001Good evening everyone I'm going to call the January 15th, 2026 regular board of education meeting to order. Carrie, would you please take attendance? Sure. Jessica. I'm here. Debbie here. I'm here. Arlen here. Ileana here. Angelica here. Bill here. We have a quorum. All right. Sorry. Our student representative Selma here. Alex here. Fareed here. All right. Would everyone please rise for the pledge of allegiance. Thank you. Welcome everyone. Happy New Year. It is indeed a new year. I hope it's going to be a good one for everyone. I'd like to welcome a couple of our local elected friends sherry clump from the Wheeling Park district. Thank you for joining us. And Ariel from 1 of our local community organizations. Thank you. For joining us as well, any individual physically present at tonight's meeting that wishes to
002address the board must complete a comment card and provide it to Ms. Del real. Written public comments may also be submitted by emailing us at district 21 at 21 dot org. All right, let's move into announcements and celebrations. Dr. Connolly? Good evening, everybody. Happy New Year. We have several announcements and celebrations for this evening. I wanted to start off by recognizing our new SRO at Cooper, who was planning on being here this evening, but at the last second was not able to make it. So he will actually be coming. in February, but I still wanted to recognize and welcome him as Officer Dennis Wolfe of the Buffalo Grove Police Department. We are really, really pleased to have Officer Wolfe joining us. He has strong ties to the community with living in the area and having
003relatives who attend District 21 schools also is fluent in both Russian and Ukrainian. So that's just a wonderful resource to be able to have to support our students and families. So again, we welcome Officer Wolf and you will formally meet him next month. Wanted to recognize several of our just really amazing students in the district, starting off with some recognition of our middle school basketball program. We would like to recognize an outstanding season for our London Middle School Boys Basketball Program. The eighth grade boys team earned the regular season title for the Mid-Suburban Middle School Athletic Conference. the eighth grade program's first conference championship since 2009. They demonstrated strong teamwork, discipline, and perseverance throughout the season. So let's give our conference champions a round of applause. In addition, the seventh grade boys team capped off
004their season by winning the end of season MSM. SAC tournament. The tournament, which has only been held for the past five years, has never been won by a London team until this season. So congratulations, seventh grade team. So some other highlights, London's seventh grade girls team finished second in conference and advanced to the end of season tournament championship, falling in a heartbreaker 32 to 25 in a very competitive final. Cooper's seventh grade girls team finished the season five and six and placed third in the tournament. Cooper's eighth grade girls posted a strong nine and four record, finishing second in the conference. And Holmes seventh grade boys reached the playoffs for the first time in many years, an achievement that generated excitement and pride as they earned their opportunity to play two additional postseason games. Congratulations
005to all of our student athletes and our coaching staff for representing the district with pride and sportsmanship. Congratulations. So I am going to ask our London principal, Anastasia Nutzel, to come up. And why don't you introduce some of your coaches and athletes that you have here today? Thank you so much for this opportunity to recognize our students this evening. I just want to say I want to echo Dr. Connolly's sentiment in terms of sportsmanship. Obviously, we're really proud of their achievements, but overall in the tournament and in the conference, but I'm also really proud of their sportsmanship and how they've represented London. So I just want to give them one more round of applause. All right, and if I can invite our coaches up here, Michael Singolu as well as Bill Bohunik. All right, and
006with us tonight, we have a lot of representation from our seventh grade boys basketball team. I don't think I see any of my eighth graders out there, but I do want to congratulate Bennett Carnath, who's here tonight. We also have Brandon Delaney. Dylan Anderson is with us this evening. Mitchell Cooper. Adrian M. Come on down. Hayden Amos. DeVay Ransom Scott. Oh, now I'm being blocked. I think I saw, I know we have Brandon Smith here. And Colin Burke. Oh, there we go. Trey. Toby Rogers. And Xavier Davis. Come on down. And thank you to the coaches for, I couldn't see everybody, but thank you for helping me out there. All right. At this time, we can take a photo? Yeah, we're going to. That'd be great. And thank you again to the board for this
007opportunity. Next, I wanted to recognize our Riley Spin Club for an activity that they took part in just before the holiday break, Build a House to Give Francis a House. Before break, Riley's Supporting People in Need Club, or the Spin Club, hosted a gingerbread house-making fundraiser to support Francis, a deaf orphan living in Ghana, through the organization A Better Life for Kids. Families and staff participated by purchasing gingerbread house kits with all proceeds going directly toward building Francis a safe and permanent home. A total of $1,120 was raised during the event, which will provide Francis with a secure living space, including a room and bathroom, as he continues his apprenticeship as a shoemaker. The event was a fun, engaging way for our community to come together while teaching students the value of empathy, service, and
008global awareness. We're very proud of the SPIN club students and staff for leading this initiative and making a meaningful impact on Frances' life. And in a statement from the president and founder of A Better Life for Kids, she says, this is so sweet and kind of your SPIN club not only to be so supportive of this event but also for the district to celebrate it. Just she was truly amazed and is so grateful for the support of our SPIN club students. So I'm going to ask Mrs. Bellini, the principal at Riley, to come up and introduce any staff and if there are any students from SPIN that might be here tonight. Thank you so much for recognizing our wonderful spin club. We do have the staff here tonight. We have Anna Koutras, come on down,
009second grade teacher at Riley. Megan Wells, kindergarten teacher at Riley. Terry Bernstein, DHH resource teacher. And then supporting tonight, we have Melissa Swanson from NSSEO and Allie Padalecki, our assistant principal. So we're just thrilled for this committee. Terry brought the idea to me at a staff meeting one day and said, hey, I've got this great idea. It's going to support a former, well, not former, but an adult now. was a child at one point. And he is a student that is deaf and hard of hearing. And as you might know, we have a deaf and hard of hearing program at Riley that is run by NSSEO, but housed at Riley. So it's a huge part of our culture at Riley. We've got a strong belief in inclusion and it just fit perfectly with our school
010mission and the mission of the club. So we thank. you guys for all your hard work and bringing that to reality and francis has a home they constructed it already so he's off the streets and living a better life thanks to everyone's fundraising at riley and we have a little video that someone submitted that will show thank you do you guys want to take a quick picture with the superintendent And last, but certainly not least this evening, we wanted to celebrate our ongoing partnership with Omni Family Services. Omni and the district work in many different ways to support our students and have really come to value their ability to provide counseling and support services to our students here within our schools and within the community. Recently, OMNI hosted another winter camp during our winter break
011at Whitman School. The camp provided students with engaging structured activities in a safe and supportive environment while school was not in session. Each day consisted of between 40 and 50 students from kindergarten through fifth grade coming together to take part in high energy games, including soccer and musical hula hoops, craft activities such as paper chains, and with their intentions for 2026 on the chain. We appreciate Omni's continued collaboration and commitment to supporting our students and families beyond the traditional school day. They really have been an amazing resource and partner with us for the past several, several years and really help our students and families through some tough times. So Roy Ironman, Megan Santoro, and Magali Loza, I hope I said that name right, from Omni are here. So Roy, if you wanted to say a
012couple of words, you're certainly welcome. We've really valued, obviously, the partnership with District 21. We're a community together. You know, we're right here both in having offices in Wheeling and Buffalo Grove. We feel a really strong commitment to continue supporting the district. You know, your kids are our kids. And so it's been a wonderful opportunity and being able to give those kids access to services. in the school when they may not be able to come to our offices after school and certainly being able to engage in activities during winter programming or winter break and then also previous programs during spring break and summer. So, yeah, very strong partnership and looking forward to, you know, the future. So, yeah, thank you for for inviting us here. We really we were it was an unexpected honor to
013be able to come here and be recognized. But yeah, we really value the partnership as well. Thanks, Roy. Appreciate it. Thank you very much. And that concludes our announcements and celebrations for this month. Great, great. Lots of good stuff. All right, let's move ahead into staff communication. Superintendents report. We have. 1 item the summer 2026 facility work presentation. Yes, thank you. And before I was like, yes, just kind of slid right off the arm there before we go into the presentation. I would like to to take a moment to talk a little bit about something that is of great concern to our entire community as well as to the entire county. And that is the. recent property tax delays. So I just want to address a critical issue that really has threatened the financial stability
014of our school district and other school districts and units of local government across Cook County and that is the ongoing and unacceptable delay in property tax distributions by Cook County. In 2015, Cook County awarded a substantial 30 million dollar contract to Tyler Technologies to modernize the county's antiquated tax collection systems. Despite the significant investment, this project has yet to be successfully completed in 2026. This failure has resulted in property tax collections and distributions being delayed four times in the past five years. Most recently, the second installment tax bills, which were scheduled to be mailed to residents on August 1st, did not go out until mid-November. As a result, our first payment of collected property taxes did not arrive until late December. As of today, our district is still owed approximately $25.3 million in collected property
015taxes. School districts, park districts, library districts, municipalities, and other units of local government rely on the timely distribution of these funds to operate and cover expenses such as payroll, utilities, and essential services. A comprehensive analysis reveals a staggering financial toll on all county school districts. Due to these late tax distributions, our collective loss is a conservative estimate of $121.8 million. These losses stem directly from lost interest earnings on delayed funds, penalties for broken investments, and interest payments and associated costs with tax anticipation warrants. Now, while CCSD 21 has thankfully not had to issue tax anticipation warrants, we have been forced to rely on our operating fund balance and drain our operating fund balance to meet day-to-day expenses. We have also had to liquidate investments early. To date, as of today, this has resulted in a
016loss of interest income of approximately $950,000 to District 21 alone. This morning, eight superintendents, including myself, and Board of Education members from affected districts spoke at the County Board of Commissioners meeting, outlining the detrimental impact of these delays. The recurring lack of accountability and the complete breakdown in communication is unacceptable. We have no confidence that we will not face similar delays in the coming year. Indeed, the first installment tax bills that are supposed to go out in March have already statutorily been delayed until April, and we have no confidence that they are going to go out on time then. While we did not have to issue tax anticipation warrants, originally at this meeting, we were going to be asking the board for authorization to do just that. The distributions that came in right after the
017holiday and before the new year staved us off from needing to do that, but we will need to issue tax anticipation warrants likely in May if this happens again. We also, though, want to extend our thanks to several county commissioners, including Scott Britton, who is our home county commissioner, Maggie Trevor, and Kevin Morrison, who have been engaged with us to problem solve and establish lines of communication with the Cook County Treasurer's Office and the Cook County President's Office. Unfortunately, the county commissioners themselves don't have any jurisdiction over this. The county treasurer, the county president, and the county assessor are separately elected officials who do not have accountability to the county commissioners, but they have stepped in and really have done what they can to get us answers and to make sure that our voices have
018been heard. And particularly, I want to thank Commissioner Britton, who is our home commissioner, also former school board member, knows the plight and knows the critical need for these funds to arrive in a timely fashion. We are going to continue as a coalition of school districts to bring attention to this. Just because the payments have started to flow does not mean the damage has not been extensive and does not continue. And insofar as we have very little confidence that this isn't, we're not going to be in the same place in three months, you know, we are going to continue to have conversations and really seek whatever resolution and to the extent that we could be potentially made whole, we will. pursue those options. But this is really something that I think our entire community needs
019to know. There has been some reporting on this, but this board historically has made very, very good financial decisions that has resulted in us to be able to have a fund balance that we have been able to tap into. But the reality is that $950,000 in lost interest income, that is a capital project, that is staffing. We have to make adjustments to our budget assumptions because that almost $1 million worth of interest income is gone through no fault of our own. And so I think our taxpayers who rightly expect. that we are utilizing very, very dear. dollars that they pay in property taxes to be used very wisely and to have the county completely fail in a what should be a fairly simple task of collecting and distributing these funds is completely unacceptable. So I
020wanted to make sure that we were able to put this on record and it is my distinct hope that we aren't having this conversation again in april but time will tell so thank you for indulging me on that point absolutely thank you for sharing thank you mike for saying it and with that clenn come on up and talk to us a little bit about what we got in store for summer construction gee whiz i'm not sure Again, thank you for the opportunity, the Board of Education and Dr. Conley for allowing me and Bill, Assistant Director of Operations, to present on the upcoming summer 2026 construction. This summer, we've got a lot of things we want to get done again. We've got renovations scheduled for flooring, plumbing, HVAC. Heating and air conditioning and some schools we
021got remodeling our middle schools and we've got some roofing projects that we've got scheduled What you're going to see on this slide is some of those projects. And if I want to point out that you're going to note, you're going to see base bids and alternate bids. And the reason for that is that we're basically with the uncertainty of the construction market and the bidding process and when you go out to bid and what you might expect to come back for pricing. We want to go with alternates to try to help maximize what we have in case. our base was a little bit less aggressive and we were able to have some extra money that we can meet what our demands are. So as you look, we've got major flooring repair and replacement and I
022can't. stress repair any better than when you go to cooper middle school and you go into the one wing and everything is sunken in a few inches and we had studies done on that and we're now able to understand why that's happened since 1972 with the compression of the the ground underneath not being adequate at that time when they did that work so that work we we reviewed and Cooper, that's part of our base bid, so that will be getting accomplished along with the other flooring throughout that school. We've got alternates for Kilmer and Poe. We're going to look to do that flooring this year, but again, that's an alternate at present. We have toilet replacements in part of our base bid. We've got Cooper, Frost, and Kilmer getting new... restrooms and that will include
023getting you know fixtures plumbing flooring and that will look really nice the flooring that we're going to go with it are epoxy floors so that will be very nice london is an alternate and again a strong alternate we're going to do boilers london's boilers are vintage they're vintage in the early 90s so those are kind of beyond their useful life but again what would be a school without heat in the winter so we're going to be upgrading the boilers at london middle school renovations this is going to be exciting we've got a lot of middle school renovations we've got science rooms 12 in total cooper and london science rooms are all going to get new flooring and i apologize i don't have any renditions for this presentation unfortunately but we got flooring painting casework sinks
024mechanical ductwork new pendant lighting we've got marker boards and we're going to be replacing some of the CMU walls we're going to be putting in new walls and doors in those in those areas another continuation on the middle school renovations is the family consumer sciences the cooper homes and london schools the kitchens the culinary areas they're all going to get new flooring painting sinks Tables and storage are going to get ceilings, lighting, mechanical duct work. They're going to get kitchen hoods coming from the ceiling, marker boards, again, some CMU renditions to help make that space a little bit available, and new doors. On another note, Cooper, the Holmes and London schools are going to be getting alternate stage lighting. Again, that's an alternate. That's something we want to do. We're also going to get music
025room speaker systems. Again, these would be enhancements. To the schools and most beneficial for those programs the Cooper main stairwell The base bed includes the new ceilings lighting and wall painting again similar to what we did at homes We'd like to do a skylight. That's gonna be an alternate Glenn. I'm sorry. Can I interrupt you briefly? What is CMU? I Create masonry units. That's a new one for me. Thank you. Please go Thank you. Someone else asked me that earlier. So thank you Roofing. We have some schools, again, we've been doing a lot of great work over the years and some of the simple things that we've not neglected but we've kept thinking about are roofs. There are certain roofing projects that we have looked at in Field, Frost, and Kilmer are definitely due for
026some roofing upgrades and we're gonna be doing those this summer. Miscellaneous London renovations. Some of these are base bed items in the orchestra room. converting certain science rooms over at London to the orchestra room. We've got a base bid for the South Commons. We're going to... Put the project lead the way program in there. We've got furniture planned for science rooms culinary Orchestra and and praise the lead the way program Alternates over here may include the main office remodel project. And again, that's a very Important project but that's an alternate again. We'll see whether the money's fall We've got the North Commons again. We've got planned office spaces going in there and Not only office spaces but meeting spaces planned in that space so again we've all noticed that when you go into London that
027that When you first walk in there's a lot of space there that's unused and that space needs to be captured. So The North Commons is a key space for that Alternates include furniture For the the band room the student services and the main office. I'm now going to bring up this mr. Bill Weiss to present some information The following is our summer construction time frame and you'll see on January 22nd We're at about 95% of our construction document budget assessment from Nicholas. You know, that's like our all of our construction documents, cost analysis, like precise documentations and drawings will be in. And then on January 27th, we'll go out to bid. Our pre bid meeting will be on January 29th. Which, you know, may involve, like, walking with vendors, walk through their site visits and
028then February 13th is the bid opening February 19th is the board meeting, which will present recommendations of what work should be done. And then obviously June. Third is the first day of summer and June 8th is the start of construction. That'll give us a few days to kind of move out of the schools, get things prepped for the construction process. And then August 8th is substantial completion for construction, which means, you know, 99% of it is complete. It gives us about another week to work out the final details for final completion. just before school starts on uh august 19th does anyone have any questions uh i have a question do you know what the general budget is for this and where the money is coming from for it so defer to mike yeah So the
029money that's coming from for this is through budget. We have set aside dollars for the last several years. And that's when I was talking about fund balance. That's where the dollars for these projects. largely come from. So we have a line item of planned spending that we do, and then we have, we build up funds over time to be able to kind of do some of these special projects. Now, I know I talked about the fact that we've had to use our fund balance to continue to pay just operating expenses. That those that fund balance will be replenished when the money's now that the money's have started to come in from the county. Right. So that's how we will be able to continue to do this. Right. In terms of if we were to do
030everything, it would be approximately 30 million dollars worth of work. Thirty one right now. Thirty one. Seventy five percent now. In the past, right, it gets better as we go along. So fingers crossed for, you know, better pricing coming in. Yeah, the closer you get to the project and kind of have everything determined and when they bid, that's when you really kind of get the, you know, real numbers, right? So a lot right now is projection. total, what we're going to be able to do this summer is between $22 and $25 million. So there will be some things that are those alternate bids that we'll have to hold off on. Now, what I will say, and just for everybody's understanding of the difference between the base bid and the alternate bid, is that if the
031base bid, it's one package, right? So whatever we say is a base bid, we have to either accept that bid or reject the whole thing. by doing alternate bids for some of these other projects we can pick and choose right so we'll have a base bid and then we'll figure out what all we can do based on the prices that come in um in and choose from those other projects we have some of our alternate bids that are higher priority items. Those are mostly the items that are at London. There are some needs to fix some of the space issues over at London. We'd like to do that as soon as possible. Some of the other things like flooring, we can hold off on. But, you know, issues like replacing the bathrooms at Kilmer, that
032is an absolute need that is not alternate, that is part of the base bid. Yes. So we're going to prioritize those things as those numbers get in. Now, hopefully we'll get really good numbers in from the bids and we'll be able to do a lot more than we. i think so good question to add to that too so board policy states we have to keep our fund balance in between 35 to 45 so we're you know keeping that in our planning process knowing that we want to maximize the funds here but we need to stay within that range and then also looking down the line right we want to make sure we keep keep ourselves within that range um but we're able to do all all that we can and we want to do so
033so when Mr. Frantini says between 35 and 45% of our fund balance. What that means is that the board requires us by policy to keep between 35 and 45% of what we spend in a school year in the bank, right? So that if something happens, like Cook County doesn't give us our property tax on time, we've got dollars in the bank that we can keep going, right? So that's what fund balance means, okay? Great question. Are there any other questions or comments for Bill or Glenn? Okay. Sounds like you have your work cut out for you, but I appreciate you setting out the timeline the way you did. I think that helps us understand every step of the way and just the very short window we have to actually do the building, but it's going
034to be great. Thank you very much. I think on February 13th we're going to lock ourselves in a room and get this plan done. Okay, so no one asks questions. Keep your fingers crossed. All right, anything else in your report? Great. Okay, let's move on into public comment. The board will allow any individual present to share a public comment for up to three minutes. Such comments should not include discussion of personnel matters, which should be brought directly to the attention of the appropriate school official. During public comment, the board and administration will listen to comments, but may not respond to the public. Thank you, Marlon, for handing me the comment card from Ben Coleman. Ben, want to come on up? Hello. My name is Ben Coleman and I'm the current president of the District 21
035Education Association, which represents the majority of the people who work here at District 21. I hope that you all had a pleasant holiday season. I'm not sure what in the world was going on with the weather, but I drove my two children to Cleveland, Ohio to visit my parents and family through the rain the whole way, both there and back. And for the first time in a while, all but one member of my extended family was present in one house. I have five brothers and sisters. Unfortunately, my older sister couldn't be there, but both of my older brother's daughter's boyfriends were there, and I was trying to start a pool on who would get married first. My daughter was confronted with lots of questions about college. She's a high school senior this year, and she's
036waiting to hear from several schools. I'm waiting to hear about financial aid before I make a recommendation. I do have two points I want to make about leadership, if you'll bear with me for a minute. A few years ago, I stopped buying my daughter a gift for her birthday and started taking her to a play. We've seen some great stuff. The Harry Potter play, Hamilton, Lion King. This year, I decided to change things up and take her to the Steppenwolf Theater to see Amadeus, the complicated play about the life of Mozart and a jealous musical rival. And this brings me to the first point I want to make about leadership. Salieri is evil, but what might have happened if he had used his influence to encourage Mozart to experiment more or compose more operas? What
037great things could have happened if Mozart had been embraced and supported by someone with Salieri's resources? I want to close with a brief remark about football. I'm sorry. I watched that great game on Saturday night where the Bears played a fantastic half of football on both sides of the ball. I hope that they can play four great quarters this weekend and come out on top against the Rams. Unfortunately, I have to bring up my lowly Browns. I think that the Browns and Bears had opposite problems in at least one sense. The Bears struggled last year, changed coaches, and appear to have figured out how to win consistently. The Browns had a great coach, couldn't figure out what to do with him, so they've fired him and are currently looking for a new leader. The Browns
038division rivals, both the Ravens and Steelers, have also fired their head coach and are shopping. It's possible that they might just shuffle coaches and start over next year. But I think that all three teams are making a mistake. All of them had capable coaches and were facing problems that were not really the product of the coaches. Replacing a coach can be easy, but that doesn't mean that it's always right. I don't think the best coach in the world would have taken the Browns to the playoffs. So maybe I want to say this more clearly to wrap up. Maybe I'll drop the football analogy because I'm not really an expert on that. I think that mentors, team leaders, and the people in our buildings who help others when they need it are really important in keeping
039our district running. I see the new committees we have formed starting to recognize and grow that kind of leadership, and I think that's a great thing. I would love for our district to continue looking for more ways to develop leadership among our staff at all levels. I think it's important, perhaps even urgent. Thank you for your time and attention. Thank you for the work you do for students, families, and staff at District 21. We look forward to partnering with you to continue making this a great place to learn and work. Okay. Have we received any other comment cards? Cass any written public comments? Okay. Very good. Thank you. Everyone. Let's move along into our consent agenda. We received 3 freedom of information act requests. This month, and there are board conference and travel expenses for
040the board to approve in the amount of 3343 dollars and 95 cents. I had an opportunity to sit down with Mike and go through the financial docs and he was able to answer my clarification questions adequately. Thank you again. Mike. I appreciate your time. As always, um, and I believe you've requested to have the. School calendar item M pulled from the consent agenda is does anyone need anyone else need. Anything pulled from consent. Okay, very good. May I please have a motion to approve the consent agenda minus item M. So moved 2nd. All right, Jessica. Yes, Debbie. Yes, I vote. Yes. Arlen. Yes. Yes. Bill. Yes. Angelica. Yes. Motion carries. Okay, thank you. Angelica. Did you want to. take a few minutes and talk about your concerns about the school calendar um yeah i just
041when i um when i took a look at the school calendar um i noticed that um the half days had been moved so i was kind of looking through my calendar and seeing for the last uh three years that that we've been a part of the district all the half days were on fridays um and this calendar was proposing that they moved to like wednesdays and thursdays so i just i reached out to dr connolly to kind of get some clarification on that because i thought that might be um inconvenient for parents or added hardship and what and kind of get a little bit more background information on it. And he came back to me and said, the reason for the change is because the half days have really low attendance for both students and
042staff. So they wanted to kind of move them to the middle of the week to help solve that problem and use this as a test year to kind of see if there's change in attendance for the half days. So that was a concern of mine that I just wanted to let people know, and that's a very reasonable reason to kind of to move it. it's a great way we want to we want to lower you know those uh those high attendance days um so i just wanted to you know put that out there so if anybody saw the calendar and had concerns with why they were moved from a friday to the middle of the week that was the reason why um and i'd like to kind of discuss i think maybe we should put
043some kind of communication out i think normally we just kind of maybe put a link out to the calendar um to see you know if we can clarify that a little bit just to kind of get out in front of it in case parents see it and see concerns with it i think that's That's an easy ask And thank you for your comments any other comments about the school calendar before we Move on all right a motion to approve the school calendar then so moved. Oh, I'm sorry. I'm going to say that Yeah, I understand that on Friday half days, there's like no attendance those days. And seeing that it was moved to a Wednesday, I feel like it would be a good idea to increase attendance. But from a student's perspective, a half day
044on a Wednesday will feel like funky. Because coming back, going to school Tuesday for a full day, coming back Wednesday half day, then going back Thursday for another full day. Yeah, half days are a little weird anyway. Unfortunately, they're really important for time for staff and teachers to be able to do a lot of work that they just don't have time to do otherwise when kids are in session. So, yeah, we totally get you. But you'll be in high school, so it'll be all right. I have a question about half days. So if half days are good so that teachers can get to do things that they need to do, wouldn't it be more effective to combine two half days to just have one day off? Amazing question. Not allowed in the state of Illinois.
045So we are able to have what the, you know, we have teacher institute days, which are full days. We can do four of those a year, and we do, two before school starts and then two throughout the year. The Monday right after winter break was a teacher institute. You guys came back on Tuesday. We are not able, under state rules, to take two half days and turn them into a full day. Weird, totally get it, but not allowed in the state. otherwise we would for sure great questions any other discussion i believe we had a motion and a second on record i just heard a motion okay can you second thank you okay all right jessica yes debbie yes i vote yes arlen yes eliana yes bill yes angelica yes motion carries thank you all
046right Still getting used to this new agenda. I've got a scroll. Yeah, all of us. I think I right. We have a new platform that we're using. So, um. Still trying to figure out what I'm doing here. Okay. Board communication. Finance and operations committee met just before our meeting tonight. Mike and Glenn Michaelini provided an update for us on specifically the plan for London's construction. And we saw some really neat panoramas of the idealized spaces that will be changed along with the base and alternate options that are being proposed. And we also had an update from Todd Rowling and Dr. Connolly on some ideas to rework the London parking lot for ingress and egress of both cars and buses. It's going to be quite a bit different, but as someone who uses the London parking
047lot twice a day, I'm willing to see how it plays out. It's going to be great. It's going to be great. So that is finance committee board champion update. Carrie and Debbie, I believe you both have updates for us this month. Yep. Carrie, do you want to go ahead? All right. So I am teaching and learning. So I was able to meet over winter break right at the end of winter break with Dr. Childress and Dr. Connelly. Great update. So teaching and learning has four main goal areas originally, and they added a fifth goal. The 1st goal focuses around curriculum review. So they've updated their visuals and their curriculum docs for how they're going to use their cycle. Right now the focus is on literacy. So the literacy curriculum review is underway and we are
048have a lot of great things happening. Some committees forming and their plan is to propose new literacy curriculum at the end of this school year. So that is very exciting. Goal two focuses on the root causes of low student achievement. So Dr. Childress and her team are currently diving into school data and looking at a variety of different subgroups, identifying some programs, some possible changes that can be implemented. They're also looking at special education, the resources that are being used, the way that service minutes are being delivered, and seeing if there's some changes that can be implemented in order to address this goal area. The third one focuses on professional development. With a new math curriculum this year, a lot of the professional development is around that. The staff also started letters training, which is
049to support literacy. So that was very exciting to learn. And that started just now in the new year, correct? And then goal four focuses on the development of our programs that support technology, music, and arts. This is where they decided to break off and make a fifth goal that specifically addresses STEM and how they can continue to enhance those programs. So overall, a lot happening in teaching and learning. Thank you to you and your department for all your hard work and the time to get all the updates. Thank you, Carrie. Sure. Debbie? I unfortunately have to say that I dropped the ball, I will admit to it. I totally spaced out and forgot about the meeting. So I would ask either Dr. Connolly or Cass Young to give us the update on that. We all
050get one pass. And I'll take this one. I promise I'll be better. So in terms of stakeholder engagement, we have been doing a lot of planning work, particularly around how we're going to really pivot towards looking at how we can support the school-based health center through seeking grants, fundraising, and so on and so forth in the coming years. And then also just really taking a look at how... we're doing in terms of communicating with our stakeholders. Are there, are our communications being received, you know, adequately? Are there different ways that we need to try and employ getting our message out? And so a lot of work still to come in the current school year, but a lot of preliminary conversations and planning around getting at that work. Thank you. And I believe Bill and Angelica,
051you have... We have a meeting scheduled for next week to get that started. And hopefully I'll be handing that all off to a new champion shortly thereafter. Very good. That's securing the future. We will look forward to that next month then. All right. Debbie, can you update us on NSSEO, please? Yes, I can, actually. We've been very busy with that. Now, in January and July, NSSEO does not meet because there is so little time between one meeting and the next one with the breaks in between. However, we did have, I did have the honor of starting off with the new. operations board for NSSEO which is all of the member district superintendents are there because it was their first meeting they did not have anyone to preside so I offered as the president of NSSEO
052to start that off and I had the honor of handing the gavel over to our very own Dr. Connolly as the president of that organization Jody from District 23 is the vice president and Don from District 26 and I'm not going to try either of their last names. He is the secretary. They set up their meetings, discussed the extended school year because for NSSEO it is very different because 100% of their students qualify. So they gave us the dates, they talked about staffing, but the most amazing thing that they did, this was the Institute Day after winter break, they have taken over Harper. They took over three full buildings at Harper for professional learning. They had 1,628 people registered, which is everyone from NSSEO and a lot of the special ed staff from all of
053our districts. And it was just, they had beautiful weather and everything that we had heard was very well received. It's just amazing that they can get 1,600 people there on a, air quotes, day off. It was wonderful. So, Dr. Connolly, do you have anything else to update on the... No, I think you covered it. Just in terms of the operating board of superintendents, what our main role is, is to really work with the NSSEO superintendent and her staff and just kind of go through all of the different day-to-day kind of operational pieces of NSSEO and then make formal recommendations for action that the governing board, which are made up of elected school board members from all the member districts, would then make. a final determination around whether or not to move in that direction. So
054thank you. Great. Thank you. Thank you both very much. Bill Edred. Yes, just a couple quick updates. Ed Red's annual legislative dinner will be held on Monday, January 26th. You should have received an email telling you that the keynote speaker will be Illinois' 10th District Congressman Brad Schneider. And time permitting, he will be taking questions. So if you have questions, prepare them in advance. Ed Red's next member meeting will be held virtually on Friday, February 13th at 1.30. We will shortly be receiving registration and link information for that if you would like to attend. And that's it for Ed Red. Great. Would you take IASB, please? Yes, I will. Three points on that, one of which the new program has eaten, so I'm going to have to do that more through memory. But IASB's North
055Cook Division Dinner Meeting will be held on Tuesday, March 3rd. The keynote speaker will be Dr. Chris Mann, the Executive Director of IASBO. That's the Illinois Association of School Business Officers. He will be speaking about school funding, potential federal impacts, and we know... Those seem to be changing on a daily basis. Vision 2030 and other topics. If you wish to attend, please contact Leticia. Second, if you filled out the survey from IASB regarding their... strategic plan you may be invited to participate in one or more focus groups to continue that discussion the focus groups are orientated to different types of districts based on size or i've been asked to join in for districts that have a significant number of pre-lunch students in them so if you do receive an invitation please consider participating Finally, I
056had the opportunity as I was waiting for the meeting to start tonight to talk to Sarah Miller of IASB. She's the head of the governmental relations department. You may have seen in the journal that there's going to be an advocacy day coming up on March 24th. It is a one-day event. for school board members only this time around. They want to see how that would work from 8.30 until late in the afternoon in Springfield. It would start out with about an hour for breakfast and networking. The mornings would be given toward panel discussions and learning for both advocacy and issues. And in the afternoon, you'd be set free in the Capitol to go and speak to legislators. If you're interested, there should be more information coming forward within the next week. So watch your emails
057for that. And that is it for IASB. Great. Thank you, Bill. Arlen, would you update us on Northcote, please? I will. I sent through Leticia's distribution to you several pages. That will cover most of the stuff. I'm not going to read it all. There's a lot going on. We will close on the new site, we believe, next week. We have a board meeting on Wednesday, 7.30 a.m., and we will vote on it then. So we're moving forward. Let me just read this one paragraph highlighting on the financial side. Some of you may remember, well, Bill may remember that years ago, North Cook was in very shaky financial shape. And as were all the regional offices across the state. So this is with great pleasure to read. Highlights in the area of finances show we are
058in great standing, although some funding from ISBE and the Cook County Department of Public Health. no surprise there has been delayed. We are thrilled to share again that our five-year projection reflects a very positive cash flow and NCISC is proud to be the first ISC ROE that is the Intermediate Service Center and Regional Office of Education to receive a Moody's rating which has assisted us in securing investors for our debt certificates for the new facility that we're going to build. And a special thanks go to Allison and our whole team. So it's exciting times at North cook moving ahead with the new facilities. We have terminated. We are in the process of terminating the lease where we currently are so that we can move out on a timely basis when the new facility is ready.
059So, I'm just pleased to announce that to everybody. That's great. That's great news. Congratulations. There. All right, local government agencies, if anyone has updates, please remember to submit those for inclusion in the February agenda. And last but definitely not least, let's move on to the student representatives report. Dr. Connolly? Yeah, so this month, the student representatives... engaged in some surveying with their peers. If you remember back in October, I believe, our student representatives had a long line of questions when Dr. Childress presented our attendance data and had some really good questions about what we thought some of the reasons were that our attendance numbers might be a little low or that we were having some trouble with student attendance. And so with that, we decided to kind of reverse the question and see if we
060could get some insight from our student members and their peers about what were some of the motivators for students to consistently come to school. So with that setup, I'm going to turn it over to our student representatives who will talk a little bit about some of the questions that they ask their peers and some of the insights that we are starting to gain from those answers. So Alex, do you want to go first? So the updates for Cooper for January first was that girls volleyball is finally starting. Our variety show is coming up this Friday on the 16th. Wrestling has just begun and is off to a great season. Our Lighted Schoolhouse is coming up on January 30th, and our musical is also coming up, which is Legally Blonde Junior. So for the middle school
061motivation survey, on question five, kids at Cooper said they were most excited to come to school. because of time with their friends and hands-on or fun activities which was 42.2 to 20.2 percent of kids and then on question six kids at cooper said they felt okay and liked coming to school most days which was about 36.5 to 34.1 percent of kids and then um the updates from london for january where girls volleyball trials were last week And wrestling is finally moving smoothly with our first meet being next week against River Trails. Then one thing I want to add is why is all the cool construction happening when I leave the school? You are not the first eighth grader to ask that question over the past several years. And all I can say is sorry. And
062then for the Google form about student attendance. On question three, what makes a school day feel successful to you? Many students at London said having fun with friends. That was 59.3 students out of the 482 students that filled out the survey. And then the next thing they said was getting good grades. That was 57.5%. The lowest thing across all schools was feeling supported by parents, 15.1% for London. And then for question four, what are your top three things that motivate you to do your best at school? Out of the 482 people that filled out the survey at London, 73% of them said getting good grades and 59.5% of them said personal goals. And then 34.6% of them said encouragement from teachers. That was the lowest one out of all the options to choose from. Some
063of the updates from homes that were the... Girls and Boys Wrestling season just started so has Girls Volleyball. We also have our Spring Musical auditions coming up and today we just started a new Hall Pass program which is interesting. The question one in the survey was what are the top three reasons you come to school each day and some of the answers were seeing my friends i go to school because my family tells me to and learning new things the second question was which part of school which part of the school day do you enjoy the most and it was time with my friends and lunch can i ask what the new hall pass policy is I haven't completely understood it because I just learned it today. But the most part is we have to
064sign out on this form and it times us. And then we have to sort of use this time. And our teacher has to approve requests and appointments to go out of the classroom for basically anywhere. So it's an e-hall pass system. Someone was saying it just started piloting today in all three middle schools. And really, it's about trying to be able to protect instructional time and minimize disruptions in classrooms, because it is now more an automated process of requesting a hall pass, whether to go to the washroom or to the nurse's office or whatever the case may be, and can be done electronically as opposed to having to stop. instruction and kind of, you know, raise your hand and things of that nature. It also gives us the ability to really better track when our
065students are asking to leave class. I know that this might be a very hard thing to believe, but we do have some students that might try and seek a hall pass in every single class that they take on a particular day. And of course, not. everybody is going to know that that's happening so um you know sorry guys but you know we're going to try and make sure that people are staying in class and only leaving class when they absolutely need to it also gives us an opportunity to make sure that if we know that there are some students that may be shouldn't be meeting up in the hallway because they have some issues with each other, whatever the case may be, that they can't pre-plan to try and be able to do that. Not
066that that would ever happen, but it does. And so it just gives us an opportunity to really kind of, you know, really up the game as it relates to trying keeping kids in class, focused, and out of trouble. I have two questions. Number one, is this been introduced to Cooper in eighth grade because we never learned about it at least today? Are they still waiting to tell us about it? Well, your team might be getting ready to roll it out. I mean, it literally just started today. And so it might take a little while before it kind of gets through all grades. So it may very well be that the eighth grade team at Cooper decided that today wasn't the day they were going to get started with it. They may get started with it
067later. Um, or like tomorrow. So I don't know. That would be a good question to ask Mr. DeMuth. Um, but it's just getting started. Ah, sixth grade only a Cooper. See, there you go. Um, so, um, but it, it's rolling out for the other two grade levels at Cooper soon, or is it just piloting in sixth grade? Oh, okay. Okay. Got it. Okay. Well, there you go. So, um, Because again, as a pilot, we're trying it out. So, you know, each school made some decisions as to how they wanted to really try and dip their toes in the water on it. And then my second question is, though I understand the benefits of this, doesn't it partially overcomplicate things in some aspect? I'm going to be honest with you. Nope. In fact, it's going to
068make it a lot easier. Think about it this way. You are moving, as a middle school student, you are moving every 40 to 50 minutes, which kind of resets the clock. Your teachers have really no way to know the frequency at which some of their students are leaving class. This helps with that. This also establishes a record. We know... and we can point to when students are moving, where they're heading to. And that's really important, particularly when we're talking about maintaining student discipline, maintaining safety. So this is something that is really, I think, going to, and we'll see, because again, we're just trying it out, but other middle schools that have established this e-hall pass have seen really good results, particularly as it relates to students being in class, which is where we need you,
069and also less in terms of misbehavior, student conflict, things that we don't want you to have to be dealing with. So this is going to be a good thing, I think. I could real quick also the health and hygiene piece of it, you know, getting away from sharing an object that's passed around going to the bathroom. So, yeah. Yep. Yep. Yep. And communication has gone out to the parents. Yes, of the grades that are being piloted. So the parents are aware of of this fairly significant change and can be supportive of, you know, helping students understand. There's a time and a place you need to go to the bathroom to go to the bathroom, go to the bathroom. But there's a time and a place. to do that that doesn't disrupt instruction. Oh, sorry, one
070more question. Is there going to be a limit, like with the other passes, where you go into red passes after a certain while, or is it just you fill out the form? So each school is going to have their own procedures, right? So that is a really good question to ask Mr. DeMuth. I know specifically at London, they only allow like four people in each bathroom with the hall pass. So I want to go use the bathroom using the hall pass. And that's why five minutes until I had to go and I didn't have to use the bathroom anymore because I had to wait for at least one boy to leave the bathroom because there was already four of them. And if there's let's say the classrooms here in the bathrooms there, you can't go
071to like another bathroom across the school. You have to wait for that. bathroom to be empty or like have less than four boys until you can go so like i understand like all the benefits and everything but like from my perspective right now i don't really like it Didn't expect that you would. And I get it because you've also, you know, been exposed to it for all of about six hours. So give it a chance. And as those kind of questions and what ifs pop up, you know, having a conversation with Mrs. Netzel and, you know, things that are new are, you know, take a little while to. you know, maybe break through. But all in all, I think this is going to be something that is going to be an overall good thing for
072our middle school. Go ahead, Selma. My question was, is this going to be for the rest of the year or is just for a little while? Because students at homes were wondering that too. Yeah. So Mr. Franchitti, did you want to talk about that? Yeah. Looking at about eight weeks total for this. Yep. So that's the pilot. Now, what I will also say is that at the end of that eight weeks, if things are going really, really well and there's a system that that, you know, is starting to work and, you know, there's no reason why it would need to stop at that point. So it could very well be something that continues on for the remainder of the school year. OK, thanks, guys. Thank you for your report on on your findings on attendance
073and for your discussion about the new. Pass, we'll look forward to hearing more opinions about that as the pilot. Goes forward. Okay, we are coming to the end of our meeting. The next regular meeting of the board of education is scheduled for Thursday, February 19th, 2026 at 7. 0. P. M. We are going to go into closed session now and we will adjourn directly from closed. We will not return for any additional business. Be it resolved the board of education moves approves to recess the district 21, January 15th, 2026 regular board of education meeting. And convene and close session to discuss the appointment employment compensation, discipline, performance or dismissal of specific employees. Specific individuals who serve as independent contractors. In a park recreational or educational setting or specific volunteers of the public body or legal
074counsel for the public body, including hearing testimony. and a complaint lodged against an employee a specific individual who serves as an independent contractor in a park recreational or educational setting or a volunteer of the public body or against legal counsel for the public body to determine its validity to discuss the purchase or lease of real property for the use of the public body including meetings held for the purpose of discussing whether a particular parcel should be acquired i think i'm allergic to reading this for litigation purposes when an action against Affecting or on behalf of the particular public body has been filed and is pending before a quarter administrative tribunal or when the public body finds that an action is probable or imminent and to discuss the meeting the minutes of meetings lawfully closed under
075the open meetings act for purposes of semi annual review of the minutes. May I have a 2nd please? 2nd, doesn't it have to be repeated 3 times? 1st. I think if we repeat it 3 times, we summon something. All right, Jessica. Yes. Debbie. Yes. I vote yes. Arlen. Aye. Ileana. Yes. Bill. Yes. Angelica. Yes. Motion carries. Thank you. The board is now in closed session. No action will be taken during close and we will not be returning to open session. Thank you everyone for joining us tonight. Get home safely. Have a good weekend.