Urbana School District 116 Board of Education 05 05 26

001Okay, it's six o'clock, so let's begin this uh study session of our Bandit School District 116. >> Order, please. >> Roll call, please. >> Member Cheryl, member Hixon, >> here. >> Member Maribou, >> here. Member Jones >> here. Member Langondorf here. Vice President Baxley >> here. >> President Palowski >> here. Uh we have a quorum. Are there any additions, corrections, or modifications tonight's agenda? Um there is no call for an executive session after tonight's meeting. So the chair would now entertain a motion to approve tonight's agenda as published. >> So moved. >> Second. >> All in favor say I. I. Any opposed? Uh >> now move on to accommodations and recognitions. First up is Habitat for Humanity. First up is who have habitat for humanity. Mark and Laura like that. Did it work? Hey everybody.

002So we're here this evening to talk a little bit about our Habitat for Humanity trip that we do twice a year now. actually two and a half times this year. Um, and we're doing this so that you can get a sense of some of the things that are happening at the high school. Um, and all really all of the hard work that the students behind us and there's several other probably dozens of students who can't be here tonight. Um, and all of the service learning that they're doing both in our community and also in the Mississippi Delta. This is our 13 14 >> 14th year doing this. And um at this point, the town that we go to in rural Mississippi called Tuttowweiler, Mississippi has so many habitat homes that they're now having to find

003new spaces to build houses, which is wonderful because when we started there, um they definitely had a lot of homes that needed it. As I'm sure you know, and the kids will talk about in a second, Mississippi is the poorest state in the union and a place that is has Oh, thank you. has a historically uh very very deep problems with not only economic issues but obviously white supremacy and a lot of other um pretty terrible things. So we're really proud of the kids and all the work that they've done. I also want to mention as they I'm sure will as well that uh we do a lot of work in Champagne County with Kim Gallings and the crew at the Champagne County Habitat for Humanity. In fact, we'll be in Renul on Saturday doing

004another build. So this is something that we try to do in our community here, but also bring to bring the students down to Mississippi to do the history and kind of understand the impact down there. So at this point, we should bring the students. Okay. So here are the students. >> So now you guys walk here. >> Beatric, you're first. >> Hi, my name is Beatatric. I'm a senior. Um, and over the course of my four years at Arbana High School, I've been taught a lot. How to derive a function, how to take an AP test, and how to write an essay. However, I never really learned how to do anything with my hands. This changed after I joined Habitat for Humanity, where I learned how to mud a room, how to varnish cabinets, and

005how to put treses to onto a house and how my skills can actually make an impact in a community. Learning these skills has helped me grow my confidence inside and outside of school, and I'm very thankful for my uh how I got to go on the trip. Next up is Maggie. >> Hi, I'm Maggie. I'm a junior at Arbana High School and I've been in Habitat since I was a freshman. And as I like was an underassman and seeing these other people go on the trip, I really like hyped myself up to go and I was like, I'm gonna connect with so many people. And I really did. Like it's really up like the hype is is good. Um, and I just think the biggest thing about this trip is just connecting with people, connecting

006with people from different states, connecting with people in your school, and you just kind of create a little family, and it's like it doesn't break. Like I went on the November trip and we still all act like a family at school. And I think that's just the biggest thing is learning how to connect with people, which is a really hard thing for a lot of high schoolers to do. And yeah, I think that's the main reason why Habitat is the best. >> Hi, my name is Lobby and I've been on three Habitat for Humanity trips. Um, Oh, this. Okay. Um, I gained a different experience on each trip. In November of 2024, I got to experience something from Habitat from Habitat that I don't get in other places in Urbana. And that was a chance

007to genuinely create connections because we were unplugged from our phones. Um, in February of 26, I learned about myself more as we were helping out communities. I realized that my future shouldn't be about myself, but rather how I can impact those in need. And in March, I learned something that school didn't teach me, and it's it was more history. Um, we visited Helena Helena, Arkansas, and saw the Elaine Massacre memorial, and we chanted Fanny Luth Hammers, nobody's free until everyone's everybody's free. And it just showed me that everything I learned won't come from school. So, I'm incredibly grateful for Habitat and all the experiences I've gained. Next up is Kate. >> Hello everyone. Um, my name is Kate and I'm a senior at Urbana High School. Um, I've participated in Habitat ever since I was

008a freshman. And I guess what stands out most to me about the group is that like the highest level of kindness and acceptance is basically a baseline of the group because no matter who you are or what your background is or your past experience with the club, it's guaranteed that you'll feel welcome by all participants and especially the people included with the builds too. Um, and this is largely also due to leaders like Mark, Laura, and Zach Sutton, too, who made like the community possible um at Urbana High School. Um, it gives students an opportunity to who to discover who they really want to be outside of school and allows us to explore ways in which we can make the world a better place besides just through our education at Urbana and through the Mississippi

009trips that I went on in February of 2025. In 26 2026, I was able to learn a lot about myself and what I wanted to do in the future as well. >> It's Hello, my name is Karay Pier. I'm also a junior in high school and um I've been in the club of Habitat for Human since I was um a freshman as well. Um I think being in the club I really enjoy the opportunities that it gives me and being able to go down to the south of um being able to go to down to the south and seeing like being in being in the history. It's like a really nice feeling. I really love these trips and the opportunities that it gives me and being to be within the civil rights history. All right,

010next up is >> Hi, my name is Rissa Olsen. I'm a senior and unlike the other people, I joined Habitat only this year. Um, I heard about the trip uh last year and knew that I wanted to go. So, I had the privilege of going on the November trip. And while I've only been in Habitat a year, it's still been very impactful for my life. Um, I was able to learn like how to use my hands to build things. And I got to work with a bunch of people that I never even met before. Um, and so I was able to build relationships with others as well as learn building skills that will uh carry on throughout the next couple years or next many years. Okay, the next person is Cecilia. Hi, my name is

011Cecilia. I went on the Habitat trip this past February. And I think the most important thing I learned during my time there in Mississippi was the power of community to make change. Before I went, I think I thought that you can only like make change through like an like individual like struggle. But when I went there, like not only was the work that I was performing like you couldn't do it on your own, but we learned so much about um the civil rights movement and like how important community was in that. And we saw like all the communities down in Mississippi and just like how important it was to rely on each other and that was really inspiring. Next up is Next up is Maya. Hi, good evening. My name is Maya Cessi. I'm a

012upcoming senior next year and um I got the wonderful experience to join the habitat habitat march trip and um I think the trip was very impactful because I think one of the things that this generation struggle with is sympathy and personally when I went down there and opened up my eyes to so many other communities and how um there's other communities out there that struggle much more than we do up here. And um I think that was really impactful because it opened up my perspective and it made me more a lot more considerable to other people and more considerable to change. And I think that's really important for this generation to move on because we need change and sympathy for others. Um the next next is Sam. Um, I'm Sam. I'm a senior. And I

013think these trips are so important to me and so many other people just cuz it's it's so different to experience the types of things you learn about like in person. Like we went to the Lorraine Motel in Nashville, Tennessee. We also did the EMTT Till Memorial down in Tottee. And it's just such a different experience to be there like in the spot to learn about the history than to learn about in a classroom. So I think it's really important that things like these still exist and that they're accessible to as many people as possible because it's just so important for um to live in like history and not just learn about it in the classroom. Um, hello. My name is Kayen Lewani. I'm a junior at Urbana High School. Um, for me, I'd say the

014trip was like pretty much like life changing. Um, going down to Mississippi and seeing different cultures and like the drastic difference in how it is like in Urbana. Um, I'd say I really enjoyed learning like about community. Um, everybody is just super kind and like open. Um, as well as like the community and where we stayed in Tyler like the kids and the um, going to the schools and working out on the work sites was very um, was very helpful like insightful to me as well. Yeah. Thanks. The next person up is Marina. Bella. Bella. >> Hi, I'm Bella. I'm a graduating senior this year and I got to go on the November and February trip this year. And when I went down there, it really opened my eyes to how important community and the

015people around you are. um up before I went on the trip, I really felt like I didn't have anyone to talk to. But um after I went on this trip, I so many I've just made so many more connections and really opened my eyes to like just how nice people could be and how trustworthy they could be. And on even on the work site, working with um people I've never I've never like talked to before. Um it was really nice. And um even when we went to the museums like the Emtt Till Interpretive Center and the National Civil Rights Museum, it really opened my eyes to so many more things that happened in the world and how recent it has how recent was was to now because it's it's really sad just to hear about

016the stuff that we learned about. And now I'm a history major and I'm really glad that I am. So I can look I can do more research and become a teacher one day and teach about the stuff that happened. Thank you. >> All right. I think we don't want to take up more of your time, but thank you. Um it's important that we can come and uh show you guys each year what we do. Um we're really proud of these kids. They're amazing. Um, and there's I mean all of the students at Urbana could really benefit from this. So the the more kids we can get involved and the more we can take on these um trips the better. Uh there's more students here that didn't were didn't want to speak but um thank you

017guys for all showing up and we've got uh letters that they wrote um just explaining what the trip meant to them and I'll leave them with Lori for all of you. So thank you. >> Thank you all. And thank you all for representing our banner so well. We're really proud of you and and thank you for the reminder of of why we all volunteer. That your enthusiasm is is really inspiring. That's a thank you. Um next up for accommodations recognitions are our unsung heroes. So, this is um my favorite meeting of the year because we get to highlight students that make a difference in our world and we also get to highlight staff members that make a difference. And so, um before we start our video, I'd like to share a couple of words and

018introduce some of the folks that are in the room. Unfortunately, not all of our unsung heroes were able to be with us tonight. So, in every hallway, behind every achievement, and within every moment of growth, there are quiet forces at work. Individuals whose impact is woven into the fabric of our schools in ways that often go unseen. They are the steady hands and compassionate hearts who show up day after day, not for recognition, but because they believe in the power of what we do in education. They lift others when the work feels heavy, offer support when it's needed most, and create spaces where students and staff alike can thrive. Their names may not echo through announcements or headlines, yet their influence is felt in every classroom, every office, every bus ride, and every interaction that

019shapes the experience of our district. They are problem solvers, encouraers, mentors, and difference makers. often working behind the scenes but always at the center of our success. They remind us that excellence is not only found in grand gestures but in consistency, kindness, and an unwavering commitment to others. Because of them, our Urbana schools are stronger. Our Urbana community is more connected and our Urbana students are better supported. Today, we're going to take a slight pause with intention and gratitude to recognize these extraordinary staff members of the Urbana School District. We shine a light on those who have long um illuminated the path for others. We celebrate not just what they do, but who they are as people and the lasting impact they made they make each and every day. Today, we honor the ones who

020never ask for applause, but have always deserved it. If you are one of our 2026 unsung heroes, would you please stand? Go ahead and remain standing. And I'm going to read Not everybody was here and I'm going to try extremely hard not to incorre incorrectly pronounce someone's first or last name. Um, and my apologies if I do that. Feel free to to interject and correct me. So Ashley Booth is our sixth grade center building operations coordinator. Ashley's in the back if you want to wave. Ashley back there. We have Joanna Davidson who's at central office and she's in the accounts payable. We have Jen Musen who's in the human resources department. Go ahead and wave. Yes. We have Jillian Graves, teaching assistant at Urbana High School. I presume that Aiden Bristo is next to you,

021teaching assistant also at Urbana High School. Ashley Bergie, is it Bergie? >> Yeah. >> Okay. I didn't know. I just wanted to make sure I said the last name right. Um teaching assistant at Le Elementary. Naine. Yes. So, she's a teaching assistant at Thomas Payne and um a a a excellent former student of mine as well. Um Will Garbront is in our business department at the Urbana School District in the back. Will do you want to give a wave? And then we have a couple more friends in the back. Kenya Orana um she is Kenya is our um I believe our par like our yeah our dual language family lays on at Yankee Ridge. And then um I believe finally just to make sure I'm not forgetting anybody else is Yamalith Maria Baseri. And um

022I really hope I got that right. So she's one of our um teaching assistants at the sixth grade center, our bilingual special education teaching assistant. Have I seen everybody that's in the room? I just want to make sure. Oh no, Tracy Gardner. I'm sorry, Tracy. I didn't see you back there. Tracy Gardner's one of our teaching assistants at Thomas Payne Elementary. Anyone else hiding? All right. Now, we have a special video for you and for our folks at home. So, thank you. Can we have a round of applause for our winners? I bet. Hey, hey, hey. Heat. N I'm a Heat. Heat. N. Heat. Heat. Number n. Heat. Heat. N. Oh, hey. Heat. Heat. Heat. Heat. Heat. Number Daddy. You can go off with your family and friends in front of you so Everybody round

023of applause. Thank you all. >> Uh, it's now time for citizen statements. If anybody here wishes to make a a statement before the board, uh, there are little yellow sheets in the back of the room that can be filled out and handed to our recording secretary, Lori Johnson. Have you received any this evening? Uh, calling once, calling twice. All right. Uh, no citizen statements this evening. Um, it's now time for our Oh, she's so cute. Uh, student ambassador report. All right. Good evening everyone. Um this is our ambassador report for May 5th. Um some things are happening at UHS. The student reflection survey is now live. Um similar to some of the previous surveys that we sent out. Um but this is kind of to get a reflection um from the students perspective of how

024things um are now going. um since since some things have been changed um and added um we want to get their input to see um if things have gotten better. Um and we also opened it up to um to also get some more things that we could advocate for for next year. So, we're going to roll some of the things that we get from this form over to next year to kind of give us a head start. Um responses for those will close May 15th at 8:00 p.m. Um and then the student council elections, they are electing um class officers as well. Um so there's president, vice president, uh press secretary and secretary I believe are the four or five that I just named. Um, and then if anybody else would like to join student

025council as well, they are they are also free to join student council. Um, and those forms are due no later than May 5th, which is today. um by the end of 8th hour. Um Jazz Cafe is on May 8th at 7:00 p.m. Um that will be featuring the um jazz or sorry the the race street combo uh jazz lab uh jazz band and uh jazz band. So, um, come out on, um, Friday, um, to the cafe at 7:00. Um, and there will be, uh, light light refreshments there as well. So, um, come out and see the jazz bands. Um, tennis has anformational meeting on May 14th at 3:45 p.m. Um, I am unaware where this is at. I know that it's inside of the building. I'm just not sure which room it's in. Um ISU

026um had a there was an ISU concert band festival that um that wind symphony symphonic band um went to that was in Bloomington um at IASU and that happened on April 24th. Um and that was a really good day. Um both g both bands had a really great time. Both did really good. Um and then we all went out to have lunch um after. Um Jazz in Chicago also happened April 25th. Um and that was in uh that was at Whitney M. Young High School in Chicago. Um oh just a little bit west of downtown. Um and that went well as well. um got got lots of different judges tapes and judges comments. Um and overall we did really well. Um and then the Monaceel market happened Sunday, May 3rd um at Monaceel High School

027and that featured Monaceel High School Jazz Band um and UHS Jazz Band and I heard that that was a really great time as well. So um congratulations to all of the bands and um everyone who went out and um who went out to all the different competitions. AP testing is currently happening. So started this week, it'll be going through the 15th. Um tests in lots of different subjects. And so we're wishing the best of luck to all the students participating. >> And then decision day, um decision day was May 1st. Um all seniors wore their apparel um from the schools that they will be attending soon. Um so congratulations to all of the seniors um who have made their decisions on which colleges they would like to go to. Um and we hope to um

028we hope to see them be in their career choice or be in um be in their choice of career um later on down the line. Um and all seniors went to the commons to celebrate um their decisions. And so in some of these pictures um students You can see that they're wearing their decision shirts and they all took pictures and um it was a great day. So, congratulations to them again. Prom happened. So, prom was Saturday, May 25th. It was at the Hotel Royer. The theme was an old night in Hollywood and it was a very fun night. Everyone had a good time. >> And then the mayor recognition program. So, um, on April 29th, the MER recognition ceremony was held. Um, Urbana students have done around 28,000 hours of service, um, accounted for in

029the mirror recognition program since 2022. Um and so students students for this completed um many hours um of of community service to be a part um of the Mary initial the mayor recognition program um and to be recognized by the mayor. Um and so we say congratulations to all all of the students who have completed their um community hours times um and have been um recognized by the mayor. So congratulations to them and this is our report. Thank you. >> Thank you. It's now time for board reports. Anybody wish to do a board report this evening once twice? >> Go ahead. >> Okay. So um the mariachis played on Sunday night at the Rose Bowl and it was really amazing. There were three different mariachi groups. She had Mariachi Tigures um from the Urbana High

030School um Mariachi Alma which was from the University of Illinois and Mariachi Libertard and um it was packed in there. So, I just wanted to say thank you for the community for coming out and supporting our our students and our band to help them continue to further their music and help provide money to buy their uniforms and be able to travel and perform more places. So, yeah, it was pretty cool. Um, yeah, this is the time of year when there are so many events and happenings and I'm just um hoping that schools will continue to put their events on the website on the calendar so that we can plan to be as many as we can to as many as we can. Um, there was Thomas Payne Carnival last Friday. I know a Leil had

031a carnival as well, but I wasn't able to go that one. I did stop by the Thomas Payne Carnival and the weather was like tonight it was just cold and I thought this is usually an outdoor event and I thought I hope that it didn't get rained on but they did a remarkable job just decorating the entire inside of the school and had a lot of fun activities for the students and a lot of parents showed up as well and you could tell that they were having a good time as well. um got to talk to a lot of people there and I'm hoping to return there um this Friday to talk to more teachers and see the children too. Saw the High School Musical which was an unusual musical. I never heard of it

032before but the acting and the singing and the dancing. You can tell the students had a lot of fun. So if you missed that um I hope you'll go to future ones because those students work really hard to prepare for their perh for the performances. Um the mail recognition was really good. Um I know that um about half of the students didn't show up because of other commitments or whatever. But I hope this continues because just like we saw tonight, how it impacts these students that came and spoke to us, students who work within their community, within their school, that make that influences them and it helps them to grow and it helps our community as well. So, I hope that we can continue to support that program. And I'm looking forward to the Urbana

033Jazz Cafe um on Friday night. Lindsay and I will be there selling tickets. Is that what we're doing? >> Um yeah. >> Okay. We're selling tickets. So, hope to see you there. But it's remarkable how how the Commons has transformed. You really feel like you are not in a lunchroom anymore. And it's a beautiful evening. So, I'm looking forward to that. And I also like to thank teachers and show them that our appreciation that they work in Urbana and they help to our our children to grow. So thank you teachers. >> Thank you. Any other board reports this evening? >> Any administrative reports? There's nothing listed but giving you an option. We do have a set of study topics this evening starting with our farm to school end of year presentation. Uh Jenny Flowers will

034will present. Hello everyone. >> All right. Um I'm Jenny Flowers, the district's farm to school coordinator. Um presenting with me tonight is Hannah Romanchuk from Yankee Ridge. She's a teacher and a garden coordinator there. And behind me, Joan Jack from the high school and Lisa Styverson and Tori Harvey from King, their garden coordinators there. Um, I want to thank you for letting Farm to School exist here in this space and for allowing us to weave our way in and around the regularly scheduled programming. Um, I'm going to start off uh before I go past this first slide, I want to mention that the lettuce in this picture was grown by um Kathy Turner at Early Childhood and she grew that lettuce in a milk jug and I just thought it made a nice background picture.

035Um, here we are again at the early childhood. That's Mity Maldonado Castillo. Comes from Tiger Academy over to early childhood and she does planting and things with those kids. They're planting peas. I helped that day. It was mostly putting on gloves. Really took a long time, but a couple weeks later, we went out and we put those plants those peas in raised beds. Um, these pictures were given to me by Tori and Lisa. They grew some really beautiful vegetables last year and I'm just going to leave that up on the screen while I talk about um some other accomplishments that happened at schools this year. Um this year uh facilities, thank you so much. They were able to repair the greenhouse there so we could use it and uh Janice Knight was able to start

036seeds with her students and they s they had a plant sale and they sold over $100 worth of plants to fund their program next year. Um UHS uh Joan and her students um made three new beds. They were able to grow uh food for the culinary classes. Um Thomas Payne bought a brand new big shed. They've got a lot going on there. They've got a big garden space. Um mostly all the schools have started seeds on their classrooms in some way or another. Um we have partnered with groups from the U of I to help us build raised beds at our gardens. Um some fraternities and sororities. Um, four of our schools participate in bugs to school which is a collaboration with the U of I where they do uh soil treatments um and then

037like take measurements and look at what bugs are present and what bugs aren't present and they they do activities with the students. Um they grew okra this past year and they're going to do it again next year. Um all of these things Oh, and we have we have 10 school gardens. um 11 garden coordinators because Tori and Lisa share and we have two new ones this year. We have Candace Cobb over at SGC and Les Kutz has taken over at DPW. Um and then I think Kathy is the next slide. Yes. So Kathy Stein is our garden coordinator over at Gerber and she just got um W&D's educator of the month for April. And we only have 10 minutes here, so we're gonna fly through these slides, but I really want to show this because

038this really sums up what farm to school is all about. Did it h how do I go back? >> I don't know. How do I make it play? Oh, but I I put a video in there. I embedded a video. Nope, not gonna play. That's okay. If you should do it. You should go to YouTube and look up WD educator of the month for April. And there's a really great um one minute shout out to Kathy Stein where she really ties up. She teaches >> Oh, you got it. Okay. Well, she um she really sums it up and the kids in her classrooms have said how much they love just going into her classroom because it's so warm and inviting. They have plants in every classroom except one that has no natural light. Um and

039she's intro to a and history I believe. And she just if she can incorporate growing plants with what she's teaching, she does it. And um you know she puts it as growing minds, growing plants, it all goes together and it's really true like all of the stuff that I mentioned previously you know a lot of people wonder well how does farm to school tie into reading and math and you it really does all subjects even PE like you know shoveling compost into a wheelbarrow like you got to have that stamina there's a reason and you can tie all subjects into farm to school. Um, we gonna do the video or keep going. Yeah. >> Oh, >> yeah. Plant sale at the high school. >> Third week of May. Great. Should I keep going or are

040we close? Okay. I don't know what's going on. Okay. Um I went too far one. Okay. So, um, this farm-toschool program, uh, doesn't necessarily have data to to prove that farm to school is awesome, but in Texas, they did a study that does prove it. So, I listed that here. Um, I was put in touch with uh, this man, Randy Craves. He's an extension program specialist. Um, he worked with Texan Texas&M with,600 third graders, a study over five years. And I'm not going to read this whole slide to you, but attendance was up. Um, attention spans were better. Kids made better food choices. Um, there's a lot of benefits that were proven by this study. And I listed the web address up there at the top, and if you're interested, you can go read those

041studies. It's a lot of acronyms, but the information is there. And then, um, there we go. I uh this past year was um invited to attend the farm-toschool leadership academy which is a nine-month program um put on by the national farm-to-school network in partnership with Shelburn Farms. We just wrapped it up um in Cleveland and interestingly enough um the Shelburn Farms uh facilitator, his name is Ryan Mora, he is also the director of client experience for illustrative math mathematics. Um, and so we talked about a lot of things at at this academy. And one of the things I was interested in was how to tie core subjects to farm to school. And he said he gave me the word was contextualized experiences. And um really that's what school gardens can do. Um it can be

042a place to apply all all kind all kinds of subjects. Illustrative math for one. Um, I Googled just illustrative mathematics garden and immediately four problems came up that could be shown by, you know, doing work with our school gardens. And then I'm clicking the forward button. It's not going forward. >> There we go. And now Hannah, >> good evening. Thank you. I want to say a big thank you to the board and especially to um grounds. Thank you so much for your patience and um helping us to be successful with the school garden. All right, here we go. I'll try the clicker now. Okay. Uh so I'm the garden coordinator at Yankee Ridge Elementary School and uh I want to highlight a couple ways that farm to school has enriched the learning for our students.

043disclicker. He is tricky. Let's try. Here we go. Oh, back we go. Okay. Well, >> we'll try again. >> Nope. >> No, it does not work. >> Uh, back, back, back, back. >> Yes, perfect. Thank you so much. So, uh, farm to school has helped us to purchase four tower gardens. Uh, these, uh, can be checked out by teachers. Next slide. Okay. Thank you for your patience. One of the ways that uh students can engage in learning with the tower gardens is they learn basic chemistry because every week you need to balance the pH. And so they get to learn about things like hydrogen and what is acidity and what does it mean to be more basic. Next slide. Here you can see one of our first grade classrooms planting their tower garden. You can

044go to the next slide. And they produce really well all year round which is wonderful because a lot of the school year we can't be doing very much outside. Okay. Can you go to the next one? You can see here uh a couple different salad parties that happened this last year. Uh and students after they enjoy the salad in the classroom, they can take some home to their families. Next slide. uh farm to school funded the purchase of lumber and top soil for our garden beds and we collaborated for a couple of those with Jones classes to build them with the uh high school students which was really enjoyable. We also have you can go to the next slide. We also have uh we've collaborated with the reading rally which is a targeted reading program

045for the students that score in the bottom 10% of our MAP scores. Uh and one of our partners at Bugs to School, she created some really wonderful lessons that are standards aligned. Uh and I really enjoyed being in the class because I co-taught it with her and a lot of the students struggle not only with reading but also with behavior. But because we were doing uh activities in the classroom that were directly connected to what we were doing in the garden student I saw students who most of the day were receiving like different discipline or they would have a teacher partner or this or that but they were engaged and locked in for the entire uh garden lesson after school. So that was really enjoyable. Next slide. All of the lessons were standards aligned with

046ELA, ELA standards and NGSS standards. And um you can see some proud student work up there. They got to learn all about the scientific method. And uh we put we designed the lessons thinking about the um four standards of language learning laid out by WEDA. So reading, listening, writing, and speaking. Classroom teachers also had the opportunity to adopt a garden bed and they got to go plant it out in their class. Uh right now we have 10 beds on the south side of Yankee Ridge and all of them are planted and classes go out and they observe the plants and um they take care of them and they learn responsibility. I won't read through all the words of all the teachers that wanted to um highlight how much they've enjoyed farm to school. I did

047want to highlight Patricia Leon uh one of our kindergarten teachers. She said, "In our dual language classroom, the garden provides a natural context for students to develop vocabulary in both languages while collaborating and sharing their observations. Most importantly, it fosters a sense of responsibility, curiosity, and appreciation for where our food comes from. So, we can we can we can skip through these slides. Yep. There were, as you can see, there was a lot of te there were a lot of teachers that wanted to highlight how much they have enjoyed the farm to school experience. A couple quotes from students. We have been learning about gu about vermy compost. Um, so they talked about, you know, in garden club they learn about worm poop and every morning uh I take a group of students out uh

048during arrival time which can kind of be there's about 30 minutes where some students are waiting for a long time. And so rather than just sitting in the gym, they come with me and we do different things like filling the garden beds with top soil or planting or weeding. And it's been exciting for me because the that specific group of students uh there are a couple that have um some behavioral struggles particularly in the morning and teachers have told me that their behavior is much better when they spend time outside in the garden doing something with their hands before the day starts. Um before we go on to this next slide, uh Hannah didn't mention it, but there we are also in our third round of Fridays on the farm, which is a partnership between

049Yankee Ridge and Solradia Farm, where on Fridays after school, about 26 kids >> uh walk to Solradia and participate in learning about gardening and food there with Fiona Monroe and um some other of their staff. And uh then their parents pick them up there and that's been really successful. This is our second spring. We had a fall group and we started it last last spring. Um, so I put the slide in there just so you can kind of see where we are. Um, this data is the most recent data and it's from 2022 23. It's from the farm-toschool census where um, they take schools that participate in NSLP and um, if they have a farm-toschool program, that's how they determine uh, this data. Um, you can see 52.8% 8% um that's where we fall and

050um they uh so the we're growing immensely which means competition is tough for grants um up right now through June 30th uh USDA Patrick Ley farm to school grant is what is funding us um funding my position and our programming and a community services grant through the city of Rabbana funds our garden coordinator stipens and garden supply budgets Um, both of those grants expired June 30th. We applied this year for a farm to school grant, a USDA Patrick farm to school grant. Uh, we did not get it. 652 applicants, 52 awardees, so it was pretty slim. Um, we can't feel too bad about it. Uh, they have always funded the National Farm to School Network. They did not uh fund them this year either. So, um, we've applied for some other grants. We potentially have

051one more that we could be awarded. Uh we haven't heard yet that would fund farm to school coordinator position and I've applied for one in partnership with the University of Illinois to potentially fund our garden coordinators for the next school year. Um so we are hopeful. Um but if we don't get those um farm to school may end June 30th. And I hate to leave it on that bad note. Um, and this is just another another graph that shows um national school lunch programming schools that have school gardens. And you can see we're right in the middle. Um, we're surrounded by about the same as what our state has. Any questions? >> Board members, any questions? >> Is the video ready? It's on YouTube if you could pull it up that way. >> Okay. YouTube

052W&D educator of the month for for April. >> It's worth it. It's a really nice video. >> You said you applied for a grant U of I for what department or program or >> It was through the campus community compact. So, we had to partner with um a department at the U ofi. We um got an agreement from the sustainable student farm. And so the grant would fund garden coordinators and then help pay for um buses and substitute teachers for three field trips to the sustainable student farm. One for sixth grade center, middle school, and high school. I don't know if we'll get that yet. >> Has extension ever indicated any interest in helping the community in that way as well? um they come in as guest speakers sometimes and do some things with the

053kids, but as far as partnering on a grant, I've never reached out to them for that. That that might be something we could look into in the future. >> Thank you. >> Thanks. >> All right. We have another set of uh study topics under the theme of board systems and accessibility. Uh first up is a docs presentation from from John Goodmer. >> So I was I was just going to give the board a little bit in the um community how we kind of chunked all these together. So several of these topics are things we do at the end of the year and our June meetings are going to be really full and so I kind of moved up a couple of our discussions like the board meeting calendar and talking about future topics and agenda

054items for the f uh for next year to now. Um however that doesn't mean that you know board members want to continue to talk about topics in the future we can. We always do that again in August. So, we've kind of clumped a lot of these and called them board systems and accessibility. So, um we can talk about them now and we can talk about them again later, but uh we thought this would be a good way to take a couple uh several different presentations and put them together and take them off of our June meetings when we will be having all of our school improvement plan meetings at the end of the year. So, just explaining a little bit of why we chunk some of these things together. No, no, thank you for organizing

055it that way. Anything to take the pressure off the June meetings is great. >> Yep. And so some of these are kind of some disperate things, but again, Yep. Uh if you recall, uh all the way back in January, uh Katherine and I came to talk to you about uh our requirements for accessibility uh WCAG 2.1 uh coming up in April of next year. uh and a little bit further now. Uh and then also what that meant for us for internal uh the way we present documents, what we have to do for our website. Uh we are almost complete with the initial migration of our website. Uh we have a meeting, a follow-up meeting tomorrow where we get to look at it on the customer side the first time. So, we're excited about that and

056that should be coming sometime this summer. Uh, on the other side, I think we also mentioned at that meeting that we had a lot of documents that were required to present that uh still do not uh comply with the WCAG 2.1 uh rules and regulations and that we are still obligated to get up to uh that standard. So these include a lot of everybody at this table's uh financial documents, HR documents, uh bids and bid specs, uh things that were required to post but are very difficult to uh get into that formatting. So, uh, Katherine did a lot of leg work and, uh, has been looking at several different products that have the potential to, uh, go ahead and kind of implement that accessibility piece for us without having to manually go and touch every

057document, uh, and painstakingly kind of update them uh, to what they need to be. We have had an intern working for the past three months uh manually doing documents and it is a incredibly laborious process. Uh and it's just the very tiniest tip of the iceberg that he's been able to get to uh over these past three months. So benefits of doc access is it kind of does all of the work for you and I'll show you a quick video here in a second. Uh it improves uh the usability and transparency. There's some features in there uh I think will be in the video that kind of blew my mind from a software uh uh practice and then it also uh reduced our liability uh once we start getting those office of civil rights scans

058coming through. So, uh, I'm not going to talk about it a little bit more, but I am going to pull up this video. Hi, Mac and Maria here. Excited to show you Doc Access, a powerful new tool that makes your documents ADA compliant. Let's take this PDF report on a website. With Doc Access, it's enhanced in groundbreaking ways, ensuring full legal and technical compliance for users with disabilities. Doc Access instantly provides a fully accessible transcript view. Take this complex budget document for example. Doc Access creates detailed alt text for images and even handles complicated diagrams like timelines. The document becomes not only compliant but also mobile friendly, something impossible with a standard PDF. Complex documents become fully ADA compliant, easier to navigate, and understandable for everyone. I mean, I can barely read these historical plaques.

059But with this tool, anyone can. But Doc Access isn't just about compliance. It empowers your community to engage with your content. Users can ask direct questions like, "Who is on the budget committee?" and doc access will instantly answer and highlight the relevant section on the page. >> With document outline, community members can quickly jump between sections, meeting ADA requirements, simplifying navigation of lengthy documents like annual reports, and minimizing scrolling. >> Doc Access can also translate your entire document into over 150 languages instantly. If someone's native language is Spanish, Doc Access translates all of the content and all of its features, including the ask a question tool. Finally, because adopting new technology can feel uncertain, Doc Access offers live assistance, we partnered with IRA, the world's leading visual interpreting platform to ensure your users have 247

060access to expert support whenever needed. >> Thanks. So, we're not going to go through that whole video, but there were some things in there. I don't think they got to the part where they had a picture of a graph and it translated the graph picture into a table of the corresponding numbers from the graph with the legend built into the table. It's just mind-blowing to me. Uh so, this is something that we are pursuing right now. Uh we're I think when I talked back in January, I was kind of hopeful that all of the things that are coming up with AI and uh some of those features would be able to help us mitigate some of the problems that we have and uh this is the tool that's the most promising for that. So, we

061also have on the Zoom uh Cameron and let me see if I can get him up here real quick. Are you there, Cameron? >> Yes, I am. How's it going, everybody? >> Good. Let me know when you guys are ready to roll. >> Yep, it's I think you're on. >> Okay, perfect. So, my name is Cameron. I work with our Illinois school districts here and I've had the pleasure with working with Lori here for a little while. And what we do is pretty much all board management. So the building, the sharing, the publishing of board documents. Um many of whom there might uh be familiar with board docs. Uh it is a software that Diligent purchased about 11 years ago, close to that now. Um there still are some people on board docs nowadays, but

062we have moved most of our clients over to our new diligent community software that I've been talking with Lori about. Um, we developed Diligent Community in about 2020. So, it's been around a good while now. Um, basically took what everybody loved about board docs and gave it a bit of a facelift because it needed to be done. Um, improved the performance. Um, improved um just all aspects especially on the public side as well. Um, so I'm going to walk through that today. We have about, last time I checked, about 150 school districts in Illinois um who use our diligent community software and one that's actually pretty close to you guys, Champagne Unit 4, which I had their site pulled up and I'll I'll walk through. Um, but I'll give you guys a rundown and leave

063some time for questions here at the end. Let me share my screen. Okay, let me know if you guys see >> see my screen there. >> We can see your screen. >> Okay, perfect. So, there's two parts to the Diligent community platform to help with boards. So, this is the public side. The cool part about it is when Lori and everybody on your team over there is building out uh these documents, um it all gets connected to here. So your public can search uh board documents very easily. Not only just the regular board, but committees and your older documents can be uploaded here as well and be searched. So as you see here, it's just a hyperlink to wherever you guys want to link it on your public site. The search is here, the calendar

064is here. You can see recent meetings here on the right. And you can also connect videos as well and allow the public to subscribe. Um, just kind of like a one-stop shop there so they can find everything in one spot. Kind of get them away from that Google Drive and bring all the content and things they need. Right. So that is the public side. I do want to jump over to the back end where the staff will be compiling all those documents and then also sharing with you guys as well and sharing with the public. So the cool part about diligent community which a little bit of improvement from board docs is it is now um a cell phone friendly. Any tablet you guys are using uh for the board you can use that as

065well. Um it does have single sign on to link into your guys login security as well. So when you log in you can see permissions by meeting group. So if there's different folks who may be working on certain committees um you'll be able to see which uh committee you have access to. And then your templates and everything will be stored in here. So the team over there can easily create a new meeting, pick the time and date, pick which template they want to use it for. and then go ahead and start adding some new items and working on that and getting it ready to to share out. One of the best parts about Diligent Community is our item approval workflow. This helps a lot of folks because usually nowadays people are submitting items a lot

066through email or they're doing a Google doc or shareepoint and just approving of items. We're humans. Things get lost. Formatting issues come up. Cool part about this is all these items can be submitted through our system and go through a correct workflow. So everybody can get their eyes on it who needs to and also gives them the ability to edit it um even reject it if they want to and then approve it and move it on through the workflow. So it's all tracked. You can see a history. You can go back and see when when this item was added to a certain agenda. All there for Lori and the team to to find. And then we do have the agenda builder here. And then lastly here, the minutes builder, which helps out a lot of

067folks with um building out the minutes, reviewing them afterwards, sharing them with you guys, and doing digital votes as well. Um I work with some boards who are comfortable with it, some people are not. But if you are comfortable with it, you can cast your own vote in our minutes tool. So, as they're going through these motions, if you wanted to send it out or Lori, whoever's taking the minutes can send it out to you guys, and you can review the motion and cast your own vote. We do have an e signature tool where you can sign the minutes and share them out from there as well. But for you guys, for the board, I do want to highlight something that would definitely raise interest for you guys and that would be your guys view

068of diligent community. So your guys view of the agenda that's shared with you and where you can pull it up during a meeting, pull up any attachments that you have in it and also make annotations and some notes. Bear with me one second. Looks like my internet connection wasn't the best, but here you go. So, what you're looking at is your version of the agenda. Am I still sharing my screen? >> Yes, you are. >> Okay. Okay. I saw board room popped up on the screen. But here's where you share your agenda and you have the ability to make annotations as you guys like, highlight, underline, everything like that. jump to certain items and you can also leave notes on your agenda as well wherever you guys like. Good thing about it is indulgent community

069is built to be fully compliant with open meeting law. So you guys cannot share notes um amongst board members. These are individual to you. You're individual to your login. Even Lori and the other team cannot see these notes. Um, but these are stored for you. So, you can come in here and then view and go search through notes that you've made in past meetings. You can download agendas that have the notes or without the notes and everything like that. And then one last piece is the whole site is keyword searchable. also saves a lot of time for you as board members but also the staff in building these documents. So the team can come to here and see file type. They can sort by um maybe a word document or a PDF. They can also

070do a date range search as well and then view any any of these documents that are pertain to agendas, minutes, agenda items. It's all stored here going as far back as you need. There's no limit to storage. So those are the main pieces I wanted to highlight today. I did want to save some time for some questions. If anybody has some familiarity with board docs, I can kind of explain that >> and also just any uh any questions about the features that I went through. >> Board members, any questions >> on the public side? Uh what languages would it be translated into? for the public side. So, we have a language translator for videos if you guys use our video tool. And that way, it it would just be up to whatever um like plugin

071that folks use. And also Sherry uh I didn't mention it but doc access gets applied to any of our which is not what we're talking about now but doc access gets applied to any of our web content including if we had whatever board documents system we have it would get applied to that too and that same translation available for all of those documents would also be available for whatever board documents we Would there be a way to uh import our historical documents in into Diligent or is that something that's just not typically done? >> Yeah, definitely. So, here in the document library, you do receive a public and an internal document library. So, the public one is connected to the to the public portal I showed you in the beginning. And this is just an

072example I have in my demo site, but usually people go as far back as they want. uh by year, you can drop those in. Now, you wouldn't have to worry about that with the agendas and minutes that you're building with once you start diligent community. It'll be automatically stored, but these are just the ones that Yeah, the historical ones that before you start using them. >> I mean, would we need to have uh different computers in front of us during meetings? Is that how this this would work if we're like doing things like registering our votes as as the meeting goes on or is this something that we just kind of use beforehand through our web interface? >> You can use beforehand during it. Uh the board member view has kind of mentioned about the

073digital voting tool. You can allow that. Um >> if you chose to do the digital voting, >> you could probably get it on the same computers that you already >> use. Well, we're sharing one like dumb terminal with the one Chromebook and >> Yeah. >> But were you Lori? Did you want to talk about >> voting? >> No, I didn't intend for everybody to have, you know, that's an easy enough thing for me to be over here to click click click. >> Yeah. I I will say like 80% of the clients don't use the digital voting. it is there but I usually it's this board secretary or whoever is doing it takes it just just for because it's because it's uh simple like that and but it is a it is an option any other

074questions so I mean camera probably isn't the right person to ask but if we negotiated what a what a uh a contract could cost are we the process of doing Yeah, I shared a proposal with Lori. We've been discussing. >> Oh, Lori has those at her spot. Sorry. >> I always ask about money. Sorry. >> Well, sorry. Yeah. So, Cameron, and please correct me if I'm wrong, but the diligent community just for the basic is $6,000 per year. And then if you do the committee manager, which would be, you know, we that allows five committee groups or five committees, that's 2500 per year. So we're at 9,000. And then we can any additional over five committees is an additional 1,000 >> for five. It's a pack of five. So we can go up to 10

075for an extra 1,000. >> Correct, Cameron? >> That's correct. >> Y. >> So So basically $10,000 for the first for the year. So let's say we we we go with with diligent for and and a future board, you know, three four years down the road decides that they want to go in another direction. Is there a way to export the documents out into a new system? >> Yeah, definitely. Yeah, we there's it happens. People have left us, people leave other products and come to us. Yeah, you guys own all that data. We just give it back to you as in PDFs and folders. >> Thank you. Anyone else? >> All right. Thank you, camera, for your presentation tonight. >> No problem. If you guys have any follow-up questions, just send them to Lori and send

076them over to me. I can help answer them. But thank you guys. I appreciate it. >> You So, we didn't put that on as an action item, correct? For tonight, and we wanted to bring it for you to consider. Um, Lori can share the proposal via email with you. Um, and so if it is something you want to consider, I should have asked him this before he I'm assuming it wouldn't take long to build the back end of that, right, John? Like if the board did decide. I should have asked him that. >> Okay. >> Yeah. I mean, I think this is an appropriate time to ask because I would assume we would do this in July and then come back in August and it would be the new system. >> Yeah, I think that's

077what we're thinking. >> If the if the board wanted to it involves spending some money. So, >> well, if if it's if it saves time, if it if it makes searching documents easier and all of that, then it might be worth the money. But um >> well and I know we've discussed like we run into issues every now and then with the Google Drive and when we talk about being more public facing. I do you know I know he showed us Champagne Unit 4 but um I think there are a lot of districts around us. I know Lori gave me a list um Champagne Bloomington Ball Chadam Indian Prairie which is a huge district in um Neapville Rockford King Aurora. So, there's some really large districts, but our closest neighbors, I'd say, would be Champagne

078and Bloomington that also use this. So, I went on and looked at some of their websites. You could do that, too, if you wanted. Not websites, their um their board docs and to to see how um how much user how much more user friendly they are, I think, >> in terms of our public being able to find information. um I think is is one of the benefits for moving to something like this. I think our Google Drive it they're Google Drive folders. So it is you know we get what we get from that because it is basically housing everything via Google Drive. So >> but >> that was one of my questions too. Does this eliminate some need for some foyas if it's readily accessible >> on the website? That was one of my thoughts

079is I my hope would be it's the search searchability would be a much better access I believe for the public. Um that would be my hope is foyas would be lessened >> there. Were there any was there data about that or any input from from them about that if other communities? Okay. >> No. >> Uh okay. If we wanted to have this implemented uh by August, by when would we need to vote on a contract? >> I say by our June meeting. Yeah, we not our next meeting because we didn't put it on that agenda to do that. We could do that in May if we wanted to, but definitely to give Lori would need the most training I think. Um John's going to talk about our new website here in a little bit. Are

080we not maybe not talking about the website tonight? No, later we're talking about the website in June. Um, and so it would make sense because we are going to be moving toward a new website um, in the next few weeks to kind of do all those things all at once. >> So, so let's let's let's say why don't we come back with like a like a formal bid that we can discuss at our next meeting and then we plan to vote on it on our first June meeting. >> Sounds good. >> Is that is that okay with everybody? So, just so I understand, um, this would help us get all the stuff that we've been trying to make accessible that's already that we already have. This would help us get it up on the website

081and accessible. >> That's the main part. >> There was two different things we presented. So the first thing I presented was doc access. Uh that is a smaller cost and doesn't need board approval but I would really love any feedback that you guys have about the doc access piece. The other thing was board docs diligent which Lori and Cameron were presenting uh that just holds your board documents. >> Okay. So one just does the old documents and one is to help us get organized towards the future. So so that we could get um our new website >> one one so we have our website is coming uh we won't get it turned over to us until tomorrow and then we'll present about it a little bit later. website. Uh, two is the doc access meets

082our federal regulations for accessibility for all of our PDFs that we have to post, all of our HR, finance things we have to post. Uh, and then the third one is the one that just basically holds your board documents, kind of like the Google Drive folders you have right now where you get things. >> Yeah. So when you're on the website, you'll have the board of education. So whenever you click on the board of education, you're going to be entered into the it's called diligent community, and that's where you have your minutes, your agendas, your documents from past and then future. Um, and any kind of individualization we want to do with that. But that would be basically diligent is your board website page >> and that would be accessible to the community. Yeah, it

083would be like our page we have now. Yes. >> If you like take notes on your agenda and stuff, that's only accessible to you. >> Yes. >> Right. >> Oh, right. That part. And then and I guess how long would those be kept? >> And >> I I emailed him that question while and he said because I said, "What if the board member goes off the board?" He goes, "Easily you'll your notes and everything stay with you until you're a board member. Once you're off the board, they just >> Okay. Okay. Yeah. No, I I realize that my personal stuff would not be open to the community, but but it would be more accessible to the community as a whole and it would be searchable. Having it searchable would be great. >> Yeah. >> I

084mean, we we all can go to unit 4 website and and because they use this product and we can we can as a member of the public, you know, see what's accessible to us, right? So, >> Okay. Okay. Sorry, I just need >> no, no. They say all the questions. It's a lot of money. >> Yeah, it is a lot of money every year, >> right? Anyone else? >> Okay, so this will come back for future discussion and then a subsequent vote. Okay. So, next is our um we do this a couple times, but our this will be our first conversation around planning for 2627 agendas um and specific topics that uh the board would like us to consider for next year so we can start planning ahead now. Yeah, go for it. There are

085there are a couple things that I've been thinking about for a while and and like to see some more information about. And number one is the kindergarten. Um we had talked about that a little bit. Jennifer, I had heard about other communities that have a junior kindergarten for five-year-olds. These are this is not for early childhood, but it's for those students who qualify and could be enrolled in kindergarten, but might not have >> um the um procative skills in order to begin formal learning. >> So, I know I would like to just be able to find out about what other communities are doing it, how they're getting their funding, and how they're how it's impacting the rest of their grade levels. Um, we know that some five-year-olds are not academically ready. Some are not emotionally

086or socially ready. And this will give them another opportunity to grow and to develop, to be part of a school community without having that without having the the pressure of of being able to achieve certain things within a certain amount of time. and to take to take um standardized testing that will impact them from year to year to year if they're not ready their first year. So, I don't know if it's feasible. I don't know how other communities have adopted this program, but I would like just to get some more information about it and also see who the students are that are enrolling in kindergarten this year and um how do they how is are they ready for kindergarten and and to determine how we can best service those students as well whether or not

087we incorporate this beginning or junior kindergarten or not. The other thing that people are asking are how is the sixth grade center doing? And we know we have lots of goals as far as standardized testing behavior, but as far as the community and developing programs for the middle school is, is it reaching the goals that we had hoped it would? And also, how is the middle school impacted as well now that sixth grade isn't there? And they've had a year to kind of get adjusted. and they'll just talk about some of that when they come and do their end of the year um >> school improvement reports right at the in >> Yeah, but that's also data and regarding testing and >> you know I just how are they collaborating? How are the the the

088um different groups working together in order to address some of the problems that they had before and what changes they've made at the middle school since they have all this new new space available? >> Sure. Those are the three things that I was concerned about >> and I think we'll hit a lot of that this year and not have to wait till next year. But yes, those are good things. Jennifer, I know you sent a couple. Were you going to share yours tonight? >> Oh, no. We can we can discuss them here if you'd like. >> You can disc unless you don't want to discuss them. I have them in writing. Okay. >> Yes. That's fine. >> Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Um I one of the things I thought that we should do was have we

089have had over the time that I've been on the board official complaints from the public where they say I am miss making an official complaint about and I'm wondering if we don't need to have a procedure or a process where all of those complaints are handled in a similar manner and at least make the reporting to the board and back to the person who made the complaint >> done in a similar manner, >> you know. Um, and so that's something that I think we should uh discuss. And the other one um was I have lately we've had so many young young kids involved in violence >> um in the community and um I've been concerned about that and I know that we have said that having the SRO's in the building will not increase the

090number of students becoming involved with the criminal justice system and that's good. I really support that. But at what point do we say that an act was not just kids being kids, but actual violence? >> If it happened on the street, it would mean police involvement. Is there a way to be able to up the ante? I don't know exactly what I mean how to say that but so that students are made aware that they have crossed that line without them having getting involved with the police as adults. These are children. >> I mean I I don't mean anything bad but I view >> no I >> um but I do believe children should be treated as children and never be tried as an adult. I'll be honest. We ought to be trying us adults

091for why this kid is acting like this. But um so too often teens do something and are tried as adults. That should never happen. But educationally these children need to know where that line is. >> And I think that we are remiss if we are not fully helping them see the consequences of their actions. So, how do we define a violent act and what do we do about it? Um, and I don't I think that when everybody is sees violent acts, you become sort of more immune to it and that's not a good thing either for the whole of society. And I I it's a it's a difficult question, but I do think that as educators, it's one that we might grapple with. >> Um and my my other one was as I read back

092about our our goals, I I looked back. I had asked last time >> Oh, yeah. if the co cons the consolidated grant mentioned goals at the beginning and I said I didn't think those were our goals and um >> so those were the strategic plan goals >> they were the but they said they were they were listed as the board goals >> well yeah >> and so all I was going to ask was should should we align our goals more um fully with the state goals the ISBE goals in order to make that grant more easy to easier to write. >> Yeah, I think we're conflating this the word goal with multiple things in in this context like we're discussing right now are >> like a checklist of items we want to do as board

093work over the next academic year. Whereas there are district goals that come out of the strategic planning process and that's what goes on the report. >> Yes. And so Yes. So what and I have an email that Tanya and I both saw I sent your email to Tanya and we both talked about it. So for every year that we've submitted the the uh consolidated plan, we have used whatever our strategic goals were even for our older strategic plan. Um, and if if you're talking about ISBY goals, their goals are very different because they're talking about goals for the whole state. >> Um, and so I do think that is a much broader um much broader lens for, you know, what we would do in our district. >> We worked really hard and it took us

094a long time to get to this new strategic plan. So, I do think aligning with our strategic planning goals makes sense. um because it it's been a long time coming and now we're here and I think we have defined some very clear priority areas to work on for at least the next four years. So now that we have a newer strategic plan, it made sense to align. So you're right. I think it was just a misprint in terms of um what Tanya how she listed that on that slide, it was our strategic plan goals, not board goals. >> Okay. And so should our board goals then align with our strategic plan goals? And I don't know how often the board changes its goals. I'll be honest. >> We can um look at that. I think

095because we we had our goal our last goal setting sessions with Perry. Um we've done those in um >> yeargo >> in yeah about a year ago. I think some of them align like finances um curriculum you know our programming dual language. We've we've addressed some of some of them I think have been met. >> Um the board's goals I think have been met already. you know, there was a very specific goal about dual language. Um, and then some of them, I think, do interweave with the the um strategic planning goals. So, that would be a good topic, I think, of conversation. We could even look at the ISBY goals if you wanted to and see if there were some >> that the board wanted to tease out and say that would be a great

096board goal for us to have as well. We could do that. We could do that here. We could do that with Perry. um because it has been over a year since we've had a kind of a board retreat goal setting session. >> Um so definitely something we could talk about. >> That was it for me. >> Thank you Jennifer. >> And I started an email to you about I agree with a lot of what you said about some of the violence. However, you know, there's so there's some new Illinois juvenile acts and there's new language in um that is coming that is just things that I'm concerned about. You know, things that happen in the community that bleed into our schools and um there there has been a lot of um just our middle schoolers

097have been way more involved in things in the evening than they ever were before. Um, and so I think those are really serious conversations. I've had a meeting with Urbana Police leadership just to talk about some of the things that we've heard about that happened in the community. Um, and if there's no nexus to school, you know, we can't really do anything about that. But it's good for us to know about them so we can put supports in place for the for our students. The the problem is with some of the new clean slate acts and safety act and the Illinois Juvenile Acts, um we have lost a lot of the things in our community that allowed us to take our students to that next level. Like the youth assessment center was a support put

098in place by the county years ago for um if there were um you know really egregious things that happened in schools, we could then support that family through the youth assessment center. Well, that is no longer there's no meat or no no teeth to that anymore because um the the police or the school could say, you know, we really think this student needs to have some support from the youth assessment center. Now, it's a choice. Parents can choose to do it or they don't have to do it. Um, so there are a lot of there's just a lot of things I think that have happened legislatively in the courts that um are tying our hands in the schools as well as tying I I think the hands of some of our our state's attorney and

099there's there's there is it is very muddy and I I had started an email back to you about that and I was going to send you a couple links but um yeah so >> yeah I I see it as really difficult. Yeah, >> that was one of the things I thought about too because I've have heard the states attorney go into classrooms and talk about the different ways and the different programs that they have before they make that that very difficult choice that you're talking about to. So, it's it's usually not the the first thing that they try unless it's something so egregious and so dangerous. So, I think there are are different things that they do try to do and perhaps having the state's attorney come and speak with us as well and present

100what they're >> Yeah, I'm going to set up meeting with her soon with a couple of our administrators to just try to share some of the things some of the some of the implications I think that we're seeing from the community and our schools and then just talk with her about you know what are some future plans what are some things that we can do and collaborate and work with her to um provide more education and to make sure our students understand these some of the things that they're doing. you're making a a real choice here as a 12-y old or a 13-y old um that is going to impact the rest of your life. And so, yeah. So, those are things that we're talking about, too. >> Yeah. And I even think for the

101high school kids, too. >> Well, it's definitely for the high school kids. I guess my point is it's happening much younger younger. So, that was But yeah, definitely for the older students, too. I mean, do they have um opportunities too for families to learn about having guns in the home and the impact that it has and how to >> to make sure that your children don't have access to that? >> Yeah, absolutely. >> And I do think um I've seen um basically that Mayor Deshawn does he does have things that are in place that he's working on. So for a banner, that's a really big thing because I haven't seen that in a while in this city. Um >> it's always, you know, when it gets hot in the summer, it gets hot. >> And

102I'd like to see something like >> even midnight basketball. I mean, they used to do that in Champagne. That shouldn't cost a whole lot of money. You just need somewhere to do it >> and people willing to do it. Ask the >> other people. >> Well, I'm sure there are people out there. I mean, I I know a lot of people that are would look forward to something as simple as that, you know. Sure. So, >> well, I have a meeting tomorrow with um Mayor Mayor Williams and um community coalition representatives Tracy Parsons, with Dr. Weel Nye and Mr. Boozman. We wrote a city grant and we wrote another grant to try to do some things this summer to to keep our students engaged and um so we we have some ideas and so that

103we want to kind of work together to give other options during the summer when we're not in session to keep our students busy doing productive things like learning how to write a job application and how do you go on a job interview. So we're gonna we are having a a part two meeting about that tomorrow. >> Yeah. One other thing because I know that you know there are spaces like the YMCA and but that's not always you know available to all children. You know it's out there. Yes, it is but it's not available to all children. >> Agreed. Yes. >> Other topics now and >> well um so we we hired the consultants to help us with the secondary campus planning. um >> is the output of that um was that going to be basically

104a list a tenative list of items to consider that we would need input from the community to prioritize or what's what's the next step on that >> for the uhs feasibility study. >> Yeah. >> So they have met with every department um well most of the departments um at the high school already and they are kind of pulling their notes together. They've met with every group in the last few Wednesdays. Um and and they're going to come back and present to the board. Um I I think what they their vision for it is bringing back some phased options for the board to consider. Um what the biggest needs were regarding space um well more so for you to give them direction on where to go next. Um right now they are looking at use, they're

105looking at space, they're looking at um enrollment. Uh they met with the teachers and talked about really specific needs that are um necess you know like different departments have different needs because they just don't have the space to be able to teach their curriculum appropriately. So prioritizing um what those needs are and then kind of bringing back a phased uh option of here's some some things that just need to be done and coming back and having a sec follow-up conversation with you guys about that. >> The reason I asked is I didn't know if we would need a community input, you know, a committee to help us prioritize that list, but it might be we could do that at the board level. I'm not sure. >> Yeah, I think so. Ry's met with um the

106administrators and some other people about their not at the high school but the high school as well but other school I think that is more of that master facility use plan. I think that is where we need to get some community input on that >> um and take that to the next level. But >> I mean that that that that's what I'm going back to is is that plan that was developed well before I was on the board that we've largely completed except for >> central office. >> Yes. Everything except central office from that. I I think we're at the point where we we could use like another 20-year plan or or a set of priorities for the next 20 years and correct and getting that getting that done I think should be a priority

107for the next >> and that's more of the facility master use um plan that >> that is part of the strategic plan >> the goal that you've been joining. Yeah. This was more of a um feasibility study just to look at the high school specifically. So, we we've spent the last what 12 to 15 years talking just about our elementary schools and touching the elementary schools in a really intentional way. And um every single student in our district ends up at our high school. And our high school should be our um it should be the cornerstone. It should be what we strive to be the best that it can be. And right now we are lacking in a lot of different areas. And so um I think the feasibility study will show that. I think

108the we have amazing teachers. We have amazing things happening but we are very much limited by the space that we have in our what 115 year old building. >> So I mean we don't have enough electricity. Teachers don't have out like s sitting and listening to the conversations like basic things like I only have two outlets in my room. And I mean like can you imagine in your house trying to teach 25 kids and do all the things you need to do with two outlets. I mean, that is kind of what what our high school folks deal with right now. And so, I think when we compare, and we'll talk about this a little bit when we bring back the CTE team um at our next session, but when we compare what just the districts

109around us and not and I'm I'm not just talking about Champagne because they have all the EAV in the money, but I mean smaller districts like St. Joe and Monaceel and Ranul High School. when we compare some of the CTE programming and some of the other things that just even some of those smaller rural committee um communities are able to do because they have added additional spaces on to their high school. Um we are just >> really not not even comparable in some areas. So >> so I think the feasibility study will share that will show that. >> I have a question. >> Yeah. Um, so is is this study focusing on like creating a bigger space or like renovating what we have or kind of adding like a new addition to something that we

110already have? >> All the above. >> Okay. >> So, yes. So we when we brought them the first time, we have like I I think I shared this when the board for you know and this was a vision for the board for the last what 20 years to uh to uh prioritize all the homes and any spaces around the high school that we could purchase. >> And by knowing that eventually we were going to outgrow the high school, which we have basically done, and our building was going to need major updates. And so, um, we have 1,200 students at our high school. It's a lot of kids. >> And there's a lot of new programming out. Um, you know, we've got AI. We have just all the career and technical ed things. Um, you know,

111our auto there's so many areas. If we could probably show you pictures of some of the other places that we've been to visit and then show you some of our spaces and it would be like, okay, to be able to look at the two and compare. Um, so yes, it would be when I talk about phasing, I think we have the the space right across the street from the high school, which is ours. It's our land. We can do what we want with it. But then as we shift and move um people from the inside outside, then we would have the ability to go in then and re recind of touch and renovate and change some things internally as well. um move some departments around or you know do some renovating. We've had to be

112very intentional about how we renovate at the elementary buildings while school was happening. So we'd have to have plans on how could we renovate this wing of the high school but also continue to have school happening. So I think there would be a lot of um things to consider but that's why we have architects and that's what they do well. And so I think the initial thing would be starting with the space that we have outside and what we might do with that so we can move people out of the building and then think about where where we could move places or what can we do inside. Um some people are really happy with where they are. They just need more light or they need more outlets or they need more, you know, I need

113to be able to do certain things in the space that I'm already in. So I think it would be all those things, Kandre. >> Okay. >> Yep. over multiple multiple multiple years. >> Okay. >> So, yes. >> Yeah. >> Thank you. >> Um something that's I I like to see presentation on, but maybe this could be rolled into other ones that that are already on our list, but I wouldn't mind getting an update on how dual language has been going at the secondary level. >> I mean, we could have Yankee Ridge give their their school improvement presentation so we kind of get some feedback about the elementary level then. But I think at least for me it's a little more opaque um with regards to how it's being implemented at the middle school and high

114school. >> Okay. And sixth grade probably six. >> Six or 12. Okay. That's a great beginning conversation. Thank you. So we can go right in the calendar. >> Yeah. >> Is that okay? So Lori has already um made a mockup for you, which we usually do. That should say 2627 at the top. One thing that um after I was working on press 121 that I saw that we need to change is uh one of the new um new uh open meetings. No, it's not open meetings. It is it is part of press. Well, we're not supposed to have >> election night >> um election night meetings anymore, right? And so November 3rd is a general election night. So, we will have to make a change for November 3rd um because we're no longer allowed to

115do that. But other than that, I think we've already kind of just using previous calendars from the last two years, looked at fall break, which is still in our calendar for next year. And um looking at spring break, um Angie, I don't know if you were able to kind of weigh in on the March 2nd and March, you liked continuing to keep those two back toback. Okay. Um but other than that, I think we the only other thing we probably need to look at on here is November, which is going to be fun with Thanksgiving. I guess moving into the 10th might be the most logical. >> Yes. And having two a backtoback so we can do that. >> The other thing we always can be are mindful for when we look at this at

116the beginning of the year is making sure we have enough people for a quorum in August and people have known travel plans for that that first meeting to speak up so that uh we know we can at least get four of us. This may be a stupid question, but I understand changing, you know, you change the whole week because you've got the whole week off and you know, for fall break and spring break, but could you just move it to Wednesday in November? Is that illegal because they're scheduled for Tuesday? It's not illegal, but there are things like the the broadcast calendar on UPV and that and conflicting with other >> We don't use UPV anymore. YouTube >> eventually not live. >> Well, that used to be the reason. >> Yeah, we're not live anymore

117there. >> Um yeah. >> Uh I mean I mean we usually try to avoid Wednesdays in general for school events just because some people do religious things on Wednesdays, but that's not all. We're not consistent about that either. >> That's true. >> Um >> I think with both Thanksgiving and that date, I just thought it would might be easier for that one month. But >> oh to instead of doing well doing the 10th and the 17th. Yeah. >> Instead of doing the 10th, do the fourth. >> The 10th. Yeah. >> I may not be available on the 18th of August. Okay. If anybody else knows of of dates they can't make, I speak up now, please. >> I'm not 100% sure when moving is. I'm not 100% sure when moving is for the U ofi.

118>> Oh, yeah. >> It's Yeah, it's usually before the 18th >> move in day. Yeah. It's usually like the week of the 10th. I think the last couple years because it's always around opening day because the last couple years I've been like juggling it with opening day for my kid. >> Okay. So, it might be the 10th or it might be the 17th. Okay. So, we can look at that. Um well the 17th that second meeting in a in August would be a business meeting. So hopefully it would be a little lighter. I'm sure we'd have a big personnel agenda because you know we always start off with the first meeting in August having a lot of um personnel folks but then we also that second one we're always approving those last minute hires too.

119>> Okay. So, uh, when will be voting on this? >> At the n on the 19th. >> So, that change. >> It does look like move in um will be the week of the 18th. >> Okay. Week of the 18th. >> Yeah. My schedule will go back the 15th. >> Okay. So, we might not have no Sherry and no Lindsay. >> Well, and and I've got a kid's birthday on that date. So, I I mean, I could I could >> I could miss that, but because he's probably going to be moving into his apartment or something, but Um, >> yeah, it's a business meeting, so we could keep it a really light agenda with just like necessary budget approvals. And thankfully, we won't do the budget until September. So, that gives that helps a little

120bit. So, okay, we'll bring back a kind of mockup. >> Yeah. >> of this for the 19th. >> Thanks. And does that complete the >> That's it for board calendar. All >> right. Uh next up then uh is 12.1 our press plus 121 policy review. >> Okay, that's me again. So I gave you a different little format this time. I hope it was a little easier. Um I what I did is took the major topic reviews and um kind of grouped them together and then listed the um the uh policies that were impacted um with the with of course the department and the person who would oversee those changes um like I usually do um and with a little more of an explanation as to you know what the change was and and um why

121the change was being made in press. So hopefully you like this format. If not, I can go back to the um the old format as well. So this one wasn't um a a really heavy one, but it is one we want to get in u before June because some of the the information in here impacts our student handbooks and our school handbooks. So we want to make sure things like the calendars and all of that are um addressed before we get too far down into the June meetings. So the first one is the open meetings act change. Um, as you can see, it has added an exemption for performance of active military duty as a reason for a board member to miss a meeting or um attend a meeting remotely. So, that is a new

122addition. I sent you a Jennifer sent us a great question about when a you have a family um a family member that is ill. Um, so I shared that with you earlier. that is allowable under um OMA for a uh a person caring for a family member um who is sick to attend a meeting remotely. So I shared some of the information that I pulled from IASB and the OMA language about that. Um so board members can do that and they just you guys just have to approve it. So yeah, um and also prohibits boards from holding regular special meetings on election days which we just talked about. And then next is the Freedom of Information Act um changes. So these have already um already been kind of being put in place by school. So

123as I've shared with you before, press is usually a little behind, right? So the legislation changes um we get the changes in school code and then the attorneys get together and then they formally um you know uh write the press changes and provide them to us. So this has been happening now John I want to say um there are a couple districts who were getting really hit by those AI generated requests even one locally around us. Um and so one of the changes was uh putting your request in the body of an email rather than an attachment. Um and then verifying they are a person um if a district believes this is not a real person and it is AI generated. So um press has provided some language for that. Our attorneys have also provided

124us um some guidance for that. that I know Robinson Schwarz wrote for a couple different districts some language that districts can use or ways that they can check to see if a foyer is AI generated or not. >> Were you gonna say something, John? >> Yeah. So, that >> for our most frequent FOYA requesters doesn't really help us much, but if you recall, we got a lot of the anonymous ones uh like a year or more ago uh with like the kind of fake names. Uh those are no longer allowed. That's great. >> Yeah, that's small steps. >> Um the next major area is personnel. And so there are two areas um that press addressed um that relate to personnel with this with press 121. So um one of them is uh if if you

125have uh employees or if their employer receives a no match letter from a federal agency um regarding a discrepancy in the individual's identifying documents. And so if that is to happen, and I don't think we've ever had that happen. Have we ever had that happen, Angie? Not in my Not that I know of. Um, press is recommending that a district should consult their legal counsel and they will write us a letter and make sure that we're in compliance, uh, with the requirements. The second one um has been something that we have um dealt with over uh many years where we have employees who um deliver a child who might be um delivered early or has some kind of medical need where they need to be in the neonatal intensive care unit. Um this has now

126been added as an and as a um area of leave in the family and medical leave act. So in FMLA um our staff members can now request FMLA leave um if if this is um something that they unfortunately have to experience. And then I've listed the um areas of our policy that would be changed to reflect those. I heard a question. Okay. And then next is student records. So, um I think we've shared this, but in the last year, last two years, um Illinois has started uh something kind of like the common app where um you know, years ago they started the common act. When you apply for college, you can do one application and it goes to so many um number of colleges. Well, Illinois started the one-click college admit program. Um the first

127one that I know of in our areas was Eastern um where um high school students if they are I forget they have to have a C average and a certain GPA they can automatically be admitted without having to go through all of the you know application process if you and I believe Eastern is the first one um they've been doing it now at least a year um so Eastern is one of the state public institutions of higher education Um the other change here is there is a um we have to share that this is telling us that we must share with military recruiters that same high school student directory. So what happens is we create a high school student directory of all of our students who meet the Illinois one-click college um criteria to be

128able to be admitted to that program. This is saying that we also um have to share that information with military recruiters as well. Um but they also put in an opt out. So districts still need to let parents and guardians um have the opportunity to opt their children out if they prefer we not release that information either to the state public inst institutions of higher ed or to military recruiters or um the Illinois student assistance commission. So there is a centralized data system that I think our our roe has been managing it for us mostly. Um and so if parents were to say I don't want you to share my students name um because we don't want them participating in the Illinois one-click college program then we would remove their name from our list of

129high school names that we would send in for the directory. >> Excuse me. >> Yeah. Could that be given at um when students when parents are students are registered because otherwise parents won't know that that's even done. >> I think our counselors cover it when they talk about FAFSA and um some of the other college application kinds of programming. So at that time um a parent can say they don't want to do it. Um we're starting registration now. I don't know how we would frame that in a registration question, but that I will talk to our counselors and see if that would be something we could put on, you know, like we could give to all the seniors because they're the only ones really impacted by it. Yeah. >> Yeah. >> Because not every student

130might apply from college, but if you have to share the information with military recruiters that they wouldn't even think about that probably. >> Absolutely. And I think that is why they've included military recruiters because there are so many students that are not going to college who um the military might be a good fit for them. So that is I think why they've included that. >> So when does that apply that you share the information with the military recruiters? >> So it just Yeah, we haven't even done it yet. It's new. Yes. But like so it would be I'll have to ask our roe because the counselors pull all that information together and we submit it to the roe and then they kind of manage the one-click college. Um so I we've not done that yet.

131So I'm going to have to figure out what that is going to look like um for the future. So that is a new change. But >> it wouldn't just affect the college the collegebound students seniors. Wouldn't it affect 16 year olds? >> Well, but this is for the Yeah. The the the information that we would be sharing here is our seniors that would be graduating. Yeah. So, it would be sent to So, it really is just, you know, they get a list of names and addresses and somebody sends a letter to your house from military recruiter. >> Yeah. And if a parent did not want that to happen, they could say, "I don't want you to send share our name. We don't want to get any information from the military recruiters." So, I'll talk to

132our counselors to figure out a way that we could create some kind of opt out form. So, yep. Questions about that? Okay, that one is a good one for me to do some followup on. And then article 27 is really a list of um a lot of curriculum and um instructional areas. So in 2025, the spring legislative session just renumbered and reorganized so many different areas of um of our policies that mainly somehow address instruction in some way. So whether it was um instruction about tobacco use and cannabis and vaping or school wellness um teen dating violence. So they didn't change any of these policies. Basically if you were to go in and look through the big packet, it just put in new references. They were reumbered. They were reorganized to address um the legal

133and school code changes from 2025. It was there were just so many of them that they've been chunking them and doing a little bit with each press review. So these were the article 27 areas related to instruction that were renumbered and reorganized from press 121. There will probably be more to come. They've been kind of giving us a chunk all year. And then the last one is u related to title one. So, um, in January 2025, the US Department of Education revised their guidance related to parent and family engagement. And so, um, we're required to use certain templates for our school compacts. So, if you've seen, um, for years, we've kind of had these brochures, um, school compact brochures that we give to to give to every family at the beginning of the year. We're

134uh, legally, as a title one district required to do that. Each school puts in their school improvement goals. Um some of the areas that that school is uh known for, what's special about that school, and it's more so just meant to be anformational document um for parents. And so we have to show that we comply with that. And so every year we um we document when we gave the compacts out, how families receive the compacts. Um so one thing that this language is changing is that as of next year we have to include in our um consolidated district plan um how we are more of a plan on how we are disseminating those compacts which now they would like us to call um parent and family engagement plans instead of a school compact. Yes. And

135then in our CDP plan moving forward after this year, we'll have to show how we've shared that information with families. So families know we are a title one district. Um this is what that means. These are the services and supports that we provide as a title one district. Um so that's what that change is. And then the last ones are just um as you know every so often every other press um that we receive they go in and do the five-year reviews. And so the five-year reviews usually consist of um additional changing out the legal terms or the legal school code um numbers or um if there's been any change and reumbering um that and so these would be the five-year review uh areas that were addressed in this particular press. So those were the

136ones that I wanted to highlight. if there was anything in the big packet that you saw that you wanted to tease out. We could talk about any of those. >> 124 pages. I know there's usually a lot and a lot of it unfortunately is a lot of legal ease, a lot of legal references, you know, um address, you know, areas of the school code. So, and they what they do is they take one one change might run through five different policies and so they kind of have to list all of them. So, >> regarding the format, I like the format when you sit and explain it better. >> I like when you explain it. It doesn't matter how you write it. It's just explaining it. >> Explain it and then put the policies under it.

137Yes. >> Thank you for the feedback. >> No, it's very helpful. >> Anything else? >> Any questions? So, be prepared to vote for this on this next meeting. >> Next week. >> At the next meeting, >> May 19th. >> Yeah. And and you use these these two weeks to uh >> I'll find out more information about that military. >> Have any questions uh you have answered by uh administration and and legal? >> Yes. >> All right. All right. Thank you. We do have a set of action items uh this meeting. First is uh organizational meeting. So we had when we did the organizational meeting last time around and voted in our officers, we did so with a motion for one year. Um so we are now required to um uh vote for officers again. Uh

138this this is a cut and paste from last year's organization meeting which we had to do all of these steps because we had a we're a brand new board. We didn't have anything. We didn't have a president or secretary of things. So we didn't have somebody to run the part of the meeting to elect officers. We didn't have anybody to call out the names. So we don't really need to do steps A and B. If we just let me run this part of it and Sherry call the names for the voting. So we can just move right to C. And there are typically two ways that the board does this. We can somebody can make a motion to uh for a slate of officers. Uh and then if those people accept that we can report

139on on it all at once as a whole or we can go uh office by office and do the separate votes. I don't know what people would rather do. >> Okay. >> I move that our very capable officers continue in their roles. >> Are people good with that? Are the people are the people filling the offices willing to to do so for another year? >> You can respond first. >> Yeah, I am. >> Okay. Good. Okay. I'm comfortable. >> I'm comfortable. >> Exactly where I am. >> Okay. >> And then your secretary prom. Are you willing to do that again? >> It's Lola. It's Lola. >> Yeah, that's fine. >> Sorry. My my apologies. It was Lola. That's right. So, yeah. So, I guess is that is that a formal motion then that you would

140wish? >> Thought it was. >> Okay. Is is is is there is there is there a second for the motion? >> Second. >> It's been moved and seconded. Okay. Any further questions, comments, or discussion? I think we can do this as a uh as a all in favor. >> Okay. Let's do this way with roll call. >> I'm ready. >> Member Cheryl, >> yes. >> Member Hixon, >> yes. >> Member Amaribu, >> yes. >> Member Jones, >> yes. >> Member Langodorf, yes. Vice President Baxley, >> yes. >> And President again, Palowski. Yes. Um this thank you for all the officers for continuing to serve in their roles. >> Um and uh last item here is is our board recording secretary which has traditionally been been Lori. He's been doing that role for us. Is there

141a motion for the floor? >> Some moved. >> Second. So again, this motion again is to reappoint Lori Johnson as the board recording secretary. Thank you, Lori. Uh, any any comments, discussion? All right. Uh, roll call, please. >> Member Hixon, >> yes. >> Member Maribou, >> yes. >> Member Jones, >> yes. >> Member Langdenorf, yes. Vice President Baxley, >> yes. >> President Palowski, >> yes. >> Member Cheryl, >> yes. >> Uh, motion passes. Uh, 13.2 two is the appointment of the 2026 IASB um delegate assembly representative. Um this this is for the the November uh triple I conference meeting. So this is you know about six a little over six months from now where people are they already taking like reservations for >> not till June one. So I guess if if people is it

142or >> November 19th >> 19th through the 22nd >> gosh >> Yeah. Well, this this is always >> this is always the the weekend before Thanksgiving. Um yeah. Uh >> Yeah. I mean I'm planning on going to my last one. Um, yay. Um, anybody else kind of knowing if they're if they're going to go or not going to go? >> Okay. >> That's true, too. So, I guess it's down to you and me. You flip a coin. >> Did you enjoy doing it last year? >> I I've done it for two years, and I very much enjoy the discussions. >> Okay. Would you like to do it again? >> I would like to do it. >> Oh, that's awesome. Well, that makes it easy. >> The only bad part is that you don't get to

143go to as many um workshops if you go to that, >> right? But um then the chair would entertain a motion to appoint Sherry as the ISB representative for the delegate assembly. >> So moved. >> Second. Any uh further questions, comments, discussion? Roll call, please. >> Member Maribou. Yes. >> Member Jones. >> Yes. >> Member Langodorf. Yes. Vice President Baxley. >> Yes. >> President Palowski. >> Yes. >> Member Cheryl. >> Yes. >> Member Hixon. >> Yes. >> Thank you for doing this, Sher. >> Um and last up is a resolution authorizing the sale of disposal of district property in accordance with state law. Uh these are uh DPW library books. Uh, MacBook M1's, Elite Book 850 G8 textbooks for outofdate computer programs. Is there a motion to accept the resolution? >> So moved. >> Second.

144Any any questions? Roll call, please. >> Member Jones. >> Yes. >> Member Langorf. Yes. Vice President Baxley. >> Yes. >> President Palowski? >> Yes. Member Cheryl, >> yes. >> Member Hixon, >> yes. >> Member Maribou, >> yes. >> Motion passes. Uh, there is a call for a future special session tomorrow night, an executive session for the purpose of student discipline. Reminder, which four of us are doing this tomorrow night? It's okay. So to yeah, I'll be at central office at uh six o'clock tomorrow, please. Superintendent's report. >> Okay. So, um, I wanted to thank Dr. Franklin for a great unsung hero celebration tonight. Um, and it was very appropriate during teacher appreciation and staff appreciation week that we are recognizing our staff who are amazing. So, um, I know we've said to our staff this

145week and our I've watched all the, uh, accolades and all the fun things that people are doing. Um the PTSAs and the PTAs are uh really recognizing staff. Our administrators are recogniz doing a wonderful job um going above and beyond just saying thank you for all you do and just really trying to be intentional and purposeful about um making sure that we know this is a challenging job and it is a challenging time to work in our schools but u we have some amazing people who are doing a fantastic job. So, we have a couple more shining stars that we're going to recognize tonight who are being honored um tomorrow. So, I have three things tomorrow night. So, I am not going to be with you at central office. Dr. Taylor will be filling in

146for me for the um the um executive session for tomorrow evening. So, we are recognizing at the spring fleeing for the CU schools foundation. Um the nominees and awardees from Urbana are um Jeff Fuller. He's a teacher at Gerber, an adaptive PE teacher. Lisiana Hernandez, who was a social worker, also a parent in the district. She works at UHS. And then Heather Nolan, um, a UECs, long-standing UECs teacher who is also a parent in the district, I believe, too. Um, they'll be honored tomorrow night at the CUSF spring fling. So, congratulations to Jeff, Louisiana, and Heather. Kindergarten open houses start this week. So I will also be at Leo tomorrow for a little bit um welcoming some of our new kindergarten um families to the district and um Thursday night um we have some other

147folks that are going to be there because we'll be doing strategic planning several of us um and then Yankee Ridge King and Thomas Payne our next week. So we're really excited to welcome our future Tigers the class of 2039. Yes. Crazy. Um, graduations and promotions. So, I think everyone has responded to Tamara, right, Lori? That intended to. Okay. So, graduation is the 21st. >> Okay. So, if you intend to go to adult ed, let Lori know because they do like to have a space for you on the stage. Um, that is another fun evening. Um, and it's the night before, so it's on the 20th and it is usually in our high school auditorium. Um, middle school 8th grade promotion is May 27th if that is um I think those invitations have gone out from

148the middle school. If not, if you're interested, just let one of us know and we'll make sure they have a space for you. And then we've listed all the fifth grade promotions. So, it is a great time of the year to celebrate and honor all the hard work of all of our young people. So, it's always a busy time, but also a really gratifying time, too. The next, um, registrations start open on May 1st. So, Friday, online registration open for our returning students only. If you're new to the district, um, you will have an opportunity to register as well, but our returning families can register online until July 16th. And then I'm really happy to report we are bringing back centralized registration to Urbana Middle School. Paul's clapping. Yes, I am very happy about this.

149Um July 30th and 31st um from uh 12 to 6 on the 30th. On July 31st, we'll have the uh mobile health uh clinic will be there. The school-based health center is going to be open um because we really really really need our families to get those physicals and immunizations in this year. Um centralized registration is a one-stop shop. Our new families are able to register in person. Returning families um have an opportunity to register um take care of a lot of um other business. They get to talk to first student. They get to see meet people from MTD. they get to learn more about Quest. Um so it the afterchool program our ASCCP folks are there and sign up families. So it is a great um great it's a busy two days but a

150really familyfriendly opportunity for us to um welcome everybody to the district all at once. All students must be registered by July 31st. And that deadline is because if you ride a yellow bus and you want to have yellow bus service by the first week of school, you have to be registered by July 31st. The buildings will take um some walk-in registrations, but we will announce those times and dates after July 31st. Summer programs. So, registration is open for summer programming. When this is shared electronically, all of these links are live. So, um, when Katherine sends out the board update tomorrow, um, if you're interested in registering for any of these special programs, see you around town at DPW, Camp Invention at Yankee Ridge, um, kindergarten ready readiness camp in August at Thomas Payne. Um, SGC

151is running an AVID boot camp the week of August 3rd through the 7th. Um, gear up for greatness is for our eighth graders transitioning to the high school. It gives them an opportunity to learn a little bit more about what it means to be a high schooler before they have to actually be there. Um, recapture and then of course uh summer school runs um we start the week after we get out of school and I think it goes till July 16th or 17th or something like that. So um if these programs are of interest to anyone watching tonight when this is shared, please go in and use those links to get registered. And then we already shared um Sherry mentioned this, but all these events are on the events and engagement calendar. So um we've

152heard from our very capable student ambassadors um tonight as well. So we most of these dates were either in their presentation or uh we've mentioned them in some other way. So the there it is a very busy next two weeks. So if this anything there is interesting to you, please mark it in your calendar. So lots of concerts and honors nights and celebrations to end the school year. So really exciting time. I think that is it for me. >> Thank you. Uh there are a set of foyer quests that were processed and completed that were published in our agenda. A long list of them. Thank you Lori and John. Um I think that's it. Uh that completes our meeting. Uh the chair would then entertain a motion to adjurnn. >> So moved. >> Second. All

153in favor say I. >> I. >> All right. We'll see everybody on the 19th. >> Well, I said everybody.