001We expect that also come in at four cents total levy for this year is expected to be 10 million nine hundred ten million nine hundred sixty two pair to ten million one hundred thousand to the bulk of that increase is in The majority of our other levies have stayed flat and promised to keep the rain flat in the clerk's office since the evening. However, comments regarding specific are not allowed during open session. Generally, these types of comments should come in addition. Please refrain from using derogatory comments about staff members. That puts down the list of who signed in for five minutes. Come to the podium or you can just stand up and receive whatever you want. Brooke Luet. I am here today to address misinformation each year regarding how the State Library Bill affects our
002district and its folks at Lodge today, so I was planning on spending time with them this evening, eating Miguel's or Joe's takeout and catching up. But what I learned this afternoon is that this topic is on the board agenda, my claim is G. Libraries are all about providing accurate and timely information, and that is what I'm here to do. First, the information being circulated states, quote, the state of Illinois is the first state in the nation to pass a library policy for all school districts that requires them to carry all books and not to ban any books. This is both impossible and false. There is no way that a school library would carry every book currently in print. And individual libraries are able to select the books they purchase for their own collections. The American
003Library Association, who the writer claims will control her library collection, has no way to govern book purchases. That is like saying that the National Education Association is going to choose the curriculum the University of Worcester County will purchase. Instead, the bill states that it will no longer fund libraries who choose to ban books, which is what the writer is ultimately saying. The letter writer then asks who chooses school library books. I am a person who selects books for the high school library, and the way I do so has not changed at all with the passage of the state. I was hired to not only run the library, but also make purchasing decisions, and I subsequently took library science coursework on top of my English degree and teaching certificate to learn how to responsibly do this.
004I choose books for the high school library based on the following criteria. Whether the book supports our school curriculum, whether it has received positive professional reviews and awards, and if a book was originally written for adults, I check to see if the reviews mention that it's for teenagers. I choose books according to these factors, as well as my knowledge of our community, where I have lived for 20 years. A lot of care goes into the book selection process, and I take pride in choosing books I know our students will connect with, from FFA handbooks on raising animals, to books on career options in the healthcare field, which many of our students pursue, to books on family members dealing with addiction or supporting a friend with a mental health issue. The financial repercussions of rejecting state
005funds are also far greater than what the writer estimated at $1,000 per year through using the state library grant. The writer also wishes to remove X to the online e-book and audio book collection for all high school students. Currently in registration, each high school parent is provided with information about an audio book program called Boundless, including that it features content for all ages, child to adult, and that the school library is not able to control which books are on. The parent then indicates in registration whether or not they want their student to have it. Parents absolutely have the right to move access for their own student at any time, and if you do, However, many of our students rely on Boundless to access e-books year-round, including with schools, which can help students with reading. There
006are currently 68,206 books in the Boundless collection, and approximately 115 new books are added each week. Last year, when there were only 64,000 titles, the value of those books was $2,532,970. It would take quite a tax increase for the district to cover this cost, which is currently paid for by the state. Parents should and do have many rights to consider about their children's education. They can choose to enroll their children in a private school or homeschool them. They can choose to opt out of having their children watch art in the baseballs. They can monitor what their kids look at on their electronic devices and how they are driving. And they can certainly tell their children what they do or don't want them to read or check out from the library. No one is trying to
007challenge these writers. I encourage all parents to talk with their kids about what they're reading. Unfortunately, the writer and those who want the district to turn down state funding are interested in controlling what other people say. Every student at my school deserves to have books which they connect to and which represent them. If the school board chooses to turn down state funding so that they can ban books, our high school library will no longer be safe. A father of two kids here in Mercer County High School. And I just have a question. Is it censorship? Is it censorship when you're trying to protect a young, vulnerable child? Is it censorship when the things they're trying to put into my kids' lives is considered obscene and has trigger warnings? This isn't political. This is a matter
008of truth. The truth is that this stuff is garbage. The truth is that they're trying to poison our kids' minds with this agenda. It's full of material that depicts rape as acceptable. It is full of racist overtones, such as critical race theory. It has sexual coercion overtones. It's full of transgenderism. It's full of things that come straight from the devil himself. I recently learned that a freshman was able to check out a book called Never Kiss Your Roommate. It talks about white privilege. It makes all kinds of trigger warnings associated with it. All kinds of sexual suggestions. I would read you a few verses from this book, but I'm not going to. Children in this room. This comes down to one thing, the difference between right and wrong. Is the $1,000 that the school will
009lose worth one child's mind, let alone hundreds? Recent Grasmussen poll taken last year, 1,000 parents on this topic of obscenity in the library. 69% of the 1,000 people were against this stuff being in the library. 79% of them were against it being in the library. 89% unacceptable, and will always be unacceptable. Their Chromebooks have software on them such as Go, which doesn't allow them to look up or go to inappropriate sites. You can't just give a kid free reign to do whatever. There has to be barriers, boundaries, and protection. Without those things, we all know it's a recipe for disaster. That's why we are adults. Because we know better. It is our job as parents and as adults, teachers, etc. to protect children's minds and what they're able to see and not see. Would you
010watch pornography or read pornography with your children? I ask you that. Of course not. And why is that? So why should we allow other children to have access to that material with no oversight? My name is Mike. I am a father of three kids in the Mercer County School District. I am here once again to voice my opposition to another law passed in the state of Illinois that forced down upon our schools and kids. This is pure government overreach. Again, this is the same state government that said, trust the science, get your vaccine, and pass your kids out of that. Library media policy and voting on time is designed to allow ALA and the American Library Association The authority to decide what is included and excluded in our school libraries. This new policy will eliminate
011local control of our school library and hand it over to a group of people who do not know or frankly care about our kids. We want to promote and push material that most people will be embarrassed to be found reading. We are not saying we want to ban books as Governor Perkins says, but we want to make sure our kids are not able to access online books that contain explicit or sexually graphic images that are depending on their age. It is hard enough with technology these days to make sure kids are not viewing or reading things they shouldn't. We, as parents, have a right to know what our kids are learning and reading, and to say no if we must. You cannot walk into a store and buy a Playboy magazine unless you're 18. Would
012it be appropriate to have an online edition available to high school students? How about a line from the book called All Boys Are Blue by George M. Johnson that reads, I remember the condoms blue, a favorite flavor like cotton candy. I put some lube on and got him a lot of seeds. You can imagine where the book goes from there. This is one of the books that the LA is promoting, inviting to keep on library shelves. Is this appropriate for 15-year-olds, 16-year-olds? What if a high schooler has a younger sibling that's in junior high? Is that appropriate? Where does it end? What if you say enough is enough? We came here to show our disapproval for the disgusting sex ed bill last year. We came here and said to follow your school board's adopted mask
013plan. But you signed it with the state school fund. There's a possibility of the state controlling our schools just to eliminate the school board altogether. We keep saying maybe this will this probably won't happen here that we're safe in our own little corner of Illinois. Those books mentioned in all the YouTube videos will never be in our schools. Our kids will never learn that. Guess what? The fight has come to our doors now. How are you going to react? What are you going to do? How are you going to remember this quarterback? One for standing up and fighting, or standing down and holding? I hope that you decide to stand up for our kids, our parents, and our staff by opting out of this. Trust our parents and our local staff. We support our staff,
014and we support the decisions that they make. We are the ones raising and teaching our students and kids, not those in Chicago or St. Louis. Send a message to the governor and the state legislature that they do not speak for us here in Burson County. Our morals and ethics are not the same. David Russell. Number seven, regardless of age, privacy and confidentiality in the libraries. So they are to, we are not to, if you were to take this at its face value, then. The students have confidentiality in their use of the library. How far does that go? Confidentiality from their parents? Now, the second page is on the ALA's website, interpretations of their Bill of Rights. And they have many position statements and the dates that they were added to help to describe what they
015are aiming for. This is not the full list, this is the ones that apply to a school. The one access to library resources for minors. And I highlighted the American Library Association opposes all attempts to restrict access to materials based on the age of library users. Again, there are other things in there, those are the things that I think are at the core of schools. The second one, librarians have an obligation to resist efforts that systematically exclude materials dealing with any subject matter including sex. Again, we're dealing with minors, so I think that applies here too. The ALA also believes the principles of the Library Bill of Rights apply, including school libraries. And again, relates to us. And then the last one, the rights of minors to retrieve, create, and interact with information, and again,
016this is online, their online portion, are extension of their First Amendment rights. And so, if you... If you read all of these together, they don't seem to believe there should be any restrictions on what students have access to as minors. If you as a parent would like to take your son or daughter to Barnes and Noble, the local public library, you have that choice as a parent. That's your choice. I don't have a say in it. And I'm not talking about just random things. I'm talking things. explicit sexual content. That's why this has bothered me so much. Because the online library is very different from the Mercer County one. And so I trust Mrs. Fluitt. I trust her judgment. We know her in our district. We can see her efforts through the years and we
017know exactly who she is and what we get with her as our librarian. I adore her. I think she's wonderful. But she won't be here forever. And when she retires, we'll have a new person come in. And we need to have, as a district, the ability to say, you know, there's some things that are off limits to our kids. Especially at that high school, you get 13 to 14, somewhere there, all the way up to actual adults who are of legal age. There's a wide difference there between what is appropriate for the different ages. My biggest problem is the state is telling us we must do this or we lose money. We must do this or we, you know, it's the carrot and stick thing. And I appreciate what Josh had said about holding control.
018We should decide. I don't want someone, a group that is at the national level to tell us or to determine what are we allowed to prohibit from our libraries. And censorship, everyone said, oh no, censorship, censorship. Well, that implies that it is not a ban. There are many places where some things, if it's too explicit for a school district, there are other places you can bring it. And I appreciate Mrs. Nelson's statement. I have no desire to ban books that would help her students. I do have a problem with sexual explicit content. for our students. Why do we want to promote that? And it's almost like here with our blessing and things that would not be appropriate to read aloud in our school board meeting or to read to a child without being thrown in
019jail for doing so. So that's where I'm coming from on this. Like I said, I have problems with parts five and seven in this library bill of rights. If you guys, you know, we all don't sit on the policy committee and we don't all read through all of it. We need a lot of committee to look it over and then report back to us. If you would like some more time to think on this for another month or do some more research on it, I'm going by what our legal team at IASB has said through their webinar. And so, if nothing else, I would recommend a delay on... and vote on this, at least for a little bit. So I guess those are my concerns. Because this doesn't necessarily have our local students' best interests
020at heart. It might. They're not saying any of that. We can't live in fear. Do you trust them? Hey! Enough. So, they're not, this is the ALA, this is not the state of LA. But in the law, they are referencing, this is the exact words that we have to adopt, or else we lose our degree. We have policies in our district that supersede this. that allow parents to shut off access to certain things and to monitor what their kids are doing. I have access to my son's Chromebook. I can get on it right now. I can get on his account and I can look and see what he has checked out. I can have all that access. So I don't see what this is not telling us that we have to get search books in
021our library. I trust Ms. Louette to pick out the books that are best for our students. and then we have the access to this other library that's digital that's great. I think our parents should have access to see what their kids are checking out and seeing what they're looking for. We've got that ability. Parents can turn it off. I mean, I think... We have to buy it. We have to. We do not. And we discussed this at the policy meeting. We don't receive free books from... outside organizations that says put these on your shelves. Even donations that are given to us have to follow those same three things that they talked about. I think a lot is how is it okay if I'm talking? I guess I do have a couple questions because I would
022agree when we discussed this in the policy committee meeting that This year was approximately $1,050 for the library grant. That in and of itself is meaningless in the scope of our budget. But if part of that is also losing access to those free resources that are online, the audiobooks, the e-books. That is not what they said above it. The legal team did not mention anything about that at all. Then that's the huge loss that we can't replace. If we're not losing access to that, that's the piece that all the concern is about. So that's where we have the opportunity, and I think that was the committee's discussion, is that you voluntarily opt into that at registration. You're not required to do that, and you have the ability to opt out at any time. described are
023all books that are not available in print or purchased by me for the high school library. Those are strictly things that are apparently out in the digital option which every parent can opt out of. 4,000 other books to choose from if their parents want them to be. But I did want to clarify that the books that were discussed are not ones that we have in print. So, just so I'm clear on this, Mrs. Fouette, there's no... a parent can't go into the 68,000 books available and go, not this one, this one, this one. It's sort of a, you can either eat here or you've got to eat somewhere else. You can't pick a burger over a chicken sandwich. They allowed, as a school, I was allowed to tell them to scope out anything that was
024labeled as erotica and anything that was labeled as bar type. And so I took both of those options. But an individual parent would not be able to do that and I am not able to do that and that is why we have a disclaimer on which we have currently two parents out of 398 who have opted out and that's fine. We can do that as someone said at any time. There's no ability for us to afford that level of control to parents. I would certainly ask. I think that would be the, I mean, you want to talk about local control. If a parent were able to have some sort of oversight over what their children are checking out, which I realize applies in the face of. Well, if they allow their child and they can,
025if they say yes and they can see what their kid's checking out, don't they have all the control in the world as the parent to say that? That's a question that I'm very concerned about. I can certainly contact and ask about that. I do not know whether that would be considered. You can log in and see what books they have checked out and what books they have on board. I guess another thing that's very interesting, and what Julie brought up with Section 7 here, is the right to privacy and confidentiality, which is the seventh mark on the library bill of rights, like how to be. I'm asking you this, we're just asking this all to consider how do we afford local control to ourselves or to parents? I am able to see what a student
026currently has checked out. Once they return it, there's no record of that. And if we're all talking about a new librarian and an inappropriate post that we think are inappropriate, then what is the recourse on that? We're not allowed to do one or two. We would have to report it at that time. should not be prescribed whether or not you're willing to just go, I'm going to cut you off from all of it at the expense of my students, instead of cutting all of the students off. No one has asked me to cut off the online access for all students. No one has asked me that. I don't know where that came from, but that's ridiculous. I never advocated that once. I'm sorry, that's just the impression I got. That's a lot, but I apparently...
027So explain yourself, because I thought, is the online all or nothing? As far as from a parent standpoint, if, or can the parent go out and choose each book? If it's privacy, how does privacy move? First, the letter that I was referring to was not signed and it was shared out from a teacher. So that's where I got that information. It was not from Mrs. Wagner. It was shared to our staff today. Well, my question is... Sorry, I forgot your question. Well, it's basically if they're getting their privacy protected, in what way? From their parents? What's the privacy thing? If the student checks out a book and there's some sort of privacy thing built into it, then is that private from everybody the parent can't even see? Or how does that work? No one's ever
028asked me to book their kid as checked out in 15 years. for the sake of ensuring that every student, regardless of their background, regardless of their situation, has access to what they want to read and release. Regardless of where individuals stand and where you're from. And we are a very diverse community, and we have a lot of students that really thrive from some of the things that they have access to, such as the online library system that we have. Because my point is, we adopt this or we don't. I mean, we want to fearmonger about... It's not fearmongering, it's looking to the future. It's not though, because, I mean, there's the boogeyman in Springfield. And there will be another board in five years, different members, and they will be able to make decisions at that
029time too. And this is being... brought to the attention of our district in the press policies and it says you need to adopt this you need to adopt something else that says you won't make it close and i'm sorry i'm not interested in parenting i am interested in parenting my kids and watching and seeing what they do but i also know if the kids got one of these you can monitor it all you want they know how to delete the stuff so that we can't see it so i mean the best thing we do is to get involved try to teach them right I don't see where, if we accept this, it's not going to change anything about how our district operates. I don't see how we're not accepting it. Right. Right. It doesn't. We're
030going to operate exactly the same, but without $1,000 would be great. We can accept $50,000 to $20,000. So what's the point of not accepting it? Right. Nothing changes, that's what I'm saying. If we accept it, we get a thousand bucks. If not, we can kick it out around 50 people, 20 bucks each. Or you know what? 100 people for 10 bucks each. So, it's about the local control. Right. What local control? I got it right here. I was going to say, if anyone wants to do this stuff, like you said, everybody has a cell phone, they want to read it, they want to turn their phones on, they don't need it in the library. I guess we either... I just don't want to tell your kid. I just don't want you to tell my kid.
031I'm wondering if this is the $1,000. I wasn't sure because it kept coming up. But all the discussion was about books that were in that online access. It wasn't about any books sitting in the high school library or belonging to the high school library. But any of those could be added in the future if not presently. And the board at that time can decide how they want to handle it at that time. I mean, it's just like if they change something. So we adopt this, and we adopt this. If the state comes in and starts saying, we've got to have this book and we've got to have that book. board at that time can rescind that the acceptance of these policies in another direction. I mean that's why you have a board so that you
032can react to the current climate. I guess I'll entertain a motion. Julie had brought up the idea of tabling it. So I would entertain a motion to accept the press policy section 6230. to approve, is there a second? We have a motion on the table to, or motion to table section 6, 230, until the change. Roll call. Yes. Yes. 230, any discussion? Is that motion to fail? That motion to fail. I'm sorry, that motion to fail. 4-3, section 230, motion to file. Second to file, over. Roll call. 50 to 75. But this is an issue about hope is that we'd like to have both our high school and junior high events. So I'll let each of them talk about the discussions. We talked about just what we see for an event into it. Even though
033there's a dollar away. And we also discussed would this be across the board? Would this allow high school students to get into a middle school event? of ways for people who don't care about people to just go hang out instead of going to work. Which again, would be rather have them here, but potentially to open up. And I would love to like, if you could read this. And some of that just has to be over enforcement. I know last Friday night Mr. Murray, our athletic director, helped some lawyer issues out in the lobby in the high school. Second by Palmer. Any discussion? Roll call. Yeah. All version of county. Yeah. That was very clear. Version of county. And then we'll talk about Kevin Adkinson and how we want to use that and monitor that and
034whether it's important. We sure are. Yes. Yes. Yes. Information. Section 5 of your board packet, you've got copies of the FOIA requests and my response to a couple of the shorter ones. One of them, I think at least one if not a couple of board members have attended the school board convention asked me if our recently adopted Amplify reading curriculum is scientifically based. because that's one of the expected changes coming into law from ISBE based on the studies that they've been doing the last couple years. And yes it is. So no, we haven't purchased a curriculum that will be changing over any time soon. The other related is our quarterly report on... which vendors do you do business with. I didn't include our response in there since we deal with thousands of vendors and the
035report packet's already big enough. Yeah, Julie talked to me, came in and beat with me about one of the sessions in particular that she saw the carousel panels and asked her if she would present to the rest of the board member a little bit about that. I enjoyed everything, but this one was standing room only, and so it was run three times in the standing room only. every time it was running. So four superintendents gave a presentation on a method they found to try and get the word out about their school, good things happening in their district. The superintendent from Meridian said when he took the job as superintendent of Meridian, everyone asked him why in the world would you do that? It was the worst school district. And he said public perception of the
036district was horrendous when he got there. And he went through this method to try and turn public perception around. There's also Ottawa, the former superintendent Rova and Jasmine Kim. So it's a newsletter very professionally done that's put together by a company called Journey to Wealth. And this company does the entire thing for you. You give them some topics, some people they can interview. They go through the interviews, write up everything, and then produce this. And then send it to every mailing address in your school district. So like we did with the building survey, just send one to every address. And I think it was the Ottawa superintendent that said that they don't get, if something happens in the mail, doesn't deliver their newsletter when they're expecting it, then they're calling the superintendent's office, like, where's
037my newsletter? I want to know what's going on. But yeah, the superintendent in Oregon said in two years, public reception of their school district did a complete 180. But one of our district goals has always been to try and find a way to communicate better with our community. So that's why when I saw this was an option, I was like, okay, I'm going that one first. And the way it started is very professional. you don't have to do the work, somebody else does it for you. And so, I don't remember which district it was, they did one entire newsletter on no horsey, former alumni. And so, there's a lot of different things you can do with it. You control content as far as, you know, this is the spring one, so let's do a spotlight
038on the baseball team or the track or whatever. But then you also include the good things going on in the classroom, which I think is really important. Because every comment you have at community forums is, oh, I didn't know you were doing that in this school. Or I didn't know this was going on. And they're all good plans. People just don't care about them. So I would really like to look into this. I think in my board reporting, I think the range is like $55,000 to $85,000 a year. seems high, but it is the cost of a PR person. There are three different ways that those super dents had used different funds to cut back costs. They used ESSA money, used the teacher vacancy grant. The Ottawa super dent says this is what she gets
039to get people to stay once they come and interview to say yes to their offer. They see that as a great tool for community. but there's just so many benefits to it and it is one of our district's main goals and it has been for years and we're trying to find a solution for years i think this might be a good way to start on that just an fyi i know mr bush has an interview with journey 12 or a conference call with journey 12 here soon they're going to look into it too i think one of their board members really like to see us do this and if you don't like it after a couple years we can always say no it's not a contract then it's a yearly renewal thing so I just
040think it would be a great opportunity for us to try another method to try and reach the public with all our good news. That was one of the, in terms of our district goals that was the one we had the most difficulty trying to come up with new ways of reaching out because the majority of the people that live in our community no longer have kids at school. And their sole source of information used to be the Times record from WRMJ. Maybe it's Facebook, but lots of them aren't on Facebook. And so print media, you know, that gets responses. That community survey that we sent out to every box holder, you know, they're... We got over 800 responses on the 4,000 clocks that were in our district. So that response was good and we certainly
041have the ability at least for a year or two through the funding sources she talked about, ESSER funding and teacher vacancy grant that we can give this a shot. And I think that's something I'd like to investigate a little bit more. And depending on what time it is, maybe Mr. Bush will let me sit in on his conference call. My goal would be $1 or $2 on Route 14. I see it. I see it. It's kind of like the snow in the southwest corner of the cafeteria. I don't want to jump ahead, but I don't want to forget about it either. $80,000 is not a lot of money in the grand scheme of our budget. I can almost say these without looking at them. It seems like they've shown up before. I think that was
042by far my favorite. I included in the packet was the information on the health and mental health services. And they emphasized over and over again, we need those courses for mediation or whatever you're needing them for. They are reimbursed. the state board would reimburse the district for any course work that the student took through their own work. And again, it's to address, you know, some people use it as a full curriculum. A lot of school districts use it for credit recovery, remediation. but and then some will use it for advanced things that their districts do not offer. One school district was there, can't find a Spanish teacher, can we sign up our kids to take their Spanish classes because we cannot meet a teacher. And so they were looking at doing that. All of that
043is in our schools. And they're all state Illinois certified teachers. Full of gaps where that's an option. We think that if they don't find out why, why there's such a tradition. Because we have had principals in the past, five principal regions I think they were talking about more young principles that maybe don't know. Personal development, lack of the district providing ways for principals to look forward to additional, insufficient salaries, lack of decision-making authority, and high-stakes accountability policies. I thought that was something for us to work on. It says it costs the district $75,000 to onboard. Do you guys use CompSci? I guess they were saying that. I don't know if it's any good. It's our fault. I thought you were taking credit for the social emotional issues. It's superintendent's fault. And I think comp psych
044is on the IASB website. I do feel like I'm not achieving the spiritual because I don't have this too. It's a little disappointing that in three years my scores might be way down. But you know, I do feel some drop. I They had two high schools, so they had two students sit on them. There's a policy for that, the school code, so they don't get to go into closed session. They don't get to vote. But in these schools, what they did was they would prepare a report for each one of the packet. They would work with the principal to make sure that they would report issues. They said that when they first started, they would bring up that. they're tired of having chicken nuggets every Wednesday. The principal will be like, let's not have board
045issues. We'll put that to the side. But then as they develop, there's been more things that they just bring to the board's attention that maybe they're more proud of. And then also, they're allowed in the discussion on certain topics that are in open session. And so, maybe answer some questions about how things might affect. So you saved two kids all year? So what they did was, They staggered it so there's two, so they have a junior and a senior, and then they're on it for two years. So the junior becomes the teacher's select, and this one's going to be an hour and a half. The teacher's select in both high schools that they select the candidates, they said it almost an unanimous decision every year. There are a lot of bigger schools in the NUS,
046so I'm assuming that's similar. Both students said that they don't participate all that much in the discussions, but that as time goes on. It's something that I think would be interesting to try. I'll probably bring it up when I come home. But the students also, if there's something that's kind of interesting, have kids come and do. We also seem to run more effectively than working class. That was good to know. there was they sounded like first administrative reports you had brought up and I've asked the parking spot is not the issue