Urbana School District 116 Board of Education 04 15 25

001All right, thanks everybody for joining us at 6 PM. So, let's kick off this business meeting everybody on school district 116. Uh, roll call, please. Member Staten, member Jones, here. Member Hixon, here. Member Baxley here. Member Langondorf here. Vice President Exom here. President Palowski here. Uh we have a quorum. Uh are there any additions, corrections, or modifications tonight's agenda? No. Seeing none, it's now time for citizen statements. If anybody wish to make a statement before the board, there are these golden rod sheets in the back of the room. If you could fill it out, hand it to our recording secretary, Lori Johnson. Uh we can put you in the queue, but we have two up right now. First up is David Guth. All right, then we'll we'll skip to Julie Beette. Can everyone hear me?

002Okay. All right. U my name is Julie Beckett. I am the UHS German teacher. Uh just a little background, I have been the German teacher by myself for 28 years. I started in 1997. And so I've been running the program with five levels of German first year through the AP level since then. Um this was the first year in my career that I was ever talked to about enrollment. Um there was no concern last year, no concern the year before, even though those students are still in my current classes. Um, so I was talked to by my administration about combining two of my entirely different levels of German, a sophomore level and a junior level essentially into one class period. Um, I was upset by this, of course, because you don't combine two levels of

003math and think it's okay. You don't combine two levels of reading abilities and think that it's okay. Um but for some reason u our administration has decided that foreign language is a place where it doesn't really matter which what gets taught in each level. They can lump them together and the kids will get 50% of a curriculum each year. That's how I feel about it. Um but I'd like to have you think about it from a different perspective. I do have low enrollment in two of my classes probably. I would say probably from a discouragement of enrollment when they're in the middle school. But I'd like you to look at it from this p perspective of return on investment in what you're putting into these kids. Uh next year I have the largest AP foreign

004language class of all the foreign languages. Every one of my students takes the AP exam. Every one of my students passes the AP exam with a four or five. Every one of my students who's old enough takes the seal of bi literacy test. and we have a probably 85% earning the entire full seal and the other ones are are commended. Uh we're getting students who Thank you. We're getting students who earn scholarships. I have a student who can't be in our class next year because he's graduating. He got a three-year full tuition paid scholarship to Southern Illinois University because he chose to major in German and another subject area. he's getting three years paid. So to think that we're not getting our money's worth on these kids, I think is shortsighted. And I think that

005if we're looking at the benefit that those students give to our district, I think it's a lot more than what an enrollment number would say. And knowing that every year is different. We're going to have a different amount of kids achieving greatness in this program each year. And so I feel very strongly about it. I do not wish to combine these classes because I don't wish to have the students perform less than they've been able to perform so far and I am their biggest advocate in this area. So, I wanted to come here tonight and talk to you about that and I appreciate that you're here to listen to me. Thank you. Thank you, Miss Beckham. Leave it on. Okay. David, are you ready? Good evening, members of the USD 116 Board of Education, Dr.

006Ivory Tatum, Dr. Taylor, and Principal Guzman. Um, we recently learned that USD 116 has canceled or combined courses for multi-level instruction for which students have already registered for the 202526 academic year. As parents of UHS sophomore and a 2022 graduate of UHS who's now at the University of Illinois, we are writing or expressing our concern in inquiring about the rationale behind these decisions. In particular, um we want to understand the following. Um what is the estimated cost savings uh achieved by assigning master educators to a study hall in place of teaching specialized mandated curriculum for which they are trained, licensed and contracted? What other comprehensive costs savings measures are being explored by the district? What is the impetus for the needed cost savings at USD 1116? And are these decisions centralized or decentralized at the

007school level? And have these budgetary decisions uh and course cancellations and and consolidations been filtered through the ISBY mandates such as Illinois Acceleration Placement Act, the ACTEL proficiency guidelines. Why is the district promoting the seal of literacy program while simultaneously reducing foreign language instruction to include phasing out of foreign language courses at the middle school, German, and cancelling combining courses at the high school? Is the district aware that ISBY will require a second year of foreign language instruction to meet graduation requirements in the 2028-29 academic year? Also, is the district aware that most colleges require two to three years of foreign language instruction while others such as the University of Illinois prefer four years of foreign language instruction at the high school level for a student to be admitted? Has the class size limits been

008listed in the UHS 202526 course guide? And have parents and students been notified by the district of the canceled or combined courses for the next year? Since our current project lead the way engineering curriculum is accredited and the curriculum is funded through grants from the organization, will USD 1116 lose its accreditation to offer this curriculum? Thank you as always for your time, service, and leadership. Thank you, David. Could you email that to me by the way if you have it? Thank you. Uh next up is Muli. Thank you very much, uh, USD116 school board and Superintendent Ivory Tatum. Our family recently learned that USD116 central office is cancelling classes at UHS after students have already registered. I'm here to express my concern about the cancellation of classes for the 2025 2026 year. Our son was

009very excited to enter a brand high school three years ago due to the challenging math and science curriculum, excellence in music and art, and diverse student body. He is very academically motivated with both STEM and music interests. With the support of UHS faculty, my son has thrived at Herbana High School, achieving a second place science Olympiad at state finish with two individual gold medals and also being accepted to all state honors choir for two years and achieving fives on all of his AP exams uh taken since his freshman year and uh and freshman and sophomore years. His success in these arenas is due in large part to his having access to challenging science, math, and music curriculum with excellent faculty support. As a junior, my son is currently taking AP Calculus BC with Louis Bushine.

010There 13 students enrolled and after registering for calculus 3 next year, he learned the class no longer available, although it is the only math class that continues his math progression and that of several other students. As someone who expects to major in a STEM field is quite concerned about his ability to apply for and be accepted into a top school without being able to take a higher level of math in his senior year. The UHS course catalog states, "A strong senior schedule helps show the applicant's commitment to higher education." I know that UHS aims to serve all students and help them achieve at their highest possible level. By removing Cal 3, USD 1116 is creating a real barrier for students in a core subject, which does a disservice to students who have worked so hard

011and mapped out their math plans since freshman year. If UHS wants to continue to be known for outstanding math and science, calcul must be offered to students who need it to finish their four years of math. UHS lucky to have Louis Bush line an inspired teacher with the ability to teach high level math and science and his classes need to be offered to give our students their best chances at top colleges and universities. I know that calc 3 is one of only is one only one of several classes being removed. We've talked to many other families who have shared that the following classes are canceled. AP Microeconomics, Cal 3, Business Law, Auto Service Tech 4, Intro to Engineering Design, Engineering Capstone, Electrical Communication, AP Spanish, Honors, Art One, Art 3 Painting, R3 Printmaking, Art 3

012Digital, AP 3D Art and Design, Web Design may be cut from one year to one semester, combining French 56 and 78, combining German 5, six, and 78. Some AD classes and music theory moved to every other year. We are concerned about how other students future paths are also being affected by these changes. I urge the school board and central office to consider the wide ramifications of removing classes that our students need to succeed. The Accelerated Placement Act requires that Illinois public schools must have a policy that allows grade 9 through 12 students who meet or exceed state standards in ELA, math, or science to participate in advanced placement programs. Thank you for your consideration. Thank you as well, Kate McClean. If anybody else wishes to make a statement, there's still time to fill out a

013sheet and hand it to Lori Johnson. Here we go. Uh, hello. I'm here in my capacity as a parent of a 10th grader at Urbana High School. She is in 56 German this year. She had planned on taking AP Micros. We have several reasons why we are here today. I will read from my paper though. I'm be here here on behalf of my student and the German program, but I'm also defending higher level classes that are being targeted for elimination or combination. These classes are not no enrollment, but they may be low enrollment because they're higher level classes that are taken by devoted high achieving kids. kids who want to learn higher level languages, higher level math, who've been counting on taking the AP levels, maybe getting the seal of biiteracy. You have to start

014in middle school to be able to take AP German. And these kids did and you're cutting them off as they get to the finish line. Um, please leave the higher level classes alone. And in addition, one of the hallmarks of great high schools and things that people look for is the number and success rate of AP classes and we don't want to reduce that. Thank you. Thank you. One last call for citizen statements. Um uh moving on that there is no call for an executive session after tonight's meeting. So the chair would entertain a motion to approve tonight's agenda. So move. Second. Moved and seconded. All in favor say I. I. Any opposed? Um, student ambassadors report. Um, so tomorrow is going to be the mayoral recognition. Um, it's at the high school gym. It's

015going to be from 5 to 7. And there's gonna be keynote speakers that are listed there. Um, so very excited for that. So if everyone and anyone who wants to come and join us and honor all our students who have done a lot of work, the mayoral recognition to get um the certificate, you need at least 30 hours of volunteer, which in itself is a huge feat. Um, but there are also levels. Um, bronze I believe is after 50, silver after 75, and gold after 100 hours. So, we'd love to see everybody come out and honor the students who have achieved that. Um, next we have Science Olympiad. Let me get on my notes. Um they won second overall in state beating all uh five uh cross rival schools. Um number one in entomology was

016Cecilia Bersley and Sydney Godell. Uh number four in helicopter was Elliot Anderson and Natalie Pochesque. Number five uh material science science uh was Natalie Pochesque and JJ Lee. Uh, number five in robot tour was JJ Lee and Colin Goth. And number seven in wind power was Colin Goth and Elliot Anderson. And there were several others who also received state medals that earned them second place. So, good luck. Nice job to our science Olympia team. And then the last thing was um high school and middle school recently did elementary tour last Thursday. Uh this is something that occurs every year. Um and the high school and middle schools or eighth grade middle schoolers switch schools. So this year the high schoolers visited uh Dr. Preston Williams, King and Leo. And we performed for the fourth and

017fifth graders um to get them interested in the band program and see what instruments they can try. And then the eighth graders from middle school visited Yankee and Thomas Payne this year. So that was nice to be able to see the elementary students because they always get so excited. Um especially when we pull out the big tuba and they're just, "Wow, it's so big." Um so that was nice to see. Thank you. All right. Now it's time for board reports. Anybody wish to give a board report this evening? Go. Go ahead, Jennifer. Um, I don't really have a have a report, but I have been hearing a lot about um what the the people who spoke here tonight um spoke about uh both obviously we've all gotten letters um through the board email and um

018also from my neighborhood list serve and also um from the um meetings that we're supposed to go to now that we only have three minute um board uh citizen reports. I've gone to three other meetings and I've heard about them there. So this is a widely felt um problem and I I do feel when we go back and look at our equity statement, the district number one is that the district shall provide every student with equitable access to academically rigorous, social and emotionally responsive and culturally sustaining education even when this means differentiating resources to to accomplish this goal. And when we adopted this statement, I made my own statement which said academically rigorous is different for different students and we have to make sure that we are considering the range of students, the full range

019and um I guess I want to remind us of that tonight and figure out what can be done about it. Sher, you want to go speak? Two want to thank those who came to speak tonight to tell your individual stories and I think hearing about your children and your program is very helpful um to know where they started and where they want to go to. So, thank you and thank you for keeping to three minutes. So, with so few of you wanted some more, I probably would have asked, but um but thank you very much for coming. Um, I did go to two events since the last meeting. One was April 2nd. I went to the Yankee Ridge um, multi- language um, fair that they had and I believe it was put on by the

020PTA. And you would think that this was a school that has been in session for years. It was so well-run with the parents there providing activities, the food, and the entertainment was of course wonderful. And I just seemed like there's a even though it was bad weather out, it was really well attended. So I wanted to really ex express that I had I had enjoyment just going there and seeing the kids participate in the families. So, and the other thing I did attend was on April 10th, I went to see the first play ever at the middle school. And uh there they were very dedicated students who worked really hard and it was really enjoyable to see. Some of them are are hams and I won't say who, but so there was just there's wonderful

021things going on in our school. So, I just I can't get to everything, but the things that I do get to I enjoy very much. Anyone else? Okay, so um I wrote a few thoughts down just because I can be pretty long-winded. I did want to talk just a little bit about the class eliminations. I want to start with um thanking everybody that spoke, thanking the teachers, thanking all of those who have sent emails. Um, I want to thank our administration because I know the work that they do is hard and I don't want anything that I say to make them think that I don't trust the work that they do or have belief in that work. Um, I know that we live in a world of uncertainty right now. I mean, there's so much

022going on and and we just don't know from day to day with with budgets and other things that are going on in the world where we will be. But I do um want to urge us to make sure that we're not treating our curriculum solely through the lens of cost efficiency only. Um some of the courses that are being considered for elimination, and I'm saying considered for elimination because it is my understanding that a final decision has not been made at this point. Um but many of those classes have several students in them. While it's not a full 20 or 25, you know, there are some that have seven, eight, nine, 10 plus students, which may look small on paper, but they represent a significant educational value. Um, these classes offer advanced learning opportunities, career

023exploration, creativity, and in some cases, essential intervention support. Courses like AP art, welding, journalism, civil engineering, and upper level world languages help shape our students future in meaningful ways, whether they're headed to college or into the workforce. Cutting the courses sends a message that only the largest, most utilitarian classes are valued. Um, but education really isn't a one sizefits-all situation. Um, I'm hoping that rather than eliminating these courses outright, that we'll continue as a district to explore creative scheduling solutions, shared staffing. Um, I know there's been some conversation on blended classes. I don't know what that looks like. I'm not a teacher. Um, I did hear the one teacher today with the concerns and and I I heard you. Um, even virtual options. Maybe there's some partnerships available with nearby districts that we maybe haven't

024considered. That is a possibility. I know the Cal 3 right now we do at the U of Parkland offers that as well and a and a fully online version. I know because my son took it one summer that I paid for. Um but I just want us to be mindful that this is about more than numbers. It's an opportunity. It's preserving a sense of possibility for all of our students, whether they're future engineers, chefs, artists, linguists. The board doesn't decide these classes that are offered. You know, in fact, we're just learning about them. And I want that to be clear to people that this isn't something the board's been deliberating on and we've made this decision. This is a decision that that is at the school and administrative level. Um, however, we do approve the

025overall budget, which gives us the responsibility to ask questions and advocate for thoughtful prioritization and and and I know I'm an outgoing board member. My time is really short. Um, I think I have one meeting left to to seat the new board. Um, I hope I don't have to be on the other side of the table yapping at you on things that I dislike. Um, but again, you know, I say that and just to bring a little lightness to this, but I do hope that we are able to honor fiscal responsibility and protect the richness of our academic offerings because that is a piece that makes her special. And I am a parent who has benefited from that through my own children who have gone on to do amazing things. My son went through Project

026Lead the Way. We didn't even know when he took the Project Lead the Way exam that it was going to mean college credit for him. I didn't know it was like an AP exam that you don't even have to pay for, but it was. And he got college credit and he now has an engineering degree. And I know that's just one example in one area. Um, and I don't I I try to not make that make me sensitive to this situation because I am looking at the overall picture, especially as an HR director at the University of Illinois where I know what it takes both on an academic side and a career side. So again, that's my two cents. It's not to say I don't trust what the administrators are doing, but I do want

027to make sure that they are really, really looking at this and really thinking about all the options that are available before a final decision is made. Thanks. Yeah, thank you. Um, you've spoken far more eloquently than what I've gotten prepared, so I'm going to uh cut it down there. There's one more point I hasn't been made yet that I really want to make. And like I said, this is the first this board has heard from it about the issue in the past week or so. The one thing that concerns me and I haven't like done due diligence to verify this but you know if we have uh fallen against past practice with regards to collaboration with our UA and our and our teachers that's counter to something this board holds dear which is a partnership

028with our union and with our teachers and shared decision- making. I mean the the the the absolute decision is made at the administration level and the board level, but it's done with collaboration and partnership with our union. And if we're walking away from that, we're changing what Urbana is. And that's something I won't stand for just flat out. So, um, one last thing I I just wanted to thank Tori for her six years of service on the board and Sally for her two years of service on this board as well. It's it's hard work. You guys have put in hundreds and hundreds of hours and done a great job for us. So, so thank you. It being your last full meeting and um yeah, anybody else want to get a board report. Okay. Uh administrative

029reports. Uh first up is uh consolidated plan and grants update. And Tanya is joining us online through Zoom. So she's coming up right now. Good evening everyone. I'm very excited that we get to share this information with you tonight. I'm sorry that I am not able to be there in person, but we will make sure that we answer all the questions that you might have during this time. Thank you. Every year we have to review the CDP and check to make sure that it's in line with the work that we do. And go ahead and advance the slide. The consolidated district plan is frequently referred to as a CDP. It oversees our federal entitlement grants within our district. So tonight you will be seeing and hearing reports on several of our grants. Not all of

030them though are included in the CDP. You have title one, title one neglected, title one school improvement, title 4 and IDA along with title three and a few other features that we'll be talking about. Since 2019, we have had to work to blend and braid our grants together and note that that was prior to COVID and CO kind of expedited the process. Um, we need to as federal grant overseers in the district coordinate the efforts that we're making, trying not to duplicate them and make sure that we're giving honor to the survey information and feedback that we get as we hold different events in the district. If we could go ahead and advance the slide, the consolidated district plan, if you had a chance to look through it, it's about 57 pages in length. Inside

031that document, there's a summary of our district needs assessments. We do a lot of assessment now as compared to when we started this several years ago. So, there's a great deal more data to take into consideration as we work to plan. Our stakeholder engagement activities help us to put together summaries of what we're looking for, what we need to do, where does our energy need to be focused. We also have to include non-public schools in a consultation process where they help to determine what they feel they would like to participate in it. For title one, that one is for the number of low-income students that they have within their school. And then for title two and title four, it's based on their total enrollment and the number of Urbana students that are enrolled in their

032schools. So it is an ongoing process and so we'll be filling in more documents as the schools send them back to us. The plan must also support students and the goals that they have moving forward. We need to support professional development and support parents and families. It also has two tabs within the program itself for youth and care stability act and a bilingual services plan. We could go ahead and advance tonight presenting. My name is Tat Deacon. I'm director of grants and secondary leadership. We'll have Beth Lad, executive director of student services. Yanda Smith, director of professional development and elementary leadership. Jennifer Ran, principal at Gerber schools. Lupe Rakonei. Um she heads up our title three and other grants that she'll share about tonight. She's our director of multi-ingual programming for grades K through five.

033And then on the next slide, you'll see that we also have tonight Russell to present on two grants that she oversees. Beth Lad will also present on a state level grant for early childhood. Shauna Sher will be with us tonight, principal at adult ed on the TEOP grant. Stronger Connections is a state, please correct that little piece right there. It is a state level grant that we participate in as well as afterchools programs grants. The graphs that you'll see on the slides ahead are based on the totals of the grants that you see tonight. So tonight we have a little over $8 million in our grants that we'll be sharing information about. And there will be some comparisons and graphs at the very end as well. At this time, I would invite Kelly Russell to

034come up and or grab the mic and please fill us in on early childhood prevention initiative. Thank you. Good evening, board members. I'm Kelly Russell, the program coordinator for CU Early. Our program is a prevention initiative homebased funded program through the Illinois State Board of Education. And in addition to the ISBY funds that we receive, we also receive funds from the Champagne County Mental Health Board. We serve expectant families and children birth to age three. We serve the youngest learners in our district. Our program is housed at the Urbana Early Childhood School. CU Early is funded to serve 85 families and 95 children. We have a staff of five. This includes four home visitors, two of which are bilingual Spanish speakers. We provide child development and parent education activities in famil family's homes bi-weekly. We

035also provide monthly playgroups for all of our enrolled families. Our program staff complete developmental screenings on all enrolled children and make referrals to early intervention if a delay um is suspected. When children are prek ready, we help them transition into Urbana Early Childhood, Champagne PreK, or Champagne County Head Start. Our program partners with the Champagne School District to provide services to pregnant and parenting teens in local high schools, alternative schools, as well as Urbana Adult Ed. CU early implements the Baby Talk curriculum. We are a high we are quality confirmed, which means our program has met and exceeded all of the requirements um to provide the highest quality services to children and families. I don't have any. Do you have any questions regarding CU early? You don't want to talk about the mental health part.

036Okay. I I with the Champagne County Mental Health Board, we um this is our second grant that we um are have funds for and we um it's funded um to provide us with one bilingual Spanish-sp speakaking home visitor. This is a two-year grant and it ends in FY26. I just want to add and highlight the work that Kelly and her team do, having uh been the principal at early childhood with her for three years. She's one of the longest standing um birth to three programs in the area. She is one of the only ones that's bilingual and as we know in our community how important it is to have um Spanish bilingual staff um to support our um community and incoming families. Um and she also works diligently with all of the other um birth

037to three programs and um supports them in um doing work that she's been doing for many years. So, I just wanted to highlight that. Um, and and just a shout out because she's working with our youngest little ones and supporting people throughout this community um and county beyond just Urbana. And um really her staff is on call 24 hours a day for their families um which is something unusual for our for our um staff. So, wanted to highlight that. Thank you. So, I'm Beth Lad. I'm the executive director for student services. So, I oversee um uh continue to oversee the preschool for all grant that funds our early childhood program. Um and uh just want to highlight um the fact that our early childhood program has been in existence for over 50 years. We just

038celebrated that recently um last year. It is one of the truly inclusive programs that exists in our district and the state. Um the slide before you has our funding. Um, this funding has uh been stable and maintained for many years. If you've been on the board before, you know, I'm going to ask you to advocate to your legislators and your um representatives that um we need more funding in this area to increase the number of students we're serving and to be able to afford the program as we deliver it um at such a high quality um level. And so this year we wanted to highlight a little differently what happens at our early childhood center. So we are a fully playbased program um and um really working on students across all of the areas um

039emotional, physical, mental, and social well-being are priorities of all of our staff. I don't know um if anybody um really understands the requirements of the preschool for all grant unless you are working in a preschool for all grant and there are really significant highquality requirements that include family engagement um supporting families um beyond just the two and a half hours a day we have students we um are lucky enough to um have multi-age classrooms which means that our students are learning from each other in those spaces. Um we have a daily schedule that's actually quite rigorous even though it is um around um play. Um and we really are held to high standards that our teachers have to be aware of. Our program is entirely free to families. We cannot ask them for money for

040anything. Everything we do is provided to them without um charge at all. Um we also have quite a few memorandum of understandings with um community programs. That's a part of um the requirement that we are connecting families to resources that are available to them outside of um our school district. Every single one of our staff has to have their own individualized and targeted professional development plan. That includes all of our teaching assistants, all of our related staff. And I think that's another unique component of a preschool for all program. We do screenings two days a week. Every week that we're in session, that is um five to six to seven new students that are screened um every day that we hold screenings to um either place them into our program and determine that they need

041services or to put them on a waiting list if we need to do that. We also do two weeks of screening in the summer. And in order to do those highintensity screenings, we have family coordinators that meet with the family and gather information and a teacher that meets with the student. And at times we bring in our speech language pathologists to determine if those young learners have additional needs. We are lucky enough to have family coordinators that focus on literacy, Spanish, and French. And I think that's a huge asset to our program. and um those staff have been around um supporting our program for many years and really support the families, support the students and support the teachers and the work they do with their families which I think is a huge asset. The next

042grant that I oversee is our Individuals with Disabilities Education Act. Um there's a preschool component and so we get just a little bit of funding that helps um support an additional teaching assistant at um early childhood potentially two teaching assistants in any given year. Um it's a very small amount um of money and um but is part of what we're required to do to make sure that we're serving our youngest learners with disabilities in our preschool program. We also have um just our typical um individuals with disability education act um IDA funding. It's called the flow flow through grant. Um we provide um funding for up to 21 teaching assistants. We do a lot of um additional uh supplemental supports for technology for our students. We um also support um a lot of sensory needs

043through the IDA grant. We um have amazing sensory spaces in all of our buildings. Looks different in each building. Some are are more um um developed and larger than others, but that's something we're continuing to work on. And a lot of that funding comes from um IDA grant. We also provide a lot of professional development either internally um within the district or externally with our IDA grant. We also are a district that uses uh uh TCI or therapeutic crisis intervention as a deescalation model as well as physical intervention for our students that need that. And we have um four trainers right now and we're looking to add um a couple more to our rotation. Um and they are providing um training for our teaching assistants, our teaching staff, our administrators to make sure that they're

044able to handle crisis situations. And then part of our IDA funding goes to some administrative and um administrative assistant staffing. Any questions? Going back to early childhood grant. Yeah. Um are we in terms of like the the enrollment are we constrained to the grant size or do the physical size of of our early childhood school? Both. So our um building is at max capacity at 360 students. Um we have 12 classrooms that run 24 sessions. Each teacher teaches two a day. Those classrooms um can have up to 15 students which puts us at 360 students. So So if the district decided to to build that fourth pod, if we built that fourth pod, which would be green, I don't know if you know our colors um in the early childhood center, but that would be

045the green village. And if we did the green village, then I can guarantee you that we would be eligible for additional funding um from Isby to um grow the program. That is the only um money that is coming out right now is to um increase student enrollment. Um you can apply for um additional funds if you increase student enrollment. Reason I bring that up is we're doing strategic planning right now. One of the things that's going to come out of that is a 10-year plus facilities plan. And I just wanted people to be reminded of the fact that we scaled back that project. Yeah. Uh when we when we did it uh due to budgetary reasons along with when we uh refurbished uh then Prairie School, now DPW, we pulled back on that too and

046didn't refurbish all the classrooms. There's a debt owed uh to that campus on both sides. I appreciate you bringing that up, Paul, because um if if you as a district decided to um add the additional um um village as we call it um which has already I believe the foundation already exists. So that that that was built um when the um school was built, you would add four new classrooms, which would be eight new sections of students. So eight times 15. Um and we we could fill that and support additional families. Um this upcoming year there is a possibility that we will um with add uh um new hires be able to add additional Spanish um focus sections which um would be amazing to be able to support um more students in a bilingual setting

047at our early childhood. that four more classrooms um would be a um real asset to this community. Um hiring teachers would would um become the next priority. Um but it would have a very good problem to have. Um anybody else have questions for So is there a waiting list now that you have for to I would have to check. Um our waiting lists uh the three years that I was there and last year were very minimal. I don't think it ever reached more than um 20. Um we are required to enroll students who we suspect um or know require special education services. So we have had to increase the number of students we're serving in each of our classrooms who receive special education services because we have to enroll them. Um we um have had

048a small waiting list over the last few years um in terms of um students um who do require um language support um because we need to make sure that we're balancing that out across those classrooms. Um we have um had a smaller waiting list than I think we had previously to COVID. We're still increasing um student enrollment and numbers back to what they they were pre-COVID. I have some other questions. I don't expect you to answer them now, but um these are things that I was thinking about as you were presenting. One of um is it difficult for parents who I mean because early childhood is not daycare. So some of the kids might have to transition from one program to another so parents can work. How do you help manage that? I can speak

049to that. Um, one, our community would love to have full um day preschool. Um, we had a couple of uh full day pre preschool classrooms at um King um and um ended up um closing that for a variety of really good reasons. Um even if we offered full day preschool, many of our students would still need to go someplace after school. So, they would still be in two programs most likely. they would be in a a preschool and then a and a day um a daycare. In terms of supporting uh families right now who need more than just um preschool program, we provide transportation to all of our early childhood students. And that is a decision that this district has made um to pay for. We do not um have the capacity within the preschool

050for all grant to pay for transportation. There was a time when we were able to do that. um but um we are no longer able to afford that and afford the staff and so this district has made that choice. So anybody who's in a daycare in Urbana can be transported by Urbana School District to that daycare um either to or from our preschool program which I think is a huge asset and a huge investment that you're making that benefits our families um pretty significantly. our uh preschool for all staff also have a very close relationship with a lot of the daycarees and part of that is due to the CU um early program and the fact that they're starting with those families trying to get them into daycare before they even come to us. But

051we work closely um with lots of daycarees to either support students who have special needs and share um uh resources with them and connect those families who are in daycare that need our services. um and also communicate quite regularly with them. We also share with our families a lot of um uh lists of daycarees either um uh child care and homes. Thank you. Child care and homes or daycare opportunities for them when we know they need that. The other um area that I'm interested in, and I know we've talked about this before, is preparing um children for kindergarten. And I believe in the play model. I believe that that's a a one way a wonderful way. But at the other end, um how do you prepare kids who are have to be prepared for the

052structure of a different program when they turn five and go over to the elementary schools? That is a rub that exists every year. We talk about transitioning kids from preschool to kindergarten. And um you know our our educational system is is really pushing our our kindergarteners you know through that kids assessment to have a lot of um academic um skills right at the beginning and to really prioritize that. And we've adopted really quality curriculum that we want to do in the that space as well. And it is a huge um jump at times from a two and a half day program to a full day um kindergarten. And I think that is more of a leap than going from a playbase to some of the things our kindergarten teachers are doing um the first few

053months in their kindergarten. I think the full day the half day to a full day is is more of a challenge than even some of the differing activities or expectations. Um, and we have, to be perfectly honest, struggled at times to really create meaningful collaboration between our pre-K teachers and our kindergarten teachers. Miss Smith and I have spent lots of of of time communicating and collaborating on ways to to lead that collaboration, when to do it, how to do it, how to make it so um that that each side isn't seeing it as a critique of the other when they're having those difficult conversations. And um we've had some structures that are successful in in doing that and some where we still need to work on that. Um, but I I do think that we

054need to continue to have conversations around what playbased can look like at kindergarten while also having rigorous expectations in terms of academic um outcomes. Yeah, it wasn't the academics that I was concerned about. It was the other Yeah. Our teachers worry about both and and and I know you do too, Sherry. But um it it a half day to a full day is a is a big leap for some of our kids in terms of stamina um experiences. Anyone else? Thank you. Thank you. Hi, this is Tanya Deacon jumping back in again. As you can see on the slide, we're looking at title one part A. And the pieces that we have to work to commit to are student learning, learning conditions, and elevating educators. Student learning requires us to work towards every child making

055significant academic gains each year, increasing their knowledge, skills, and opportunities so they graduate equipped to pursue a successful future with special attention paid to historic inequalities. learning conditions were asked to address. All districts and schools will receive the resources necessary to create safe, healthy, and supportive learning environments and will be equipped to meet the unique academics and social emotional needs of every child. Elevating educators is defined through Illinois's diverse student population will have effective educators who are prepared through multiple pathways and are supported in and recognized for their efforts to provide each and every child an education that meets their needs. For this slide, I went ahead and pulled out some of the numbers that are significant within the grant. Within the title one structure, we have the opportunity once every three years where we

056can shift funds more than 15% to flow through the next year. So as we were working on ESSER three years ago, Miss Dion Webster and I collaborated to watch as we went along in the event that materials purchasing for supplementation of the core curriculum, we would have money sitting in title one this year when ESSER was wrapping up. So that way we would try to minimize the financial cliff that we were anticipating. So there is why you would see over $2 million sitting with instruction materials and supplies. We also have been giving a push towards attendance and social services this year and the attendance across buildings across all um Miss Webster's been leading the seas towards meeting goals and we've been working to support that improvement of instructional services. This could include professional development. It

057could include conferences to be able to train on different skills and bring them back to the district. Transportation can be used for different factors. Primarily in this one, it is for the afterchool program and the summer programming. We have $3,000 for other community services. Technically for homeless, this year we have over $50,000. the state has changed the way that they want us to allocate funds within the grant itself. So this year there was a new tab for that piece and they have um determined what our homeless rate is for each year. So it's always a year behind and so we now have larger pots of money that we are required to use towards our homeless population. And then we also have our non-public school services for the non-public schools in the area that would like

058to participate in title one programming. We coordinate to make sure that we're providing the pieces that they need. Um, one of the biggest misconceptions is that Urbana would write a check and send the money. That's not allowed. They have to make sure that our plans are coordinated and that we're working together in spending the funds. So this year's budget overall is $2,997,824. The subtitle in the graph is off a little bit, but it's more than a third of the grant funding that you're hearing about this evening. If we could go ahead and advance the slide. Thank you. On this slide, I listed the different positions and programs that are within our title one grant this year. We have our tier three interventionists across the district, our family leaons, afterchool programming along with some groups um

059committee stipens. Title one has taken a huge step forward in asking us to make sure that we are addressing the needs of our students and providing training and materials to staff. We also have our kindergarten and first grade jumpstart programs that will occur in August, August 4th through the 8th. We also, as I mentioned just a moment ago, homelessness has taken on a larger part. Way way back in the day, probably 8 to 10 years ago, the state would recommend that we only allocate $600 towards homelessness, but the need is much larger. And so the state, as I mentioned, has now required us to provide more funding. Family engagement funds are included as well as our transportation and non-public school participation. And then curriculum initiatives, stipens for curriculum development and professional development. Next slide, please.

060Could you stop for a second, Tanya? There's a question. Sure. Yeah. Yeah. Can can you uh tell me a little bit more about the services for homeless home? Yes. One of the it does allow us to do spending in very different and innovative ways. However, we're not allowed to spend it on hotels or food, which are two of our largest needs. So, I know that Dr. Mitchell and Mrs. Webster are working together on a few other grants that will help to pay for those needs. And so, what we've been doing, we we have to spend the money or we lose it this year. So, we have been making purchases as um hygiene kits, clothing, boots, winter coats, um also setting up storage. You know that we have u Miss Mitchell's closet in our buildings in

061the district where students homeless can go to and basically pick out the materials and the items that they need. Right now, we are exploring the possibility of providing a space for laundry. We have some families that are living out of their cars and the students do not have access to being able to clean their clothes. So, we are working right now on an amendment. It was submitted today to see if we could use our homeless funds on setups within our high school, middle school, and one or two of the elementarymentaries. We are in a position where we could expand it to other elementaryaries, but we want to make sure we can get everything amend before you spend is their their quote. So, making sure that we meet those needs. We also provide school supplies with

062our homeless students, bus tokens. Um, we can also pay for transportation if we have homeless students that started the school year with us, but now they're placed in a home outside of the Urbana School District. the youth transportation um tab within our CDP um helps to reinforce that the students can choose to still stay in the school that they started and we provide the transportation to move them from that home back over here for their learning. So that transportation, it could be school buses, it could be taxis, it could be um I we try I if I understand correctly to stay away from Uber and Lift, but it is something that we could use should we choose to. I'm not sure if I answered your question or created more. Did you have others? No, that

063answer my question about that. And then for the after school programming, what is the budget for that and how it's applied? I'm sorry. the after school programming as far as it works when part of the budget because I understand that is uh pay for the parents you pay for the after school program it's not a Christian there's two different afterchool programs there's ASCCP that would be one that parents would pay for this one is our reading rally format that we hold after school until 4:30 and that allows time for working on math reading and enrichment so thank Our after school program does not charge for this. This is something that the the grant pays for. All right. Thank you. Anyone else? Right. But please continue, Tanya. Okay. Um then title four. Title four is a

064grant that we do have the option that we could slide it into title one and then we would only have one grant of the two that we would be focused on. Title four kind of gives us some advantages in that it's asking us to make sure that we provide well-rounded education, that we're providing safe conditions for student learning, and that we're using technical technology to improve academic achievement. For this year, we broke down the numbers. Overall, we had $160,114 to spend. We chose to take the path this year of providing for well-rounded education instruments for our band and choir programs along with choir robes to be able to help students have access who have not had it before. And then we're also looking at um technology. We had started out with the typical Chromebooks and

065decided to change it up. We're test driving a piece of technology right now that helps us with interpreting languages and having conversations more easily between each other. So, we're very excited about that so far and we hope to be able to expand that format into all of our buildings. Are there any questions? Okay, I'm going to hand off to Jen Ran. Good evening. I'm here to talk about uh the title one neglected grant. Um this is a relatively small grant uh that uh provides additional funding for our students um from Cunningham Children's Home. It's a grant designed to serve students um who live in uh institutions and help uh uh level the playing field and give them additional access and try to improve their outcomes. Um so like I said it's a relatively small grant

066every year. Um but we are able to get some great benefits out of it. Um, if you look at our slide here, um, it helps me provide for some additional support during our summer school program. Uh, so I can pay for some additional teachers and teachers assistance to really help smaller sections in our summer school programs and um, additional attention to our students. um it really helps provide um some instructional uh supplements. Um, one thing that always makes my principal heart smile, um, is when our students love to read. And even though, uh, most of my students are struggling readers, um, they really, really love to read and they really, really love to have books in their hands that they can take home. Um, so one of the the one of my happiest pieces of

067this grant is always to use it um to be able to say uh to my staff member that uh takes care of our school library. Yes, buy more books. Whatever you want, whatever kids are reading and will read right now, please put it in your Amazon cart. Let's get those books in their hands. Um, so that's my favorite part of this grant. Um, it also helps provide, uh, Bethl Lad talked about TCI trainers. Uh, we have two Gerber specific TCI trainers, um, that can really work with our staff and help brainstorm some of those specific behavioral needs that our students have. Um, so this, uh, grant helps pay for their stipens and their certification, um, so they can keep my staff, um, in in the best way possible to provide that safe support for our

068students when they're struggling emotionally. Um, and then other professional development needs. um because we have students that are dealing with a myriad of mental health issues, trauma, and academic needs. Um I really like the ability to um provide my my staff with um professional development in all of those areas and this Title One grant really helps me have some freedom to do that. Any questions? was any questions? I'm sorry. What's a TCI trainer? Sure. Uh TCI is therapeutic crisis intervention. Um so that is uh it's a a the initial training is a five-day training and it helps our staff learn how to deescalate students who are experiencing a crisis situation. So hopefully talking them down, helping look at the environment um to help prevent that student going fully into uh a crisis. But it also

069includes restraint techniques if if a young person is being unsafe to themsel or others and learning how to do that in the safest most therapeutic way possible. Uh just a reminder board, next year is a contract negotiation year and one of the things we typically do during during those years is we visit opportunity to visit and talk to staff members at each and every one of our buildings including Gerber. I'm calling Gerber out because they do inspiring amazing work and the visits there always stick with me. So I would encourage everybody to visit the building when you get an opportunity to do so. Thank you Paul. We don't have the numbers on our enrollment report for Gerber. How many students are being served there? So, we have a very small population. I think our current

070enrollment is 34 students. Um because we only serve students who are residentially placed at Cunningham, we're kind our numbers are are bound by how many beds Cunningham has at any point in time. It also varies quite a bit during the year. Correct. Yes. Yeah. I would say um we have experienced amazing mobility this year. We've always been a very mobile population, but that has increased uh significantly this year due to uh some different initiatives that DCFS has right now. Um and so some of my classrooms have had complete turnover once or twice already this school year. Anyone else? Thank you. Welcome. Good evening. I am Yvanda Smith and I will have the next eight slides. Okay. Okay. The mission of the title one a 103 is to build the capacity of the adults in order

071to provide a continuous improvement of schoolwide systems so that we can support all of our students. This grant is designed for the specific purpose of helping school personnel implement effective school improvement practices. Multiple measures including ELA, math attendance, and the five essential survey are which our schools have been designated through. This year we have five designated schools. Dr. Williams, Urbana Middle School, Thomas Payne, King Elementary School, and Leo Elementary School. The first school that we're going to talk about is Dr. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Elementary School. You see two designations on the screen. They were designated in 2022 with a targeted designation, but then in October 2024, they received a comprehensive designation. At the bottom, it explains what targeted and comprehensive school designations are. Basically, targeted is groups of students, and it could be

072a variety of group of students that overlap. Comprehensive is a whole entire school. Thomas Payne also received a new designation in October 2024 of comprehensive. And so here you see the breakdown. I'm going to explain Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and Thomas Payne in the same manner. Both schools this year went through a needs assessment. One of those components is working with the American Institute for Research. It is um a group that is hired by ISBY to meet with our schools. It required them to do a principal survey. It required them to do also a principal interview in person. They did classroom observations and then they also did a focus group at both schools, both Thomas Payne and Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Elementary. With doing those both um needs assessments, each school had to

073pay $40,000. $40,90 um to get that complete. The other half of the money is used for stipens. Those stipen amounts are paid to staff. It includes our support staff and classroom teachers. So, the entire staff at King and Thomas Payne to do um school improvement work. So, updating the school improvement plans, looking also at an Illinois quality supporting rubric framework. And what it does, it looks at how the district is supporting the school, how the school is functioning within itself, how the culture and climate is, how the teachers are learning, and what it tells them. And then also the last thing that they will do is they've been able to meet on a continuous basis outside of the normal school improvement meeting times to talk to collaborate on what the schools are needing right now.

074new technology for me. So, this shows Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Elementary School, which has the same breakdown as Thomas Payne. Okay. On this page, it really just outlines what the American Institute research is. We are anticipating to have the full reports so that the board can look at both of those reports from Thomas Payne and Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Elementary the week of May 19th through the 23rd. I will warn you that last year those reports did not get done before the end of the school year, which is why Dr. Preston L. Williams Junior Elementary School was not able to come to you and share the report findings, but you will receive the report findings on both of these schools. Also, in January, we received a gift from the state. Lucky us, we

075got more money. Lots of more money. So, Dr. Preston L. Williams Junior Elementary School this year was awarded 307 two $37,230. They are still in an intensive summitive designation. I want to tell you that they did use their money this year. They have a retired teacher. They retired they hired a retired teacher to come back and coach not only the classroom teach classroom teachers but also the long-term subs. They also were able with the permission from Isby to chunk set some money aside for next year. So Dr. Preston L. Williams and also Leil Elementary School already have embedded coaching for next year to cover ELA and math. Okay. And then on the slide for Leo, they were awarded $216,700 and they have a targeted designation. Their designation did not change from 2022. And if you

076note, there is $105,864 donate designated for the ELA and math coaches. Urbana Middle School received $424,838. Their designation did not change either from 2022. Note that they still were able to use a retired teacher coach this year. Last year, they were able to hire the person full-time. This year, it was at a 50% um time. They also were able to set aside money for ELA and math coaching next year. And so those professional development packages have already been paid for as well. So we're very thankful for the additional monies that we have received because we are able to pay forward for the next year for professional development to make sure that our math and our ELA content areas are supported with embedded coaching. Are there any questions about school improvement 1003A? I have a question

077with regards to uh and uh the fact that next year we're going to have a seventh and eighth grade and a sixth grade centers, right? So that's a new school. So in terms of you know how the grants work with regards to two different buildings, you how is that going to going to happen? That is a great question. So what we are doing now is we are um looking at what both campuses will need and ensuring that we can cover that. Um Tanya talked about blending and braiding and that's what we will do. We will use title one funds and we will also use the title one 10003A to make sure both campuses have what they need. There are some things that I will tell you that the state did allow for us to forward

078pay for and which is the professional development and then also some some of the other things that the school needs as far as materials and supplies. Anyone else? Other questions? The next grant that I will talk about is the title two teacher quality. We know that having a quality teacher in front of our students is the best thing because nothing replaces teaching. So the purpose of this grant is it serves many purposes. It supports our new teacher mentoring and induction program. It also supports any consultants that we pay to bring into the district um for a variety of reasons. And it also supports our administrators. The last couple of years we've been able to pay for consultants to come in um to coach our administrators specifically on the science of reading um being a culturally

079responsive leader. Um last year we did co-eing series and this summer we are going to do do a professional learning communities institute for our admin which is basically collaborative conversations in the school. Um we do have a recruitment and retention specialist in this grant. Um but also we have provided substitutes for our not only um our schools that are working on just trying to collaborate during the day on specific things but also to make sure our uh multilingual teachers are able to collaborate in order to use additional time so they don't have to use additional time outside the school day. Um, we know that there's a lot of time and effort and from being a principal of a dual language school, there's a lot of time that they put in in creating what is needed

080for the students and then to make sure everything is appropriate in the context. That is what we're making sure that our teachers don't have to do so much additional work outside of the school day. Um the other thing that I would remind you about is we also have the evaluation system in our grant. Um that is through frontline. It is how we are able to um do the tenure track of evaluations for all of our staff. And then the last thing that Tanya was talking about is the non-public instructional support. We also support Smart Academy this year with professional development needs. Are there any questions about title two? No questions. Yeah, it doesn't appear to be. So, thank you. Okay. I was just going to say one thing. Um Sherry, in regards to the playb

081base, we are bringing two kids coaches to Urbana this summer for a three-day institute. Um it will cover early childhood, kindergarten and first grade teachers because we do understand the importance of developmentally appropriate practices. They call it DAP instead of you know they say playbased it is playbased but we want to make sure too that the conversations the language the vocabulary does not get lost. And so these two kids coaches particularly have been working with districts on to make sure that CKLA is not compromised. And so we have CLA and also developmentally appropriate practices. So I will make sure you get an invite. It is June 9th through the 11th and we will be doing some great work. Good evening. I'm Shauna Shar and I'm the director of Urbana Adult Education and as part of

082my role, I oversee the TEOP grant. This grant is dedicated to um providing interventions and supports for students who are truent or who have dropped out of school, the high school, and come to us as an optional educational program at adult ed. Um the grant, this is the second year of a three-year grant, so the funding is level from last year. Um and it was distributed pretty much the same as it was last year in terms of um the district portion, the the schools portion, I should say, and the adult ed portion. So on the adult ed side, we spend some of the money for our instructors that work with our students to gain high school diploma credits towards our high school diploma. Um we have a transition specialist who helps them once they get

083close to graduation. Well, helps them identify their college and career pathway and then um helps them with a transition once they get close to graduation and then a small portion goes to our staff member who enters all the data for the district. Um the district's portion um of the funding goes towards part of the student engagement advocate salary and benefits. So that is only a portion of it. And then the district covers the rest of the costs for our seas. And we have seas located in um every school except for early childhood and Gerber and adult ed. That's right. Yankee Ridge, right? Sorry. Yes, Yankee Ridge. There are people there. The family liaison do the work um but aren't covered under the TOP grant. They're covered elsewhere. Um, and we expect that this funding will

084remain the same for next year as the third year of the three-year cycle, and then we'll apply again and hopefully receive it. We've received this grant for many years and have been fairly successful in getting the funding, so we're hoping that that will continue. Any questions for me? Thank you. Thank you, Shauna. Okay, the next grant that we'll review is the title three grant. Um, which I think I skipped one too many slides, John. Nope, never mind. Thanks, John. Um, so the title 3 multilingual grants, their purpose is to provide supplemental funding um to ensure that all of our emergent bilingual students across the district, pre-K through 12, um, receive uh, access to materials and supports to help attain English proficiency as well as develop uh, their levels of academic achievement um, so that they

085are receiving the same uh, rigor and uh, access in order to meet the academic standards that we set for every other child in Urbana School District. Um, title three is divided up into two um, more specific grants. The first one is the immigrant student education program. This grant specifically is awarded based on the number of newcomer students. Um, so students who are recent arrivals. Um, and the second one is the language instructional education program. And this one is uh calculated by a formula of number of total eelss in the district. A couple things I wanted to mention about these grants is that the immigrant student education program grant um if you were to look at our numbers from last year, this year did have a dramatic decrease than we had anticipated from the fall. um

086in the fall um at my annual director's meeting, we were anticipating um probably double what we actually got. And that number was because the number of uh newcomer students to the state of Illinois increased dramatically from October to when it was awarded in the spring. So the pot of money um had to be distributed amongst a lot more kids. Um we are grateful that we did get some funding. Um thankfully to the blending the blending and braiding that we have across our departments um we were able to still support the needs that we had for this year. Um regarding the LAP grant um the uh allocation was fairly similar to what we've received in the past. At my director's meeting in the fall we were um warned that it would likely decrease the per pupil

087amount for following years. So, another thing um in the words of Bethlad, if you would like to speak to your legislators for additional funding or to not decrease our funding, that would be [Music] great. Um, regarding on what we do with this funding, um, we have been able to provide a salary and benefits for a full-time TA that supports at the high school level, specifically with our newcomer students and, um, who, um, our SLIE students, our students with interrupted formal education. um addition to supplementary materials for all classes that support ML students across the district. Um this year at King School and for our ESL um students at um are that are not a part of the dual language program. They we did adopt uh supplementary curriculum that they have enjoyed using um in additional

088tools. Um we've also used this money for books for classroom libraries and for the units that were mentioned in the fall when we spoke about the biliteracy unit framework. Um an additional piece that um I had this week, we actually use some of our title three funding to help support um building libraries um especially for the sixth grade center um with funding to purchase books for their building libraries that are native language books um of all the languages that are represented in the building. Um in addition to that um various different subscriptions that support our students. Um the this grant also supports the cost of the assessment for the sealed biiteracy testing that was mentioned earlier. Um as well as materials that we use when we screen students. Um all students that check guests on

089that home language survey do have to be language screened. So we use the funding for those materials. Professional development um support. Um while Miss Smith supports a lot with professional development, there are a couple things that I support with as well. Um so all of our um teachers that are using the biliteracy unit framework have the opportunity to attend a professional development on how to write those units, how to implement those units as well as um providing uh this summer we will providing a professional development specifically on how to support newcomers in a mainstream setting. Um, as you know, we have emerging bilingual students in every single classroom, in every single building of the school outside of dual language. Um, and one, um, some feedback that Miss Smith and I and Jesse Bradford have gotten

090is, you know, how do we continue to support these students that are not in dual language or that are not in um, a traditional bilingual program. Um, and then for parent engagement, you know, continuing to find funding um, to support parent activities. We did have a guest speaker in the fall um for some of you that attended for Latina Heritage Month um at the middle school as well as um also not on here we will be supporting with funding again for parents to attend the ISB sponsored bilingual parent summit. Um another piece of my grant is that Tanya had mentioned earlier is the bilingual service plan. So this um the service plan was wrapped into the CDP last year. What this is is annually I have to submit a plan for how we are going

091to serve our multilingual students. Um this includes what buildings will have, what programs, how much staff is at each building. Um as well as how we are going to support parents through the bilingual parent advisory committee. That plan I believe was linked in the documents that you got for today. It was shared with our BPAC leadership um at the end of March and they had time to provide feedback and revisions and um they did not share any additional revisions at this time and that is what I have. Does anyone have any questions for me about title three? Any questions? Okay. Thank you. Just going back to Tanya then. Yep. This is Tanya. Um we're jumping back in. We have been having some conversations about grant funding in the district and what that looks like. So

092the top left corner shows Miss um Smith earlier had mentioned all of the school improvement grants. When you add up all five of hers together, it's a little over a million dollars. And the key has it broken down by content and where the money is being provided from the state. To the right tonight at our meeting, we just reviewed $8,292,584 in grants. The district itself in its budget has around $16 million overall. So the bottom left, by the way, the colors are flip-flopped there. So tonight you saw the orange piece which is all of the grants that you were presented this evening and then the other grants that were out there. Dr. Mary Angelo and I talked the other day a little bit about what is sitting in that area with the 7.7 million. It

093would be um the ESR grant. The monies that we still had as we entered in past July 1. We were allowed to spend that through October. Um, we also had our 21st century grants that went until August 31st. We have afterchool programming grants, teacher vac uh vacancy grants, and then lots of other little grants that are in place that make up the whole piece of the pie there. So then when we get to the end and we're taking a look at our money, we're seeing that out of the overall district fund, roughly 6 to 7% is made up of grant funding. and I listen to the news almost every night and just always wonder what is going to be the next step. Um Dr. had recommended that I attend the NFIPA conference back in March

094and they had shared information at that time about what um and they being attorneys AASA and the um Department of Education and they all seemed pretty consistent that they felt that the idea grant and the title one grants would remain fairly stable as will title 4 and CTE because those are college and careerdirected monies. the others um can be worked into existing grants, but at the moment there's not been any final decisions. So, we're just trying to make sure we're aware and that we're watching what is going on in Washington. Were there any questions about those? Board members, any questions? No. Thanks for the update. Yes. So, the next slide just thanks the people that had worked on the CDP and all of the grant work that they do to support that. And on the

095last slide, just a reminder that at our next board meeting, we'll be asking that you sign off on the consolidated district plan so that we can get that submitted to the state. We aren't allowed to have any of our federal grants approved until the CDP is approved. There is a constant flux of employment at ISBY with a lot of changes all the time. So, some years that can hang us up a little bit. So, we were trying to bump ahead a little bit more this year to try to get this pulled together and get it submitted. So, we appreciate your time and your patience as we share shared the work that we're all passionate about. And if there are any further questions, please let us know. All right. Thank you. We do have uh as

096typical for business meetings, a slate of action items to approve. Um, starting with our consent agenda, I know some of these items are going to get pulled off. I including 11 uh Sherry 11.8 11.7 and let's go ahead and pull out 11.1 as well into separate individual action items. Uh, so I'll read off the consent agenda and if anybody wishes any of the remaining ones be pulled off uh indicate that uh when we're done. Uh, starting off is 11.2 two uh bills, checks for February, March, education fund bills for $4 million, operations and maintenance fund bills for $511,000, transportation fund bills for $666,000, working cash bonds for approximately $3.7 million, school facility oxy tax for $142,000, um tort for $190,000, payroll salary and benefits uh for $10.1 million and Urbana Adult Education for $152,000. There's

097a variety of personnel items um that were listed in our uh in our packet. Um and and there's also administrative personnel item uh 11.4 four that needs to be approved. Uh appointment of school auditor uh Forvis LLP uh at a fee of almost $56,000. It's a 2,600 increase over the uh 2023 2024 audit. And then 11.6 is a resolution authorizing and directing the sale uh Yankee Ridge and uh audio audio meters and the light portescribe. Um, is there a motion to Does anyone wish to have any of these uh removed from the consent agenda? So, would you like to have removed from the consent agenda? Um, I had a question about some of the personnel items. Okay. Is it is this one I would ask or not? Um, you could wait after we after we

098move. Oh, after unless you want to pull them separate and then we could talk about that, but we could we could also talk about it during a consent motion. All right. Is there a move to approve the entire consent agenda? So move. Second. Moved and seconded. Now will be the time for for your question. Um obviously we've had a lot of um teacher transfers between the high school and the I'm sorry, the middle school and the sixth grade center, which was to be expected. Some teachers moving from the middle school to the sixth grade center. It seems in um this piece that we've had a lot of teachers being hired or being transferred to the middle school, which would be just for the seventh and eighth graders. And I am um I am wondering if

099we will get a financial e accounting of extra expenses that will be incurred because of the sixth grade center. Um yes, if if we have transferred certain teachers to the middle school from the middle school to the sixth grade center, there was no um extra cost. But if we're hiring more teachers or transferring teachers from the high school to the middle school to replace those teachers, there has been an extra cost. And um I I was wondering if we will get some sort of accounting for for that and because I am concerned that this has it has been suggested to me that perhaps some of the cuts at the high school level have to do are related to the needing more teachers at the middle school because we have we have the sixth grade center.

100So um this was so this was a question I asked essentially during the UAA roundt we held a week ago and uh what I was told was that basically that the basic plan for additional FTE ads at the sixth grade center um which was presented to us back in May is ostensibly the same except they had to add one more music teacher because of exceptionally high enrollment in incoming sixth grade band. So if you go back to the presentation that was giving given to us in terms of additional FT ads from back last May, it's basically the same. Okay. I suggest you talk to Angie about any of the specific ones if you have a question because she'd be the one to know where they're coming from and why. Okay. Any other questions? Like to

101send agendas on the floor? Roll call, please. Member Hixon, yes. Member Baxley, yes. Member Langorf, yes. Vice President Exom, yes. President Palowski, yes. Member Staten, yes. Member Jones, yes. Uh, motion passes. Uh moving back to the items that were removed for the consent agenda. Starting uh with 11.1 which is our minutes uh from the March 11th, 2025 uh business meeting. The March 25th, 2025 district parent teacher advisory committee, the March 26th uh special meeting, the April 1st study session, and the April 8th BOE UAA roundt. Uh worthy of note, the published minutes from the uh in our packet for the April 8th meeting included all seven board members being present and we only had five u who uh we had me member Hixon and member Stan were not able to attend. So if when we

102approve these minutes, they should be amended to reflect that. Um is there a motion to approve the minutes as just read by me? I move to approve with the um amendments that you just mentioned. Second. Second. Any further comments or discussion? All in favor say I. I. Any opposed? Uh 11.7 is our CU uh transit district uh contract renewal. Uh is there a motion for the floor? I move for approval. That'll get the discussion going at least. Second. Seconded. And now be time for any any questions or comments. The only question I had or the only comment that I made is that it's it's quite uh an ordeal to to schedule all everybody in the um all the students in schools and especially adding to the sixth grade center. And I thought the presentation was

103well done and gave us a lot of the information, answered a lot of the questions that we needed to know to get started for the next year. And I just didn't want to know if anybody else had any concerns or before we go on because we really did discuss it. We just heard the presentation. Yeah. If anybody has concerns about the contract, I guess now would be the time to voice them. Is there is there anything else that Hello, Dr. Ivy Tatum. Would you like to add about them? No, I I didn't receive any questions unless Maryanne did in the two weeks since we talked about it when the MTD folks were here, but yeah, I don't I haven't received any questions, right? Okay. Yeah. All right. If there are no further uh questions or

104comments, uh roll call vote will be in order. Member Baxley, yes. Member Langodorf, yes. Vice President Exom, yes. President Palowski, yes. Member Staten, yes. Member Jones, yes. Member Hixon, yes. Uh, lastly is 11.8, the Quest Food Management Services contract continuation. Uh, this is a extension request from the the current contract to allow them to serve the district for the 2025 2026 school year. Is there a motion for the floor? I move for approval. Second. Move a second. Any any questions or comments? Yeah, I had a lot of questions regarding um after the presentation or wasn't presentation the representatives from Quest came um and spoke to us and and and and were very dedicated about um wanting to fix all the issues that they had before. So, I wanted some followup. Should we invite Emily up

105since she's here? These gonna be questions that Marian and I can answer. We asked them to come tonight to so they could kind of speak to some of the things. So, if you guys want to come up to the table, they've been doing a lot of things to kind of remediate um and improve. So, yeah. So Sherry, was there a specific question that you're wanting or I wanted to make sure that the the um problems were um pardon were solved. Yes. And that the there was a a um satisfaction at the high school based on um the serving and also the temperatures of the food. And I did get some information from Mr. Guzman who said he was satisfied. So that was very helpful. But so why don't you guys share? We met with We

106met what two weeks ago and they shared a lot of things that they've done since then. So this Can I print it out? Do you have your email printed out? Okay, perfect. Turn your Okay, I will just go through the list that um You want to introduce yourself to Yes. I'm Emily Lane. Hello. Um I'm the new food service director um here for um you know, I work for Quest Food Service Management. So, I'm just going to go through real quick just to kind of follow up what you asked Sherry. Um, all of our leads have successfully taken and passed there. We it is called CFPM and this stands for certified food protection manager courses and this is good for five years. Um, additionally to all of our other team members, they have completed their

107always food safe food handler coursework and also an allergen awareness coursework. Um, with this we've also Quest has engaged a third party auditor. They're called Steritech and they just come in and they do private health inspections. Um, and that is what we engage. And then also myself and then our chef that we have on board, we are doing internal um, they're called my field audits. So they're quick um, really easy five minute pulse um, check-ins at every location and this is done at every school weekly. Um with this all of our team members were retrained on food handling, temperature danger zone, personal hygiene, handashing, and also crosscontamination. Um since the leadership change here, we have passed every inspection including the reinspection at the high school. Um and then to go along with that, after the

108reinspection with the high school, we did meet in person with the department of health. Um, so we went over to CUPD and met in person with the inspectors just to kind of get, you know, their input on everything. So, yeah, we have successfully passed every inspection since then. All right. Does any other questions or comments to the motions on the floor? Want to uh comment and question something? Um, I think I'm in communication with you as a as a parent of someone in the school. Thank you so much. I found it really easy to communicate. Um, one of the things I'm struggling and a lot of people struggle is to print the the menus from the website. When you try to print it, they give you the whole thing and it's like seven pages and

109it's really hard to navigate. I know the schools have the menu like sensitiz um resume or resume of all those menus on there. I wonder if that's something that you can improve in your website or in the app that also is really hard to navigate. That's the only concern we have right now. Thank you. So the website is probably us. So is there something else we could do? And I mean like when you go on the website, is it taking them directly to Quest or is it how we're posting them on our website? When you go to because I had experience to do it. When you go to the menu, you look for Yankee Rich who doesn't make it cool. And then you go to food menu. They give you a link to the quest

110or whatever it is in here. And then uh it give you a link for the menu and it comes with all the specifications of what how much calories and grains. Yes. And you try to print the seven pages. Um but in school they have the menu from day and they have the three choices they have. M um which I'm still right now I'm working with my son who is vegetarian and we have a special plan for but sometimes the kids the vegetarian kids doesn't have a lot of choices more like chocolate cookie something like that and there some bag of some butter flour something some butter so it's not really like something attractive for kids um but I did sign for the other and now we are working with that which I inspiring everybody who

111is vegetarian or have a special diet to do it as an alternative um but Yeah. Navigating the menu to me to know what is in there is really harsh. Okay. And it's been very harsh since the beginning. Yeah. Maybe that's something that we Oh, were you going to say add to that or something? I was going to say I'm Marissa Trout, the district manager with Quest. I work closely with Emily and we are internally working on a new website to roll out in the fall. I was on the demonstration with our associate vice president of marketing just this week, U My Quest. I'm happy to demo that with you and her as well. We're aware of some of the limitations as it presents to or as it relates to forward facing menus. And so I

112think you'll be really pleased with the website, the platform, kind of a one-stop shop for information for students and family members. So that will be out in the fall. And I'm happy to um set up a demo for you with that prior to launch to get some feedback. And maybe John, we can look at what how c how it's being posted. And I mean, I feel bad that somebody has to print seven pages to get I think it's directly through. Is it directly through I'm on the website right now. Yeah, it looks like it goes through link connect. Does that make sense? Yeah. So, I think but can't we print a PDF and post it ourselves? I think it would, and correct me if I'm wrong, but with like menu changes and things like that,

113I don't know how easily accessible it would be for it to be available. And there's different menus as you scroll through there depending if you're elementary or a serving school or elementary and a cooking school or a middle school. That's why it has kind of that structure and I'm sorry it's kind of a frustration on our side as well. I'm I'm also at the high school um twice a month all through the lunches and I just want to say it's very well um organized, lots of variety and it's very um appetizing. So, I I I think it's a good program. So, I also had a chance to um eat at the high school um on Monday. Um I had a nice taco salad. Um I'm not vegetarian, but I appreciated seeing the unmeat option um

114uh plant-based option available. Um but the food, it was a nice little taco salad. I I do have a a few um comments and suggestions for um people who come into the school and I know you don't get this often but who come into the school who aren't teachers and aren't students and so they don't have an account and but I'll share that along with just some observations that I had myself with the staff there. Not bad, but just um needing to be cognizant of those in that are sharing the space and the conversations that are being had. You never know who's walking in. I certainly didn't say I'm a board member or announce myself and I didn't look like a board member. Um but some of the conversations probably should have been behind closed

115doors. So just little stuff like that I'll share. But the the food was good and um I hope that things continue on the positive side for Quest and at the high school. One more thing, I discovered something today that I never saw before because I always stop at the chocolate helm. I never go beyond that, but I was nice to uh see that there was a coffee shop there too and students have that option as well. So that's alakart. So [Laughter] anyone Anyone else comments or questions? The changes that you all made, were they just something that was tweaked or was it just a overall change in the protocol, the way things are set up, would you say? So, I will say both. Um so actually with all the inspections and everything that did happen

116here um uh at the Quest level we have changed uh what we call SOPs so standards of practice to how you know at every account that Quest has um how we submit health inspections. So it's being monitored um how we you know came into this was a reoccurring thing. So that's how the yellow placard was placed. And so now um we have a team that watches everyone's health inspections and also work orders get submitted into our new SOPs too. Um so that's being followed as well. Thank you for that. Thank you. Can I add one thing too? So I know Emily took over um after all of this happened. She was kind of our lead dietician. Was that your official title? um and has been really really responsive. I mean like she's in communication constantly

117with Maryanne and every time they have someone is in one of the schools we get an email saying you know that we passed and here's what we did and I I don't know if the board's aware but we get two health inspections for every building every year. So the health inspections aren't anything new and I think that there was some confusion too about like failing or that there was any kind of like lag in service and there was just one line that needed to go back and reheat and so it was it was just a kind of like a oh we need to go reheat but since there was a couple of instances where there was repeat issues then that's how they got the yellow card and the bad publicity. So, but since then there's

118been and we were meeting regularly, but I have to say that the meetings are very regular and then even I don't know if it's quarterly or monthly that we get to meet with Marissa too, but we meet with Marissa just as frequently. Um, but anytime I see or have any concerns, if somebody reports them to my office and we get them to Emily, there is some plan of action in place, which makes me feel a lot more comfortable knowing that things are being addressed. Anyone else? Roll call, please. Member Langodorf. Yes. Vice President Exom. Yes. President Palowski? Yes. Member Stanton? Yes. Member Jones. Yes. Member Hixon. Yes. Member Baxley. Yes. Moving on to our individual action items. Uh first up are gifts. Altra USA uh International District 6 donated time uh stuffing 300 plus supply

119bags for kindergarten registration held April 10th at Lincoln Square. Uh contractor association donated $500. Durbana High School Project athletes donated $250 worth of baseball gloves, batting gloves, pants, belts, and water bottles to Urbana High School baseball program. Uh Donna Lindseay Pedrick donated $200 to the Evern Bernett Underwood Music Assistance Program. Is there a motion to receive the gifts and to send out the appropriate thank yous? So move second. Seconded. Any comments or discussion? Yes. Um, Altrusa donated $750 for that. Um, I don't know if we had acknowledged them before, but um, not only did they donated the time, but they also gave $750 for the materials. Okay. Um, I guess Yeah, we'll add that to the Yeah, I'm glad you said that because it doesn't say that on there. So, yes. Right. Um motion's still

120on the floor. Uh all in favor say I. Any opposed? Uh next up is our school resource officer SRO contract agreement. This was discussed at our at our last meeting. Is there a motion for the floor? I move for approval. Second. Moved and seconded. Uh before we progress, I one of we got an email that I neglected to to bring up is from Nate Wall, who couldn't make it tonight to make a citizen statement, but he he sent the board an email basically asking uh to voice uh his up here, his uh viferous support for the SRO program, especially at the high at at the high school and middle school. um if I could find it. Here it is. Uh promised him we'd read this. So to go ahead and do it. He's writing to

121express his strong support for the continuation of the SRO officers at Abana High School, Banner Middle School, and Abana sixth grade center. They play a vital role in maintaining a safe, supportive, and positive environment for students, staff, and families within the school community. Their presence not only provides a sense of security but also fosters trust and builds meaningful relationships between students and law enforcement when implemented effectively as our programs contribute to a holistic approach to student well-being. One that includes mentoring education and early intervention in addition to safety in an era where school safety is of growing concern having trained compassion officers who understand the unique needs of young people is more important than ever. Urban has SRO's do more than support that more than respond to incidents. They participate in student life, collaborate with

122educators and support students in making positive choices both in and out of the classroom. They are accessible role models who help bridge the gap between law enforcement and the communities they serve. Removing SRO from our schools would not only eliminate a layer of security, but also a valuable resource for students who may be facing personal challenges, struggling with peer relationships, or navigating difficult situations at home. I urge the decision makers to continue supporting the program and to invest in training and accountability measures that ensure our SRO are the best equipped to serve Urbana's diverse student population with respect, equity, and care. From Mr. need and he's a dean. He's a dean at the middle school. Yes. And Sherry, I wanted to add that we have been working on the request to have the kind offormational

123like I think Lori shared that but I wanted to say it out loud too. So I didn't want the rest of the board members to Sherry asked if we could have a space. So Mr. Guzman has been busy. So um we have a space. It's the 29th of April. So, I know it's after this um but we still wanted to be able to have that. So, he sent us that date yesterday, I believe, um where we could have and we'll find time for Michelle to come over and um announce that at the middle school level to Mrs. Robinson from the middle school to come over. Um so, if there are any parents who want to come over and meet her at the high school, we can work around that time. What was the time again,

124Lori? My computer is having issues. 11:30 11 to Okay. Okay. Great. Any any comments, questions? Can I add one more thing? And so this will be going before city council on the 21st as well. So, okay, last call for comments, questions, or concerns. All right. Uh, roll call vote. It's again in order. Vice President Exom. Yes. Um, President Palowski, yes. Member Staten, yes. Member Jones, yes. Member Hixon, yes. Member Baxi, yes. Member Langodorf, yes. Motion passes. Uh, 12.3 is lifting up LLC agreement. Uh, the administration is requesting approval of a one-year professional services agreement between their banner school district 116 and Lifting Up LLC. Um, is there a motion for the floor? Move for approval. Second. So, move and seconded. Um, I'm going to ask a question. I guess it would tell the public what

125lifting up LLC is. So um they presented at our last meeting and um so if you didn't watch the presentation I'd encourage you to go back because I am not going to be able to share all the information that was shared and comments. So, lifting up is um is also referred to as handle with care and it would be a collaboration with um Urbana Police where we would be um working with um them to provide they would provide information for us um for in a very safe uh FUR impro approved way where we could support students who have experienced some kind of trauma in their home um related to some police event or some trauma response event that uh of course the schools would not be aware of. Um and John is going to work

126directly with them in terms of protecting all that student information. Um we have a couple of uh community partners who are financing it for the year. Um United Way and Community Coalition are taking care of the costs. Um this is something that a couple of districts um that also use it. Peoria, Decatur, I believe. Um maybe Bloomington. No, mostly just the Peoria area. Maybe not as far as Bloomington, but they love it and um their population is uh you know way is as diverse as ours, if not even more diverse and much larger. Um and all of their schools participate. So, what would happen is if there was an incident at one of our students homes on the weekend or at night um and it involved a parent being arrested or a student seeing a

127very um inappropriate or violent event or whatever happened in the home, we would get an email the next morning with that student's um ID number and um through our system and and of course the police would not have the students names or anything. It would just all be done very much through student IDs. Um we'd get that information and a very select small few people will get that information like the um I would John the um principal of the building and an identified person in the building who um is like the threat assessment um leader or coordinator for the school would get that and then there's a training that goes with this. So then they would know how to intervene and how to respond, you know, because our response wouldn't be I heard the police

128were at your house last night. It would be more so um you know, they have a very select kind of way that you approach that student and you offer support um in a kind of non-judgmental, non you know, sharing information way. So um we're going to pilot it for next year and um see how it goes. The police um Urbana Police came to us with it. um United Way brought it to us. I had not heard of it um prior to them approaching us to do it and we had several meetings and discussions and we're looking forward to being able to better support some of our families um and our students through this effort. I think one of the challenges would be because we have so many different cultures and some of them are would

129be very embarrassed or want to be very private. So it's good that they um our representatives in our school will be trained to understand those and to really address the situation, but they check up on the student. And our all of our schools have threat assessment teams and most of the student support staff are part of those teams. You know, people like our social workers and counselors. And so, um, my hope is that when that information is received, no, they there's enough of a relationship with the students or the families to know, um, if this is a family that, um, will not or a student who this, you know, be more harmful than good to approach them, I think is, um, we'll have to rely on our school staff for that. And, um, and so

130that's a really good point, too. So, thank thanks for the the broader context. Um, any other questions or comments? Uh, roll call vote is again in order. President Palowski. Yes. Member Staten. Oh, member Jones. Yes. Member Hixon. Yes. Member Baxley. Yes. Member Langodorf. Yes. Vice President Esom. Yes, motion passes. 12.4 is a handle with care of understanding. So, this is the agreement that allows us to work with Abana police department in order to enable the the what's going on with lifting up with the handle with care program. Is there a motion for the floor? I move for approval. Second. Any comments or discussion? Roll call, please. Member Staten. Yes, member Jones. Yes, member Hixon. Yes, member Baxley. Yes, member Langadorf. Yes, Vice President Exom. Yes, President Powski. Yes. Uh 12.5 is our district 2026 2027

131calendar which was discussed again at our at our at our last meeting. Is there a motion for the floor? I move for approval. Second. Moved and seconded. Any any comments, questions? Just go in it. All right. Uh roll call. Uh Roll call vote, please. Member Jones, yes. Member Hixon, yes. Member Baxley, yes. Member Langdenorf, yes. President Vice President Exom, yes. President Palowski, yes. Uh, and 12.6. Lastly, understand. Oh, sorry. I'm sorry. I jumped the gun. I'm sorry. Pass. Yes. Pass 70. We got one more vote. Uh 12.6 is our sixth grade center uh cleaning contract bids. Is there a motion for the floor? Move for approval. Second. Moved and seconded. Uh Randy, you provide any context. ESS is is the provider for $18,620. Yeah, we held a bid opening April 1st uh for a one-year

132contract with the six trade center. Uh we had six biders pick up uh bid packages, had four interested biders submit bids. The qualifying bids range from 118 620,000 or 118,000 to 6 $118,620 to $153,150. Wow. Um ESS Clean, Inc. of Urbana has agreed to terms of service without hesitation. And after thorough thoroughly reviewing the contract with ESS and knowing they are comfortable with their bid, I recommend the bid accept. Remember, the board accepts the bid and also recommend the board approves this to one-year contract service between ESS and Urbana School District. Great. Any questions or comments? Uh, roll call, please. Jennifer, I'm sorry. That's okay. Um, I was wondering, do we always have a separate bid for each school? So, like one company would do the middle school and a different company would do the

133high school. And we used to have one company do it all. Um, and then we got into uh um when ESS lost the contract to a company called ABM, um ABM couldn't do it, they a billion dollar corporation and uh wasn't able to uh staff all the buildings and um so then I reached out to a bunch of smaller companies to when I was getting rid of ABM to look at into uh see if they would be interested in that and they were and we divided up and uh our contract currently says that you can't have more than half of the buildings. Um so like not one company can have more than half of the buildings. So um it's it's kind of split up amongst all the buildings and each building is bid out separately

134except for the high school and middle school. We keep those as one. Okay. And is this for does does this pay for the janitorial staff that are on staff in the building during the day or just for the after school cleaning the evening cleaning? Y questions. Yeah. Anyone else? Question. Roll call, please. Member Baxley. Yes. Member Langodorf. Yes. Vice President Exom. President Palowski. Yes. Member Staten. Member Jones. Yes. Member Hixon. Yes. Motion passes. Next up is our superintendent report. Okay. Sorry, I'm waiting for John. All right. So, um, this weekend the UHS, uh, Science Olympia team placed second in the state, um, after placing 13th last year. And this is only after the program has been revived. I believe it's been three years back. Is that you you probably had this in yours, too. I

135think I saw it right. Different um, little notes. And so, here's the team. Really excited. Um, six were named state champions. Um Colin Goth and Elliot Anderson in wind power. Um Elliot and Natalie um Polio in helicopter. Natalie and JJ Lee in material science. JJ and Colin in robot tour. And um Cecilia Bersley in Sydney Godell in insects. So there they all are. So exciting. Um it's great that we have a sponsor who has just jumped right in and taken the program so far in just three years. So that's awesome. Dual language tours. So, um there are a lot of things that we haven't brought back since COVID and this is one of them. So, um slowly we're kind of talking about things like why aren't we doing that anymore? We haven't done it since

136the um since the pandemic. And so, we are going back to offering the tours again. Um and we've had several requests for tours. um now that the dual language program is in one location, people are really um are incoming kindergarten families and people who just want to see the program before they make a decision if they want to be part of the dual language program. So um we're bringing back the tours and um they are going to be happening on Tuesday, April 15th. Uh we're providing an afternoon and a morning option for our working families. So, um hopefully if the afternoon on the 15th doesn't work for you, maybe Monday the 21st um in the morning at 9:30 does. We think it's really important for people to tour while the students are there so you

137get a realistic um view of the program and the um diversity of the students, the student body, and just you get to see school happening. So, um there are always things that we do at night where we can um people can come in and we'll have our we'll talk about kindergarten openhouse here in a second, but it's way more meaningful when you get to actually go into a classroom and see learning and instruction happening. Um and so there'll be guided tours, administrators will um provide those tours, the building administrators and um incoming parents will get to go in and see um the kindergarten classrooms in action. if you have questions. I know um director Rakone was here tonight for her presentation, but you can definitely email her and ask more. Of course, board members are

138always welcome to go and um hop in a tour if you yourself not been able to go over during the day while instruction is happening. It's something you really should see. So, yeah, we're excited about that. Kindergarten open house um is always in the end of the year in May. So this is another opportunity where we open up all the buildings um and we have staff available where you can go in, you can see um the classrooms. There's usually a very short introduction and presentation and also a short tour. So uh these are all within in the month of May and in the evening. um we keep them to about an hour and um it is very informal. So um you know people shouldn't feel you know that they're going to be asked to do

139a lot. It is really open just very much an openhouse feel where you come in. They will do a little bit of a presentation about some of the new curriculum and just what to expect in kindergarten but most of it will be uh just walking around and looking and um just seeing the spaces. So, we'll be sharing these out um for the weeks to come. So excited about that. Kindergarten registration, I should also add, was last week. I know we've been talking about it for several weeks. Um so, if you have not registered your incoming kindergarten student, please, please, please do so at [email protected]. Camp Invention is a longstanding uh program that we have offered in our community. I don't know how many years, but it is a um it's open to all USD students

140in grades K through six. Most of our students attend for free because there are scholarships available. You do have to do a little bit of work for them, but not a lot. And we have staff who will help support you to get through the paperwork that you fill out. Um this is a full one-week camp. It fills up every year. We always have a waiting list. Um it is run by the um camp invention people. We provide the space. Um we provide teachers who might want to work but the activities and a lot of the curriculum come from um the camp invention program. In the years uh prior to this um Mr. Choaha from Leo has been the principal and it's been housed at Leo. Um but the uh assistant principal at Yankee Ridge Multilingual

141um Erica Rudolph is going to be the director of the program this summer. So we are moving it to Yankee Ridge Multilingual School. Um so if you're interested there is a link here where you can sign up. I'd encourage you do not wait until June because the program will be full by then. Broadway on Vine, Moana Jr., great show and um it was just really great. I know Thursday I had a conflict, but I was able to go on Saturday and the it it's just always I'm just always so impressed by the level of talent of our young people. There were a lot of eighth graders in this show. So, several of the high school people were around saying, "Are they all coming to the high school?" So um hopefully we will keep them engaged

142in u drama and theater and all the wonderful thing we had singing, there was a little dancing um just great. The crew behind the scenes, the sets were amazing. Um and I know there were a lot of parents who helped and um it takes a lot of effort from our staff, the directors to put this on. And so it isn't just the kids that you see that come out and do the acting and singing. It is all the things that go on behind the scenes. So it was very well attended. Today they have the ele one of the elementary show days. Um there's another day for the when is the other one, Angie? Is it tomorrow? Um so our elementary schools are invited to bring like fourth and fifth grade classes over also during the

143day. They get a bus and they can come over and see. um it's like a little field trip, something for them to look forward to when they're older and um they get to participate in things like this. So, shout out and congratulations to Broadway on Vine. So, tomorrow is the um mayoral recognition program at UHS. I hopefully everybody here I think Lori already got everyone their cards and your invites. Um so, it is an open um opportunity for you to come. This is Mayor Marlin's last recognition and so um I know it will be kind of heartfelt for her because this was a uh this was kind of her vision and a program that she really brought to us and just has supported so much over the years. So I know it'll be a little

144um little sad but also exciting. Um then Friday there's no school spring holiday. On May 1st, online registration opens. So, we will be sharing out a lot of information about that for our returning students. And then May 7th is bike and road to school day. Well, thank you. Besides uh the invention camp, there is any other splash or camp, summer camp offer? Oh, yes. Um and I don't think Katherine has the flyer ready for that yet, but we have see you around town, which we offer every year. That again I think is going to be a king. We don't have the sixth grade transition because the sixth grade the building won't be open, but we will have the other two programs that happen at the middle school. And of course, the high school will have

145their regular summer school as always. The two sessions that they offer um that start the week after we get out and they go all first session is in June, second session is in July. and ESY, the extended school year for our students um who have IEPs are also um do you know where those are going to be, Marian? I don't have my computer is like not working right now. Did you guys have your summer school? Yeah, I can't remember. I think see you around town is at King, but I can't remember. Do you know where it's from? It's been at King the last couple years. So, okay. But there is not like a splash that's a full day. It's only Friday. No, it's not a full day. It's a half day. Yeah. And you know,

146we don't have the 21st century grant anymore. So, that is the grant that really um funded the full day summer program options that we've had for years and years and years and we don't have that grant anymore. So, we've been trying to use title funds to put together the summer programming. Um so, they won't be able to be full day, but definitely keeping the half day option. We'll still have the two programs. Well, there'll be three things in August. So, the high school transition week will be in August. That week before school starts, we will have jump start for kindergarten and jump start for first grade the week before school starts like we did this past summer. That was really well attended and very successful for families who were a little nervous about kindergarten. Their

147kindergarteners get to go the week before school and fig learn a little bit and figure it all out before they have to officially be there. So nothing in July. It's all except for ESY. ESY high school. Gerber runs pretty much the whole summer. So tomorrow is uh strategic planning. Yes. Wednesday and Thursday. So we've been very busy with that. So yeah, we're excited about that full day. So if you're looking for me, I will not be I'll probably not be checking email until much later in the evening. Both days. And then Friday is is a spring holiday and then Monday is the due date for applications for subd district 6. So if anybody out there is interested in being a board member for subd 6. Yes. Including Tori. Please fill out a form. We keep

148trying. We're gonna I'm gonna really miss you. Two more years. This one here. Two more years. Uh anyway, if if somebody is interested in in filling the seat, please fill out the form and turn it to the district offices by Monday the 21st. Yes. Thank you for reminder. Um we do have a special meeting on Thursday for student discipline at 6 p.m. at 11:01 East University Avenue. Uh is there a motion to adjurnn? So moved. I second. It's moved and seconded. All in favor say I. I. We'rejourned. Thank you everybody. Yeah, they didn't even show up.