001It is 7:09 and I'm reconvening to open session and calling to order the regular board of education meeting for Indian Prairie School District 204 on Monday, October 6, 2025. Michelle, will you please call the role? >> Miss Donahghue >> here. >> Miss Grover >> here. >> Mr. Kurubis, >> here. >> Mr. Rising >> here. >> Miss Gent >> here. and Miss Demi >> present. >> We have a quorum. Miss Grover, will you lead us in the pledge? I >> aliance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. >> The next regular board meeting will be held on Monday, November 3rd. We have one board salute tonight, Miss Gent. >> District 204 director of innovation selected
002for National Digital Promise Collaborative. The board salutes IPD 204 director of innovation Brian Giovanini for being selected to represent district 204 and joining 61 other school districts in digital promises league learning collaboratives for 202526. Through this partnership, District 204 will engage in AI literacy, career readiness, and workforce development, and educator recruitment and retention collaboratives to share best practices, explore innovative solutions, and bring back strategies that will directly benefit our students, staff, and community. Congratulations, Brian. Let's all have an applause for this great accomplishment. All right. Next, we have our student representative report from Anushka Sundep from Wabanzi Valley High School. Hello everyone. It's a pleasure to be here. My name is Anushka Sandep and I am here today to represent Wanzi Valley High School. As a warrior, I am proud to report that our Wubanzi
003community continues to thrive and provide many outstanding experiences to our students. This past week, Wubanzi Valley celebrated their 50th homecoming. We themed the dance Golden Gala. The week began on Monday night with over 350 students participating in Dancing with the Warriors. Tuesday night, we saw some competitive powderpuff football with the junior team winning the championship over the seniors. And Wednesday night, we give our Warriors a day of rest for the busy weekend. Thursday, we had our variety show with over 20 acts and 250 students participating. This year, we held this outside on the south lawn because our auditorium is still being worked on. As a matter of fact, today in the auditorium was the first day of installing new chairs. Friday brought the alumni walk and this year we had over 150 alumni walking the
004halls and reminiscing about their days as a warrior. And Saturday was the big homecoming dance to finalize the week-long celebration. We had just under 2,000 students attend and they danced to music of a DJ that we flew from New York City. Since 2021, we have hosted our homecoming dances outside in front of the building and have enjoyed fantastic weather each year. Our year is off to a great start as we celebrate 50 years of tradition and excellence. At my next board report, I'll be able to provide exciting news about our athletics and activities. Go Warriors. >> Thank you. >> And additionally, Mr. Stip has provided us with alumni gifts that have been given to our alumni and they are from the oak that we have in our building. Thank you so much. >> Thank you
005so much. Okay, next up we have a spotlight on Longwood Elementary and it will be presented by Mike Zean and Jen Campen. >> Thank you, Dr. Tally, members of the board for welcoming us here tonight. I'm Mike, the principal at Longwood Elementary. >> And I'm Jen Campin. I'm the student services coordinator and a proud K12 graduate of district 204. Go Warriors. >> Uh this year we were extremely excited when the district's theme of belonging was announced uh for a couple reasons. One uh and most importantly, this was at the core of everything we had really been doing schoolwide uh dating back into the middle of last year, which meant we didn't have to change our own themes there. we just got to continue pushing that which was great. Um, our entire goal has been to
006find ways to strengthen relationships and connections to school specifically by intentionally planning everything that we do and making sure that we take the time really to pause and think about what we're doing because uh our ability to reflect on how we can control things and and make sure that we're improving each day for our students and their families was extremely important. Um, at the core of this focus is our SIP plan, specifically the goal of improving um, attendance for our students because if they're going to continue to grow as readers and with their ability to solve mathematical problems, they must first be at school. >> So, tonight we're really excited to be able to share about our community at Longwood and how they've really helped to shape and contribute to the success of our students
007and our school. Um during the 22 23 school year, many buildings across the district, including Longwood, had the opportunity to welcome families um to their school. And with this shift, um we acquired a really unique characteristic at Longwood that we're very proud of in that we became a true neighborhood school. All of our students at Longwood actually live within a mile and a half radius to our school and they're all walkers or car riders. We have no busing at Longwood, which is a unique characteristic of our school. So, as we work together to improve attendance opportunities um and ways to be able to get our students to school regularly on time, that was an important component that we wanted to consider with our attendance advisory group. Um and included the voices of our building staff,
008district staff, and most importantly our families in that attendance group as well. Um so from that work together, we created the idea of the walking bus. And the walking bus began last January. And if you remember last January how bitterly cold that it was, our walking bus was just getting started. Um so our group together um learned in our conversations that that mile and a half walk could be anywhere from 20 to 25 minutes for our littlest walkers, our littlest students in first and second grade. Um and snow or sunshine that that walk can be pretty long and parents understandably had concerns about their students navigating um the neighborhood independently. Um, so when that grown-up in their household or maybe older sibling was unavailable to accompany them to school that they wouldn't come to school
009necessarily. Um, so the idea of the walking bus allows our families to be able to send their students to school with the support of a Longwood staff member and walking them from the walk the walking bus stop directly to school. Um, currently we have, thankfully we have a little asterisk here because we actually added two more students over the weekend and one more this morning to our walking bus, but we currently have two stops running within um within the community. And for our students that participated last year, we saw really great success. So, we're really excited to be able to continue um the support for our families. For students who participated, we saw a 50% reduction on average in absences from fall to spring and a 75% reduction on average for those late arrivals. And
010then once students were at school, our focus has been on considering different ways to engage and connect with our families. Um, in our free time, Mrs. campaign and I have created a podcast driven by the Longwood Pledge, which you can find on our website, uh where we've incorporated voices from our staff, our students, and our parents in discussions related to how school should make you feel, what kindness and respect look like at Longwood, and how hard work is, a willingness to face daily challenges while we grow as Lions. We had a very dedicated PTA last year that had um been around and worked through some of the challenges from COVID. Um and then this year we were able to extend all of their incredible work seamlessly into uh the work with an all new PTA
011board at the school. So before the year even began, uh we sat down with them and explored uh ways to use new alternating meeting times and formats to incorporated um snack times and stay after school and play times for our families uh right after dismissal and before a meeting. And the results have been immediate. Um at the first meeting of the year, we had our entire field and blacktop area filled with school community members. at the first stay andplay meeting. We had double the attendance of PTA meetings at the end of last school year. Our PTA board is also committed to investing in some equipment that has made their virtual attendance in meetings much more user friendly allowing families to join easier especially with their busy schedules. So I think the first day and play
012meeting we had uh last year on average there was probably about nine or 10 families present at meetings. This year we had 20ome people present in person and another 20 present online at our first meeting. So it was it was really good to see. >> So we wanted to continue that flexible planning and thinking about what family involvement looks like during the school day. In addition to our kind of seasonal classroom parties, we also wanted to think about how we can invite our families to be part of um our school day and the things that we do and enjoy each day. Um I know that other school teams have had the opportunity to share about their soft start routine at the beginning of the school day. We really love that at Longwood. Um and we've
013also turned that into a family event as well. So in September we hosted our first stay and play um where our families have the opportunity to be a part of that strong start to students day and enjoy time with their student while they enjoy breakfast, enjoy some time to play, connect with other students within their child's classroom and community members as well. Um, we're really proud that we had 113 family members join us for our very first day in play and that they were able to make that time for the first 25 minutes of our day to just hang out with us and enjoy some time in their child's classroom. Another important event that we really love at Longwood is our lunch with the Lions event um where our families enjoy lunch and recess with
014their student. and it's really created a great opportunity for our families to be able to enjoy um an important part of their child's day and be able to connect with their child's teacher um and members of their classroom as well. >> So this year it's really been a a very strong focus to connect our our families there and everyone within the Longwood school community is ready and willing and has been participating doing that work to make sure that our kids feel connected, supported and a part of the pride. Um, engagement is more than just membership on a PTA board or a PTA meeting. Belonging is more than just having an event at the school where you get some people to show up. It's what we have have started to strive to do every interaction of
015every day. And uh we're thankful for the opportunity to share that with you tonight >> and we appreciate you supporting our pride. >> Thank you very much for all of your work. it's so important to um drive that connection of the community to the schools and make um the students want to come into school every day. So, thank you so much for your work on that. >> One quick point I want to make is the uh the bus stops. That's the first I'm hearing of that and that's an incredibly creative idea. Um I think the students would would love it and I think it adds safety um and camaraderie and a lot of other things. Uh so that you know kudos to proposing that idea and supporting that that idea. I love it. Community outreach
016like uh President Donahghue mentioned is kind of a two-way street, right? You got to reach out and the community has got to reach back. And so to see the PTA involvement and the the lunch involvement, that's great. So you've provided a structure, but then the community has also stepped up saying we want to be involved, which is great to see. Thanks. >> Thank you so much. Thank you. Okay, it's now time for public comment and 60 minutes is allowed. Each person is limited to three minutes. When addressing the board, we ask that you respect the confidentiality and safety of our students and school district personnel. We also ask that those addressing the board be cognizant that this is an open meeting and is available to all age groups and as such ask that you consider
017who the audience members are this evening and keep comments age appropriate. Public comment represents the voice and opinion of the speaker. There will be no feedback from the board members during the meeting, but followup will be provided by an administrator as appropriate. Although this is not required, it is helpful for the board to know whether the comments and concerns we hear are being raised by residents. So, we ask that you state if you live in the district and if you currently have children in our schools. We have two speakers tonight. The first is Christina Garcia. My name is Christina Garcia. I've been a resident for this district for 17 years. I'm a parent of students attending our schools. One is a graduate of Still Middle School and currently attending Wabanzi Valley High School. My youngest
018is at Fiser. I'm addressing the board today because while I've seen some positive strides at Fiser, I believe a critical review of our disciplinary practices is necessary. Every member of this board needs to closely examine the restorative practices that the district champions on its website and consider how they can proactively implement it at Fiser. I'm particularly concerned because I have learned that Fiser has enforced a rigid zero tolerance policy. If one child touches another, even in situations involving bullying, the child who reacts automatically is assigned a one day in school suspension. This is a mandatory action reportedly applied regardless of the context and it does not align with the flexibility or discretion outlined in the middle school handbook. Furthermore, in the one specific instance shared with me by my child, the other student had a
019history of multiple suspensions and detentions. This issue is underscored by the current disciplinary data for Fiser. In 2024, Fiser has logged 240 disciplinary actions. Of those, 130 were in school suspensions and 110 were out of school suspensions. The total suspensions is significantly higher than any other middle school in our district. The boundary changes were purportedly enacted to achieve equity. The district must now live up to that promise of equity by dedicating more resources towards Fiser Middle School. To truly apply the principles of restorative practices, which focuses on growth and development rather than mere punishment, the school needs conflict management programs, programs for building resilience therapy dogs. These resources are essential to address the root causes of these behaviors we are seeing rather than in and out of school suspensions. The entire purpose of restorative practices
020is to help the children grow and develop through conflict resolution, not simply by penalizing them. The goal of education is knowledge, not action. Quote by Herbert Spencer. Will you take action? Thank you. >> Thank you. The next speaker is Alicia Smith. Hello, my name is Alicia Smith. I'm a graduate of Gregory Middle School and Wanzi Valley High School. I live in the Gomebert attendance area. My niece and nephew attend Gambert and my other nephew attends Fischer Middle School. 204 needs equity and having successful schools. Three 204 schools fall below the state average in state testing. Georgetown, Longwood, and McCarti. When the district designed the boundaries of Georgetown, it gave them a lowincome population of 63%. That is more than triple the district average of 21%. Longwood's low-income population is 58% which is almost triple the
021district average of 21%. Both schools low-income population percentages are also higher than the state average. Then the district created even more inequity by having three of its schools with the highest low-income percentages in the district feed into Fiser Middle School. School districts do not have to create inequitable schools that cannot meet the state testing averages. Neighborville 203's low-inccome average is 18% compared to 204's 21%. Neighborville 203 does not have a single school with a low-inccome average that is more than double the district average, let alone triple. As a result, every single school in Neighborville 203 is well above the state average in state testing. A 2016 study found that in almost all major cities, black and brown students are much more likely to attend schools where most of their peers are considered poor or lowincome.
022Researchers have found that the single most powerful predictor of racial gaps in educational achievement is the extent to which students attend schools surrounded by other low-income students. We should not be surprised at the racial gaps in the district or at Fiser Middle School when black and brown students are in schools with high low-income percentages. The time is now to fix systemic equities in our educational system. The needs and rights of children cannot wait. For a kindergarter at Georgetown, McCarti or Longwood, how many years of the same trend line? If this school board and administration are committed to equity, this segregation by income needs to be fixed. If Neighborville 203 can make sure that all of its students are attending successful schools, why can't 204? We deserve to be included in the district's educational excellence. We
023want equitable schools for Georgetown, Longwood, and McCarti. All of this information is available on the Illinois School Report Card online. Go online to the Illinois school report card and then type in the school district or school to see all of this information. Thank you. >> Thank you. We now move to our consent agenda and superintendent report. We will start with the superintendent report. Dr. Tally. >> Thank you, Miss Donahghue, members of the board of education, and the Indian Prairie community. I will start my comment sharing the latest results of our niche rankings that were recently published. Indian Prairie is ranked number nine in the state of Illinois, which is one step higher than we were last year. We are the highest ranked unit district in the state of Illinois. Nationally, we are ranked 36. However,
024we are the highest ranked school system of any district with 15,000 or more students. All three of our high schools are ranked within the top 25 um high schools in the state of Illinois. Of our middle schools, five of our middle schools were ranked within the top 25 in the state. Eight of our elementary schools are ranked within the top 25 within the state. We are very pleased with these results. These results are a testament to all of our staff, our parents, our volunteers, and our community. On Sunday, October 19th, are you ready board members? Many of us here tonight and across our district will be running or walking in the IPF annual 5K event. We have more than 235 people signed up to participate in the race. Congratulations to our top four schools for
025fundraising. Those schools are as follows. Cloud, Labanzi Valley High School, Springbrook, and Prairie Preschool. Cloud has raised almost $11,000. Wonzi um close to 8,500. Springbrook has approximately $4,000 and Prairie Preschool has approximately 3,500. To all runners and to those who have donated on their behalf, thank you. I do want to update all of you on our CARES clinic. Information I shared at the last meeting has changed. Our clinic locations will include Longwood, Georgetown, Granger, Welch, Na Valley, Matia Valley, and still middle schools. We will uh we were able to expand our offering based upon the funding. These clinics will start in November. To access these clinics, parents, students need to contact their professional school counselor or social workers in their building. Finally, parent teacher conferences will take place on October 20th. The portal to sign
026up for conferences open this morning. I'm certain there are many, many parents waiting at 6:00 am to sign up and will stay open to October 14th. Parent teacher conference are a great time to connect with your child's teachers. I hope all parents take the time to sign up and meet with their child's teachers. Miss Daniel, I'll turn it back to you. >> Thank you. I need a motion now for a consent agenda items D through J. I move that the board of education approve consent agenda items D through J as presented. >> Is there a second? Second. >> Any discussion? Okay. Michelle, will you please call the role? >> Miss Kent, >> yes. >> Mr. Kurubus, >> yes. >> Miss Donahghue, >> yes. >> Miss Grover, >> yes. >> Mr. Rising? >> Yes. >> And
027Miss Deming? >> I. >> The motion passes. Next, we will have a presentation from Mr. Rod Mack, Mr. William Gray regarding tech services. Good evening. Closer. There we go. Good evening. Um, thank you, President Donahghue, Mr. Dr. tally for this time to uh again update our tech services work for the year. Um currently it is just uh trying to do this with my paper. Uh it is just uh BJ Graham myself Mr. is not here this evening but uh he sends his his his wellw wishes again um our tech services align with the strategic plan alignment again uh we you'll you'll hear throughout this presentation our our investment in staff um listening to staff a lot of the changes and things that we have put in place in here are from our conversations and things
028that we have going on in the buildings um our work working with the uh facil FAC service team um and their master facility plan and us trying to not look at everything through two lenses but put it together and and and attack um you know the instructional areas that we're dealing with in the at the same time. Um, and then you'll also hear definitely about our operational efficiencies and how we consistently look to lower costs for the tech budget. Um, and still be able to provide all the services that we can and even add services at time. Always as a reminder, there are four large parts to the the tech services team. The server team, network, data and support team. Again, um without each of those parts, we would not be able to do the
029things that we do. Uh we are one of the larger district um departments. Again, we we out in every building all the time. Um and it really does uh make that connection and that sense of belonging for us as a department, but also the district. A few of the accomplishments. I'm not going to read through all these, but I'll highlight a few. Uh the first one there, the migration of our wide area network. Again, that's our connections to the to the buildings. Um BJ Gray was able to work with the department uh Illinois Department of Innovation and Technology. they call it their uh the do it connection. Um all of our WAN services except for I believe five five connections are still we're still paying for but the rest of them we were able to
030move to this and as part of an -ate um consortium in Illinois they take over that cost. Uh if you remember when we brought in Rival 5 phones we knew that in a year we would possibly be moving this. Uh, all in all, that's about a $280,000 savings to the district that we used to be able to add the Rival 5 phone system that added the safety and security features and all of those pieces that went with it. Another piece that uh we're highlighting is the the device rollout process that we implemented last year. Remember, we used to always do all elementary, we get new Chromebooks, and a year later it was all middle and then the next year it was high school and then there was a year off. Um, part of that is
031we try to stabilize the budget is, as you can imagine, the year you buy elementary, the the total is in, you know, 3.7 million a year. And then when you buy the middle school, it's less. When you buy the high school, it kind of rose in the middle. But we're always trying to find a way to even out that budget. Um, this new rollout plan, which last year added second, third, sixth, and eighth, uh, and ninth, I'm sorry. Um, this year and every year moving forward, we're adding second, sixth, and eighth. But it makes it a very stable cost expense. Uh it's it's now closer to the 2 point I think it's 2.2 or 2.5 million a year. But we can put that in a line item without always having to offset costs. It makes
032it easier to budget long term without the every you know a few years you're up 600,000, some you're down 600,000. Uh the other piece that we're going to talk about here is the cloud storage monitoring solution. Uh just to highlight that was in there. It was something we put in this summer and we'll talk a little bit about that here in another slide. Uh one new tool that we did add um this was something uh we've heard requests from board members uh about a solution like this. This is called securely classroom. Uh we've heard from many teacher groups throughout the years for a program like this. Um this again came to us as we were looking for a new filter um in in last year uh when our lighteed filter was up uh for a
033product that would replace the filter and we really kind of looked at what other products are out there. Securely classroom um is that monitoring tool that uh teachers have been asking for so that they can see and and help um not control the Chromebooks, but they can help utilize the the structures in place with Chromebooks easier in classrooms without having it constantly having to walk around and interfere and and see everything that's going on. This is one thing that's really familiar. This is what everybody thinks securely classroom is. If you're looking at again, a teacher could quickly look at this and see that most everybody's on task except for two kids are shopping for shoes. That's an actual image and I've hidden everybody's name so no one no one has to worry about that. But
034and I use that as a joke because this is not how we're really using the product. One part that we had both um Brian Giovanini the innovation side and our side as part of that is then it turns to a teacher sitting behind a computer just watching what kids are doing and that's not how we're utilizing securely classroom. we look at these images and think these are what we're really using it for. Um the the ability to do a push URL what what that is is that um a teacher can and this is the request at the younger levels the first grade, second grade, third grade, they might not be doing as much because you can imagine how long it takes eight-year-olds to open a Chromebook, log in, and then get to a certain website.
035You know, it's it's minutes sometimes. With a push URL in the settings that a teacher can use, they can actually push the URL to all the kids Chromebooks. they're all ready to go. It saves minutes of instructional time at the younger level. It's also something even even for high school level or middle school just to get everybody focused. A teacher can start a class and have those tabs open. Another thing they can do is they can do site locks where they can actually say we're going into class today before the class even starts. So it's not a teacher again sitting at a computer. They can say we're using these three resources. These are the only three sites you can go to today. You can have three tabs open and that's it. because I can tell
036you without it just about every other kid has YouTube music playing on the other tab or something else that and again a lot of students that's okay in instructional um or they need it to listen but this way you can keep you're really reducing the distractions and all of that for students they can chat with the student um you'll see a chat down there at the bottom it says this is not good use of your time let's just assume that was the kid um looking at the shoes this was a teacher who was working with a small group of kids in front of them so they're at a table with a small group they have their computer open to the side. You can't see the kids. You've all been in classrooms now. They're not all
037in desks all the time. Kids are on the floor. They're wherever they're they're working on their Chromebooks just to interrupt them and say something. You can't even see what they're doing if you're working with a small group. Teacher can reach out, type up. That's not a good use of your time. Maybe this was the kid that was buying the shoes and the kid says, I can't even read that from here. Sorry. >> I think he says, "I finished my work." And the teacher says, "You didn't even start it yet." I mean, so again, I mean, it's it's a really it's it's when it's used that way, it's really great. Um, they can actually share their screen. Another thing they can do in announcements and stuff like that. Again, I I often think I can go
038back and say, I'm a loud person. When I was a teacher, I could get everyone's attention fairly easily. But when you have kids who are really ingrained in doing something, even on a computer, not not doing their time bad, but you want to remind them of something, just freezing their screen. Well, then they're going to look around the room and say, "Oh, I need they need their attention." There's just so many little tiny tips and tricks that that came with this that really kind of answered that question of okay, this this is a product that we think we can use. Uh the teachers have been have been loving it. We started with a slow roll out. Um and with that slow roll out, we have um just those statistics there from just last week how
039much was being used. Um but we have about at any one time during the day when I look just to see what's going on still with just elementary and middle there's about a hundred sessions going at any one time. So, it's it's a tool that's getting use um and will continue to be utilized along with securely. Um another another tool that's going to actually be launched here very soon um is securely home. This is another request um listening to the community. We have every year we have requests from parents um they want to be able to control their students Chromebook from home a little differently. We never had the capability to do that with Lightseed the way that we wanted to be able to give a parent. we would help them and walk them through
040some systems they could put in their own house if they wanted to. But this new product we really think will help parents um that are looking for that uh a little bit of control. Uh again uh BJ and I can look we can see every Chromebook and when it's on and there are Chromebooks connected at one two in the morning. You parents are probably unaware maybe they're doing homework that would have been me one two in the morning. Um but this is the type of program that will help them. They there's just some screenshots there. They can schedule off times. They can set a bedtime for a kid. Um it they're very simple. You can see the screenshots are very simple to set up. They can check their online activity. They can get a report
041of what the student is doing to just kind of see, okay, they are actually doing their homework. They can set certain rules. If they had three kids, like in this example, they can set particular kids. So one kid really needs to stay off YouTube because they got to get you can make it just so that YouTube is blocked for that one student and not the others. It's really kind of a nice setting, especially people with multi-child. You're not setting it up for your house. It's for that person's use. They can pause the internet just for one. Sorry, Riley. You know, mom, dad turned off your your Chromebook for tonight because you forgot to clean your room. I don't know. Um but they're allowed to do that. It's just a simple toggle button. They can choose
042to get um notifications sent to them, flag notifications if there's certain searches that they're worried about or just reminders and notifications of what was done in the last couple days. Um but that was one nice product that we think we are launching that um emails will be or notification is going in the next the newsletters that are going home to parents and then parents will receive a welcome email the week of October 13th that uh the following week. U we are also handing out a flyer that will both introduce the new district 204 app from the communications team and securely home for parents that we'll be handing out a two-sided sheet of paper for everyone during conferences to really kind of encourage parents to do this. Um so we probably in the spring if we
043come back we'll be able to say how well how well it's being used. We should get some numbers and feedback on that. Uh the last product um that we talked about up there was that um managed methods I think I spoke this was the other bullet point the cloud security monitoring solution. Um managed methods is a product that um looks through all of our data and how everything is shared. Again, in Google, if you remember, we used to show the statistics, 30 million files in Google. Um, all of that type of information, uh, both by staff and students. What this product does is it actually scans all of the files and looks for information that we tell it to. It'll look for driver's license, credit card numbers, FURPA information. If if it's a list of
044a bunch of student names or student IDs, we can actually set limitations that say this cannot be shared out of district or it can only be shared out of district with people in special ed because a lot of times they will share those things with a co-op group. Uh we turned this on this summer and we've been slowly collecting all of the data on it um just to see what types of interactions we do. we were able to pull back right away um thousands of documents that were just shared externally out and again that was always the quick someone's on they're in a room with people and they're like I need to see that document they go into Google and they say just share anyone with the link because they think no one will find
045that link we've seen those links they're really long but still that opens us up so uh this solution runs in the background and does a constant monitoring and if you look at the Google tool trends now this is just from August 1st we've We already have 10 and a half million files already loaded. So again, we don't have the time or energy to sit and look at everything and make sure people aren't sharing things they're not supposed to. Um, but this product will allow us to to really rein in both Office 365 and Google. Um, and really that inadvertent sharing and anything that um, student information could get out. We've always talked there's there's really not hackers out there that log into a system and grab our information. It's someone inadvertently doing something and somebody
046stumbling upon it. This way, anything that we might have with, you know, could be in Google old shared drives from a long time ago with with a list of old passwords and stuff. And I'm not saying from tech, it could be something from a building. This would not allow those things to be shared even if they currently are. It would actually cut those. And the one really nice post with this little uh screen here at the bottom is again I said this is from the beginning of August have 122,000 posts in Google Classroom. only was 25. There was 25 days of school when I posted that. That's 4,800 posts on a daily basis in Google Classroom. So, it's a nice service. Um, one thing that we were going to talk about today, I again a
047little different. This is kind of different than when we normally do these uh presentations and talk about what we're what we have upcoming. This is uh we wanted to answer a little bit about the 12.1 million um capital dollars that were moved over. I thought the best way to do this is kind of take a look back and then a look forward. Um our technology budget, the operating budget or what we what we get every year in the um the ED fund is is approximately around $9.4 million. That's not what our spend is. Our technology spend in the from 21 to 2025, you can see those figures there. 2021 and 2022, we got capital dollars. They helped pay for that first phase of the smartboards. Um the first phase of the copier fleet copiers that
048we bought and the network switches. 22 and 23 we got additional um capital dollars to finish out the smartboards at the elementary level. And then that larger fleet at the middle and high school for the copers. And then in 23 24 was the uh wireless access work that we did. And again the that third area of the copers last year we didn't actually spend anything. If you remember a year ago when I did this, we were short about a million from our ask um that that it was. So, we really didn't do any large projects. Part of that could also be with the master facility plan coming and everything, we didn't know where things were going to be. So, we didn't really have any big projects. We still spent about the 9.4 million of our
049normal budget. Um part of that request for the 12.1 million taken out of uh fund balance for uh mainly for technology purchases. As you can see, um, in 2024, I think it was April, we presented the long-term budget. We also presented that to Matt all the way out to 2030. Um, those were the asks at that time, 12.8 million, 12.8, 11.6, 14.1, 12.3. Uh, the 28 29 is a large year because that's the year we have to replace the Chromebooks at the kindergarten and first grade that are in carts. That's kind of why it's a little bit off from the other ones. But, as you can see, we're always spending around that 11 to 12 million. If you remember from that 2024, which I know you all do, you're like, "Yeah, you said that really
050well." The the 3% the tech budgets normally between three and 4%. 3% of our budget is about 12 a.5 million. That is, you know, we're at the low end in the tech spend, but uh Matt has always been able to help us with the capital. Moving that 12.1 again will help this where these differences are that we wouldn't be able to cover. Um, part of that moving that 12.1 is to help keep a balanced budget. Our fund balance, our I'm sorry, our ed fund tech budget that we use every year is going to remain 9.4. It is not growing with CPI. It has not grown since 2021. So, we're looking out seven, eight years. Technically, the tech budget is still at 9.4, before, but because we have access to those capital dollars and capital spend,
051we're able to take care of probably most of what we have slated for those first three years to cover all of that. The really nice thing about moving it out of um the the budgeted dollar amount or the budgeted years is we can continue to work at a pace that we don't have to stop. We always have to spend the money before the May of the year and then we have to wait until July and get things delivered. you know, we're always working before and after things. This allows us to work on projects and move through and spend that 12.1. Also looking at where some of that spend in these next few years where some of the big work is happening at Wubanzi and at Nqua and then at Gregory and and Hill, some of
052the funds can come in for the tech stuff through the the um through the referendum dollars and won't have to be used from that 12.1. So, it really it does two things. It allows Matt to The tech budget's not going to go up, but we're still going to be able to um attack most of the things that we presented all the way out into that, you know, 28 29 year, 29 um 30 year. And again, we build in some escalators. We probably don't have them all covered. We, you know, it's they're they're pretty good estimates, but we think that should be able to help us looking forward just for this year. Um our capital funds, uh we purchased the firewalls this summer. Um, we got them installed early, but we didn't pay for them until
053this year, we did that as part of a contract agreement. Um, originally on this plan when we presented two years ago, the access point licensing is a few years out. This is again where we get creative. We've switched that because normally this was supposed to be the first installment of switches. Again, when I first walked in, we replaced every switch at once. Then we said, what we're going to do is once the new switch comes out, we're going to replace a third, a third, a third. So again, it stables that out. It allows us to take care of -ate dollars and stuff a little differently. The there's no new switch, meaning the type of switch that we have in installed now, that's the latest models that's available. So, there's no reason to buy just to
054get a new of the same model. So, we will wait for new new for that. So, we're going to switch around and get the access point licensing because that's a big ticket item. >> Two two years out, >> three years out. >> Uh 2028 is Yeah. So it it'll it'll cover us to cover some of those other things. And then the other big area in classroom needs again this the high school and middle school displays. Those are the two things that we the million that we that we asked last year and didn't get for. That's what those would have gone for. We also have the early childhood displays. Um and continuing with the small office displays. I I did the run once of the numbers uh how many small office displays there are in places
055that you might use small offices or instructional spaces across the district. It's 450 rooms. We don't think of that, but when we talk about those places need these small and they might be smaller 43 inch, but it's gotten to the point where everyone needs those types of devices. So, this is going to allow us to move at a at a nice pace and get those things in. One thing we probably did learn through some of this capital funds plan uh the using the capital funds through this um and and going with smart in those first few years is we're really trying to also stay um device agnostic. We need multiple touchscreens. Um again those smartboards will be due in the 28 29 probably because smart will stop supporting that OS and that system. But any
056TV that allows touch and we can put our own OS behind it. Um it allows us to to navigate that. So we're really looking at that as we roll out these uh high school, middle, and uh the early childhood displays. And then looking forward out just the next couple years. Those are some of the larger projects that we have going. Uh we have the SAN is up. You'll see that in a few minutes about how old that is. Um network access control is something we've been looking for for the last couple years. And then again updating the switches, access points, and continuing those display work just like we did with the elementary. It'll take a few years to get where we have new interactive displays. Anybody will be able to shoot up to them wirelessly.
057Um it'll be a real nice enhancement for the classrooms. Now, this is the part we've always seen, the our little colors. Again, most of those capital dollars cover kind of the red and the blue area, but we'll go through these four sections and again what we're what we have in place this year. >> Okay, good evening everyone. So, for the network infrastructure access, our current plans are the firewalls, which we actually got completed. So, we're just, you know, cleaning them up and getting rid of some old rules and stuff like that. Uh, we brought in a new filtering solution this year, um, which is securely. we went away from light speeded. Um, and we are currently working on our SIM sock that we brought in this summer. Um, a SIM sock or a SIM I
058should say is basically taking all our logs for our entire infrastructure and putting them into one place. This device then turns it around and takes raw logs and makes them usable for us to see what's going on in case of an attack and everything like that. The other piece that was added on there was the sock operation. And the sock operation, what that gives us is it gives us somebody looking over our shoulders 24/7 and uh looking for potential breaches or attacks or something like that uh during those off hours when we're not on site or holidays or weekends and things like that. and they'd go ahead and take action and shut things down before they get any any into any problems or anything like that. The nice thing with this uh SIM sock solution
059is we were able to uh eliminate three of our current security uh applications or devices that we had. So, this turned out to be a wash as far as the budget went and we get a lot more out of this than we've had in the past. So that that was a that was a win-win for us there. Um coming into the future, like Rod said, we are at the point where it's time to replace our SAN and our servers and uh finally looking into getting a network access control or a knack solution. >> Um >> Knack is probably the last big tool we need on on a network. Again, to remind you what a knack is, wherever there's network plugs in the in the district, you know, anyone could walk in and plug something in
060and they're on and they're on the network. This would stop anything that it doesn't recognize and say you need the right access to be plugged in manually or connecting the wireless. That's the the one tool that we're still waiting for. >> So, we can see what's going on on the network. We can see who's on the network. We can't automatically stop them. So again, this is one of those if somebody comes in at two in the morning, connects, we're then reliant on our SIM socks stopping them. But this would just put a hard we don't know, you get off our network. Um, so as you can see, our our life cycle for the network infrastructure equipment. Um, we're in good shape everywhere other than uh the storage area network and the servers, which is coming
061up this year. Um but now it's just going and starting the cycle of replacing to keep the budget down um and keep the life cycle within the years. >> Uh operationally uh we've talked about moving Google to Google um for email for quite a while. We we did that this summer started to move people. Currently we have 50 to 75 I don't remember the exact number but it's in it's in there. Uh people who volunteered to do this. We didn't force the first group. They volunteered to move to Google. Um uh it's uh we have a plan. We have how many buildings? >> So we have three buildings that want to go all in. Uh we're going to start our first one over Thanksgiving break just so that we can see how long it takes
062to convert an entire building and find out if there's any problems to get those kind of resolved before we continue with full built building in our uh migrations. Uh, one nice thing that we we figured out doing this again with the one year of planning to it, the team was able to move everything. Originally when we were planning this, it was let's move everybody's past five years. We'll keep everything else in the archive or they really don't need access to it. It really moves everything into Google, all their folders, everything the way it is, every email from 17 years ago if it was if it was on the email from back then. So, most people who've done it are like, good, I didn't they're really not missing anything. They're able to, you know, go back
063and recall all that. The other big operational system again was the securely and not just the classroom but all the other pieces. Securely home uh securely is also our self harm and monitoring tool that we use that's called securely aware. Um the uh on the instructional side they were using securely pass. That's how they're managing at the middle in the high school students leaving the classroom uh for bathroom breaks and stuff like that is now done through a computer. Um, so it times them. It can, you know, oh, BJ and Rod keep going to the bathroom at the same time every fifth period. We got to stop that. It actually gives them those kind of reports and things like that. Uh, so it's really kind of a nice tool. And again, securely came with about
064five or six products that we're using. Uh, we're also we have a um just some copy replacement based on volume. And again, that's uh some of the larger units uh just based on they're at that their uh their life cycle of clicks. And again, we don't want to get to the point if you let some of those things go too far, they then become where they're being repaired every Tuesday and Thursday and the school is frustrated that their copers aren't working. So, we're trying to stay ahead of that. Future again, we're looking for to move um storage to a cloud-based solution. Uh could be Google uh really is the one place we moved everyone's shared drives into Google. Uh we have a few of the buildings right now that are also moving to Office 365.
065So, we're looking at both of those. Um, we have the big fleet copier solution coming up and then we're going to continue looking at our solutions based evaluations. That's where we look at each product every year when it comes due or its contract is up and really say, is this the best product? Is there something better out there? Case in point, we did that with Lightseed and walked away not only saving $60,000 a year on what we were paying for something that only had two products, we've got a lot of products out of securely and we're saving money. That money was then able to be used for managed methods. It's it's continuing to do that as a deep dive every year. Uh this is normally be Brian's area, but um classroom instructional areas. Again, um
066he's actually started the early childhood display um upgrades. If you'll notice, I think when you notice the displays all over on rolling, all over around up here, those are all demo models that we're using. Everyone's like, why do we have an influx of TVs all of a sudden in the hallways? Because we're looking at a bunch of different models in different stands. Um we do have those for the middles and the high schools as well coming up. Uh we're looking at the small office um room displays. We'll have that full securely classroom products roll out. High school is the last level to be rolling out. They're going to be doing it uh during their training on the 20th, octo October 20th. So sometime in November that'll be a full roll. Um and we have our
067project lead the way lab updates coming. Um we do have a docking station refresh. It it seems so funny. It's such a small little thing, but they change too. They have little brains in them. And as we continue to update laptops, some of those so we always want to stay on top of that. Okay. And then going into safety and security, a lot of this stuff we've pretty much talked about throughout. Um, but by going out to bid on several of these solutions like the new firewalls, the new filtering, email security appliance, even our fishing simulation uh change. uh we were able to save a great deal of money by bringing in multi multiple vendors in and uh try to get the best bang for our buck pretty much that we were able to do
068bring in the manage methods for the cloud storage monitoring um and again with the whole SIM sock you know we were able to eliminate three products to get that and it gives us even more than what we currently had so again future planning we've got the knack solution and then the ex extension and appbased uh approval process. Uh what that is is um you know how Google likes to link your Google account to certain third party outside websites and if you're at home you could do whatever you want kind of thing. Well, we're bringing that back because some of these websites, you know, can get access to your data, your information, especially with the student data and stuff like that. So, we're trying to control, you know, and only allow the acceptable ones for that.
069>> Right now, it's I think it's over 2400. >> Yeah. >> Are in play in our And it's half of those are the ones that it says, "Can I use Google Drive?" Yeah. Can I have access to all of your files? Yeah. Can I add, delete, rename them? You people just go, "Yes, yes, yes." They don't even think about it. So, it really is, you know, kind of reigning that in and saying, "Which ones do we really need?" because it only takes one disgruntled employee at that place to, you know, delete your Google Drive. That could never happen. We back it up, but I'm just saying. >> Oh, that's it. Any questions? >> No. Great. >> I'm going to start with our student advisory board. Do you have any comments or questions about technology? >>
070You can come up here to the microphone. [Music] Hello. So, one of the things as we have seen today with securely I can definitely say that it has changed a lot of the digital environment at our high schools. So it uh controls pretty much every aspect of our students lives. And as I understand that you're saying it is to improve student engagement. So let's say that's true and it does improve student engagement. I've seen the opposite actually happen when implementing it at the high school. So an example of this is with the announcement of continuous monitoring. What a lot of thing like what students are end up doing is they actually bring their personal computer to school. they get scared that oh my teachers are going to monitor every single thing about what's happening. So
071I ended up bringing these personal laptops to school. And on these personal laptops, if you log in through your personal email, then none of the sites are blocked. None of um the resources that you wanted to use. So, for example, the push URL, the lock site, all those things that um are great resources teachers wouldn't be able to use anymore because they're on their personal laptop on their home account. So, this is more of a comment, not really a question. Is there any way that we would be able to consider that moving forward when we're actually implementing it at a larger scale with the teacher training? >> Is it is it more because we've had we've already met with two of the buildings um and their newspapers. Is it more that there's more blocked sites
072That is one thing. So with securely pass, I know um we were planning on talking about this too with um securely's new blocking blocking with with the new like filters that they have for block sites. There are so many more sites that we can't access. I know even today we were trying to look at the board docs for um I on the IPSD website and that too was blocked. So there are obviously like a lot of issues with that. Even I know my UC application that was blocked. So people bring their home computers number one to deal with that. Number two because they're scared oh my teachers are going to look at every single thing even if I don't do something wrong they'll see oh maybe she copy pasted something. So I know at least
073in the English department what a lot of teachers are doing is saying like oh I can see how many times you copy pasted on your Google doc. So if you have any copy paste on your Google doc at all then we're going to um we're going to like look more into it this and that. So, what students end up doing is they'll use your home computer um and then there's no monitoring monitoring at all and I feel like that just worsens the situation. >> Yeah. I don't I don't know how they're seeing the copy paste in Google. >> I think that's done through actually Google is Google. >> Either way, uh we we do know one thing that we noticed um at the beginning of this too is we we blocked I think it's 18
074categories. Mhm. >> It was the same 18 categories in Lightseed that are being blocked in securely. What we have found out here in these first few weeks is that the companies rate the sites differently. >> So what might be an okay site in Lightseed wasn't here. You can still request any site to get unblocked. All you have to do is go to the support center. anyone can. >> And the nice thing with classroom is the teacher, even if your site is blocked, your teacher can overwrite our security policies and make that site allowable. >> Is there any way from a more I guess district approach that we would be able to make those same block sites um similar to what was there last year? because reportering it reporting it to the support team having your
075teacher do it like that does take time out of your class and I feel like it just lowers student engagement because if someone does want to do something on a block site I know the example of playing games was used before they're going to be able to find a way to play games regardless of whether that one particular site is blocked or not. So having it such like a stringent policy on all of these websites have to be blocked. Um I I feel like only decreases the amount of student engagement that we end up having. >> Yeah, I can appreciate that. And again, I can't we copied everything that came out of the one into the other. >> Yeah, >> it's just not treating them the same. And that's why we're trying to catch these
076ones that are sneaking through. We've we've heard from multiple people that >> Yeah. you know, it's a site on Aboriginal birds or something like that. We're like, you know, we can't figure out why that one's blocked either. And we have to actually look at what securely categorizes it at and the other one does. And we have to send that to securely. And the only way we can get that is if someone tells us. So at a systemic level there would be no way to as like I guess pick apart certain categories or like change the >> I mean really the the categories that we are blocking basically are >> malicious categories, adult site categories. >> We are I mean everything else is pretty much open. >> Okay. >> The only thing that I think that
077a lot of this is falling on that I see a lot of this falling on is the uncatategorized kit, >> right? and that's where a site pops up securely hasn't had time to evaluate that site and they rank it as uncatategorized and that's where um that's where a lot of these malicious sites sit. >> Okay. >> So it it is one of these that I mean Rod and I come from a place where we've been it's it's always been loose. >> Less is more. Go and see it. We just got to keep you out of the adult sites. We got to keep you out of the malicious sites with the um with the viruses and malware and stuff like that. And that's pretty much how we like to do it. >> Unfortunately, there are a
078lot of these sites that are getting caught as uncatategorized. We do meet with securely every two weeks. We will definitely bring this up to them >> and let them know that, hey, is there any way we can, you know, speed this along or you guys figure out what these sites are? Um because yes, we do we do see the good sites that are being blocked. Board docs tonight. I was in there with you guys unblocking it for you. That that was seen as an unatategorized site for some reason. One thing told me it was educational and then when I went to look at the uh data, it said unatategorized. Soon as I saw that, I said allow and came down to see you guys and Right. Right. >> We were back up and everything like
079that. Um, so yes, I mean I get your frustration. It's frustration on us too, but we will we'll definitely bring it up and talk to securely about it. Uh, I think we meet next week with them, right? >> Yeah. Um, so we'll definitely bring it up, but yeah, I we apologize for that. And >> you're good. I know it's a new system, so it's it's new for everyone. >> Feel free to just put in any site and as long as it's not something way out there, we have no problem opening it up. >> Sounds good. Thank you. I appreciate it. >> Thanks. >> Thank you very much. >> All right, Mr. Rising. >> Oh, sorry. >> I do want to point out though about the the classroom. One thing we we didn't mention is those
080teachers only see what you're doing during that physical your physical period with them. when you're on holiday or you're at home at night, they can't see what's going on on your Chromebook. Now, the internet filters are always being logged. That's just un that's just the way it works. But nobody's actually watching what's going on at night or anything like that. I just wanted to point that out. >> Securely classroom can only work during the school hours. It will turn off at whatever the end of the minute is. it would kick everybody off whatever classes. >> And if it's a holiday or no school, >> yeah, they can't access it. >> We've we've got the calendar set that nobody can watch your Chromebook when you're not in the building. >> Okay. Um this is just a
081comment towards the securely home. So in securely home, parents can schedule offline times and pause internet access. As students homework and after school activities vary on a day-to-day basis, we believe that securely home could increase unnecessary stress and pressure on students to finish um by unrealistic time standards, jeopardize students independence and student respon individual responsibility. That's all. >> Thank you. >> I would go to your parents with that one. >> Well, thank you very much for those comments. Um Mr. Rising Um just I only have one thing and it's more of a comment but to the first students well the second students comments are concerning too but the you know as far I mean maybe we need to look at putting something out for the students so they understand what is being monitored and what
082isn't being monitored because clearly there's misinformation going around or fear on the students part and um you know and if students are bringing their own laptops and then once we install that network access control they're all going to be booted off anyway. So, it's just good to maybe be ahead of that or proactive to let them know like, hey, this is when it's monitored now. And let's be honest, the reality of teacher monitoring a student's stuff that got 150 students, chances are they're not looking at every what every single student's doing and they would have to do it during that class period anyway. So, it wouldn't even make sense, but it might not be a bad idea. Just a thought. Um the second one as far as the site access you know based on uncatategorized
083and stuff like that. I mean and you probably could talk securely about this. I mean maybe we could put in a process somehow that is easier for them for them to request access and then within 72 hours somebody could look at it at the network team and say okay does this pass mustered or not and you know but just a process that's easier for students to especially as we're working >> the same thing if there was an extension they could just click and say have it checked and it just kind of automatically reports that could be unblocked quickly but I'm not sure if they have that that was where my mind went to is something we'd be able to easily record that. >> And then my only comment on slide nine um where you were
084talking about the the budget and consistent budget. So I I went and looked at what a small business or actually we aren't considered small business. We're considered um bigger than a small business. But, uh, I was looking at for businesses our size as far as revenue goes. Um, on average, you said you were right on spot on. A business our size with our budget spends between three and 4%. Um, but just an FYI, that 3 or 4% would be about 14.5 million on average per year instead of the the 9.4 that we're spending. So, that was a plug for you guys um that we spend more, but I'm glad that we are making up some of that and and some of the money that we took out of the fund balance. So, that's the only
085thing I had. Thanks, >> Miss Gunce. >> Thank you both very much for that very comprehensive presentation. Um obviously with any new systems, especially how big Securely is, there's going to be, you know, some growing pains as we go. So, I very much appreciate the students comments. Um, I did piggybacking actually on the the second student's comment, I did wonder if for some reason a parent has decided, again, I don't know why they would, but if they did decide to limit um, you know, the time on it to a point that the kids aren't able to get their work done, is there a way to override parental controls or just have to talk to mom and dad? And >> I don't I don't know if we want to muddy in that one. That's Yeah, it's
086fair. >> Again, they're they sign in the agreement that they're >> they're allowed to use it at home under their parents discretion. So, it's this is we're finally giving tools back to the parents that they've asked for. It's >> Yes. Which I think is great. >> And and it's it's a it's a small number. Again, this was I wouldn't have bought an individual program that did this, but because it kind of came under the umbrella, it was a value ad. >> Nice. Yeah. A nice addition. Yeah. No, I completely agree. I think a lot of parents appreciate that too, feeling like they have a little more control over, you know, what their their children are viewing, working on, you know, and how late they're doing it. >> The ability just to set a bedtime. I
087mean, again, for for I set them for my own kids, and they know when it goes off, and it's a special request if they still have homework, but >> I'm the tech guy, and I've been doing that to them for since they were 10. So, it's >> That is smart, though. the procrastinating children, they do like to do their work at 1:00 a.m. Um, but I had just a couple questions. The the chats between the the staff and the students, are they saved anywhere? >> Everything is saved. >> Okay. And is that something a parent is able to access >> um >> without their child doing it for them? >> No, they'd have to go through us or or a building I don't even know if their building admin access sees that yet. I haven't
088logged in. >> Okay. >> As a building admin to see what what they They see that historical perspective. >> Yeah. Okay. No, that that makes sense. >> Every interaction when they log in and every site a kid goes to is tracked, but that's the filters always did that. It always did that. This isn't anything new. Yeah. >> It just puts it in a per this class period, who was on task, who was off task. >> And we're really kind of pushing with the staff more the the settings from the front end of >> limit to three tabs and these two sites only. And that >> because if you ever walk by, some kids will have 30 tabs open. you don't know, you know, they just click into a different one. It's it's and again, they
089don't also have to do it, you know, >> right? >> Teacher can ignore it for a class period. It's >> Yeah, that is nice though, giving giving more power to not just the parents but the staff as well. So, no, I really appreciate that. Um, and then I just had a question and I'm sorry if this was addressed last year, um, and I'm asking it again, but is all printing done at this point in district or do we still use the district print center for anything? like the 203. >> I just sent that. >> I think it was like 95. >> I didn't listen. >> It was a lot. There was very the uh the the one big thing that was still going was the uh binder binding books. Those are all now inhouse. Great.
090So, it really only be special sized things or special paper or something like that. There is >> it is a very small percentage compared to last year we were probably at the 90%. we were probably closer to 95 to 98. >> Okay. >> Because we took all those big booklet things and part of it was the team was learning how to do those things. Now they have three of them that work the the clerks work 12 months a year now. So they're able to handle some of those really big projects that have the binding and all that kind of stuff. Before it was just an we're not going to get to this while we're also serving our own building, >> right? >> Um yeah, most I I would say >> a very very small amount.
091I couldn't tell you exactly. I can I I'll let you know once Brian comes back. We'll figure out. >> Yes. Now, the former PTA president in me, you know, really that's one of the things that I focus on, too, because that is honestly one of those things you don't think about a lot, but it makes such a difference when you're able to just get it all done here in district. So, thank you, Miss Dunning. I appreciate um one of the uh the questions that I had sent over you addressed so specifically. So I really appreciate that. Uh just that the explanation regarding the budget and I had just asked about a little bit of the and I and because I I so appreciate the fidious that you know how fidious you are about ensuring that
092we're getting taken care of what we need to but there wasn't there's not a great variation but I had just wondered about a couple of those years. Um, but that explanation was so on target and it makes so much sense to have everything much more uh able to see with to that expectation be able to be uh the same each year around the same each year. So I appreciate that. >> Thank you. Um the let's see and just backing up. Uh there's not anything that you see with us doing that. There's not anything that you're seeing that we're missing being able to do um based on the usual 9.4. But with the additional coming, you're not seeing anything that we're missing being able to >> uh No, I I again, I think the displays were
093the big things that that we that we consciously said we don't need because again, there's still projectors in every room. They could just replace a bulb. If a projector went, we could replace that. It it's it's upgrading to the the the touch or again going to flat panels in the rooms. It doesn't just get you a flat panel that's brighter and and better resolution than most projectors can get. It might be a smaller of an image, but because it's more crisp, but we also get sound out of that. You you get ability to do touch on and things like those. We're probably off a year or two of when we originally were going to start that. Um, we've been slowly dropping them in in the where we can, but it's not it's not large enough
094that even the building probably knows they have 10 new ones in their building because it's in in a small select area that that we were able to move some in. But this also not being tied to a a school year budget, we'll be able to go, let's do this wing, then this how fast that wing goes, how fast the next wing goes. Um, part of that is also working with the facility team again where we plan together. They're very busy with the facility planning and all of that. The things need to be mounted or are they on carts. You know, there's we can only go as fast. We don't want 20 of them sitting on floors where we can't get them up on the walls at time, too. So, um I I I think if
095anything, we're just probably a little behind on the refresh of those. And it really is a refresh of projection just to a different model. >> Okay. >> Is probably where we're at. But no, I I don't think there's anything that we're drastically missing. Okay. >> I just think having again the ability people are so used to now just you know I don't even know how my kids do it at home they just shoot their phone up to the TV you know and it's like students can't really put their Chromebook up unless they go and connect and these new models they will be able to a teacher will be able to say show us what you're doing you know and it would be able to switch up and then the teacher come back and >> those
096types of things are are where we're just missing some things that everyone does >> at their home all the time we're just not there yet >> okay um securely at home is that K through 12 or preschool K through 12. >> It'll go K12. Yeah. Uh preschool, they don't take the K1 doesn't even take the Chromebooks home. So, it's really irrelevant to >> Okay. So, really 2 through 12. Okay. Perfect. Um and then the last thing that I had, last question that I had, um the SIM sock. So, you mentioned that um we moved we're able to move things into one area and I just don't understand it but I I just wanted to know is there anything um with concerns with dispersion with everything being as far as you described it being into one
097place is there any concern with >> so the the logs basically it's raw data raw logs that let's say for instance your firewall switches, um the email filtering solution, um our um our EDR or our virus scan that sits on the computers and stuff like that. All that stuff is has the logs in its individual place. >> Okay? If we're ever under attack or in a breach or something like that, we would literally have to go to each one of these spots to try to identify where it's coming from or and trace it back across. This system brings it all into one and gives us the warnings ahead of time. Hey, there's something going on. There's a lot of data flowing here. Check it out. It's coming through here and here and here. it it's
098a very nice piece of uh technology and um it was one of the things that we were missing and >> okay >> we were able to get it for the price of removing three security pieces um and it gave us even more which was which was a no-brainer. So you you definitely helped elevate my lack of understanding because I'm thinking, "Oh my gosh, we don't have dispersion here." You know, everything's housed under one, but that >> Yeah, it's it's so it's it's like a one-stop shop. the data still lives over at these other systems, but it's one place that we can look at and, you know, and let's say for some reason something gets in over our head and we have to call in a a professional or something, >> it's all right there for
099them to see. But the nice piece is is on top of that SIM, the company also gave us their security operations center, which is watching this device >> and they can take action 24/7 if something if they don't like something. We we get a lot of benefits being Indian Prairie School District. I I think that a lot of districts don't. They they want us and they're going to because then they can put us in a flyer and I'm being honest. They can Indian Prairie's using it. Oh, it's again same thing with Securely. We We got it at at a heck of a rate compared to some of the comparative ones around here that I know are using it. And I'm not telling them what I'm paying, but they want they they want our name as
100well. They really do. It's it's so we get those someone trying to break into the education sphere. I'll give you a SIM sock because I want 10 more districts in this area. They're not they didn't give it to us. That's not free. But you know, I mean that's they're we got the sock part added, you know, and that's a critical part that someone at 1 in the morning going there's something going on. I'm just going to pause this traffic and we'll deal with the school in the morning when they get there, but we're going to stop anything from happening. So yeah, like for instance, one of one of the nice alerts was um and we saw this early on. Um you know, and we wouldn't see this unless we actually went into Google admin and
101looked at alerts and stuff, but uh we were notified of a student logging in in Aurora and a student logging in in Russia at the same time. Same student >> right there that they sent us an email. They alerted us. Here's what we do. they shut down the student right there. It was the summer so nobody was really affected by it. But it's things like that or you know we get logs of uh somebody is sharing somebody's social security number out to uh somewhere else out there. It's stuff like that that you know gives us the ability to shut down things or um I'm trying to think we had uh you know we're seeing an increase in this server's activity. something's going on there. Turned out it was nothing. But it's just those alerts that
102if we're not available or it's a holiday or a weekend or um we're sleeping at night. I mean, just to have them to be able to just come in and say, "All right, this doesn't look right. We're shutting it down." >> Thank you. I appreciate it. >> Yeah, >> Miss Grover. So, I want to echo Miss Gensa's appreciation for this comprehensive report. Um, having a high schooler, I understand the frustration the first student was talking about. My question was BJ, you mentioned you were able to bypass the board docs. So, does that mean now for everyone boards students is available or Okay, great. So um you had mentioned also in a question I had asked that the teachers can temporarily bypass. So what do you mean by temporarily? Can they if I if the teacher
103bypasses one time is it forever just like >> do uh it will just be for that class period but then we're trying to find a way that we can track that site to get it unblocked if it needs to be. Um case in point teacher finds a site the night before and the teacher filter it's working fine. Well it's a great site. I can't wait to use it tomorrow morning. What used to happen last year is they would come in and tell every kid to go to this site and then it's blocked. You know, the kids start yelling out it's blocked. What a teacher can do with the push URL is if they use the push URL, it overrides the filter just for that class period. But then they have time to report it and
104say now we can unblock it for later that day. But at least it doesn't stop that immediate I was going to use this this morning and the filter blocked it. It will allow if they use the function of push URL through securely which is push YouTube.com to these kids would unblock YouTube.com for the whole class for that time. YouTube's not blocked. I was just using example. >> Right. So, so students can get ahead of it like if there certain sites that students get their research from or whatever. They can like give all those to the teachers and then it can be unblocked forever if they push it to you guys. >> Correct. Yeah. We think that or the student can even put it in themselves into that into the system. Um, and we we've we've
105done it both ways. If it comes from a teacher or if it comes through a student, we look at the site really quick and we're usually we're probably faster than if we were to ask uh securely to look at this URL. I mean, we have guys watching help desk uh all day long and when they pop in, we try to jump on them right away. So we leave the window open and can just add the the site and quickly go. >> Does something pop up that says like blocked call this number like do you guys is that pop like how would the student know to go? >> So we used to have one where it was blocked and email this location um and uh the well the problem with that was is if somebody wasn't
106watching that email it wasn't getting resolved. With the help desk system there's multiple people watching it. So if somebody's out in the middle of fixing something and a ticket comes in, they can go ahead and release that site right then and there as opposed to you're on email, but oh, we have an emergency over here, so I'm over here. So that email is not getting answered at all. >> So I guess I I'm I'm still unsure. Is there something that alerts a student where it tells them it's a blocked page? I don't I don't know if there's a redirect on that block page, but they get a thing that says this page is >> I can't remember what it looks like, but it says this page is blocked. Okay. >> Contact your IT supervisor. I
107don't remember what it said. It says something like that. Yeah. >> Okay. >> I thought you were asking if we got alerted. I'm sorry. >> No, no. I just didn't know if the student knew where to go. Like it came, you know, call >> if we can add a link to that that takes him to the support. I mean that I'll have to look at that and see if that's possible. >> Okay. Thank you, >> Mr. Kurubus. >> I really appreciate this slide nine. So, I I recall kind of uh pushing for it over the years and having the numbers up there, especially when we did the the $12 million transfer. Um, you know, we get the buzz budget presentation as a whole for the district, but then we're hearing from technology. Let's hear about
108your budget as well. So, this was very informative for me. Excuse me. >> Yeah, >> he entered a block site. I just released it. Um, so this is a great presentation. I I include the numbers. Let's keep doing that on a regular basis. And if we do have a presentation on transportation or food service, I think including that part of the budget in the presentation would be beneficial. Um, a lot of what I'm hearing here, um, on some of the questions from board member Grover and the student is falls to in a category of kind of professional or student development like um, we're we're stubbing our toe um, on some of these things. Um but maybe we need to be more deliberate about informing the teachers and the students by you know you might use
109Google um regularly but this is how we're going to operate in Google and this is how securely operates and this is kind of uh you know the 90% or 80% of how your use is going to go and then the 20% is getting blocked and having problems. Um, so I I'd like to um, you know, direct or hear more about kind of the professional development, student development aspect of it. Um, and then the it got me thinking and looking at the presentation that this is kind of like the the iceberg graph where there's a part above the water and there's a part below the water and a part above the water is kind of the user interface, right? Like how do I use this in the classroom? how the students using the classroom, but then
110there's all of the stuff happening behind the scenes because the user is concerned about like, can I log in? Is it fast enough? You know, can I get to the sites I want? But then you're talking about, you know, the speeds and the and whatnot. So, that's the bottom of the iceberg. And so, it's it's very impressive. Um, and it's kind of mixed in because you're you're talking about um you know, how it impacts the classroom in some parts. it's kind of peppered in there, but then the vast majority of it is the stuff that's happening behind the scenes. So, it's very impressive to see. Ultimately, I kind of pass this through the lens, does does it help the teacher teach and the student learn? And and looking through that, the answer is easily yes.
111So, kudos. Good job, guys. >> So, thank you very much. It's always nice to hear about cost reduction and getting more functionality at the same time. So that was wonderful um to hear some of your stories about getting better pricing and getting a lot more um apps and tools out of it. Um I appreciate that. I think change is hard especially with technology and I mean look at our board had to switch from board docs to diligent and it's yes it's been you know every single board meeting we're still like I don't like that. It just the idea of moving to Google mail kind of freaked me out when you said that because I'm like oh I just I'm used to Outlook and you know so um you know I it's not something that I
112um I'm a technologist my background is you know technical but um I am someone that likes to do things a certain way and so I can see how when you introduce something that's a big change it does uh cause cause issues. I um a couple years ago spoke to Dr. Tally about something like securely because being a sub and watching some of the things that were going on in the classroom, it's like it would be nice to have something like that. Not and I'm glad you addressed this, not to be a teacher that sits up in the classroom and looks at the screen and go, "Oh, you're on the wrong site." But to help I mean some I love the idea like especially in elementary classes that we have these three tabs open and those
113are the three that you can be on because I often will see the kid will as soon as the teacher is not looking goes to their favorite tab of whatever you know math game they want to play or whatever and it's like I think this might help with that. Um, but I also do see that, you know, it's it's going to take some time to make sure everything is going smoothly, but it seems like a lot of powerful uses could be um done with this. Even today, I was at a high school and they were supposed to be doing earthquakes and as soon as I turned around, one kid's watching a football game on his thing and I'm like, "How does that happen?" I go, "That doesn't look like earthquakes." Okay. So, so I um
114I think it will be helpful. It will just take time to to be fully implemented. So, so thank you very much. And I know in the past it was a very expensive tool to kind of look at. So, um I'm glad we got better better pricing and things. So, um so that's it. So, thank you very much for all your work. >> Thank you. >> Everybody can fight Dr. Howard for who wants to go last to switch him to Gmail. [Laughter] >> Well, I think we waited till this because Dr. Tally threatened our jobs. [Laughter] >> I'm not changing. Not going to happen. >> All right. We will now have our presentation from Miss Carrie Beth Harry regarding human resources. Good evening board me. Good evening. Can you hear me? Good evening board members, Dr.
115Tally and the community. I am excited to be presenting to you tonight. Um and I'm grateful that I've been given the opportunity to share with you our annual HR updates. uh we share this information with you as it relates to board policies regarding employment and personnel as well as strategic plan priority too. I promise I don't have as many um acronyms as but just as excited about HR as they are uh with tech. So priority two of the strategic plan focuses on investment in staff. More specifically, uh, District 204 acknowledges that a culture of positive well-being is critical for all staff to deliver on student outcomes. Therefore, District 204 is committed to fostering strong connections to value staff and ensuring equity and elevation of voice. We're proud to provide examples of how our team has
116delivered on objectives one, two, and three of priority two of the strategic plan. I'll talk with you about professional learning opportunities, collaborative engagement with staff, and our recruitment successes. So many hears and associate it with either employee management or discipline. While those are components of an HR structure, we want the community to know that we are much more robust than that. What's important to us are the relationships that we've established with staff and administration. These relationships allow us to better serve the needs of the district. So, the word cloud that I provided to you simply illustrates the areas that define the district's HR team. We've often said that our job is to hire the best and most qualified staff to achieve our mission. The chart illustrates the percentage of staff in each employee category. Uh
117the our largest group is licensed educators and that's at 66% classified staff which is comprised of assistants um and secretaries at 26% non-bargaining staff which is made up of special education staff including occupational therapists, physical therapists, nurses as well as some district staff including HR, um the business and communication teams and the tech teams. That's all at 6% and administration at 2%. We continue to produce incredible results with fewer staff than our comparable districts. I'd like to highlight for you um some of our recruitment highlights. So, although this year's new hire class is smaller than it has been in the recent past, there's much to celebrate about our most recent recruiting season. On this slide, I just wanted to highlight for you. We hired 80 new educators over the summer, of which 10 were district
118204 alumni. We hired seven educators of color. And just u to give you some perspective, 60 60.4 60.4% 4% of the that new hire class was hired before July, which just means that we were out um and able to initiate contracts with staff um well before um the busy part of the summer. 66.2% have zero to three years of experience and 55.4% were in the bachelor's lane. Again, our commitment to fiscal responsibility. Um as we look at um where those new hires um landed in the classroom, 32.9 uh FTE were at the elementary level, 17.9 at the middle school level and 25.6 at the high school level. Uh 2.0 FTE or 2.2 FTE uh were in special education and are generally considered itinerant staff. The smaller cohort of our new hire class is due in
119part to lower turnover um and a lower retirement class this year. We do however anticipate being closer to our average hiring again over the next couple of years. So we do want to send a huge shout out and recognize and acknowledge the educators who have returned to District 204. Uh, additionally, we're proud that over 220 of our current licensed staff are 204 graduates. We are also very excited to share with you some updates on our grow your own teacher program. We're entering our fifth year of the grow your own teacher program um and have over 140 high school students participating in the program this year. were encouraged that in the last two years 74 seniors in the program committed to continuing in the field of education at their college or university. They were recognized with
120their peers in April and with you in May. The program provides authentic experiences for both our high school and middle school students. Um so I'd just like to explain a little bit about um the two programs. So the high school program um is made up of four authentic observations that they have throughout the school year. Each uh each quarter they um participate in an observation at a different grade level. Um so this past uh Wednesday, October 1st um was the first observation for the high school program this year and they swapped high schools. Um they also have been able to participate in an alumni panel. um and one of their observations included professional development. So they got an authentic professional learning opportunity um during the course of the year. We also were able to partner
121with some of the local colleges and universities um to create kind of a a career exploration experience for them. So they got exposure to talk to um university um program coordinators to learn a little bit more about the programs at their schools. Um at the middle school level, it's an after-school activity. It's called Teachers of Tomorrow. Um and is also very robust. We have approximately 160 students in the middle school program. Um which just reinforces um and it it is so encouraging because the strength that we have at the middle school program carries on into the high school program. Um so these activities through the grow your own teacher program directly relates to strategic plan objective three and strategy one. Our work on the portrait of an educator continues as shared with the board in
122April. The district's committee uh in collaboration with Battel for kids met last year to identify the essential qualities and competencies of our future educators. The committee was comprised of administrators, staff, community members, and students. The final product is displayed here uh serves as a guide and tool in our recruitment and retention processes. This directly relates to the strategic plan objective one strategy 2. So again, as um explained to the board in the spring, we have um three years of a growth plan with the um portrait of an educator um we wouldn't be as successful um as we are without the retention that we have. Our work in recruitment is only as successful um as the work that we do in our retention. So I'm excited to share that our overall retention rate is 94.7%. um
123and compared uh overall teacher retention rate compared to the um Illinois retention rate is significantly higher. So very um very excited about that. Uh we also met our board goal of retaining 98% of our excellent rated teachers. Um additionally we we recognized 428 individuals this year for their service milestones. um we celebrated years five through 35 um and were able to um acknowledge each of those in a different little way. I'd also like to share our appreciation for the collaborative relationship that we have with both of our unions and they're here tonight. So, um, the Indian Prairie Education Association and the Indian Prairie Classified Association led by Katie Pop and Liz Lanning, respectively. Thank you. We meet regularly with both unions to share, problem solve, understand, and build our relationships. We've expanded the content and
124scope of our IPA professional learning days based on the feedback and collaboration we have with the union um, and continue to work with the teachers union. These activities directly relate to objective one, strategy two, and objective two, strategy one. Finally, I'd like to share with you um an update on the HR and HR in the building initiative. The 2425 school year was the third full year of our HR in the building initiative and we continue to increase our exposure with all staff. Our main goal is to build relationships as stated earlier and this included one visit to each school um by the support team uh within our department. This allowed staff to put a face with a name and ask us questions. We also dedicated time to support staff at uh to support our staff
125at school assemblies, in classroom parties, and throughout the hallways at arrival and dismissal time. Our plan is to continue the HR in the building program this year and we look forward to seeing more staff. Uh we have also reviewed and invested in our formal communication with staff through the inside 204 newsletter. Um and we've done that by providing more relevant and robust content each month. Um again these activities directly relate to objective 2 strategy 2. So, a lot of work on the HR team, a lot of exciting work. Um, again, I'm grateful for the opportunity to share with you our update. Okay, about Miss Deming. >> Thank you so much. Uh, I really didn't have any questions. I just uh had one comment and that was just to reiterate uh on slide I have to
126look and see slide nine just the retention highlights that you um shared with us. just exemplary that uh we continue to see our teachers as well as our overall staff feel that we are a wonderful working environment and continue to want to come back and stay and be with us and uh especially as we look at our rates compared overall statewide. So um exemplary uh work that we're doing in uh in the district. So >> thanks Mr. Kubis. >> Slide four please. Um you made a a comment about how um the number of staff we have and kind of in relation to other district as well. But I just want to have confirmation that uh you know some districts have their bus drivers in house, their food service inhouse, um their custodial staff in house.
127Um but those aren't part of your department. You don't um they're not human resources. They're not staff under you, so to speak. Um because we're able to outsource that. So that kind of varies the uh you know the the pie so to speak. Some districts would have another chunk of the pie for transportation, right? And does that sound about right? >> Yep. >> Thanks. This is Grover. >> Thanks for the presentation. I love the grow your own program. Uh question. It's been five years so that first class has graduated from college. Have we um do we have data or have we do we know those that first class that graduated college have they become teachers or whether the grow program helped them in college or any data we have on that? >> Yeah, so this
128this is the the fifth year. So the very first year of the cohort are seniors in college and we are um anticipating that we'll be able to bring some back as student teachers and then um potentially as staff in the district. So, I don't have total numbers of the um students that were in the program that have actually continued on and are completing their degree and education, but we'll have a better sense of that at the end of this year because they will have completed um college at this time. >> Great. Thank you, >> Miss Gunce. Thank you very much for the wonderful presentation and for all that you do to maintain good open relationships with the staff. I think we can all agree that you know as Dr. Tally was talking about our niche
129ratings rankings that has everything to do with the staff we have here and the fact that you work so well with the unions too. I just want to thank you first of all for all of the effort that you put in. Um, and I apologize I did not ask this question ahead of time. So, if you do not have the answer for me, that is okay. But, um, on the PI chart, uh, you know, we have 2% administration. Do we know on average in similar districts around us what their number is? I I don't. >> Okay. And again, I I'm so sorry I didn't ask that ahead of time, Carrie Beth. I It just it moved me while you were talking. So, I do know we have a leaner administration than most districts. Correct. >>
130Yeah. Our administration is one of the leanest um that you would find. >> Okay. >> But everything else is it's going to be about on par. >> Yeah. Okay. Thank you so much. Yeah. No, and I again just thank you for everything that you do, >> Mr. Rising. >> Um just two comments. Uh, first of all, thank you for sharing those middle school numbers with me with the grow your own because that's just super exciting. I mean, I we always hear about the high school stuff so much and, you know, get to see those students, but um the fact that we're engaging those students that teaching is a career and it can be such a rewarding career and getting them involved at that level, I just think that's wonderful. um the HR in the building.
131Um well, actually, let me preface the HR in the building. Our retention numbers are great and and I think we have a lot to be proud of there. Um but we also can never rest on our laurels, right? And and always have to continue to to to be better for our staff, for our classified and certified staff. Um, I love the idea of HR in the building because it it it shows to our staff that we're showing up and we want to listen to them and hear them and answer their questions. Um, because they often think we're in this administrative tower as HR, you know. So, I it's great that you're going in there. Uh, but I also recognize and realize that a large part of staff morale or teacher morale also happens with the
132building leader. So hopefully we're giving those building leaders those skills and those directions to I know they're having their staff meetings and stuff like that, but also engaging their staff one-on-one because I have just heard that that can make a huge difference to teacher morale, too. But I'm sure we're doing that and that's a whole separate presentation. But I just wanted to throw that out there. So, thank you. >> So, thank you. Several people brought up the importance of the retention that you've achieved. I mean, that's a um stellar result and really um says a lot of things about our district that people want to work here and the success that is driven out of our staff is um incredible. So, thank you so much for that. The also the relationship with our unions is
133incredibly important and something that you don't see across other other districts and you know keep continue your efforts there because that also is a significant importance to working as a smooth organization and alignment on vision and goals and um expectations. So on the U middle school um grow your own. I hadn't heard that before that that was a afterchool club. Is it at all of our middle schools or >> Yes. >> Oh that's quite interesting and fun to hear and I'm excited for what that might drive in the future too. So so thank you very much for all your work. Caribbe >> I just want to add one thing. Um, Julia Lavell, the first recipient of the Paul Gamboa Educational Scholarship, is a teacher with us. >> A nice Okay. And now, um, we have
134legislative advocacy and board of education update. Do we have any items? >> I just wanted to say one thing, um, madam president. So, we have received um the resolutions committee report for uh the statewide meeting um in November and this year uh delegates will vote on um ISB constitutional amendments, the election of officers and whether to adopt a um one proposed resolution. So, uh I think the um constitutional amendments um board member Rising has been very familiar with. Uh but I will share all of those um with the board in order to see if there are any comments, thoughts, and then I will request that at our November 3rd meeting that we look to come to a consensus on each of those areas that we will be addressing um in November. Okay. Any other items?
135Okay. I need a motion to adjurnn. >> Motion to adjurnn. >> Second. >> All in favor? I. Everyone else wants to stay. >> Sure.