Board of Education Meeting 9/21 at 7:00 pm

001for about an hour and a half under 2c1 the appointment employment compensation discipline performance or dismissal of specific employees and also under 2c10 the placement of individual students in special special education programs and other matters relating to individual students let us start with the pledge allegiance okay as far as opening remarks I just want to share a few quick things I'm sure the board has had these conversations as well uh this is our first meeting since the school year has started and just in the past two weeks I had three conversations which were really just told me what the atmosphere was in the district one of the conversations was with a um a teacher who's been over 20 years and she's like Denise it's a really good feel to the start of the school year

002and so you know she just said the energy level um she's we're in a good spot another parent um his as his student went to a different school last year and transitioned to our middle school and he said I wish we would have done it sooner he said it's such a great what the district is providing is a good thing and then there's a retired teacher who I talked to and she said I think things are going really well for district 64. so lots of good things and so just wanted to to share that and uh it just seems like we're in a good space so thanks to everyone into making that happen um at this point we're going to adjourn from the meeting and convene to a public hearing on the 23-24 budget and

003I'm going to turn that over to Adam thank you may I have a motion to convene a public hearing on the fy24 final budget for Park Ridge now School District 64. do I have a second second all in favor aye any opposed so this is the public hearing conducted by the Board of Education Community Consolidated School District number 64 Cook County Illinois pursuant to section 17 1 of the school code at the August 17 2023 Board of Education meeting the board adopted resolution 1317 to post the notice of the public of the budget hearing and availability for Budget has been on public inspection for 30 days the budget was communally located both in the district's website and available for public inspection and district office located at 8182 Greendale Avenue Niles Illinois 60714 before we turn

004the comments per recent section 17-1.3 of the school code I'm going to reveal the cash balances of by fund as of June 30th 2023. the education fund has 22.8 748 million the O M fund has 4.150 million Debt Service has 1.304 million Transportation has 2.444 million imrf Social Security fund has 145 000. working cash has 2.423 million and the tort fund has 315 000. hearing those cash balances at this time does anyone have the from the administration have any comments about the budget hearing none does any members of the board have any comments hearing none are there any publics from I'm sorry any comments from the public on the budget hearing none I'm going to ask if I could have a motion to adjourn the public hearing on the FY 24 final budget and return

005to regular session so move do I have a second all in favor aye aye any opposed we will now return new regular session all right thank you Adam okay we're gonna start our night with a spotlight on Franklin Elementary so we'll invite Kristen Williams and Margaret Burke up and they gave us these cards so we're all wondering what we're going to do with our little cards mine seem says meatballs we need one thank you okay good evening everyone I'm Kristen Williams in the principal at Franklin and I'm thrilled to be able to share Franklin with you this evening and all the wonderful things we have happening this school year I am here with some of my wonderful Falcons and the spark and they're going to get to introduce themselves in just a moment um you

006know this school year we pick a new team annually and this year we're focusing on finding joy in our journey there's so much to be proud of at Franklin especially these last few years that we've been able to share some wonderful spotlights with you um but I'm really excited about all that we have to share today and talking about what our journey is looking like over so to get us started I am going to turn it over to some of my fifth graders here that are going to help us in today's reading so we're going to talk a little bit about why we're doing decorating in a little bit but I have my Elkins here we're going to start today's reading they're going to model it for you and then we're going to ask you

007to help participate and join us in this video good evening my name is Matthew and one thing I'm looking forward to this year is going to Camp Duncan good evening my name is Angie and one thing I'm looking for this year it is the field trip which field trips we're gonna have good evening my name is Anna one thing I'm looking forward to this year is continuing to learn good evening my name is Miss Burke one thing I'm looking forward to is seeing all the smiles of our students all year long please I was gonna say I'm looking forward to what Dimitri is going to say but I'm going to go up there a different one uh good evening my name is Denise and I'm looking forward to Halloween it's one of my favorites I

008love the community uh just everyone seeing everyone get together good evening my name is Dimitri tuzios and I'm looking forward to all the holiday spirit that we're gonna have coming up good evening my name is Ben Collins and I'm looking forward to meeting all of our students in our great schools good evening my name is Monica Milligan and I'm looking forward to um visiting family during the winter holidays good evening my name is Rachel georgakis and I'm looking forward to learning about Franklin from all of you tonight good evening my name is Adam Parisi and I'm looking forward to visiting schools and seeing all the excitement and all the kids faces of all the cool things you guys are doing this year evening I'm Crystal Williams and I'm one thing I'm looking forward to this

009school year is being able to see how much our students grow from this point to the end of our school year and the end of our journey so thank you so much to my amazing fifth graders for helping take out our greeting today um some of the things that I'm most exciting to share with you this is really kind of capturing what we've done so far on our journey this school year and what is you know coming for us um our staff had the opportunity of getting together for a handful of days as we know to start our school years together before we welcome students back and that's a wonderful time for us to be able to come together and staff to understand our mission and vision is as a school to embrace the theme

010of our school here and we talked about the join our journey our very first day back together we talked about the purpose of the intent of finding enjoying our journey the reasons why we need to capture and look for joy in our day-to-day lives and some of the reasons that we discussed as educators are incredibly important is that we need to be looking for jewelry and in spiral enjoying for our students in our classrooms in our communities and with each other and what that means for our school community and what that means for our learning group and what that means for engagements and all of the positive rectifications and outcomes hoping our seeking joy in creating moments of joy in our schools so looking at the ways that we are bringing joy to our students

011is we are starting this year on boarding meetings so the entire school has this opportunity to avoid a meeting with their class and it really is a great opportunity that we haven't previously had for school community at home and communities within classrooms um we have a system that we're following the morning meeting outcome of having a reading which you did with us today then there's a share opportunity and activity which is coming and that is ending message so we're showing you what it might feel like um to have a morning meeting but in this evening meeting time together yes I'm really one of the most we thought rolling out boarding meeting at Franklin was open of students diversity in many different ways and we want to be building connections and belonging across our school and

012across our community and this is a way that we are able to create respectful learning environments and increase engagement within the classroom students have that opportunity to connect with each other every day and to connect with their teachers we have teachers that are able to join classroom spaces and support in a way that we haven't had that opportunity in our in our schedule before and we have English language learning staff being able to support in classrooms during this time special education teachers social workers and it's really been able to capture the beauty of forming a strong School community one of the other ways we are finding joy in our classrooms is through various different professional developments that we're working on at Franklin to share out with our teachers when we're growing as Educators and we're

013learning new things that Sparks excitement and joy and learning in the process one of the professional development things that we're working on is also um from responsive classroom as this morning meeting and that's the joyful classroom it's research and evidence-based that some of these practices support student engagement they create sacred learning environments they increase teacher instructional strategies to support all of our Learners so we're hoping to capture more joy in our classroom Spaces by increasing our instructional practices creating a menu of professional learning opportunities for all of our teachers in creating strategies in ways that they can better their practices increase that engagement and in turn be able to support all students at Franklin we are finding joy in our community Through various different collaborations um one that I highlighted here is the Franklin lrc

014and the Parkridge Library fully embraced our theme of finding joy and our finding joy in a book challenge this is also capturing a lot of our Franklin Community as some myself and some of my other Franklin colleagues selected their favorite book and I have students approaching me of Mrs Williams and reading your favorite book from the book challenge so we're creating some opportunity for us to talk about wonderful literature and growing and like inspiration from you know having that Community Connection and school connection and finding those moments that I don't know if I would have talked to a student specifically about my book selection but they're picking it up at the library or connecting with other staff members of this is the book that they picked and are inspired to read we are having this

015opportunity with morning meeting as well to have grade level student collaboration time it's increasing our whole school sense of belonging and purpose together um we're having you know kindergartners and fifth graders collaborate during this time to to have written modeling we have you know Franklin um leadership opportunities coming out of this and it's creating Greater Community connections some of the other community connections that we are finding joy in and looking forward to continuing to support um are through our PTA we have the most wonderful PTA at Franklin that do so many things to support our community and our learners that we wanted to highlight some of the things looking at looking ahead at our journey our PTA looks it does things that bring us joy including School celebrations like we have the back to school

016bash coming next week they have helped support our school as a community as we get our gearing up to have our first annual 5K to honor a former PE teacher that unfortunately has passed away we have raised price coming up which is a wonderful Community event Miss Burke and I also have you know increased our school Community by getting in having a shared reading every year our shared reading follows our theme this year's theme is finding Treasures a book of Joy if you want to read it yourself but it's been a great opportunity for us to get into each classroom and have that common conversation of where do we find joy and what what does that mean to us um and then last is we you know do at Franklin often love doing community service

017and that brings us joy we've done um and look forward to doing this here you know donations for Food donation for shoes donations for winter gear um and having the opportunity throughout this school year to celebrate our amazing Community we have so much to celebrate our student growth our student learning our community that we've built and it's just been a wonderful opportunity to see it grow every year so with that I'm gonna oh last thing is when I ended my time with our staff together on that very first day I did share this quote and I think that this is really just encompassed what I'm focusing on this school year and the intent of why we're really finding joy in our journey this year is that when we're finding Joy gives us fulfillment and that

018fulfillment fulfillment comes from relationships belonging and purpose and there is no more important job for us as Educators that each child at Franklin feels that relationship piece feels that they have a sense of belonging and knows what our purpose is is to help support them every day and see their growth and development and understand that their purpose is to be the best version of themselves and Learners along the way so now I'm going to turn it over to our activity which my wonderful fifth graders and Miss Burke are going to help kick off [Music] all right so for our activity today um we gave each of you a slip of paper um that we are going to be reflecting on something in District 64 that brings you Joy or is that has brought you Joy

019so far this year this is an activity we actually kicked off with our PTA in September at our first PTA meeting and then throughout this year Mrs Williams and myself are joining classrooms at all their morning meetings and asking all the students to also reflect on things that bring them Joy this is our traveling Joy jar we didn't bring our our full one with us tonight but our goal is to collect all of these joyful moments throughout our year so that at the end we can reflect on all of these moments of joy that we've had together and how it's impacted our learning and growth and our sense of community so we're going to start by giving you about a minute to reflect and write down on what brings you Joy and then we're going

020to get to the fun card foreign audience members there are also slips of paper if you would like to write something that brings you Joy about d64 and we'd love to include you in our joy our jar of joy as well all right as people are finishing up um each of our board members and our presenters our fifth grade presenters here have a card these are actually cards that our fifth graders use in their own classrooms during morning meeting and it's to help you find a partner so we're going to ask people to stand up they're going to find the other part of their card and then share their moments of Joy with their partner our audience members if you want to turn to a neighbor nearby and share that would be lovely okay United

021States oh my pleasure yeah okay and then we'll do a picture sounds great thank you enjoy Ed all right so as we wrap we just wanted to share one last thing with all of you um in terms of the last part of the morning meeting is the class message and Miss Burke and I thought long and hard about what the best way to capture what message we wanted to give to each of you so we decided um to interview all of the people that are ending their Journey at Franklin so we have retired teachers represented in our video we have parents who are have their last child exiting Franklin and some of our fifth graders so we're excited to share with you our final message and I'm sure my friends here would also agree that

022we we love Sharon Franklin with others so thank you so much okay all right thank you Franklin Falcons I think we might get a quick photo yeah let's go all right we're gonna take a picture the bar has been set all right thank you for sharing yeah thank you all right okay we started off with Franklin on a really high note so thank you all right uh this is the point of the meeting where we welcome public comments each speaker is given three minutes to address the board comments may be made in almost any matter related to the operation of schools blatantly asked that you refrain from making comments concerning individual students or staff members the board uses this time to listen to community questions and concerns uh but will not respond immediately to requests

023for information Additionally the board cannot take formal action on non-agenda items contact the board president by email if you wish to discuss your topic further please come forward to the microphone and state your name and if comfortable your address for the minutes so I believe we have um Dr Ryan Maxwell is here all right please come to the podium thank you hello I'm way too close hi everybody I'm Dr Ryan Maxwell um I my wife and I own a practice in Park Ridge Silver Lining Chiropractic we have the one of the largest practices in the state of Illinois we are a pediatric focused um prenatal as well as Family Wellness practice here um and before I get any further I forgot the thanks you guys uh I think our parents and our communities appreciate you

024guys for being here on a Thursday night at seven eight o'clock I don't think you guys get enough things for that so yes um but one of the biggest things I want to talk about I've been here I think this is my third board meeting I've came to I'm sitting in the back like a weirdo back there but yes um I love the energy you guys bring and it makes my heart very happy that our kids are growing up um with people that actually care about their education but one of the biggest things I have not noticed talks about in our schools was health and wellness of not only our children but our teachers as well um if you guys don't know this but a lot of our teachers are growing up all right are

025going through the school years more stressed than ever I see this on a day-to-day basis and our kids throughout their country are growing up sicker than ever rates of 80d ADHD focus problems sleep difficulties um autism uh focus problems again headaches migraines and kids are skyrocketing drugs and meds are not the only option and that's a Band-Aid for our kids and for our teachers what we've noticed and what I've done was I've been communicating with a lot of docs in the state of Wisconsin in Chippewa Falls Wisconsin they actually implemented bringing chiropractors in at least one in one of the schools in 2017 um and they started with the teachers to see how this would go the teachers one were having less sick days two were having better focus in the classrooms and three were

026not as stressed that was huge and they saw the biggest impact so they wanted that for their children and for those students because those kids some of them weren't focusing at their best and once they brought that in for the kids it's changed everything they were thinking outside the box and how we can get these kids growing up healthy sick kids grow into sick adults I'm trying to change that trajectory and we've done that in Park Ridge it's not enough we got to get into our schools we got to change something there's PT's OTS speech therapy his nurses in schools what we focus on is the nervous system the nervous system is your brain your spinal cord and your spinal nerves and that controls and coordinates every function of the body so we don't do

027the big twist turns cracks and Pops that people think of I know you guys have seen like YouTube videos and stuff like that no we're very gentle and that's why we see so many kids um my biggest thing I'm not looking for answers here but I just want to get the ball rolling um I want to make sure that I can help out our schools in any way can and that's one of my biggest things that I'm trying to do here yes again my name is Dr Ryan with silver lining Chiropractic if you've got any questions yeah reach out to me thank you thank you okay are there other public comments hi there come to the microphone please and we have three minutes I don't think our timer's working exactly but we'll keep in time

028I'll let you know thank you my name is Michael coach my kids go to um Lincoln Middle School and and Washington Elementary and today I would like to talk about the radon issue in general and radon in schools back in March our family member my mother-in-law she was diagnosed with lung cancer with no prior history of smoking or any other health condition we did some research and found out that the exposure to radon can cause lung cancer and we tested our home and it came up three times the EPA recommended level just uh so general public understands radon is a colorless odorless and radioactive gas produced naturally through the decay of uranium within the Earth's soil radon develops from breakdown of soil and rocks sipping into buildings and the air we breathe radon is all

029around us in the open it disseminates without causing any problems but in closed spaces chronic exposure could be deadly and victims don't realize they have been exposed until years later when it is too late I have some facts here just I would like to read some radon is the second leading cause of lung cancer linked to more than 20 000 deaths every year in the United States and in children it may cause cause leukemia neurological disorders and severe respiratory issues 36 percent of buildings in Illinois are above EPA level uh at present only seven states require testing in schools which are Colorado Connecticut New Jersey New York Oregon Rhode Island and Virginia and there is no federal law mandating the testing uh just some facts from Illinois in 2014 nine staff members at Pleasantdale Elementary

030School school in LaGrange were diagnosed with cancer and when they did the testing it came up to 15 to to eight times the EPA guidelines the company that did the testing and mitigation Elliot and Associates installed six radon mitigation systems in that school and the levels were not normalized actually that's the company that did the mitigation in my home as well school districts that tested Illinois from 2018 through 2022. I'm just going to mention top five with the most children Springfield school districts District 186 13 000 students uh Waukegan School District 60 14 000 students East Aurora School District 131 13 000 students Saint Charles school district 303 11 000 students in Lake Zuri School District 95 5000 students and to me it is apparent that federal and state authorities are not willing to take

031any responsibility and face this issue I actually contacted an individual who is there sir I think your your time is up can we do if you can just finish your sentence that would be great the three minutes is up though I understand um I just want to make uh just to get my message out to the general public to test your homes for Radon and to schools you know please test our schools that would be my message thank you all right thank you okay any other public comments okay uh and Gareth Kennedy has joined our meeting remotely he's traveling for work uh Gareth can you hear me okay we can hear you as well all right thank you okay um all right let us um if we look at the agenda um Gareth made a

032a suggestion so if we can just move a 10 um up before we talk about the budget for the current year so if we can just go to 810 first and then we can go to A2 and A3 okay yeah um as I was putting together some plans for triple I one of the things that I found in board policy um was that we need to make a I need to make a recommendation annually for what would be the extent of what we would reimburse on a daily rate um for our expenses so as I studied other school districts and just got information um 120 dollars seemed like it was uh what everybody else was doing or somewhere in that same ballpark this would just be the maximum amount per day that we would reimburse

033generally for meals um but um and we need to do that we haven't been so thought we would do this and this is a board policy uh two colon 125 yes two calling two one five so that is my recommendation okay and so just to be clear that's a per diem of 120 but we would turn a receipts in and it you know if it's only 60 then that's what you get reimbursed and we could always say no if it's something that seems out of the ordinary that we wouldn't have you know we wouldn't approve for an employee so any questions from the board on that why don't we take the motion I move that the Board of Education of community Consolidated School District 64 Park Ridge Niles Illinois approve a maximum allowable allowable reimbursement

034amount per diem of 120 for meals and incidental expenses for board members attending conferences on behalf of the school district okay Monica the motion Rachel had the second any further discussion from the board okay let's take a roll call thanks to Phyllis Matt is not here today so she um jumped in two deals yes or no oh yes lubinski yes Pearl yes yes George akus yes Kennedy okay motion carries okay all right thank you we just wanted to do that ahead of time and then um go into the financials and the budgets um okay so Adam is going to talk about and this is just a first discussion there will be all the discussions on financial projections before we um adopt the budget thank you in previous meetings we talked about financial projections so I'm

035here tonight to talk about four different scenarios related to the budget and then have some opportunities for questions um in all of these assumptions there's some constants I just want to go through those first before we get into scenarios so on the revenue side over the five-year period EAB is increasing from 1.9 billion to 2.6 CPI cpis mates are beginning at four and then moving down to 2.5 the tax rate fluctuates from a 4.13 now it's 3.69 the cap Levy increases from 81.2 million and 92 million State funding increases slightly from 5.1 million to 5.5 and all of these assumptions take into consideration that there are no additional Federal funding related to Esser the three three bargaining units the three contracts SSC is through 2025 prea through 2026 and prta is through 2027 all of

036these assumptions are assuming the parameters of those contracts will stay in place over the five-year time period in addition to purchase Services increasing from 10 to 11.8 and supplies and materials increasing from 3.8 to 3.9 so with that being said those are the constants we're going to go through the four scenarios so next nextogen item we're going to talk about the budget and improve the budget um that budget is a true balanced budget where overall revenues exceed overall expenditures what this does this new base scenario has the true balance budget in it just to remind the board we haven't seen this in a while so the red line that exists up top that is our ending fund balance our fund balance as of June 30th and that is the combination of all of our funds

037who spent decent amount of time going through the funds last time the blue line is our recently adopted fund balance policy at 30 percent so what we're trying to do in these scenarios the idea is to keep the red line above the Blue Line This base scenario using this balanced budget and keeping that moving forward does that scenario two keeps everything the same with the exception of not charging kindergarten tuition so I we've talked a little bit about you know the concept of kindergarten tuition and if that kindergarten tuition goes away the question is you know where it is that Revenue come from so in this case what we'll see here is over the next three years that will that red line will go down kind of cross with the 30 and then eventually dip

038below in your sport and five it would definitely be below the 30 percentile the third scenario keeps that kindergarten tuition off so no more kindergarten tuition and then as we've talked about recently we've talked about our need for Capital Improvements in all the buildings so the first scenario has the two million dollars two million dollars for construction over the five-year period however as we we've talked about briefly and we will continue to look at especially the next month when we start taking a look at buildings the the two million dollars in the budget is not going to be enough to sustain the needs of our facilities so what this scenario does is instead of keeping at two increases it three million three million three million and then four million and four million over the five-year

039period under this scenario you see we dip below the blue line right away and as time goes on the um our fund balance decreases you know at a slightly um stronger rate and then the fourth and final scenario is similar but what we did is we kept kindergarten tuition in for the five-year period and still use the operating budget to fund the capital projects so again using those same numbers three three three four and four um red line is fun balance is still dipping below the 30 but obviously it does not dip as quickly as scenario three so with that open the floor for questions and I have two comments I want to make Adam and one of them I want you to respond to one of them is that we've gotten questions about this

040and I think it's important for everybody know that we don't know what the future holds for what our ability to continue charging kindergarten tuition would be depending on what where the state the direction of the state goes correct it's important to mention the second one if if you could talk about um the Tiff especially the one we have two the one that exists in uptown Park Ridge which is slowly nearing its end it still would be money that we would realize in a few years even past when it ends because obviously when you pay taxes it takes time for those taxes to get to whatever the taxing bodies are generally two years so um can you just talk real briefly about what you know about the up down diff just sending and anything else pertaining

041definitely so the the the largest Tiff in uptown Park bridge is going to come off the books in 22 27 so we still have a few more years when that Tiff when that tip ends right now the the eav for the tip is frozen and it's in like a different pot of money um or tip a bucket so to speak when that tip ends what will happen um is that those dollars that are in the tip are going to come on to the district as new construction and it will add to our total eav so our eav will come I'm sorry will increase when that tip ends now something just to you know take into consideration and I can you know just mention it once we get to the budget part is right now as

042part of our agreement with the city we do we do get payments out of the TAF so you know it's a little too early to run some scenarios but it is it is an idea that um so yes once it events we will have a higher eav but then those dollars that are paid to us from the city for tuition and other type of made whole payments will disappear okay other questions Gareth did you have a question correct yeah we have we have not run projections yet because just we're still a few years out and the tip still has to materialize and there's still some development that's happening um I I don't have a number or even a fair guesstimate at this moment but it's something we can definitely look at in you know in

043future time that's great right definitely other questions from the board um go ahead oh sorry on the slide with the contracts and the costs the purchase applies or sorry purchased um Services increase from 10 million to 11.8 million does that just increase in terms of like costs of living adjustments okay yes well on 2035 and 2035 or 38. yeah uh yes I'm almost positive that is the case okay foreign well I think as Gareth alluded to I mean I think this is the start of conversations we're going to have about this but this these projections gives us some options as you looked at different scenarios but um you know there may have to be some conversations on things that need to change yeah so definitely it's really helpful Baseline information to to share with us

044so thank you you're welcome yeah all right sounds good all right Adam the next agenda item is yours so stay right there um as Adam said we talked uh in detail about the District budget went over the different um buckets in the budget more closely last meeting so let me just turn it over to you so just to let you know what you just said yes so the intention was to go really in depth with the tentative and now that the final budget's in place to go a lot more high level so this is the presentation the official budget um so really quickly just a few things have changed so any new staff that has been hired recently uh the actual salaries and benefits are in the budget document as opposed to projections and then

045the fund budgets were closely monitored so uh the the goal not only is to have a true balanced budget but to make sure that there were not deficits in any of the funds so through transfers um made by board action we'll be able to do that and the budget is set up in that manner manner so with that being said we know that um majority of our revenue is locally funded and mostly property taxes so 93 of that is local funding five percent of that comes from the state and almost entirely uh evidence-based funding the business-based funding formula is that and then two percent of is federal and those are all of our federal grants our Ida and title grants when we break down expenditures we do it in two different ways first part is

046by function so 56 instruction and 39 of support and then one percent for Community Services three percent for debt and then one percent for payments other districts and governmental units uh we look at expenditures in two different ways when we look at in the object way we know people are most of our spending salaries and benefits 64 percent of salaries 12 of benefits are purchase Services you know keeps keeps things running with about 10 percent supplies is four Capital outlay which is mainly our construction is only three percent of our budget we remember last year was close to 20 percent with our construction spending other objects are five percent and then one for non-capitalized equipment and one for termination and then you you have the in your in the board packet not only at your

047tables but what is posted online we have all of the backup including revenues and expenditures and the state forms so this is the snapshot of the state form but I think for I guess you know for us I'm hoping the big takeaways are true balanced budget revenues over expenditures and then no deficits in individual funds because we're going to make those transfers happen uh similar to what's going to be happening happening next so we can have that um that that become in line and with oh and then future Financial uh challenges you know as we're we're getting better but still you know coming off of covid some local announces the impact on learning loss in SEL working really hard through teaching learning student services to be able to prepare our kids for that and then

048as far as legislation whether it's the veto session or the spring session uh every single time when we were in those scenarios we talk about TRS cost shift property tax breezes and other Financial scenarios that will impact local school districts so those are always things to consider when you guys are down at the triple I conference you'll definitely have some interactions and hear some sessions related to that so with that leave it open for any questions you have specifically about the budget questions for Adam how about Gareth any questions for Adam on the budget yes definitely great I think you only mentioned a balanced budget maybe six times seven I don't know so okay all right so this is an action item I moved that the Board of Education of community Consolidated School District 64

049Park Ridge Niles Illinois adopt the budget for the fiscal year beginning July 1st 2023 and ending June 30th 2024 as presented Monica the motion Rachel had the second any further discussion from the board okay roll call Bo ozios yes lubinski yes Pearl yes Mulligan yes Rodriguez yes Kennedy motion carries and passes okay thank you okay Adam has one more um item on the agenda uh a resolution he just alluded to to transfer funds and then there'll be a public hearing at the next meeting so you're up so basically this it this is a procedural motion to move money um to help fund our construction our capital projects we've talked about this in the past about how yeah well yes we we borrowed money we still need to utilize fund balance to pay for those construction

050projects so and because we're moving money from the education fund to the O M fund and then a capital projects we need to conduct a public hearing which will take place in um in October so what this essentially is is to um is to pass a resolution to conduct the public hearing very similar to any of our other hearings we'll publish a notice in the paper um and then we'll be able to have that hearing in October and then with the Auditors assistance perform the transfer any questions for Adam all right let's take the motion I moved that the Board of Education of community Consolidated School District 64 Park Ridge Niles Illinois approved resolution 1318 to conduct a public hearing directing the transfer of 19 million 385 685 from the education fund to the operations

051and maintenance fund and then to the capital projects fund of the district all right Monica hit the motion and Rachel had the second all right any um any further discussion from the board all right let's take a vote Tuesdays lubinski yes Pearl yes Mulligan yes George aakis yes Kennedy motion passes thank you all right thank you Adam thanks for all your work here okay uh next we have um Samantha is up with our student achievement update I'm gonna sit here if that's okay with everyone okay perfect I'm Samantha I'm on the assistant superintendent for student learning here in District 64. if any of you didn't already know that thanks for having me tonight this is really exciting to talk about our student achievement data for the 22-23 school year specifically our spring data and I'm

052a little biased but this is all of the work that we do all year for learning in the classroom with teacher students and staff right so it's a big part of everything you do and everything that we do our learning targets for tonight are what we're going to kind of talk about is a glimpse into our student achievement performance for last school year and with that we're going to highlight what our accomplishments are but then we're also going to talk about our areas for growth and things that are admin team and our teachers and all of our certified and non-certified staff are working towards for this year and then beyond within this presentation I'm also going to explain how when and why we assess students throughout the year for grades k through eight because I

053think it's really important for all of you our parents our families and communities who aren't rooted in education to understand that process and then in the end we'll talk about the factors that impact our district data and then what our action steps are at each building at the district for this year and then beyond so kind of keep those in mind as I go through to begin and we always do this at a building level with teachers and administrators it's important to think about who our students are right not only in the classroom and a building but also at the district level so last year we serviced 4 500 students and while that pie chart doesn't look too diverse it's always really important to think about those demographics and who our kids are right Kristen

054Williams sat here and talked about how Franklin has a wide array of students and that also comes with those columns to the left there right who we serve that falls under low income students with special needs are English Learners population and then we also think about the full spectrum or Continuum of services with students who are in some advanced placement and that doesn't only Encompass our channels of challenge or gifted and talented program that's also our accelerated math and even some of our elective programming our instrumental music program can be considered an advanced placement for some students so kind of they think about that as I go through too at the building level with teachers and even with parents and families we always talk about a balanced portfolio so although I'm going to talk about

055quite a few standardized assessments we give throughout the year we look at other data points classroom assessments and common assessments Universal screeners that give us some additional data and then those standardized assessments so a child is never a One-Stop shop with one or two pieces of data we're looking at everything this projection kind of back Maps the things that we're working on this year and last year with our teachers and our admin staff so something that's on our mind is where we were at pre-pandemic and what those targets were and I'll talk about that throughout the presentation but for the most part as you'll see we're back to those pre-pandemic levels and now we're trying to go from them grow from them excuse me from there we start to think about our achievement you'll see

056in this presentation that we continue to report high achievement data which is fabulous but then we also look at our growth we want kids to continue growing from grade level to grade level and that rate can show some improvement and that's really our Focus to begin we'll start with grades K and one which are our little people and they're so adorable but we do assess them right and fast bridge is one of those tools that we use so some background we give Fast Bridge assessments and reading and Mathematics three times a year it's done on a one-on-one session with students and teachers because remember we're working with kids between five and seven years old and this reports accuracy of a skill a single skill multiple times so here we look at kindergarten and first grade

057in the area of reading for kindergarten specifically we're looking at decodable words and then for first grade we're looking at reading rcbm is reading and then a curriculum based measure okay and specifically for first grade we start to think about fluency and the words per minute that students can read and that builds from kindergarten because decodable words is how kids can break words down like cats right cat I'm practicing that with my child at home so if you take a look at this data for kindergarten and first grade we look at three tiers we want the majority of our students to be in tier one about eighty percent which means they only need really good teaching in the classroom from there thank you we have tier two which is about 15 of our students receiving

058some type of intervention at that next level and then from there tier three is about five percent so we want it to be at 80 and then that teal and gold are yellow to be at about 20. some of our district goals are about 85 percent of students in that yellow so if you take a look from Spring 22 to 23 we see improvements for kindergarten and that's wonderful because we had a implementation of full day kindergarten last year and then for first grade we still see some nice stable data but we just had a new implementation of a kindergarten first grade phonics program foundation so we're hoping to see some progression from there and then obviously our students who are in full day kindergarten will keep progressing to first grade now keep in mind

059one year of data isn't totally reliable right but it's a good start okay next we also look at math so for kindergarten specifically the skill is number sequencing and then for first grade it's decomposing so learning how to break numbers down and as you can see we see some really nice positive growth for the spring of 23 for kindergarten and first grade that purple is really starting to grow and then those teal and gold are starting to shrink which less which means less students need intervention I wanted to show the board this as well because I love that we have full day kindergarten and I have to be very transparent our sample size for half day kindergarten last year is 30 so it's low if you're if you're a statistics person right I don't know

060if that's a reliably sound data piece but I did want to show this to the board our expected tiers are on the left are spring 23 data is on the right so they look very different than our full day kindergarten students again 30 is not a large sample size but it is telling us something about our full day kindergarten program because in the afternoon we do offer intervention and enrichment for those kindergartners just a clarifying question on the previous slides did the kindergarten numbers include both full day and half day or just full day so these would have been all of our students correct and then this is only those part-time kids and to me more school right for for kindergartners in some sense is more school there's more learning going on next we'll talk

061about our iar data which was formerly called Park if anyone's familiar with that so this is the Illinois assessment of Readiness and it's given to our students in grades three through eight so keep that in mind in the areas of ela and math they do title at Ela instead of reading there are between three and six sessions depending on what the state allocates to our district every year so keep that in mind as we look at the data too and we only take this in spring so it is different than our map data that you'll see in a second there's not totally a growth component within one school year right now we're looking at some of our preliminary slash published data but our real real data gets published on the Illinois report card in about

06230 days I'm counting okay so here you'll see a chart of all of our grade levels for Math and dla and this is our percentage of students who met or exceeded standards within our district and also given to us by iar we want students to be at 55 to 60 percent meeting or exceeding so our numbers look good in comparison to other districts especially those in the surrounding area and we'll talk about some comp districts in November when we return to iar data as a board and District admin team but this is a data point that we continue to think about for our teachers and our building administrators here you'll see some historical data for iar so 2021 would be right after the pandemic right still a little bit of movement in and out of

063remote and real school but our numbers do stay stable with some grade levels moving eighth grade tends to stray up in ela excuse me same with fifth grade there's some second grade movement that looks pretty good nothing dramatic to report there but it's something that we're keeping our eye on next we'll talk about map which is our measures of academic performance and math is a standardized assessment that we use for many different reasons within our district and it's something that teachers use probably every day in their classrooms we give this assessment three times a year in the fall winter and spring and the areas of reading and Mathematics it measures achievement and growth and that's over school years so if a student came to District 64 in second grade we would Benchmark them all the

064way to eighth grade and then even District 207 would look at their map scores so it's a very fluid assessment that gives a lot of data it does give one rich score which is a rush unit I don't know if you're familiar with that that term but it's one scaled score that a student will get and then it does break down into strands for reading and Mathematics into some more numbers and then it also gives a percentile ranking for students and parents and that test is one time and it takes about 45 to 90 minutes so I just wanted you to think about the difference with that and iar a little bit we'll start with math so this slide has a lot of data added I know so I'm going to try to kind of

065explain a little bit of it to you this is our achievement percentile for Math and grades two through eight our Target in the green is an average of three years of pre-pandemic data because that's where we want to get back to that's where we see our numbers were the highest and this is going to be a percentile based on National Achievement as given by map okay so this is in comparison to other districts similar districts right so you'll notice that grade 6 and grade 2 we've exceeded our targets which is wonderful and all of our other grade levels are projecting upwards in that blue red and yellow so as I said before in that previous slide or the third slide our achievement looks really good right I know that's that's a very simple way to

066say it but it's a major celebration for us next this is our mean writ percentile for an average student at any grade level that's up there in District 64. so right now the average student performs between the 70th and 80th percentile so a little bit different than those National percentiles but this is also really important for us to think about in terms of an achievement that's a high average percentile in comparison to other districts so now we talk about growth because map reports on achievement and growth and one note that I have in the right corner up there is that a growth rate of the 50th percentile is expected anything of over that is above average okay so we do see a little bit of a dip in the yellow there we're still at a

067growth rate that's acceptable so to speak but this is our main focus for this year and moving forward and when I say main focus I don't mean just for myself and Dr Collins but our building administrators our classroom teachers and all of our certified support staff have this on their radar as well we did a lot of work as an admin team to think about this data and talk about it and then we all brought that back to the building level here you'll see our percentile rank for growth so again that percentile based on a national report right so at eighth grade for 2023 we're at the 48th percentile as compared to other districts I'll move into reading now for map for map Performance again we'll start with that achievement percentile so that Target is

068in green and as you can see at fourth grade we already hit that Target and then all of our other grade levels are for the most part projecting up which again is really nice to seek that achievement keeps growing for reading again achievement percentile this is an average student with their writ percentile is between the 64th and 76th so again higher than an average District right way above an average District so we are very proud of that accomplishment again you get to our growth which is our main focus something that we're thinking about daily we look at these numbers and they kind of go up and down here so that's something that's on our radar for our for Math and what they report to us we see some numbers that are a little bit lower

069than the range we would like them to be but that's something we're continuing to think especially as we head into an Ela committee review for grades k through eight this is really on our minds here we have our percentage of students meeting growth which is in our yellow for the year before and the one thing that we talked a lot about or I've had to think about is how our growth may have gone down just a little bit at grade level but our achievement continues to stay high map will give students a growth Target and it can be anywhere between three and eight points and if a student hits that then they're calculated into that percentage if they don't hit it they're not so if Denise has a goal of seven points to grow and

070you meet six you're still growing Denise but you're not in that percentage so we're still showing achievement I hope that makes sense and I really had to dig into the data to think about that because sometimes it seems oxymoronic right it doesn't seem to make sense but students get a growth goal depending on what level they're at so if Denise is performing at a lower level than Monica Denise is going to have more to grow and Monica if you're in our gifted and talented program you may only have to grow two points right next I'm gonna I want to talk about our tier one performance because our district is really working towards providing a strong mtss multi-tiered system of support foundation so this is something that we have to think about as well I stated

071before but our tier one should be about 80 to 85 percent of our students who just need differentiation in good teaching in the classroom and then tier two to three which should be about 15 to 20 percent of our students are maybe getting an intervention in the classroom or some type of pull out from the classroom or they may be a student who falls under the category of special education right so here we look at our students and the percentage of them that are at above or at the 40th percentile because that means that they don't really fall into any type of intervention being needed so as you can see all of our numbers are above the 80th percentile right now and some are even in the 90s which is wonderful I just wanted to

072give a little bit more of an example here but for our fourth grade in math we have 89 of students who are above the 40th percentile nine percent who are between the 25th and 40th and only two percent who are below the 25th so again when I say we have students who fall into a high achieving range that this is what I really want to highlight for us and then those students that 11 percent who fall into tier two and three were thinking about how we can support them through our mtss system and that's a lot of work that Ben's building with us I'm building with the principles and the principals are building with their teachers for reading we have the percentage of students at or above the 40th percentile so again as you can

073see all of our numbers for spring 2023 still reside above that 80 percent or even 85 which is really our Target there so as I stated in the beginning part of our learning targets here is to talk about things that impact our data and then our next steps so we are working to continue to accelerate growth through our mtss model we're doing a lot of work on Wednesdays during our early release time not only as an admin team but then also building by building with teachers so when we have administrative counsel we're doing a deep dive into the data and some PD and training amongst one another to really talk about that system and what it means and then our administrators go back to the building and have monthly meetings with their teams to look

074at data and then classroom teachers are kind of sent back to dive a little bit more into those common assessments and talk with students and families and then kind of create those groups within their classroom or out of their classroom to service under that mtss model so when I talk about those tiers and also growth that's how we're working on that this year and then finally we've also began to look at increased progress monitoring and then differentiation or different things to do in the classroom through that testing and it's not that we want to over test students but these are quick assessments that just give us some more data so for example at the middle school level we're beginning to give students a very quick 15-minute assessment once a month in the areas of reading

075and math on if they're underneath the 40th percentile and then creating small groups in LA or math to service those students right and it's hard to do at a middle school level right when we're so departmentalized sometimes but our teachers are so in and it's wonderful to see then finally we do have some new Staffing and resource ideas that we are working on and have been implementing so we're in year two of our K-5 math curriculum which which is Eureka squared and if you were kind of looking at some of those math numbers they look good right you always sometimes see in an implementation of any curriculum a dip but we're not seeing that yet we're not gone would right we're also in year one of a new Middle School curriculum which is Carnegie and

076we're doing a lot of professional development with teachers right now to make sure that we have a sound foundation in that and then we're also going to be bringing a parent University for some sample lessons out so that we're kind of drawing a circle around that which will be really exciting I mentioned that we're launching a K-8 Ela review and that's at the K-5 Elementary level and also at the middle school level so we're working really hard to review our Ela data best practices and research and then we're looking at new curriculum and our standards to see if there's something that will better service our students were still employing or hiring interventionists with some of our title money that we received through the state which has been really beneficial as you can see from our

077data those extra pieces of intervention are working under our mtss model and then finally we have that explicit phonics program that we've been using which is Foundations at the kindergarten in first grade level and we're seeing great results with that that was some of the early fast bridge data that I showed you so that brings me to the end of my my Spiel here and all of this exciting news does anyone have any questions or comments just wanted to thank you for such a thorough job of like presenting this data and making it easy to understand and for tying it into mtss because I often feel like when we look at a meme that doesn't tell me exactly where students are because it could be the opposite ends of the spectrum and I I so

078appreciate you giving us that 40th percentile and above data to look at and putting it into mtss and seeing how all these different systems that you and our staff are working on are integrated so thank you so much of course thank you thanks Phyllis I was nervous not gonna lie I got it perfect you know the one thing that I'll say is I started in this District eight years ago as a teacher and our mtss model was was fine Lori really did a nice job with Alicia and Leanne Frost to start to build it up and we're finally seeing some of the benefits of that right I feel we have a sound mtss system there's things we need to work on but but we're seeing gains and new opportunities with teachers because they're providing new

079things but then we're also seeing it within our data with students which is really exciting yeah I would also Echo very thorough and helpful and easy to understand presentation so thank you thank you um and I think the message that I'm getting that's kind of the overarching message which I think you presented at the beginning and kind of it flowed throughout is you know in terms of performance we are doing really well um and I think that's pretty clear to see across the board and in terms of growth there's opportunity for us as a district and so I think the big question for us is we help support you and staff across the district is how do we ensure that we are setting up students and teachers um to row as quickly as they can

080academically so that you know where we're getting better and better each and each and every year so thanks for that clear kind of through line throughout all the presentations and all our teachers their goals are to grow students in a year right that's what every teacher wants and that's what I want for them so that's the work we need to think about right how can we give them the capacity to do that so thank you for saying that how about Gareth uh do you have a question or two foreign mm-hmm thanks Kara so the electronic map scores that are going out I can't take 100 of credit for it Matt tomes and Janice Santos really helped me configure that and that's more of an electronic system right so we can send those out by merging

081that map report and then power school and parents can get that really easily and then parents who still want a paper copy just call the office and we mail it out and I think Gareth in the past when we've had to print those and mail them especially in the spring when we take a map test maybe on I don't know May 15th it takes us time to to process those and then get them out to families so we would like to continue to do that we also will be electronically sending our iar reports as well so both of those will be going out in that manner which I think will be really helpful for families in terms of the fast Bridge reports that you talked about I do think that's a great idea because it's

082another tool and data piece that we use it hasn't always been considered a standardized assessment so we always haven't reported it out to parents so that's something I want to think about with the curriculum and student learning team what's the best way to do that and then I have to also look at the software we use and what our report looks like because Gareth I think the link that you're talking about doesn't fall under our capability right now but that doesn't mean it can't because there is it's great to share with parents especially at that level when we have a full day program now too um and then finally Gareth you are correct there has been some bad press around school wider units of study and while there are many great components to that program

083we're not running from it right we're in it we're in a seven to eight year review cycle so our time is kind of up to see if there's anything else out there that would best service our students I'm excited to do that work with our committee we did launch it last week and the week before so we have two committees simultaneously running we've done a lot of research as a group around best practices for ELA we've looked at our data and then we're really starting to do a deep dive into other programs that have research behind them and some data that we like and then my team and I have also started doing site visits to other districts to look at their programming and how they bring that into their classroom so it's all it's

084awesome we're having a really good time doing it and then I'm hoping in March April May we'll have a conversation about an adoption sure well Samantha we can't tell are you excited in your new role I mean I'm not sure if you've shared your excitement yet I'm just kidding yeah um so you know one thing it seems like if you look at think of the data holistically like second and third grade seems to overall be performing well so like what's the secret like what's happening there that might be used by the other grades any thoughts on that so I always think of our primary levels as some foundational building right when you have students who are in kindergarten first grade second grade even to third grade think of all of the learning and the growth

085that takes place during that time right it's all foundational skills of learning how to read it's that phonics decoding encoding fluency and that really is a lot of that growth that translates into those numbers right as you learn to grasp those skills you show so much more growth there same with math right you're learning how to count in kindergarten one of our first standards on our report card is counting up to ten but that by the end of the year you're learning how to de-chunk hundreds and Tents so we see so many more foundational skills being built and not that we're not doing that at the middle school level or in grades four through eight or anything of that nature but I do and this is not research driven Denise but I do find our

086primary level to just pack so much in so we see so much more growth with them because of those foundational skills and I haven't tested that hypothesis but as I kind of walk around talk with parents talk with students and our teachers and then if you look at those strands of map informational text vocabulary you see those skills in there and that progression is just so much quicker and you know I just wanted to mention one thing um you mentioned we had 30 students in half day kindergarten uh just so I think some of the board was not if there's a student um wanting to attend play there is a you know um the financial need the district will support them to do that so just want to make sure but I didn't know I

087know this board wanted to how do we serve the needs of all students and so like my situation I have three children two attended call day kindergarten one to ten at half day she was working on some anxieties some social emotional things where it just wasn't right for her but I wonder can we supplement parents who want some things to work with their you know how can we give them some of those things and supports even though they're not in school can they still do some enrichment if parents wanted to yes I just wonder about that and I think that's part of I mean any student that's in District 64 we always offer that right when parents reach out to students who are on either end of the spectrum who have you know some some

088needs and fall into maybe a tier two or three category who are gifted and talented our teachers will provide that intervention or enrichment I mean many of you already know we use computer-based programs that students can log on to when they get home if parents you know aren't printing things or anything of that nature but our teachers can also send home some extra items that students can practice on I know one thing that we use at the primary level so just IXL students are doing more practice at home and that's a leveled learning so there's a lot of growth that happens through that so yes a lot of opportunity for some enrichment and intervention outside of the classroom that teachers can provide too yeah so I just wonder if that's specifically targeted to our half

089day students you know or half day kindergarten students that they can you know if you're looking for extra enrichment that you're not here in the afternoon here are some possibilities you know just to and maybe it's out there but maybe we can just be more sure um you know kind of uh specific with that population yeah just to clarify but there's 30 kids last year not this year last year this year I believe we have 16. at least the last time I checked which was at the end of August correct yes we have 16 past day kindergartners for 16 . correct we have 16 part-time kindergartners this year last year we had 30. and I think some of them did transition even you know by October you know at some point correct yes so I'm

090counting spring numbers as opposed to fall those were a little bit bigger but by October or November we had many students transition to full day one of the other things I wanted to mention amongst Samantha has done is there's one school that's not represented here in the state and that's um with Jefferson and so with Alicia's help um when working with our new principal Michelle you know the goal would be next year to have correct include some data so we could see some of those things that we're looking for to build even more foundations for those kids to be successful by the time they leave us yes and something Alicia's doing which is fabulous with Michelle Barkley and the staff is starting to standardize what we're looking at for students and how we want them

091to progress and then how we do that through assessment which is tricky with three and four-year-olds that's great thanks thank you for having me I missed the Emerson kids but I love this job so thank you Denise reporting that out drink some of that water all right all right thank you Samantha all right nice job all right all right we're moving on to A6 and uh Joel is gonna come up talking about our enrollment and Staffing for this year just give me one second pull some things out Joel are you getting more sleep now that school year started I'm sorry are you getting more sleep now that the school Year's started a little bit a little bit all right so thanks to everybody for having us here tonight uh as indicator we're here as we

092do every year at this time of year to talk about the enrollment Staffing so each year at the six day point of the school year we take a snapshot of where our enrollment is and compare it to the previous year to see where we are we're up or down and then the impact that's had on the buildings and our staffing numbers so this year when we look at August 31st for this year we're at 4465 students when we pull that same time frame from last year we were at 4 510 or we're down 45 students this is not something that comes as a shock to us if you recall or if any of you attended or listened to the board meeting back in February we were actually projecting to be down in our rollover at

093that time we were looking at 4 401 so we're actually up about 64 kids from the projection but we did not anticipate being close to where we were going to be so again this isn't a big surprise to us and if you do consider since the pandemic where the enrollment really has sat with the district prior to the pandemic we were at 4 600 and starting to go a little bit above the pandemic obviously changed everything and since the pandemic in 20 21 we were at 4538 in 2122 we were at 4 444 and then again last year four thousand five hundred ten so we've stayed in this range and again this year we fall into that same kind of status quo uh area as we've been in the last couple of years when we

094look at then where is the kind of impact of this happening you can see uh from the memo that we sent it's pretty much even there's a little variation it's status quo with most of our buildings the two big kind of uh discrepancies there are Franklin and Franklin's down 16 kids and that really relates to one grade level which is fifth grade prior last year they had five sections there was a point when we were heading into June where we only had three um we did pick up a couple kids and we moved and popped a bubble at Franklin fifth grade but it just happened to be that that fourth grade that was moving up was not a big section so again it's not something that we didn't anticipate but it really kind of dramatically

095impacted Franklin in particular and then the other one is Roosevelt which is down 21 students and again something we foresaw last year we actually grew Roosevelt much greater than we anticipated going over 700 which is a really large for Roosevelt kind of dropped back down to where we typically expect it and we had two really big sections of kindergarten and first grade I'm sorry second grade last year and so when we look at Roosevelt this year we're down a section in kindergarten and down a section in the first grade and again I think what you'll see there is they're historically kind of drop back to where they normally are the year before going over 700 was just something we don't typically see a whole lot of at Roosevelt so again we're happy that we ended

096up higher and closer to our last year's numbers but again this wasn't a surprise to us and I want to commend Adam and the tech department for really pushing the registration early one of the things we talked about a lot are the bubble sections and again a bubble section is where we go over the class size minimums and we add a new section or we drop down and since the pandemic what we found is that registration was really slow and that had a huge impact on Staffing especially as we rolled into the month of August but I know that Adams Department along with the tech department had a concerted effort to really push registration and we saw that over the summer we only popped three bubbles and they were done early enough that we were

097able to staff and make changes uh pretty much without issue and those sections were can kindergartened field where we just went over a handful of kids as I mentioned before while we had dropped down to three sections of fifth grade at Franklin we gained one back so we popped a bubble in July and we were able to move up to four and then probably the one that was the most unexpected not because we were that many kids away but just where the bubble pop the seventh grade at Emerson typically you don't see a lot of move-ins at the seventh and eighth grade level you do it sixth grade if you're going to see it at the middle school but to get about six to eight kids at Emerson at the seventh grade was really unexpected

098but again it happened early enough we were able to accommodate and make those changes and I know that uh Tessa Schulman and her team did a nice job with them if we really look at the sections then per building we find that um Carpenter is down a kindergarten because when sorry when we go down 45 kids there's usually an impact unfortunately for Carpenters particularly uh Brett balda they really were just about three kids away so this uh the variance of one or two kids can oftentimes make a huge difference in a carpenter dropped us down a section of kindergarten again we're down this section um I'm sorry we're up a section of kindergarten at field do the bubble bursting we're down a section of fifth grade in Franklin Roosevelt we're down two sections again kindergarten

099first grade Washington had no change Emerson went up that seventh grade section and then Lincoln was no change so overall when you do the whole factor in we are down two sections from last year which makes a lot of sense if you're down 45 kids then again when you look at the impact from that really is then next to Staffing and when you look at the Staffing from the previous school year we were at uh give me one second 431.71 FTE or certified teachers in the district this year we're at 428.775 we're down 2.325 which again equates very simply to the change in sections we were down two sections we were also down the impact of that enrollment was a special ed teacher but then we're up a little bit Denise had asked me and

100I'll talk about this for a second we're up a little bit in CFC numbers across the district this year and we're up a little bit at our El numbers which is a little bit again anticipated because we had a number of movements especially with uh taking in some students affected by the war in Europe and so again enrollments down but it really relates to what we're seeing with the um I'm sorry Staffing is down but it really relates to the enrollment that we see across the district uh while we don't have Jefferson numbers on here we are at 116 students which Falls almost identical to where we typically fall we're almost always for the Pre-K third and fourth grade when you combine those at 115 or right about we've been at 114 115 and now

101116. but that's really the max and I know in the past at least the Halverson has worked really hard to make sure that we've hit that number and we've maximized so we're right at where we would expect to be at Jefferson um I know Denise you had reached out I have some numbers just a little bit so our C of C for this year is up um we are at 548 students in Reading across the district and 528 students across the district in math the previous year we were at 503 so we're up about 45 students in Reading across the district and our channels of Challenge and um in math last year we were at 5 10 so we're 528 so we're up 18. typically we're right around we hover above and a little bit

102below historically the 500 Mark I'd say this year in particular is kind of a high point in what I looked back um and I would say nothing I looked at the individual grade levels there isn't like a true Standalone where you're like wow it's there there just seemed to be like we picked up across the district you know a handful of kids at each fourth grade and some of the buildings has some increases we're up a little bit in middle school so it's pretty well spread across I didn't see any outliers in that which is actually pretty good you like it when you see that kind of uh equal scattergram across the district so I would say and then um obviously I at this point I can't tell you if that's a product of all

103the work that Samantha's just talked about that's happened over the previous uh couple years or not but obviously we're thrilled with the increase in our channels of ChalleNGe Program so with that that's a little bit of a snapshot of where we're at here at the start of the 23-24 school year but if anybody has any questions I'll be happy to answer them for you well first of all thank you for getting those numbers when I had asked them just earlier today so thank you I didn't know if you'd be able to get them for the meeting so great stuff uh you know what in the past we've done a you know demographer study about enrollment we've been using the rollover method do you think we're going to employ that again what are your thoughts yeah

104Adam and I talked about it a little bit in the past I think one of the things we're going to need to do as we move forward is I do think there's going to become a point in time here very quickly where we're going to have to look at what is the Staffing uh and enrollment really going to look like because I think Adam and Ben and uh you know have had conversations of as we look at the budget and do these projections we want to be able to provide the Board of Education with the most accurate information to be able to say hey we expect in five years it's going to look like that and obviously one of the biggest impacts of that is our enrollment and then the impact on how many staff

105members we need so I do think as we move maybe another year or so away from the pandemic I think it would uh be a good task for the district to re-engage with another demographer to look and see what the impact has been and what they project those uh enrollments to be because if you remember last time he did a 10-year study and uh he was pretty accurate in his numbers and so we were using the demographers projections up until the pandemic then again obviously that caused everything to go out the window I know we wanted to get away as we kind of allowed things to settle but I do think as I said a second ago I think it's about time we're pretty close to that time to start to explore that so that

106we can plan accordingly with the budget one of the other things I would add to what Joel just said is that we the housing market right now is so unpredictable with when people are moving when they're not moving and what I'm hearing from other school districts is that they're having a harder and harder time to project out what they think their enrollment is going to be just because of what the housing movement is right and so and there's also this also this larger conversation about when people retire and they typically would maybe start to downsize you're seeing that less and less too as a trend we've got a great Community here why would you want to go anywhere else so um it is going to be really interesting for us in the next decade 15

10720 years because ultimately enrollment is going to make the biggest impact on what our bottom line needs to be for us to have those those conversations so even the next six months could be instrumental every time there's a hike in the interest rate sounds like we've got one more still coming that matters right and so having those macro economic kind of forces they really do play into everything that we have to consider anything you want to add economists sir you said I was thinking that the interest rate environment's insane that way for two two and a half years people that you know would normally sell are going to hold on maybe hold on a little bit longer so families are going to wait you know won't have those opportunities to move in like they normally

108would questions for Joel thank you appreciate it Gareth just want to check in do you have any questions okay all right thank you Joe Joe I think you're still up yeah so don't go too far all right all right so don't leave yet all right so next on the agenda A7 uh we have the approval of the recommended Personnel report anything you'd like to talk about with that Joel no as I think I said last time these are the largest ones this is the last of the large Personnel reports uh for the school year which uh I think as you mentioned Phyllis uh it's been a I'm glad to be done with those it's good to be done with the uh the Staffing and and having all of that taken care of you know hopefully

109now for you know the next six to eight months things will be pretty quiet uh but now it's pretty straightforward at this point any questions from the board for Joel why don't we take the the motion I move that the Board of Education of community Consolidated School District 64 Park Ridge Niles Illinois approved the personal report dated September 21st 2023 noting that the personal report is based on the recommendation of the superintendent and not upon the board's direct knowledge regarding any of the specific individuals selected for employment all right Monica hit the motion and Gareth is being complimented for his second thank you from Dimitri just to let you know Gareth all right um any further discussion all right let's take a vote Kennedy George yes yes Ocean passes okay thank you thank you Joe

110now you may leave I think you're you're done at this point okay all right um so next we have um at this time of the year we look at the superintendent goals and so Ben has talked with the board about his goals and he'd like to share those at this point okay in your packet are my draft of my goals and they're structured around three different major aspects um I've used two different types of learning standards one of them are the Illinois leadership standards that's what all the administrators in the district are evaluated on so when I share my goals out with all the other school leaders um I just want to make sure that we've got alignment on what those are and then there's also the Islip standards which are in my contract for

111my evaluation tool there's obviously pretty direct overlap in all of these so I've included that as well um the first goal is really just about being new and learning and everything is outlaid in my entry plan which is on our website for everybody to see and I take a look at it twice a week and just make sure that I'm doing the things that I said I would do uh moving things around as you know I learn more and what by what the calendar looks like um but just trying to be a good Steward of this wonderful position that I'm in um I do have to pinch myself every once in a while and just say I can't believe that you know I get to I get to have this job so it's been wonderful

112and I'm learning so much and I think we're going to do really great things in the school district together the second goal is really about completing the Strategic plan items that I am very directly responsible for or responsible for supporting there's obviously pretty much everything in this strategic plan and everything at the school district at some point I need to help support so I tried to be a little bit more specific the big one on there is the safety work you're going to hear me talk a lot about that through the school year but I've kind of put that on my shoulders and we're going to be doing a lot of great things with that as well um so that's what the second goal is really regarding all of those aspects of our work and

113the Strategic plan the third one is the Community Connection which I think is so critical for a school superintendent especially with one that is as active a community that we have that does like to see people out and about um and so the good news is I like to be out and about so it works well and being around and just I think trying to understand what people are thinking about and wondering about and worrying about with the education of their children is really critical so for instance we had our first Community Coffee I thought it went really well I'd like to thank Chris Lilly for all of The Branding around anything I ever do in the community and like things like the video that he shot started attending uh PTO meetings we're actually going

114to begin a PTO at Jefferson this year so that's going to be exciting um I've been meeting just started but been meeting regularly with the parent transition team and then also trying to you know communicate with the school board as much as I possibly can just to make sure that all of you have all the information you need to do your job because I work for you and want to make sure that I'm doing that well so those are the the kind of the synopsis of the three areas of my goals and I will certainly entertain any questions or any comments and and just what you want me to do so I can make sure I'm doing right by all of you comments questions um I don't have any questions but I'll just make some

115comments that this last few months have been just very different from what I've experienced before on the board and I walk into the schools and it's like jovial and it's happy and I hear compliments and I've actually started walking around town again and it's great so thank you for being you thank you for taking this position and um it's been great that I only look forward to fun more exciting challenging things happening that's all I got someone else come on yeah so you know Ben just uh um I agree with the fun but just on your goals I liked the key performance indicators and that's I think really helpful for the board for the evaluation process you know we want to do you write as well and you know do our duty in evaluating the

116superintendent and I think it makes it when these are really specific and measurable it helps us to evaluate you as well no I go ahead go ahead not mine's not gonna seem as um General it's going to be a very specific apologies no I I love all the goals um I think they're spot on I think the only thing I would um edit slightly is I think in terms of modeling Financial situations I agree about the kindergarten tuition um being a factor that we look into and building spending but I think if it's possible for us to think a little bit more holistically about are there any other changes that we would want to look at in order to maximize the outcomes that we want for students I'd love for that to be the overarching

117goal versus just the two factors so I don't know what other levers you would want to pull but if we could think a little bit more holistically about long-term modeling versus just those two factors I think that will serve us a little bit better okay all right thank you and um this is an action item and then we'll come back to these kind of mid-year mid-cycle just to um just to talk with Ben about his goals and so Monica you want to make the motion yep I move that the Board of Education of community Consolidated School District 64 Park Ridge Niles Illinois approved the superintendent goals as presented tonight and agreed upon all right Monica the motion Phyllis had the second any further discussion from the board all right you're up for a vote Pearl

118yes Milligan yes Kennedy George Jacobs yes yes lubinski yes motion passes okay next on the agenda we have um maybe our last discussion of the board protocols I just kind of put that out there all right so Monica you are taking over yep I think there are um two discussion points from um feedback that I received before um today's meeting so I wanted to go through those and then if anybody has any other discussion points would love to go through that and the goal is for us to hopefully get to alignment so that I can make changes and we can approve at the next board meeting so no no action taken tonight but just discussion and hopefully alignment so um discussion point one is around um if we get um concerns from the community around

119things that are relevant for the board what should our standard protocol for the lack of a better term B I think right now we wrote it as for board related issues board board members will refer the person to the board president and I think the feedback I got was that that's a little too narrow there may be other things that as board members we may want to do instead of referring a hundred percent of things to the board president so I wanted to open it up because I would love for us to be generally aligned in terms of I don't know guiding principles that we take or an overarching approach that we take which is not to say we need to have a if then list of a hundred things and we must always do

120everything in concert but that it doesn't feel different going to one person versus another in a very dramatic way so would love ideas or advice about how to change that so that it feels like something that we can all agree to but also allows for some individuality [Music] yeah Garrett I think um just for clarification the the point was about when we all get emails from um community members um we've differed in terms of which of us email back or does an email back and so we were trying to Norm on communication protocol versus bringing it to the board and so I wonder if there's something around communication protocol of do we want to Norm on emailing folks back and saying the board president will communicate back with you or do we not want to

121Norm on any communication protocol and some of us may email back and some of us may not email back and that's okay so it's I think it's not written that way so I understand the the point of confusion but it was meant to be about how do we want to be similar or dissimilar in terms of how we communicate back when we get emails and we don't know what each other has responded back to the person about does that make sense right it's more of an email yeah same I'll say I have appreciated recently when people have been sharing Communications that they have gotten because I may not have gotten the same and to just be aware of the same Community concerns that have gone on um and so I I feel like this Norm

122um is kind of in the spirit of some of the practices we've started recently um and that's been really helpful to me because if it is a board issue but only one board member is finding out about it um I do you know this I liked the way this template was written um just so that there's equity in terms of how we're handling different Community issues that are brought to our attention um and that we're equitably understanding the different issues that are brought to the board and all having access to a board level matter from the community right because I know that we're getting those from the district the same way but I I really appreciated that and so I'm wondering if this is really just putting it down what we've been starting to do

123in practice with that already and I think if what if what I heard more on Monica say like if if Phyllis says you know what I'm not going to respond at all the Community member if Rachel wants to say thanks for your email our board president will respond to you is that okay if one person does that kind of whoever's not getting four messages thanks for your email we'll be here yes so if she responds then blind copy all of us and we know that we all got it okay I like that yeah okay Dimitri is that okay is that okay great messenger so what I can do is I can um edit this so that it's more specific to email and and I'll add in the language that uh Phyllis just mentioned because I

124think that's what we've been doing and I think it's been working well I agree great okay I'm gonna move us forward because it's 9 13. um discussion point two was about the closed session meetings and just the lining on what we want to agree to in terms of protocols and I think Gareth if you wanted to share what you are thinking here I think it may be helpful for folks to have kind of a uh your perspective about how this could change from what's currently written agree I think Gareth I understand it's a nuanced issue I think I'm trying to figure out how do we is there a way that we can write something that we can agree to that's not reading the 50 page document and I'm not I promise I'm trying not to

125it's not me trying to get out of reading the 50-page document but I'm wondering if there's like a way to lift guiding principles out of it too and if you have to think about like exactly what the guiding principles are that's totally fine um but what I you know what I mean what I'm trying to do is like not have the protocols have to reference like you have to read this and internalize it and come to alignment in order to like understand and align with books so I think like the The Guiding principles of that document to me that you shared Gareth really more represent what we've all done in our Oma training um and that is something that we've all been trained on and that we've all agreed to follow um that we're required

126to follow by law in terms of the open meetings act um and this to me is a part of that in terms of the importance of respecting confidentiality and people knowing that when they're coming to closed session that their confidentiality is going to be respected and insured and I'm wondering if it's that term far-reaching consequences um because I remember when you shared that document before and we um that it was about I think a term that like there can't be a consequence for divulging right and I don't think that's what we're trying to say is that maybe it's if that that there can be the potential for impact that divulging that can impact future District um operations I'm wondering if we took out far-reaching consequences how that might feel um because I can see how

127that that word could imply to be against what's in that 50 page guide because I did read it and I I didn't see it to be disaligned with this or in Conflict at all and I I did spend time reading that when you had shared that in August um but I I know the phrase that you're referring to meaning that you can't have consequences for someone with that um and so I'm wondering if we remove that language if that could bring us to alignment or even removing five beat in in total so that's interesting and just simplify it I was just thinking just to remove my being that's fine you know so we still have the confidentiality piece in 5A but we don't um you know because Gareth none of this is legally binding you

128know but it's just how is our group functioning but if we can all agree just to have a I think that's great yeah simple and when we're in closed session we're generally talking about students teachers salaries admin so I mean I guess if you want to limit it to that maybe but there's other issues we talk about that don't I mean we're not going to list all the issues we've discussed in this session so either then you'd be listing all the reasons or and like like we do 21c 2C Ron and yeah yep so I I can too actually trained on the open meetings app so okay eliminate B and move on with it I'm hearing agreement Monica yeah I know okay I love that I love it I love it okay um I can't

129even say love anymore I'm like I love it um okay we're dropping 5B um anything else or folks good okay then what I will do is I will make the changes and I will re-share so that folks have access to it and can see it for one final time before we build on it next uh board meeting thanks all right all right thanks everyone for having this and uh now we have if we have them we all need to abide by them so and make sure if others aren't you know just to help us to get on the same page so all right thanks Monica for all your work here and um let us look at um next is a11 um and this is the board received agreements from a staff member so uh the

130board talked about it's in closed session why don't we just take the action item and then see if there's further discussion I move that the Board of Education of community Consolidated School District 64 Park Ridge Niles Illinois approve the superintendent's decision to deny the uniform grievance procedure complaint filed by teacher Amy Rooney second okay Monica the motion Rachel had the second uh as I said the board discussed this in closed session so is there anything else to be shared by the board okay Pearl yes Milligan yes George akis yes Kennedy lubinsky I'm just going to say vote present but motion carries passes okay thank you okay all right next we have um the board was in closed session about this and just looking at this motion I don't think there is a motion on this

131where we landed we're just waiting on it I think there's so I think at this point there is not an action item on a12 okay all right thank you all right all right let's move to a13 uh this is another issue the board had met with on closed session uh why don't we start with the action item I move that the Board of Education of community Consolidated School District 64 Park Ridge Niles Illinois adopt this formal resolution authorizing the dismissal of Michael Biondo for reasons other than reduction in force second all right so Monica the motion I had the second um as I said the board discussed this in closed session so I think we can move to a vote Kennedy Mulligan yes georgakis yes yes motion carries I don't think I voted but Pearl

132yes sorry I'm sorry that's okay motion carries okay all right thank you all right let's move on to the consent agenda is there anything any board members need to take off uh before we vote on that as a package okay all right why don't we take the action item I moved to the board of education of community Consolidated School District 64 Park Ridge Niles Illinois approved the consent agenda for September 21st 2023 which includes bills payrolls and benefits approval a financial update for the period ending July 31st 2023 approve intergovernmental agreement with the Northwest Suburban special education organization approval of intergovernmental agreement with the Niles Township District for special education 807 and destruction of audio closed recordings none is there a second second okay Monica had the motion Rachel hit the second and um any

133further discussion from the board okay let us take a vote fellas yes Mulligan yes George akus yes Kennedy who is you yes Babinski yes ocean carries okay all right moving on to a15 approval of minutes from our August 17th closed and regular meeting I think everyone was here um all right any changes that need to be made on those minutes from the board all right let's take the motion Monica I move that the Board of Education of community Consolidated School District 64 Park Ridge Niles Illinois approved the minutes from the close meeting on August 17 2023 and the regular meeting on August 17 2023. second all right Monica the motion Phyllis said the second any further discussion all right let's vote Tuesdays Lewinsky yes Pearl yes Mulligan yes George aakis yes Kennedy okay motion carries

134oh yeah scared sorry about that you were not here for the August meeting yeah hard to keep tracks thank you for remembering okay uh next is Ben's topic some just information and updates for the board yeah just a quick a few items uh we've had a great start to the school year and I just want to say thank you to all of our district administrators their job is often very thankless and they do a great job of making sure that they have all of uh all the things that they need to have ready to go for our staff and for our students um our staff has done a great job of welcoming our students in our schools and making sure that they're going to have a great school year so I think Phyllis talked about

135the energy around our buildings it's absolutely there I was just at Washington for my final meet and greet uh last um it feels like a year ago was yesterday um and there's just there's just so many so many wonderful things happening and the kids are just so excited uh for the school year we also have a lot of back to school events that happen from our PTO so I definitely want to send a shout out to our ptos the uh what's going to become the annual Bounce House award is going to go to Roosevelt I have never seen a bounce house display like that in my entire life so uh thank you to the Roosevelt PTO on at Friday's back to school bash and then we are also bringing back the parent University this year

136um we have secured our first Speaker Mr Excuse me Dr Justin Patton he's the co-founder and co-director of the cyber bullying Research Center and actually during our first Community Coffee this subject came up and just in terms of digital citizenship social media everything that happens that we know even changes the brain as our students are growing up in this digital environment so this is going to be a great talk we hope to pack hendy and have many many people here because we'll also talk about some of the things that we're doing in the district but frankly it's an uphill battle right now for us this is a community issue it's not just a school issue so we want to talk about it in those in those terms and we hope folks would join us to

137hear Dr Patchen speak we also have other parent universities that we are planning I know Dr alimo talked about kind of a cool concept of having an open curriculum night so we can bring really a lot of understanding and transparency to the curriculum decisions that we're making for our students so I think that's going to be great and then we've got some other topics that we'll have released soon as we have more time the next board meeting is going to be a Lincoln excited to hear the Lincoln chamber orchestra celebrate our Fine Arts programs and then also we're gonna make sure you bring your walking shoes We're going to walk Lincoln Lincoln needs some attention let's just put it that way and we really need to have a serious conversation about what that means in

138terms of our financial projections we're also going to walk hopefully over to Washington and just see a few things there that you could replicate at all of our elementary schools so when we're putting together our financial plans and then all of our facility plans we can make some changes in priority lists through the year so that we can think more holistically about what we're doing frankly with all of our projections so that is why we are doing that if any community members that isn't open meeting the entire time so if any community members join us you get to go on the tour it's going to be a great time and then all of our foia so far have been processed that have come in and then you can see the memorandum on our e the

139employment information system the Eis system that Joel has to put together every year and that's an annual thing it's a law it goes up on our website you can find it in every school district and so those are the items we are looking forward to October and celebrating our principles and we'll talk more about that at the October board meeting and the things there so if you're watching on YouTube if you want to send your principal a shout out just a quick email they also have really hard jobs and just a little bit of a thank you goes along wrong way for all the hard work that they do for our kids every day thank you very much yeah so our board members uh and I'll make sure I drop this off your house Gareth

140but our board members have a little note cards that uh Chris Bernard has made um and so if you want to write a little note to each building principle I think they would appreciate that or just anybody uh we'll make sure you get like a little pack um if you don't want to drop a note off these go a long way I used to give these out when I was a principal and I still remember my last day walking through the school just one last time seeing them on staff members desks they mean a lot it doesn't take much to make a teacher really feel appreciated so thank you very much okay sounds good uh yeah so any staff member I think just a personal note um these are a great idea so thank you

141Chris for doing those all right how about new business uh to see if we could start a peer group for kids who are either grieving or going through divorce or going through something and so we found rainbows which was established in and she has fundraising fundraised she's raised 960 dollars we have enough money for two teachers or two parents we have one already signed up and oh two sorry two people have signed up one as a teacher one is um a certified gcfs social worker who's a teacher but not in our district but she's willing to do it so if there's any teachers social workers parents in our district who would like to have the eight hour training contact me and I'll put you in contact with facilitating uh trainers and then we expect this

142group to meet for 12 weeks twice a month at two of our schools we have 36 children signed up we just need facilitators to train so put that out there and you want to do some good call me all right um just a quick thing um I know Ben's been out and about some of the district administrators Alicia and Michelle from Jefferson and Monica and Phyllis and myself will be at the community tent at the Farmers Market on Saturday supposed to be beautiful weather so stop by say hello and we'll be there all right is there a motion to adjourn is there a second fill us at the motion Dimitri had the second all in favor aye all opposed all right it is 9 32 p.m and the board is adjourned