Urbana School District 116 Board of Education 08 05 25

001Welcome back everyone. It's six o'clock, so let's kick off this first study session of our 2526 school year. Uh, roll call, please. Member Cheryl, yes. Member Hixon, here. Member Maribou here. Member Jones here. Member Langodorf here. Vice President Baxley here. President Palowski here. Uh we definitely have a quorum. Uh there are are there additions, corrections, or modifications to tonight's agenda? Hearing none. There will be a short executive session after tonight's meeting for the purpose of a personnel matter. There will be no action taken by the board after our executive session. It is now time for citizen statements. If anybody here present wishes to make a statement before the board, please fill out a golden rod sheet in the back of the room and hand it to our recording secretary, Lori Johnson. We have yet to

002receive any and I see no one indicating they wish to speak before the board. So, at this point, the chair would take a motion to approve tonight's agenda. Second. It's been moved and seconded. All in favor say I. I. Any oppose? Uh we have an agenda. Uh board reports. Um there are a few topics listed here. uh for a quick board discussion. Uh one is picking up where we left off uh at our last June meeting which is discussing uh board of education goals. So these are board tasks we wish to make sure that we take on during this calendar year as well as uh study session topics we want to discuss so that we can kind of uh plan our year's calendar out so we're not bunching up a bunch of stuff at the

003end of the year. Um, we have the list that we created. We started this conversation in June. So, we had several suggestions um at the June 17th meeting, but we also always usually give you time over the summer to think about it. And so, if there are additional topics that you'd like to add, could you give the public a reminder, I guess, of of what we of what we've already talked about? Wonderful. I can. So, um, in on June 17th, uh, Sherry asked if we could have more discussion around, um, how UHS is going to be implementing their cell phone policy and, um, just to have the team come and discuss how it's going and what they're planning to do. I shared a an email from Mr. Guzman, but I think it'd be nice to

004have him come after school starts just to give us a little bit of a update on how their plan is working out. um communication, other ways to convey to parents what's going on and getting input um before major changes happen in schools. Um in addition to the and this was still from Sherry. Um in addition, uh Sherry would also like to uh talk a little bit more about our incoming kindergarteners, what their needs are, um how we are seeing them grow from the beginning to the end of the year. Um, just a little more about the demographic makeup of our kindergarten group because we showed some data around the kids KIDS assessment and um where our kindergarten students are starting. They're already a large number of them um behind where some of their grade level

005peers are before they even walk in the door. So, just having a little more information about that. And um yes, so that was some information from Sherry. Um Paul uh said that he'd like to have the director of immigrant services, and I got to write her name down, come and share a little bit about um immigration and how that's impacting our community. Um and we would uh invite the welcome center maybe to come and share a little bit in addition to that topic. Uh we have the statement from Jennifer Hixon around um uh lots of things things like exit interviews. So those were some really specific HR comments. um a little more information from parents that are leaving the district and going to private school if we can come up with some kind of exit

006interview for specific parents. Um interviewing parents of students who are attending and taking a variety of classes at UHS. Um monitoring school performance. Let's see. So we had we had a full statement and we copied we have her statement designate a board committee that gathers and analyzes the data that we need want to know to help us make decisions going forward. And um okay I think that was that Ben wanted to invite um the Urbana police chief um uh Chief Boone to come to a meeting. Um, is that something you want to do early or maybe during the course of when we're talking about school safety? Okay. Yep. And then, um, just having a broader positive relationship with our Urbana Police Department. and Sherry um also discussed maybe the effort of going into the community

007and really talking um more about how we can advertise that the board members are available and um where those locations are going to be where they are going to be making themselves available to meet citizens throughout the year and I think that was it. Okay. So now the floor will be open for any other topics people would like or specific uh go uh actions you want the board to take this year. Um I think a big focus this year is going to be as all in all contract years our contract negotiations. I'm the only sitting board member who's done this before so I probably should be a member of that committee but I don't plan on running uh for reelection. So, I would really appreciate it if we had at least one other board member

008who uh kind of wishes to learn how this process works in case um they're able to serve the next time around. Excellent. All right. Thank you, Jennifer. Okay. It's a pretty heavy time commitment because it's it's when we get down to the meat of it, the you we're meeting with the union for threeish hours once a week, but then we have a prep meeting the week the day before that typically so that we can kind of get our side of it kind of figured out and that's also another two to three hours. Um so it can be upwards of six or seven hours a week on um you know in the late afternoon early evening um for for a long period of time. I mean what typically happens is we is that the two sides

009kind of set deadlines and that those artificial deadlines kind of do help us reach consensus. Um so u we start our prep work um before winter break and on the administrative side um talking about we already have a list of specific topics and then um we have our opening meeting. We haven't set that time with the union but in the last two negotiation cycles it's been around February Marchish. Our goal is always to be done by the last day of school. I I mentioned it to Mark yesterday when I ran into him at at new teacher day and he was like, "Oh gosh, Paul, so it's too early." Yes. But um yeah, I know that they they want to, you know, figure out when to start. It probably be, you know, late fall, winter time

010when we get when we really get going. Um Oh, okay. So, you and Jennifer maybe could share. Yeah. that so uh point of information for for the board uh union negotiations are completely exempt from um so we can have all three you don't even need to notice notice it um like you would an exact session it's the only um thing that doesn't fall under OMA so yes so if as long as that is what as long as that's what the topic of discussion is um we could have as many board members who want to participate as as as Okay. Um I think it's a good idea to have um uh some discussion about immigrant issues, but I would like to suggest that we have the refugee center. Oh, yeah. That's what I said that we

011were going to I thought you said welcome center, but refugee center. Yes, that's what I meant. Um but yes, refugee center. Thank you. Go ahead. Um, I know I rely on you a lot, Paul, as far as policies, board policies go because you're the encyclopedia. Say that much. No, I mean, as far as understanding and knowing them and I was wondering if there's a time if there's any policies that we need to sit and review change because some of it might be outdated. So, that would be one thing that I that's part of what we do in Press Plus is to make sure that it's compliant with with changing state and federal laws. But but there there are certainly pro uh other policies that don't fall under necessarily fall into state and and and federal

012law that we should probably revisit. I think she's talking about like specific board policies, things that we that maybe are never touched by press. Is that that's what you're saying, right? Yeah. Okay. Do do you have any policies in in particular you're thinking about or I would like to know more about them. Okay. Um, also AVID, it seems that the sixth grade center is going to be pretty in um involved in that program and the high school also uses it. So, I don't know if we're going to have another presentation about AVID. Um, we just sent a large group to the week of summer institute for AVID. So, the sixth grade center is going to be schoolwide AVID, which means all the students um will get some um exposure to AVID strategies, but they also

013will still have the elective AVIT classes. the middle school and high school will um have the AVID elective classes and this year we're moving down and piloting um AVID at Dr. Williams, our first elementary school. Okay. Yeah. So, I'd like to know more about what's involved. Um and also possibly a memorandum of agreement between the Urbana Park District and the school district for use of the auditorium for their student um performances. Okay. We have one with the Urbana Pops Orchestra that we've had for many years. They've um we've worked with them for 16 years and I think it was signed in 2013 possibly that there was a an agreement and um if that's something that they really want to use for their productions we're using you know our students then I think we should more

014formalize that. Okay. They've not expressed so this is the first year they've used our auditorium. They've been using Parkland. Yes. But I was told they wanted to try it out and see if they liked it better than Parkland. So, they've not requested that, but I'm happy to reach out to them. Yep. Great. Anyone else? Okay, it's a long list. Um, but but appreciate people and of course this isn't set in stone. if if if uh you know something comes up that you would want to explore, you always uh bring it bring it to the to the board report so we can we can discuss uh making sure we can fit it in. And I'll take the topics that you've shared and um just like last year, we'll kind of put together a tentative calendar and

015um again, as long as everyone knows it's fluid, so there are times where we have to move things around. So um hopefully we'll get you this early September. Okay. under board reports. I had assumed that's when board members could share what they wanted to share and you jumped ahead to 7.1. Well, that's that's under board reports. The goals. So, we just need goals. I I promise we we will get to open floor so people can discuss whatever. I just want to make sure we we get these specific things covered that were in the agenda and then we'll open the floor up to anything else. No problem. All right. Okay. Okay. Committees. So, you have a couple documents in front of you. So, one is it actually has some red on it. It says board committees.

016Um, this is our draft. And, um, it's a Yep. It's got pink. I mean, not pink. It's got red names and dates. And then here is our other draft of We'll send a couple that way that has all of the dates. Um, we had a few that didn't make it on to the um, colored copy that you have because directors are still actively Yeah, they're kind of folded back and forth. You can see the Okay. So, I normally what we do unless you guys if you'd like to do this differently, what I usually do is just walk through tell talk a little bit about each one and then you just tell me who would like to volunteer for what and um we do it that way. Okay. Sorry, Lori. All right. So um first is

017the um policy committee 2150. These are are the um ongoing board committees. So the first one is roundt. So I think everyone here except maybe Luke and Lindsay got to um experience the UEA BOE roundt discussion. Um, I was just checking my email because I um proposed to UEA that with negotiations coming, Paul, and I was seeing if they maybe responded to my email, but I don't think they've had a chance to yet. Um, I propose because we're going to be going out into the schools um in October, November, December for those um lunch roundts. So, what we usually do and Lori will start um sending out um information. We'll start collecting dates from the UEA and from our principles. During a negotiation year, we like to go and um engage with teachers and we

018just do it during the lunchtimes. We go to every school and we just listen and we listen to concerns. We listen to um you know, what challenges are they experiencing? We like to hear a lot. We like to hear the positive things. Um but then that is a way for the board and admin to also hear um some of the concerns so we can begin to prepare for the negotiation cycle that is going to be coming. And so I proposed to UEA to because that is really a time inensive process. You're giving up your lunchtime. Um we ask you to commit to at least going to two or three buildings. We ask board members to definitely commit to going to the building that you represent, your your closest neighborhood school, and it is a lot

019of time and effort that you're putting in for that. And so I proposed to UEA that maybe we don't have our fall roundt meeting in lie of the um lunch meetings that we're going to be having instead. They haven't responded yet to let me know if that's something. We usually have a meeting in October, Februaryish, and then April. So, um the April meeting I'm sure will be very heavily um focused on negotiations. Uh so I will I don't have those dates yet because we've not finalized it. But my proposal to them is we don't have the fall roundt meeting because you guys are going to be putting in a lot of time going to the schools to do those lunch meetings. If you'd like to do both, I'm more than happy to. We have an

020October date that we looked at. Um, but I was also trying to be considerate of your time, too. I mean, yeah. I mean, I think until we hear back from UEA leadership, it's kind of hard. They may have very specific things they want to address outside in October. Yeah. Okay. We we'll see what they say. I have not gotten a response yet. Um, contract negotiations we just talked about. So, it looks like we have um Paul for sure, Jennifer, and Ben as a possible whenever he can attend. Sound good? Um, standing board committees. So there are two committees that are part of our board policy and also part of our um contract uh our contract with the union our CPA and it is the parent teacher advisory committee. Um and we have uh the dates

021listed for you that is an evening committee. The last two years um Lola and Tori our representatives on the um district parent teacher advisory committee. Chassity and I shared the leadership of that this year. This is a standing open committee. So we do notice this committee. We have an agenda. Uh it is a open meeting. People can come and um listen to the discussion or they can come and make public comments. Uh but we are very specific about the uh the direction of what that group works on. So it it it is truly a space where we talk about discipline, culture, climate. Um this last year we created a handbook um that we will give to all of our families around um positive behavior and interventions in the schools. Um so I don't know Lola

022if you want to continue on there. Okay. We don't have to have two people but it's always great. Okay Lindsay. It's a great group because we have teachers, we have parents. Um so it is it's a really nice group. We had a we had a really great group of folks who are ve really committed this year. So, thank you, Lindsay. And the other one, um I'm going to turn I turned the page to facilities and property acquisition. So, this is an as needed committee. So, um Paul has done this in the past just because he has a lot of history. Ben has also been a rep for the facilities committee. These are um noticed as well. So, we put out an agenda. It is open to the public and um it is as needed though.

023we are doing any I would still like to participate in this especially leading into what's going to be a kind of facilities assessment that we're going to be doing um through the strategic plan. I also want to state that we're not limited to two board members here because this is a notice meeting. We can in uh we're allowed to have more than than two board members show up. Absolutely. Okay. Ben would like to continue. Thank you, Ben. Anyone else? These usually happen during the day because um many of the people who come and have information to share with us are I'll you know it might be the park district. We talk about the aquatic center at a lot of these spa in meetings. Um so okay um next is the working committees. So these are

024not um standing board committees but they're the committees that are doing the work of the district kind of behind the scenes. So the first one is the school wellness committee that is overseen by Maryanne. She's put the dates there. Um and it looks like the committee is going to meet once a quarter. Who was your person last year? Remember Sherry? Sherry would you like to continue? Sherry. Okay. Oh yeah. Perfect. Yeah. That's great. Anyone else like because we can have up to two. Anyone else? Okay. Um crisis and school safety committee. So this is a committee that um includes administrators. We try to get a couple teachers. Um so that we've had a couple teachers. That number is small smaller depends on the year. Um we have representatives from Urbana Police. Uh both of our

025SRO's participate. Um this is a monthly committee where we meet and we talk about our crisis plans, evacuation procedures. Um, and this has been Tori and I think it was just Tori this year. Anyone want to do those? They meet, if you look at our list, they meet right after school because it does involve teachers. So, we uh this meeting usually um is a four o'clock starting time for the and it goes from about 4:00 to 5:30. Think about it. think about it. Let me know. Okay. Um John, you want to talk about the district technology committee? Your first tentative date? Yep. Uh this has been uh typically to provide direction for classroom and district technology. Uh this year we're focusing uh following our strategic planning committee on finding uh better communication tools and then

026also uh finding better ways to engage in communication and increase participation with families as well as other technology issues. It'll it'll meet after school because they're usually Yep. typically after school. Uh we are we had some requests to move them off of Zoom. Typically we had been on Zoom uh but maybe like a hybrid mix in person this year. Uh the first one is tentatively probably going to be uh because we're looking to move quickly with communication tools uh to pilot some stuff starting this next semester uh either the 11th or 12th of August. and then we'll work with the committee to kind of find availability then you'd like to do Sherry. Okay. Okay, Ben. Great. Thank you. Um, next we have a new committee and this is also from the strategic plan um and

027under the umbrella of the strategic plan and Maryann is going to talk about the finance committee. Good evening. So the purpose of this committee is to just promote transparency and support the strategic plan. One of my goals is to um improve upon the equitable building budgets. And so this group will have discussion about that. Um we're going to be reviewing budget financial reports, anything that comes from Isby's weekly newsletter just to kind of prep the committee. And so if there's any discussion before a board meeting, it would be good to have some of that transparency and conversation beforehand. Um, and then with just the state of our government right now, it we just feel like it's a good time to reinstate this committee to start having those conversations. So, who loves numbers and finance? That

028would be me. Marian, are you thinking these will be I think I have like four to five. Four to fiveish. I'm going to be at the conference. I'm going to be attending a couple of the finance workshops. So, apply some things I've learned. Would it be possible to have like a hybrid so Paul then could zoom in maybe if you had work responsibilities? That would be ideal for me, frankly. Yeah, we can do that. Definitely. Would that be a possibility? Okay. Is that a committee that only two board members on? Well, we could we could either trade off or or or publicly notice it, but um yeah, we I guess when you schedule those meetings, I guess the three of us can figure out which two of us will go. Okay. So you're interested maybe

029depending on the topic or something like you'll have an agenda and then you guys could get together and figure or I might just be slammed at work and can't go anyway. So okay, sounds good. Thank you. Um next is a standing committee that we've had for many many years. So program council which is where we talk about curriculum needs this year. Um we also are um going to be using program council time to talk about school improvement goals but also reinforced with our this is where we have all of our teacher leaders. So we have our department chairs, we have members of school improvement teams. So we have a lot of our experienced and most knowledgeable staff members in this space. Um so we're also going to be utilizing it to do some of our

030strategic planning work. So Sherry and Jennifer did that last year for us. I was out of town for a majority of them because they were the second to maybe one. So yeah. Okay. Okay. Awesome. We moved from four meetings to three meetings because for that group um because this is year one of the strategic plan, we are also bringing in the strategic planning priority goal work groups. So these will be um split up based on the um goal area. So you know we have a goal area for student achievement, a goal area for uh staff uh retention and um growth and retention. We have a goal area around family and community as agency and then a goal area around district operations and procedures. And so uh we're going to have different working groups break out

031on these dates. So I think board members could be on a working group and you know one so m multiple people wanted to do this you would be in your working group for the entire time. Um depending on your area of you know interest which one of those priority areas you might be interested in. and those will be in the evening because this is where we'll have community partners, we'll have parents, we'll open this up to parents as well. So, this won't be a 4:00 meeting. It will be a meeting that probably right now on the sheet that you have, I have it highlighted um to start either 5:30 to 7 or 6:00 to 7:30. So, we haven't made a final decision on that time yet because I want to get a little more input

032from our UEA and um but it is definitely going to be an evening space. No, this is the one under program council the the priority goal groups for the strategic plan. So, this will be where we identify our strategic plan action steps and then throughout the year we'll monitor our progress and be work doing that in a group. We already have several teachers who have signed up to join different working groups. Um, we just need to get some parents on those groups. So, I'm gonna have that available at welcome back to school night. Hopefully, we'll have some parents willing to be on some of those groups as well. I could probably do this. You kind of all could do it. You just have to be on a separate working group. Okay. So I will make

033sure you to share that and then you guys maybe can split up those four priority areas. And then um these are the ad needed ad hoc committees. So right now we just uh approved two years worth of calendars. So unless we need to bring the calendars back to make any changes, we probably will not have the calendar committee working this year. Um health insurance committee is Angie and we've got four dates. So, I don't remember who your person was. Paul. Paul. Go for it, Angie. Yes. Um, last year Paul served on the committee and we have changed our insurance broker, um, to USI, which matches what our district liability insurance is with as well. And so, um, we're looking forward to the meetings and hopefully Paul, you can continue, especially with the impact on negotiations.

034So, sorry to add one more thing to your plate, but we do meet visually. I should stay on on that one. Okay. Okay. Thanks. Uh, schoolbased health. Thank you, Paul. Schoolbased health center advisory board. Um, and that was who? I don't remember. Maybe it was Tori. It was It was Tori. Okay. So, um, this one meets quarterly. Beth Lad, our executive director for student services leads this, um, initiative. It is our time where we talk about the needs of the health center. Um staff from Promise, uh the leadership from Promise are usually there. Some of the staff members from the schoolbased health center also participate. Um it's part of our negotiated agreement with them that we have these quarterly meetings to talk about the needs of the health center. Anybody who wants to do that

035and they do meet in the evening. I Beth has it on here. I can do that one. Okay, Luke. Awesome. Thank you. And then naming committees is on here. So, you want to talk about naming now or you wait want to wait till later? I mean, we can we can approach it now as Okay. Since it's it's the next thing on the list as needed. Um yeah, I guess we really had so naming con committees are typically drawn up on an as needed basis when either a new building is built that needs to be named or a group comes forward with a set of petitions wishing to honor a specific individual. Yes. So so far I've seen two letters. Um we it's typically 10 letters is what's Yes, I've seen two. Um so I don't

036know do we want to but you the board can but the board can still direct me to right the board can can direct can direct the superintendent to con absolutely to uh impanel a committee for a specific purpose. So if we wish to for example uh impanel a committee to seek out a a name for the what we have been calling the sixth grade center uh the board can can can direct the superintendent to do so. What would the process be for that after if you have a committee and then what happens? The committee will will then uh meet and they will bring forth a recommendation to the board which the board can accept or or decline. Yep. That's what we've done in the past. So is I mean I mean for example like the

037renaming uh changing the name of Prairie to to Williams school there was a set of petitions that were brought forward at least 10 of them a committee met and brought forward to the board uh request to rename Prairie School as Dr. Preston Williams III or sorry the junior sorry not the third not right um and the the board deliberated it was a 4-3 vote actually it wasn't it was uh deliberated a couple times I think I think we had a couple meetings about it um so Sherry you wish to looked like you wish to chime in no I I think that we needed to address it either with responding to some of I only saw two letters myself. Um responding to that now or somehow and the fact that we're going to propose having a

038naming committee. I think that that's next step forward in addressing those school letters. And I can reach out to the two people who have sent us letters and ask them if they would like to participate. I think that'd be the first step. I know there are some staff members at the sixth grade center who also would like to um be part of the committee as well so their voices are heard. Um and we can go from there. Any other suggestions? Okay. Is there a board member who would like to be the representative for that committee? We've got three sixth grade center parents sitting here. I don't know. I was like Ben, Luke, and Lindsay. Just thought just just throwing it out as a thought. If you would you like to do it, Ben? Okay. You

039can have more than one. We can have more than one. Okay, Lindsay. Okay. All right. I do think as parents, you wear a very you have a a very unique perspective. So, I mean, yeah, I mean, think about this in general. We haven't received any requests yet, but I think or petition or Well, no, I I was thinking just completely differently. I think it'd be uh worthwhile for the district to honor Janice Mitchell in some fashion with this finding something appropriate to name him after her I think would be worthwhile. And there are a lot I mean and the other thing maybe that board members don't realize the naming committee can also um bring back suggestions around um we have several libraries that are named after like um Yankee Ridge the library there is named

040after Margaret De's and the De's um that is a really important legacy for the De's family. So there are other spaces um in the building athletic athletic gym. We have gyms that are named after people. So um the committee can bring back multiple recommendations for the board to consider for sure. Okay. So we will do that. Yes. Um it was actually Luke. Yeah. No no Luke. Luke was for the health center. Oh health center. Not insurance. Insurance. Oh, she said insurance. I'm sorry. Just pause. Just me. And then we already have our 2526 delegate. So, thank you, Sherry. That was approved in um on June 17th. So, awesome. I will rewrite all of this up and reshare a final copy with everybody before our next meeting. I thank I know that took a while, but

041it's it's certainly necessary for us to kind of get this all figured out. Well, and it's important for our staff and our um our our community to see you in those spaces and um you're you're representing all seven of you because all seven of you can't be there. So, when we bring up certain topics, um it's great that you're in some of those spaces and you can bring back um you can bring back the uh just the feel of the committee and what you're talking about. So, I think it's really important that you guys are committed to being on working committees. It means a lot. Um, next up in the list of published, uh, oh, can I share one thing? I'm sorry. Sure. Um, we must have UEA leadership meeting people watching the meeting right

042now because they emailed me and, um, they suggest around the roundts. Um, so they've just emailed and said, uh, let's focus our time and energy on the admin lunches in the fall and only have roundt on October 21st and February 10th. and we forego the meeting in April because we will be heavily into negotiations at that time. That makes sense to me. Does that sound good? Okay. So, we will start working on the admin lunch meeting schedule and we will have two roundt meetings this year on October 21st and February 10th. Thank you, UEA, for watching the meeting and chiming in. We appreciate you. And then will you get back to us with the um schedule for the lunches so that we can sign up to go? It's a really involved process. Yeah. We we

043will we will get repeated emails from Lori with regards to scheduling and we t we tend to like break up the bigger buildings like the high school into shifts because there's like three lunches at the high school and typically there's more than two board members who want to go to the high school. So we'll we'll figure out which you know you know these two will take the the first lunch period and these two will take the so we kind of negotiate that ad hoc via email and I foresee we'll be we'll have others so we've broken up the bigger buildings so like last year at Yankee last time we did this at Yankee Ridge we had two people coming in and out in and out in and out because you may really want to be

044there to hear from dual language or something. So we start this process by reaching out to the principles to find out um what they have going on in their buildings. The meetings happen during the lunchtime. So we get we have their lunch schedules. We talk to UEA because we kind of share noticing it to staff like they let their folks know. We make sure the administrators have set up a space and know that we're coming. And so it is pretty it is a pretty involved process. So you'll get lots of emails. Don't worry. This this process also includes Gerber. So I would highly recommend if if uh a board member hasn't visited Gerber to do so and this is a be a great opportunity to do that. Absolutely. Can you um make an arrangement to

045get a tour of the different schools at the same time or Oh definitely. I think we've done that. So when we've been there for lunches especially Gerber because um it is a unique setting being there on the um with Cunningham. So, yes, we you definitely could do a tour before or after. We just have to work it out with the principal. No, it's all good. I just saw they emailed me while No, that's great. Um, so moving on to 7.3. Uh, so John approached me uh this summer with the discussion with regards to uh having a fee schedule for uh access to district public records in kind of in alignment to what other districts of our size in the area are doing. So I guess John can provide us some context for our discussion. Yep.

046Uh as we discussed at one of the previous board meetings, we've had a greatly increased number of uh FOYAS this year. Uh and in reviewing the board policy, uh one of the policies uh 2.250 states that the FOYA officer uh shall require or shall provide a fee schedule to the board. Uh so this fee schedule submitted in compliance with that board policy. Uh I did have a few questions like from board members earlier uh just about how many people this would affect and like what kind of effect this would have. So, of all the foyers we've gotten since I've been here, uh this would have affected uh aside from one individual, there was one other FOYA request that we had that would have fallen uh into this fee schedule. Uh this also addresses commercial fee

047schedules uh and how much time and uh limits on those uh and is consistent with uh what other districts have and is consistent with the Illinois state statutes. So if you have any other questions, I will try to answer them. I am not a lawyer uh but I uh have a little bit of knowledge on the subject. This is on our agenda as a possible action. Um, you know, the board can can choose to vote it up, vote it down, or or defer it to another meeting if they wish. Um, I had a question. I had a couple questions. One, didn't we have I thought I had seen a page on the website and Lor's picture was above it and then there was a fee schedule below it. So, did we already have some sort

048of a fee schedule and we're changing the fee schedule? I have to admit when I looked for that page again, I didn't find it. So, I just found the rules. No, I don't I don't Okay. I don't think anything was taken down from the website and I don't recall seeing that there. No. Okay. So then I I have no idea then. But so we have not had any kind of a fee schedule before this then? Uh yes, that's my understanding. Well, other than what the FOYA act Yeah. has it's just a basic um where what you can charge for and things like that, but it was nothing official. So this one, this makes it official. Okay. Because it'll become part of policy. Okay. It's not changing the policy. The policy as stated was just that

049the FOY officer would provide this to the board for review on a regular basis. So that's what we're doing here. But no policy change. Okay. And I I was really wondering about the PDF stuff um the online um digital since we're doing it by megabytes. We're charging by megabytes. Would that be manipulatable given the ju but just by changing the resolution of the of what we were sending? And should we have, you know, something in there that said, um, at such and such resolution? Uh, I think they're mostly encoded as text, but we've never had any complaints about using too high of a resolution. The only complaints we've ever received were about the resolution being too low. Uh, and we had to like provide a slightly higher resolution and we would be consistent with that.

050Yeah, I just meant would the price be manipul manipulatable by changing the resolution? You know what I'm I'm saying? If you if we're doing it by megabytes, then if I if you send me a very very very high resolution, it would take more megabytes. Therefore, you would charge me more money. Yes, we have not been changing the resolution on any PDFs that we've been sending to anybody. Is that what people have been saying? No, I'm saying if you're going to start a foya, when we receive a request, we re respond with what we have and how we have it. We do not alter it. We do not create anything new. We give it as how we have it. So, so we have been charging people as we have not been charging. We haven't been. No.

051So, okay. So, we haven't been. We're going to start charging them what the law allows. And would this be I think it was was it I left my paper at home for the my questions. Um. Oh, I was so the 500 um copies the 500 pages. Is that from one request or after you um have have done 500 page pages does it? So it is I actually pulled it up here for the state statute uh because that was another question I got. So it's voluminous if it's uh I'll paraphrase just a little here. Too broad or requires the complication of a large number of records. uh considered voluminous if it includes more than five individual requests for more than more than five different categories of records within a 20-day period or requires the compilation of

052more than 500 pages of legal sized pages in a single record. Okay. So is it anyone else wish to speak to this topic or have any questions? Yeah, I just have one question uh regarding um the amount of time that our staff puts in. Is there any way when we do get a FOYA request to indicate um after we've completed how many hours if that can be conveyed as long a as well as what the uh FOYA entailed? Uh yeah and in the kind of board reporting we had talked about that. Uh as far as internal time that would be something that it would be possible to include. As far as uh legal time and expenses we typically report the FOYAS at the next board meeting after they're closed and we don't receive our legal

053invoices until the following month. So we wouldn't be able to report the legal costs at the meeting following the foyer request, but we could have a followup if desired to report on that in a following meeting. It would be either one or two meetings after when the foyas were initial initially reported. As far as the internal time, that would be possible to track. It's just a little extra work on our part. We could publish a spreadsheet with that information, too, like online, right? Yeah. If that was the desire of the board, we could look into what we would have to do to make that happen. Exactly. I wouldn't expect you to know immediately how much it's going to cost because you don't know until you get build for it. But if we had a um

054a spreadsheet as as Paul mentioned, that will at least give us some idea of how much time and how much money our district is spending. Thank you. Okay. So again, this is on our agenda for a vote for a vote later if the board wishes to act. Um, now the floor is open for any other board reports that anybody wishes to discuss. Go ahead, Jennifer. Okay. Um, and this is about renaming. Um, and this will uh I guess I just I want to tell everybody a story. On June 3rd, I received an email from a community member telling me that in January, the superintendent had begun the process with the state to officially rename WY School and that the new name had been officially approved by the state on May 9th. So, the school is

055now officially named by the according to the state Urbana Sixth Grade Center and has its own middle school RCDTS number under that new name. On June 4th, I wrote an email to the superintendent asking if this was true, expressing my belief that this could not have been true because such matters were not to be advanced without the express approval of the board. According to board policy 4.150, naming or renaming a building requires a vote by the board. Since the board has the policy on the books and since the board has referred to the policy in board meetings at least twice over the past 18 months or so, I would have considered such such action to be a breach breach of the public trust because in fact the public was led to believe that we would

056follow our own policy and we didn't. On June 5th, the superintendent replied to my email with a message to the entire board. In it, the superintendent made the following points. Number one, commemorations or memorials require submissions to the superintendent who then forms a committee for submission to the board for approval. Citizens and staff have had over a year to come forward with the necessary letters or signatures, and I have received neither. Number two, the board can also direct the formation of a committee to approve a new facility name. The board has not made the recommendation to form a committee. I assume primarily because there have been no public requests or public interest in doing so. This continues her uh the email. Critics and proponents alike, including staff, administration, board members, parents, and students, have deemed

057the building to be the sixth grade center. All architect renderings, branding, and internal signage have been designed with the sixth grade center as its name. This is what we in parenthesis quotation marks basically everyone has called the building since its inception. Therefore, we have all been complicit in this practice for the last 18 months. At this point in the project, the district would incur significant costs for rebranding and labeling the building. Now, the policy 4.150 actually reads, "Definition. For the purpose of this policy, the term facility or facilities refers to any district, outbuilding, classroom, gymnasium, auditorium, or other space and any athletic or academic field or complex. Recognizing that the name for a school facility reflects its public image, the board's primary consideration will be to select a name that enhances the credibility and stature

058of the school facility and/or district. Any request to name or rename an existing facility should be submitted to the board according to the process described below. When a facility is to be named or renamed, the board of education will appoint a special committee to consider nominations and make a recommendation along with supporting rationale to the board. The board will make the final selection. The policy goes on to say, "All nominations for commemorative or honorary naming must be presented to the superintendent through a formal letter with the reasons for the request. The formal letter of nomination must be accompanied by a minimum of 10 signatures or supporting letters. A committee will be appointed by the superintendent and that committee will be approved by the board of education. The committee has the responsibility to review any suggestions,

059study the impact of the requested recognition on the school, district, and community, and make recommendations to the board of education of ways to best honor the individual nominated. The committee's recommendation may reflect the wishes in the nominating letter or the committee may suggest other methods of honoring the nominated individual. Please note this. Now this is me not that all naming or renaming of buildings must go through the board. No one came to the board to request a name change. I had assumed that the name would be staying flossy wy because no one had come forward to ask the board to make a change. I found it interesting that the superintendent used the word complicit in her email to the board. She says, "We have all been complicit in this practice of calling it the sixth

060grade center." Complicit means from the dictionary associated with or participating in an activity, especially one of questionable nature. Well, I may not have been as observant as I should have been, but I have not been complicit in anything questionable. I was calling the program located in the WY building the sixth grade center. When WY was an elementary building, the name was WY. When WY was closed as an elementary building and used for early childhood and central office, the name of the building was WY. Because no one suggested a new name, the board had nothing to do in that case. So does the superintendent think that this renaming process was done in a questionable manner and therefore she and others at CO at central office were complicit in that activity. I was not complicit. Yes, I

061should have been more observant. I should have been more watchful to be sure that bore policy was being followed. I was naive, maybe negligent. And I believe that the board did not provide the oversight that we should have in this process. Be that it as it may, I believe that now we have to step up to to following board policy carefully and thoroughly. There is no excuse for administration to be unaware of the policy and the ramifications of that policy. I can remember two times in the last 18 months or so when the policy has been discussed at board meetings. Once it was brought up when Yankee Ridge was closed as a neighborhood elementary school and became a multilingual school. I think it was Sit Lai who asked about changing the name. She was told

062at that time about the policy. The second time was when a WY parent asked about keeping the WY name. he was told about the policy. So, parents and the community were told at board meetings that to keep the name, they didn't have to do anything. To change the name, a request had to be made, a committee had to be formed, and the board would make the decision publicly at a public board meeting. To continue my timeline, as I said, the superintendent replied to me and to the entire board on June 5th. On June 7th, I replied to the superintendent saying that all of this had to be brought up at a board meeting. I decided that it was most appropriate for me that I allow the superintendent the grace to bring up the topic and

063introduce it in a manner that she was comfortable with. when it wasn't on the agenda for our last meeting in June, I assumed that she had decided to bring it up uh at the end of the meeting in the superintendent's report. I was flabbergasted when it was not. I was pretty upset with myself for letting things unfold as they had and not getting this brought up at that last meeting. At that time, I determined that I would bring it up at this first meeting in August. I believe that the school board must now live up to our responsibilities as representatives of the public and address this squarely and honestly. And I'm glad we are going to in retrospect in hindsight do something about this. But I think I think we in order to do that

064we need to face what's already been done. Well, thank you. Anybody else wish to make a board report this evening? Yes. I I'd like to um convey my feelings, my ideas about this. I was going to not read this after we've decided to have a naming committee because I thought that would be a more appropriate time. But I think there's some other issues besides specific board policy and what has been done in the past and what has been assumed that need to be addressed. And so I'd like to read my um my statement now. And um unfortunately I will not be able to attend the ribbon cutting ceremony scheduled for this Friday as I will be out of town. This is a big disappointment for me as it has been 20 months since the decision

065was made by this board to convert WY school to a sixth grade center. And during these past months there has been a great deal of planning for and commitment to improving the educational experiences for middle school students. There are many who are excited to start a new and will go forward so this change in our district will be successful. There are still many in our community who are still outraged by this decision of losing a cherished school that serves so many students and families in our community. This feeling of allegiance to one school is not unique. There are families across the district who feel the same way about their elementary schools, their teachers, and their experiences that they had when their children attended their designated school. As I thought about how I would feel as

066a parent of a student who spent six years in a building where she was nurtured and cared for in so many ways, I wondered how I would react if the only elementary school where my daughter attended was suddenly eliminated. I reflected about the teachers and their strengths and their willingness to treat my daughter as an individual. I valued the teachers who listened to our concerns throughout the years. It is not the building that made the experiences memorable, but rather the interactions and the successes that were achieved through the years. What now is important to me is meeting former classmates of my daughters and learning about the paths they have taken in their lives. It is seeing my daughter's former teacher, Kay Greybel, in the community and how she always asked about my daughter and how

067she still conveys a ser a sincere interest in her well-being. Losing a building in the community is difficult, but that does not take away the memories or negates the successes that were achieved during the years. As a former adult education teacher of over 20 years in the district, it is still exciting to see former students in the community and be able to learn that their experiences in class help pave the way for a different future and other possibilities. These interactions are so meaningful and I don't need the building on Race Street to confirm the relationships and the opportunities that were forged during those years. I don't believe there was a vote to drop the name of WY. It was just assumed that the school would have a new purpose to educate sixth graders and it

068would no longer be an elementary school. It would be confusing I believe if a sixth grader said he or she was attending WY school and the assumption would probably be that that student was still in fifth grade as the name WY is associated with an elementary school program. Yes, I know Flossy Wy was important to our district and was honored because of her contributions but so was Gene Burkholder and John Gar. The administration building was named in honor of Gene Burkholder and the adult education center was named for John Gar. Their names may be on the building, but people do not refer to these buildings by their names. They say, "We are meeting in central office or the classes held at the adult ed program or adult ed center." Even though the names Burke Holder

069and G were on the building's facades. If the board wants to include the name of Flossy Wy on the renovated building, I will not vote against it, but I still would refer to it as the sixth grade center, as I refer to central office or the adult ed building. Thank you. Anybody else have a board report this evening? Okay, let's move on with our published agenda. Thank you for your patience. First up is uh a single administrative personnel item. Uh Angie, can you provide context for the board? Sure. Ma, do you want to come up to the to the microphone just so we can properly introduce you? Thank you for your patience. Miniona Moko Lungan Lang hired first as admin in her first administrative role as assistant principal at Thomas Payne is excited, honored, and

070extremely grateful for this opportunity to directly serve and positively impact the life outcomes of our most important stakeholders, the scholars and tiger cubs of Thomas Payne, their families, their teachers and staff. Miniona, I hope that I pronounced your name correctly. It's going to take me a minute to Minionao Lalang. Better. Okay. Sorry. I'm a little nervous. I don't want to mess it up. So, um, Mona brings 14 years of serving in the North American public school system, both in the rural and semi-urban Midwest communities. she's called home since arriving in the United States from the northeastern state of Nagaland, which is geographically located in the Indian subcontinent. Most recently, she has served as the instructional interventionist at Dr. Howard Elementary in Champagne. Mona is a proud resident of Urbana, which has become home for her

071and her husband Mike, who's here with us. Mona hopes to lead with integrity, wisdom, humility, and joy. She welcomes every opportunity of genuine support, kind collaboration, and strategic partnerships that will directly strengthen positive life outcomes for all students, most especially those she'll serve at Thomas Payne Elementary School. So, Miona was recently um interviewed as assistant principal at Thomas Payne Elementary and overwhelmingly um selected to to serve as assistant principal, her first administrative role pending formal board approval. Uh thank you, Angie. Is there a motion for the floor? I move to approve the hiring. It's been moved and seconded. Any further questions, comments, or discussion? Roll call, please. Okay. Member Hixon. Yes. Member Amarabu. Yes. Member Jones, yes. Member Langodorf, yes. Vice President Baxley, yes. President Palowski, yes. Member Cheryl, yes. Congratulations. Welcome to the district.

072Please. Hello. Okay, there you go. That directly translates from my mother tongue of to say thank you all so much for this opportunity for me to lead at this time in this community. Today I bring two members of my community, my husband Mike and our neighbor Paula. And I look forward to extending my Urbana community with unit excuse me Urbana School District 116. Thank you all. Thank you. Congrat. Uh next on our agenda is our single study topic uh Tiger Academy. Okay. So while Dr. We is coming forward, it has been our tradition since um we started Tiger Academy. They don't do their um end of the year presentation with the other schools because they are very unique in um their uh their programming and their methods of learning. And so, um, we always start

073the year with an update from Tiger Academy. It's something that we, um, we all look forward to. And so, um, I'm going to turn it over to Dr. Wemouth and his team. Thank you. Good evening and thank you for having us tonight to present about Tiger Academy, one of my favorite topics. I'm joined with some colleagues of mine. So, Natalie Brett, who is our curriculum coordinator and program coordinator and teacher instructional specialist, kind of does a little bit of everything at Tiger Academy, and we're excited to have her join us this evening to co-present with me, as well as one of our teachers, Miss Lighty, the teacher. Um, Miss Lighty, as you probably know, has been in the district for over 29 and a half years. Um, mostly at UHS, but came over to Tiger

074Academy when we opened and has been an amazing teacher with us here at Tiger Academy. Um, we have three other staff members who weren't able to four other staff members who weren't able to join us this evening, but will present on their behalf as well. So, jumping straight in. That buzzed at me when I hit it. Does it do that? Okay. So, we're going to just do a quick presentation this evening of a review or an overview of the past school year, the 2425 school year, as well as some tentative uh a couple slides just previewing our plans for this year, which are pretty similar to the past uh couple years as well. Um, also we will provide a real quick update from the SIU Carbondale Southern Illinois University Carbondale program evaluation. Last year, if

075you recall, um we presented phase one findings and now they have completed phase two findings. And so we'll present and provide that information to you this evening as well as well as time for questions and answer. Um so just starting off, here's just a real quick overview of who our staff members are. So myself as executive director, specifically here at Tiger Academy, I function more like a principal than a director. Uh but because I have role uh with multilingual programming at the middle school and high school, my title is director. Uh but I'm kind of the principal here as well. Math teachers Melissa Lighty. We have a social emotional learning specialist Mitsy Maldonado. Grants and curriculum coordinator Natalie Bretts. Student family community support specialist JJ Elvier. Our restore you facilitator is Domisha Nun. And we

076have a special education teacher who has a sixth assignment who comes over here eighth period every day who is Emily Carter and provides special education services for students as well. This image on the right was our kind of our motto this past school year and our t-shirt design um TA all the way. It's just kind of a catchy phrase for us. Um just some essential skills that we really try to emphasize at Tiger Academy listed there. Um the next one is just you've seen this slide every year for the past three years. I just added two more bullets at the bottom. So, just as a reminder, in the spring of 2022, uh the district, the board of education, um planned for the the opening of Tiger Academy and alternative education in the district, and I

077was hired. And then most recently, the 2324 school year was um rolling into our third year up until this current school year, we'll be starting our fourth year, kind of our third and a half year um so to speak. So, we our grants have ended, which we'll talk more about that later. Um, and so we are now district funded completely, which we're very appreciative and and thankful for, but we are still seeking grants to continue to provide services and and funding for Tiger Academy as we move forward. Um, just a real quick reminder uh and overview of our students and the process for the students that we serve and how they u are placed at Tiger Academy. So, Tiger Academy functions during the school day as an alternative daytime program that is primarily a part-time

078program or what we call a hybrid program where students typically will spend part of their school day at Urbana High School or Urbana Middle School and part of their school day here at Tiger Academy. And we'll literally walk back and forth um between the two schools to hear for their day for their schedule. We individualize student schedules. So, not all students are here at the same time. Um, they're here for certain times of the day for certain classes and for certain individualized needs and and supports. The referral process goes through the buildings of Urbana Middle School and Urbana High School primarily through counselors and a lead administrator that's kind of tasked with uh working with me directly and with our team for that referral process. So the referrals typically revolve around a we we typically

079talk about three types of students that we serve at Tiger Academy. One type is a student that's just really struggling to be engaged in school in the traditional school setting. Whether that's for social reasons, emotional reasons, um academic reasons, they're just struggling to to do well and and a lot of times low attendance, a lot of times um disengagement from class and and failing classes. And so that the referral process is an opportunity for them to have just a new start in a smaller space, a more flexible uh space of Tiger Academy for part of their day. And then we develop individualized plans for those students. That's kind of one group. Another group of students are students that h are already way behind academically and have been reclassified. Maybe their second year as a ninth

080grader or their third year as a ninth grader or they're very much behind in credits. and we bring them, they're referred to catch back up with us uh with our process and our our programming. We're able to provide online u options for credit recovery in addition to classes that they can take simultaneously while they're here. That's kind of that second group. And the reasons why they're behind could be a v wide variety of reasons academically um and socially emotionally. And then the third group that we do serve are students who are have been expelled um with an alternative placement held in advance of an expulsion. Typically, if they're not able to be placed or accepted at other alternative programs in our region like the uh ready program or other alternative programs that serve more as

081safe schools for students who have been expelled. If those schools are full or if they are not accepted there um then we will typically take them in either for part of the day or some kind of individualized plan between homebound online learning and us. And so we serve those types of three groups of students is typically who we serve through that referral process. The referrals can have to be parent approved and agreed upon. Um, and they can be generated, the requests can come from families, but they have to be approved by the building administration and us as we work through that process. Last school year, we we served a total of 47 students across middle school and high school. Um, and the year before we had 34 total students, so we increased, of course, as

082you can see. Um, there's just a real quick breakdown demographically. It's a very diverse mix of students. um not just racially and socioeconomically, but a wide variety of different reasons and needs for for for needing us and for being with us. And so that's just a real quick overview there and a reminder of our staff at the bottom. Sorry, I like to take time to really there's always questions about how students are placed at Tiger Academy, so I always want to I think I lost battery or something. Thanks, John. Ah, okay. All right. So, um, last year this this is just a real quick overview of what we do. So, our alternative programming, we really tried to have a low studentto staff teacher ratio. We really try to emphasize a calm space, uh, fewer distractions,

083being able to be more individualized with their schedules. Um, some students are able to have shortened school days based on their needs, based on whatever the situation might be. We really try to emphasize flexible learning environments. Um, literally with the the furniture that we have, um, if you were to walk through classrooms or to see some of the other spaces, you would see a wide variety of types of seating. And that's on purpose. Uh, that's intentional to try to create something different and unique and non-traditional for students. We already know that the traditional setting has not been working well for them. So, we really try to change it up and be much more flexible and and different with that with students that we serve. We really tried to provide an emotionally supportive environment for students

084um to be successful here as well. Um last year, a real quick overview of academic supports and classes that we provide. So, we do a lot with credit recovery with an online program called Apex Learning and we couple that with hybrid learning models with Google Classroom at the middle school and high school. So, for example, for some students, it works better to take biology uh via Google Classroom and not be physically present at the high school for biology, but they're still with the exact same curriculum that their peers are using in biology at UHS. And we work with the teacher via Google Classroom to provide that class. We don't have any licensed science teachers on staff at Tiger Academy. So sciences typically either have to be at the other school site or online um with

085Apex or with the hybrid model of Google Classroom. The rest of these classes that are bulleted are classes that we provide with act with live instructors um and up to about 10 students in each class with each with each teacher. We typically have every class has two adults. So one teacher and one co-teer or one teacher and one assistant uh with most of our classes. So all we offer all of the math the math is all of the math classes um algebra 1, algebra 2, geometry in high school level and we've offered middle school math as well. Social studies we're able we've been offering civics and middle school social studies. We'll dis we'll describe what we're going to offer next year. We're adding more social studies classes. Uh as well as English classes with English

086nine. that's our most popular or most uh popula populated class because that's often a class that students have failed um and are having to retake it. So, we've offered that in person here with students as well as art as an elective physical education. If you've walked through this back room, you've seen our new weight room that we've built over the last couple years. So, we do a lot of fitness-based physical education with students as well as some other elective classes with 21st century skills. And we are an AVID site also. We offer the AVID elective just like the middle school and high school um do as well. So that's a real quick overview of what we provided last year with classes. Um I haven't taken your slides yet. No, it's coming up. Okay, I'm next.

087You're next. Okay, so this is just a real quick picture of Miss Nun who uh offers in collaboration with Miss Brett's our English classes. And so this was a day that they went to their bandree library to get a library card and to really emphasize um checking out novels and reading and those sorts of things. So this just a quick picture. That's not all the students that were in English nine. That was just all the students that wanted to take a picture that day. And now I'll pass it over to Miss Brett. And if no, one more slide. Okay. So real quick, we do a lot of social emotional learning and an emphasis on that emotional uh regulation for students. Um, a lot of some of the students or maybe more than half of the

088students have have had some negative behaviors in their previous school years at the middle school and high school. So, we really try to emphasize a lot of emotional regulation, conflict resolution. We do that daily with advisory classes, with SEAL lessons, goal setting, a lot of community building, a lot of relationship building with students in in a variety of different ways. Uh we really emphasize restorative practices and we really try to teach and work with students on how to resolve conflict with our words at the appropriate age level of middle school and high school. It's challenging. Um a lot of the students that are here are here because of physical fights that they've been in. Uh and so really trying to rewire the response to disagreements and conflict is a challenge. It's it's hard work, but

089it's important work and it's hard work for us and something that we really emphasize. We also do a lot of work with long-term goal setting. So, not just the day-to-day, but also setting especially high schoolers preparing for post-secary, which we'll get into in just in a few slides. Um, so a couple of these pictures you can see some students that are leading social emotional learning activities as well as doing other work to help with with in those areas. One of the points of pride for us in the three and a half years that we've been open um and the students that we've served here, we've only had one real physical altercation that's happened in the building. And a lot of the students that we've had that we've served have have are placed here because of

090multiple fights. And so I say that because we very intentional with trying to create a different type of space um and reteing some of those skills to be more uh restorative and less conflictbased. Okay. Student outcomes. Yeah. So, one of my um responsibilities at Tiger Academy is to collect data and mostly that's used for our grant purposes. Um all of our grants are asking for different goals and different data set to come to them. And so, one of my jobs is to compile all of our data at the end of the semester um so that we can see both internally and what we have to send externally what our progress looks like for our students. So, um, I get to talk about, um, the student right here pying me in the face. You can't tell,

091but that's me on the left side. Uh, and Mr. JJ are getting pied in the face. So, all that to say, because we, um, our attendance, if you can see from the top of the slide, we had a 56% average attendance rate for the whole year. So, our students are coming to school about half of the time. We would like that to be higher. Um, of course we had 58% of students improve from fall to spring, which is good, but we still would like that to be higher. So, one of the things we did back in February was we created an attendance incentive plan where we had um reached out to community organizations, uh, stores, restaurants to receive donations and we started a weekly and monthly attendance incentive program. And we one of the closing

092rewards was students get to pie a staff member of choice in the face. So you can see me and Mr. JJ right here in this picture. Um but during that time they didn't choose Miss Latty or anything. No, you know I don't know why says anything. They like they want to pie their favorite teacher. Okay. All right. Um so during that incentive program it we had 11 students come 80% or more of the time 25 coming more than 50% of the time and those were upper upper numbers like 60 70%. Um and so stuff like that works for our students. Um being able to have fun engaging them with prizes and rewards. We don't have a large number of students, so it's easy for us to get some of those smaller donations to to pro

093to give to our students and something like that helps. We do want to continue working on our attendance, though. We we need our students here to help support them. Um, so we want them here. We want them here more of the time. students who were not consistently attending during this past year. It was for a variety of reasons and we continued to reach out to those students and monitor them with home visits and phone calls and um different other supports and check-ins. Um for academics, we have a little bit better data to show. um at the in back in August of last year, we had 13 of our high school students start the year in August reclassified in a below grade level. So if they were supposed to be a sophomore, they were reclassified as

094a freshman because they didn't have enough credits to be a sophomore. Um and throughout the other grade levels, too. So, of those students who ended the year, still in Urbana School District, still Tiger Academy students, we had six of them who were fully caught up and on track to be at the right grade level. And five actually graduated high school, which is a huge celebration for us. One finished early in December, and the other four finished in May. And one of those four that finished in May finished an entire year early because she was able to take advantage of some of those online um credit options that Dr. Remount just discussed. So, we're really excited to have those graduation numbers. Um, 61% of all of our high school students, not just the ones that started

095behind, but all of those students are on track for this coming year at the right grade level. Um, 71% of them improved their overall GPA from fall to spring. Um, and then of our middle school students, 70% ended the year on track, ready for their next grade level. And we did have five students complete eighth grade and are ready to go to the high school. And so here are some pictures of some of our high school and middle school graduates. We do a little celebration here at Tiger Academy for our students as well as um allowing them to participate in the S and UHS ceremonies. Several of them are now enrolled at Parkland that graduated um from here as well, which I think is coming up. Yeah, we did a lot this year with college

096and career readiness and community partnerships. Uh, one of the initiatives that we began last year was the AVID initiative. So, we are an AVID site. So, we try to incorporate college and career ready skills throughout our building and we also had five students in the actual AVID elective class. Um and so throughout the day and the school year, we had um we involved community partners with the goal of community partners and um colleges and um businesses with the goal of showing our students op opportunities for a future beyond um what they might have imagined themselves previously. So in November and March, we had the University of Illinois Graduate Society of Women Engineers come and join us and they um facilitated STEM experiments with our students, our female students. Our students were hooking up potatoes to

097electricity and creating finding DNA from strawberries. It was hands-on and um really exciting. Uh in November, we took a group of students to the JAC local I'm not gonna get this right. 149 plumbers, pipe fitters, and service technicians open house. So, they were learning about different career opportunities in the trades. Uh we had a representative from Carl come and speak to our students in January to discuss different career paths in the healthc care field and how to how to get there too. So, if you wanted to do this career, what type of education did you need to get to that? Um, and then we also began taking groups of students to Dr. Williams and Urbana Early Childhood School to volunteer. So, they were going once a week, sometimes twice a week, we would take the

098activity bus. Um, and they would help with recess games, they would read to students, they would play games with the kids. So that was um really rewarding for our high school students to be able to to engage in that type of volunteer service work. We also did two college visits this past spring. We took a group of students to Eastern Illinois and then we also took a group to Parkland. And when we got back from Parkland, we had four students get right on their computers ready to fill out applications to go to Parkland. So, we are really excited about supporting our students through that process. Um, and those that have graduated, we are still in contact with to try to support them with that next step of now that they are enrolled, how are we

099going to continue to support them while they're there? Um, we also had street college who helped uh volunteer with us last year and meet with our students last year. They continued this year um engaging students in music and other engineering activities. So they came a few times. They have a separate program that meets at our banner free library and so a lot of our students started going to that on their own um after school which was really cool. So we really just wanted to bring all these opportunities to our students to show them what different opportunities look like and for them to see themselves in those roles. And that's something we really just kind of took off with last year and we want to continue doing more of that this year. And so here's some

100pictures. Um this is the group that went to Eastern. And then this is the group at Parkland. And this is the street college. Have some kids creating beats, doing some DJing. And so then the last student outcome I just wanted to reflect on was our improved relationships between our students and the school um and families. So enrolled students have just really generally have expressed feeling positive about school. Um they feel that their peer relationships and their staff relationships are more positive than they've been in the past. They feel more connected. They feel more respected. Um, and that and that's really just shows that when you have a small environment, you really get to know students in a different sort of way. And our we like to joke around, but it's true. We we're kind of

101a family here. So, we have the good days and the bad days of being a family, but in the end, we all come back together as a family and work through what we need to work through. Um, so we've really um been able to kind of show students a different way to trust education again and trust school again, maybe that they had lost that trust in in the past. Uh we also this past spring collaborated with um the CU schools foundation with a grant and another community partner and we had the documentary film that was created that I think a few of you were able to come to the screening of um which really does capture that relationship feeling that our students feel and how they feel about Tiger Academy. Um, so this is a

102picture of one of our advisory lessons where students were really just working together to solve a riddle. Um, or a thinking strategy. Not really a riddle, but they're working together and kids that would have never really worked together before and they're they're solving problems together. Oh, one more picture. We did take an end of the year field trip to Crystal Lake Park where we taught the kids how to fish, which was really fun. Most most kids don't know how to fish or have never been fishing, which is shocking, right, to me, but they loved it. Um, and the the girl in the middle was the most proud of her fish, even though it was about not even a pound, I don't think. So, um, back to me. So, this past school year, we were able

103to continue some of the afterchool programming. If you recall, when we first opened, we had the Freedom School grant and Freedom School programming happening. That grant ended last year, but we were able to maintain mentorship groups after school. Um, the self-made kings program has still been in operation for several years. We started an equivalent girls group called Besties, um, which was the girls mentorship, and then a manifest group, which was a continuation from last year, but shifted to be housed here at Tiger Academy, where high schoolers were mentoring middle schoolers here with our staff. um and was a great program that involved many students at multiple levels. And so u we're going to continue hopefully to with these after school types of mentorship programming uh for students as we continue into the future years. Um

104here's some just a quick overview of our plans for this school year. Um as I mentioned earlier, our grants have all ended other than we do have one new afterchool grant which I'll talk about in just a moment. Uh but the daytime what what has funded our daytime programming has dried up and there those grants are not able to be renewed at least at this time. So the district and board I we really appreciate your support of maintaining what we've been able to do with a slight shift which is bullet two where for the start of the school year we're going to focus just only on high schoolers. Um the all but two of our middle schoolers were eighth graders last year anyway. So those students are rolling up into high school and would continue

105with us. um the two students that weren't eighth graders, we're going to continue to wrap around them at the building at the middle school this school year to start the school year. And we want to spend some time thinking about new ways we can provide alternative programming within the building at um now that sixth graders won't be there. Um we have a little bit more flexibility within the building to create some new types of alternative programming inside the building. One of our greatest challenges these past couple years was the integration of middle schoolers and high schoolers here during the same time. As you know, a 16-year-old and a 12-year-old are very different and their needs are very different behaviorally, socially, academically, and we struggled with that at times. Um, just the maturity levels and those

106sorts of things. So, that's one important reason. The other one is with the reducing of of funding, really trying to focus on with the staff that we do have, increasing the number of high schoolers while we can to get more back on track and caught up. Uh, but with plans to start meeting this fall with S staff um to start developing a plan and a program within that the building at Urbana Middle School. That's not to say maybe in the future we may never have middle schoolers back, but at least to start this school year and as we move forward, we really believe that separating high schoolers and middle schoolers is is a priority. And so thinking about a new way to do that at the middle school level while also with the new structures

107that are coming in at the sixth grade and the seven eight level um kind of starting over with new systems and new routines and new programming and supports. Our hope is that fewer students will need alternative programming at the middle school level, right? And so kind of rebranding and restarting all of that at the middle school level will be the work this year while we increase the number of high schoolers that are coming um this school year here. Can I add one thing to that? I think another thing that we've talked about at the administrative level and um also with our new uh leaders at S, we have a full new administrative team there. So, we also want to give them an opportunity to really um build the programming and some of the new initiatives

108that they want to um house now at the for the seventh and eighth graders. But one thing that we've talked a lot with um Bethl Lad, our uh executive director for special services is just just the generalization of the skills from for a middle school student um when they're here. Uh, one thing that we've seen is when you're individualizing, you're meeting students needs at such an individual um, high intense uh, level, it's been really difficult to generalize those skills back to when you're in a space with well with 900 kids as it has been. Um but now even going back with just the seventh and eighth graders and it that part has been I think really tricky is um we fear that by having students here are we ever going to be able to get

109them back in a space where they can function as a typical middle schooler. And so we feel like having a space at um where they are on site they are seeing those students every day. Um they may not be interacting with them in the same way. Yeah. but they're in the building, they're part of that space, they feel like I'm still part of the school. Um, being able to generalize those skills back and forth from crossing over here when it is it is so small and it is so individualized and that that the teacher to student ratio is so unique. It's been hard to generalize that back to that setting. Thank you for that's definitely we should have even made that a bullet point. Um, one of the two things we saw with middle schoolers

110was once they were here and they generally did much better when they were here because of all the different things. Um they would either they and their families eventually would say we no longer want them at we just keep them here at Tiger Academy which wasn't the original intent of Tiger Academy. So generalizing those behaviors as Dr. Vatum said back to be able to transfer them back into the traditional setting wasn't going wasn't working well. um and or when they would go back that it was just a real struggle um for them and and the staff that was working with them. And so we were always kind of struggled with that transition back and forth for middle schoolers. Not as much at the high school level. We were able to they this was the right

111amount of kind of supports to be able to go back into the high school building and be more successful generally. Not every single student, but much more successful at that level. So thank you for that reminder. Uh we do have 29 now. Um we made this PowerPoint. High school students scheduled to start the school year here, which is more than we've had uh at once at the start of the year, which is a great that's that's a good thing. Um and we're hoping to continue to add students strategically um as we move throughout the school year at the high school level. AVID implementation will be continuing. A really strong focus on attendance and academic gains and performance will continue to be a focus. And we're really excited about the district initiatives around the portion of

112a graduate, the strategic plan, um the the monthly mindsets with the seven mindsets, capitalizing and utilizing those resources with the focus that we have here. We're really excited for that um as well. And then uh just real quick overview of the classes we're providing this year. Very similar with the addition of new high school classes of US history. um another English class, English 10, um another elective class, and a continued special education support. So, we're able to provide more for high schoolers by just focusing on high school than we have in the past, which will be a very positive um initiative. And then this is just a real quick blurb of evaluation phase two. It promises just two slides and then we're done. Um so the program evaluation from SIU Carbondale um I have an

113appendix that you can read more on your own. Uh but the researchers focused on these research questions in year two as it relates to academic outcomes and you can see that what they their findings are. These are just pulled from an article that they're publishing right now or a chapter they're publishing. um but seeing increases in academic performance. Over 80% of students had an increase in their math and reading scores according to Matt and um so on and so forth with GPA improvements that Natalie's already mentioned. Motivation and attendance. They interviewed students and parents and surveyed students and parents about their own motivation and attendant their their kind of social emotional well-being at Tiger Academy. And they see that they're more confident, more motivated now that they're at Tiger Academy. Attendance is still an issue

114as we've talked about, but wanting to continue to focus on that. A couple more questions. What are the degree and responsive disciplinary incidents? So, they've seen a significant decrease in behavior infractions from students once they start attending Tyra Academy, which is a goal of ours compared to their previous um academic or behavioral uh experience. Disciplinary incidents are less serious and less common here than at the high school and middle school. and um their overall behavior improved at the middle school and high school as well. Generally speaking, um restorative practices are favored rather than more serious out of school or in school suspensions. We only suspended two students all year last year. Um and these are students that have had multiple multiple suspensions or expulsions in the past. And then the last research question, what type

115of student social emotional achievements are students experiencing? the patience, maturity, feeling less angry, more more excited to be in school, etc., higher self-esteem. So, we appreciated the the program evaluation was required by one of our grants, but it's helped us drive some of the work that we've done, and it's also been nice to get outside perspective on the evaluation of what we're doing well and what we need to improve upon. So, um, if you were to look into, that's just a real quick overview. Um, undoubtedly supporting the growth of students who have struggled in traditional classrooms. We were excited to see that statement. Um, not just academics, but life skills, which was great for us to see. Um, the remaining slides are just appendix of phase one and they're sending us more phase 2 results

116soon that I can share with the board as well. But we'll take this time to answer any questions um that the board may have. Board members, any questions? Did you serve sixth graders in the past year? This past school year, was there a sixth grader? The previous years we've had sixth graders before. This past year, we did not have any sixth graders that were referred. Um, there were a couple that were referred and placed at ready, but not here. Okay. This past school year, so if I'm just curious, you you have the same amount of staff you had in previous years. And you're going to really are you going to have some permanently stationed here and some permanently stationed at the middle school? Staff, you mean staff? So, everyone will be uh based out of

117here, all of the staff, but we are scheduling times where they're going to the middle school to to do work with students either mentorship groups um co pushing into classrooms um primarily in the middle of the day um and into the afternoons, but it'll be scheduled with students based on their needs, based on where they're struggling. It's not officially scheduled in their day yet because it'll be based on students, but they'll be in regular classes the rest of the time. Yes. And then are you figuring You're not going to serve sixth graders because they can't walk across the street. Not this. Yep. Not this school year. Okay. At this point, um what is the capacity um for the students at Tiger Academy that you can have like total number of students? We've the past last

118school year we set it like the cap at 40. We got up to 37 or 38. Um which felt about right. um by now just having high schoolers, we think we could get 40, 45. Uh it really is going to depend on the classes they need and maintaining that balance of um we don't want classes to become 20 20 students in a class like it would be at the high school because we already know that they struggle with larger class sizes, right? So we're trying to maintain the balance of 10 or less in each section in each class that they're in, but increasing the total number of students that are here at different times. So a general ballpark 45 is kind of what we're looking at. And those 45 students wouldn't be here at the

119same time. So some of our students are here in the morning and then they're at the high school in the afternoon and vice versa or they're going back and forth at different times. So we r rarely there's you maybe like sometime in the middle of the day we have a big number but it it adds and flows throughout the day based on the students individual schedules. Um, in dollars, how much money have you lost with the loss of your grants for the upcoming years? The annual um I don't have the number off the top of my head, but I mean at least at least 500,000. Yeah, I was thinking right around 600,000 is what we've had in grants the last few years. Yeah. Okay. um in the event unfortunately we do have some middle schoolers

120sometimes who we do um have to expel. So Tiger Academy will no longer be an option for them. Correct. Yeah. Correct. But ready is still an option for them and other alternative placements that they may qualify for. Um and we're we're ready to get flexible and creative with them too. Um but just not during the school day when high schoolers are here. Right. Okay. Also, if um you can um convey to us some of your needs that you have some of us that belong to other organizations that would, you know, like to help supplement if your needs if they're if we are able to do that. So, if you could make that known. Sure. And thank you for your work. It's very needed in our in our district and for the students that are successful,

121we are glad that you have played a role in their success. Thank you. Anyone else? We all kind of joke with this, but we all say this is the best job we've ever had. But I think it's true. Uh we really love it. Uh this work and so we appreciate the support financially and and emotionally and and all all of the above. All right. Thank you for a very great presentation. I always look forward to seeing you guys. Thank you. Appreciate it. Uh we have two administrative reports this evening. The first one is an MOA from uh the Champagne Orbana Public Health District. So I guess so this is annual. Um we renew it every year. Nothing changed. It basically is our agreement that they come in and they do the dental clinics. Um they

122do the dental screenings. Uh we provide them a space. They provide the dentists. Um and the results uh we provide the students of course um we send out the permission slips um we really highly encourage uh very specific grade levels where dental um is like second graders. So um they don't get any student information other unless the parents fill out the uh the slip saying they want them to be seen by the dentist when they come here. So, um it is basically just kind of our annual agreement that we we um enter into with them every year. So, no changes. Yes, this is uh one of the items on our consent agenda later this evening. Uh but if any board member has questions or wishes to discuss the MOA, I guess now will be appropriate

123time to do so. Okay. Our second administrative report this evening is for uh the syllary allocations for substitute teachers and teaching assistants. Angie, yeah, I don't have a formal presentation. It was just to request a raise. Um we have not given our substitute teachers, TAs, long-term subs a raise in a couple of years. Last year we were at a freeze and so I'm asking if we could raise their rate 3% just to be competitive with other districts in our area. Any questions for what is the rate now? Right now for our daily subs it's 160 a day. Currently unit 4 pays 175 a day. So if we were to give a 3% raise for our daily subs it would raise them to 164.80 and so we suggested the 3% just because of um CPI. So

124it still doesn't get us as close but the subs have been they requested raises last year. we didn't um come through and so if we can it'd be nice to be able to give a 3% raise across the board. What's the rate for retired teachers? Is it the same? Um no, it is higher for So this would be a 3% raise for each category of subs. So for example, our long-term subs um in Urbana make $240 a day. That means that they're filling in the place of a teacher. So, even our um long-term subs who have they have teaching degrees. They went to school to be teachers, but we have some that have had a hard time passing um the teacher lensure tests. And uh their pay per day is $240 per day in unit

1254, that's $253.90. And so with the 3% raise, that would bring them up to $24720. And this is the time of year where we're um it's very competitive for us to secure. We don't um plug in our long-term subs until August because we're still hiring. That's what we got. Any other questions? All right. Again, this is something else that's on our consent agenda, which is coming up next. One one more question. Um, I know that last year was an a good surprise that we had extra money at the end of the fiscal year because we budgeted for for teachers that weren't hired or we we couldn't fill. Do we know how much extra money we have acquired after last fiscal year from that same situation? Um, that might be a question for Maryanne, but I

126can it's hard to know how much we'll we'll need every year for subs. I mean, the goal is to fill the classrooms with the licensed teachers and have a the fewer amount of subs, but for like the day-to-day subs with the teachers being sick or personal days or so on, we're going to have those. And so, the question, Marian, I don't know if you heard it, it was what um so what type of budget did we maybe have left over for vacancies of positions that um from Yeah, from last year's budget, right? Um I'll have to get back to you on that one. I have like I did get about how much we paid in subs for last year for teachers um which was like 2.3 million for the year and but like Angie said

127it's really hard to um budget for that because it just depends teachers have days in their contract that they're allowed to use and so it varies. One data point that might be helpful is Angie has the um data from the last couple years. The number of long-term subs that we've had, that number has gone down. Um and when you think about that, we typically budget around 65,000 for a teacher. Um is that the number that we're still using? 65. Yep. So, um you want to give that progression of how that has decreased a little bit, which is a positive. It is a positive. And so um you know it's the the goal is to continue to increase teacher retention. Um from the 2223 school year to the 2324 school year we retained 80% of teachers

128from 2324 to 2425 we retained 87% of teachers and from that last year 24 to2 to those returning now 2526 we've retained 88%. So that is also in aligned with our strategic plan. We are hoping to raise that 1% per year. Um strong and consistent building leadership matters greatly in terms of retaining teachers. But for long-term subs in the 2324 school year we had 89 long-term subs. Last school year we had 75. Currently we have 27 long-term subs. Um we still have a little over 30 vacancies, but um a lot of the folks that are that are serving as our long-term subs are in school that we are helping um them finish their degrees through teacher vacancy grant, tuition and fee assistance um through various programs in the state as well as advocating at the

129state level. um because our teacher lensure te test um it the folks that are not passing it um are some of our African-American teachers and it has been deemed by several folks myself included that it's a racially biased test and so if you ever want to advocate at the state level um we have several people that um that deserve to be paid as our teachers and and to get um the same benefits. So even with 30 vacancies plus um the number we know we have that's still going to be in the mid50s which is a decrease from 75 the year before. So do you happen to know what what I guess what the randol rate is? Um usually usually ran tools under us and so I always look at unit 4 since it's right here.

130I can Google it real quick. I had it from a couple years ago but let me see. Yeah I I I thought they had raised it recently. Yeah. Uhhuh. I can look. That's that I mean that's my concern is we're also competing with them. Yep. Usually triggers a domino, right? So we'll raise oursel will raise theirs. Champagne will raise theirs probably next year. And um just depends on where we fall in the negotiation cycle. I mean I I I understand we're trying to be fiscally conservative. I just wonder if 3%'s enough. That that's that's where I was getting at. 3% is not very much at the end of the day, but we didn't um percentage wise. I didn't know if I should request more than that just because of you know what I'm saying. No,

131I get it. We have a lot we have a lot I mean we lost grants. We're covering a lot of expensive other in other places. Yeah. I'd love to give and we landed at 3% because that's the raise that we gave all we gave our um non-union supports. All right. End of the school year. All right. Um it's it's not like this it's not something we can't address later on if there's if there's if you're if you're struggling hiring subs for example. We can address this later. Yep. We've done really well. Like we're doing we have some very special retention efforts with our substitute teachers and just support in general with our teacher vacancy grant funds. And so um we're in a much better place than we were four or five years ago with substitute

132teachers. But they do deserve a raise. They're working hard just like everybody else. And the price of groceries and everything else continues to go up. Uh any any other questions? Did I um hear correctly that you budget $65,000 per teacher? It's our base level. Base level for new teachers. For a new teacher. Okay. I just wanted to make sure. Thank you. And I have a question. Do you know what the retention rate is for the different schools for teachers? Um yeah. You said something like 87% retention. Yeah. overall like districtwide with all the teachers. I can get that for you and break it down by school. I I I don't want to tell you my gut. I I mean I can tell you that there's a couple of schools that have had higher turnover and

133are typically a little bit harder to fill. Orbana Middle School is the the number one. um it's really hard to be a middle school teacher and there's it's just it's that's what another reason we're hoping to have the division between the two levels um to just make it a little bit easier for kids to learn and teachers to teach too. So I can get those numbers for you. I just don't have them off my that's unnecessary. One thing I I was also wondering is I don't know if this is ever protocol but is it protocol to uh change the rate for what grade level somebody's teaching? So, you're having trouble getting people at the middle school. Yep. You pay more. Yeah. So, I'm all for that. That's something that um has to be negotiated with

134our union um and and talked about. We do have a higher referral rate if you because the middle school has been harder to fill. If a current staff member refers a new teacher to the middle level, sixth, seventh, or eighth, they get a $500 bonus for referring them. If they refer any teacher in the district, it's $ 250. But right now, if it's a special education teacher or somebody that works with our middle level students, it's um 500. So, we try to do little things like that um to attract where it's at. But um yeah, as a former middle school principal, like that would be great. There was a provision added to the last union contract that allows for some level of differentiated pay in in areas that are hard to hire. that is negotiated

135uh annually between the administration and the union as to which positions are hard to hire and it's not just for the in new incoming staff members but for the the already existing uh staff members who are filling that role. So who what roles uh I guess are qualify as as hard to hire right now? Sure. Hard to fill hard to fill. So the hard to fill positions um we have allotted 50 stipens annually um per the last contract negotiations and it's actually a retention and um uh retention and recruitment as opposed to recruitment and retention because we want to retain the people that we have. So for example um last school year our school psychologists were part of the hard to fill group. um we were short two people um and so they were deemed

136in that group agreed upon with the union and administration. So every current person serving as a school psychologist also received that hard to fill stipen. It wasn't just for people that we hired in. So we wanted to value the staff members that were serving in that role too. So past positions that have fallen into this category have been dual language teachers, have been um various sped teachers, have been the school psychologists. It's hard because we only have 50 stipens and we have more than 50 teachers at the middle level. Um, and so it's hard to say every middle school teacher is in a hard to fill position because we don't have enough to do all that. That would have to be something that would come out in negotiations. But the future is bright. I mean,

137the sixth grade center um staffing has been really solid. Um, is picking up. It's just it takes a while um to be able to uh kind of change the narrative of public perception and teacher perception, but I think an 88% retention rate is outstanding. Um we're not being well, knock on wood, I won't say anything else, so any other questions? All right. Uh moving on to our action items, uh which are listed as part of a consent agenda. I'll go ahead and read out the entire consent agenda and if any board member wishes to have a particular action I removed from the consent agenda and vote on individually um you can indicate after I've read them. Uh 11.1 is a long list of personal items which is typical for the start of a school year.

138Uh 12.2 uh is approval of the 2025 Urbana High School graduates. Uh 11.3 is theou uh from the two with the Shabban Arbana public health district which we discussed as part of administrative report. 11.4 is the fee schedule for access to district public records records which we discussed in uh board reports and 11.5 is fiscal year 26 salary allocation for subsid teachers which we just finished discussing. Uh does anybody wish to have any of these particular action items removed from the consent agenda? Uh hearing none. The chair will entertain a motion to approve the entire consent agenda as read. Second. Moved and seconded. Any further comments, questions, or discussion. Roll call, please. Member Mau, yes. Member Jones, yes. Member Langodorf, yes. Vice President Baxley, yes. President Palowski, yes. Member Cheryl, yes. And member Hixon, yes.

139Motion passes. Uh uh there is no call for future special executive meetings, although we're going to have a quick exact session after tonight's meeting for the purpose of personnel with uh no action taken for the board after the exec session superintendent report. Okay. So, while John is pulling that up, I want I don't want to do showand tell because I'm too far away from it. But if you go to the next slide, John. So, we are starting to put out some of our strategic planning signage. So, right here, we took down our um little vinyl posters that were back there, and we put up um one of these. We're going to hang one of these um at our high school as well. So, this is just showing um the the um priority areas for our

140strategic plan. If and there is a QR code where you can access some information about the process and the plan coming soon. Um if you go to the next one, John, um we have uh created new mission posters that are going to be hanging in all the buildings um relaying our new mission um to create a supportive community to equip and nurture all learners to achieve success. Um, so we have these translated. So we have Spanish versions, French versions that will hang in our um, multilingual spaces. And we also have a new values poster which is um, we just received these all today. So John, you want to go to the next one? Um, this poster um will also be hanging in our all of our school spaces um to show that as a district

141we value belonging, community, integrity, and pride. So, we'll be talking about these things through, of course, in everything that we do, but um I'm very excited to be able to show student representation and staff representation on the um images that relay what we value and what our new mission is. So, um those are hot off the press. We just picked they were just delivered today. So, um sixth grade center ribbon cutting and open house. So, just as a reminder to um anyone listening, Friday's event is very much geared to staff, students, and their families. I know there have been many, many people who have stopped me in the community and want to um come to see the building, and we encourage those folks to come on Monday, August 11th. Uh we'll have people available to

142tour um you know, walk you around the building. But we really want um Friday night to be about our kids and about our teachers um and their families. So uh we have a couple special activities um for our students to make their mark um in being the first class of sixth graders to attend the sixth grade center. So there are a couple of activities for them. um the teachers where we were just given access to the building today and so teachers started arriving today to pick up their keys and to go in to start um uh setting up their classrooms. So people do need to manage their expectations. I mean the by Friday the building is not going to look in every single room and every single bulletin board um like it will when the

143students arrive on um August 18th but you will be able to see the spaces and really um really see uh the building and and how it's transformed in the last um year. So again 5:30 p.m. uh we'll cut the ribbon right around that time and then invite families in. um classrooms will not all be open because not every teacher has come back yet to um start setting up their spaces, but the common areas will be available. Um the new section of course will be available and um we don't anticipate it to be, you know, a final uh view, but we did just want everyone to be able to get in and and see it. We've we today uh we had some families start bringing their students in who have some special needs who just kind

144of want to walk around and familiarize themselves. So um we're really excited that that we were able to get um other people in there today and kind of get in their spaces. So it's been great. And then um our back to school event. So uh we are having a back to school event for the first time in several years. So we will be outside um orbana middle school weather permitting. I'm not claiming any bad weather, but it's it's going to be great. Um 5:30 uh on August 15th before the weekend, the Friday before our students start. Um we have food. We're going to have hot dogs and chips. Um Kona Ice will be there to give uh give out a free little uh slushie. There'll be prizes. Um we'll introduce our seven mindsets to our

145um youth who show up. We have about 25 community partners who have signed up to have um community resources available and they'll be out there at their tables to give out information to all of our families. And then we'll go over to the um the field and hear more about the fall sports team. So, we really want to encourage all of our youth to um come out to our events because again, our goal is for every single one of our students to end up at our high school. So, they need to really see it and be excited about it. So, um please join us on the 15th for a night of family fun. Um meet the teacher and supply drop off nights. So, again, back to school nights will happen at the buildings as they

146have in the past. Um so, you can see on this document, um I know some of the board members like to go to specific schools, so you might want to jot down when those events are happening. Again, this is not a mandatory student um visit with your teacher time. It isn't parent teacher conference time. It is really designed to be I bring my supplies. I know where I'm picking up. I know where I'm dropping off. My kid knows where to wait for me. Um just an opportunity for you to walk around the school and familiarize yourself with the building if you're a new um parent and new to our district. So, um those will be happening at early childhood and in our elementary spaces. um the secondary schools, sixth grade center, and UHS, theirs are

147more open houses um instead of uh welcome back nights. So, um for the sixth grade center, the building will look very different um by August 20th than it than it will on this Friday. Um and then the Milwin High School, uh they will run those events more so as openhouse events. So, you drop in, you walk around, you get to see teachers. Um so please write down those dates and um go to any of those events and remember board members we can have two more than two board um board members in these spaces as long as we're not um discussing any board topics or anything like that but you're more than welcome to for everyone to um join us in any of these back to school events. New teacher orientation we welcome Paul did a

148great job welcoming as board president. he represented you all very well and in um welcoming our about 60ish um new teachers who were at orientation yesterday. I was able to welcome them and spend the morning with them. So this is the class of 2025 for our new teacher uh orientation hire group and um just a really unique uh group of people and they were all very very happy to be part um new members of the Urbana family. Um opening day 2025. So, we have shared out our theme. Postcards have all been delivered. Um, and the theme for this year is the time is now. Uh, if you plan to attend, make sure you let Lori know. Um, Paul will um welcome um our staff. Again, we always have a short time for reflections from the

149board president, our UEA president. Um, Mayor Williams has um confirmed that he will also be able to attend and welcome staff back. And we always invite CU Schools Foundation because they are always great about giving us grant money. So they really hype the teachers up. Um, one of the unique things we're going to do this year is you've been hearing about seven mindsets. Of course, we're going to have the uh presentation um about the mindsets uh before the board here very soon. Um, but our staff will get to experience the seven mindsets um as well. And so we'll have stations available um as people come into the building and um they'll have little seven mindsets little passports that they can fill out. So it'll be a little different vibe uh for opening day this year.

150Um but also really exciting. So our theme, the time is now is hopefully um meant to recharge everyone around several of our new initiatives. We have new curriculum. Um, we've been talking about something called CHAMPS, which is a classroom management framework. Um, so there's just lots of new things and new learning for our staff. The portrait of a graduate, the strategic plan. So, um, lots of excitement around the beginning of this school year. If you're and and again, if you're going to attend, please let us know. We know Paul will be there, but if you also plan to be there, we like to have a space for you up in the front. Um, this weekend is CU days at Douglas Park. We always participate and have a table. Um, we give away school supplies. So,

151our tent will be up from 11 to 12:30 on Saturday. Um, first day of school for students in grades 1 through nine, plus half of kindergarten is Monday the 18th. And then Tuesday the 19th is the first day of school for early childhood and the other half of kindergarten. So, write those dates down, parents, in case you don't have them. Board members should have we gave you your calendar. Um, you also have the postcard about opening day and we gave you one of our new little tiger tickets if you want to stick that on your computer on a cup or whatever. Little tiger sticker. And that's it. Right. Uh, there's a list of processed foyer requests uh that are listed in the agenda. Um, I guess now would be the time for the chair to

152entertain a motion. And I have to read this because it wasn't actually published in the agenda. So, I like to read all the legal verbiage. Um so after a 10 minute re recess to clear the room uh the chair would entertain a motion to enter close session for the purpose of the appointment employment compensation discipline performance or dismissal of specific employees, specific individuals who serve as independent contractors or specific volunteers of the district or legal counsel for the district. including hearing testimony on a complaint lodged against an employee, a specific individual who serves as independent contractor or volunteer of the district or against legal counsel for the district to determine its validity. However, a meeting to consider an increase in the compensation to specific employee of a public body that is subject to the local

153government wage transparency act may not be closed and shall be open to the public and posted in accordance uh with this act. Is there a motion to that effect? Second. It's been moved and seconded. Again, that there will be no action after the close session. Any comments, questions, or discussion? Roll call, please. Okay. I don't have my list in front of me. Member Maribou. Yeah. Member Jones. Yes. Member Langodorf. Yes. Um, member Hixon. Yes. Member Cheryl. Yes. President Palowski. Yes. Vice President Baxley. Yes. Okay. Um yeah, guess we we'll reset the room and then begin our close session.