Board of Education Meeting: October 28, 2025.

001like my points over here. Right. 7 o'clock. I'd like to call the meeting to order. Please rise for the pledge of allegiance. I pledge allegiance to to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. Kelly, would you call the role? Michael Dvito, thank you. Christian Coppel. Beth Marie Evans here. Alex Grados here. Cole Rnner here. Heather Tomlinson here. Alan Zantoot present. Form is present. All right. As a reminder, our board governs by policy aligned with state law. These policies are not just guidelines. They are legal, ethical obligations that ensure transparency, accountability, and consistent leadership. When policies no longer meet the district's needs, it's our responsibility to amend them within the bounds of the law to better

002serve our community. The board acts only as a whole in a duly convened public meeting with a quorum present. Outside of this structure, no individual member has authority. Adherence to policy protects the district from risk and ensures that all decisions are fair, lawful, and aligned with our strategic goals. Our mission is to empower all learners to succeed in their world. Our vision is to provide an ideal learning experience where students and staff are engaged and want to come back the next day. Our board policies and actions should reflect that mission and vision. Not just [snorts] going to talk to all of you guys all night. So, few more remarks. On September 16th, 2025, the Sycamore Community School District Insurance Committee met and voted to eliminate the lowdeductible health plan for all staff members. This transition,

003which will take effect January 1st, 2026, is projected to generate an estimated 1.5 million in recurring annual savings for employees in the district. Approximately 640,000 in employee savings and 860,000 in district savings. As part of this transition, the board of education approved a memorandum of understanding with the Sycamore Education Association regarding staff health insurance. In recent months, the district insurance committee had worked closely with the district's insurance broker, the board of education, and the SEA to evaluate health insurance options. The committee shared goals to identify the most sustainable, cost-effective path forward while remaining mindful of the impact on employees and their families. Through this collaborative process, the committee recommended removing the lowdeductible health plan and maintaining the existing health or high deductible health plan or HSA as a district's primary health insurance option. The SEA

004leadership hosted a membership vote and an overwhelming majority voted to approve the change. This shows how when we work sidebyside with staff, how much we can truly achieve. I'm really proud of this collaboration with the SEA, the insurance committee, and our district leadership team. This agreement reflects the district's commitment to fiscal responsibility, good stewardship, and collaboration. And it demonstrates transparency and mutual trust, and how that can lead to meaningful positive results for staff and district stakeholders. The next item on the agenda is our recognition spotlight. So, we have two groups we'd like to recognize tonight. First of which is our Spartan TV. On October 10th, our Spartan TV students had the incredible opportunity to be featured on the national stage when the homecoming football game debuted on Marquee Sports Network as part of their community

005showcase series. This game showcased the energy, pride, and community spirit that defined Sycamore. According to the ratings provided by the Marquee Sports Network, 4,000 people across the count country tuned in to watch. The marquee producer praised the team for an excellent 20-minute open, noting the clear excitement and energy leading up to the game and noted how professional the broadcast was from start to finish. At a later date, the students will travel to Chicago to tour the Marquee Sports uh network studios located across from Regular Field. I want to say thank you to the following students who are in attendance tonight. If you are in attendance on behalf of Spartan TV or the uh Spartan TV network or in any way involved in the Spartan TV network, if you could please stand. [applause] [snorts] We would

006also like to acknowledge our Spartan TV adviser, Mr. Rich Aguilera who took the initiative to apply for this opportunity over the summer. [applause] It has been wonderful to witness the growth of this program under his leadership and to see the advancement of our students skills and education. So, one more round of applause for our Spartan TV. [applause] I'm also very excited for the Pumpkin Fest recording, too. I had that like I hadn't had enough Pumpkin Fest watching the parade and being involved in the parade. We got home, we ate chili, we put on the pumpkin fest recording. So, and we didn't get through the whole thing. So, I've got like some Thanksgiving Day material. So, good stuff. Um, all right. Our next group to recognize in our student and staff spotlight is our building principles.

007So it is uh October 20th through the 24th. Governor Pritsker declared principal appreciation week and Friday, October 24th is principal appreciation day in Illinois. Effective school leadership is vital to the success of every school district and principles play a critical role in fostering a positive educational environment. The principles of our district demonstrate exceptional leadership by supporting high-quality instruction, promoting student well-being, building strong relationships with families and staff, and ensuring that schools operate safely and efficiently. Our principles consistently model professionalism, dedication, and integrity while addressing the diverse needs of students and guiding our comm our school community with compassion and purpose. The month of October, having been designated as principal appreciation month, offers an opportunity to recognize and honor the significant contributions made by principles in our schools. The board of education extends its sincere appreciation

008to all district principles for their outstanding service, leadership, and commitment to educational excellence. We encourage students, staff, families, and community members to join in acknowledging the essential role our principles play in the continued growth and success of our school district. Thank you to our principles, assistant principles, dean of students, Nam Wel, Jay Countryman, Sarah Franowitz, Tom Rucker, Thomas Franks, Emily Waller, Mark Extram, Justin Hayes, Justin Drenin, Ryan Swanson, Kitty Herz, Steve Bolster, Johny Carrick, and Nate Wright. If you're in the audience tonight, please, if you'd stand to be recognized. [applause] All right. We'll move on to and I I'll make a note too about student and staff recognition. We did solicit um the uh general stakeholders for the Sycamore community uh regarding nominations for recognition and we received uh the it was a survey that

009was put together by a communications department. Um the idea was if you see or identify someone who deserves recognition uh to be recognized uh at the board uh at one of our board meetings, you know, fill out the nomination form with some reasons why. The survey was circulated for a couple of weeks uh and received uh nearly hundreds of responses. It was overwhelming the amount of uh responses we received. So um in an effort to try and effectively manage that uh and be respectful but also recognize the talent from those nominations, we're going to be working to uh effectively integrate that into our board of education uh schedule. So more to come on the nominations. and also great to seems like it's a smashing success. So the next item on the agenda is the consent

010agenda. Uh the recommended action is to approve the consent agenda as presented. Items 4.01 through 4.08. Item 4.01 is minutes of regular meeting September 23rd, 2025. Minutes of executive session September 23rd, 2025. Minutes of special meeting September 30th, 2025. Minutes of executive session September 30th, 2025. bills payable, financial reports, personnel report, gifts and donations report. Is there a motion to approve the consent agenda as proposed? So moved. Seconded. Moved and seconded. Is there any discussion? Just like to thank Narisha Rasheed, the sports boosters, and the SAF for their generous donations to the district. Amen. That's good. Yeah, it looks like [clears throat] and you should the public should also be able to see all items uh on the consent agenda with exception to a few of the restricted pieces but bills payable, financials, and the

011donations report. So, all right, we have a motion and a second. Is there any further discussion? Um, I'd just like to thank Nick and anybody that contributed to the great hires we had. There was four people hired and I think it was really good. We even had someone that spoke a foreign language. I think it was uh it was a some type of Arabic, Yemenes or something. And um it was such a fit for the student because she actually had a visually impaired student as well. So we had a visually impaired student that and I just thought it was really great. We have four great hires and new teachers and I'd like to just publicly welcome them and thank Nick for all his hard work. Yeah, that's great. Any other comments? Kelly, would you call

012the role? Grados, yes. Regaryy, hi. Tomlinson, yes. Zantoot, yes. Evans, yes. Divido, yes. Motion carried. [snorts] All right. The next item on the agenda is the NIA consent agenda. The recommended action. A motion to approve the NIA consent agenda as presented. Items 5.01 through 5.04. Those items are the NIA treasures report, the NIA bills payable, NIA personnel report, and NIA contract/ vendor agreement report. Is there a motion to approve the NIA consent agenda as presented? So moved. Second. Moved and seconded. Any discussion? Seeing no discussion. Kelly, would you call the role? Ragnary. Hi Tomlinson. Yes. Zantoot. Yes. Coppel. I'm sorry. Evans. Yes. Raos. Yes. Motion carried. On to the next item on the agenda, the audience to visitors. Guided by board policy 2230 and the Illinois Open Meetings Act. This is a business meeting held

013in public. The seven of us seated here are your neighbors, volunteers entrusted by you to care for your schools. We're truly grateful you've chosen to spend a portion of your evening with us. To balance participation with the board's agenda, we've reserved up to 30 minutes for public comment. Each speaker is kindly asked to limit remarks to three minutes. Unused time may not be transferred to another person. Any extension requires a majority vote of the board. When you're recognized, please approach the podium, state your name, share your thoughts. The board will listen without debate this evening. Questions or concerns when called for will be rooted through the appropriate administrative channels for follow-up consistent with our chain of command procedures. If you'd like to speak, please raise your hand. Wait to be called. Thank you for lending

014your voice and helping us model effective self-government for our students. Is there anyone who'd like to address the board at this time? Seeing no one, we'll move on to the next item on the agenda, superintendent reports. So, we've got a lot here. Uh 7.01 01 building and departmental updates. Uh we've got reports from early childhood, uh K5, uh middle school, high school, building and grounds, communication, food services, Oscar, student services, and transportation. Um, I just want to first say before we dive into some discussion um, and some comment, I'm hopeful that in having reviewed these reports in advance of this meeting that we're able to uh, get a clear line of sight on some of the happenings uh, districtwide. I'm also hopeful that as a board um we can try and if we do have

015questions or inquiry um be mindful of uh the limitations of same day questions um and that if there is something that we might need answers to it may be something that could be pursuant to a follow-up meeting. Um future agenda items uh could come from some of this discussion regarding these reports. uh future directives, uh resolutions, policy changes, budgetary considerations. Um none of these are action items. These are all justformational pieces. Um so I'm just again hopeful to set aside about 15 minutes for us to uh just discuss and go through uh some of the reports uh and any comments uh or points of interest. And I understand there's some people in the audience who uh produce the reports. Um, so if you have something that you think might be valuable to contribute as we

016go through this questioning, feel free to chime in, but at no point are you expected to address any questions that the board has. Um, Nick is out today. Uh, so uh, Nicole has been kind enough to help and she's bearing a lot of the burden now. So, um, as we go through these reports again, we can direct those to Nicole and where applicable chip in. So anyway, any comments to start? Can we just go through them one at a time maybe? Sure. So early childhood, we'll start with that. This one I spent a lot of attention on and I went back and forth quite a bit with Nicole on. So thank you for all those answers. But before I get into my questions, any comments, discussion? Yeah, thanks [clears throat] again everybody for producing these.

017I think these are great documents. uh you know they'll create a good record public record so the people who want to know what's going on can come back and you know audit what we've been doing and what we're going to do. The early childhood report is near and dear to me. I think that's an excellent program and I've said many times I'd like to see us grow it. um as correct me if I'm wrong Nicole or um is Ne here. H yeah so correct but as I'm understanding it sort of three buckets of student there's like the PFA grant there's the regular tuition and then there's the sped students and growth could theoretically happen in all three lanes together that'd be limited by physical space uh and then the other type of growth that could

018happen obviously the special education growth that's just what it is and we just you know we do everything we have to their quality comes first maybe there could be some grant growth I don't know exactly how that works and then basically the bucket that could grow is everything else the regular their tuition growth and um I couldn't exactly part unpack all the numbers that you presented so maybe you can either shine a light on that. Yeah. So I got some information on the numbers and I'll just lay this out as I've understood it and Nicole correct me if I'm wrong here. So, the sources of revenue, we have 63 students um who are in some way connected to the preschool for all grant. Um and that realizes $436,800 connected to those 63 students. $8,711 are

019connected to a grant for supplies related to the idea or idea preschool grant. And then we have uh the third source of again I'll say revenue um for the 50 tuition students who are spanning a 36- week period at $250 per month. That's per month. Per month for nine months per nine per nine months, right? So in total that equates to uh let me see here. Uh, as I do math publicly, it's what people leave. It's like about $114,000. So, yeah. Again, so there's an operating I and I again, this isn't Yeah. I I didn't want to I didn't want to exactly get into the weeds necessarily so much on the numbers, but just maybe I'm just know if I'm understanding this correctly or not, but so I want to grow this program, but it

020I don't know that we can have a ton of growth because it's going to draw on our operating funds, which we need for the rest of the district. Unless the tuition is such that as you add seats for not costing more and more money, obviously capex, whatever. If it's a onetime thing, then okay. But I just like is there a way to like see how we can grow it and sustainably and like build this thing out? That's my topline question. Um, didn't Na I don't want to say her name wrong, but she the one who secured the grant. Me. What? Yeah. Me ne here in the audience. Yes. Thank you. Thank you so much for that great work. And um but anyway, isn't there a chance for more grants as well as the tuition grant

021cycle is next year? As I put in a report, um there's a few issues with the fact that we're going to go to a new state agency um which is blending um early birth to free early early intervention and preschool together. And there's still a lot of unknowns on that new state agency and where the funding will come from and if the funding for free for all will change onto that new state agency. So we are waiting for more information. Um I signed up for every email last I forward them to Nicole. Nicole forwards them to me. Sometimes we get the same one within five minutes of each other. Um so we're really just waiting for information on the state of how the new state agency will affect our funding. Um and then kind of

022just um how demographics in our state change and things like that. But yeah, so there's always an opportunity every time the RFP comes available um to reapply and that would be our intention is to continue to reapply um if we're able to register for more seats, we would have to have the space to do that and at this time that is our issue. It would be a physical classroom. Will you be able to utilize any of the space here at some point in this building? We've not talked about that uh specifically yet, but um that would be something that we could definitely explore. Awesome. Thank you so much again for your hard work. Yeah. So, we definitely would agree they'd love to grow. So, is the It sounds like the current constraint is space. It

023doesn't matter across the rest of those buckets. So, um well, financially there's always a constraint, right? So, we want to make sure that we have the money to support the programs and the needs of the students. Um but we are funded um so our funding for the PFA students also includes some of our IEP students um students can be PFA students as well um that's why we can get to that 112 number um so um it's just about time and the fact that we continue to always be um a special education program first make sure the needs of that legal component of the program are met. I think having a future agenda item of what cost we would need to charge the tuition based students so that each additional tuition based student the district wouldn't

024need to incur a cost from operating funds. I did some rough on math and it was like 671 bucks per month and we're at like 250 bucks. Well, I guess that's my my next question. One thing the little Spartans is 250 per week. No, per month. It does say it's five days a week at 250. It's per month. It's a clarifying point. Yep. So, okay. That makes us on the extreme loan then, right? Or are all these per month? Three days per YMCA is 238. Those are all per month. These are all monthly. Okay. I put in there monthly. Like just so you have like a comparison in town. Um and like we are not the cheapest. if you add a dayare option, there's a one cheaper than us in town. Um, but I just

025tried to give you some perspective of the other prices in town that are available. Um, and the fact that we still have families telling us we're too expensive and that they're arriving to kindergarten with no early intervention. The point of early intervention for our district is the money spent at the front end. that saves us money on the back end and specialized programming resources. Um principles time with student like you could come down with a whole list of things that because they've been in early early childhood which is an early intervention um for their education that we save money as a district. Um there's a lot of studies I can give you more details about per dollar you save by offering early childhood. Yeah. And I I don't want you to you don't have to

026defend early childhood. I don't know. telling you that it is a long-term investment for the students. So, some of like the limiters that I was seeing too were like if we wanted to it's three through five, right? So, that's and let's just say with 3,600 students and if it's 300 stu, you know, we'd go 12 grades, it's 300 students per cohort roughly. We're serving 150. Let's say there's 900 total that we could be serving. Is that again napkin math? Pretty close. I would do 600 fifth grade class. Yeah. So 600 students. So if we So for us to be gold standard offering full swing early childhood, we need to be able to get from 150 to 600. Right now we're at about $147,000 operating loss with 150. So again, freehand math, you're losing about a,000

027bucks per seat. So if you said, "Okay, we wanted to add 450 seats. We need another. And again, I'm sure there's some economies of scale. I'm sure there's some seat caps. I'm sure preschool for all messes with this a little. You know, transportation isn't in this, but the numbers like 450 grand in recurring costs out of the budget roughly maybe is the way I'm reading this to be able to do like a full-fledged early childhood program offering. Then there's the space constraint and then you need to be able to have uh so which is in my mind on a lot of levels like a one-time investment but we have space we go okay what do we need to be able to put together this classroom let's say you have 20 kids in a classroom we

028have three classrooms right now right four classrooms six classrooms okay so again it's what what's that 25 kids per so then we need another 15 students on average 20 is the legal max 15 is the best practice for blended education. So we need 18 more classrooms, right? Yeah. Something like that. Yeah. Something. Okay. If we had every child in Yeah. Okay. I just like this the ceiling. So that's how I was. And again, like when I was looking at this report and I was chatting with Nicole a little bit, she was kind enough to share with me some numbers. I know these are super tentative. just entered them into the public record, but nobody hold me to them because I haven't fact checked all this. But um at least I mean that's how my mind

029works on this. So other questions, discussion on early childhood. No. Well, go ahead, Alan. No, I I I think it's just I'm listening to a lot of what we're talking about. I think there's just it sounds like there's some ambition to want to potentially grow the program, but there's challenges from a financial perspective and then a I guess a capital outlay for space as well. That's probably a good use for discussion of what are our goals. We have limit we have uh legal requirements that we have to we have to abide by which of course we will. We want to go above and beyond and serve as many as we can. Um but we may have limitations and so it sounds like today we're maxed out at South Prairie from a space standpoint and then

030subsequently for students too. For our current space, we're not maxed out on students that we can enroll. We can continue to enroll for the rest of the year but we are max available right now. Yeah. So, I think as we plan forward, we have to take into account short term, that's that's a real limitation that we have that we don't have necessarily great solutions for perhaps. And then midterm, what are our goals and what do we need to to do to try to achieve those? I think it's a good discussion for the board and the administration to have discussion on generally. Anything else on this? I think it's something we should talk about more in the future. future agenda item growing EC. growing EC especially like how could we afford classroom by classroom little by

031little chunk by chunk what it would take if we got more another grant to get we like the idea of growing easy there's a lot of space here I don't know I guess I'd like more information I'd like I like the concept you got another t-shirt coming out um okay so we'll do a future agenda item then for uh and maybe this could be a good referral or maybe this can be a full board I'll think about it and I'll get back to you guys. Uh, for early childhood, I really like the I mean, this will just be a general comment for all these, but there's there's a lot of really good things to celebrate, too. The grant that um, right, a few got worked together, which is wonderful, but then also raising those concerns

032and merging issues helps to give some context for us, too. So, I I really appreciate that. I think that helps us learn as board members what's going on at the district level. Um, and what we need to be talking about, what's important for us to consider. So, I think there's a lot of really good value in all these and I'm old school. I printed them out to read and and highlight, but it's helpful for me to to to absorb it all. So, thank you. Yeah, this is great. Anything else on early childhood? Okay, we'll move on to the next report. K5 comments on comments, points of inquiry. I have another future agenda thing that sort of stems from this. Go for it. Could we see the option and I don't want to say I endorse

033this or don't endorse it because I just don't know. Um the option of switching to like we've talked about attendance centers or hiring assistant principles or any combination would allow staff to focus on their assigned duties. so what their job description is as opposed to have to sort of fill in gaps um and how that would improve student outcomes. So it's sort of a what could we do at an at a K5 level to ensure that staff are supported to do their jobs and that could be shifting students around potentially probably not or the assistant principles like the um report alluded to. So attendance centers was one and assistant principles. But I think it's sort of an like that agenda item. I think it's one topic like how to support. Yes. So how to support

034the staff? What what options do we have and how much would it cost? How to support that's a that's a pretty broad it is a broad one. That might be so we might have to zoom that one in a little bit. But you want to make it broader because I could add some to it. [laughter] Um because by I mean the I think we read the same concern I think I or I just took the whole quote about staffing. It was a it was a concern someplace in the report said the ongoing shortage of lunch recess monitors, substitute teachers and custodial staff is creating daily operational strain leading to increased supervision conflicts burnout among existing staff and compromised that was that this that was this was something like that in this one. Yeah, that was

035this okay. um bold I mean I have bolded under this I mean there's a question okay how could we fix this right how you know and that's what that agenda item is getting at right I mean and there's a question of you know paying does it need to be we need to pay lunch recess monitors more or pay substitute teachers more but some Nick provided me with some literature on that that basically says we're competitive with substitute teacher pay rates so is it so it's a systemic right you know environmental issue that's across all districts or specific to us. Yeah. What you know, what does the literature say to try? You know, is there something to try because obviously this is an issue and but but his agenda item is how can we support staff

036and he was looking at it first from you know maybe you can free up uh staff with attendance centers or you can new staff with uh assistant principles but mine was even broader but similar. Nicole, do you know if we do like exit interviews when people leave? If they if they give reason of why if they were leaving for another district because of pay or if it was we typically do not. Okay. Because sometimes that can be helpful to understand with them just to chat with us but we don't have anything formal. Sure. Sure. Sorry. It just might be helpful to learn. It doesn't have to be a formal process by any means, but just a hey, what's going on or where where you going? Might be helpful to understand, oh, many people are going

037because there's a higher paying job wherever within a school district or otherwise. Well, one of our goals is the um strategic plan to focus on attracting and retaining teachers. That's what it says. I think something staff. Yeah, it could be top. This is a deliverable here. I I could be it may just need to be changed there, but yeah, I do remember it was related to staff. Um, so one of the things like having an update or at least what that looks like because I know that is currently a board goal, but like seeing that culminate into maybe what we're talking about for learning and teaching the FTE forecast. Does that connect? I think it's all Yeah, it it certainly does. I think it would be we might be able to as a board come

038up with ideas that might be really helpful, but the staff might have a much better idea of what what's working for retaining people or attracting them or what's scaring them away. I know we read a I hear the I've read a lot here and heard elsewhere the word trauma, which is a startling word, but I think very accurate to what you see. And then we see some behavior incidents that are higher than they have been in past years. So I I think we might be able to hypothesize some ideas, but those might just be very high level. So it might be helpful if there were some suggestions. Not tonight. But in general of what we could do to help support if there are things we could do it through LTC or we could do it

039elsewhere. And I mean to me it just I'm seeing it totally connect to our board goal. I mean like right like wouldn't that be a deliverable for the board goal is just the strategic plan to focus on attracting and retaining staff. I think it's beyond the plan implementation. What do we need to get this to happen? Well, there's some like to your point, Ellen, there's like some suggestions and like Alex, what you were saying is like what's it going to take to get it done? And like one of the things commented here that came up is assistant principles. You know, adding an assistant principal at each building would provide focus leadership to address these behavioral and safety needs, support staff in implementing interventions, allow principles to devote more time to instructional leadership, ultimately benefiting all

040students. Like I I personally have long wondered why we don't have more assistant principles or any for that matter at the K5 level. Um and the answers that I've gotten have been well that's just the way it's always been. So, I mean, I'm interested and and again, if this is what our principles are submitting to us and if our administration's also acknowledging like this is an opportunity for us, like I don't see a reason why the board should take the foot off the gas and not look at entertaining is that where best spend is, is that the most effective starting place? Um, you know, how do we how do we enhance support? So yeah to your point like Alan we could sit here and theorize a million ways to one the experts gave us an

041answer. So I guess what say the board is this something that we how do we put rubber to road here? Well I mean I think you do it as a future agenda item for a presentation for some kind of plan or set of plans that not only list the plan but also outline the costs and opportunity costs associated with those plans. Right? I mean the board lives in what's and the administration lives in hows and the what is you know fix the fix the stated problems and the hows are the implementation and those implementations ought to be grounded in you know best practices literature and the experience that our administration team have but they do sort of have to come as at least partially developed house and I would like that you know as well

042to show the opportunity costs of those hows because we are we do have a fixed amount of resources. And so if the literature indicates that given our you know fixed amount of resources, you're going to get the most bang for your buck to improve student outcomes by adding assistant principles then if the burden I mean it's incumbent upon us to do that right but to Allen's point we can't just sit here and say um let's add some assistant principles you know what I mean? So, some kind of future agenda item that is some kind of, you know, get a proposal or or or pitch or start to learn about or have a brainstorm. I mean, am I making any sense? Yeah, I think this definitely would be part of the budget process um that we

043would bring to probably the business service committee. Cole, do you agree? I would think live there. Yeah. Um that would be my suggestion. Um that's typically when we would have these discussions with the board. So the deliverable like so the intentions and expectations for the board goal cultivate a measurable positive district climate that attracts supports and retains top talent with collaboration across the district and then the deliverable on this is develop present to the board and execute a strategic plan to focus on attracting and retaining talent. Um and then there's like we talk about this happening hopefully by January of 2026. Um and then also having a survey regarding emerging trends, concerns and priorities um using ISBY approves alternative survey with 65% participation. Like again just tying this back to our goals and what we'd

044hope to see at least in a deliverable. Does this does this live under that? I would think in the mind of the board is that I'd assume and I guess we haven't seen the survey that the survey results from principles would indicate a desire for assistant principles but we just I guess we don't have that data until we launch the survey. So it's like it's sort of the sequencing here. I'm not sure but that survey is going to be talking about retaining our current staff. Correct. It's a I think it's a tractor. Oh, the survey is yeah is current staff. But the other goal he mentioned that's two different that's two different topics. To me this particular idea actually attaches to a bunch of different goals. It does I think you would call you could

045call out attracting uh top talent but you would also it certainly relates to me to I mean the uh multi-year academic excellence plan. I mean the idea is you're going to get better student outcomes. It's also going to relate to all students feel safe at school, right? like that you're going to have better, you know, more admin available to respond to more crises, etc. It's not like this matches one to one with a goal, but I do think this attaches to many of the goals. I think we've broadened to or we've narrowed maybe just to the assistant principles, but we [clears throat] started also talking about just general staff, right? and and they're really I mean the the lunch monitors and recess monitors, substitute teachers, custodial staff um they're doing some really important work. Absolutely.

046And that's well everybody is but I think that there's there's filling those positions that we know we we have open that we aren't able to maintain fulfill and then there's the potential of assistant principles as well. both important, both should be discussed, but I just don't want to lose sight of there's there's this one as well, right? And the way I'm reading this is it says the ongoing shortage of lunch recess monitors, substitute teachers, and custodial staff is creating daily operational strain leading to increased supervision conflicts, burnout among existing staff, and compromised student safety and cleanliness standards. Um so and then it goes on to talk about how disrupts behavioral or disrupts learning environment escalate behavioral issues places undue pressure on teachers and administrators to fill roles outside their responsibilities. So I don't I don't

047know if the problem at least being put in this report is that we need to do a better job attracting lunch recess monitor substitute teachers and custodial staff. I think the projection at least from this is there is just an ongoing shortage of these roles and so it's creating a strain in these other positions. So I don't I don't know that we should be chasing one problem over the other. I I guess and maybe I'm interpreting this board support update regarding staffing. Is that am I sizing this up? Yeah. A lot of times [clears throat] those types of positions we don't have those people on the day or here or there. Then it's up to us to take those over. So like we don't have a sub for a classroom teacher. We're the only usually

048the only person available in the building that's certified to teach. So then we would step into that or peacemail that job throughout the day. So that might take two hours away from me or you might have to cancel meeting with a staff member because I'm across the district. So it's not necessarily it does all fit together. I guess like you're saying it's not necessarily have those, but we don't have enough of those sometimes to support all of our kids in all of the spots. Gotcha. Does that clarify? Do you feel you have enough direction to get to work with Nick or Nicole to create some and Nicole mentioned bringing some stuff to business services so I think she's got some idea but do you two seem to have enough of understanding to kind of move

049this forward to get some get some pitches for next steps type of yeah I think there's a nice followup here at least that I have tied to a board goal so we're staying in our lane but also related to this maybe opportunity so what about the attendance centers. I get I brought that up because I've heard it from staff several times. It wasn't one of my ideas. Attendance centers. Yeah. Is that is there a desire out there for that? Is it worth entertaining? Is it worth researching? I'd be interested in just a report on it. I don't know about they see they're nodding. Oh, yeah. Maybe. [laughter] Well, we talked about when we were presented that information to you at that time and you can't fit all into your elementaryaries at that point because of

050the size. So unless you when we were designing out North Grove, we talked about it back way back then and at that time the community wanted us to have community schools at that point. Then we looked at when we redistricted and we showed you that we couldn't physically fit all the grades that we wanted to in those buildings bring that in for that part. So that if you go back to the one you look at the redistricting one what two years now those slides were all in there we talked about that and then we showed you where move the houses then to redistric again what three years you guys look at redistricing again to spread the students one more time if you needed to because of how the demographics of our town change okay so

051maybe an updated report just recapping some of the information we already have accessible um because most of us weren't even there for the redistricting initially great I think Michael you were the only one that was don't quiz me on it so yeah no uh that sounds great so maybe just an update then on what we already know and what we might or should maybe know going forward. So, okay. Anything else for the K5 report? Do you speak fish? I had to read that one just to get updated. I was like, man, I didn't I was thinking it was a different book, but it it wasn't. So, it was a still a good read, though. added it to my Charlie library. So, if you haven't read it, you should. It's cute. Um, no. Nothing else. Okay,

052great. We'll move on to the next report, which is SMS. All right. Any comments on the middle school report? I just top row love a good chart. noticed the drop or decline in number of incidents it said compared to last year which again you kind of like when you see that big of a number drop almost makes you wonder what what was the cause or why so I don't know interesting but uh the goals I thought there was a good addition some of the goals and incorporate incorporating the district goals there also mentioned filling open positions. I'm not sure if it's a similar challenge or um might be a good thing just to better understand filling positions in general at the district the school levels. Yeah. Right. It just yeah filling I see that. So

053and that's for interventions you know it's been posted since applicants for that position we are presenting internally, but we can't move that person over to that of a classroom inside the building. We did that last year. The math teacher from the high school were never able to find a teacher for that spot which we had longterm submary close to the school year. We just don't have applicants going for regular certified jobs. just makes it tough at that point. So retirees coming up like oh we need to get them out early is what I'm just looking for because historically we've always waited later in the game and we missed out on applicants because they've already taken jobs other districts in April May in June and July we missed a whole set of people. So that was

054just being put in to let you guys know we know some things ahead of time posted earlier that would really greatly help us get to that point of getting some great candidates coming to this. Yeah, I think that speaks really well. So we have the LTC meeting on November 11th and one of the topics that we're going to talk about is FTE planning. Um and that goes really well in line. If we know we have those positional needs, we we may choose not to have to wait till the June time frame. Maybe that April makes a lot of sense or whatever time frame that may be. I mean, earlier, right? I think I think this year we posted some positions in April or early May and those I think some of them didn't get filled

055ultimately. Um, and I've heard just hearsay. I don't know if this is actually true, but if you want to be competitive, you want to post them even earlier in January. January, February. last February we had people around us interview we couldn't we had we were there detracting them taking all these resumes we couldn't interview we knew spots were coming but since they weren't posted we weren't able to snag people from that one and there was 250 districts there you know it was nice to be able to find right there too like the rest of so having those conversations in February is early enough I think for retirees You got to talk a little bit earlier like in January they're being posted. So when we go to the February open house at universities we're able to

056attract the next generation of the young teachers coming into us. We're able to find teachers other directions if you kind of competitive wise through the contract and salary and benefit packages that way. But the young teachers are they're they're excited at these job opportunities they have and they're interviewing right on site. you know, offering second rounds that come back to staff from there and then boards are approving them from that point that way. And when you say the ones that are retiring, they kind of know, but then there are some chances with be able to change where some of that goes, which is a budget process we go through with not always you fill some of those same spots with the same people. Yeah. So the retiree filling that's there's no conraint on that. Yeah,

057we should just be unless we see some posting that right. I mean because for FTE planning I know what you're saying and I think business services has a similar recommendation about trying to project some stuff out and but it seemed that we could be posting those soon as humanly possible. Right. Right. I got on the list. All right. I'll talk with you. Yeah. Yeah, I like the comment about the SRO's kind of changing gears a little bit about officer Raven Burus and it was interesting because I know that I recently saw some legislation change about what SRO's are to be doing and not doing in terms of like ticket writing. Mhm. And so to make it into the this report though um you know from my understanding the SRO's it seems like it says what

058spend 50% of time working on relationships work with the dean and administrative team require expertise in police work other 50% helping with the elementary level situations do I mean I I know we have as a district our size we have two SRO's and I think NASRO recommends between four and seven SRO's National Association for School Resource Officers. So we have two based off our size based off our you could go two metrics. You could go based on per thousand students. So 3600 students 3.6 SRO's four SRO's or you could go based on one per school which was their other guidance and that's seven. Now that's you know a pipe dream. I think DLEP has five SRO if I'm not mistaken. They have 6,000 students. So they're I mean Kel's a different school than us, but

059you know they have more resources in a lot of ways. But even still, I think that's just an interesting thing to have brought up their collaboration because I think when people think of school resource officers, maybe they don't fully understand the broaden scope of the responsibilities that they have. I think another interesting thing about the school resource officers is that we have an intergovernmental agreement with the city that has a shared cost to school resource officers. And [clears throat] so school resource officers and our collaboration with the city of Sycamore um like go hand in hand unlike something you know that we may have complete doicile over like just number of pair of professionals or what have you. So, um, and what's our cost share with the city of Sycamore? 75%, 25%. Who? We pay

06075%. We pay 75% and they pay 25%. Is that typical across other districts? Do you know Huntley has a I had a nice opportunity to talk with Huntley at the last quarterly meeting for IASB. They have a 5050 split with their city. Uh, a lot of other districts have a 50/50 split. We've had, I believe, this intergovernmental agreement or version of it very close to it since the 70s. So, um, every school district's different, of course, different needs, things like that. But as as I understand it, those are the splits, other questions. So, if they're not writing tickets, what what is the what are they doing now? to address these issues. Yeah. So, I I had an opportunity actually to have a couple a meeting with um [clears throat] Stacy Benowski a few months ago

061and she talked to me for a few hours. We we got to talking and um she was just sharing with me a really um pretty terrifying story of an instance where she identified um like a student safety issue um related to self harm and she was able to uh address that student safety issue and like sort of I guess the insights and the connections that she had from her perspective were different enough where she was able to uh get involved very ly um and then report it through the proper chain of command and ultimately as she described it saved the students life. Um, so I think like a big part of at least what school resource officers are doing and I know they came in and Dulie came in and gave a nice presentation about

062the emotional support and I think in one of the reports that Meg gave she had brought up how supportive DY was especially in this time of tragedy that we've had but where some of the school resource officers can offer a lot of um emotional building support um tied to our board goal of ensuring all students feel physically and emotionally safe at schools. um it seems like there might be an opportunity there. So at least and again I don't I know there's a lot that I probably didn't cover about what SRO's do but I know that a big part of it is early identification of safety concerns for students to other students and then students to themselves too. So but I'm not by no means an expert. I so just using empirical data reaching uh as

063I quote to you NASRO stats right like Mark still write reports and so those reports that come up. So the ticket can't come out of it but they still bring them down. break down try to put you know a little bit of something you can't write but there's still a lot of report writing that goes on from our level and high school level as they go in the parents outside school time discussions and have so kind of put a little behind it but still I think going down to the [clears throat] police station kind of still puts that factor in that lets know that you can do this outside of our this is what's going to happen. Those reports are still there and they can kind of lead up to some other things that they

064can do some things that way. So there's a lot of silver writing behind the scenes between high school, middle school as well. There's a share of information between us and them. That is huge for us being able to identify issues and get insights that we may not have in situations or insights that they may not have in situations. And I know Dan, officer is very adamant about the relationship he's able to build with our students while they're there. So when they become citizens of Syc I know something that like with all the soft lockdowns we've had feels like just like a student safety especially being a board goal but I don't know it's one of those things that like you can you can be reactive to it or you can be proactive. And I don't

065know that there's like a fix all to keep all the students safe all the time. Um but I think that there is in fact a lot of information to support that like there is a direct correlation between you know student safety incidences and just sheer numbers of staff able to support that and I don't know that there is a better method proven method to protect students than SRO's. So I'm that's something that at least is is line of sight in my perview. So I don't know if that's right. It's just unfortunate that there's less consequences which is going to lead to probably more crime in the future because there wasn't a consequence here. So when they go out there and they don't get in any trouble or don't have really a consequence, I think it's

066very dangerous and unfortunate that that legislation was passed. I guess that's all I can say about it. But this SOS are great. I mean, I know the ones we saw come in. It's nothing against them, but didn't the report say that the incidents are going down? Yeah. Significant. So, I guess that's not really like a bad thing that they can't write tickets because it's not a direct correlation between consequence and action. The the incidents are going down for the middle school or the high school. Middle school. Middle school. Yeah. Year to date it was 170. Last year, same year to date 204 and the year prior 285 from at least from looking at Meg's report on student services. So, like the middle school's behavioral report was interesting to show the kind of the decrease, but

067the student services just jumping over for a second actually showed an uptick in behavioral issues. Yeah, that's what I thought. I guess that's where I'm getting confused at. Yeah. So, I think I don't know if there's maybe just across the board maybe the middle school's kind of anomaly, but at least it looked like there more issues of behavioral needs than fewer. So, are we thinking about any type of future agenda item related to this or we got we just toasting a discussion? There's not a lot we can do because it's the legislation as we try to change the you know try to change the law but there's probably a lot more that goes on to maintaining the schools than just just the ability to write tickets. I think there's a lot that this is true.

068Anything else on the what do we have? Middle school reports high school. There's a couple of topics I know that are of particular interest. One of which is graduation requirements. Just jump right to it. But anybody have any comments on high school's report before we address that? besides grad requirements. No. Well, we have a we have a goal related academic goal related to um passive pass rate and we have the lowest number of total FS in the past four years, which I thought was encouraging, really good. Um not sure what's driving that, but I think that's that that's in line with what we're trying to succeed and work towards. So, that's that's really encouraging to see. I know that on the on the concern side, we didn't have anything listed, but I know it's come

069up multiple times that the facility itself may be a concern in itself. So, just continue discussion. I know there's on the facility side, there's a fiveyear facility plan, but my guess is that's probably an area of concern that we need to keep top of mind. I think it was figured that one goes without saying. Very well could be. Yeah. [laughter] So, graduation requirements. Um, there's a whole separate PowerPoint here, which is great. And just want to say thank you to Brian for putting this together. Um, I'll just everybody has access to this, but I'll just pull it up here. Um, from what it says, right, uh, is 16 credits required. So, four are ELA, three are math, two are science, two are social studies. Sycamore's requirements are 20. Uh we have a Y as previously

070set by the district and BOE and it exceeds the minimum expectations. Um and then the uh KPIs or local school credit requirements. So L Sycamore is 20, Lasal Peru is 23, Ottawa is 40, Keaneland is 22, Rochelle is 22, Morris is 22, Burlington 20.5, Genanoa's 25, Geneva's 20.5. Asiggo's 22, Bington's 20.5. I think Deelb is 25. Genanoa is 252. I didn't see I think might be 23. 23 23. Yeah, I didn't see. Also, maybe some of these numbers are a little bit old, but u because Burlington, based on what I saw, is actually 23 and a half. So, some of the really low ones on here are actually higher. Bington is truly 20.5, but like Burlington, I think, was lot I saw was 23 and a half. But some of the I think they're actually

071moving down. Are they moving down? Oh, maybe you're ahead of me. All right. I think they're moving down. And Ottawa is 40, but that's actually per class. So, that's actually comparable. And also I thought I saw that Genanoa I know they're blocked but I think Genanoa this says without um the PE I think with the PE they're 28 block because we're 20 with PE right so there yeah also Genanoa has um 25 hours of community service baked into their grad requirements too and they have a 93% graduation rate and we were at 94 so no no difference there. Yeah, I really like the community service requirement. I brought that up at a passport meeting. uh didn't get very far. So, I'm bring it up now and I hope it gets very far. Um have our

072students do community service. Yeah, I think I mean it seems we're a very community serviceoriented community. Well, this like goes back to the whole like what do graduation requirements say about what our priorities are for the portrait of a Spartan like you know and I think that there's some interesting data here too with the like 20 credits. I think you'd put down five students like 20 to 22 at 36 like so and the way I like pulled information from this was that while the bar may be 20 there are other there are a majority of students who are exceeding the bar right is that that's kind of the yeah that those other KPIs that I put in that presentation just kind of show you where average number of credits are for each of the three

073classes that I have been here in Sycamore obviously this is my fourth year so I don't know what this class will look like those average numbers are kind of on par. You can see the range credits kind of been on par for the past couple years and just the different breakdown of where students land as far as credits that they some of the benefits for academ to increasing graduation requirements. just yeah just put a note in on the the list of where it's like okay 20 credits five students 20 to depending on which you're looking at but it's broken and people you could you can look at this PowerPoint it's up could be up there just assume everyone has it yeah so so 20 credits eight students are only there 20 to 22 credits 30

074students are there 20 to 20 22 to 24 credits 67 students are there and that's who to me a policy like increasing graduation requirements would serve it's not the students who are already exceeding those it's those and I done a bit of a deep dive on this, but Gan Bottoms is was president of the Southern Regional Education Board. He's contributed a lot of pieces of National Association of Education Boards published pretty frequently. He's a big CTE guy, too. He's, you know, he's thinking about basing local accountability systems on the principle of valuing college readiness and career readiness equally. He says we ought to set accountability standards for graduation, college, and career readiness higher than those set by the state. Now, we are, but local or local area. And they do not undervalue students by holding

075them to lower readiness standards. And the idea there is if Decal is graduating people at 23 credits and Genanoa is at 25 credits, when our people go to look for careers with our high school diploma, it's them it's those with just the 20 and 22 credits who are could potentially be out competed by people with a degree where they've got more credits. If you go back to a 2004 article in the Harvard Journal of Economics, uh I can give it to you if you want, but they um is you can draw a fairly clear line between increased class taking and future earnings. It's a little bit fuzzier than that. Um like it's super clear if you if you go to math, not that I'm saying that's what we ought to do, but um but it's

076it's pretty clear across the board. And again, to me, like you're really serving the the students who are maybe going to go right into a career out of high school by lowering the floor. Um, but the emphasis always according to according to some of the literature I found has to be on career readiness and college readiness hopefully at the same time and you can you know like build out these pathways and you can't just lift the floor. There's lots of literature on you have to build supports around them and make sure they've got the resources provided to them. Um, and then there are carveouts and basically the law and everybody's policy I could find that says students with IEPs, they can have different graduation requirements or whatever is necessary for them. So, you can fairly

077clearly see where I stand on the issue. But that's sort of my my thoughts are it seems to be what the people around us are doing as far as I can tell would be best practices and to me it's going to serve our students um in the long run and in the short run. Well, my question is is do those other schools have the same trade opportunities we have here? Because I learned that you can get your pilots's license here. I don't think you could do that in Genanoa. I don't know. So, using that account for credit, too, would be the But that's that's a career ready opportunity. Yeah. I don't think you can have I don't think that it's a you can have one without the other. I think there's a scenario where you

078can have both. Yeah. I just think it's something that learning and teaching committee could maybe take a more with a recommendation or I think that's a great place for it to start for sure. I think part of the discussion is graduation requirements. Uh you somebody mentioned community service. It's really what do we as a district want our students to have when they graduate so that they're as ready for whatever the future brings as possible. So it could be class room related, it could be community service, it could be you name it and I think that's the job of uh maybe LTC probably certainly the board has to work towards that but others too is what what are the real goals? What what's the vision of what we want a a Sycamore Spartan who's hopefully the

079portrait of a Spartan to move forward and graduate with and and is it the 20 credit hours that we have today? Is it 20 plus community service? Is it 20 plus additional credit hours? Um, there's certainly good argument to be said that credit hours certainly plays into that, but are there other things that we want to consider? Um, so I'd be happy to take that to LTC. That is a topic because this has kind of come up here and there along the way that we talked about continuing that discussion and we could work towards a proposal. But this is also something that probably takes some time to try to determine. And then if you decide to make changes, you being all of us, um we have to figure out what's the impact, right? So are

080there additional um teachers or other support staff that's required and what does it look like? So I I think it's definitely something we can start with if you would all like from the LTC perspective. I think that's a good conversation to have. What even is a credit hour? Like what classes do they all get? Are they all the same amount of credit hours? Are they not? are like as Heather said, is KEC and um the KISH exploration programs, do those count towards student credits? Sure. Is the amount of time physically spent at KISH the same racking up the same amount of credit hours as if they're in let's say a calculus classroom? I I just don't I don't have that information. I think we need to first understand sort of our baseline and then build

081up from there. Yeah, I think that's correct. Someone the weight of that class. I guess just sort of seeing that would help. I think would be interesting also to revisit KC what's going on with that program in addition to, you know, for the future. Alan, to your point about how this takes a long time to do, I've got a trivia question for Mark Extro, who was being historian earlier. Here's [clears throat] the headline from the Daily Chronicle. What's the year Sycamore District 427 begins talks for new high school graduation requirements? I'm just like putting you on the spot because earlier you were the historian. I don't actually I know. Well, it's been it's come up several times. Yeah, that's a Yeah, that's a And I will tell you and how many times have you changed

082it? No, it's okay. Yeah. No, it's come to your board. You know, I've been here since 99. It's come to you numerous times. And we've changed it every time, right? [clears throat] No. Not a single time, right? Not a single time in 25 years have we changed it once. No. Exactly. So, it's come to you guys and then I knew the answer to that question. Yeah. And some of it is because of your lower like you talked about that you have a whole group of people that really struggle to get to the 20 and coming in. The hard part is, you know, being a former high school teacher was in the vocational program, if you don't have it high enough, then you can't attract a set of kids because they're like, I got my 20

083credits. I don't need anymore. Well, here's a chance for free to take classes that explore careers here compared to trying to figure out what you're going to do at a four-year university and coming in. So that part I think is you know when you raise it up that you actually get more kids your junior senior not taking as many study halls and trying to you know leaving school you know at one o'clock and being done with the new policies. We weren't able to do all that back when I was there in the old days but you just didn't have the kids like they would take two study halls or three study halls and they missed out on a chance to learn some other things that we had some great stuff in that building. I mean

084your building was when you know built for a lot of CTE and we just didn't put the funds. My job for the last five years before this one was to keep the kitchens up and going. Your early childhood now was you know for attendance coming in. That was a beautiful early childhood center in there. The sewing room now became the board room. Um you know at least cooking's come back now through the egg classes there. So the kitchen but that kitchen is so out of date with everything in there to be able to do some of the things that you need to do with that kitchen. So yeah, but it hasn't changed in 25 years. Yes, we've come it's come up four four times. Yeah. Yeah. 20 is what is what has stayed. So just

085to add to what Mark said, that's initially why that presentation kind of I created it last year because some of our staff at the high school are saying our kids are taking multiple study halls or lounges or flexes. So I was just genuinely curious how many credits are those kids earning? So they were actually earning, you know, I can't remember what the exact average is, but it was close to the the class average for each of those classes that students that were taking multiple off periods were actually earning 24 25 credits. Well, it's like goes to the portrait of a graduate. I know we've talked about it. It hasn't gotten super far, but I am curious like because I think this does go to the portrait of graduate piece, which is like who do we

086want to walk out with a diploma? What does that look like? And who how inclusive is that process going to be? and will it mean that this is number five where we pick it up and set it down and do nothing to it. So that's not always appreciated when you're 17 or 18. It's your last opportunity to have free education to whatever it after that unfortunately there's costs associated. Well, I know that. So there's that something to be considered. Right. Right. Definitely to be considered. Can you imagine somebody that sat in study hall and got all these credits and then then they want to go into a program which requires a lot of math in college? It's probably who you who comes into your class. We could all touch. So yeah, it is something really

087to talk about. One of the numbers that the KPIs that you point out, Brian, that I think would be good for the LTC is uh the percentage of students that are less than like the 21 credit hours. I know that it says the percentage of that have IEPs, early graduation, KC students or night school students. How many of those are maybe the the IEC sorry IEP uh students just to kind of understand because I know there is that concern of are we allowing not allowing are we giving um all students a good chance to graduate but understanding those differences maybe a little bit more parsed out might be really helpful well that's where it would come in to be important when I mean if you if you can't pass at the high school level math

088classes should you be going into a very expensive college program. I mean, that's when you would direct to a trade because, you know, plumbers make a lot of money. Um, in fact, there's a plumber shortage. So, there's a lot of other things people could do if they're not excel if they're already not excelling at the high school level and then they go into an advanced program in college and pay a lot of money for it. You know, back to what you said about this is their last chance to, you know, like a proving ground. So, a little more should be required, I feel, just so they would know where they're at before they go into a college program and spend a lot of money on it. Well, different college programs have different criteria cuz my

089social work program, I don't have to take math classes and I'm terrible at math. Well, yeah. So, you would know different. So, there's different college criteria, but you probably knew that by high school, correct? Yeah, it's Oh, I'm not going to go into Well, a lot of late bloomers, I think. I know because my son my son has higher he teaches higher level at the college. Yeah. And he has people that don't even know what they're doing and he's he doesn't even understand why they're in the class. He has like advanced calculus and they don't even they don't even know the simple basics for calculus. So, this is what I'm talking about. So, it sounds like there's a lot of interest in exploring this further. can absolutely I mean I'm not the one to say

090we shouldn't talk about it any longer. We can certainly talk about it more now but I'm more than happy to take it back to LTC to have more discussion. Definitely. We won't get it determined on November 11th but we can start that discussion. We can determine how we want to explore it further if we want to four times in 25 years. It sounds like this is the fifth time. It's an important topic that should be revisited whether we change it or not but we definitely should discuss it. Sounds like there's quite a bit of interest for potentially looking to raise the bar, but we need to maybe explore it and understand a little bit further. Can we send a survey out to students and see how they feel about the classes they're taking? How they

091would feel if they had more opportunities for advancement? I mean, HY actually surveyed and students responded and there was some interesting feedback we got from that survey related to the quality of the education they were receiving. But one of the comments, was it positive or negative? From from my recollection, there was a lot of positive feedback about the offerings and I think there was some interest in [clears throat] more rigor. But again, it that was not geared towards like this and I certainly think part of our board goals is, you know, conducting a survey of all of our stakeholders to get a better feel of where there's needs. So, yeah, definitely on the I want to see two L&T topics. one, increasing credit hours and second, I really like Beth Beth's idea of um student

092sort of career planning. I'm not sure how they're sort of intertwined, but they're also in my opinion separate. I think part of I don't know, but my my thought would be that for the graduation requirements, one of the stakeholders that we would want to engage with would be um the school of counselors and what their perspective is, which would probably in line somewhat with career counseling and moving forward in that regard. And again, it's it's not all academic credit hours. It could be we want to ensure that you have one 30 minute session with somebody on career counseling or we want just Yeah. Like I don't I was a student. I don't recall that. So I think that's something that would be very beneficial. But again, we have to understand what's the impact, right? We

093have Yes. Exactly. And so lots of discussion to be had, but it's it's the vision of what do we think a a graduate at Sigma High School shoot? The portrait of a graduate. The portrait of a graduate. We asked you. We coined it. We said it. I don't know where we're and Nick's not here to speak to it because I'm sure you'd have an answer, but I know it's somewhere sitting on someone's desk right now. It's waiting for the next piece of progress. So, um, Cole, you had something? No. Oh, I I mean, you know, good at math, bad at math, love math, hate math. The point is we want to serve all of our students the best we possibly can. And it seems to me that increasing graduation requirements is going to improve people's

094college and career readiness wherever they want to go, wherever they want to end up. And it's going to be doing our ser our students the best possible service to prepare them for their futures, whatever that might be. I agree. All right. So, we'll talk about it at learning and teaching. Yes. Great. Okay. Anything else? November 11th. 11th Armmesus day. Yeah. Wow. Okay. Uh so there were some looking ahead future focus pieces in the high school report course scheduling for SY 27. I know learning and teaching is talking about that too. Um [clears throat] anything else out of that? That was a big one. Had its own PowerPoint. So, thank you. Appreciate that. Yeah, that was really good. [snorts] Building and grounds. Go to building and grounds here. Where is it? There's a lot on building

095and grounds. There is a ton. Yeah, it was great. Marvelous. Is there anyone Scott? Scott's not here, is he? Oh, there he is. Sorry. He's quiet and [laughter] Yeah. We've been talking about building in grounds for it feels like a year and a half. It's too much. So, it's a lot of work. Not a great I mean, I I don't want to beat it the same drum over and over again. I I think we're well underway. It sounds like, you know, you've got a good handle on this. The age and obsolescence planning, [clears throat] I mean, yeah, that's Yeah. How's that? What's What's top of mind age and obsolescence planning wise? Well, I think it's all just the equipment that we have within the district making sure we have a timeline of when we can

096cycle those out and have those budgeted. So, it doesn't come to where it breaks down and we're scrambling around and I have to go to Nicole and ask for more money to get this done that we can kind of cycle these out and what their lifespan actually is. And it made Yeah, it made it sound like there's a document that's extent or will be eventually. It's in the works. Yes, in the works. That's sound great. And then I did on the preventive maintenance schedule. Is that are you going with manufacturer manuals or for the schedules or what are you going or just utilizing our building tests around that we can do with changing filters, looking at drains, light bulbs, just you know multiple uh utilizing incident IQ for tickets to go out just to give

097reminders for them to be able to check that to be able to save some money for outside vendors doing that work and providing those professional development opportunities for our own staff. Um so we can utilize them instead of hiring out. Yeah. And is that document extent also the preventive maintenance within incident IQ? Okay. So that's our ticketing system. So those tickets are then going out throughout the year. Is there a way to measure the success of the implement like does it show you like number of incidents like before and then like as you implement like I would imagine that would be something that from like a data standpoint like you could see well because we've implemented this level of preventive maintenance we've seen the number of incidents drop x like there's got to be some

098and again working in insurance like preventive maintenance is like risk management that's like the whole half of my job. So it's interesting because there there is like a a bell curve between like preventative like when you get to the point of well preventative maintenance starts to see diminishing returns to like incidences and then you talk about like where does redundancy make sense or not. So do you like does that software does it give that level of can you I guess is there a way to see a correlative trend between preventative and incident occurrence? the software is still fairly new and I think that's something we can dive into and I think it does will give reports like that. So that's something I can look at maybe for sure. Yeah, we've not had it for a

099year yet. So um but definitely I think that's something that we can look at once we've had that under our belt for a while. Typically when I've seen preventative maintenance plans implemented you see a spike in the number of tickets because maybe we weren't as uh proactive as we could. But over time, you see like service calls go down, repair part costs going down. I don't know if we account for those in in line items to be able to track over time if we're seeing a benefit for that work, but um that's a typical way that I' I've seen it in the past, not at a school, district level, but elsewhere. So, it's the software that we're that's creating the schedule. Yep. Yeah. But we but we I'm sure you probably do. We might track

100like backlog like we might have 50 tickets open. Are we are we achieving the 50 or did we get to 40 and we we were we have 10 in backlog so to speak. Are we able to keep up with that PM schedule or not? Um so I'm I think it depends on the time of the year too. Um you know at the beginning of the year I think our staff are super busy getting the buildings open and stuff like that. So they're not focusing necessarily on those preventive maintenance tasks, but then as we get further into the year [clears throat] and then we hit winter when we're out snow falling and doing all that, you know, you might see those go down a little bit more. But yeah, I think it fluctuates definitely. I'm not

101sure if this is this topic or the BSA recommendation, but I think it would be helpful at a committee level to like sort of kick out health safety costs or if there are any um and see that separately from just a facilities plan like really highlight this is a safety issue or this could be you know fixed with HLS bounds potentially. That's just just a just a thought like a filter for like kind of. Yeah. I mean it'll be interesting to see like I think in January that report because I know that the 10-year health life safeties have those categories. You could see the health life safety but you're saying like would we actually choose to Yeah. like are we going to complete if we get any um HLS findings when will we complete those

102specifically because they're sort of elevated in terms of importance. It depends on what it is. Typically, we address those uh pretty quickly um when we get them. So, those are usually done right away. Oh, so there's not like a $10 million backlog. We're we're anticipating at the elementary levels for Okay. Okay. That's good. I want to just commend you guys too in the report I read. The team handled the removal of old furniture and prepared the new 52,000 square feet or 52,000 square foot administrative building for occupancy using district staff to clean and organize the new facility resulted in savings of more than $63,000. Uh so good on you guys. You deserve a hand for that. Yeah, I know. I saw the number of I mean it was [applause] it was like a football field

103in there of cubicles. Yeah. Like I don't know where you guys put them all. It's starting to feel real cozy in here like a lot of work. So, we put our blood, sweat, and tears in this building. So, we definitely um it's a nice building. It's it's going to be good for the district. I mean, you can see the cost savings. I just underlined them all. And you're right, there's there's quite a few areas where we've gone above and beyond here to really try to save the district some money, which has been really much appreciated. It's really great. So, yeah. Anyway, yeah. Anyway, I think the agent obsolescence and the PM scheduling that would be a business services interest. So, especially as seeing what you come up with for your obsolescence study. Um, so thank

104you. Anything else for building ground? So much to come in January. So, okay, we'll move on. There's no depreciation schedule for items, right? Do we? So we do a fixed asset report um every year u with a third party company through our liability insurance. Um so that does have depreciation in that report. So there is a at least from an accounting perspective of yes lifespan and that is part of our audit too. Our auditors look at that as well. So, communications. Um, just quick update. I had an opportunity to sit down uh with Lauren and go through because, as you can probably tell, some of these uh scripted um remarks I've had some help with from professionals. So, Lauren's been kind enough to help and share some of the information that uh we've been doing.

105Um, one of the comments here was just talking about um, maybe sharing some more about what the work, you know, what work the board is working on, how we can communicate more effectively with the public. Um, one of the items that came up uh, in our discussion was just uh, policy 810, connection with the community, public relations. Um, and like our policy versus press. There's a really big difference between standard policy and our policy. ours is much shorter um and less detailed. So maybe there's an opportunity there. I know that that's indicated in the board support update. Um maybe better aligning to just the standard press policy versus So I was thinking for a future agenda item maybe having that it's on the agenda I believe. Great. Um some other pieces I know we've all

106seen the walk in their shoes uh highlighting the students uh and Spartans and updates on that. Um, so that's been great. Other comments on the communications report? There's a few other things I've got here, but I'll stop talking. Something we're talking about doing is um a quarterly update from the board. Uh, and that would look like something you'd see in November where we would just share some of the milestones just kind of top top line. this is what the board of education did uh or talked about and this is why you should care. Um Lauren's been uh sharing some helpful insights about what that could look like and how we could effectively communicate. I think a big piece um that the board can work on is you know being able to communicate effectively with stakeholders

107so that way there's uh no gaps in messaging um so that way people understand uh better what they can do, what we do and how that all works together. So, some information forthcoming. Um, when HIA was here, they were saying that we have a rather large communications department. Is that something that we're concerned about or are we comfortable with where we're at? Um, were you talking [clears throat] about in the survey or like um she just I just remember her mentioning something about she repeated herself a couple of times um about how large our communications department was. and how many people we had on staff for that. I had an opportunity to talk with um Lauren and I talked about just the makeup of communications too. And I know that I think there's probably some

108confusion about what is or who is composed in that. And I think a big part of it is like where the Spartan TV and where um Spartan TV is one component club advisor um and then there's also a component for u oh goodness I'm trying to go off director what's that also falls under it's not necessarily communications itself but they fall under the communications department as One of the things that caught my eye sorry yes one of the things that caught my eye um was related to the working with the HR department on their strategic plan from a department standpoint which is interesting I don't know we do that in each of the departments do they there's a there's a comment on uh actions and events milestones about working with the HR department on their

109strateic IC plan and I thought that's it would be interesting over time to understand what's the strategic goals of each of the departments communications but then HR and that's I thought that was really nice to see and I just don't know if that's something that we do typically across um all the departments or not but just an interesting nice thing to see I I guess yeah well it came up once writing the HR strategic plan as a board goal you know developing an HR strategic plan for focusing [snorts] in attracting and retaining uh staff. So, anything else? Yeah, on Allen's note, I think I had a really similar comment. I just um just, you know, make I assume they're doing it. Comms is presumably supporting all the other initiatives because basically all the other initiatives

110are problems we've talked about can in some way shape or form be supported by comms and we haven't gotten to some of these but like food services jobs or growing the Oscar advertising that we want to grow the Oscar program when the time comes that we decide EC needs to grow right that's going to be like lot so comms has you know is very involved in all the other departments so I think that's kind of what you're getting at right yeah just the goals of the department who are we trying to speak to and for what what purposes I don't have anything else on communications. Anything else? Great. Thank you very much. Close. Food services. 1,500 apples. I saw 1500. That sounds great. Yep. This is the second year that we did the Great Apple

111Crunch um with coordination of our food service department and Mac Orchard provided the apples for us. Max the best. So, we drove our van out there and picked up all the apples, brought them back and distributed them to um each class K5 or actually preK5. It's a fan favorite in my house. It's a fan favorite at least. Yeah. So cute. Yeah, there's more of the same here. Staffing shortages. I mean, I think we've talked about that already, right? Um there was something on here about creating student taste panels. So, I was wondering how how we're going to operationalize that like we're doing. Are we going to do something like that? That's pretty cool. Yeah. So, Sophie already has some plans um to implement that probably mostly at our middle school and high school levels. Cool.

112Um and that way we can get feedback from those students as well. I wasn't as familiar with the potential for state level universal free meals. Mhm. Is is how likely do we have any sense of how I mean I know that there's no way to know how legislation might vote but is that moving through out there? Yeah. What would be the I guess I'd be curious then can the kitchen support that if we decided if not if we decided if that were to come to fruition I wonder I mean I guess we'd have to see when we get there but yeah I think um I think we [clears throat] definitely would see an increase in our meals um probably not as much as some other districts. But yeah, I think they definitely will see an

113increase in Is that there is that just the um school provided lunch or is that like the extra stuff too like we still have the chicken patty. Alex eats like five of them every day in our house. [laughter] A lot of kids complain about the food. So everybody, yeah, I will say our food and I taste it. I taste it at every building every year. Um, it's it's very it's good. I think it's great. So if you guys would like to come and taste test our food, feel free to. Do we I mean I this might be beyond the scope of board work, but do when we consider food vendors, do we consider the ingredients like what the what's in the food that the students are eating? Like does this one have more ultrarocessed whatever

114is this one that the food has to follow. Um and every food service management company has to follow that. Okay. Yeah. Nicole, I remember you were counting was it milk jugs at one point or like you were counting meals. I saw you at a school once and you were just like taking inventory. Yeah. So I do audits every year at each of the schools. I'm required to do that. Um just to make sure that everyone's following the processes correctly. Nobody takes two milk jugs, right? Nope. Not even a chocolate milk. [laughter] Mr. Countryman, are you going to be a chef for Halloween? You're looking good. Yeah, we'll have to see who's next on the guest server list. Huh? Oh, yeah. I don't think I didn't have pictures. It was a lot of fun. Pancakes and

115sausage. Nice. One thing I really appreciated here, simple. There are so many acronyms that I do not yet know. So, I appreciate putting what the acronym meant. And then that was just helpful for me so I didn't have to go to Google to look those up. Thank you for doing that. All right. Anything else on food services? [clears throat] I feel like I haven't heard from food service like so this has just been really insightful like knowing about what's going on with Yeah. Talk about using equipment again. probably going back to facilities, the kitchens themselves, perhaps modernizing them, but at the very least equipment wise, right? Something that I'm sure will kind of come filter through as we were talking just a facility side. Yep. Oscar, well, it seems like you're starting to do lots

116of things that think sound really good. I'm very interested to hear what you find once you start tracking things like attendance trends, staff student ratios, behavioral incidents, parent feedback, and program utilization. I can't find any crowd between the two largest. [laughter] So, no, just I thought heightwise happy that you're thinking ahead and looking at stuff like that. And again, next year, really curious, you know, two years from now, really curious to hear what you find when you put that together. Fifty goals. Um, I felt bad putting it in there because I started in August. So, I don't want to make comments about a program that I've, you know, recently been a part of, but those are things that we would like to start looking at. Follow up with you next year. Yeah, hopefully. Yeah. Anything

117else? Um, very informative. Lots of good. Yeah. Yeah. Mhm. And I'm glad to hear that the the uh combination of those two roles has sounds like it's been very beneficial and I think was talked to in both the transportation and the ambiance side which is good to see. Right. Very good to hear. There's an invite in there too if anyone wants to see. I always I know I we got to Lacy and I spent four hours together for Lacy on transportation. So I am curious. I I hear his stories because my younger brother worked for Oscar or did worked in Oscar and so uh he just loved it said it was great really he did a staff survey recently and we got a lot of positive feedback you know students had mentioned that they didn't

118think they wanted to teach until they started Oscar and now that's a future so that stuff we can measure also um so most of our staff um they had they came with some good suggestions too much but most of them were very happy it was their f it's their favorite job and you know they they learn a lot from their peers so we had a lot positive feedback. And this is something brought up. I just had mentioned it to Nicole when we were when I was getting some information on the early childhood piece, but there's some overlap and it it's interesting where like Oscar Jr. and um Little Spartans have crossover and how like the duality of those two programs is a strong appeal. Um so I don't again I think that's an opportunity that

119we're already leveraging. Um, but I just want to draw attention to the fact that that like I think is a competency that we have is like really really helps push us above and beyond uh other competitive offerings for early childhood. So the fact that we've got that to sort of sprinkle in um seeing how those two shake hands. I had an opportunity to take a tour um early childhood last year. It was brief uh because we were time strapped because I went and met with uh Mr. rocker too. But um you know I saw the at least a a a quick look and seeing where those again where they shake hands is is interesting. So because there is a lot of overlap but um that makes me wonder if we did have early childhood in

120a different space what that looks like for Oscar Jr. or for Oscar and how that those two programs would be affected by that. So I don't know um another thing to just think about. Something to note, we worked really hard to not increase the Oscar Junior space um at South Curry this year and that affected the global building um to keep the free Oscar Junior spaces open um which we wanted to do even before Lacy took a position. So just something to note note that that stretched child prairie even further and our parking situation. If you've ever been there, don't come at 8:30. um or 320. But um we did able to stretch that and people went to smaller spaces around carts to make that happen and we didn't have to decrease to two classrooms

121just so everyone knows that there was a lot of work that went into South to make that happen. Nice. Thank you. Yeah. And again, not to say dirty words like redistricting again, but it does make you wonder because I know for a while redistricting that like that school took a big piece of that and there was a lot of movement there. So, I'm just curious like as we talk about the future of that program and those programs, what the impact will be um for student placement. So, yeah, South definitely changed. I mean, I walked in there five years ago and there was plenty of open building. I joke around how many book rooms we had or spaces. There was plenty of space there. The redistricting definitely affected South Prairie and the continuing turning over of

122ne older neighborhoods that South Prairie. Like I live in Fox Point. My street does not look like anything when I moved in there. Um so um yeah, she does too. So our kids class has gone even from where they started where our girls her youngest and my oldest are in the same grade and boomed. So, I feel like it's just something that was harder that we didn't predict in the redistricting was the turnover of some of those neighborhoods. So, um I get why people talked about that building having no space, but if you toured it again like you did last year, it's a little bit different story and this year is even more tight. We have three speech and languages in the same office, things like that. Well, yeah. Now it's packed. And so then

123if we talk about an early childhood [clears throat] expand expansion, like there's interest in it. I could see the difference just from when my son was there to now. So, so it's wild. Yeah. And it'll be that'll be an interesting suite of problems. So, um, anything else on Oscar? Okay. Student services. This one I thought I learned so much. I had no idea about. Great. And I I'm going to draw a reference to Lacy's wall of I knew you were gonna say that. Yeah. I if you haven't had a chance to see Lacy has a whiteboard in transportation office that has two of them I have one hand oh okay with just all the out placements and the coordination efforts and again like a testament to where those two departments like shake hands to have

124to overlap and so like how what one does affects the other. So, I'm glad that we're able to talk about this in the presence of all of you because these these they're so coingled and in the past when we do the individual reports. It's tough because of attendance, but now you guys are all here to sort of hive mind this. But anyway, any comments on student services? It was just really great to hear about the progression um of life school and I wanted to see life school have a home, you know, and so it really touched my heart the uh I really appreciated it a lot that you took the time to write out everything. Whoever did it, if you're here back there, Thank you so much. It was written beautifully like the timeline and

125[snorts] I'm just so happy that life school has a home here in a kitchen and everything to learn for those that that group of students you know that um thank you so much. We're continuing to grow and to learn. I call it action research. You have to be in a space to really understand what the needs are, right? Working side by side with the teaching staff and myself and we're working through those concerns that are coming up as they come up and find solutions and in my 20 years in special education administration been a part of restructuring programs or initiating programs. So this is very near and dear to my heart. make sure that we continue to look at our student needs and our district resources and combining those together to really continue to plan

126out our future vision of how we can support our students but also grow this program in a way that's helping our community but also helping our students transition into adulthood and to the work experience. It's awesome. Thank you so much. I did have a trend question for you. Uh based on what I was looking at, I could be a little bit wrong, but seemed like from 23 to 26, the total sped counts are up about 11% and our outplacements are up about 33%. Is that just typical in the world right now or? Absolutely. It's describing what all schools are seeing with different populations coming in, different coming into the buildings. educators feel it in the classrooms and then we also see it as administration and supporting those needs and so the growth is very difficult

127to lots of directors that I talked to around the state it's definitely something that we have to keep an ongoing conversation on because she's talking with elementary schools with the program that we just expanded with my time here and we're seeing an uptick of placements within that program. Um, now there may be a a cohort that then goes to the next level in the next year, but right now we have concerns with making sure we're meeting the needs of those students and also addressing those concerns from staff members to make sure that they're able to provide services within the constraints and the growing needs and numbers that we have. things that I said to, you know, concerns or future issues. It's echoing a lot of what you're hearing about that recruitment, about that retention. Um,

128special education is really hard to secure related service personnel, social workers, psychologists, speech pathologists, teachers. And so, it's something that we continue to grow, either grow our own or come up recruitment and retention things to support our special education teachers and related service really put you on the spot. Do you have I mean do you have any thoughts about how to do that in the long run or you can think about it well beyond just going to do it during we had some extra money. So when my previous district incentives to bring in um those hard to build positions, you know, you really have to look at them differently than other positions when you're looking at the laws of making sure that we service students within those legal documents. So, we're we're bound by those

129laws. As far as recruitment, I would say we just have to be really flexible in in how we recruit them, how we retain them. I have some thoughts. Yes, the answer is yes, but it's probably going to be a lot of communication. Gotcha. Yeah. Well, if it's Yeah, if I'm in the if I'm in the how, then certainly, you know, bump me back out. But as far as what you know, make you know, please make sure that you get what you need from the board. So, do you feel posting for these positions if if open as early as December is helpful? Yes. I see some nodding of heads from the principles. We have open positions. We have one at the high school. We have contract social workers. We have contract speech pathologists. We have contract

130psychologists. So, you know, those needs continue. Those vacancies are still there. So, when we can when we can post and sometimes in November, we could get those early grads, those midyear grads from universities. But I earlier we can post I absolutely makes a positive impact on filling those positions. Just quick in your opinion what makes a school district competitive when attracting those positions? What do you see? I mean because you mentioned like there's a a theme coming up like how do we attract and retain top talent which goes back to our board goal like you know what what makes a district competitive compared to other districts like I'm thinking of a word but I don't you know money right like is that it is it money or like is that a big one right there's

131many things that attract to come into our district. It's also the community. about those relationships, the reputation of the school, you know, what makes this community so special and then using that communications department to really make sure that that's out there so that we're attracting people that want to come in and live here in the district. Um, one of the things that is even broader than that, they're not in school psychologist, they're not um graduating at the rate in which would be able to fill our nation's hole. NASP says one school psychologist per every 500 students. Well, EBF funding says one for 1,000, but if we were even to do one for 10,000, my graduating cohort as a school psychologist was eight. So, when you have limited programs in the nation, graduating 8 to 10

132per year will never keep up. So, do we have to be competitive then, right? Like that's because it's what it comes down to. We're not going to be able to fill all the needs. So, we have to be aggressive. And so, working with those higher ed I work with um with King University to get an online program for school psychology. It goes beyond just what can we do right here, but how can we look even nationwide and up in in those upper level universities? How do we get them graduate more teachers, graduate more social psychologists. If we need to be flexible online program, making it accessible, incentives from a district level on growing your own and how to help people that may be in a teaching role that want to become a school psychologist or

133a social worker. I think we need to really look at a lot of different avenues to come up with how currently maintain kind of goes to that hopefully that HR plan we're talking about strategic plan there's something there just quick question for you too about and since you're we're doing a dialogue no pressure but um the count the sped count I I guess I'm just looking at like the 33% increase right and we talk about just the sheer numbers increasing you're saying it's across the nation What's changed? Is it the criteria by which we've No. Right. Okay. I'm I'm guessing. Right. Is it So, if it's not the criteria, if it's not like I mean, I guess I won't theorize because I'll be way off, but can you do you know what's changed that has

134maybe led to this across the nation? Do you have any any ideas or any guesses? When you look at the past five years, you look at especially the younger ones coming up through co they did not have language examples. They were they were in homes learning online. I think the opportunities the children were born into not being exposed to um you know the grocery stores or the environment. So I think that we're seeing those impacts of nationwide or a worldwide partially what we're seeing emotional the trauma that we're seeing come in from students all of those things we see an uptick where that's coming from I think we all make guesses that more too much screen time or gaming or violence are watching. You know, there's lots of things I think that would impact those

135increases in behavior. But there's the book, The Anxious Generation. I know everybody talks about this book, The Anxious Generation. I I don't know. I know we have a district or we have a a high school cell phone policy. It's recent, right? So, I don't know. I mean, as we try to stumble through the wise and what we can do for it, does student services do we have any line of sight on how the implementation of the cell phone plan? Like you brought up the cell phones. Again, I'm just we're just looking. We're wandering in the dark here. Is there any connection or do we see that data at least at the student level? Is there any way to track that? Some articles about screen time and speech development at early childhood um the amount of

136screen time affecting speech and language and developmental disorders. Happy to pass that on. There's a lot of current research going on of how that um kids being placed in front of TVs and phones is limiting their interactions, their social skills, and their speech development, which I think then we're just seeing push up further in the grades. I also think people aren't, you know, that's getting just pushed up into higher grades. So, there's a lot of current research being done on, you know, handing your kid your because it's easier. You know, I'm guilty of it. Um, here's your phone. Like, be quiet so I can finish dinner. You know, things like that. There's a lot of different research on how parenting styles have changed and impacted school outcomes that are kind of really current cool and

137current studies. So, maybe the solution is in early childhood. Is that what I'm hearing? I'm gonna say everything. You're telling me that's like he's gonna say everything in buildings and grow. She's gonna say middle school. She's gonna say transportation. Um, so I think there's a lot of different things, but I think there's some really cool research being done about technology affecting how brainical issues and every time I read an article, I like promise myself not that young. So you're right, it is early childhood. I will say the high school the social emotional distraction of the cell phone and the issues that I've dealt with is just anecdotally the issues that I dealt with have dramatically decreased this year by implementing the cell phone policy and it not being in their hands as much in the

138classroom. I've noticed a a decrease in just some of the teenage drama things that I've that I've had to deal with. So I think also to the special ed testimony of our district, there's a lot of kids who've moved in with significant needs because our district is well known for taking care of their special education students. So I think outplacement students, some of them have just moved here because we're good at our jobs. Did I read this right too that we're getting a 77% reimbursement on outplacements? Is that is reimbursement for private program? That is if Yes. the controller actually pays us. We um last year with a higher percentage supposedly. So it's typically around 50%. Okay. But the state says that they'll reimburse us for private therapeutic day schools up to that 77% rate.

139Um is it different in house or is it why is it why we don't get any? So, it's better from a reimbursement standpoint to outplace than it is to try to do it in house. They're expensive, right? So, um it is it is great that we have that ability because for special education, you have to provide a continuum of education, meaning something as small as maybe speech or resource all the way up to a residential placement and everything else in between. So when you look at a continuum of services that we have to provide um with our size we have a few layers that we can support students. We have able but then when the needs become greater than what we can provide then having that avail ability then to get reimbursed at that high

140rate for private therapeutic is absolutely a positive I mean 77% is a huge percentage so like that's a non-negligible amount of reimbursement like if you get but that's an up to right that's not a It's usually about Yeah. I don't think we've ever been funded at the full amount since I've been here 16 years. That's nothing new. That's just It would be like a student that maybe has needs that cost the district. I mean, we see bills $25,000 a month. If they're in LEAF, it does not cost, you know, 33% of 25,000. It would be cheaper to do it in house. And you're not sending a student to Neighborville for the day. It's a case byase basis. I think I don't think it's we can just generalize. Yeah. To your point, an isn't just a

141student with emotional dysregulation or mental health disabilities. It could be our low incident. We have death and heart of hearing, blind, we have autism, multiple disabilities, significant cognitive or fragile. Like there is a a list of of disabilities and unique needs of students that then we are placing out. Um I would say the majority probably looking for more of that behavioral or emotional but we have quite a few of that 48 that have those. Um, I had one other comment on this and I Lacy had kind of piqued my interest in it when she was talking about students sitting in the car for like an hour getting out place to a place in like Neapville or you know it's not ideal but sometimes it's the best way to serve them is they have to go

142to these places with specialized services but Mena Academy I know is close by um and we're doing a lot of outplacement to that place I had an opportunity I didn't go through in great detail with them, but just kind of check out the facility and how they're building it out. And it looks like they've seen a huge uptick, too. What um I guess in terms of accessibility to Mena Academy and seats because there's space this is it are our opportunities to outplace students close to home limited by the competitive nature of other schools also looking to outplace to those and is Yes. Go ahead. Yeah, that I mean that's essentially the question facilities really have with accepting or not accepting students. Some of the places that we are wanting to send, they're either old with

143those grade bands or they're not taking someone with specific disability whether it's blindness or aggress aggression. So they have the right to tell us no. So then we have to you notice the number facilities that we use. It's 17 and there's really 13 facilities but then some of them like ment online and then the cow genoa like me is all over but each facility has its own um niche of what they provide and what students that they're able to take whe it's elementary or emotional internalizer or so that's the reason why there's so many Then when we can't find a placement for a student that has IDs, then we have to look out farther. We by law we keep them to that hour. We don't want them. We can't have that over that hour time

144limit. Um and that's a lot, you know, on the road. Yeah, an hour is a ton of time. That's not our first choice ever. We're we're truly at the mercy of the private placements that openings for specific disability, specific age range and then their disability need. So we have a death and heart of hearing program but it's and it's a little one. It's a little so I saw they got the kids some of these kids that Lacy was showing us that like it doesn't look comfortable what they're situated in. Like they're doing I know we're doing the best we can here but it's like man oh man that's I know it was like the there was a contraption. I mean it was right but I can't imagine sitting for an hour in one of those.

145They fit better than they look. We have multiple sizes so we measure like we go like I'll just use L for an example. if she has a kid who requires a harness for safety, we'll go in with different sizes. Len will help measure them. Um, so there is they're not as tight or restrictive as they look. Um, but it is a tool that keeps them safe for these rides and that we use those in district as well. We have some students that can't ride 30 minutes um safely. So that is a tool that we use for all of the routes, not it's not specifically to just out. Well, this is really really insightful. Thank you for this. Any other comments on just to keep things moving, could we have a future agenda item from the

146director of life school on maybe what she would like in this new facility? From her directly? Did you guys see the pictures too? There were pictures. Yeah. Okay. like facilitywise, um, space-wise, it I mean, frankly, it's just I think there was a communication gap between the board and admin on what the live streams were going, what spaces [clears throat] they'd use. Um, so I think having more discussion about that would be helpful, but I mean, we've been going a while, so maybe at a later date would be better. More interest in life school. I think that's a good idea. I don't see why not at a regular board meeting or a subcommittee. I don't know what committee would teaching and learning with it or regular. There's so much we put on their plate though. I

147don't think we have I I would suggest Do you want like a separate life school update standalone life school update? Okay. Yes, maybe just with recommendations on what the director would like potentially. And just so you know, I I had lots of conversations with the previous teacher when we were going to be moving in here beginning in January of designing and what she wanted to see. We separated the kitchen. We advocated for that. So there was a very close communication between myself and the previous coordinator. Um, and then when we hired Miss and she has brought just as as early as two weeks ago, she brought some things to my attention that I was not aware of when we meet pretty regularly. So, we're working on for instance a sensory something that she said is

148needed with at least one of the students for sure. And so within that's the 15th of October within that that next week we were able to then locate a sensory room where we're going to go ahead and buy those tools and and options. So it is an ongoing conversation that I'm also having with the staff and making sure that the needs that are arising are being addressed and we're future thinking as well. I saw it too. It said it like seven to 10 hours per week is spent preparing for vocational experiences and receiving district instruction and then 70% of the time they're embedded in they're out which is the goal. That's right. We want them to be in the community and and having jobs so that they're they're going to be productive members of our

149society. That is truly the goal right. So minimal But we want to make the time here, those seven to 10 hours a week, um, useful and and make sure that we're meeting their needs. Great. Thanks. Thank you so much. Anything else? Student services. Uh, all right. And then last report here, transportation. Um, we're doing a year's work uh a year's amount of uh reporting in one meeting here. So, 15 minutes. It's a long I know. I was thinking about that. I was thinking 15 each. That's what it was. Yeah, it was 15 minutes each. It's good work though. I mean, it's really really great, right? Um, all right. So, transportation, just taking a quick peek at this. One of the high level pieces was what are we going to do about routes that fall within

150one and a half miles [clears throat] and what do you think? [laughter] I mean I read this is it's I think that the hazard study that we're doing is is a great tool. Um not the sole tool but a great tool because it takes the opinion and the emotion and it is they're measurable items, right? And that's that's important. Um, I did hear you when you and Allan came in and we were talking about an elevated version of that, right? So, we had this hazard study. You know, Illinois Department of Transportation is like, "Hey, [clears throat] this isn't a hazard. They're not local to us." Right? So, there's an element to they're not local to us. What does that look like? So, um, you know, Nicole and I have talked, um, we touched base with

151PD. Um that was one of the things that we discussed um you know after the the accident. Um there's obviously some things that can't be shared necessarily all the time but their involvement with how they provide crossing guards or um complaints that they receive in areas accidentrone places different situations that maybe they would know about that we don't um so you know their involvement I think would be important um they have a criteria for crossing guards too. um they will sit on an area, they will make observations, they will check out traffic flow and patterns similar to kind of what we do but also different. Um, and I think Mark and I did this two years ago, but having maybe an internal um, group of people or um, established people where uh, if we're looking

152at an elementary route, having an elementary principle or or people in that avenue, look at the walking path and say, "Hey, is this is this something that our K through five population can do safely?" Um, maybe it's education that we have to provide. Maybe it's um where we walk the path as adults and kind of look at all of the different things that could come up on that path. Um but just having an insight of someone that's not, you know, where I'm looking at data points and here's someone coming in and they're talking about the population of kids that we serve. So that opinion is, you know, there as well. So I think still using the hazard study piece, right? Because that's always going to be um how much traffic is in an hour during

153your about time or um what are the signs, are there any? You know, those things are are important because I think that those are um good tools, but then maybe having this extra layer so that if parents are like, "Hey, you guys are very, you know, blinders." Then we could have an elementary principal or someone in that avenue say, [snorts] "Hey, here's what we observed. Here's what we looked at and we support this decision that is maybe, you know, to take a route away or sometimes to add one. I we've talked about other areas where, you know, maybe we should reook at it from a different perspective." So just having kind of a group established within district um to see what the measurement is and then also what is possible of our student population. So

154so is it staff that's been standing at park and board after school? Our staff? Yeah. No, I don't not that there's two women that have been standing at park and boarding. I don't know anything about that. That's not our district staff is not we have not done that. I did have a bus incident the other day where I had to pull over there to get on a bus and help with the discipline issue. But no, outside of that, no, I don't know [snorts] if if parents are I just know if that was parents or staff because I've noticed I I mean unless Mr. Rucker has an opinion on that. It's not transportation. Okay. So, I'll just maybe I missed it. Um and so correct me if I'm wrong. So, as I see it, the problem

155is that we have routes that we're running that are within one and a half miles of walking distance and we don't need to offer those routes, but we do because we have always done that. Correct. And so, if we were to for various reasons, some of it's procedure. That's a given. Yep. Sure. Exactly. If we were to say we don't we're within one and a half miles. We're not going to offer routes to any of these within one and a half miles walking distance. That creates obviously disruption to what people expect and calls for justification. So, we're at a sort of crossroads. Um, do we continue to offer these routes inequitably argument sake, right? or do we create some sort of process that justifies when we offer a route beneath one and a half miles?

156Um, or do we just say just indiscriminately no routes within one and a half miles unless they're a hazardous route? And you're you were saying, Lacy, correct me if I'm wrong here, that we should involve the building principles and put together uh sort of like a task force and on a casebyase basis. I think like you brought up the petition. I mean, we've talked about petition a lot. Um, you know, we've also there was two routes um in the original hazard presentation where we were taking potential routes away from two different locations, one of which didn't really get a lot of of hype um and didn't seem to create as much stress as this other one. So, um just an extra layer of support maybe if there is um a need. I mean, I I'm

157very black and white in this situation. Um, I live in the area, so I mean, I've I've done a few of the hazard studies over there. Um, one with Mark, Nicole, and I have sat over there. Um, we've talked to PD numerous times. I don't I don't I think the hazard study works in this area, but I do hear that there is parent concern. So, if you have further parent concern and I do saying, "Hey, this is not a hazard." I think a a in district tax task force of people who aren't looking at it solely from a transportation perspective because I can have blinders in that avenue that might help at least feel have the parents feel like they're validated in that conversation. At the end of the day, if this task force is

158like, hey, we agree with the I do findings, then you know, could this fall on the parent teacher advisory committee? Do you think because that's composed of parents, teachers, the idea is if you were interested in serving in it or publicly, like could that be something that falls on their agenda? and then they could potentially have a follow-up meeting where they solicit stakeholders and then come up with a sort of Yeah, I don't know that we'd want, and I don't mean this disrespectfully to the parents, I don't know that we'd want the parents necessarily involved. I think sometimes we um emotionally have blinders on when it comes to like mask masking safety is an inconvenience, right? Like if you take a route away from this group of people, it is inconvenient. Not necessarily strictly from

159a safety perspective, though it feels like that, but also could be from, you know, I have to pay for Oscar and I have not had to before or I have a job where I might have to change the structure of my day to get my kids to and from school or, you know, um, they brought up that the South Prairie parking lot is a concern. I think ultimately at the end of the day, we're not telling people they have to make their children walk. It's just an option. um in a series of options um that the other district members have had to face also. And there are when we talk about taking a routeway, it's similar to this. Um you know, when they established it, it was during upstaging traffic and the things have changed

160since then. Um but you know, it offers avenues for us to utilize the the routes in different ways. So right now we only offer um special education buses to our able program or our leave program. We do have special ed students in other buildings that would require that. We just have found creative ways to serve them, but having this flexibility would offer avenues for them and to have more support for that. So, um supporting our growth in preschool, right? We only have two buses that support that. Um having a third bus would be great. So there are other ways that we could utilize this route um if this was not what we did next year. So yeah, well go ahead, Heather. I think it would be worth having the parents in on the conversation because

161if enough kids from one neighborhood are walking to the same school, they could easily have a stay-at-home mom or somebody walk the group of children together instead of each individual child walking themselves. It's a mile and a half. It's a long way to walk in the winter for five. I wouldn't want to see a fiveyear-old walking a mile and a half. Did you say K through 12 is involved in this? The hazard studies are for all levels. So it's just the the measurable items change with the age of the student. So yeah, I think it's troublesome to take away one you already had. My my question was it may be helpful to share does ID do provide written rationale for their rejection? Yep. I think there's a packet that you guys had when we started

162this original conversation with their written rationale. Yeah. So, they have different um each category or point system has like paragraphs related to what that looks like. They have a lot of examples of traffic flow and um different crossing measures and what I read that document um but I meant did they provide a written rationale for their rejection of because we added the two judgment points. They said no, those are no good. They just follow the area. They go through the measurements. Um if it sometimes they'll send a staff member out to look for themselves, but no written. They'll just say, "No, those two judgment points are no good." The judgment points were good. They just when we added those two judgment points, they still didn't exceed. They didn't Oh, they disagreed with your original assessment.

163So, we the judgment points, I don't remember what they were exactly, but they have to total 12 or 21 to count as a hazard. And they did even with the judgment points per the measurements of the streets and the traffic flow, they didn't get to that level. Oh, I guess I was I guess I was confused. I guess I was confused several months ago then because I thought that I was under the impression that it had based on your maths it was something like it had 18 points without the judgment points and then yeah once we decided to send it to the state um and not just do it internally we had to go out and physically I a lot of those we were estimating high on behalf of the parents those estimates had they

164have been high and submitted to ID do ID do would have changed them they did that on another um hazard study that we I had a I So it was submitted differently than it was shown to us. No, it was submitted the same way it was shown to you. The original one that we did um where we were kind of guesstimating when we sent it to the state, the one that Alex signed. So then the one that we got shown here later was slightly different than the one that we had shown. The original one that we did just as a rough estimate was different. And then when like I said when we went to send it to the state we had to be very very accurate to that. So we went out with tape measures.

165We measured the sidewalks. We measured the distance. Um we did the traffic flow. Um per the website that they gave us. Um we did submit a hazard study for um Brickville over by Brier by North and they did not agree with my findings on that one. I had listed that as a hazard. They disagreed. They did go through and um I said that there was a bridge that the students had to cross. They said the bridge wasn't as significant as it needed to be. So they took my points from four to three. So they do make adjustments if we measure wrong or if something is is not up to their standard um on the one specifically for park and board and they did not make any changes to the measurements that we sent in. So

166they were never paying for the park and board and stuff. We've just been paying for it. none of the hazards have ever been. We've never submitted the hazard forms and then we just decided now recently in the last year to take that away. So we saw a decrease in student riders in that area. Um so that was one of the reasons. Yeah. So we were going to utilize that the second half of that route in a different way. We saw a decrease in student ridership. So we were sending a bus to that area that had less um on some days maybe 20 kids total. Um and there were some other resources that we could have used that for. So that was something that prompted that. Um obviously the um structures in the area had changed,

167the traffic patterns had changed a little bit. Um and then when we decided to do the hazard studies for the entire district, that was one area that we decided that we did as well. So if we're going to send in hazard studies for all the hazards that we need to be reimbursed, um that was one of them that we would have to do. um because it is listed as a hazard and then once we did that research we realized that it did not meet the standards of a serious safety hazard through IDA. This sounds like a policy committee referral to me. No. Does it? Yeah. I'm feeling like I don't think it I think I agree with Heather about involving parents and seeing if parents would be willing to carpool or make some kind of

168We have a lot of education pieces too that we've talked about. We've just never made it that far. You know, we had Rich and I had talked about um you know, doing a video to show the appropriate walking path. Christian had mentioned involving um a business to create a walking path. So there, you know, talking to Sigma PD and having more police presence in the area. Um having them come and look at whether a crossing guard would be appropriate there. So there are things that we would implement if that route was removed. It just we haven't made it that far yet. So I don't think we can solve this here tonight right now. No, but I just wanted to say I do just one more thing real quick. Um that would be helpful, but we're

169still going to have a problem. I feel that kind of distance walking in the bad weather. This is one of the shorter areas of walking in comparison to other areas of the district. Yes. I just have a question for the parents. Um if was this done, it's it's a two-part question. Was this done before construction started on the fire department or after? And is the fire department traffic going to be is that deemable as a hazardous thing if like if there's a fire and the fire engines happen? No, that that's not a measurable item, but we did do the traffic flow patterns um as um construction was happening. Okay. All right. We don't count cars. We use the average daily traffic count through um a resource that the um state gives us. So to be

170totally honest, that traffic flow pattern is estimating higher than what it would be if we sat there and physically counted cars. So we did use the higher number as far as traffic patterns go in support of, you know, the district and and for the parents. Okay. So we acknowledge there's a a problem here in terms of the inconsistent implementation of routes beneath one and a half miles. So the but the question is does the board want to follow its policy which is one and a half miles we do free transportation less than one and a half non-hazardous we don't or do we want to override it saying this could be a policy issue but I but I would need direction from the board on if the board wants to override the policy because right now

171we're not following I think we should take it to the parent teacher or the parent committee first and because I guess I don't know what it bring it up as an agenda item I'm there to see if any parents are willing like how they feel about it. And before we make a policy decision on it, we could also ask for an administrative recommendation like we could direct administration to produce a recommendation on how to handle the issue and where it should live as an option to if we don't know where to refer it. Yeah, I guess I would prefer because it would policy. I mean, I don't know what I would do. The policy is pretty clear. It just be it live as an agenda item for discussion and review specific to action in policy.

172But does the board but it's ultimately the board that needs to decide do we want to follow policy? Do we want to write I I wouldn't have any direction on what we're even trying to accomplish besides look at this. But would you want the committee's opinion on if we should follow the policy or rewrite the policy? No, I'm I definitely I most certainly would like the administration's opinion on what specifically we as a board should do so that way we can be consistent and have our policy reflect what our I would suggest we start with admin's recommendation then if we don't like it or it's different than policy kick it to the policy committee not start at policy committee and just to have even if we change the policy we're still going to have the

173issue of the funds being provided correct it's not going to so I guess I would like admin's recommendation and then decide. I think our recommendation which I think we've done it I feel like they've already given it though is just follow it that's what I'm saying so ad follow policy do we want to adhere to admin's recommendation or not that's that's not a policy committee issue right it's that's the board needs to decide do we want to follow our policy or not yeah I think that that's been our recommendation the last because I'd assume it would be frustrating for admin to keep coming to us say well we recommend this the board says no okay try this They tried this. It didn't work. Now we need to give some direction soon. I don't want to

174take the route away. So I like that's the problem. I guess I don't I don't want to do that. It's not up to me to take it away. So before that's the [laughter] problem. This is the whole issue. There was an accident there before. So I hear the recommendation. I don't like the recommendation. But we're not taking the route away from Alan. I'm going to use your neighbor as an example. Um Allen's Neighborhood was one of the other um locations that we did a hazard study for. Um that [clears throat] one didn't meet the qualifications either and so that one is kind of slipping under. I guess the radar as far as a route that has existed that we will then take away because it no longer qualifies. That one was more specific to um

175construction and sidewalks not being established and now being established. So again, infrastructure has changed, whatever the reasoning is. Um, so I think that the the biggest issue is if we present two and one we're like, "Hey, we're going to take yours away. It no longer makes sense." And the other one we're like, "Hey, we're going to keep it." I just there should be some I don't know how to do that equitably. We're not emotionally because I get where you're coming from. No. Right. And like ultimately what we should do then is we should host a vote if we're split on this issue. It' be the first time we've been split on something in a while, which is fine. So we should have a future agenda item that hosts what the recommendation is and then we'll

176take a vote on it. And uh I think that yes and then if the vote is to allow this route to continue it would go to the policy committee to come up with some mechanism to override because we would be going against what's currently written which is fine. The board has mechanism is the policy related to suspending policy. So that's we could suspend it or we could just revi revise it too. There's a board it would be something for the committee to investigate at that time. So future agenda item with this recommendation and we'll just host a vote. And one more question before we do that. How is the speed limit on board and for that type three calculation uh the speed and volume in the well look at it. Is it how's the speed

177limit calculated? If it's listed as 30 is it 30 or is there something that causes it to be written? Yeah. Yeah. It's so it's it's what is posted. Bordon is a little bit more difficult because it is um split where there's the um school section and then past the school section. Um so in an effort to estimate on behalf of the pair like I estimated for the higher point item. So if it's 25 gets less points because it's lower than 30, right? I would have used the 30 speed limit to present it to I do. If they didn't agree with that, they could have made a number. Gotcha. Because in the original memo that we got, it was listed as 30 miles per hour and in the one that we submitted to the state, it

178was listed as 20 miles per hour for for zero points. Am I reading that right? Yeah, we we did a walk through and we But what's it it's the original one too we did as park in Bordon. So like like a collective when we submitted it to the state they said we had to do an area of just Park Avenue and then just Bordon Avenue and then combine those two numbers together. So originally when we did like the rough estimate it was Park and Bordon kind of combined um [cough] like I said [clears throat] when we submitted it to the state I had to go in and do the Bordon section and the park section separately and then they became a combination hazard instead of a single hazard. Right. [clears throat] Yeah. No, I get

179that. I was I was talking about the specific type three crossing a roadway just on the form we submitted to the state it's listed as 20 miles per hour as the speed limit on board. Yeah, that when we went over there and that's what it was posted as. I think originally we looked offline um something from Mark Bushnull and then we like I said we physically went out there measured looked at posted signage um and got really specific per the state recommendation. Well, 20 would be when it's a school school zone. It's 25 into 20, but it would be when school's not in session increased. I think 25 is it even 30? No, it's based on um during school hours. It's got to be during route time like route hours. Yeah. So, in the morning

180it would be till 9:00 and it wouldn't start again. It'd be from 3 essentially to argue a route would be 4:30. That's why I was asking how it was calculated. I didn't know if it bordon became a school zone or if it just says 30 m per hour on board and then then you list it as 30 miles per hour. So good. Yeah, I think we're clear. Are we Yep. I got future agenda items for recommendation. We're going to take a vote. Yeah. Specific to that route or in general? I think in general. Yeah. All right. Is that Wait, hold. I was thinking specific to what do we vote on what in general? how we're going to handle routes under one and a half miles like which it's all we either allow all of them

181or none of them. Again, this is where like the recommendation will be clear. How do we manage our policy and routes under one and a half miles? What does the admin think we should what do the administrators think we should do? And then we'll vote yes or no in support of that and hopefully we can come up with a really good solution. And maybe the recommendation is we need to have more stakeholders involved. Maybe the recommendation is we think you should modify policy. Maybe the recommendation is we think you should follow policy and do X, Y, or Z. Nicole said the recommendation would be just to follow it. Right. Right. But we don't have a recommendation on the agenda right now. So what we would want is a future agenda item. Maybe it's that same

182recommendation. Um but essentially to officially so we can put this to bed because this is like the third time we've picked this up. So okay, we we talk about it. Yeah. So it'll be so forthcoming from administration. Anything else on on this? We are through the reports. Useful stuff. Very good. Thank you. Um, yes. Learning and teaching. Any updates? Not beyond what we've already talked about. There's a meeting on November 11th where we're going to take up a lot of the topics that we discussed. Um, but we haven't met since the last meeting, so I don't have any updates. Great. Business Service Committee, you have a recommendation rules. Did I miss? Oh my gosh, flipped over. I'm so sorry. Thank you. Uh we'll go to item 8.01, foyer reports. Um any comments on the foyers

183we received. All right. Yeah. Well, short ones still. Uh board goals progress update. Feel like we talked about board goals a lot and a lot of things are tying to board goals. I really like the K5 report connected a lot of pieces to board goals. So it'll be interesting to see there's some updates going online on the website with deliverable updates. So, good stuff there. Um, Nick's out, so that's kind of his forte. Superintendent search process update, I guess I should say. Anything else on board goals? You guys feel good? Oh, good. Okay. Superintendent search process update. Uh, we have many applicants. I talked to HYA. They shared um there they were extremely surprised by the number of applicants, overwhelming number of applicants. So, they're working diligently to try and narrow um the uh pool

184of candidates. And we will have our work cut out for us in what will be, as I understand it now, she's saying 8 to maybe 10 hours, maybe 12. I'm hoping we can keep it to eight hours on November 8th. Um so, early morning, late night, we're going to work hard. So, roll the sleeves up. Well, that's exactly what we'd hope to have, right? Yeah. I That's what Right. is a lot more. More is better than few. Will we get My concern is if you get everything you asked for, which is the full list. Yes. But will we get to review it before that meeting? Because it's it's October 28th. I I it would be unfortunate to have to read it like o I mean November. I'll follow up with them. If we could follow

185up, we'll actually get it because like reviewing it next weekend. Next week. Yeah. It's already next week. Reviewing it in advance. That's why I I was getting worried. That's why I text you. Like, do you happen to know when that second one is? Like, I'm not missing something. Yeah. So, I'll get I'll make sure. And I couldn't find the paper. Yes, please. Thank you. Yep. But anyway, it's at 9:00 a.m., correct? 8 a.m. Yeah. And we might need to make it earlier and later. I, like I said, I'll keep you guys posted, but we will see. Okay. Um, anything else on super search process? Okay. IASB conference planning um sent out that sheet uh to everybody to take a look at. I was hoping that we could um put our heads together on interest. Um

186in my mind, I thought, "Oh, we'll do that at a regular meeting and we can all just communicate." I didn't also in my mind visualize that would happen at 9:30 at night. So, um, I guess we'll just devote a few minutes to it. I don't see anything on here that says do not adopt. So, no, I'm sorry. I'm talking about the conference plan. Yeah. So, like what who who here of us is going to the conference? So, okay. Yeah. Yeah. But I'm not going to go. I don't think I'm going to go every day. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. I understand. But the Okay. So, everyone here is going to the conference. So, Then of those people going to the conference, if you got the planner schedule I sent, it was just a short 53

187page planner schedule. I'm sure you guys all Can I make a suggestion real quick? Yeah, please go for it. What if we all just send you what we're planning on going, Kelly aggregates it, sends it back to us, and if we need to make tweaks at the next meeting, we do that instead of like we don't have we won't be able to do it at the next meeting because the next meeting or she just sends us an email or whatever. Yeah, that was my that was my thought was how do we do that without it being an open meeting act? Well, there's no deliberation on it. It's just I'm going there. Like that's not deliberating board business. I think we'd be okay. But if we want to do it now, that's fine. I was just

188trying to No, I get what you're saying. Yeah. Like it'd be nice if it's just the problem is is like with the Google doc, like how do we not us all communally giving feedback on something that we all then see is the the issue if we don't do that in view of the public? we create a situation where we might be in violation of law. That was my concern with doing it that way is I don't want to do anything even remotely deliberative without it being in the public. Um give me a few minutes on this. Just a few minutes and we'll just buzz through the highlighted ones. Introduction to collective bargaining, dollars and decisions for school finance. Um I guess of the highlighted ones which was strategic planning that works. Um hiring for impact,

189setting your new superintendent up for success, communicating financials with clarity and confidence from headlines to high impact board leadership and hot topics in issuance of municipal bonds. Um, superintendent employment contracts, Goldilocks and three bears of financial statements. Um, what to know about board member communications, setting district goals, beyond compliance, exercising local control through policy. Uh, mastering the deal, the ultimate negotiation playbook. Uh, board and unions evolving district relations and bargaining. executive search process, property tax based preservation strategies. Those are the ones I was hoping we could all have some level of attendance at. Do any of those, and I highlighted them on the list I sent, seem like ones that we should eliminate from that list. I I think the executive search probably because we're already so far in like I agree. I think we

190should scrap the executive search. Okay, scrap. Anyone else? Keep gone through the list independently and highlighted a lot of seamless. I did not highlight that one, but I read it that much. I was trying to use the app that we always use and it's not let me sign it. Yeah, the apps that we can trouble work on that together. I got in. So, okay. Executive search gone. Anything else? Hot topics and issuance municipal bonds. That was more of like a personal one. So, I don't know if that's super relevant, but yeah, I didn't know how much that was. It didn't sound sounds interesting, but I don't know if it sounds super helpful. Okay. So, scratch it. Anyone else want to keep hot topics on issuance of municipal bonds? No. Just send me the list of

191what everyone else is going to do to that. Issuance of bonds. I'm sure I'm going to learn something at everyone that I go I always do learn something at everyone. Okay. Go to. Were there any on here that we didn't include or I signed up for a 9 a.m. one like way back then? Way back when. um for board scenarios for new board members. I don't know if I can unsign up for it or because I see a lot of these are at 9:00 a.m. that Friday. They made a lot of duplicates, too. So, and this is where I was thinking if there are no other ones that we want to exclude from this list, there will be many that you could individually fill in. But if we at least covered these and then whoever

192went to that took notes so that way we could then share those publicly, but then also with each other, we wouldn't miss anything. um is that to do a Friday one because I'll be in delegation all day Saturday. So the delegation is usually shorter than the allotted time like last year didn't take that long at all. Okay. Just so you might have some room to Okay. So any others on this list that are mustos? I like the list. You like the list and with the omissions the executive search and hot topics for municipal bonds. I felt bad including it, but so I'm going to take it off. But okay, you emailed that list, correct? I did email that list. Yep. With the highlights. Mhm. So, if nobody else has any issues with it with those

193omissions, I'll send out a list or I'll talk with Kelly on signing up for those and how we can maybe crosscoordinate so that way where there is overlap, we can hit everything. Um, and then where you independently want to see things fill in the gaps. And then what we can do is is aggregate app because that's how I always did it before. I would and we we had talked about doing this in the past and we never actually did but um if we could take notes and Yeah, I know Alex you did. Um I I was guilty too. I didn't I didn't take nearly enough. I don't mean to be like oh but I I recorded I recorded. Yeah, I know. I got your recording Beth. That was really good. Um, I wish there was

194a better way that we could take notes that was consistent that was lawful like you know do like AI special app for that now. Yeah, I know. It's like I wonder what options there are. But could we could I should I share my template for notes? Standing correct. We all agree that these are the topics that we collectively want to attend as the board. At least one of us. Yeah. Right. And then if anyone has any strong uh want to go to a specific one maybe maybe we speak up otherwise we just somebody just assigns it to a singular person at minimum and if more than one person wants to go and doesn't have something else even better. Yeah. Like the whole thing is is we individually can't go to nine of these. Yeah. But

195if we assigned out one of these to each of us and one person got two, then we could all go and do another five or six independently, but then we've covered these nine for sure. And that's the idea. And then the worst thing that happens is like we don't have five people showing up to one and we're all like in different spots in the room and you're like, "Oh, well, you know, even though sometimes it is helpful to have multiple people." I I went to the dollar and decisions one um last year. Was it any good? The presenter was stellar. I thought she was really great. Um, but it was high level financials and how to kind of look at the school report card and work through that. So maybe you scrape that one, too.

196Well, I I it depends on who goes, right? So I think if if somebody who has is it may I Yeah, it may not be as important. It's interesting, but I'm not sure it's high level. Yeah, if you've got that feedback, I'm gonna act. She was great, though. I mean if there's an opening and you want to No dollars any other feedback on this not again this isn't like super formal obvious I'm not you guys can spend your conference however you want I just think this would be useful so share we'll synchronize clocks at 8 a.m. Saturday. [clears throat] All right. So, then we'll move on to the next item on the agenda, which is the Spartan Senate update. It was a nice video prepared. Um, thought that was great. Really a a useful update.

197So, everyone, I'm sure, got a chance to watch it and enjoy it. So, stuff. Are you guys look like you're queuing something up? I wasn't we weren't planning on playing it, right? Okay. Great. Yeah, it was really good. Great to hear that the phone policy is benefiting everyone according to the students not just according to [laughter] so they were really I mean the student president anyway was like this was great. So yeah that was good to hear. All right the back side of that sheet that we picked up there all right now learning and teaching you already given your uh now I have a very long update like we talk okay BSC Um, I've got these recommendations. Yeah, these are directives to administration. So, they weren't going to be action items. So, if you want

198to read off your recommendations and then I think we can without a vote direct administration. Okay. So, [clears throat] um, we had a business services meeting two weeks ago. It was was a good productive meeting. We sat one of our new members, Jason Kavanaaugh. That was Jason Kavanagh, Josh Husman, Ketta Miachi, myself, Cole Stuckert, along with some we had some feedback from some other people in the audience. Um, so committee recommendations number one on the 5-year facilities maintenance projection. The committee recommends that the board direct administration to bring forward a draft multi-year facilities roadmap by January. That one will outline major maintenance needs, anticipated capital projects, and show how our facilities align with current and future enrollment. and that two will allow the board to better understand the size and timing of future investments relative

199to their urgency and potential impact. And that three will include a categorization of maintenance and capital expenditures by needed, wanted, and can afford. If you've got questions in between or you stop me or you can wait till the end. Two, proposed charter and calendar realignment. The committee recommends that the board one formally adopt the attached business services committee charter at its next meeting and two direct the policy committee to evaluate the budget calendar process from policy 410. I'll just give you some notes on that. Um we have the business services committee has been working to you know for clarify its purpose exactly in line with the directives that the board has given it and um you know sort of synthesizing that and feedback that we've got from admin along the way. We adopted an actual

200you know document that says hey here's what we do and how and then there's a proposed calendar in it so that future business services committee people have a document that they can reference and it's sort of like a playbook. So, uh, the chart is attached to this. You can read it and it has the draft calendar that has had feedback from assistant superintendent stuckard as well because there's a draft calendar in that it's somewhat in conflict in some ways with the budget calendar process from policy 410. Um, which is why uh we we recommend directing the policy committee to evaluate that budget calendar process. So sort of becoming redundant and align it with the Yeah. Align it or excise it depending on however best. Press doesn't even include a budget, right? The budget calendar is

201um local language in our Yeah. in policy. Yeah. So three district opportunities uh assessment. The committee recommends that the board direct administration to one develop a 5-year projection that includes enrollment, staffing trends, and associated costs and for the projection to be broken out for both general education and special education. And two, to direct administration that the projection be presented in such a way as to indicate whether in their opinion there may be opportunities or needs to adjust over time through retirements, attrition or growth. And three, direct administration that the projection be presented in such a way as to show how our current staffing and associated spending compares to past and best practice that actually touches on a bunch of stuff that we talked about tonight. Um, four, process for current debt service repayment schedule. The

202committee recommends that the board direct administration potentially with support from PMA to update the board on our current debt load, how soon new capacity might open up, and what types of projects that new and current capacity can support. Also related to some discussions that we had today. Five, um, we were presented the levy, the levy presentation. The committee recommends that the board approve the levy in line with assistant superintendent Stuckard's presentation. Um, and I think I asked her at the time, but I can ask again. You know, in your opinion, that levy is what's best for the district. Uh, and then some notes for you. Recommendations 1, three, and four should be viewed as a set. Together, they enable the board and community to see a holistic picture of the district's current finances, including present

203and future staffing, facilities, and capital needs. If given the above direction, the chair expects that the administration will apply their subject matter expertise to add any relevant information in context not expressly listed in the recommendations so that the board and community receive an accurate view of the district's status and the options available under different prioritization scenarios. Thank you for that recommendation. And just to restate, so a subcommittee uh can't give any formal direction to administration. Um they can give recommendations to the board as a whole and the board can act on those recommendations via resolution, a specific motion, adopting budget, uh amending policy or giving informal direction to administration uh in a non-binding vote. Um so I'm of the mindset that just by virtue of general consent um that we should uh see something like

204this. I'd like to see something like this. Curious to hear everyone else's opinion. Is there interest in seeing something like this in the future? Sure. Yes. Yeah. All right. I'll just we'll move on to the next item then. Uh policy committee update. Yes. Um press 120 is not has not been released yet. So, I I'm curious, Alan and Kelly, or I guess just Allan, um if you'd be available, um I guess I sent you that text, but might as well do it here. Um as well, just to confirm, would November 17th also work in addition to the 10th if we can't get Press 120 pushed out by the 10th or would we rather meet some other time? Is there a reason to do both or should we just do one? I would suggest we do

205both. Here's why. Okay. What we have on the 10th is probably already at two two and a half hours without press 120. Yeah. Um you me I like marathon meetings. Yeah. If if you'd rather do that, we can. But if we want I mean I would just think break it up, but we can do one long one. If we want to do one long one, maybe we could move it up a little. Or we I I mean I'm I don't really care. Just an idea. We could do move it to the 17th if it doesn't come out by the 10th as well. But I guess I'm just curious if the 17th is open for you. That would at least be a majority of the committee. Or if we need to find another date. But Kelly,

206do you know what day it's coming out? No, they have not released that. The past two years it's been on October 30th. Okay. um with the um accompanying um video that they do when they go over like all the Yeah, that that's not till November 12th this year though. I saw the webinar scheduled for the 12th. So that made me think maybe it'll be later, but do they usually release that earlier? So last year it was on November 7th. Okay. So if we're a week behind there, we might not. It is um a tight fit. So would you And then you're you're gone for that week too, right? I am. So yeah, I think we should probably move it. Would you prefer if we move it, Kelly? I would suggest. I'm fine. Okay. So would

207the 17th work or the 24th? I'd prefer the 17th because we could take action on the 24th. I mean on the 25th. If we have the meeting on the 24th, it would be a tight turn around for Kelly to come back to the board on the 25th with action from that meeting. So if if you can do the 17th, Alan, that's Can someone else be here on the 17th? Kelly's gone that week before. Well, we just like I guess we could technically No, we have to do it. Do you Is there a scenario where you could do the press update at the next policy cycle in three months? No. Um to have the um in order to do the administrative procedures project, you're going to need to have everything adopted by February. Yeah. So, all

208the 120 updates need to be adopted by February. Could we put it as a like a double header on November 25th, right before the 7:00 board meeting, like do a 5:30? No. No, no. It's going to be We have way too much to cover. Is there any way where it can be like a written memo and then you guys No, just No. Good. It's going to be deliberation. Yes. Um because of what's on the agenda already, there's certainly need to be deliberation. Oh, I'm just saying just for press alone. Oh, yeah. There there's there there'll still be deliberation. You can't do it after the 17th. I mean, what what's the because uh what's the issue with the 17th? I guess I have to fly to Texas to see So, she won't be able to push

209and I have to fly to Texas to see my mother from the 13th to the 17th. What if I just did it? And this is just for the policy committee meeting. So I'm usually missing a lot of me. It's very hard to understand the policy if you're not at the meeting and hear it discussed. Like I understood everything like it was confusing to me. You have the agenda in advance though. Have you made it far enough before you left or is it not possible to have it made before you leave? Yeah, it just needs to be um the work that has to be done to compile. I don't right now we have 36 policies um in the 120 update which is a big one. Um I'm not sure exactly how substantiate the the changes are.

210I can do my best to try to get that out. Why can't we push this into December? So we could do it in December because then we could have a December 1 reading, right? February 2nd reading potentially and still be good for the AP project. Yeah, I like to be with that one because it's hard to follow that much without is that what that logistically so moving it to December logistically is feasible. I guess there's a question. There was a question. Yes. And you said not the 24th. December 24th. No. No. Oh. Um November 24th. Um, you have a meeting then you have a board meeting on the 25th. I guess we could do it then and just not take action on the 25th. We just push it to because I don't see how I

211defer to um Alan, do you have a preference sometime in December, November 24th? I would probably prefer the first week in December over the week of the 24th. December 1st then. Or or would we want would a different day like I could do [sighs] I could do the 26th of November? No. And just Alex just for my clarific like they haven't released the press update yet. We're up against the gun with the administrative procedures project for February. The if they do release press by November what is it? 8th I think is the No, fourth. November 4th. When do you leave? I'm looking this Saturday. No, the 8th. Okay. So, no, we we would need it by at least what the sixth, fifth, fourth in order for it to be um with the correct um it

212has to be the sixth. I would release it six. When do you need the stuff? Like, could you do it same day? Well, Kelly does a lot of that preparation work. [snorts] That's what I'm saying. Like, can you do that all same day? If they release it on October 30th, then I mean, I'll do my best. I guess what I'm That was my whole goal was When's the latest that this press 120 could be released to just leave the schedule? Alex, why don't we plan on the 10th? Let's see when 120 comes out. We can we can discuss on the 10th. If if 120 comes out too late for the 10th, we can discuss meeting maybe early December to go through 120. Yeah, that's a good idea. That way if it if [clears throat] it

213maybe it'll surprise us little Christmas present be out earlier. But I'm saying even if it were to come out tomorrow, you'd be okay. Like I I thought we're already too late. And that's what I'm trying to figure out. She's saying this time even if it comes next week. Okay. Yeah. So we maybe we just have a a group of meetings coming up that require that preparation. You got to email the press people just be like where is this up there? Yeah. Well, I I was learning and teaching special regular meeting. That's so we'll try to find a contingency date. If the 10th doesn't work on the 10th see where the dust settles on 120 when it when it comes out. If we can do it on the 10th that's great. It's easier for me to

214do it all in one night personally. Okay, that's good to know. From family perspective, but if we have to do it in two, then I would look to say maybe early December, get it in the December meeting for approval in January ahead of the February deadline. No, I I guess I want to get this straight. I'm still not We want for sure to meet on the 10th, not cancel the 10th, but maybe or maybe not look at 12th on the 10th. Is that what you're saying? Yes, I think so. Yes. On the 10th of December or November? November November 10th for your meeting. We will meet regardless on November 10th. We're gonna make no changes right now. We're going to just hang tight as it is and we're going to we're going to wait and

215see and then in the next week or so as the situation develops. Okay. Okay. Sounds good. Somebody's working overtime at press. I'm sure they're going to come through for us. All right. So, the U parent teacher advisory Christian is not here for this. There is a parent teacher advisory meeting in December. Um, right. Uh, it is 9th. 9th. Yeah. Oh, nth. And Christian uh emailed Meg and Nick and they're working and hopefully going to get together on an agenda. Um, and I know Beth and Heather that's in your wheelhouse because we wrapped behavioral interventions together. So now we're just one big happy family. Okay. Uh, so that agenda setting process um is going to look a little different. Um, so forthcoming info and then but meg as we talked about behavioral intervention as you guys

216know it is still operating just totally independently. It's just it own thing. So no changes from when we had last discussed at the last PAC meeting. No deviations all the same. Anything else on parent teacher advisory and behavioral intervention? No, I reached out to uh Sycamore Education Foundation but I haven't heard back. I'm trying to get to one of their meetings. Gotcha. Yeah. Yeah. Todd Man's your guy. That's who you're looking. Oh, maybe you can email me later along with that list. I had trouble finding the list just now for the uh the meetings that you wanted us to attend at the conference. You got it. I'll get you. Thank you. All right. So, on to old business. uh discussion and action on the proposed Illinois Association of School Boards resolution for consideration at the

2172025 IASB delegate assembly. Um there was a resolutions committee report that you guys all should have been able to see. We are among Am I right in understanding this? Are we the only district? We're the only one that Yeah. We're the only one who sent in a resolution. So we are going to get the eyes and ears of every single school district in the state reviewing our resolution, our rationale, and the resolutions committee is suggesting a dot. Great job, Heather. Um, we have this whole book just for us. Just sycamore right here. Big old binder. 853 school districts. So, as we sit three hours into this meeting, you can see this is hard work right here. Um, do you want to There's nothing to tell us because there's normally like 30 of these. So there's

218one ours. Um so I think we should adopt it. Yeah, I think we should. Um it's the school bus safety funding. So, it basically just adds an extension to the um law that was recently passed that all districts need to have a um they need to be in com they need to be in compliance um by July of 2031. Um, on or after July 2031, everyone needs to be in compliance with threepoint seat belt systems on new or leased school buses. Um, this creates a waiver that extends um a compliance deadline until July 1st of 2034 for districts with a fall enrollment of under 2,000 students or um equalized assessed valuation per pupil um below the statewide medium. And it also authorizes qualifying districts to use transportation fund bonds um proceeds or revolving lease agreements

219for the local cost share without counting against the district's statutory debt limit. and it directs the IL department, the Illinois Department of Transportation to approve alternative research-based occupant protection technologies that may offer equal or greater safety at a lower cost, giving districts um flexibility to comply. I want to sing Heather's praises here. She proposed this, made this, and with Christian presented it. Um so this is I want to like frame this for you. This is excellent work, Heather. a little help along the way. Um but yeah, this was um you know, after talking with Lacy and you know, Steve about this um we I realized that this is not in our budget to have it done by 2031. So um you know, we I suggested we propose something that gives us a little bit of

220leeway. So [clears throat] I did get an email from Sorry. That's okay. I said I did get an email from the senator who proposed the state bill from Jeff. Yeah, a little bit of interesting uh resistance. So, we will see what happens when they lobby. Uh but anyway, [snorts] we're we're making friends everywhere. [laughter] Um okay, any other comments? I move that Heather Tomlinson be granted the authority to vote on the ISB resolutions at the 2025 delegate assembly solely in accordance with the consensus of the Sycamore CUSD 427 school board on October 28, 2025. Second. Any discussion? I is one board member support this. Do we I guess we need to get consensus then we can vote probably right Michael we don't even need consent. I mean, no, the motion is with the consensus of

221the board. So, she needs to vote in consensus of what I think we all support our own resolution, right? Yep. Okay. That that's what I'm All right. Uh, all in favor? I. Any opposed? Christian put a lot of work into this, too. So, he on August's meeting when he wasn't here, he was on a video call pitching it to their resolutions committee. He had to fill in. they needed somebody. So, he stepped up and did that. So, kudos to Christian. Um, so discussion and action on proposed Illinois Association of School Boards constitutional amendments for consideration at the 2025 ISB delegate assembly amending the constitution. They need twothirds majority to do that. Um, I am going to make a motion. Well, I guess I will solicit a motion in good form. uh that delegate Heather Tomlinson

222be granted the authority to vote at the 2025 IASB delegate assembly solely in accordance with the consensus of the Sycamore CUSD427 board on October 28th, 2025 on the proposed IASB constitutional amendments. So move seconded. Moved and second. Any discussion on the constitutional amendments? I'm fine with all of them. I'm good. Great. Yeah, I had an opportunity to go to the divisional meeting. Kishwaki divisional meeting where they did a breakdown on all the constitutional changes. There was just a lot of updating from it. I mean it's just an old document. So um some good stuff. So I also support it. Any other discussion? All right. All in favor? I. Any opposed? All right. Eyes have it. Next item on the agenda, approval of the budget calendars charter. Um soliciting a motion to approve the business services

223committee charter as presented. So moved. Seconded. Moved and seconded. Any discussion? Looks really good. Nice work. Colleagues, thank you. Nicole helped as well. Oh, thank you, Nicole. I I guess procedurally this budget calendar we'll just use year over year over year. It is a recommended calendar for for forever like it's a recurring recommended. Okay. Yes. All right. Uh all in favor? Any opposed? All right. Item 9.04 approval of board review policy updates for second reading. Uh, is there a motion to approve updates to policies 2150, 2240, 412, 420, and 7:30? So moved, second. Moved and seconded. Any discussion? This requires a roll call, I believe, right? Yep. It's a second reading. So, we've talked about this now twice. What was the change? It was on policy 7:30 to as practical. as soon as practical um

224with uh notifying the board about um changes to attendance center. So that's the only is just adding the word practical. As soon as practical as soon as Okay, it looks looks good. Thanks. Any other discussion? Kelly, would you call the role? Evans, yes. Regny, I. Tomlinson, I. Sant, yes. Veto, yes. Motion carried. New business. Approval of the 2025 preliminary tax levy resolution. Um the recommended action to authorize publication of the 2025 preliminary tax levy resolution is presented. Um I'll just do a quick preamble. We received this presentation. It is publicly available. Um and it was presented to the uh business services committee and it carries with it the recommendation of the business services committee that we approve this tenative levy. This will then go on to public display where we'll then vote to approve it

225after hosting um viewing of it again come. Uh is there a motion? So moved. Second. Moved and seconded. Any discussion? Seeing no discussion, I'll restate the motion to authorize publication of the 2025 preliminary tax levy resolution as presented. Kelly, would you call the role? Sant, yes. Evans, yes. Grados, yes. Gregory, yes. Tom Lson, yes. Devito, yes. Motion carried. Uh, item 10.02, approval of the 2025 2026 student handbook updates. Um the uh recommended action to approve the 2025 2026 student handbook updates as presented. Um I spoke with uh Nick on this uh in regard to a memo that was shared about updating in alignment with the Illinois Association of School Principles regarding some uh updates to the school handbook. Uh it's our hope that um updates can go before the parent teacher advisory committee um before

226they go before the board. But given the board's change to scheduling, no fault other than just board adjustment, we're going to or I'm proposing that we approve these changes uh without it going to the parent teacher advisory committee first. um in speaking uh with Christian who's not here in attendance um you know he understands the situation and the timing as uh and thinks that this is our best move as well. So uh at this point I'm soliciting a motion to approve the 2025 2026 student handbook updates as presented. So moved. Second move and seconded. Any discussion? So just for clarification in the future it will go to PTA. Yes. In the future, we want the PTAC to review it and our policy outlines that. And the only reason it didn't this time is because of

227our delays from the way the summer scheduling worked out, us kind of figuring out our board calendar. Nothing to do with uh principles or or Yeah. Uh great. Okay. Um all in favor? I. Any opposed? Abstain. All right. The eyes have it. Is there a motion to uh that the board of education adjourn to executive session for the considerations of consideration of matters related to 5 ILCS 120/2C1 26811. So moved. Seconded. Moved and seconded. Any discussion? Seeing no discussion, Kelly, would you call the role? Gregory, I. Tomson, I carried. I wrote it down. So we had 194 people respond to our survey out of 278 113 have no other insurance 56 already take cash and live and only 24 people could take cash that don't when the second question 24 what would it take for

228you to the average was 8,300 so we had 15 that were less than that and 12 that were more than that you know, that's the average. Um, but it's only 24 people. And I know that this I know that this number is at least 100 of people that take our cash and live. And so We're good. Okay. It's 10:32. [snorts] We're now in open session. Uh the item on the agenda, approval of the sale of 245 West Exchange Street. Um is there a motion that the board of education approve the sale of 245 West Exchange Street for the amount of $151,000? So moved. Second. Moved and seconded. Any discussion? Yeah, I do have a little bit of discussion and correct me if I'm wrong because I might be misremembering the series of events, but this

229began at one point the board had gotten an assessment before long time ago that the value of the building was quite high and then we posted it for sale and we got some bids back that were quite low and this was a couple months ago and [clears throat] uh we thought that it would be best for the community to try to get them a little bit more money or at least take another shot because the bids came in so far off from what was originally thought to be worth. And so then we undertook uh the journey of collecting some more information. We got a broker's price opinion basically on the building. Learned that our original estimations was was a little off and maybe this thing was worth somewhere. What was the range? The broker I

230wanted to say between 150 150 and 250 or so 150 and 200. Yeah. And so then we had we were armed with that information. We gone through a couple different processes to try to fulfill our fiduciary responsibility and finally a couple months later we've got 151,000 on the table as opposed to a couple months ago it was and it cost some money to hold this building and uh I think we did the best we possibly could and got as much information as we could and I feel good about this. Does that say does that sum it up? And the building's going to a good purpose, too, on top of it. I feel like that's going to be good for the community because I know there was concern from some of that near I'm not sure

231those are that'll be things that'll come out. Oh, I thought they were going to close session. That was not nothing. It's all good. So, we're good. Any other disc I get where you're coming from. Any other discussion? No. Okay. Kelly, would you call the role? Evans? Yes. Tomlinson? Yes. Sans? Yes. Motion carried. Uh, okay. During the board meeting on October 28th, 2025, the Sycamore School District approved the sale of its former administration center located at 245 West Exchange Street for $151,000, a $60,000 increase from the previously rejected high bid made to the board in May of 2025. This marks a significant milestone in the district's ongoing facility planning efforts. The district also completed the sale of its district warehouse located at 520 Maple Street earlier this year for $468,000. These sales follow the board of

232education's May 28th, 2024 decision to purchase the former Nyore gas call center at 1947 Bethany Road in Sycamore, which currently serves as the district administration center. The central school building at 245 West Exchange Street has long been a cornerstone of the Sycamore community. Constructed in 1926, it served as a school building until the 1980s before being repurposed for administrative use. For nearly nearly a century, it has supported generations of students, educators, and district operations. The district is optimistic that the building's next chapter will continue to serve the Sycamore community in a meaningful way, honoring its past while creating new opportunities. Uh, this meeting stands adjourned.