001[DONAHUE] it is now 7:06pm 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 november 15 201 jeannie will you please call the roll [DINA] ms jain [JAIN] here [DINA] mr karubas [KARUBAS] here [DINA] mr rising [RISING] here [DINA] ms demming [DEMMING] present [DINA] ms grover [GROVER] present [DINA] ms donahue [DONAHUE] here [DINA] ms fosdick [FOSDICK] here [DONAHUE] we have a quorum ms jain will you lead us in the pledge of allegiance [DONAHUE] our next board of education meeting will be held on monday december 6th and we have a couple board salutes today so um mr karubas [KARUBAS] the board salutes steps for being selected as the 2021 best of naperville award recipient in the category of schools each year the naperville award program
002identifies exceptional organizations that help make the naperville area a great place to live play and work recognition is given to those organizations that have shown the ability to use their best practices and implemented programs to generate competitive advantages and long-term value congratulations to principal kimberly maloney and her staff on this well-deserved recognition [FOSDICK] the board salutes mccarty elementary kindergarten teacher kim ligeski for her recent heroic efforts kim came across a serious accident and without hesitation stepped in to help she assisted in getting two small children out of the vehicle and led them to safety at a nearby restaurant we salute kim ligeski for her acts of kindness and courage [RISING] the board proudly salutes the metea valley high school girls volleyball team who won the state championship this past weekend this is the mustang's first
003volleyball championship and the first state championship for any sport in the school's history the team reached the super sectional by defeating plainfield north at the oswego east sectional and the mustangs triumphed over juggernaut mother mccauley uh by uh in three sets 15-25, 25-18 and 25-17 by winning their 24th consecutive match i think their final record was like 40-2 congratulations to the coaches and the team on this great achievement [DONAHUE] our next item is our student representative report by liza nadtochiy from neuqua valley high school [LIZA] good evening everyone my name is liza nadtochiy i'm neuqua valley school board representative and it is my pleasure to represent neuqua for you all here tonight it's been a busy few weeks for neuqua athletics the varsity football team saw an end to their season in the quarterfinals after
004a hard-fought game the boys cross country team took 10th in state where they've been top 10 for 17 out of the last 20 years the girls cross country team girls swimming and the boys and girls basketball teams all had a strong end to their seasons as this one ends however wildcats are starting to train for gymnastics wrestling bowling and other winter sports we can't wait to see what new heights you'll reach this season 12 neuqua seniors signed national letters of intent on november 10th demonstrating their dedication to continue playing their sport at the collegiate level congratulations on all of your hard work paying off we also got to see the beginning of the math chess and speech team seasons and they've already accomplished so much the speech team alone has taken home nearly 50 individual
005awards over the last two weeks keep going wildcats we are so excited to see your achievements over the rest of the season in order to celebrate all of the neuqua accomplishments in the last year we will host the red carpet rally on november 19th where students will be honored for academic and athletic excellence over the last year we are so excited to show off our wildcat pride on november 3rd many parent organizations such as the ptsa athletic booster club paths program neuqua music and the theater parents association banded together to volunteer raise money and spread information about all of the various ways they support the neuqua community during an event called all in for students we couldn't thrive without all of this aid and we thank every parent that's involved in these activities the neuqua
006theatre program showed off the culmination of all of their hard work in the fall play titled play on it ran from november 11th to the 13th and this hilarious comedy received rave reviews we are all so excited to support the theater program and their next endeavors last month the class of 2023 hosted a book drive meeting their goal of collecting 500 books from neuqua students and families it is so inspiring to see wildcats working hard to make an impact on their community members of the neuqua community are joining together to create the student equity action committee in order to hear the range of perspectives that district 204 has to offer there are so many diverse voices all around us and it's clear that we will all fight for everyone's views to be heard tomorrow marks
007the start of the student council's annual holiday 204 drive to provide families in our district with the money they need to make it through this holiday season it's always awesome to see everyone working together during these cold winter months to spread joy in our community teachers and parents alike are preparing for parent-teacher conferences which will be held on the 18th of november both groups are working hard to make sure that our students are as successful as possible and we thank everyone involved for their dedication on december 2nd and 3rd neuqua's 25th annual crystal concerts will be held our award-winning music program has been practicing for months to bring us this beautiful performance it is so wonderful to be back on stage and we can't wait to appreciate it in only one short month final exams
008will be upon us although it's been a while since we experienced in-person exams administration and students alike are putting an effort to make this as smooth of a transition as possible keep working hard wildcats and we know you'll succeed i would be remiss if i didn't mention the epidemic of suicide and deteriorating mental health that such a competitive school fosters we need to do better as a community by supporting our peers and cultivating an environment that encourages being open and prioritizing oneself there are so many young lives that have been cut short because instead of fostering a supportive place to learn and grow neuqua valley and other district 204 schools have become a crucible that pits us against each other i too have struggled with my mental health last month i began to take ssris
009to cope with depression and anxiety and i am one of dozens in just my graduating class we need to do better check in on your friends your students and your children it doesn't have to be this way it's been a pleasure speaking to you all tonight thank you for listening have a great night and as always go wildcats [DONAHUE] it is now time for a public comment 60 minutes is allowed for public comment and 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 who the audience members are
010this evening and keep your comments age appropriate public comments represents the voice and opinion of the speaker there will be no feedback from the board members during the meeting but follow-up will be provided by an administrator as appropriate so tonight we have 21 people signed up so if everyone can kind of shorten their talks a little bit we can fit all 21 people in and we will be cutting people off when they hit the three-minute mark so i'm going to call the first speaker and then i'll call who's going to follow so that might help speed up people coming to the microphone so the first speaker is christopher bond followed by jeff lindquist and thank you all for coming i know it was a cold night so thank you [CHRIS] my name is christopher bond and
011my daughter goes to clow elementary school on tuesday when speaking to numerous boundary committee members a consistent theme heard was we don't want to repurpose schools yet we feel like we need more options/solutions to address district concerns since the boundary committee meeting on october 27th demonstrated to all of us that no further ideas or proposals were going to be forthcoming from rsp at this time despite requests from the public and the boundary committee members i finally took it upon myself after tuesday to try to develop something on my own i emailed each of you yesterday a copy of my proposal and i know a number of you are on our facebook pages and have possibly seen it there as well i in no way presume that what i propose is a definitive solution to this
012boundary process that's consuming our district my goal was more so to demonstrate that dramatic improvements can be made to the present concepts if the effort is put in and minor adjustments are made do any of us really believe the only options this district has are closing schools as in concept number one or the feeder system that exists in concept number three you cannot expect us to believe that after nine months that this is the best that rsp could do that more than anything is what has led to such frustration on the part of community members i put forth a concept that rsp should have developed between the september 22nd boundary committee meeting and the october 27th one yet they chose not to so now the responsibility and burden falls to us in the community i
013have shown you via my proposal that we can have the clean intact feeders of concept number one the innovation spaces of concept number three deal with the north side over capacity address the south side under capacity keep all of our schools open have no construction costs at longwood elementary lower the sibc levels and has all but one school under 95 percent in 2022 and all of them are under 95 percent in 2027. this addresses every concern that i am aware of that has been brought forth during this process i'd like to note my plan only involves changes to 125 students all of whom are already being moved in concept number one and the loss of three innovation spaces this plan requires very little time and effort to address from the present concepts and can be
014used as a starting point for new ideas at this point the ball is in your court since my concept addresses all stated concerns and keeps all of our schools open if you choose to close any school in this district you are doing so because you want to not because you need to and not because you didn't have other options my hope is that you will choose correctly and keep our schools open thank you [DONAHUE] next speaker is jeff lindquist followed by clare malloy [JEFF] members of the board my name is jeff lindquist i want to talk here tonight about transparency and trust rsp presents a lot of data and it's easy to assume with all those numbers that they're being thorough but by peeling back the onion just a little it's clear all they're doing
015is masking existing problems by creating new ones it's a shell game with our children paying the price from the start they've hammered on capacity and utilization as the basis of all their conclusions how they derive capacity is just basic math 25 students per classroom we're all familiar with the repurposing solution by now but on what basis were these two schools picked were they poor performers drains of district resources no they're both top rated both using every classroom but they're smaller and this has been admitted as the only reason that's unacceptable i have to wonder if such a crucial decision is based on one factor is rsp stress testing any assumptions at all are they bothering to gather new data or challenge themselves in the least here are a few ideas have they thought about how
016recent home sales or city to suburb migration in the face of covid might change projections why is there no capacity accommodation for self-contained rooms where is the downstream study of effects on closing schools not only on mental health but transportation concerns safety concerns commuting across major streets potential adverse impacts to schools that will have large student increases and for those of us who live in an area where there's a potentially repurposed school what becomes of that why at this late stage are these concepts not moving valid questions not being answered and no fresh ideas emerging in months why are we still talking about the same things it seems like rsp is ready to go back to kansas and leave this district with a giant mess how are any of us supposed to trust in such
017a flawed and paper-thin process it's past time to start listening to public concerns concept one has received virtually 100 percent opposition from speakers all over the district for a wealth of completely different reasons it's terrible just retire it concept three has been better received by both the committee and the public for use of innovation spaces over school closings and less major disruption overall but it's complicated with unnecessarily messy feeders and caveated with costly construction projects these seem created to give rsp talking points and loaded survey questions to advance their preferred concept that no one else wants i implore you don't let this process get away from you if rsp won't answer our questions fairly make sure someone on the board is thinking more than a half a step ahead that all the unintended consequences this
018path is leading us on we deserve better thank you [DONAHUE] next speaker is clare malloy and she'll be followed by sarina diaz [CLARE] my name is clare molloy and i'm a senior at neuqua valley high school a group of us are coming from the second wake of a neuqua valley high school student who lost their life due to suicide mental health issues are a concern that will impact most from at some point of their life our school has implemented a social emotional learning program where our gym teachers are supposed to advise us on mental health but it usually ends up being 15 minutes at the beginning of class where the teacher flips through a presentation and then we move on this is not the fault of the teachers by any means as they are not
019trained to be mental health advisors on some occasions kids will go to the class house in search of mental health assistance our counselors are fantastic but they're largely focused on academics rather than mental health support as you know mental health counseling requires a complete a complete a completely different skill set than academic counseling we as students feel that we need more resources dedicated to mental health having counselors and social workers trained trained specifically for adolescents would be an incredible asset these professionals would be just like our academic counselors assigned to students and provide mandatory check-ins with all students these counselors would act as advocates for the students help end the stigma around reaching out for assistance and give students the opportunity to address concerns i have struggled with mental health issues since second grade after
020being diagnosed by a medical professional the only reason i was able to get help that i so badly needed was because my parents were able to recognize the signs having these resources would give students the tools that they need to cope with any struggles they may be having notify a trusted adult if someone's life was at risk and provide them with this with the tools needed needed to turn healthy coping to turn to healthy healthy coping mechanisms instead of unsafe ways to find instant gratification having these resources available to students will create an environment where mental health is a priority it will have it'll be good because students are encouraged to talk about mental health struggles and the stigma surrounding mental health will be removed thank you [DONAHUE] next speaker is sarina diaz followed by
021lucas lombana arias [SARINA] my name is sarina diaz as you know we i'm a senior at neuqua and we came from a wake of a good friend due to suicide now i think that neuqua does a good job with mental health they are very they support their students however i feel for example it's not always it's not always there for example a couple weeks ago i got sexually harassed by a relative and the next day when i went to school it was extremely hard to function and just go about my life without thinking about it i went to go seek help from my guidance counselor because i needed space and time from class and to really talk to somebody however she was not there and all of them were in meetings even the social worker
022was in meetings and i just think it's really unacceptable how a student can be struggling at school but then their guidance counselors who are there for them won't be there for them because they're in meetings and i just think that if we had therapists access to therapists at school it'll be easier for people to get help i've struggled depression anxiety adhd and add since i was in the fourth grade and it's always been a hard time finding a right therapist and many of my friends have tried to seek help also with their depression anxiety they never know where to go and what the step what step to take to start therapy if we can have access to therapists of you know their names their informations for students to go seek that would be i think
023it would be a great thing for our school but also i think there's a lot of neuqua students here we can all agree that whenever we have maybe a mental health we need to take a mental health day or we have something going on it's hard to skip school because for example when i skip school for being sick it feels like once you skip one day it feels like you're skipping a whole week and i just think the the lesson plans are good and it's not the teacher's fault the teachers are doing what their their jobs but it's just the material just goes so fast and it's so rushed that some of us students hate missing school because we feel like one day is a whole week i begged my parents to come home from
024arizona for thanksgiving break days earlier because i was so stressed about missing school where i should be enjoying a vacation i just think um those subjects really need to be brought up thank you [DONAHUE] next speaker is lucas lombana arias followed by udhay nullapati [LUCAS] hello my name is lucas lombana arias and i'm here as a junior from neuqua valley high school to talk about our school's relationship with mental health and how it's affecting my friends my school my district and me my entire life i've been in all the advanced programs in the district you know ap honors classes all throughout high school three years of pa in middle school and in elementary school and my entire life all my friends have been the p the kids in these classes you know the academically gifted
025kids the smart kids our entire lives we've been told that we're smarter than everybody else and that creates this environment in which we are expected to succeed and thrive academically and if we don't we're seen as failures our grades are tied to our self-worth if i get if i fail a test i i i'm a failure as a human being my value is so connected and so intertwined with how i do academically and how my friends do academically that it's affecting my mental health is affecting my friend's mental health and our school if i miss calc pc for one day i'm behind eight units and i'm still struggling to catch up from a class i missed a week ago and that's just academically mental health in the past three weeks our district has had eight
026deaths two of which at neuqua were to suicide both of which were my friends i just came here from my friend's wake in which i saw his dead body in a casket just not even an hour ago and two days ago i attended my long time teammates funeral not even a month ago my friend a sophomore in neuqua committed suicide my freshman year my best friend's sister committed suicide i've seen more death and in my 16 year old life than any 16 year old should ever see my friends and i are constantly getting sent down to the counselor i have been sent down a dozen times in november alone this doesn't help at all i'm missing class i get sent down in the middle of a class i in which the classes are extremely rushed
027and i miss anything i'm behind i get sent down to the class house i sit there for 20 or 30 minutes waiting for the counselor the social worker to be done with their meetings or whatever they're doing and then i talk to a strange adult that i do not know about my mental health problems and that doesn't really solve anything at all these are people that i do not trust that my friends do not trust we do not feel comfortable going to them about our problems and our school i feel that our school does not do enough to address these issues to combat these extreme stresses on my friends me and all students at neuqua we need more funding to go to the mental health programs we need more counselors who are qualified to deal
028with these issues three counselors for per grade to deal with 900 students it's it's not enough our school is hurting right now and we need a school that will agree to help us and our problems thank you [DONAHUE] next speaker is udhay nullapati followed by jennifer cortese [UDHAY] my name is udhay nalapati and i am a junior from neuqua valley high school um i've been in the quote unquote gifted programs since third grade and currently in four aps in honors class and part of the school newspaper my two peers lucas and sachin and you might be wondering wow that's a lot of rigorous courses and a lot of workload for a singular student to take on and that's exactly what i'm covering today honors students like me lucas and sachin have been cultivated from the
029very inception of our careers as ipsd 204 students to be straight a students in school and be the overachievers and take all the possible aps and honors possible to have the highest gpa compared to all our surrounding peers this leads to the fruition of several mental health issues and a feeling of unbearable pressure within a miscellany of students and however the question how is that the fault of the district or if school arises and the answer is it isn't not entirely this complication in the lives of students is due to a mixture of parental pressure school administration and even the fault of students themselves students are pushed by parental pressures and fear to take an obscene amount of aps and honors classes and the thing is with with taking these amount of aps and honors
030classes it leads to a multitude of problems mentally and physically for a wide range of students like lucas has said there have been two suicides in the span of three weeks just at neuqua and aid is needed to quench these consistent problems plaguing the minds and bodies of students around 204 but whether you look to social workers counselors or even deans for this mentioned aid an unfailing generalization can be discovered no adequate help can be found i also realized that putting all the blame on school admin isn't fair because some may say the sheer difference in the size of student to faculty ratio just doesn't allow for social workers to cover all students and that's exactly exactly the point three social workers for over 800 to 900 students in each grade just at neuqua is
031just not enough to cover it cover the mental issues plaguing many i would say most of these students most of these 800 900 students at neuqua and to end it off i'm begging for the school board and the district to consider providing a higher quantity of aid through the mediums of social workers or counselors trained in mental health situations for the increasing number of students because i guarantee no matter how hard it may be increasing faculty faculty size for mental health issues is a whole lot easier than bringing back a loved one who has died [DONAHUE] next speaker is jennifer cortese followed by gary mou [JENNIFER] this is going to be tough to follow so forgive me um this is why i'm here my name is jennifer cortese and i'm the current co-vice president of the
032pta graham elementary i have two children attending graham i'm here tonight to encourage you to remove repurposing or closing schools as an option during a pandemic i'm here to also repeat what many others before me have already stated our children are not okay the american academy of pediatrics american academy of child and adolescent psychiatry and the children's hospital association have declared children's mental health challenges amid the pandemic a national emergency the tragedies that these children have just spoke about in our community are evidence of this crisis and it's happening in our neighboring districts as well in the chicagoland area this past week we've learned a total of six high school students who have taken their lives and we also continue to learn about more children nationally yet i still hear people claim children are resilient
033children living in this pandemic are not i can tell you from first-hand experience that this isn't just a crisis among high school students my elementary aged kids have lived the past year and a half in fear of getting sick with covid the chaos of remote learning classrooms with masks being told they couldn't play with friends or get too close to kids on the playground and now they're hearing about the possibility of having to change schools and be separated permanently from their friends again i don't think very many people in this room can say they experienced this level of anxiety when they were eight and six we need to do better by our students and be on their side and not just the data side with any decision that is made i urge you to think
034about what this will do to these kids if their elementary experience continues to be filled with inconsistencies and more change my third grader is currently experiencing his third abnormal school year and if the school he is happy and thriving at is repurposed it will be his fourth how is this setting a good educational foundation we have to account for the human factor in this process and think about the ripple effect it will cause separating the elementary kids in river run in high meadow would be devastating these two communities have a 25-year history together furthermore these children just got the opportunity to be together in person again and we may have to tell them never mind now you have to go build a new foundation at separate schools and start all over and if they have
035to start all over they may not even have a bus to get them to kendall and belta because we're also in the middle of a bus driver shortage i think the community may be understanding of this possibility of repurposing or closing schools if it was backed by a shortfall in finances but you have stated to us that this is not the case we also may be more understanding if this was happening in an underfunded or underperforming district but this is also not the case in fact this district prides itself on its national ranking so why is a nationally acclaimed school district considering repurposing or closing schools i'll leave you with one final thought there's a sociologist who once said in regards to data analysis that not everything that can be counted counts and not everything
036that counts can be counted please consider this when thinking about graham elementary and its students thank you [GARY] good evening thank you for giving me a chance to talk today i just have a one simple question for the three public forums we had last week where are the recordings the public comments where did they go when confronted with the question online the response was this there's no requirement that this meeting be digitally captured whose requirement we're not talking about laws and regulations here do you still call this a public forum a public forum with public comments cut off oh by the way i checked all the law books i could not find any requirements that says a teriyaki chicken has to have a chicken you guys are very creative the public comments were already being
037pushed to the corner during all three of the so-called public forums only 30 minutes were allocated to the public with the rest rehashing the same information that has been repeated numerous times including rsps qualification experience even a mathematical formula with bunch of fancy symbols with all the respect i doubt even the rsp folks really understand what they mean in order to get this one minute one minute speaking slot a big crowd of people lined up outside in the wind in the wind for two to three hours each day and the majority could not even get a chance to talk even for those who those who did manage to sign in the last four to five people were cut off not allowing even five more minutes to finish as a school taxpayer myself i really feel
038their anger their frustration they do not deserve to be treated that way two concepts are being discussed and it is conceivable that your preference is different from ours that's okay but don't destroy our speaking records it is our rec it is our right to speak out our concerns our communities are being affected our children's safety and well-being are on the line look you guys might have a bigger megaphone but you are on the stage in the public eye and your every move is in the public scrutiny suppressing our voice is never a smart thing to do and it will further agonize the community and make us wonder what is the real motivation behind this thank you [TALLULAH] hi my name is tallulah thorn and i'm in third grade at graham the last normal school year
039i had was in kindergarten i love my school and my teachers everyone is so nice and welcoming sometimes i wonder why adults are even talking about closing the school in the first place it doesn't make sense to me i moved to graham from paterson in 2019 seven months into the first grade covid shut down everything i spent all about six weeks of second grade learning virtually on a computer i am now finally getting settled into third grade and now my school might close it's not fair to me and my friends at graham if you close my school i will be sent to builta i will be split up from most of my friends who would get who would go to kendall i live in riverrun and could walk down the street to patterson i also
040live less than a mile from kendall why can't i go there my mom is even talking about moving if graham closes so that we can stay with my friends why should we have to move just to stay with my community right now i don't get off the bus until 4 pm if i go to builta which is over 2 miles from my house i will be on the bus for 40 minutes this would take time away from doing basic things like having a snack doing my homework and going to after school activities covid has made me anxious about school and i feel a lot of pressure at nine years old my parents shouldn't have to explain to me in our community why kids in our community are taking their own lives us kids are not
041okay we have been through enough i'm begging you please don't close my school [DONAHU] matt skindzier followed by mandy traynor [MATT] my name is matt skindzier i have three kids in the 204 school district including a third and fourth grader graham um and a seventh grader krone my wife tracy is president of the pta graham uh i'd like to express my grave concerns about disproportionately high amount of time discussion that is spent in the boundary committee forums on concept one while the need for a closer balance of students and classroom capacity across the 204 has been demonstrated by the board none of the analysis or goals shared by the board appear to justify closing schools given the committee's analysis demonstrates concept 1 would impact almost a third of our elementary school students and roughly
04250 percent more students than in concept 3 it is highly questionable why concept 1 continues to feature far more prominently in the boundary discussions and other alternatives ms donahue you stated last week that a goal of the board is to reduce class sizes concept one would increase the proportion of elementary schools operating at 80 percent utilization or higher from just under a third today to half clearly concept one is in direct conflict with your stated goal of reducing class sizes dr talley last week you spoke to the close engagement with community parents for the formation of the boundary committee which is both commendable and in line with our community values however public commentary consistently strong opposition to closing schools was omitted from the uh public commentary from the public forum videos posted on social media
043and the boundary process community survey created extensively to solicit feedback from the public is patently flawed with clearly biased questions towards concept one uh this is concerning giving that rsp's stated metric of a favorable respon of a consensus is only 51percent favorable responses frankly this does not appear to be consistent with open and honest engagement with your board's constituency by the board's own admission it currently lacks the foundation of a long-term strategic plan perhaps these contradictions are symptom of a lack of a plan that fully reconciles the rezoning with the well-being of our students taking such sweeping actions without a clear strategic plan as any consultant should tell you is a flawed process most confounding is the continued focus on a scenario that closes school when none of the goals and objectives of the board
044actually require that schools be closed we ask that the boundary committee abandoned concept one and focus on a long-term plan and solution that better serves the comprehensive needs of the school district anything less would be to fail our students and our community thank you [DONAHUE] mandy traynor is up next followed by cecilia lindquist [MANDY] my name is mandy traynor and i'm a parent of three boys who are currently students at neuqua crone and graham i want to thank you all for your service and efforts over this very challenging past year and a half i'm here tonight to express my opposition to concept 1 and my support of concept 3 concept 1 proposes closing and repurposing repurposing two schools graham and clow while much of the discussion around this concept talks about these schools as buildings
045i urge you to remember that they are so much more both schools are a collection of educators many of whom have been working in these schools for decades they have created a culture for our students along with the surrounding communities closing these schools puts an abrupt end to these legacies i speak to you as a parent of a child with special needs my youngest son is in third grade and has down syndrome thanks to in large part to the incredible administrators teachers support staff and teaching assistants at graham my son has been meaningfully included in general education with appropriate supports since entering graham this has been a collaborative process between the staff at graham and our family where we have been welcomed as part of my son's team this has been built and tweaked year
046over year to create a solid foundation for my son he is a valued member of the graham community while covid was difficult for all students it hit students with special needs particularly hard the team at graham worked so hard under such challenging circumstances in our case it still meant regression for our sun and behaviors at home this school year has been such a relief as we return to almost normal our son is flourishing as he is back at graham full time with a familiar structure and routine to his day he is surrounded by a dedicated team who knows him well and how best to support him the thought of this all coming to an end is hard to fathom the students of graham and clow who have just gotten back into their routines where they
047feel secure would now be split from their classmates and divided among five schools they would be pulled from the teams of educators who know them as individuals these changes would all be made with no strategic plan for how the buildings would be repurposed or at least not one that has been communicated to the broader district closing these top-rated schools does not solve the overcrowded issues in the north and has no impact on the feeder system instead it creates additional bus routes in a time of a driver shortage concept 1's impacts significantly more students in concept 3 after an unprecedented challenging time for our students i ask you to reject concept 1 and support concept 3 or actually i liked your proposals tonight too so thank you so much for your consideration [DONAHUE] cecilia lindquist is
048up next followed by matthew schreiner [CECILIA] rsp claims to have a 97 percent accuracy so do certain medical analysis the biggest difference is that the fda has oversight as a compliance agency rsp rated themselves my family rated my accuracy at 100 this is as reliable as rsp self-valuation rsp claims they do work all over the midwest it's actually six states per their own client list they monopolize a whopping .76 of the market less than one percent within six states let's not talk nationally here the big elephant in the room ms donahue said that the pandemic highlighted the overcrowding of some north 204 schools during the pandemic the proposed solution crowd more schools at over 90 percent especially while we're still in a pandemic does that make sense i glanced at the financials and you certainly
049can put this off until we're on the other side of the pandemic the board has loosely used repurposed without clearly defining its intended use or providing viable performance repurpose could be anything selling renting time shares you want to push a vote on a unknown repurposed and closed means the same for our thing for our community not available to our kids or the educators rsp was able to come up with zero concepts to alleviate the overcrowding in north 204 are we paying for mediocrity because that's what we're receiving i'm going to give you an out of the box idea and it's better than zero from rsp why haven't you talked to fox valley about inline space or a creation of an out parcel for students in north 204 retail has reinvented themselves over the years from
050a mall to mixed-use residential on-site hotels fine dining outdoor entertainment proposed concept 1 is horrendous no one wants this we are the community which you are supposed to represent look around the room do you see community members children and educators do you actually think that most feel represented by this board at what point of the process will you actually consider community impact and most importantly our children where was your community consideration of impact during the acceptance of the watered-down apology from rsp referring to us as gangrene and blatantly defining a personal biased and perceived socio-economic difference with our neighbors where was your support during the boundary committee process where rsp repeatedly and blatantly ignored boundary committee member requests for alternate concepts the boundary committee members certainly didn't seem like they want to close schools but
051rsp would not provide additional concepts i have to ask was this per your direction i do not believe there's full transparency from the board to the public individually we might be small communities but united we are a force to be reckoned with so bored are you with us or are you against us [DONAHE] matthew schreiner followed by venkitesh k [MATTHEW] my name is matthew schreiner i'm a proud parent of a second and fourth grade clow cougar and future wildcat i want to pause for a second to thank all the neuqua valley students that came here as as a parent and of students that will be in your shoes and for all of your classmates and all the future neuqua valley students i appreciate you being here keep speaking up and hopefully all of our voices
052are heard this comes to to what i came to talk about out cougars have continued to brave the dropping temperatures to continue to support their schools i have a second grader who has yet to know a normal school year in school but decided that he wanted to write his message to the school board instead of watching youtube this is a really big deal a fourth grader who continues to along with her peers hold strong with the support of her caring teachers and staff who continue to be the rock of the clow community for students after all that covid has thrown at them cougars who should be eating jello at lunch and not having table talk about whether or not their future is etched in it cougars who have been working to collect caps for a
053buddy bench at their school and not which buddy will go to another school students who with their wonderful teachers teach them in their individual needs and yet this process has come to them as just a number every cougar every ipsd student has a story tonight i hope to remind it all mind is is the students the reason why we should continue to discuss communicate be transparent consider other ideas just like mr bond brings up not get locked into concept 1 or concept 3 since the early days of this process being that concept one has been the only one that hasn't changed remember that every discussion that is made will have ripple effects on our children's future thank you for your time [VENKITESH] good evening board members and all uh parents were present here today i
054want to first of all thank the board for their services to our community my name is uh venkitesh i'm the resident of the village of meadow lakes community same neighborhood at the still middle school uh before moving to the naperville uh community um we were living in the north suburban the district 102 is a school district so i want to share some personal experiences aboard which the board members may or may not be aware of so uh when my son was in fourth grade school had issues with over capacity and they tried an idea called co-teaching where each class had two teachers and there were 30 kids in each class i thought that was a great concept they were also supported by a full-time teaching assistant and it provided great balance to the class it
055also provided work-life balance from a teacher's standpoint and personally as parent i saw that my son was more engaged in the classes and he was very happy about it so i thought that's a great uh idea that the school could consider at some point if you ever run into those uh scenarios uh second um i heard in the public forums uh both dr talley and matt shipley talk about repurposing the funds from the stem school towards our elementary and middle school so uh i was also active member of uh at the school from a science olympiad competition supporting at the district 102 and i can tell you that the ptas were a great part of each of those elementary schools so each elementary school at district 102 had a science lab where the parents volunteers
056were coaches and they had to go through like a training session to be eligible for a coaching and they would support the students who would stay after after school hours to coach them and experiment do their experimentation continuously improve the experiments to be part of the regional competition uh part of the science olympiad competition so when we went for the regional competition arlington heights we actually had a participation from district 203 so i really uh request the i thought that was a great program that is something that i was looking forward to and uh i request the board members to reach out to 203 and see if that's something that we can offer to our students here and also make the best use of our funds and lastly uh i just want to emphasize the
057community engagement and the pta played a big role in district 102 making sure the parents are engaged in the science lab in after hours supporting those efforts and as from village of meadow lakes we already have pta board members as well as the communities already engaged i thought like keeping us under owen elementary will make sure we support the board's uh uh goal of making the maximum use of the funding resources so that's kind of my request from my [DINA] speakers time has ended [DONAHUE] nijay dara is next followed by samra saha [VIJAY] good evening board members i am a resident of mission oak subdivision which is very close to both welch and neuqua valley i attended last week's three meetings held in waubonsie neuqua and metea about the boundary meeting and one thing i
058noticed is everybody unanimously rejected concept 1 and everybody unanimously accepted concept 3. and why did people unanimously accept concept 3 they based not their decision not on some complex data analysis that rsp did they made the decision based on some simple common sense things for example when everything else is kept same if somebody asked do you want to commute less to your school or far away from your school everybody will choose less to your school and people are already traveling short distances to their school why would they want to go to a far away school nobody wants to do that that's a simple common sense thing and everything else kept same if somebody asked you want to have a safe commute to your school or a dangerous commute to your school people will say i
059want a safe commute why would i want to choose a dangerous commute by crossing route 59 or crossing railroad tracks or crossing busy intersections again this also people make decision based on common sense and when people are asked everything else kept same do you want your school friends to be near your house or very far away from your house people will say i want all my school friends to be near my house again common sense thing so people made decisions based on simple common sense i understand rsp did a lot of data complex analysis but it should not ignore common sense common sense should still be taken into consideration another common sense thing one of the criteria for boundary meetings is not to create islands but if you look at my mission oaks subdivision i
060have route 59 on the west and i have big shopping complexes on the north and i have forest preserve and golf course on the east and i have one close neighborhood on the south but what did rsp do they moved the south neighborhood to neuqua valley and north neighborhood to waubonsie so that is also gone so now we are an island so the whole purpose of this boundary exercise is to solve island problem but they are creating more islands and in the beginning of the meetings in the beginning of the three meetings somebody said on the stage that north schools are overcrowded south schools are underutilized so what do you think [DINA] speaker's time has ended [DONAHUE] the next speaker is samrat saha followed by owen beinhauer [SAMRAT] i am here this evening actually to
061read a letter passionate letter that my daughter wrote so um here it goes uh i'm anushka saha a seventh grader living in mission oaks apologize i cannot come to the meeting tonight uh but i'm sending this letter through my father so that this can be read to you all first of all i'd like to thank you for appointing great teachers in our school in our school we are taught by the same teachers very three important life lessons first one is value time be fair and take every opportunity provided by the education system under concept 1 kids from my community will be sent to schools that are over four miles away instead of attending our neighborhood schools that are only about about a mile away that too when our local schools are currently under capacity with
062both my parents working full-time they'll be unable to drive me before and after school activities due to significantly longer commute time across busy highways traffic signals railroad crossings which i won't have to worry about by going to my local schools this lost opportunity will deprive me of my future academic success relative to my peers i am writing to you here tonight because my teachers taught me to be fair and speak up against any injustice so that no one can bully others regardless of their position or power unlike adults we don't have a salary for us time is money but our commute time is being increasing over four folds just imagine how would you feel if your salary will be reduced by over four folds finally a guiding principle that my teachers taught me was if
063you ever have to choose between being right and being kind always choose to be kind over being right because if you are kind you will always be right thank you very much [DONAHUE] owen beinhauer followed by batah senapati [OWEN] i would like to thank the board for allowing us to speak tonight my name is owen beinhauer and i'm currently a senior at neuqua valley living in an affluent area such as naperville the expectations of students academically are at a much higher standard when neuqua valley high school being named a blue ribbon school those expectations were once again raised causing an even more competitive environment while i don't disagree that school should be a place where students strive to be their best and are challenged that isn't all school should be most students are aware that
064there is a guidance counselor or social worker for them in the class house but very few have the opportunity to use them with the class size almost 900 students per grade is impossible for each student to quickly and efficiently use these resources as is a ratio of 300 students to one guidance counselor many students experiencing mental health struggles are sent to the class house to quickly resolve their issues because of the amount of people assigned to each counselor there's usually a wait to meet with them i believe each student should have a quarterly check-in with their assigned counselor or social worker just to check in on their mental health then if there's an issue in the school a student and the social worker will have a previously established relationship and will be able to resolve
065this issue quicker with a more personal response this is not the fault of the guidance counselors as they have been trained to be more college and after high school resources but many feel like they do not have they do not have a mental health counselor only someone to provide them with academic assistance a saying that has been used to normalize mental health is stop the stigma but most if not all the action is being taken place from the students not the system as a whole one example is simply the use of space and hallways there's so much opportunity to put up posters and quotes to send us positive messages of ending the stigma around mental health but instead we have blank or outdated walls for an example the birkett freshman center i currently have two
066classes at the freshman center and attended my entire freshman year at the freshman center there are display cases that still have images of the senior pe leaders that helped teach classes while i was a freshman that have not been updated students art pieces from 2005 are still displayed on the wall the current freshmen weren't even alive in 2005. these are just two examples of spaces that could be better used to inspire motivate and upbring the current student body many would agree that spending a minimum of 35 hours per week at school would call for some sort of mental health support just like benefits similar to dental insurance or 401k that many fortunate adults receive with their 40 hour work weeks schools are made to prepare students for living in the real world and taking care
067of mental health is a challenge that most of us will face in our adult life schools should be the front line when it comes to the battle of mental issues in america and district 204 should be the first in action thank you [DONAHUE] bata senapati is next followed by rafiya quadri [BATA] respected school board president and members dr talley and my fellow community members my name is bata senapati and i live in mission oak subdivision that is between 87th and 83rd state in naperville i am here this evening to talk about the school boundary topic i have sent you several emails with problems and possible solution options thank you for reading those emails i spoke in the public forum where i said how concept 1 would break our neighborhood and contradict several boundary criteria i
068have interacted with the several boundary committee members where i suggested to keep mission oaks and aerostats with welch and neuqua readjust the kendall and peterson to create a win-win solution for the school board and the community a lot has been spoken over the last several weeks months and especially last week in the public forums and i do not intend to reiterate those points here tonight my comment today will be somewhat philosophical in nature we all feel good and proud of to live in the community that appears in the list of our countries top 50 places to live you have a clear choice ahead of you to make and your choice will decide if that tradition will continue or not you heard all the feedbacks and reasons in last week's forums where by absolute majority of
069the folks across the school district favor concept 3 over concept 1 mostly the arguments are fact driven some were principle driven and some of course are emotionally charged one thing has not been spoken enough last week there is one concept and that is a concept one that is reactive and proposes to close some school breaks our neighborhood and most importantly sends a dark signal to the communities around the state and in the country that naperville is a dying city and is not a destination to raise kids anymore imagine the possibilities that are in front of you you can turn the extra space into stem and innovation space the way you have in concept three in each and every school the art of possibilities it creates for the kids early stage in the academic life is
070huge it clearly would put 204 school district in a competitive edge concept three is the path to the future encouragingly we heard from dr talley and mr shipley that we can afford those programs we have money so i i humbly encourage you all to choose the path to the bright future for our kids and community over being stagnant let's turn the crisis of declining enrollment to the new opportunities for the kids so please adopt concept 3 or modify concept 1 to make it future looking and less disruptive disruptive thank you all for listening to me [DONAHUE] rafiya quadri is the next speaker followed by akvind perumal [RAFIYA] good evening board members and everybody else um i am a resident of wagner farms community we sit on 103rd street and uh currently my i have two
071kids uh my older one goes to first grade at kendall under the concept one we risk losing kendall to welch and i'm not sure why that's being done our community is fairly new it was constructed a year and a half ago and we moved in primarily because of the schools um before moving into naperville a number of our family members discouraged us to move into naperville saying that so many schools are overcrowded but we believe that uh being on the south of naperville we won't have to face that problem um now concept three has gotten a lot of traction and under concept three we will remain with kendall which we would like simply because it's uh so many of the kids from our community actually bike to school on a good day you can actually
072walk too and um moving us to welch doesn't make sense under concept one simply because the buses will have to travel through much busier streets and i am surprised that um wagner farms actually being doesn't is not being given an option under uh either one or three to remain with crone middle school uh under both options we've been proposed scullen middle school simply because it sits so close to our community however i was looking through the numbers um and right now scullen is the only middle school that's operating at 100 percent capacity and even under concept three um it would still operate or hover at around 80 85 percent uh for the projected time period um i don't see why we should not stay with crone middle school um i had requested some of the
073data from our community our community is very small the once completed there will be around 300 homes and right now there are just 35 students going to crone and 100 students going to uh kendall so today i'm here to request that you allow us to stay with kendall which is much closer a place where my son has adjusted well into and crone because it's one of the schools that is that will remain uh under capacity uh it will be around 80 percent uh even if he were to be uh even if he were to stay with crone um again uh most kids that go to kendall continue on with crone and are not moved to scullen so that results in also a broken feeder system so um yes i hope you would consider us we're
074small our request is also not too big an ask so thank you so much for your time and your consideration thank you [DONAHUE] our 20th speaker is arvin perumal jeannie will we have time for a 21st speaker okay so we'll go for 21. [AKVIND] good evening my name is akvind perumal i'm a resident of meadow lakes community first of all i sincerely thank you board members you know for your service i'm here to talk about the boundary changes um i want you to know our community strongly supports concept three that's mainly because of the proximity uh to our school the proposed concept which under concept three which i would send our children to white eagle elementary which is considerably closer than our current school and also it helps in keeping our subdivisions together so the proposed
075concept three would keep our community stonehaven and chicory place our neighboring community for the same elementary school so these subdivisions run continuously between each other and our families in this communities rely on each other for transportation activities etc that said um our our community strongly opposes concept one it's not a choice mainly because it's it creates a separation of our neighboring subdivisions at the elementary school level this concept creates our create separates our stonehaven and chickory subdivisions remaining at owen elementary concept one unnecessarily swaps kids between their current schools within our community this also creates fractions among our larger community to go to three separate elementary school also in the proposed concept one elementary school students would have to pass a railroad crossing um which would which would be an obstacle in driving students to
076the school and will affect our community uh commute time uh so that said i i sincerely thank you again for your services board member it's not an easy job and you have some tough decisions to make ahead of you but i want you to be aware uh that you would make our life and our kids life easier by choosing concept three thanks for the opportunity [DONAHUE] last speaker is peter shewman [PETER] hello my name is peter shewman i'm a senior at neuqua valley you've heard many other speakers talk about the need for better student mental health options at our school and i feel like i just need to talk about it as well so indian prairie school district 204 has had a rough few weeks with a total of eight students and 204 that took
077their own life this year at my high school in neuqua valley we lost two wonderful friends brothers and classmates to suicide gabe corey was only in his sophomore year of high school i didn't know him very well but he and i were both on equal wrestling whenever gabe showed up to practice he always gave 110 percent he always wrestled his hardest and he always did his best and that's what was expected of him and that's what he did matthew nash was in his junior year of high school i didn't know him but we had mutual friends and one of those friends afterwards was constantly acting asking himself what could i have done is there anything i could have done to prevent this from happening the other mutual friend has already been battling mental health issues
078the day after nash took his own life he texted me asking if i was alright saying he couldn't lose anyone else many students are aware of ways to help their mental health but it is those that believe they don't need help from others that are most vulnerable i call on the school district to have more counselors and recommend professional therapists for students that need mental health who need it most he also needs to create more options for students to reach out for help but still protect their identities and remain anonymous the stigma around still affects many individuals that believe that they have to act a certain way around their fellow peers one of these ideas includes after school zoom calls with counselors which i believe could help benefit protecting students and their identities from others
079that may believe that they're not as big a man as they pretend to be what we as students are worried about is a snowball effect where all we receive is bad news for the next few weeks and even the next few months all we hear is about another lost friend it is time to say enough is enough and help prevent student suicide in district 204 thank you [DONAHUE] we now move to our consent agenda and superintendent report we will start with the superintendent report [TALLEY] members of the board of education and the indian prairie community has been mentioned by many students tonight we do come to you with sad news out of privacy concerns i will not mention the name of the student however i want us to we did lose a student and i
080want us to take a moment of silence now for reflection and contemplation about our students and about what was said tonight thank you i appreciate what the students said tonight i can say that as a district we are very concerned about mental health in fact tomorrow we will be meeting with the three high school principals to talk about how we can augment what we're already doing in our schools we want to come to it from a three-pronged approach working with staff and building their capacity helping students and also our community our schools currently have mental health professionals in the buildings however i know what the students are saying the issue is we don't have as many as we should have this is a national issue one that has been around for several years as we
081continue to struggle to find additional psychologists social workers and others with the skill sets with that said though we currently do have our professional school counselors we have our social workers we have our psychologists and we have our mental health coordinators in all of our high schools those people are there and available to support last year we did a parent academy and we had those people present to talk about what resources they have and how they can support families as well we will continue to work on this and come forward with some more support as i have said in our prior updates indian prairie school district is piloting the test to stay program option in four of our schools i'm sharing with you tonight that we are expanding that program to all of our elementary
082schools and middle schools under the test to stay program parents if they so choose are able to have their children participate in covid testing if exposed to someone who is positive in this classroom under this program students if they test negative throughout the testing period they can stay in school very happy that we had this in place because already we have students are able now to stay in school because of the test to stay program as opposed to having to be out in quarantine the program is only available to students when they are consistently wearing their mask and only for unvaccinated students in our schools it is the method that the state has allowed going forward i also want to thank very much our nurses because of the work that they are doing on this
083our nurses are doing the testing for the program the swab test without their without their presence without their work we would not be able to do this and our nurses are truly angels of mercy and i appreciate all that they're doing to make sure we're able to do this district 203 and 204 recently had a vaccine clinic uh for children ages 5 to 11 all 2000 spots were filled at this time we're not certain we'll be able to do another clinic it depends upon jewel osco the company with whom we were working and if we are able to do one we will let people know i will end my comments tonight to say that november 15th is school board members day there's a resolution that i'd like to read whereas school board members are elected
084to sit in trust for their diverse communities and in that capacity are charged with meeting the community's expectation and aspirations for the public education of their children and whereas school board members are entrusted with the guardianship and wise expenditure of scarce tax dollars and they are responsible for maintaining and preserving the buildings grounds and other areas of the school district that the community has put in their trust and whereas school board members are responsible for providing leadership that ensures a clear shared vision of public education for their schools that sets high standards for the education of all students and requires the effective and efficient operations of their districts and whereas school board members adopt public policy to give voice to that leadership and employ a superintendent to administer board policy and are also responsible for
085the regular monitoring of the district's performance and compliance with state policy and whereas school board members selfishly volunteer countless hours to public service with no compensation and whereas school districts have faced enormous challenges over the past two years and the strong dedicated leadership provided by the indian prairie school district board of education has allowed student learning and success to continue and whereas employers are supportive of their employees who serve as school board members generously lending support and time employers give their employees the opportunity to better serve the needs of the school districts and communities they represent through sometimes tremendous sacrifice to the employer and whereas decisions made by school board members directly impact the quality of life and safety in their communities placing them at the front line of american democracy therefore be it resolved
086by indian prairie school district 204 that we proclaim november 15 2021 as school board members day as a way to honor these citizens who devote their time and energy for the successful education of our children and future leaders what i appreciate most about this board is their thoughtful approach to decisions it has to make this board of education is very professional in its approach to handling difficult decisions board of ed members may not always agree but they are able to disagree professionally and continue to work to serve the community and our students you do not always see that see that happening in other districts in illinois across the country and we are lucky to have this very functioning board of education now back to you ms donahue [DONAHUE] thank you so much for that beautiful
087honor so i think we're all touched by that [RISING] it was almost as long as our oath of office [DONAHUE] next we move to our consent agenda item i need a motion to approve consent agenda items d through h [RISING] i'll make a motion to approve consent agenda items d through h as presented [DEMMING] second [DONAHUE] is there any discussion [RISING] we're finishing up phase five of the air conditioning which is pretty exciting [DONAHUE] jeannie will you call the roll [DINA] mr rising [RISING] yes [DINA] ms demming [DEMMING] aye [DINA] mr karubas [KARUBAS] yes [DINA] ms fosdick [FOSDICK] yes [DINA] ms grover [GROVER] yes [DINA] ms jain [JAIN] yes [DINA] ms donahue [DONAHUE] yes motion passes our next item is our action items i need a motion and a second to approve the tentative 2021 tax levy
088[DEMMING] i move that we approve the tentative 2021 tax levy as presented [FOSDICK] second [DONAHUE] any discussion [DONAHUE] sorry go ahead [SHIPLEY] i'll uh just just read the annual uh spiel here so uh good evening uh tonight we are taking the first step in the process that will result in the extension of our annual property tax levy the illinois school code gives the authority to boards of education to levy a tax on the real property within the district to support its public schools this is an annual process that must occur by the end of december furthermore the truth in taxation law provides that if a tentative levy exceeds 105 percent of the prior year's tax extension a public notice and hearing are needed before the official levy can be adopted since our levy request represents
089less than a five percent increase we are not subject to the truth in taxation law however we still intend to follow the intent of this law therefore 20 days prior to the adoption of the final levy resolution the school board must estimate and announce a tentative levy for the amount of money they deem necessary to be raised by the property taxation it is this tentative levy that we are asking the board to approve tonight i am recommending the board set a tentative levy in the amount of $326 548 436 this includes the bond and interest levy the bonded interest levy is set at $27 325 000 this is the estimated bond and levy amount in accordance with our bonded debt this levy is simply a request while this represents a three percent increase over the
0902020 levy extension the district is subject to property tax cap legislation we will not receive a three percent increase over the past 30 years the property tax extension limitation law or ptel has limited property tax increases in dupage and will county to the amount of cpi depending on the amount of new property the district should experience approximately 2.2 percent increase of final extension that 2.2 percent would include a consumer price index amount of 1.4 percent this was the consumer price index for the 2020 calendar year the remaining 0.8 percent would be related to new property in dollars this represents approximately a $7 000 000 increase from the prior year extension of which 3.9 million would come from the consumer price index increase and 3.1 million would come from new property under ptel cpi has become
091the critical factor not the tax rate when the county sets the property tax bills for individual homeowners the rate is lowered or raised by the tax cap formula based on that cpi cap we do expect tax rates will drop this year as property tax values have increased in both will and dupage counties we are estimating dupage's eav or equalized assessed value have increased by 2 percent and wills have increased by 1.6 percent therefore for 2021 the average tax holder should experience a 1.4 percent increase in taxes paid as that's the amount of cpi and a slight decrease in their property tax rate tonight's levy is based on fiscal year 2023 budget forecasts current projections for fiscal year 2023 suggest increases in costs related to cpi across district operating funds that is why that is the
092justification for this increase the 2021 levy year this year is the first year of public act 102-0519 this law was signed into law by governor pritzker over the summer and this act requires that the county clerk extend a supplemental levy on behalf of the school district for assessment loss due to certificate of errors or board of review and property tax appeal decisions there's no action needed taken by this board in related to this act i do anticipate the impact of this law to have a very minimal impact on our district and our taxpayers as we historically collect 99.8 percent of our property taxes each each year and both our counties have been very proactive in resolving appeals prior to the extension of property taxes so although we are not subject to the truth in taxation
093law this year we are still intending to hold a public hearing prior to board adoption this hearing will occur at the beginning of the december 6 board meeting so with that at this time administration recommends the board adopt the 2021 levy as presented [DONAHUE] now do we have any questions [RISING] i'd just like to make a statement for our community it's important to know that the reason property taxes in illinois are so high is because illinois funds education 50th in the united states illinois has pushed that burden onto home property taxpayers furthermore school districts cannot increase property taxes and have to stay capped within cpi as matt had just mentioned that is going to be 1.4 percent however because assessments have gone up that will actually receive less than cpi and residents should see their overall
094portion of their school district overall tax rate drop a little bit is that what you said [SHIPLEY] correct so if you compare that 1.4 cpi with projected increases in the counties of around 1.6 to 2 percent that that would be that slight decrease and we've seen that pretty consistently since since 2011 where our property values have risen um quicker than cpi resulting in a declining rate [RISING] so where i was kind of going with that is that if people see a higher percentage increase that they should talk to their assessor because we are we can only levy at a maximum of cpi [SHIPLEY] correct those numbers or estimates are for the counties as a whole so individual properties obviously can can increase above that or increase below that or possibly decrease in value and that that
095does impact the individual assessment on each property [DEMMING] thank you i had some questions about um special education at the levy and just on the uh what is the percentage of our general education budget that actually goes to because you did indicate that some of that does go to special education [SHIPLEY] sure and i uh should have known this was coming right um we have uh we spend about i think in the budget for 2022 we budgeted over 53 million of special education expenditures and our dedicated special education levy's only 16 and a half million some of that remaining is made up of state and federal grants but that that largest portion is that general piece of that levy and again part of the um part of when we construct the levy and choose
096our ask between the individuals funds is that there's some strategy there and in general the the general education gives us just the most flexibility because that is money we can use for anything so we can use it to cover special education we can use it to cover um some of the other restricted levies as well so so the strategy has generally been to make sure that we're maximizing that general education levy and then you know potentially levying a little bit lower in some of those restricted amounts as a result [DONAHUE] just a point of clarity and the cpi increases we are we are limited to five percent though so if cpi was eight or some horrible number above five we still would be limited to so we can't always follow even the cpi [SHIPLEY] correct
097that the cpi uh again it trails a year so this year we're living based on the 2020 cpi so that's why it is 1.4 percent uh you know i think it's it's in the news everywhere now that cpi is is well above that and it i i have seen reports that i think 6.2 percent is what what was released last week so uh this time next year we could be talking about um not getting that full cpi percent and that would be the first time i believe that's happened um since that ptel law came came into action about 30 years ago [RISING] one other thing there was a couple years back in 2010 through 2012 where cpi was flat and while district expenses were going up we were receiving no additional revenue and that extremely
098hurt us because we are 80 percent of funding of where we should be [SHIPLEY] that's correct we uh you know and ironically just how much things have changed over the last year we were concerned about a negative cpi um at the beginning of the pandemic and we were looking at how that would potentially impact our levy and now we're here a little over a year later worried about the opposite problem about going above that five percent cap [DONAHUE] jeannie now will you call the roll [DINA] ms demming [DEMMING] aye [DINA] ms fosdick [FOSDICK] yes [DINA] mr karubas [KARUBAS] yes [DINA] ms jain [JAIN] yes [DINA] mr rising [RISING] yes [DINA] ms grover [GROVER] yes [DINA] ms donahue [DONAHUE] yes the motion passes our next item is mr eccarius he'll be presenting our review on summer
099learning [ECCARIUS] good evening dr talley and board of education members i appreciate having the time this evening as you probably recall last year we expanded our summer of learning to support students who were adversely affected and we really tried to approach how we could support as many students as possible but looking at our students who really were struggling and how we could really provide a type of on-ramp for when we were going to start back at school this year so tonight i'm just going to review a little bit about how some logistics of how the summer went last year and then our early planning for this upcoming summer and how we would like to expand it if possible so uh for the summer of 2021 our focuses were to provide additional support for students who've
100been adversely impacted during the previous school year to boost their academic and executive skills as they prepare for the 2021-22 school year a lot of that too is just building and building upon the relationships [ECCARIUS] thought i was gonna have to use coach's voice might not work viewers [AUDIO ISSUES] [ECCARIUS] provide 204 online courses for high school credit so those were our goals for last summer uh some logistics uh last year was our first summer that we had the 21st century grant this was our beyond the bell program [AUDIO ISSUES] [ECCARIUS] i can tell when it's going out sorry it's a grant we had received where the only schools that would qualify as if we had any uh buildings that had over 40 percent that were low income it was $150 000 per year per
101school it was a pretty heavy duty grant process that we applied for we received it so we received uh $300 000 uh it is actually renewable for five years for a total of $1.5 million and so we are now in the second year of our beyond the bell grant for last summer it did go throughout june uh at georgetown and longwood we had our summer lit camp in camp invention at this uh academic boost [AUDIO ISSUES] [ECCARIUS] so for academic boost uh we did that later in july as we said we wanted that kind of the on-ramp to the start of the new school year that was at various elementary schools across the district and it had really across curricular student engagement opportunities we really wanted to build relationships with students as we also tried
102to focus on some of their literacy and math concerns we identified students first we looked at how many teachers we had available to who were able to teach during the summer and then from there we looked at how many students per grade level we could serve we were able to get enough staff to provide those services at seven of our elementary schools this did relate to quite a bit of busing to get as many students served as possible and i'll go into the specifics on the next slides so first with our 21st century grant we did meet the needs of 152 students who came for the summer and just for a little outcome on this one we're fortunate that we had a video to be able to put together to show a little bit about
103thank you perfect a little bit about our beyond the bell program [VIDEO] club inventions like you get to have fun make your own things you can make toys you can make a toy car and everything you can make catapults with rubber ducks you get to play with a microphone it's pretty fun club invention is a is a club that allows for students to be able to be creative it's a stem based every year it's a little different this particular year we actually had road rally solar bot open mic and then we also had duck chuck my favorite part was the car because you could make different kinds of things from the car one was a propeller and the other one was a pulley and i think that was really cool club invention is only possible
104with the help of money this grant made it possible for our title 1 students to be able to have this opportunity to be able to do this stem program stem is important for our students because that's so much of what their future may hold for them and i think exposing them at an early age and getting their thoughts moving and flowing in that direction is just so important for their future i joined a club invention because i wanted to do a bunch of fun things that i didn't think that i would actually do and then once i started doing club invention i just wanted to stay here [ECCARIUS] we will be uh doing that summer program again this year with our camp invention uh through the 21st century grant we're actually that's a grant that
105goes throughout the year where we do after school programming we also do before school programming and looking for all different opportunities where we can provide additional opportunities for students on our academic boost we ended up serving 525 students ended up coming during that month of july in that first week of august the program provided literacy and math instruction and practice to build students confidence before the beginning of school year just a little bit of feedback really help my child during the summer break and get ready for the school year sad that this is the last day from a student who loves coming there and and students really enjoyed the extra attention and fun activities we are monitoring the students and and looking at how they're progressing during the year as well one of the big
106things is just relationships that were built uh and right now we have just anecdotal information but as we continue throughout the year after we get the first semester see how they're progressing in their classes and whatever assessment data we get we'll continue to see how those students are performing at the middle schools we had a similar approach same time period so we had our cross-curricular uh learning reading of high interest texts stem experiential hands-on activities physical education sel we were doing you know field trips we were doing uh different opportunities of you know growing things outside and just connecting with students but tying in a lot of those academic areas at the same time a lot of this was just you know really trying to form relationships and we aligned it with middle school models
107supporting the whole child for that program we did serve 220 students our outcomes once again were positive feedback from students staff and families students seeking out support due to relationships built last summer they're noticing that right in the beginning of this school year strong connections with families has been beneficial in supporting students in increased school participation from students who attended summer enrichment they did see that this did quite a bit for building relationships and trust at the high school we had our summer bridge same time frame once again these were all just a couple weeks before a new school year started a program at each of the three high schools focusing on helping freshmen enter our schools more confident and prepared for success uh focused on academics as well as growth mindset advocacy and belongingness
108a little bit just getting used to uh the high school credit recovery we had held that in both june and in late july through the beginning of august and this assisted students that may have fallen behind in credits last school year provided opportunities to earn credit using the apex software with guidance from our teachers through the learning process you know we have credit recovery in place you know to support our students who do fall behind we did see last year more students fall behind and felt like we need to we needed to enhance that over the summer to help our students really kind of get caught up on those credits for the summer bridge we had 134 students participate served as a great transition from eighth grade to ninth grade particularly helpful for uh students
109that were remote learners for all of eighth grade credit recovery we had 182 students earning 293 semester credits and some of the feedback there was just teacher support and academic coaching very valuable gave students an alternate pathway to remain on track towards graduation and students earn their way back through focused work often times in that one you know some of those are very traditional with a you know trying to follow a program that helps the students and and guide them but a lot of this is based on how did students perform in those classes you know some student might have finished with a 62 percent and so they just need a little bit that gets them over to get the credit for the class they might have got an incomplete for some reason and they're
110down many classes you'll see here if we had 180 students but 293 classes we had a lot of students that took two credits uh during the summer uh you know to get back on track so it was really um it did a lot also to support them uh i think we all know what it feels like as you start to get behind and the weight that that presents and this was an opportunity to help students really get caught up and to feel like they're back on track our 204 online learning these are all the courses that we offer this is a continuation unlike the other ones this is a tuition-based course that our students can take a full course with us but take it over the summer we did off uh do offerings in both
111june and july and you'll see from this that it was very popular last summer when you see the break down there we had 1645 uh students take courses um i think last year uh when our last presentation to the board we were at about 1200 at that time and said we're typically around 1400 i think and we ended up with over 1600 students who took advantage of that and you see some comments there both from a student as well as a teacher and a lot of them it just it helps so they can decide if they want to take a different class during the course of the year or to ease their schedule so the cod partnership these are all different courses offered through cod it's tuition to cod most of the time is our
112teachers who are teaching those courses we did not have any classes that had enough students to open up last year you might recall that the summer before we did not have any but that's because of when things first had kind of closed down due to covid and prior to that it had started to wane a little bit we are not going to offer cod courses this summer we are looking at right now what um courses we might be able to offer ourselves uh to support students there are some courses that we we we've not recommend in the past even for students to take through cod just because we might want that foundation to be done like in algebra one is a foundation that we really it's such a strong foundation for math that we don't
113want it to be done in a short summer period but done throughout the school year and so we're working now to see which of those courses are which popular ones in the past that we could also offer over the summer for students as we look at possible enrichment opportunities financials uh when i came to you last year about potential amounts that we could spend on uh and this was out of our federal funding uh as you know uh we had a cares one uh then we had esser 2and then esser 3 and so we're looking at opportunities to support students with that funding when we didn't know what it was going to look like over the summer we didn't know how many staff we'd have available we didn't know how many students were going to
114participate we did have a lot of students that also they either needed a break from school or had other things going on in the summer and so all said and done uh through the tuition free programs there we had 1061 students who took advantage of our academic skills boost credit recovery and summer bridge and we spent $323 000 you'll see almost half of that is on transportation when you look at the breakdowns there and but we were able to provide transportation for students needed transportation i think that was a big deal this will all come out of the federal funding that we received through the grants last year when i presented to you i think my ballpark estimate was around $520 000 we didn't know how many sections at that time we were going to
115see if we can get all 21 elementary schools going uh that that just didn't uh play out that way uh so we did spend approximately $323 000 the only asterisks i had there were on the final column that with transportation it was hard to separate it by group because we did a lot of sharing of buses and trying to figure out all those routes we do know that we spent about $153 000 in transportation across all programs all right so for this upcoming summer obviously we're early in that process we are once again looking at how we can provide uh additional supports for students who continue to be most adversely impacted over the past couple of years who we see are still struggling we do you know several questions that have come up how are
116we identifying those students whatever minimal you know assessment data we have we're looking at that data we're looking at students who might be in our problem solving or multi-tiered system service of supports processes and looking at the students who need the most support as we try to prioritize how we identify students to get those supports knowing that we also this summer wanted to make sure we tried to increase our summer opportunities and see what kind of enrichment opportunities we can also be providing this summer we do plan that our students who need those supports like the academic boost the credit recovery courses that we are looking at that being tuition free again to support those students who most need it and we would look at that for transportation as well because we know that that
117plays a big part in it is making sure we can get them there we're looking at what our enrichment opportunities are going to be at that same time so as i said uh we'll we'll provide additional support in those areas um and we continue to you know we'll do that again this uh summer uh and try to meet as uh the needs of as many students as we possibly can we do feel like we'll have those dates out earlier this year than we did last year which might also help in some of the summer planning we did see it as a really good way to do that a couple weeks before the school year started just to really get them back into kind of school mode at that time we'll continue to offer our 204
118online courses for high school credit as you saw that those were those remain popular and we'll continue to offer those courses some obviously one of the enrichment ones that will stay in place for next year also is that 21st century beyond the bell we'll be doing that again at longwood and georgetown but in addition to that we're looking at many other possible enrichment opportunities some members on the curriculum instruction team have been planning around some stem related concepts and we're looking at how we can best do that over the summer whether we do a type of stem camp or how we stretch that out and look at the different opportunities we can provide over the summer these were just some ideas that we've been looking at we do need to recruit obviously staff who can
119also teach those courses and figuring out how we want to support that we also we're looking at with our grow your own to see if there's some opportunities we can provide teacher sorry students who've graduated from our district but plan on being teachers who maybe could do some kind of internships over the summer by being in those classes there's another set of extra hands in there both for our boost classes as well as in here um just to provide additional support so that's another thing that we're looking at doing um over the summer um some additional ones now these might not look as traditional because they might be a one day thing or looking at different certifications we're exploring these ideas there's a lot of work that would go into these ones but we're looking
120at how we can do that as you see there the family experience as well as we're looking at you know certification opportunities for students at the same time we're also looking at and we're going to take suggestions from staff who might offer some ideas of possible enrichment ideas over the summer i remember when i was a teacher in the district a long time ago over 20 years ago we used to get to submit i think i did math magic and some different ones when i was a teacher as well as teaching you know some support classes for students as well but we're going to be looking for ideas there we did recently submit a grant that we're hoping to receive and part of that grant was also to do an expressive arts class to support
121mental health over the summer and so we're hoping i think we kind of like that you know we like the idea a lot that we will also see what we can do to make that work even if we don't get the grant but we're looking at other opportunities that can also support mental health at the same time so um with that our next steps is just you know discuss the planning with our building administration i know that they have a lot on their plate but we're going to continue to look at how we can continue supporting students over the summer we are looking at creating some summer learning coordinator positions and expectations looking at a job description posting those positions and hiring for that something similar to our esy coordinators ones so we can do
122a much better job of also communicating what we have available and how people can sign up for that as well as recruiting staff members to be able to teach those courses determine logistics of building availability we know we're we also have uh extended school year going on but we do know that there's going to be construction this summer and so we're going to work through that as well i believe we have air conditioning that needs to finish at several of our buildings and we're going to have to try to juggle that with also trying to provide services for students so we we are going to be trying to determine those dates and locations knowing that we have all of that to work with well as i said we'll select as additional enrichment ideas for summer
123learning and the big task will be obviously recruiting staff to support those summer learning opportunities so with that i'm more than happy to answer questions um and hopefully the um some of the questions that you had i've already answered but if not feel free [DEMMING] i did send over a number of questions so but i'm only going to ask um three and then um i'll try and make sure that you get those again so you can respond to some of the other ones but um i wonder we're doing the summer bridge program first of all thank you for for the uh concentration on on supporting our students um last summer because that's that's been a big concern of mine as far as how are our students that really some that we just that didn't have
124the support and for resources that they needed how we were doing so so thank you for that um on the summer bridge we were doing the ap summer bridge before [ECCARIUS] yeah we haven't done ap summer bridge in a while and um i i think they were finding out that they were concerned about how students were going to start into ap courses at that time and they found out that that there really wasn't um a large concern about how those students were performing in those classes and so it was a decision several years ago that they had stopped providing that service because they weren't seeing that same need i think they've built in a lot in the beginning of those classes for the freshmen on how um they what can help support them um throughout
125the year um and so but if you're hearing anything different uh we have regular conversations making sure that we can support our students and and i think we heard from students about the need to increase our how we support students and and especially their their you know mental health is mental health associated with that [DEMMING] algebra one um i did have a question about that i know you you know talked about the need that sort of being like a really foundation course and i had sent a question over just and i totally understand that trying to do algebra one in the summer for those that haven't succeeded [ECCARIUS] so the answer there is kind of it depends uh if we had a student who was really close in um completing that course that would be
126something that we would work through with like credit recovery um you know if they finished with a 62 or even like a 48 that's real i mean that would be quite a bit more uh work for them to do but we look at students and how close they were to see what we can support them uh with over the summer so um it is something we approach but it really depends on how close they are to completing that everything associated with that class or at least the essential things associated with that class versus you know if a student missed most of algebra one we probably would not try to make that up through credit recovery [DEMMING] it's such a foundational course that's kind of when i wondered where we're doing that and then um the
127last one that i'll ask what what when do we have to complete the use um on the cares and essar funding how how much do do you know how much we have left [ECCARIUS] we'll be presenting to the board about esser 3 but next time we'll actually present to the board about some some of the spending through cares one but that one already ended that was our first one that went a lot towards nursing and supplies and a lot of things to you know support us right in the beginning of the pandemic cares 2 is where we were able to really focus on some things with summer learning some things with class size and we're going to be presenting on that next time and we are really trying to save um esser 3 for the
128start of next year um we're we're working hard for that we have another meeting this week to kind of talk and see if we can get esser 2 to carry us through this year um and then esser 3 you actually have until 2024 so we're hoping you're going to see when we talk about it we actually we probably had one of the lowest per students in the state of federal funding that we received a lot of that was based on i believe census data and so you're going to see when i share with you what ours was per student it was i think it was $400 and something per student when you look at i think the average across the united states was around $2000 i'll confirm that um but we we were quite low
129on what we received per student but still it's great to receive that funding and we're doing a lot of great things with it so next time we'll go into what we've done so far and then as we plan out for esser 3 that's we'll bring that to the board we actually i believe by law have to have a hearing connected to that one and demonstrate um you know how we're doing that and the different components with that so we we do plan on doing that um we're trying to make sure that we kind of empty out uh cares one and esser 2 uh before we roll into esser 3 [DONAHUE] you'l be giving a presentation on december 6 that our december 6th meeting on the federal spending and programs that we got [ECCARIUS] we won't
130get a lot into esser 3 completely at that time but we'll talk about what we've used funds so far for we won't go into summer learning because we just kind of did a little bit about that but we'll go into the other things that we've done so far with it [GROVER] thank you for the presentation um especially the younger kids elementary the video just showed their enthusiasm and i know this past summer they were very excited because as part of their summer program elementary school got a bunch of books um reading books um would we be able to do that again [ECCARIUS] we heard great we've received great feedback about that so last year um what she was referring to is our our k through um actually i think we started with early childhood through
131fourth grade um we provided uh at our title schools ten books um per students to uh students could keep other summer and five books for the rest of our students there was a large cost to that so that is something that we receive great feedback with and i do think it helped quite a bit to keep our students reading over the summer so that is something that we are considering again um to see how we can support that i think we spent around $250 000 on that that we did out of esser funding as well and so we are looking at how we can support students that way getting books in hands is is critical we did that for all kids not um ones who just signed up so [GROVER] i know and i i
132was bummed out because my kid was a sixth grader [ECCARIUS] and the kids were so excited to get those books to bring them home and to put them in their backpacks so it um it was it was great and we heard a lot of positive feedback about it [TALLEY] we were all as excited to make sure that they had those books as the kids [ECCARIUS] and our schools were great we were trying to get them um we were trying to give them some notice ahead of time about what the titles of those books were because a lot of people were doing book fairs at the end of the year and so we didn't um we were you know we were trying to get out in front of that uh so that kids weren't buying uh
133certain books and then they were getting them from us at the same time so and that is one of those hard things to try to um schedule out we're fortunate uh to to work with um some companies who really help us in trying to make that happen [GROVER] great um my other question is on slide 12. it's um the online summer learning and i know a lot of high school students like that because a lot of those courses are required courses that they need to take to graduate are there are we planning maybe in future years adding other courses [ECCARIUS] we continue to have conversations about that there's a lot that goes into building those courses and you know trying to make them effective but we're constantly trying to see what would be possible um you know
134we've had a lot of changes over the last couple years and so our time right now hasn't been focused on increasing those yet but i think that could be something that we explore in the future especially if we're not going to be working with cod and if there's opportunities to increase some options there [FOSDICK] thank you for it is exciting to me to see kids excited about learning even in the summer um what i'm asked about is something i asked about a little bit earlier and you did touch on briefly you know potentially having an expressive arts program or some mental health piece um and i'm wondering as part of this summer learning or summer program of taking care of our kids if we would if we have ever considered doing some kind of like
135summer connections or touch point especially for kids moving from middle school to high school just as a way a workshop or check-in or strategies you know we're seeing and we know that learning about taking care of ourselves and our mental health is just as important as our academic learning [ECCARIUS] i think it's a a great point i don't know if there's a course or how we connect with them or or what we do to continue that and that is something i will definitely bring up with our social emotional learning and wellness coordinator um especially now i mean we're having a lot of conversations we just recently as i said applied for a grant we rolled in that expressive arts but it's actually a grant being provided by the state it would be $250 000 a
136year for two years so a total of $500 000 we are looking at parent education it's all related to social emotional learning mental health and wellness and so we're looking at parent education additional student services additional speakers that we could do at buildings but also what are some other things we can do to support mental health across the district in a district our size $250 000 doesn't go a long way but it's it i mean any little bit helps on what we can do to support all students um with there's also some things with um you know uh teen mental health training and mental health first aid training and stuff you do need a certain percentage of your staff to be trained first before you can start offering to students with that and so we
137we have been we do have trainers in our own district now and we continue to offer those trainings um and people continue to sign up for them and we're looking at are there opportunities where we can kind of pick up the pace on that um but it's that's the hard part finding time and so we are looking at that and what other ones i do like your suggestion and will share that with the team as well [FOSDICK] thank you my last point is it's just a question um especially as you're presenting tonight mentioned you know we all know how it feels to get behind and how scary that can feel and how stressful how much weight that is um how what do we do to communicate these options to our kids for like credit recovery
138so that they know right we want to of course encourage them to do what they can during the school year to stay on top of things [ECCARIUS] well a lot of that we do depend on um you know our teachers our counselors you know our deans our administrators looking at how students are performing they do talk and discuss about how students are doing how they're progressing in a class i know they do have a lot of conversations about especially trying to identify students who might not be on track and providing those options i think they also try to provide those options to parents of those students and we'll continue those efforts we are offering credit recovery throughout the year as well that was something we started to do last year so because like you said
139you if those can snowball really quickly and so if we can take care of some of those but one of the challenges with that is you know if you have a student who's been struggling with a full load and then you try to add something else for them to do on top of that so there is a balancing act to that and i mean we have great staff in our buildings who do try to be delicate about that and how they can support the students while not trying to overwhelm them that is one of the hardest parts um is you know the full load plus let's do this on top of that and many students um you know might be in a fragile state and that's why they're um you know not on track and
140so it is a definitely a balancing act [FOSDICK] i appreciate your work to make sure we're addressing that side of our kids learning as well [RISING] if you look at slide 16. um which is kind of the focus of 2022. i know you said at the beginning and we knew this because we talked about this last year that one of the biggest struggles for this past summer was staffing staff was burnt out but the numbers we got were respectable but my concern is leading into the summer um i think we all want to expand this um you know the the academic boost at the elementary in the middle school but i guess my concern was you said the summer bridge wasn't as well attended as maybe the credit recovery and while credit recovery is extremely
141important for our students to graduate you know i think we all continue to hear what are we doing to help those high school students with the learning loss that they experienced so assuming in a perfect world we could get as much staffing as we needed i mean could we is this something we could you know because i'm just looking at the numbers of high school 132 for summer bridge and 182 for credit recovery i mean that's 314 high school students and i'm sure and i guess my question is especially regarding that summer bridge were the students identified or was it offered because i'm sure we would have more take advantage of it if it was something that was offered [ECCARIUS] we have rolling offers with that we had a lot of students who did not
142take us up on that and that happens every summer i wouldn't say we were obviously we would like more students to take advantage of that we were not short on staff for the summer bridge program that's been something that has been in place the last couple years and they look forward to those opportunities and building those relationships at that time uh we do often offer offer offer and either i mean people you know there's a lot of things going on in the summer and um i think especially last summer some people chose to you know take a step away from school and took it every advantage they could over the summer to do family events or or different things like that but we'll continue to emphasize um you know how important that is we look
143at all different type of needs with with that um we have you know parents reach out to us and ask you know i really think my child need this and we direct them right away to find a way to give them the opportunity to do that there's a lot of students we're reaching out to saying this would be great they work very closely with our middle schools on which kids are going to most benefit from this and then they continue to try to provide that and try to increase the number every time a student says no i think they open it up to another student to try to see if they want to take advantage of that opportunity [RISING] it's encouraging that our staff at all levels is trying to identify the kids that really
144need the help um but i hope we continue to try to maximize this as much as possible for future years um with the money that we have but again it's a fine balance in that because you can only do so much with the staffing that you have as well so i understand that um and then uh oh yeah just oh two more comments just not questions comments summer learning couldn't stress how great it is enough both my daughters did it it was wonderful especially for those kids that are in you know band or music or art that you know can't take some of those core classes that they need to get for graduation they're the online courses is great for the high school students and then um not that i'm telling administration how to do
145their job and operate the district but i would highly suggest you put out the posting for the summer jobs like right after winter break when the teachers are all arrested and everything instead of right before [ECCARIUS] yeah we will we're we're working on our timing for that we do think some of the enrichment offerings too that we'll have um excitement i mean i couldn't be more grateful for our teachers who did um you know it's it has been difficult uh and exhausting and a lot of new things learned last year in in how to instruct students and the fact that we had as many teachers as we did to come back and spend their summers you know supporting students and and they want what's best for kids and i wouldn't be surprised if that happens
146again with how many teachers are dedicated support i mean you saw the smile on the teachers faces even in the 21st century one and the opportunities that were given to kids we're looking at can we replicate that in some of our enrichment opportunities as well for students [JAIN] i remember towards the end of the year there was a little bit of i don't know uncertainty or anxiousness about how these programs would be and where the students would be and how much the teachers could give after last year and it's really encouraging and credit goes to you and all the teachers for the enthusiasm they bring into these programs i'm just curious if we did any sort of pre or post assessment on some of the programs that we offer just to see how effective our
147programs were since we are hoping to do this long term or at least next summer [ECCARIUS] we didn't do any honestly we didn't want to spend the time in the summer assessing students we had them for 12 days so we were really focused on building relationships uh progressing we already had an idea of where the students were kind of performing um as uh students were recommended um for the opportunities i i did hear from several parents who were so excited um when their child um was recommended and had that opportunity because they wanted those supports as well we are still monitoring those students right now as we get data in to see how they're progressing or what supports we've need i i'm i just happened to regularly talk to two parents who had um students
148in the course and uh they continue to tell me how much they're really young i think one's a second grader and one has a first grader and how they're progressing um with their um with their academic skills uh so far into this school year and are we're grateful both for the summer the books that went home but also for those summer opportunities and so obviously we hope we can expand that for other students but we are trying to track how those students are doing and will continue to do so [JAIN] the other thing that i was wondering so for the 21st century grant were these teacher recommended students that joined the program how were they selected [ECCARIUS] open to all all students so um and it was our first year so we do think this
149summer we'll have even more kids who take part in that um and actually our that what we were offering be with beyond the bell prior to that right after we got the grant and after school most of those were online through zoom and so we still had a lot of nervousness last summer for people to come in person and we were doing the camp invention in person so that was we do think that that impacted the numbers a little bit as well as just vacations and different things going on i think people are now planning for that for next summer but we offered it to all kids um at longwood and georgetown there was it was not broken down by any other thing except to offer that we're doing that throughout the year for the
150grant we need to have a minimum number um as well um so that we can keep getting our funding [JAIN] yeah that's really great to hear because i kind of have the same concerns as what board member rising explained in the sense that i know our teachers are doing such a great job trying to identify those students but there are those certain students that might fall through the crack or may not have been noticed or may need help with this and if we can get those students to also partake that would that would be wonderful [ECCARIUS] our teachers get to know our students and families so well so i know there's also a lot of encouraging and calls and saying please sign up for this i know a lot of that happened also dr tara
151bell she did a lot of um reaching out we also we had a retired um teacher slash administrator who also speaks fluent spanish who was calling a lot of families as well trying to encourage them and give him as much information as well to try to get as many students to come in and be a part of it as possible [TALLEY] there are so many teachers from across the district who were participating in the program a physics teacher from neuqua participates and teaches in that program retired teachers just the whole arraign and not just teachers from longwood and georgetown [JAIN] one last comment or um just to echo what board member fosdick mentioned i i would love to see a summer program that's not so much academic oriented but more based on life skills which could
152be tied in with our career readiness or but also implement these social emotional learning skills that'll give students time to deal with scenarios and life stressors and perhaps strategies on how to cope with these life stressors it's so hard to fit in throughout the academic year and i know this district is really trying hard to do that but if we could be more proactive rather than reactive um which i know we're not just reactive but um if such programs could be made available over the summer i think that would be great [ECCARIUS] i think that's a great idea i do think that's um and i think it would fall right under there but i think that is something that we'd have to look at the federal funding to possibly support and do something like that
153as a tuition-free i think um you know i will have conversations around that i think it's a great idea or what are some different opportunities we can do maybe it's not you know two weeks straight but it's you know some different opportunities where for check-ins or those types of things it makes complete sense [DONAHUE] i think on that camp invention is a very cool program and it kind of i mean it's not a social emotional thing but it's not like a class where you're taking you know um it's creative right it's it's coming up with concepts and ideas of how to solve different puzzles or things that they have to to work with and i really i think that's a great value i love the involvement of the grow your own possibility that you brought
154up i think that would be a wonderful way of further engaging students that are interested in teaching and i do sometimes wonder like you know we did hear a lot from the students today from neuqua and sometimes i you know summer sometimes needs to be a break for students and i worry sometimes that some of the enrollment in the summer learning is to get something out of the way so that they can take something that puts additional pressure on the students and i guess i would just encourage families to look closely at you know what they're doing and and making sure that students are given a break when you know when when they need it especially during summer [ECCARIUS] it's one of the reasons we're looking at like even maybe we can do some one
155day things and make it more family engagement type of things as well but trying to do that so it's not too much uh additional on top either [DONAHUE] thank you very much our next items on the agenda is legislative advocacy and the board of education update and i believe ms grover you have something on the [GROVER] this saturday friday starts friday this weekend is the iasb meeting and as saturday we will be meeting at the delegate assembly to discuss the resolutions last board meeting we voted on the resolutions and today i had given everybody what our vote was and today it's whether you guys want me to speak on anything the way the delegate assembly is going to work this year is different in that mr rising we're not going to have paddles anymore it's
156going to be technology now so we vote with our internet connections are going to be working they said and so we will be using our phones to vote um so i i plan to unless um i'm hoping that the belief statement that ipsd submitted will be on the consent agenda item if it's not i'm then i do prepare to speak on that one but if there's any other one that you guys would like me to speak on let me know [DONAHUE] i was thinking since we had split votes on pretty much everything that it probably would be just most appropriate to just speak on your belief statement [RISING] yeah my guess is on the ones that get pulled from the consent agenda you might write something up and never get a chance up there to
157to speak because it the line just gets huge um not that's a bad thing but kind of like laurie said we you know we're split on quite a few votes and those other ones that we weren't split on they'll get enough opposition [FOSDICK] if you speak on any based on what our board also said here i would ask that you consider speaking about the child safeguard storage [DONAHUE] does anyone have any other items in this area i'll just um make sure the public knows that this weekend is our conference the state conference of school boards for illinois and so the board will be in training on friday saturday and sunday attending different sessions to learn how to be an even better school board member than you already are so thank you all for your dedication and
158um happy uh board member day so thank you [RISING] our board is presenting [DONAHUE] that's true too yes we will have a presentation on tif's and mr rising and mr karubas will be presenting along with mr shipley and our attorney so thank you very much it will be a very worthwhile session for people so with that i need a motion to adjourn [KARUBAS] motion to adjourn [DEMMING] second [DONAHUE] all in favor