001[DONAHUE] It is now 7:00 p.m and I'm reconvening to open session and calling to order the regular board of education meeting oops you're okay okay for Indian Prairie School District 204 on Monday April 4 2022. Jeannie will you please call the roll [DINA] Ms Jain [JAIN] Here [DINA] Ms Fosdick [DINA] Mr Karubas [KARUBAS] Here [DINA] Mr Rising [RISING] Here [DINA] Ms Demming [DINA] Ms Grover [DINA] Ms Donahue [DONAHUE] Here we have a quorum Mr Karubas will you lead us in the pledge [KARUBAS] Sure I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands one nation under God indivisible with liberty and justice for all [DONAHUE] Our next regular board meeting will be held on Monday April 18th and we have a couple of board salutes
002Ms Jain [JAIN] Congratulations to Waubonsie valley senior Jaisnav Rajesh who was awarded a prestigious national Coca-Cola Scholarship Coca-Cola Scholars are well-rounded bright students who not only excel academically but are also actively involved in their schools these leaders are passionate, serviceioriented, and demonstrate a sustained commitment to bettering their community Jaisnav was one out of total of 150 students in the nation in the nation selected and one out of 10 in Illinois the original applicant pool was over 68,000 congratulations to Jaisnav on this stellar achievement (applause) [DONAHUE] Mr Rising [RISING] The board salutes Waubonsie Valley science teacher Carl Armstrong for publishing a novel "They Left One Tree" the story takes place 500 years from now and describes what the future will look like after the effects of climate change Carl Armstrong was a semi-finalist for the 2021 Illinois manuscript
003contest and was awarded the 2022 Prism Prize for Climate Literature honorable mention in addition the cover of the book was designed by our teacher Molly Bozarth congratulations Carl (applause) [DONAHUE] next up is our student representative report by Saad Qureshi from Metea Valley High School [SAAD] Good evening everybody my name is Saad Qureshi and I'm the class of 2023 executive board representative from Metea Valley and I'm ecstatic absolutely ecstatic to be here with you all tonight first off Metea Valley had the opportunity to bring back some of the traditions of having a spring pep assembly the assembly contained acapella singing by our acapella groups Apollo and Muses a humorous duet acting from Metea Valley speech team members Lauren Verthein and Saish Pothina and the Orchesis partner dance that everyone seemed to enjoy the assembly also contained games
004hosted by the Mc;s such as blindfolded musical chairs, a balloon relay race, and a bachelorette game Metea Valley plans on starting a new tradition by having a farewell pep assembly for our seniors Metea Valley started a new tradition by hosting the first annual multicultural night the evening consisted of different religious groups and ethnic groups that came together and shared a little bit about their culture with others it truly was a great event that is bound to make a return next year Metea hosted the annual variety show the variety show is where students and staff members auditioned with various acts from performing mathematical magic to singing and dancing the staff and students performed later in the week for after school for everyone to enjoy and watch now for the athletic update boys volleyball is off to
005a great 6-1 start of a season can't wait to see the rest of the season both girls and boys track team have been placing very highly in every indoor meet they've attended girls badminton and boys tennis have been winning at all levels from singles to doubles both combined girls and boys lacrosse teams have been performing phenomenally so far within the season keep up the great work lastly our combined warriors hockey team won the state championship for a combined high school hockey congratulations once again to our Metea and Waubonsie athletes on another state championship that's all I have for the April board report thanks everyone and as always Go, Go Mustangs! [DONAHUE] Thank you (applause) [DONAHUE] It is now time for public comment 60 minutes is allowed for public comment and each person is limited to three
006minutes 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 as such ask that you consider who 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 follow-up may be provided by an administrator as appropriate we only have one speaker tonight and it is Jeff Wynn [DONAHUE] Welcome [JEFF] Thank you board thanks for all you guys do I know you don't get paid for this so I appreciate what you do my name is Jeff Wynn I'm here to speak out
007against the national sex education standards these standards were written by a non-profit advocacy group known as Future of Sex Education Initiative in partnership with Advocates for Youth, Answer Seekers, and with contributions from Gender Spectrum Human Rights campaign Planned Parenthood and others these are not educational standards written by educators but rather ideologies advocated by these extreme groups to push an agenda there are not there these groups advocate for the gender of your choice LGBTQ and abortion on demand they advocate for allowing young children to receive abortions, gender affirming therapies, puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones without their parents knowledge it's not for me to judge adults who want to live these lifestyles they have the free will to make their own choices in life but I take exception when they think it's okay to push these agendas on
008our young children they have no place in our public schools they can do very serious psychological damage to our children and physical damage can be irreversible transgender ideology in schools is psychological abuse that often leads to chemical castration, sterilization, and surgical mutilation we're seeing a substantial number of of teens who are coming out as as the opposite sex it's easy to understand why this happens they're looking for attention for one thing and for another they're in an environment where coming out as a trans can can all of a sudden give them popularity the goal of the National Sex Education Standards is to sexualize our children beginning in kindergarten through 12th grade they emphasize gender identity and sexual orientation this their instruction materials I've seen from other states who adopted these standards are pornographic and not
009at all age-appropriate the terms that that are in the standards are not age-appropriate and since we have one school a school student in here I won't go into that it's not medically accurate to teach children that there's many genders and that they can choose which one they want to be it's not medically accurate either to teach them that aborting a baby is not taking a life there's a heavy emphasis in high school on creating LGBTQ advocates out of our children they also promote abortion as being equal to parenting and adoption they want our teachers to circumvent the parents and provide addresses of groups that will provide puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones, and abortions keep in mind the learning standards that will be coming out later this year our voluntary request that is not being forced on
010the district [DINA] Ms Donahue speaker's time has ended [DONAHUE] Tthank you very much [JEFF] I'll just finish up here in closing I want to keep in mind I want you to keep in mind where these standards came from they're designed to sexualize our children corrupt the minds of our students corrupt the moral fabric of our community and promote an ideology that has no place in our culture thank you [DONAHUE] Thank you Mr Wynn [DONAHUE] Next we move to our consent agenda items and superintendent report uh we will now start with the superintendent report mr aquarius thank you um i uh dr taylor did uh prepare a report which i will deliver this evening miss donohue members of the board in the indian prairie community tonight unfortunately i must start off with sad news over spring break one
011of our students at gregory middle school shashir jaligama passed away on march 29th after a long fight with cancer we are saddened by the passing of shashir and send our consol condolences to his family and want his family to know we are thinking of them in this most difficult time i ask that we take a moment of silence right now to honor shashir thank you i also would like to provide you an update about a grant that was mentioned at the last board of education meeting this is the community partnership grant we applied for and titled our grant the parent education and community engagement peace of mind a grant that has a focus on mental health supports i'm at the last sport of education meeting dr taliad indicated that he we had received five hundred
012thousand for the next two years since that time our award has actually grown to 635 000 over the next two years um we are pleased with the additional funds and will work with our community partners on how we will spend the funding in future board meetings we will inform the public about the following items at the april 18th board meeting we will give a stem update at the may 2nd board meeting there will be a budget forecast as well as an i.t update and then on may 16th we will talk about our summer learning programs as well as all the grants that we have received to fully update the board on those as well as the community and then finally before we hear from mr ron johnson tonight about transportation dr talley would like to
013thank him and miss alicia clayton transportation coordinator for their work they have done to address the transportation issue related to grandfathering mr johnson and miss clayton are a team of two who work diligently with first student to route all of our buses across the district they have worked very hard and wants to thank them for their dedication and commitment to our goal of trying to provide transportation to all who requested it i will now turn the meeting back to miss donahue thank you next we move to our consent agenda items i need a motion for for approval of consent agenda items d through m i'm sorry i'll make a motion that the board of education approved consent agenda items d through m as presented second any discussion genie will you please call the roll mr
014rising yes mr kurubis yes ms jane yes miss donahue yes the motion passes now we will have a presentation from ron johnson regarding transportation for grandfathering of boundary changes good evening members of the board of education um i am joining ron tonight with our transportation update and as dr tally mentioned in his superintendent update we are presenting to update you on the status of providing transportation for students who elected the grandfathering option related to the school district boundary changes that go into effect next year ron and i also wanted to take this time tonight to cover a few other topics related to transportation uh you know transportation has come up sort of uh several times over the last couple years whether it's been as part of our cova mitigation strategies or or as we look
015to reopen reopen schools last year it's been part of our budget presentation i know it even got brought up a little bit at our special education update last month so we thought this was a good opportunity to in addition to covering the grandfathered student information just provide a transportation overview then an update on a few specific initiatives we're working on to both the board and the community so with that i'll start tonight just reminding the board in our community some of the fast facts associated with transportation so we rely on an outsourced transportation model relying on two main service providers to provide transportation for all students in the district the two companies we use are first student and rich lee first student is is one of if not the biggest provider nationwide and richly is
016also a big provider in the student transportation industry in total between the two providers we provide transportation to approximately 1700 students total miles traveled is about 3.6 million each year we've done that while maintaining a 94 percent on time um excuse me 94 percent of on time is has been our on time percentage this year um our annual budget for transportation is is about 22 million and that's split between both local and state funding sources on the consent agenda item just presented we did approve our transportation for the 22-23 school year um but we are happy to continue to partner with both the first student and rich lee as they have been valuable service providers for the district for many years the final piece i just want to mention that's not on the slide but
017we rely on what's known as a three-tiered system for providing transportation so we're using the same drivers and buses for high school as well as middle and elementary routes so those same buses are dropping off students at the high school returning to pick up and do a middle school drop off and then do an elementary drop off as well and that's really been one of the limiting factors and challenges is we've explored other opportunities or ideas both both in the past and as it came to some of the reopening as well some of the grandfathering conversations were going earlier using that three-tiered system does save us about 10 million dollars annually but again it does create challenges when we start talking about flexible start times at levels providing transportation for extracurricular activities or field trips
018or again even meeting other one-off needs throughout the district i just wanted to really quickly cover that as an illinois school district we have to fire file the illinois school code related to transportation eligibility that means that we provide transportation to all students who live greater than 1.5 miles away from their school of residence or if they're less than 1.5 miles away we evaluate if we provide transportation due to a serious hazard and that would be things like crossing route 59 or other busy roads crossing railroad traffic things like that if we do not follow these policies or provide transportation to students who maybe don't qualify under those that transportation is not eligible for that state reimbursement piece of the funding and so that's why it's been important to the district to be able to
019maintain the to maintain our transportation program that we follow these guidelines as we built our grandfathering program that we're presenting in a little more detail tonight we did make sure we prepared it in a way that keeps that transportation eligible for the transportation funding reimbursement from the state so finally before i turn it over to ron we have covered several times again as part of our budget and and otherwise the current driver staffing situation and there really was a driver shortage that existed pre-pandemic that the pandemics only increased so what we just wanted to show here is where we've been able to operate this year with about 246 drivers that's down 45 from where we were historically pre-pandemic when we were at 293 we really feel that 264 would be the ideal staffing level you
020know so that's a reduction of 30 that we've achieved over the past several years as a result of more efficient routing enhanced use of gps technology to route our buses and to be able to make adjustments in real time and then finally it does reflect a slight decrease in student enrollment as well so we've we've made some real good changes and ron and his team i do want to commend them for identifying where we were able to reduce drivers but we're still under the number that we need to optimally perform and as a result that that's created an environment where almost on a daily basis where we're rerouting drivers we're doing what we call sweeper routes where drivers are picking up um additional routes then then their schedule we're making last second changes um i
021don't know if ron or his team have slept past 5 a.m any day this school year because i think there's always a phone call or an email that they're dealing with along those lines so this driver staffing challenge it's been a challenge it's been a real challenge it as the sort of last part of the slide shows every time we add one or two drivers it seems like we also lose one or two um so even though we've added 72 drivers or received 72 applications this year that's net only a five increase by the time you factor in resignations natural turnover the lag it takes for for drivers to get certified and receive their their cdl and their school drivers license permits and things like that so this was the other limiting factor that we
022really had to work around as we evaluated our grandfathering options and then also as we look going forward with other transportation initiatives or challenges that we're facing so with that i'm going to turn it over to ron to specifically talk about our grandfathering plan for next year as well as one other initiative and then we'll talk at the end about some things we have hopefully on tap for next school year and beyond all right thank you matt good evening board members and any prairie community so before we were able to even look at the grandfathering transportation plan we needed to look at the new boundaries as they were approved earlier this year it's a complete redo of our routing scheme that has started over 20 years ago and just kept being manipulated and updated manipulated
023and updated over time once we got the files the shape files that had the new boundaries from rsp we then have to look in and look at the walking boundaries the hazard boundaries for each area for each school obviously that takes time it's a manual process that's where in mr ucaris's update when he recognized alicia she spends a lot of time on that um the the the new boundaries created some new hazard areas that we need to review um where they may need to cross various roadways that current students in the current school year don't need to do there's four middle schools that are affected nine elementary schools we completed the four middle schools and submitted those evaluations to the illinois department of transportation for their review and approval we're starting to receive those back
024as approved so that's a good thing means i did my job the right way and the nine elementary schools so we're we're about through two i'm on the third one right now submitted those two i dot and getting ready to submit the third and then we'll be completing the rest of them uh by the end of the school year um it is a lengthy process it's it's a lot of data you got to gather for not only the traffic but in field measurements in field observations you don't want to just look at google maps and say that's the environment that kids are going to be walking through at a specific time during the day so you go and look and then we're also looking at our current bus route paths looking at the optimization we're
025coming across uh various areas that we're on a we're stopping every other block which not only makes motorists travel general chad ross traveling motorists anxious and maybe looking at that red flashing stop iron as an inconvenience and maybe looking to remove a few stops off of our routes where instead of having 15 stops on a bus route we'll only have 10. that may mean you may have to walk a few houses further than you're currently walking to get to a bus stop but that's also allowing us the time to repair those routes to get them put together and when we talk about grandfathering what we're able to do for the students that have elected the grandfather by doing that we're also looking to keep the walk time the bus stops in that 10 to 15
026minute range no more than that and that's pretty much where we're at right now and then looking at the uh the age group as well elementary versus secondary as we discussed multiple times what the grandfathering plan was and who's eligible to be grandfathered rising fifth graders for elementary rising seventh and eighth graders for middle school and rising 10th 11th and 12th graders at the high school level when we presented and on february 8th we talked about what we were believed to be able to do there were some conversations at the end of that presentation some direction that as the elections came in what we can look at and what we can evaluate within the areas that were grandfather eligible some of that led to discussions on if we can't do it for all what are
027we able to do do we provide as much as we can and a lot of that came down to going back to the couple slides ago is we needed to redo and restart what we are going to be routing next school year and looking at the routing scheme and looking at the routing plan as those elections came in which is time right we needed more time we came up with a color coding to make it easy to understand green means go yellow means hold on we need to keep evaluating but it's close orange meant it's going to be problematic it's not a firm no yet and red was we there's absolutely no way we're able to do that and there were a few areas at the february presentation that met those that read in orange
028criteria that we were concerned with prior to receiving the numbers uh on that friday so we presented on the 8th we had 224 students that would be looking the route and these were the areas as of the elections came in there were only 48 students that elected the grandfather and we can do all 48 so we'll be able to provide transportation for all 48 students that elected the grandfather at those schools middle school we had a lot of red bigger areas bigger areas to cover looking at capacities on buses without redoing those boundaries and looking at the routes and assigning students great advancing our current student population into next year's boundaries into next year's routings what would that look like in the unknowns of how many we would have elected the grandfather along with those
029vehicle capacities there was a lot of red right so 797 students with the majority of them not being guaranteed transportation after the elections came in there was 294 and we can do them all so middle school and elementary we're good we'll be able to put them on existing capacities with the existing routings without adding any additional drivers or expense high school there's one area which is surrounding here in the meadow lakes area of where we're at right now there were 239 students that met the criteria that would grandfather into metea that we would not be able to provide transportation for on the february tran meeting that we discussed and what what that area was and what it looked like and the reasons being it wasn't that we had a high number of senior students that
030were able to drive themselves or you know get a ride with another friend it was it was split 80 80 80 pretty much it was pretty pretty even so we couldn't even say all right all seniors drive yourselves find a way but we can do it to the uh rising sophomores and juniors it wasn't there when we discussed this on the eighth of february after the elections came in uh dropped that number down to 176 which is a lot still it's it still gave us a problem it did take it away that we can continue to evaluate it put it into the orange phase it's not a definite no but we really needed to continue to build out the routes not only for metea valley but for neuqua and waubonsie looking at what routes would
031become available what drivers would be available and where those capacities would lie so what we did is we surveyed all 176 families and asked them to provide us how are you going to get your child to school next school year and the survey came in is they need transportation so it didn't really didn't really help me with my evaluation we did have about 50 parents not respond so you have to assume that they need transportation and really didn't want to tell us no because it's a yes so we assumed that they were and that led us to say okay let's move forward with the evaluation build out not only niko and waubonsie to see if we can meet the needs of metea but now we have to look at the middle schools to see if
032we can free up a driver there and create a two-tier which is a three-tier type of job day after we did that which was what takes a couple weeks still at the 176 but the good thing is is it will now change the green so for every student that elected to be uh grandfathered we'll be able to provide all transportation for all the students that elect the grandfather so that's a good thing right i mean we you know students that were unsure of how they were going to get to school will now have a way to get there through the grandfathering timeline which is a three year phase out any questions at this point before we move on mr rising anything just real quick i know that transportation that we pay for primarily is done
033by route that's how we pay for students um are we keeping the routes relatively the same and the reason i ask that is number one for cost but number two i want to understand that with this grandfather and is that still reimbursable by the state yeah so there's there's two questions there's one was mr krubis's uh feedback during the february presentation was we want to know the costs of this my goal is to not even with any other initiatives and not to increase costs of the district which is why we needed the time to evaluate when the elections came in this is not increasing if we didn't do grandfathering our costs would be the same we're putting on existing routes that are needing creating the capacities based on more efficient routings instead of running a
034route that conflicts where you only can have a two-tier now you can have a three-tier route which creates additional capacity that you can sweep through these areas so it's not that meadow lakes is going to have three dedicated buses there's probably going to be 10 buses run through this area that have capacities on them another piece of that is is at the beginning of startup every school year we do headcounts to make sure that the number of students that we assign are the ones are the numbers that are riding and we make adjustments even after the fact so if we have you know 60 students assigned to a bus route and every day there's only 30 we'll collapse that route and save that cost so those are routing efficiencies that we we do ongoing every
035week we look at those numbers and work with the high school administration team on those so this is not adding anything more than what we would need if we weren't doing grandfathering transportation and then matt the other piece the second piece is yes it is transportation eligible these are routes that meet the 1.5 mile criteria they'd be transportation eligible if they were assigned to those attendant centers regardless and i just add i mean that was sort of the parameters we started with um both from a cost standpoint but also practically speaking from the a driver availability standpoint we were not going to be in a position to add drivers or or or add add additional costs to provide this so yeah if you if you recall the slide that said we had 72 applications come
036in this year and we net five drivers we're getting the applications but there's fallout also with that so you're not you're not getting 72 behind the wheel unfortunately i wish we would but we're just not we're not seeing that that turn-in rate miss jane um thank you for all your work it's incredible uh what you guys have done in such a short amount of time once the routes are set is there any scenario where a route would be pulled meaning like let's say students aren't using that route do you re-evaluate that again um yeah there's constant ongoing evaluation which is comes to the head count so we assign a route so that the bus route is um full not at the stated manufacturer's capacity so we're not going to have 72 kids riding a route
037they just wouldn't fit already to be overcrowded so we try to set capacities between 50 and 60 for the elementary and between 40 and 50 for the middle and high school just due to size of students they're bigger at that level sometimes we'll try to squeeze a little bit more on there take the head counts and adjust but like i was saying earlier we will look at and work with the building administrative team and the driver if they're only they give us that feedback hey there's only 20 students riding and we see another three routes that have a capacity of 10 on them will collapse that route so it's not removing the service but the driver may look different as we make that adjustment and given what you've said about the driver shortage uh do
038you see anything changing like any movement nationwide or at the state level or at the local level that might so both at the federal and state level they've lessened some of the requirements to get a cdl so that's that's the biggest hurdle for our school bus drivers they have to get a full-blown cdl then they have to get the passenger endorsement then they also have to get the school bus endorsement so it's a lot of studying and testing studying and testing so there's fallout with that they get into and said this is not for me there's also a cdl industry that is struggling you got the amazons the fedex of the ups's that you're also competing with with that same cdl requirement so some of them see that there's just more upside more long-term career
039benefit there sometimes they use the school bus industry as a stepping stone or a stop gap before those openings open up so i don't see it getting any better within the next three to five years honestly i believe where we're at today is probably the same conversations we're going to have in the next five years that's that's my opinion based on what i see across the country and locally i mean we've benefited with the technology that we've put on the on the school buses with tyler drive that we can ask another driver to pick up a few stops with minimal impact right so we have where other school districts are saying we can't cover your route so that by us moving away from you know the stone age horse and buggy and getting in the
04021st century with technology on buses it's it's carried us through reopening our buildings last year covering the 30 40 driver shortage that we've seen at the beginning of the school year where some of the surrounding districts some of the other districts in the state and the nation aren't don't have that technology and they're struggling a little bit so it's definitely a recruitment tool look what we have they don't have it we definitely use it in some of the job fairs that we we attend and and i attend them with first student we host them ourselves there's there's one on good friday at waubonsie high school where they're doing a kind of like an easter extravaganza they're going to do an easter egg hunt do raffles and you can test drive a bus if you want
041to go out there i i know your substitute teaching but if you want to try maybe todd default can you know put some bumpers on the light poles or something yeah and we've also increased wages we have um so there's a a district that just passed the contract that raised their wage rate so now we're in discussion to make sure that we stay above that so that they're not uh taking some of our driver pull because it's not that there's like a an academy of school bus drivers that is turning out right um drivers right it's it's we're all looking at the same pond and fishing at the same pond hoping to get more fish and it's just not there so we gotta we gotta stay competitive with what what's going on around us as
042well as some of these other benefits like the technology on buses that help drivers and help the school districts and help parents which we're going to go through in a little bit thanks mr kuribus okay so um thank you for everything i know that four o'clock in the morning or whatever every day it just sounds crazy to me um and i thank you every day for doing that and i hope all the parents in our district also do the same um for the um proposed new bus routes i'm assuming some parents might see longer routes for their children than they currently experience right no we try to keep we so the 1.5 mile is about between walking to the bus stop and the bus rides about a half hour right so we try to stay
043within those guidelines going past a 20 to 25 minute bus ride really breaks the pairing up we can it it creates an additional driver needs so we have to create our routes to be within 15 to 20 22 minutes which 98 of them are once you get into the special education realm where you're routing those we have students going from north boundary to south boundary so a little bit different nothing should look different except for you may have to walk a couple extra steps to get to a bus stop it's it's really not changing that much yeah and i'll just add one of the benefits of the boundary adjustments we did is that for those regular education routes we got through the change in the boundaries we got rid of some of those longer routes
044that would that would be the challenges for us so uh so some of the the so we should see an overall improvement in the system as part of that boundary change um and that does to to ron's point allow us to to more efficiently route the buses and and again hopefully provide um the same level of service with the the same or less drivers yeah and and even the grandfathered students shouldn't see a big big increase from what they're currently seeing it should be very similar so are the grandfathered students on a separate bus from the no they're going to be intermingled so they may be picked up depending on if it's a high school student they could be picked up first sweep through the regular route within the attendance boundary that's assigned and then
045go so that can be a little bit longer once you get into how you pair your routes so if we have a student that lives down by station boulevard that goes to kendall and their grandfather into kendall we'll try to do a matia route that sweeps up through route 59 pick up that kid and then go to the rest of the kendall boundary so they won't see anything increase from what they see now so it's i wish it was we can just flip a light switch it's really address by address student by student roadway by roadway it's it's really building it out that way you know the 1270 1280 routes it's it's not just the software doesn't do it for you definitely i wish it would i wish but no yeah it looks incredibly complicated
046just thinking about it so thank you thank you for all of this work so all right so you have another topic to talk about yes so feels like ages ago three years ago we presented my stop and what my stop is it's a a parent app where they can log into a website or login download an app on their smartphone and see an eta when the bus is going to get to the bus stop okay so this is a lot of technology behind the scenes within our tech department they've really supported our servers and updating our servers i mean um it was added it was stan gorbachev and it was adam schmitz and then now it's rodney mack so there's been a lot of changes but the initiative in the the path has kind of
047stayed the same mentality has stayed the same there's been a few other initiatives like synergy and the student information system that we've tried to build some of the logins into um and then there was this you know pandemic that hit where we weren't running school buses so the thing was useless but uh we we've also if you remember three years ago we put a tyler drive on all the buses which saved us through the pandemic but it was all geared uh to be able to do this and provide a tool for the driver make the routes a little bit safer and give the district data when you talk about routing efficiencies we can look at gps routes and see how we're pairing and seeing does does our plan time match the actual time are they
048running into a delay on the ogden um front neck bridge which we that pairing just doesn't work they're never going to make it because that thing backs up in oswego every morning at seven o'clock right so that all this allows for us to get to this point we kind of stepped into it letting the drivers use it getting on all the vehicles giving our schools access to a system called arrival board which we'll talk about here in a second and then eventually starting a parent group a pilot group which allowed parents to use this software give us the feedback uh tell us what works tell us what doesn't work so we can go and troubleshoot which then we go sometimes back to our our tech services team and say hey are servers okay or is
049the is the api between us and tyler technologies working so we have you know michael barth and rodney and alfonso and robert iwataki i mean there's just a list goes on of people that behind the scenes are supporting this um we tried to align everything with this project if you recall and the bottom the bottom key is no cost appearance it's it's all built into the suite of routing software which is which we use versatrans uh which is the tylertech product and their flagship for routing it's built into the suite that we already had so this is just turning it on and then making sure that the data that was coming through is reliable that steph families weren't just gonna see nothing and then all of a sudden we have to set up a call
050center to answer where's the bus right wouldn't have worked that's what a tyler drive looks like on a bus and that's what the parent would see there's a system called a rival board so even if a parent says hey or school says hey ron bus hasn't arrived yet they can log into this and see this this has helped tremendously we gave access to this during this year's startup and schools didn't have to call our transportation support center to see where the bus is they were able to log in and see exactly oh it's right around the corner i don't need to call alicia ron doug's in there with dry erase boards mats in there i mean a lot of i mean that's not too many not too many people are not in that room at
051startup but it has gotten a lot easier and a lot better over the past few years there's not too many people in there that's a good thing these are some of the screenshots on the left side it's the app and on the right side is if you used a web browser if you had a computer or you know went through the web browser on your phone instead of the app but it's it's pretty reliable i mean it's it's within a minute from what what we're seeing obviously it's technology and three years ago that's exactly what mr crew just mentioned is you know tech the one certainty about technology is it can fail and yes we can lose the g we can lose a cell signal and the parent may not be able to see that
052there you'll see in a slide we're not going to provide life support this is a resource that you can use if it works and it's working it's it is good but yeah if a gps signal is lost you'll lose it so we're not going to hey we're not going to answer that in the moment this will not replace our existing procedures you still should be at the bus stop a minimum of five minutes prior to your arrival time you know like if i was in high school and if i was on a bus i can guarantee you i'd be watching this very closely and you know we're not gonna you know my luck i'd be chasing the bus because of the minute delay but we're not we don't want to create unsafe situations where you're
053chasing a bus missing a bus asking for a bus to come back which is creating other obstacles other issues because of a app and a piece of technology that can be used as a resource i don't see this being used every day all day every morning i see it being used when there's a snow storm it's raining outside do i have time i'm standing at the bus stop it's running late i can look up to see where it's at is it going to be here in five minutes 10 minutes and make decisions as i was saying we're not going to provide any live feedback first students not going to provide any live feedback or support so if it's not working we're going to we have a form that we've created that we use for the
054pilot group that we are going to use for our community and put that on our website that they can provide the feedback again a bus will come regardless if the app is working but we do want to see if it's if there's if there's something that we can troubleshoot so uh community members can just submit the feedback on the form we'll look at it and you know if there's something to fix we will if there's something that we need to replace we will if there's a training component with a driver not logging in correctly we can then just troubleshoot right so we're at the point where we can do a soft launch we've worked with our tech services team on how we can set up user access and combine families if you have a student
055at the middle school at the high school instead of having two separate logins you can log into one account there's going to be a method for that with looking at the security precautions that we were concerned about three years ago is if there's a no contact order a parent won't have access to both students in that situation in that situation you would have separate logins but there's going to be a way to request that online so that we can evaluate to make sure that those precautions are taking place it's unfortunately the two softwares with single sign-on just won't interact the way we thought and would like them to so it's not going to be done through single sign-on at this point rodney and his team are continuously looking at that and trying to build that
056in but that was some of the reluctancy to go out is to not create an additional login but we feel that the tool is valuable and we should get it out there and collect feedback this wednesday ms lisa berry is going to put out a message to our compete community on how to access it how to download it how to use it um and then monday april 11th our families that are receiving transportation service will be able to log in and see it and then if they do want to combine the accounts they can request that online and it usually takes a few days to to get that in place some of them we've already worked on knowing you know based on through the pilot group so it's a pretty quick turnaround on it mr
057shipley yeah so with that we just also wanted to update a few other initiatives and projects that that we're working on some of these have come to the board already for approval um some of these you may you may be seeing uh coming in the future so first just wanted to talk uh quickly about what we are trying to do to to work to adopt electric buses or at least start piloting some electric buses as we prepare for what future transportation could look like both both for school districts and and in general so we've been working with uh first student to to apply through the epa for the clean school bus program um that's a very lengthy process that's only been more challenging as a result of the same sort of supply chain challenges that
058we're seeing throughout the economy right now but we are hoping that within the next couple years we will receive five electric school buses to pilot. Again that would represent a very small portion of our overall fleet and this would be a pilot just to see how that works and if that'll be something that we can gradually adopt and become a larger part of our school bus fleet. I will say the the process to go through the EPA is not necessarily 100% required but that's what allows this to be a cost effective or at least a cost neutral solution for us if we don't go through the EPA grant program the cost of the electric buses is is anywhere from three to five times the cost of a regular diesel fuel bus. Next just wanted to highlight
059some of the additional equipment that we've purchased we've increased the amount of activity buses throughout the district so that all middle schools now have access to an activity bus this has really been in response to the driver shortage and other challenges in transportation this gives us another tool to provide transportation for different athletic teams and activity clubs. In addition to that we're starting to work next year we're going to work with our coaches who may be interested in becoming school bus drivers so that they can drive their teams directly to their their club or competition or game we're not sure how what the adoption will that be be yet but that's at least something we're working too as well to to try and reduce our reliance on both First Student and Richlee providing drivers for those
060after-school activities. [JOHNSON] And let me just touch on that a little bit. A lot of our high schools want to leave at 3:00. Well that's when our drivers are still running routes. Where if we were fully staffed we would have a group of drivers that would be able to be allocated to just do that unfortunately every driver we have available is running a route so it's where does the sacrifice come from. So we're trying to provide middle schools the basketball teams, the track teams a way to get there earlier instead of waiting until 4:30 for our First Student bus, same thing at the high school level. So that's kind of why that was needed. [SHIPLEY] Yeah sorry sorry it does go back to that three-tiered concept of needing the same drivers to run um not only those elementary
061middle and high school routes each day but then also to turn around and run the the extracurriculars. It's a similar initiative for our STEPS program we were able to purchase two wheelchair accessible minivans which has allowed them to to get to their community outings community events and do that in a way that does not put stress on our First Student team. And then finally I'll just point out to some of the you know we're at a point where we are looking to refresh some of the GPS equipment and other equipment that we're using as part of our routing software as part of this MyStop app and so we'll be we'll be bringing something to the board this summer um to start that refresh cycle um I think you would know how long that MyStop has been
062in process by looking some of the screenshots where apple phones that I think are well off the market now so that's how long we've been working on this and again some of some of the equipment we're using in the in the buses go back to that time already. I think with that both Ron and I are available for questions on the the MyStop app or any of these other initiatives or if we do want to go back and talk about grandfathering or the other information. [DONAHUE] Mr Karubas [KARUBAS] If Mr Rising wants to drive the middle school activity bus does he need a CDL [JOHNSON] if he's using it for extracurriculars which is a non-curriculum trip then no but the district does have a driver approval process that they must go through we do check the motor
063vehicle record he does have to do a training which is an online and a behind the wheel training with a First Student safety trainer so there's processes to protect, to make sure we're putting a safe driver behind the wheel and they know how to operate that vehicle if he wants to drive for curriculum, STEPS program yes you do need a non-CDL school bus permit because they're not driving the a 15 or 16 passenger or more vehicle so it's a non-CDL school bus permit but they don't have to get the CDL but they got to get the passenger and school bus endorsements. [KARUBAS] We talked you talked about the electronic buses I guess is how they're wording it but the vast majority of our school buses we don't own right we outsource them they're owned by First Students
064so one of our cost saving efficiencies is we don't invest our capital into actually purchasing the vast majority of our buses now we do own some of those and those are some that we see parked at the buildings. There's third party there's contracting but we still talk about these things even though there's legal niceties we talk about them as our buses as our drivers so tell me where the the electronic buses falls into play with that we're not we're not getting the electronic buses. [JOHNSON] No so First Student is going to own the fleet right they it's their fleet they have a capital purchase pro annual capital purchase where they're replacing buses and just the direction of at both the federal level and the state level is you know electric school buses and and you know
065they're they're pioneers as well they want to be into it as well there's other transportation companies uh that are doing it already I mean there's there's a couple of transportation providers on the west coast that are already moving to an a full EV or an electronic vehicle fleet. So in our area the Midwest area with you can have all four seasons in the a.m. before noon we want to make sure that the reliability is there and you can still have the reliability of service. There's a mechanic training component there's a power component there's a lot of other things that that data is still being gathered for our area which is why you don't just go out and buy one right you want to make sure that if you if you need three hours of a
066charge you can get you can get through the route and then what's the refresh rate so a lot of that is is why we're only gonna pilot five um so we don't own the fleet it is still theirs's but it's part of their their purchase cycle their capital purchase cycle which is why instead of buying a $400,000 vehicle they need to go through this grant program so that it's cost neutral to the $80,000 diesel vehicle. [KARUBAS] I want to make sure that we can the bus will start at -20 that's pretty much if we can do that then i think we've won. [JOHNSON] I spoke with the shop manager this morning it's his same concern. [SHIPLEY] I'll just comment statewide there's um a single digit number of districts that are that have electric buses that they're
067using on it on a daily basis I think the actual number of buses in circulation last I heard was was 11 or 12 or some number like that so so we're we're just trying to stay um to stay on top of this and and to to Ron's point really our our concern is really in testing it um when we do receive them it is reliability and and making sure that um again I think there's a there's a on paper I think people see school buses and they they see okay you take the kids to school and you drop them back off and then you charge for six hours and you do it again and I think when you actually talk about our operations and how dynamic it is and and you add in field trips
068and extracurriculars and and things like that um you know we're we really want to make sure that that this is something that would be viable for for a larger portion of the fleet before we go down that road. [JOHNSON] And our partnership with First Student is solid so when when I said hey where are we at with EV school buses you know can we make that an initiative they said yeah we're yeah we can get you we'll how about how's three to five sound you know we're still early in the process but when they're ready well and it it's a conversation they're already on the train tracks we want to be with them on that train and you know at least at least attempt right I mean we want to be smart about it because
069there's still an operation you have to run [KARUBAS] Two other points when we go live with the MyStop. I recommend that we lead and stop with the page 21 stuff go to slide 21. This doesn't replace our current system and there's no live support. Just let's start and stop with that. [JOHNSON] That's part of the message Ms Barry will be sending [KARUBAS] The rest of the stuff is awesome and I think it'll be much appreciative. It's great in the time of Uber and finding out where things are located. That's great information but we do have to say what it's not. And that is that's I think going to be more more important because you're going to keep repeating that. Why can't I do X, Y, and Z? It's one of the reasons why I put it on the
070slide because that we can always say on April 4th we presented this to the entire community. Are you going to say that again. [KARUBAS] My third point and final one is kind of the law of unintended consequences. We um it's recently convened a student voice on the board through a subcommittee that's going to meet and invariably one of the first things they're going to present is moving the high school start times and invariably they're going to come to you and say how can we move the high school start times? And so this is the law of unintended consequences where you get back to the next presentation where now you have a high school student learning on why we cannot maybe move the high school start times because we run three tier busing and we outsource
071and we don't have our own buses and there's a driver shortage so I think it and then they'll be pushed back to say but what can you do and can you do can you do Tuesday can you can you do 7:45 instead of [JOHNSON] We've definitely had these conversations since I've started here and yes it's something that is very hard to attain if you wanted to maintain your current routing system you would have to change you'd have to bring in more providers it wouldn't just be one more provider you probably have to have sure an additional staff member on my team to to route right now it's it's tight so there's a lot more behind the scenes that like you said the unintentional like hey it's great if I can sleep in another hour and
072not get on the bus at 6:50 in the morning to get to school and it's great and there's health benefit all that data is there right it's but what can be supported um not that I always ask for more stuff to be put on my plate but I am not fearful being part of those conversations so that the expectation doesn't go so far down and then all of a sudden it's what we can't do it because of busing right. [KARUBAS] I envision that coming back to you and when I hear of your challenges and limitations I wonder about your bandwidth to get uh to address a lot of those so hearing the additional staff might be needed I can appreciate that and that might just be where you're at saying look I understand that and
073but it is important to hear that voice and to bring it back and them to have some of the data that they might not be privy to because for from a student's high school perspective they stand on the corner it takes them there that's it it works i don't know the behind the curtain stuff. [JOHNSON] Yeah I mean when we looked at going from a three-tier to a two-tier to support different bell times it was about 100 extra drivers 10 to 12 extra million dollars in expense just to add that so and then you lose some efficiencies you lose some of these initiatives that are spread across multiple contractors as you know like MyStop would go away unless all contractors allow us to put it on their vehicles but it gets a little trickier for
074sure [KARUBAS] Thank you [DONAHUE] Mr Rising [RISING] So the MyStop I can't believe it's actually happening after when we signed the contract four or five years ago I believe. Yeah I I'm very excited about this um you know I think you're going to have a lot of parents actually here's a question for you so will the will the MyStop be available for preschool [JOHNSON] Anybody who's riding a bus route will have [RISING] So also our Special Ed kids as well um yeah I can imagine a lot of parents you know those that pre-k through five are going to be using the app but a lot of these 6th through 10th graders will be using the app. And I will partially echo a little bit of what Mr Karubas said is that this is not to be used to
075run to the bus when the bus is 30 seconds away this is only to check when the bus is running late. You know I hope it's used correctly and and not incorrectly [JOHNSON] Turning it off is a flip of the switch fortunately getting it started is not [RISING] and then just touching on the electric buses and I kind of know this is you know I saw this happening there was initiative I think by 2026 the whole state of California needs to be electric buses or electric vehicles that are transporting students um you know. I am in favor of elect electric buses um but here's what I'm not in favor of and and I'm gonna be brutally honest is that bus companies in my opinion severely overcharge school districts now they are they are kind to us
076because we are a larger district. But their prices are very pricey and as we've known and have seen the increases of those contracts have gone up significantly in the last five years now I understand a lot of that has to do with driver cost acquisition of drivers training of drivers and most recently gas prices because remember the routes are priced by route not necessarily by gas right that's included. So while moving to electric buses can be good from the standpoint of no more high gas prices the driver acquisition and driver cost is still going to be there. Maintenance is somewhat eliminated because there's not as many mechanical parts with electric bus but there's also the power charging stations and all that. I guess where I'm going with this is that while I am in on
077one hand in favor of electric buses I'm not in favor of this significantly increasing the transportation cost of our district for the sake of electric buses. I care about the environment so don't let that be misunderstood but i also care about the finances of the district. So I just wanted to throw that out there and I look forward to seeing how that pilot goes. [DONAHUE] Ms Jain [JAIN] As I was hearing uh board member Karubas ask questions it just I feel like when we talk when we're talking about transportation today it's just so reflective of how our district handles our budget you know uh across the board that we have to be so mindful about everything and really trying to push our efficiency without reducing quality and which is what I'm really hearing today
078with your presentation and I really do appreciate that. With regard to MyStop I just am really excited about this as a parent I could see myself just being at ease you know working late maybe not being home necessarily when my middle schooler reaches home just knowing because sometimes your middle schooler doesn't respond to your texts. So this is very nice for me to just check up and say hey okay I know I know I know the bus has reached home so I really think this is going to be a great addition so thank you for all your work. With regard to um the electric school buses I find this super exciting and I think again it shows our leadership efforts as a district to try to push and test out things that aren't the norm
079yet and so I'm really excited to see where where we lead in that in that area. One question I do have is with regard to activity buses um I wasn't really clear and this is something I wanted to bring up during our redistricting conversations but say a high schooler is involved with an activity and after school activity but doesn't have transportation to get home are there buses available to take them home and how would they access that? [JOHNSON] Yeah so the activity buses that the district owns you're not allowed to do home stop you're not allowed to conduct bus stops with them they don't have the eight ways they don't have the stop arm so you're not allowed to use those for those purposes but we do have First Student that run late activity routes at both
080the middle some elementary for like late homework club and all the high schools um so yes they're available for the late runs. [JAIN] And how how does a student access that [JOHNSON] They work with their house their dean the school office to get added to a bus route depending on where the population density lives sometimes we'll just put a bus stop like Welch elementary they'll get off there walk through the neighborhood to get home we won't have them crossing busy roads we still treat the hazards as hazards and those types of deals but those routes run longer because they can they you know you'll have one or two running the entire attendance boundary for that school as opposed to like Metea 42 running where it's a 10-minute route then so they are longer some high schools have two they'll
081have one at 4:30 and then another one at like 5:15 to kind of stagger depending on what schedules then activity schedules and athletic schedules then so yeah they're there and are available [JAIN] Great thank you [DONAHUE] I'm also very happy to see this application come forward I know that it was a lot of work for integrating in our systems looking at security that multi-child issue like different schools and also the reliability of the app so thanks for working through all of that um do other school districts around here use that app right now [JOHNSON] They do but they have the same challenges with just data so when there's not a lot of school districts using Tyler Drive in my opinion the reason why I recommended us going that path is that the GPS data is the
082tablet itself it's not the bus with a hard-wired device so I can be in any vehicle log in run the route and that's the GPS that's communicating out as opposed to if I swap buses and then in the back end I don't change out that bus for the new bus the data's garbage it doesn't it's going to show a bus being in another state potentially where the tablet is the GPS data that's getting transmitted out similar to a cell phone when you're when you're carrying your cell phone and you're using Google maps Uber the driver's logging into an app and that's your your GPS device which is why we wanted to be the piloters and get that out there not only for the driver aspect they don't have to have a route sheet in their
083hand startup goes a lot smoother and easier dry runs are non-existent sub drivers can just jump in log in add the route go when we have to collapse routes or run sweeper runs as Mr Shipley was saying they just add the stop to their route students aren't waiting for a full route to complete it just becomes part of the existing route instead of being 20 minutes late it's five minutes late. So a lot of advantages outside of that so school districts not especially in Illinois aren't there yet with Tyler Drive and MyStop if they're using MyStop it's it's not as reliable as I wanted it to be uh mainly because of the GPS data and how it gets transmitted especially if you have a vehicle that goes down in the shop there's some things that
084you have to do on the back end that not everybody does especially with resources you know transportation directors are behind the wheel driving routes dispatchers you may only have one so just you gotta allocate your time right when the resources run thin. [DONAHUE] Yeah i know my daughter had something at college and I thought boy that's really nice and she would run out of her dorm or whatever right when that was coming out like I had to walk to school but I also I have to say I had instances of interacting with you like through the winter like especially that snow day I was amazed at the accuracy of these bus drivers and tracking like the pickups and stops because I forget there was one time where someone was complaining it was one of those snow days
085and when I contacted you it was like that person was picked up at 6:57 which was five minutes after their stop time so it's like amazing to me that you have that level of ability to track so keep up with that and I also am thrilled with the electric bus initiative I don't want to do anything that hurts our budget so I'm happy that they're working through the EPA program to make sure the pricing and renewing their bus fleet and using purchasing electric vehicles is cost effective compared to buying a diesel bus so I'm very happy with that um so I'm looking forward and I hope we don't get a whole bombardment of a bunch of emails about that so thank you thank you thank you very much for working through this yeah and everything
086you do thank you. [DONAHUE] Our last item tonight is legislative advocacy and board board of education update. Does anyone have any items? [DONAHUE] I did go to the large unit district meeting and I expect some notes or something to come out pretty soon from IASB about changes that are going on. The large unit discussion was about a couple things focused on the change that was announced from IASB to move away from the nASB to another newly formed organization and they told us that they expect about 25 states to join that new organization so pretty significant and they had some very positive things to say so we'll keep watching that we they also talked about um we were concerned because Mr Raczak a few years ago met with IASB the topic of the meeting was to increase
087the voice of large districts in IASB and changes that could be made there and at that time they did devote a person to large unit districts Lori Grant so she's been our rep for several years and it was recently announced that she would not be our rep anymore and that they were kind of doing away with that large unit district configuration as far as support staff from them so we have Dee back with us so we wanted to know more about what was going on there and they assured us that um you know they instead they're having these large unit district meetings every quarter the head of IASB was there they're going to invite the president next time to also participate and that that should be a good outlet for our concerns and our
088issues so they also talked at the meeting and I'll put out some more notes on this as they publish what they're what they're doing but the whole resolution process is going through a complete overhaul they're looking at defining focused and very limited legislative priorities for IASB instead of hundreds of resolutions and all these belief statements belief statements look like they will be converted into core values and that they're going to go through and look at the resolutions but new resolutions will require alignment with the core values and with legislative priorities and it'll be very different from what we've experienced they also recognized how resolutions were repeatedly presented so they want to make sure that that doesn't continue and I thought it all sounded very positive and so they should be like I said writing some
089notes uh fairly soon that goes out to the wider audience about what they're doing with all those resolutions and things so Yes? [DONAHUE] I was trying to look for that well yeah I don't remember yeah I think it starts with the C I'm not sure um but I'll find it and send it yeah [RISING] I hope we keep the pressure on IASB about the large districts having a larger voice because in my opinion the these smaller downstate districts have been driven driving some of the narratives and and listen school board issues are school board issues right um but you know the the resolution process as as you talked about was kind of going off the rails a little bit so yeah I hope that continues [DONAHUE] yeah no we're not going to let them drop that and
090I will say the attendance and it was an in-person meeting all of the area large districts where the president was there so um they had an active uh audience and a very active discussion so um and I know that um Kristen Fitzgerald from 203 is on that committee that's re-looking at all the resolutions and things so um I think we definitely won't let ourselves disappear yeah but I think that was it so with that I need a motion to adjourn [KARUBAS] Motion to adjourn [RISING] Second [DONAHUE] All in favor [ALL] Aye yes yeah