001you [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] good evening welcome to the august 24th valley view school board meeting i would ask everyone rise and join us in the pledge of allegiance led by member baderis i pledge allegiance 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 remember pero how about the board mission statement our mission is to empower all learners to be college career and life ready and to develop grow and achieve as productive citizens thank you let's kind of the agenda yes sir we'd like to ask that you approve the agenda as presented motion second all those papers say aye both same sign nice habit treasures report mr gazafi if you would please you may
002recall at our last meeting we did pay the bill uh bills approve the bill list and so tonight we do not have a formal bill list but we do have the usual summary of treasury reports beginning with uh treasurer's reports for the month of july including the balance sheet summary revenue expenditures we do have interim obligation payments and debt service payments uh for the month of july totaling six million nine hundred eighty nine thousand eight hundred and fifty one dollars and sixty one cents for your approval so moved second motion and seconded is there any discussion if not roll call vote please member campbell yes member gilboa yes member peril yes remember but duress yes secretary sakura yes vice president zach yes president quigley yes uh 5.2 is a summary of investments some 5.3 is
003the property taxes received 5.4 is the state funding update and 5.5 is the all schools trust account activity uh just one quick comment on the state funding update uh you will see there that we were about two and a half million dollars owed from the state for categorical payments primarily special education and transportation happy to report that those funds have been received and so we are left with i think an 18 just about a 19 000 aou from the state uh to end or to start fiscal year 21 so i did notice that thanks for the update that's uh i mean for us starting this zero basically at zero is a really good uh it's a good thing considering our concerns with finances and taxes and so on and so forth and revenues to run
004the district so thank you gary uh consent agenda items super nerd kinder yes consent agenda items we're seeking approval on three items 6.1 board meeting minutes from august 6 6.2 executive session meeting minutes from august 6 2020 and 6.3 resolution number 2101 authorizing valley view to approve intervention in certain tax appeal cases motion second motion and seconded sharing discussion seeing none hearing then roll call vote please remember gilbo yes member peril yes member beduros yes member campbell secretary sakura yes vice president dak yes president quigley yes uh board liaison reports point 7.0 give me an all from my right hand know from my left um i do um last tuesday as our tuesday meetings we had for the um returning back to school we will be meeting every tuesday from now through november i think
005we're skipping this week because the school actually has started and we're needed elsewhere so again i congratulate those people who've worked diligently day and night to get this ready to go and and open up for the students on wednesday thank you you audience participation is anybody who wished to address the board this evening seeing non-hearing none moving down the agenda miss kinder action report item number nine yes action report 9.1 is in accordance with the illinois association of school boards with school code and our legal guidance in the authorization and the destruction of executive session tapes upon review of our legal counsel we are presenting resolution number 2102 the semi-annual review of executive session minutes to determine need for continued confidential treatment and authorization for destruction of executive session tapes more than 18 months old
006again this is standard protocol in accordance with the school quote thank you is your emotion second motion seconded any discussion sitting seeing non-hearing down roll call vote please member apparel yes member but duress member campbell yes member gilboa no secretary sakura yes vice president zach yes president quigley yes miss white no action report at this time thank you uh action number 11 mr gazafi tentative annual budget it is that time of year where we find ourselves presenting you with the first draft of our 2021 budget overall budget spending plan just over 305 million dollars that's about a 4.3 million dollar decrease from last year the operating the operating budget 262 million dollars that's about a 3.47 increase over last year's actuals it has been fun trying to assemble this budget with all the moving pieces
007on the revenue side 2.3 percent cpi is baked in which should net about three and a half million dollars of additional property tax revenue corporate personal property replacement tax the estimate from the department of revenue is a 17.4 percent decrease over last year we're probably i think the eighth or largest ninth largest recipient of cpprt in the state so that's going to net us about 8.6 million or 1.8 million less this year which is a pretty pretty sizable decrease the ebf or evidence-based funding tier funding from the state uh will be flat funded meaning no increase each of the last three years we've been receiving about a 1.5 to 1.6 million dollar increase year over year um this is actually a small victory i i kind of alluded to that in the write-up in that
008in the days of uh of the downturn in 08-09 we received pro-rated funding uh which really hurt those districts that receive a large amount of state funding such as valley view uh hit us the hardest and so uh with with this flat funding and the hold harmless provision that's in the new formula uh i would take no no increase uh year over year uh any day uh and so uh obviously there's there is some uh concern will the state have the money to pay schools uh as as is budgeted uh will they need well they need some sort of bailout well they need some sort of borrowing and so that's all tbd but right now this is what we have in front of us so that's that's what's budgeted uh same with the mandated categoricals
009primarily transportation and special education no change in the funding levels or amounts and as i mentioned earlier all the funds have been received for fy 20 so there is no carryover on the federal in the federal realm uh cares grant 2.7 million dollars we received notice back in fy20 we've got 1.9 million of that booked in fy 21. uh the biggest difference in that was when we bought the the tech devices that the board approved for our pre-k uh kindergarten and first graders and so the balance of that funding is booked into this budget the budget is balanced but we're using our fund balances to uh to make up for the shortage in revenue due to those several factors i mentioned the reduction in cpprt uh we do anticipate some sort of reduction in property
010taxes collected we won't know that until november we've kind of mentioned that here at the dios in past meetings and no new dollars from the state so those three three items in the revenue side of the equation uh uh is really what's causing us to have to dig into our reserves in order to uh to balance our budget uh that being said the year-end balance is estimated to be 119 days of reserve which gives us about four months of operating cushion um good good amount to uh to have it at already we had talked several months ago about the potential for issuing taws or tax anticipation warrants i'm happy to say i don't think we're going to need to do that i think it was nice to have available but again without a need i
011just don't see the value in doing so even with the the low interest rates and so again you know not a bad place for us to land in terms of the funding local sources make up 73 and a half percent of our revenue the state pitches in an additional 21 percent and the federal is at five and a half percent within the budget we've got a sizable amount of cost related to coven 19 as you might imagine nutrition services purchased some kiosks some scanners and supplies for the grab and go portion of meal service when we were predicated on having a hybrid model ppe in in large quantities thermometers hand sanitizer spray bottles toweling signage air filters for the for the hvac units uh plexiglas dividers as needed we budgeted some day porters for our
012buildings if and when we return uh those though that's built in so that we've got somebody that's wiping down all the high-touch surfaces uh throughout the day uh additional garbage cans and liners uh electrostatic sprayers in order to be able to disinfect uh classrooms and our our bus fleet attendance scanners zoom subscriptions additional licensing for various tech tech tech related items all of those things have been have been baked into the budget it is fair to say that the budget a large part of the budget is built upon the idea that we were going to be a normal course of operation those costs will be trimmed down significantly as we bring you the final draft in september something like diesel fuel for our buses you know we have a full annual allocation budgeted for that
013and so that's something that will be trimmed back but something that will be increased most likely will be unemployment costs um and so we're waiting for our final statement our latest statement rather to see what that what that looks like in order to make a educated guess on what what should be budgeted in terms of unemployment costs we've got several exhibits in the packet for you again the most important is that exhibit a gives you our starting balance along with the anticipated revenues subtract out the expenses leaving us with the estimated ending balance for june 30 of 21 looking at about a 6.7 million dollar deficit i think again that's a worst case scenario i think when i bring this back to you in september that number will be less than what we're seeing here
014now and so our reserves of 119 days estimated should actually tick up several days as we as we kind of fine-tune the budget moving forward uh we will put the budget on display for 30 days uh beginning tomorrow on our website for anybody who chooses to uh review it uh we'll incorporate any changes and modifications necessary to better reflect those changes coming out of springfield and any additional covert related expenses and outline those for you at the september 28 board meeting i do have a recommendation to make and that's to approve the 2021 tentative budget to be put on display and make available for public inspection for at least 30 days a public hearing on the budget will take place at the september 28th board meeting at which time the final adoption will be recommended
015second motion and seconded we have motion second is there no discussion i just have a comment um on the increase in the ppe uh some people are aware this some are not uh will county and kankakee county are considered region seven region seven just went on an additional restrictions today sometime later this afternoon there's several things in here particularly towards bars and restaurants but also meeting social gatherings are limited to the lesser of 25 guests or 25 percent of overall room capacity no party buses not that we have those but in an organized group recreational activities no changes sports guidance and effective is august 15th remains in effect outdoor activities not included in the above exposure settings continue per current dceo advice i'm sure that idph and isb will also have some comments following uh
016some of that but yeah we did make some purchases and we we have some or we will have some expenses related to that if we get reopened in a regular classroom setting or a partial classroom setting and uh i i will i want to point out vic especially and others up here but vic was tireless working in in making comments and trying to find out information on reopening and uh and the equipment and the things necessary uh mike lopez is not here this evening but also gary in the phone calls that went into that uh again we've we we impress and the the i want you know don't ever leave here thinking that safety is not first and foremost it's just that simple because we know we have multi-generational families living in in homes we
017don't want kids taking something home that they may pass along to their grandparents or their parents or a sibling that may have some other health issues uh just not the way we want to see things happen so there will be some costs in there hopefully they won't be so substantial that we can't bear them but we know that we're going to do we're not going to get the cheapest we're going to get the best for what we fit our needs and i think that needs to be explained and understood so thank you to all the people who have reigned heard over that and kept a diligent eye so we have a motion and we have a sacrament there's no further comments a roll call vote would be in order to approve a tentative budget for
018display for 30 days and beyond for approval correct pending hearing member beaders remember campbell yes member gilboa yes member peril yes secretary secora yes vice president zach yes president quigley national report 11.2 is the recommendation to approve the transportation modular building purchase at uh on the rhs campus back in 2017 the board approved the rental of a modular building for use by the transportation department to support the increase in buses and related drivers this has resulted primarily from the expansion of the early childhood center and insufficient parking at the current transportation center uh the building allows the drivers a place to punch in and out have lunch access restrooms and eliminates the need to shuttle them to and from the main transportation center as was happening prior to the the sighting of the of the
019modular this agreement is being finalized in conjunction with the rhs baseball field complex um with the village of romeoville originally we had a three-year operating lease which was which has reached its expiration we have the option of continuing the rental lease arrangement or to purchase the unit outright we discussed this with the finance committee and came to the conclusion that we are recommending a direct purchase of the modular for lump sum of 48 thousand dollars a unit is in very good shape it's been functional for three years we've also invested the necessary stairs ramps and other furnishings along with underground utilities low voltage and landscaping so at this time we are recommending approval of the purchase of the modular building from innovative modular solutions incorporated for a one-time purchase price of 48 000 subject to
020final attorney approval of the contract motion so moved motion and seconded any discussion we'll call vote please member apparel yes remember gilboa yes remember campbell yes remember badurus secretary sakura yes vice president's act yes president quickly yes final action report this evening is a recommendation to approve a 10-year life safety survey proposal we brought this to you at the july 20th board meeting we had a proposal that we received from white and company one of the district's architects of record as required by school code the district is required to survey each of its buildings every 10 years and we are required to complete this report prior to december of 2020. we've got 2.37 million square feet of school space throughout our our communities in our district and at the time we had received a proposal
021from white and company at 8.2 cents per square foot uh at a total cost of 195 thousand dollars a question was asked about you know what if we bid it and at the time i had told the board that we felt like white had uh a pretty good understanding of our buildings seeing that they built several of them um been in and out of all of our buildings throughout the years and just was i think there was a question about how do we know we're getting a fair shake uh so we went to tria architecture who's also done a lot of work in the in the district uh over the last several years uh been very satisfied with their work uh certainly more than capable uh and they provided us a proposal at eight cents
022a square foot so uh just a little bit less but hey six thousand dollars is six thousand dollars uh and so uh upon talking with the principals there uh we feel that uh we'd like to give them the business and so uh they are an architect of record for the district so the recommendation is to approve a 10-year life safety survey proposal from tria architecture in the amount of 189 752.64 motion sum up some of the emotions there second second motion second is there any discussion um i just want to say thanks gary for shopping around and i'm glad you found a good a better deal motion second no further discussion we'll cover please remember gilboa yes member peril yes member beduros remember campbell yes secretary sequoia yes vice president jack yes president quigley yes
023uh miss nash consolidation action report 12.1 yes sir consolidated action report 12.1 is our consolidation report for certified and classified personnel this evening we're seeking your approval on 45 items for certified pers personnel 35 items for classified personnel five items for classified administrative personnel and five items for certified administrative personnel is there a motion still moved motion second motion seconded any discussion seeing none hearing none roll call vote please remember campbell yeah member beduros member apparel yes member gilboa yes secretary zecora yes vice president zach yes president quigley miss nash 12.2 board policies yes sir in your packet we have four board policies that we are seeking your approval on this evening they were presented to you for information at the july 20th 2020 board meeting for review the chart below reflects titles in the
024last amended dates and as you can see several of them have not been updated in several years and since that time there have been several recent developments in state case law federal case law as well as updates to equal employment opportunity commission guidance under title vii of the civil rights act as well as updates to the fair labor standards act which guide some of these policies so this evening we're seeking your approval on the four policies that are in front of you is there a motion second for a second motion and second any discussion um i have a few comments about that um with these policies i know that it is one of the board's duties to make policy for the school district and um i know that we have to update and be compliant
025with the law and um and i think elizabeth does a great job at doing that for us elizabeth thank you for doing that but i also think that there needs to be more input from the board and i know steve and i have talked and uh deb and i have talked and a few others have talked about getting together and having a committee so that there are more board members that have input to do to have a say so and to have some and well i guess just some input on the policies so i'm looking forward to that in the future um so thank you for considering that and that would be a good thing we have a motion we have a second there's no further comment roll call vote would be in order remember
026beduros member campbell yes member gilboa no member apparel yes secretary secora yes vice president zach yes present quickly yes information report return together 365 plan update you should say 365 you for the update just for it yeah we definitely can add that to you okay this is um going to be a kind of a standard practice from today and going forward for all board meetings in the upcoming future as you know things change daily um sometimes hourly so a lot of things are very fluid and that's going to require regular communication to the board which is occurring but also to the community as well i have some slides that will be projected on the screen here some of this will look familiar if you've seen our plan presentations before in terms of our reopening goals
027those goals remain the same and number one goal is safe and secure learning and working conditions for our staff and students ensure that we are responsive to changing conditions flexibly meet learning and support needs for every learner high quality instruction and support in an innovative and responsive fashion and a lived commitment to our core belief of equity in meeting the diverse needs of our students and families and then reallocating or allocating resources to those priority areas so tonight i want to prevent provide you with an update on how our planning efforts are going and provide an update on the continued preparation for a transition to on-site learning giving all the variables and considerations as i shared previously and the board approved the plan presented on august 6 we are beginning in a period of remote
028learning for all learners with the site set on on-site learning with a remote learning option so of course we're planning to welcome all of our students back virtually on wednesday august 26 for grades k-12 and our little learners a little bit later than that on september 2nd and our staff our teachers support personnel leaders every individual support operations throughout the district has been working very diligently for this virtual reopening and have been completing today day three of our institute day today one more day to go before our kids come back so as i said we begin our virtual kickoff to the school year on august 26 in early childhood on september 2nd and as we are preparing for that we have provided a survey sent out to families for social emotional and other needs and
029so our staff is working very hard at connecting and responding to those needs that have been identified we are working on communication from the building level and the teacher level to have student and family access to schedules and provide and ensuring that students have everything they need to begin their virtual their remote learning on wednesday the 26th we are providing supports for readiness for online access ensuring that all of our students have access to their appropriate platform and we're continuing the process and communication for pickup of materials as well as technology which i'll refer to in a moment at the same time we've continuing our partnerships with many of our community partners one of those areas is providing e-learning or remote learning supervision or child care for students in grades pre-k through five we continue
030to update our community e-learning supervision resources that are posted on our website we also have a list of additional resources many many community resources that we can connect our families with we encourage our families to visit the website to access that information or to reach out and the district or the building all of our staff will be happy to support we're continuing to share this information on social media as well our staff work expectations have been established and communicated our staff have not stopped working they're working around the clock to ensure that we are ready in every fashion to support our students beginning on wednesday we have three of four institute days in the books we have another institute day tomorrow and our staff teachers support personnel leaders everyone has been engaged in a great
031deal of learning collaboration training around student social emotional learning health and safety protocols virtual engagement instruction instructional technology curriculum and service delivery remote learning planning and collaboration and adult wellness this is a whole lot and even just listening to me you know say that list out loud should give you an indication of just how much there is to take on and is being put on the plates of our staff as they are making this monumental shift to be coming remote instructors and connecting and instructing our students so they have been working and putting in so much effort and i hope our families see that when they see the new and improved structured remote learning opportunities and supports that are being provided to our students of course we know it won't be perfect we've experienced some
032bumps in the road this morning we had a outside service interruption to zoom that was a nationwide occurrence and so these things are going to be a part of the way of life since we are so reliant on technology but they took it in stride they adapted they adjusted and they will continue to connect and as soon as we were able to we're back up and running so you know i just encourage everyone to continue to be patient i see a lot of parents you know having questions and figuring this out as they're working to support their own families and learners at home we know this is a great deal to take on for staff students and families and so we just continue to ask for your patience and partnership it truly is something that
033none of us have ever done before but we are doing our absolute best to to make it happen our technology team is no different they have not stopped working since the spring ensuring that our students have working devices providing devices for new students families who students who do not have devices they've answered more than 4 000 calls from families to help desk since the beginning of august we have a student device survey out that any family needing support internet device support is able to fill out and get responses we continue to work through those families that have made appointments for these needs and we will continue to offer our curbside for repair or support and then we are also working with transportation to provide a service to drop off any repaired devices for broken student
034devices at home so essentially what you see is another example of our staff going above and beyond to ensure that any barrier that's present for a family or a learner we're going to find a way to meet that challenge and ensure the students have what they need we're they're providing support for our staff same type of situation to ensure our staff is are fully supported in everything that they need to switch to this virtual world of meeting our students need and adapting to the tech demands families can make an appointment to pick up a device get a replacement i just wanted to highlight this here this information is all available on our website and again we will do everything we can to continue to be responsive to needs that exist nutrition service another group of
035our staff who continue to adapt and respond to needs there's a survey an order form that was made available for families to pre-order meals for delivery we're encouraging pre-order for delivery curbside is also available meals will be pre-packaged charged to the student's meal account for free and reduced lunch those meals will be free and a student id is required so we we encourage our families to fill out the order form the pre-order form and that's again located on our website and also linked into the slides that are available online to ensure that our kids have nutritious meals and hopefully help the families in every way possible with the convenience and the support of having nutrition provided for our students our buildings have been working our building teams are building principals assistant principals leaders have been
036working non-stop on all of the details for coordination and communication to make this happen i know that there are still questions a lot of questions but we are being responsive and reach out to the buildings reach out to the district and we will connect you with the answers that you need there's a great deal of information that's being communicated from the buildings we know it's a lot to take in but you can also find this um on social media accounts as well as online and we will continue these updates as well there's a community-led effort by some of our parents right now with a private facebook group that any vvsd parent can join it's the vvsd parent network for remote learning there's a lot of questions being asked and answered by parents by staff and
037it's really great to see because everyone is truly navigating this but we're helping each other through it because it's certainly a lot of information so as we are planning for what comes next of course our focus our primary focus right now is on supporting solid implementation of improved and structured remote learning model and then also preparing for on-site transition and of revised hybrid plan we know many are anxious to hit that first benchmark and determine if we can bring our learners back on site or determine if we can transition learners on earlier than our planned benchmark so we are moving through these stages and right now we are of of course i'll be in stage one with remote learning for all i wanted to spend a few moments this evening on the health and safety
038updates i think this is very important for us to realize just how fluid this situation is we are completing or have completed individuals from every building have completed contact tracing course i'm just completing mine now and so this is a new duty placed upon school administrators school nurses who are working diligently to not only provide the services they accustomed to providing but to now become very well versed in managing public health matter so we are becoming contact tracers and we are implementing our protocols for reporting cleaning initiating contact tracing it's an all in effect we have had many situations arise where we are implementing these protocols so we're getting a great deal of practice and then we continue to adapt based on the most recent illinois department of public health guidance as well as continuing
039to work with the will county health department on our roles in communication and coordination it's a very um it's very much an evolving partnership because we have far more contact than ever before because it's just a standard way now that we we must work through this situation we have our initial delivery of personal protective equipment gloves mass thermometers gowns modular plexi to each building complete of course we'll continue to monitor that stock as president quigley spoke to previously and so all these things listed on this slide are things that ensuring that our physical space is ready for when we begin to transition signage floor markings furniture physical space increased air circulation we do have a lot of staff in buildings now as well i wanted to point out with one of the recent involvements is
040the illinois department of public health county level metric guidance for schools so what this is this is in terms guidance for schools on adaptive pause which essentially means utilizing periods of remote learning as a strategy to limit contact or to decrease transmission when there are positive cases present so i have a link on this slide if anyone is you know interested in reading the entire document and i just have a screenshot of the chart present but what this essentially outlines is metric guidance for local health departments working with school districts based on these identified metrics that we are now monitoring regularly and they're available on the illinois department of public health website we are looking at alert level based on the defined metrics the weekly county case rate the weekly overall county case number increase
041the weekly county youth case number increase which was not previously published but they will be providing that to us and as well as the weekly test positivity so we've we've spoken about metrics before and in addition to our internal metrics which i'm going to speak about very soon these are metrics defined by the illinois department of public health that are guiding our decision making in terms of are we at a moderate level of community transmission are we at a minimal level or we're in a substantial level of community transition so i'm going to speak to that next in the slide so i mention all of this so that you understand that we are going to work on our transition to bring our students back on site but of course a lead indicator is the the
042metrics from the county level from a health perspective so despite the best plans until our region and our county is in a place where we can safely bring students back to school and manage the transmission in a local sense we have to be very cognizant of the county level metrics as well as our region level metrics there is currently as president quigley alluded to earlier resurgence of positive covet 19 cases in illinois as well as in our will county and in our region seven which is will county and kankakee county this chart that i have posted is available on the illinois department of public health website and this is updated regularly this um average is 8.3 percent for our region as of august 20th and it's actually the same today on the 21st and so
043what this means and if you were aware or caught this on the news this afternoon three consecutive days greater than eight percent of positivity rate means that additional restrictions mitigation restrictions have been put into place and at this time of course that means a great deal for restaurants and group gatherings events things of that nature and at this time it's just a point of awareness for us obviously because we are in a remote learning setting but we will continue to follow this very closely um as well as the other metrics that are are present there um this is a troubling trend if this trend um continues of course we will find tighter mitigation restrictions put in place this could potentially have implications for schools of course so that will be something that we will be
044watching very closely as we are preparing to make recommendations for safely bringing students on site we also were issued additional guidance from the illinois department of public health on exclusion guidance and this is um a great deal of information to take in so if you're listening at home you're listening here this evening and this seems like a lot it is and we continue to understand this make sense of this work with our partners i mentioned this point here because this is very very important because exclusion guidance has been issued which essentially tells us when we would be either excluding an individual for a positive covid case so that isolation or for contact with a coveted positive individual or for symptoms of covid like symptoms and so in each of these instances any individual who has
045symptoms a fever 100.4 or higher headache shortness of breath sore throat the whole list of symptoms would be required to be excluded likewise any sibling of that individual and so at the same time we're monitoring positive cases and isolation we all are also our monitoring symptoms and this would be important to keep in mind because as we're working through this we're experiencing currently with staff and soon you know when students return that there will be much fluidity between the transition between on-site learning or teaching and remote learning and teaching due to the public health effort to reduce transmission and so this is going to be something that we continue to work through um and we'll be fully prepared for but it's also important that we as a community realize that as great of a challenge
046as keeping our students home for learning now is this is going to be something that even when we return to on-site learning or hybrid learning that this will be a very real reality if children demonstrate symptoms are ill or have a family member who is coveted positive or has symptoms and is being tested at home and so this is certainly something that we are continuing to plan for in the sense of our instruction and remote and how we could most effectively transition and support that need because this is going to be a very real challenge that all schools are working working through right now and additionally in district we are monitoring additional metrics to support decision making related to on-site transitions so like i said we're monitoring the number of staff and students with positive
047covid identification i'll be very transparent and say that we've had multiple in the recent days many of those have been staff who had not been on site in some time so thankfully they're isolated at home safe taking care of themselves they had not had contact with others we've also had cases of staff on site who had tested covet positive and so that required us to implement our protocols conduct contact tracing notification for anyone who had direct contact but what this tells us and it's very instructive of the more individuals we bring back on site the greater that effort is and the more important it is that we are very solid on our protocols we have staff members at home right now in isolation for hovid positive cases we also have staff members who are quarantined
048because of direct contact with individuals with covet positive cases outside of the school so this is a very fluid thing and this will of course be a very key decision making point when determining if we can safely bring students back on site and if we can meet the logistical demand for staffing support on site we are also monitoring our current and anticipated staff fmla family medical leave act and americans with disabilities act request requiring that would have an impact on staffing as well and guest teacher is going to be a critical support and resource in meeting some of these needs that arise so that is a great deal of information one that i will be continuing to update you on but when we are making future decisions about the possibility of coming back on site
049these are all going to be key points in our decision making and as we continue to plan not only for some supporting what's going to kick off on wednesday august 26th we are also continuing to plan in the background for those eventual transitions our transportation department is continuing to be extremely responsive not only for current needs for delivery meal distribution device distribution as well as routes that are going to occur because of our possible transitions that are up and coming they are staying on top of it with new cleaning procedures and every other thing imaginable to be responsive to the man the demands of the district in the in the forefront we are also continuing our conversations about activities and athletics and we will of course be consideration for any future activity or athletics and
050that could take place on site or virtual we do have limited high school ihsa sports occurring presently and middle school iesa sports will not be held however we are having great consideration for what we could eventually offer in the future or what we could modify for a virtual offering because we know that our kids are losing a lot and if we can possibly offer something that is another connection um something that they love connecting with their coach or their sponsor their their classmates their teammates it would be something that we of course would offer for our students if we are able to so a great deal of planning is continuing to occur both for our immediate next step and in the background for the um for planning for what comes next so i'm happy to
051answer any questions or senior administration can support questions as well anybody have any questions yeah i do um you said that we do have some people that have culvert right now and i know one of the slides it was a little small to read so maybe for the people at home and for us could you just tell us what the protocol is for the ones that have covid um for the ones that were near the ones that have coveted and were they near them for 15 minutes or longer within six feet like what is what what are we doing with those people yes so the district absolutely has those health and safety protocols in place in accordance with the cdc guidance centers for disease control and the illinois department of public health guidance as well
052so if we are notified of an individual who has a covet positive case that's when we implement contact tracing and what contact tracing essentially means is that we first isolate that individual they're excluded from the workplace and then we contact any individual that may have had contact with our staff members and direct contact meaning within six feet for more than 15 minutes cumulatively not at one sitting but throughout the course of a day so thankfully we have strong protocols in place for distancing and wearing mass and our staff are being diligent in implementing those so a lot of times there aren't instances there's not a lot of direct contacts that we'll have to contact but we do notify them if there were other people that may have had contact but we are unsure we do
053send a notification there as well and then the health department does the contact tracing for anything outside of school so for many of the cases that we've been notified of the staff had not been on site during the time frame when they would have been contagious or it would have been infectious so in that instance there was no contact tracing initiated they had not been on site they had not had any contact yet were made aware of it and because then they're not able to come on site and then if there's instances where they did have direct contact those individuals were notified directly and then they too then are put in a period of quarantine for 14 days until they are cleared to return to work and of course that is a very fluid situation
054as well that the healthcare providers give guidance and direction on because then if they do become symptomatic or they do have a positive test themselves they then would have a period of isolation until they were then deemed that they could return to work so even if they don't have symptoms and they you're saying these people did have that contact for 15 minutes or or longer but if they don't have symptoms they are still gone for 14 days yes and that is the case for any individual not just in schools right now my i know of a personal acquaintance at the moment that both adults in the home who have jobs in different industries are quarantined at home for 14 days because their son had a positive um covid case so they are required to quarantine
055and get that clearance before they are retire required are allowed to come back to the workplace so we you know so if a staff member has a coveted positive individual in their household they're not allowed to come to work right now they will be working from home um but they are not allowed to come to work right now and that's in accordance with the the guidance so on the covert front it was announced earlier this was actually late last week now that the university of illinois has received preliminary federal approval for a saliva-based rapid test they're ramping up to be able to provide as many as 10 000 tests a day which will be very beneficial because if you've talked to pretty much anybody you've read something about this sometimes people test positive then they
056go in for an advanced test and it turns out to be a false positive and so on and so forth so trying to get ahead of that uh in you know letting medical science and science research uh help out in this situation and from where they were to where they are in this period of time hopefully that test will take and it will be uh help in reducing some of these unknowns that we're currently facing so uh but until that time we are where we are so uh rach thank you for the reputation anybody else have any further questions thank you uh moving down the agenda uh initial plan for equity i'm not sure is that rachel is that lita it's both of us yeah okay i'll get us started um so this is an
057information report um to provide um the board and the community with an update on planning that we are doing and continue to do in our work and living our core value of equity um just to start out big picture the district mission and vision are centered around equity in the sense of meeting the needs empowering all learners to be college career and life ready to develop grow and achieve as productive citizens our district vision is also centered around that in terms of providing every student what they need in order to meet this high level of growth and success our vision is we will hold high expectations provide collaborative supports to ensure academic social and emotional success for all students regardless of race gender income geography disability or native language our core value in valley view
058school district one of our core values is equity and also partnership and continuous improvement so what this update is centered around is in the work of equity and how we will continue to renew our commitment to living this core value and to ensure that what the work that we're doing in value in valley view reflects our words and our actions on a consistent basis in may i sent out a district message and a community message centered around our commitment to providing equitable opportunities and supports for every learner including our children of color and our children from diverse backgrounds and i'm very proud of a lot of the work that we have built as a foundation of committing to this work and making great strides and challenging beliefs that run counter to our core beliefs in
059valley view and also fixing inequities in the system that were not designed to support every child particularly minority children and children from poverty so while we've taken the the charge of closing some of these gaps head-on for our learners we know that we have a long way to go we know that we've made initial efforts with restorative justice practices long before it was required we know that we've taken some first steps in educating ourselves on trauma-informed practices and topics of social justice we know that we've taken foundational efforts to use voice from our community and all of our stakeholders to continue to have the conversation about how we can have an inclusive and equitable learning experience and we've continued to engage in efforts to diversify our workforce and create career path and opportunities for our
060students in partnership with our community partners and so while we are proud of our progress we realize we have a long way to go to truly impact systemic change and lasting change in valley view and we realize we will do this in partnership with our larger community um and so assistant superintendent white and i have um just wanted to share a few things with you this evening about our re recommitting to this work and taking the next step in engaging voice and taking planning to the next level of how we will continue to grow our efforts in this area thank you um i really would like to echo and just being here a short while i've seen some of the great things that are occurring here in our district around restorative practice trauma informed instruction
061and the equity work i've had lots of conversations with principals and parents and they continue to reach out you know asking what are our steps for equity you know what are we doing about black lives matter and that's why we wanted to bring this to you and um it is going to be a joint effort effort by the school district definitely going to form a steering committee whereby we have parents we hear the voice of students some of our business partners and we're looking to have a call to committee sometime beginning in september okay and with this committee our goals would surround creating a framework where we can focus on equity one where we can establish common language we could establish goals strategies action steps so that we have equity and action continuously in our
062district and we would like to begin this work again in september as i stated we would spend the months of october through february researching hearing from our students hearing from our staff and our community members and hoping that some themes would emerge we would also examine data we have to identify what are the inequities in our in our school district and identify how we can intervene and interfere and disrupt the equities that we encounter with the research that we do and hopefully by february we can begin crafting a framework that framework that i talked about we can have a set of conditions where we can address the inequities that are identified some other things that may emerge may who knows what the themes will be but i know the one issue is we've talked about
063curriculum and the social justice course and so hopefully we will have that conversation when we hear the voices of students and parents to see if their child their diverse background is reflected in our curriculum and if not again how do we mitigate that and what are we going to do about it so in february begin crafting that framework and by may hopefully have a presentation to the board of education with the work of that committee so those are some of our next steps for the steering committee that we plan to form and hopefully we'll accomplish much and of course this will be aligned with our district strategic plan and those goals as well so i definitely wanted to reiterate that any questions um i do have a couple questions sure um within what you guys
064were telling us about it says that we have made strides and challenging beliefs that run counter to our core beliefs so i was just wondering what are some things that run counter to our core beliefs here at valley view so initially and what i was referring to is kind of where we've been previously a very basic example in a place that we started quite some time ago was the disproportionate representation of our minority students in upper level coursework um the disproportionate representation of our minority students in remedial courses which were since eliminated and then also having conversations about how students were growing and achieving and not being afraid to have conversations about how subgroups were were doing how well were we meeting the needs of all learners and not just that but how well were
065we meeting the needs of specific groups of learners so some initial efforts that we took were eliminating subpar courses um providing greater opportunity and access and supports to higher level courses like advanced placement coursework honors courses i'm sure if you've been around valley view for a long time you would hear dr mitchum use the example of when you used to walk into an honors course you could tell that it was an honors course by how few minority children were in the seats that's not the case in valley view anymore um and so that has certainly shifted there's there's definitely many many examples our staff continues to dig into that to see how well we are meeting the needs of our kids and subgroups of kids if you recall previous school improvement efforts you recall us
066having targets set for specific groups of learners students with ieps students from a low income background students of a minority background so definitely not being afraid to challenge anything that would be seen as a barrier from meeting every child's needs okay um thank you also we talk about trauma-informed practices so if you could explain that to me as well as your definition of equitable and maybe help the parents understand what restorative justice is these are three of your things that you want to accomplish i'll go ahead and speak to that so when we talk about trauma-informed practices it's really about understanding that our students come to us in a variety of ways and teachers having that understanding as their approach could you just speak into the microphone a little more thank you is that better
067so i was saying that students come to us in a variety of ways and teachers understanding those ways in which they come so some students may encounter trauma at home there's an asus score that a child could have and asus stands for adverse childhood educational experiences that they may have depending on if they come from a one parent or two parent home that's an ace of score that a child could have depending on you know whether they've been homeless employed parents have been employed etc it's another score and so therefore children are coming from a variety of homes and teachers have to understand how to approach those children how to have conversations with them how to understand from where they've come and so the district has for example uh superintendent kinder and i today were
068taking a look at some trauma-informed training that the teachers took a day or two ago on friday and again how to work with students have these conversations and understand the homes and backgrounds from where they come so those are examples of trauma-informed practices that our teachers have been exposed to when it comes to restorative practices restorative practices deal with a variety of things as well some things could be having circle time in the morning again when students come in the classroom teacher taking the opportunity to form a community again to find out how the student is for the day set the tone for the day instead of taking a leap at times if an infraction occurs with discipline again understanding the source having those conversations with the child to repair the harm having the child
069understand what the child did and how the child can repair it to continue moving on with those days those with his or her day those are all restorative based practices that are currently occurring and come in some of our classrooms in which teachers are being trained consistently and again we just had a trauma yesterday and also on friday with our teachers so those are examples thank you any other questions yeah there was one more um your definition of equity well that's one of the things that we plan to define with our committee we have to again have common language we did an exercise about a week or so ago with our administrators whereby the definition of equity at each school site could be different and that's one thing that we plan to define with this
070equity steering committee i have a personal definition or it's about eliminating barriers and ensuring that we have access and supports for all of our students but that's my own personal definition of equity it's important for us as valley view to create that definition of equity for us that's one thing which is going to drive the work thank you thank you you're welcome uh moving down the agenda legal services report nothing i have nothing to report thank you aft report no report thank you valley view council no report thank you valerie office personnel council i'll report any old business before the board this evening any new business before the board this evening any questions from the public on actions we have taken this evening please come forward stage name greetings i'm glenn irvin i was here
071last speaking the 20th of july and my two main things at that time were focused on obviously the hot topic of the day which is the response to coronavirus and how the teaching vehicle is going to be done and then the other one is strategic planning and i actually plan to really come back at the next meeting with a little bit more detail but uh i was surprised to see this plan on initial plan on equity it uh it's a bit concerning and here's here's my thought on it and just the the data that i want to review because you know i've been looking at this i told you guys i was going to study uh at some point i'll take ms kinder up on the point to get more information that you guys have
072but i've been waiting because you guys have been really focused on heavy lifting for the last few weeks sort of respect for that i didn't think it was the time to actually go into it but here's the key thing it's great to see this plan for equity you guys say you've got to live commitment to equity and i hear ms white say that there's no standardized comment of what is equity the school board is asking what is equity in a body that has a live commitment to it i see a plan that's going to take eight to nine months to develop ms white i just ask is it possible to do something sooner i realize there's specific parts of research that you need to do but anybody within an hour of going and looking at
073the publicly available data can see significant issues with diversity equity and inclusion beyond aspects of the social components now those are important i agree but as a body that's trying to educate all of our human beings in a fair way and have results you've got 33 chronic absenteeism at bolding brook high school what if we look at that from a demographics perspective what is that going to look like across these different parties or bodies of uh people the demographics you also speak about or you have the data about four-year graduation rate almost 80 percent of your student body at bolingbrook high school is black and hispanic and you've got 84 percent is that equity you've got standardized testing and when you look at this you look at your major demographics black hispanic economically disadvantaged a
074full 75 to of those are approaching so what i like to ask is when you go and you put together a plan and this is the same thing that i spoke about last time on the strategic plan that's going to be in development i imagine soon have some real metrics some real teeth to this something that's measurable i read your guys note tonight and it's it's great there's a lot of things that have happened but i think you guys have to be honest and say here's some of the problems that we really have put it out there for people to see because not everybody's going in and looking at this data and these reports and you guys aren't sharing it get it out there sir with all due respect that is part of the process
075so tonight's report was just to let the board know that that work is going to be initiated with a stakeholder group that has representatives parents students community staff students the equity audit and re and digging into the data again within a measurable way as well as in a qualitative way and listening to voice as well as looking to the research is part of this process so tonight that that wasn't to the purpose the purpose was to communicate that this work was happening so we have and we will continue and that information will be made public thank you and like i said i didn't plan to come up but i i really had to because let's look at what this body has done in terms of a strategic plan again there's no measurable metrics that are
076put out there but we're underperforming in a lot of places who's going to put it out there and say what are we going to close the gap with the gentleman went through the budget tonight i didn't hear anything talking about we're going to take funds and try to close some major gaps if you want true equity you've gotta stand up and say we've got problems and i'm not saying these are catastrophic i'm not saying they're insurmountable but if you're not talking about it and creating plans to it i think it's difficult to actually make true progress thank you i can say for myself and maybe others want to chime in we have never shied away from any confronting any problems that we've had in this district we we have since i've been on this board
077we've had all kinds of issues uh getting our challenged learners up to a level getting our economic challenged learners up to a level doing the things that we can do with what we're had they're handed you know jim mitchum sat here a couple several years ago and said we do what we can with what we have but now we have to do it better and if you go back to where we were to where we are we are making strides forward and i think we have closed some tremendous gaps i i'm not sure of all the numbers that you cited i thought our graduation rates were a little higher at bhs they they are and sir i encourage you to go on board docs and look back at previous academic progress updates you can actually
078see the quantitative progress you can see the difference you can see that we have two exemplary schools 16 commendable schools one school that has a target for um individualized education students who have an iep um that has a specific area of improvement noted for that you can also see our growth percentile and that's holds true across demographics you can see that we are students of almost nearly every background demographic breakdown are growing more in valley view than they are growing compared to this their peers across the state and you can see that holds true for performance on sat there are very few school districts or schools that are getting the results that we are getting with students from minority or low income background and that's the simple fact and that's based on data now with
079that said we have identified many areas for opportunity and i will be the first to say good bad or ugly let's talk about it let's address it and let's improve it that's one of our core values in continually improving okay we're doing great how can we do better principle of one of our exemplary schools is sitting in the audience right now she is fierce about school improvement continuous improvement okay we're good how can we do better how can we improve her staff lives that just like in every other building across the district so i offered you my card last meeting and said come let's talk i can walk you through this this is the second time you visited a board meeting and so of course there's a great deal of information i could share with
080you outside of this setting or refer you to the publicly available documents or walk through the illinois school report card website with you to show you this breakdown that said the strategic planning process the school improvement process does include measurable quantitative goals we review them and that will be part of our ongoing process so my offer stands to come and have a conversation to sit down and discuss this because to say that it's not occurring or that we don't or that we're not getting results is simply not true great if you just let me chime back on a couple points here uh one i didn't say that results are not occurring i spoke to the results that are specifically when i quoted the 83.9 percent i said 84 graduation rate you look at the 2018
081illinois report card the long-form version that's that's not accurate it's it's publicly available data so i'm not able to say if it's accurate or not but i have to take it at face value but it's 84 if it's not accurate then it should be corrected i think it's 86 or 88 88 88 at a total score but what i was talking about in the scope or as you guys say with an equity lens with an equity lens looking at the demographics i talked about almost 80 percent of your body is that 83.9 graduation is that correct or not i didn't hear the last part of your question 83.9 in the 2018 available data for hispanic and black students which is almost 80 percent of the school of the student body the four-year graduation rate is
08283.9 percent i don't have the broken down data to the percentage in front of me at this moment but that is something that that team as well is aware of we know that there are opportunities identified we we look at that comparison in terms of hitting that benchmark and what those gaps are there are gaps there are definitely um gaps that exist the the one point that um i'd like to make though is that the data right here i can show it to you can i approach it i found it within the course of this meeting so just to address the other point that you had said uh look i'm not attacking the plan but what i'm asking for is can you do it faster i think the data most of the data is out
083there it's available i don't think we need to spend five or six months studying and researching completely on a lot of the data that's already compiled and i'm excited to see what's going on i said that i want to be a part of this i have your card from the 20th of july like i said i did not engage with you guys because you've been extremely busy and i understand that so i didn't even mean to come up tonight but after i saw that report it's concerning it just is concerning when you look at the the published data so all i can look at is and you you mentioned illinois report card that's exactly where i've been i've been looking at it i've been mining the data the data doesn't look great i'm going to
084take the data i'm going to plot it up then we can look at it specifically and then if some of it's wrong it's wrong but there's a lot of data that's not wrong and in the lens of equity what are we going to do as a community to close these gaps i mean these are people that we're sending out you got people that aren't even meeting high percentage of people that aren't even meeting math proficiency it's dangerous i'd like to say that i've conducted equity audits before and it does take time i applaud you in having that information and knowing it and i as well will know it but remember that we're going to have multiple or many constituents there and they may not know it and understand it and it's going to take some
085time to go through that and explain it and work through and hear quantity quantitative data that also hear qualitative stories and it takes a while to gather that and to have those themes emerge and so it's not something that can be done quickly we want to do it well and you know i said the research will start happening in october and us reviewing the data and talking about it and we will definitely plan simultaneously so please keep that in mind okay thank you and then just one last point miss kendall you had mentioned that you know there's quantitative data for the strategic plan so i downloaded the long form strategic plan on the website and there's nothing quantitative there so i know that you said that there's things that haven't been released so i will
086follow up prior to the next meeting and i hope to continue the discussion i appreciate the time ms white again i would like to challenge you i've done plans i've done studies worldwide and yes it does take time but when it's important you got to find the way right uh on the 20th mr quigley and i we talked about you got to bring better than your a-game we're bringing better than the a-game for the coronavirus let's do it for the long haul graduation rates math proficiency ela absenteeism you know really basic table stakes thank you all very much thank you thank you no one else who wants to address the board will move down the agenda any announcements by the board from my right yes i like to just wish everybody that's coming back to
087school the children the parents the staff something the new norm what is it going to be none of us really know but we're going to look at it we're going to attack it and we'll do our best to make sure everybody's safe and gets an education and hopefully we'll be back in school in a decent amount of time so welcome back starting on wednesday for my love i just wanted to um mention i know superintendent kinder had talked about the facebook page that a parent had started it's the vvsd parent network for remote learning and mithra zoucha is a very involved parent in the community and she started that page and she has the help of jenny park another parent and they have done a phenomenal job on that facebook page if you haven't joined
088it i encourage you to do so people are asking questions they're getting solid answers there's not gossip on there there's not oh i think there's solid answers there's good suggestions a lot of people are asking how are you setting up your kids workstation or things like that very very positive and informative facebook page so please thank you to um mithra for starting that up it was a fantastic idea um i have something i i just need to ask i know we had another visitor come talk at i think it was the last meeting stephanie ryan asked about wilco plans and i haven't heard or seen anything about that do we know anything about any wilco plans yet hi good evening my name is adam herder i'm the executive director for our middle and high schools
089and member gilboa we've have been working both at the district curriculum level but also the school administration at both high schools to set up a schedule for students to be able to take programming from wilco and so what is being finalized now is just the exact scheduling for how that will work in conjunction with their online learning schedule at school but i know that parents have been receiving information and we can bring a more specific update um at the next meeting or get that to you sooner obviously too so are they online learning totally as well that that was what was being discussed where we're at is trying to see what opportunities there could possibly be for in-person learning since it's a smaller you know campus a number of students but at this time i
090think it i would say it's undetermined thank you adam i also want to say to all the students out there enjoy your learning experience and i hope you have a great year and especially now at the start anyone else um yeah i just echo what others have said it's going to be uh it's gonna be interesting to say at least but uh hopefully the kids will adapt to it the teachers will adapt to it administrators families um and hopefully it's not for a prolonged period of time uh we're not gonna be perfect in this but we're going to try real hard and i think that's what we can do and once we have been ground down we're going to continue to try beyond that and i think everybody that's up here and in the buildings
091and at homes people are trying to do the best they can with this situation trust me i'm sure people's patients are a little frazzled kids are the same way i hope the children and you know young young children middle-aged kids and the higher you know the high school kids all get into some kind of a routine that's very productive and useful and then hopefully when these buildings get back open they hit the ground running and you'll probably not find very many kids for the next couple years who'll say i don't really want to go to class i think that's going to change i think that'll change dramatically not not unlike our generation where we i don't want to go to school you know so um but uh i do want to thank everybody for the
092efforts behind the scenes it's like the duck you know that's paddling like crazy underneath but the water's calm on top but i know that there's a lot of paddling going on underneath so um that's my comments any announcements uh by the administration no announcements but administration announcements by the public uh motion to adjourn would be the order some of motion and second all those types say aye opposed same sign you guys have it have a great and safe evening thank you