Urbana School District 116 Board of Education 04 01 25

001e e e [Music] you for e [Music] John uh good evening everyone it's 6 o'cl so let's begin the study session of B School 116 a roll call please member Jones here member Staten member Hixon here member Baxley here member langendorf here vice president exom here president palowski here uh we do have a quorum uh are there any additions or Corrections or modifications to tonight's agenda Noe so we continue on the citizen statements if anybody wishes to make a statement for the board there are these Golden Rod sheets at the back of the room if you can fill that out and hand it to recording secretary Lori Johnson you can get into the queue we have I think 10 so far starting with uh Anna Mendoza good evening my name is Anna Mendoza and my

002testimony is about why it may not be the best idea to have 26 students in a dual language class um I'm going to be talking about the second pillar of dual language programs which is bilingualism and biliteracy I'm a professor at the University of Illinois Department of linguistics by now there is a 50-year-old academic literature on what we can expect from language immersion programs and we can assess language acquisition in four domains listening speaking reading and writing two domains are oral and two are textual two are receptive listening and reading and the other two speaking and writing are productive the larger the the class the more the proficiency of students tends to be receptive only or students can understand but cannot produce this is because productive skills like speaking and writing often require individual elicitation

003when I did a study of the second grade class at Yankee Ridge in 2023 which had nine students students were practicing productive skills individually and a literacy specialist was was working with students with special needs oneon-one today with Thrice the number of students to due individual elicitation would be tedious boring and untenable on the other hand I would doubt that anyone would count receptive only proficiency as being functionally proficient in a language on another note another way to assess language proficiency is what the scholar Jim Cummins called Bix versus kelp basic interpersonal communicative skills and cognitive academic language proficiency at Yankee Ridge students are exposed to kelp in The Sciences curriculum as early as second grade such as plant and animals and their life cycles therefore even at an elementary school level they have kelp

004however to achieve celp instruction in a foreign language requires more cycles of unpacking and repacking than in students first language and most Yankee Ridge students study French as an additional language for example when teaching a class of English speakers AER a scientific Topic in English you unpack scientific text in everyday oral English and then repack in academic English this is two cycles or two phases when grappling with academic content in a foreign language you first repack into everyday French and then have students talk about it in frl then repack into everyday French productively and finally repack into academic French and then one additional phase of learning to write it down this begs the question of whether all this repacking and unpacking can happen with 26 students in a class therefore I strongly urge the program

005if concerned with academic proficiency and productive skills not only receptive skills to consider reducing the class size back to what it was before thank you very much thank you um next up is Hannah romanuk Roman atuk sorry if I'm pronouncing it wrong it's okay I will be speaking on behalf of a parent who like to remain anonymous hello I would like to start with a quote of darrett Bach if you think education is expensive try ignorance I would like to thank the USD 116 for all that they do for the education of our children I would like to thank the teachers administrators and everyone who works tirelessly for the betterment of our children I am an African-American woman who is privileged to have her child learn a second language at Yankee Ridge multilingual I am

006grateful for this program because my child can speak write and read in a second language she can commun with communicate with her cousins Grand and grandparents in a language that they understand with that said I do not want the program to die and I want it to be there for my other children my daughter is in fifth grade of her six years at yaner Ridge in the French program she has been in a split classroom for three consecutive years while the teachers are experienced and well organized to teach gr two grades at once is almost impossible and she is not being taught all the standards and things she needs to know before Middle School thus I am advocating for a lessening of the load of teachers by creating Standalone classes or hiring specific content teachers

007like math or other subjects so that all the material for each grade is covered especially in math my second daughter will start kindergarten in school next year I really want her to go to Yankee Ridge but I'm second guessing because I do not want her to be in a classroom starting from 2 grade until fifth grade as it is right now at yane Ridge and I believe many parents will think like me please make my decision easier so that the program does not keep losing students thank you thank you uh next up is Aurora morose hello everybody thank you for hearing us can you hear me yes okay uh I am speaking in my capacity as a professor of French second language acquisition teacher education at the University of Illinois with 20 years of experience

008in language acquisition specifically about French and teacher training um first of all let me say that we are extremely lucky and grateful to have an exceptional dual immersion program at Yankee Ridge in French I'm sure you're aware of the fact that this is extremely rare in this country uh and I'm sure that everybody here is convinced about why we're doing this we're doing this because that's the right thing to do right we care about this children their identity we care about their feeling welcome obviously we care about their academic standing and we want them to achieve the sky right absolutely but there's more than just grades there's also how they feel in their identity if we've gone so far as to create such a wonderful program let's make sure that we keeping it quality program

009this means means a ratio of one teacher to 10 Max 15 students in the classroom this is not me saying it this is research this is two decades of research on dual immersion programs okay and this is not just about academic French development or ESL development but also stem and also the way the teachers are able to make those students feel welcome it's very important for what we call linguistic security for the students to feel like they're not being rushed but that they're being provided with exactly what we meant to do when this program was created so I'm begging you to please reconsider the size of those classes for the well-being of the children we need to expand on these programs we don't need to start shortening the resources in any way shape or form

010in fact we need to expand to the middle school and to the high school and uh please bear with me because I'm here to bring you money even for this I'm uh leving money from the French government and from the Quebec government able to give more resources including books I just raised $10,000 for French books that would go directly to the Champagne Public Library for all the kids to benefit from so please help me help them I know we are all convinced about why we're doing this please get those kids to be Max 15 in one class thank you very much for listening thank you um next up is uh Matthew Hans uh sorry sorry quite read this uh it lotes or L LS thank you uh good evening um I'm a student of French

011at the University of Illinois and I studied French in a a split classroom in high school and I just want to speak as a student um in a situation like that that it was uh it was very difficult to get uh the resources and attention needed from uh my teacher who was uh she was the only teacher at my high school for for French and she had to go across six different levels um the spread heard very thin and it made it very difficult to uh communicate with all the students and give them the attention that they deserved um this made uh you know acquiring material very difficult uh and I can attest to that uh it made it more difficult in my third and fourth years uh there when I was in a split

012classroom uh as compared to my first and second which were uh devoted to just those levels um so I implore you please do not uh continue to expand the sizes thank you uh next up is Allison stod hi thank you um I'm I'm am a parent of two kids in the French program at yane Ridge multi school and I'm here to express my deep concern regarding the continued use of combined classrooms I recognize that this was a necessary short-term solution a few years ago but it cannot be the long-term model the challenges posed by multi-grade classrooms are significant obviously for teachers but most importantly for students multi-grade classrooms can be successful if they're strategically organized not by simply combining every child into consecutive grades regardless of their academic or social Readiness which has been the

013approach thus far while there may be some social emotional benefits to these combined classrooms such as stronger peer relationships these come at the cost of academic achievement teachers often are never trained for multi-grade classroom teaching making it difficult to effectively modify the curricula to meet diverse student needs this is especially an issue right now um due to the math curriculum that is being used my understanding is that the current math curriculum does not allow smaller group learning which means that teachers are essentially teaching to the entire group at the level of the lowest common denominator and it's impossible for students in this situ ation to receive grade level instruction required to meet the state standards particularly alarming is the fact that some of these students have already spent three consecutive years in Combined classes and

014if this pattern continues the current first grade cohort will have endured four years in such an environment and this is unacceptable the lack of a clear plan to phase out the combined classrooms suggests a failure to prioritize student learning and academic success the district must take a hard look at the funding allocations and ensure that the resources are directed first first toward education of our kids and then for additional projects we know that at least one teacher in the French program has not received a contract renewal for the next year would strongly suggests that the district intends to continue with combined classrooms however the current enrollment numbers show that by 2027 the French program will be too large to sustain the four combined classes thus another teacher will need to be hired one year after

015one was released the Whiplash from these Staffing changes creates unnecessary disruption for the staff and fails to consider teachers satisfaction one solution is to continue to work towards increasing incoming enrollment in the French program this allows us to sustain our single- grade classrooms and maintain the current Staffing levels if the classes truly are too small to support a single- grade class we need to provide additional staff for math intervention particularly so that our kids can maintain the bare minimum state math standards the French program within the multilingual school is a rare and valuable asset we all know this um the it makes the public Orban school system and attractive to families who might otherwise choose private education however the continued merging of classrooms only drives families away and it sends the message that we do

016not truly support all Multicultural learning opportunities we owe our children a strong Educational Foundation and I look forward to seeing meaningful changes to prioritize the success of our students Emma Arin Hart I have a second grader in the French dual language that for the second consecutive school year is in a split level class I'm here tonight to ask the superintendent and the board to con um to reduce the number of split classrooms in French program or at the very least add an additional team member to teach some subjects such as math and French while there can be advantages to split level classes the current system does not allow enough math or French instructional time the current plan for next year has a split second third grade classroom which will create a a class size of

01726 this will make it the largest classroom at Yan Ridge based off January enrollment data I understand that this enrollment is technically within the allowable limit for split enrollment per the teachers contract but this does not account for the additional burden of teaching in two languages they have half the time to learn double the language and half the time to learn their grade level math this is causing our students to fall behind any Urbana student should have a limit of two of their six Elementary years in a split classroom otherwise we are setting them up for failure once they reach Middle School the 2627 Academic Year will contractually require a new French teacher because the enrollment for a split second third grade will exceed the teachers contract for maximum classroom size we have an additional

018qualified French teacher now due to the temporary hire to fill an another teacher's um leave of absence it would be wise to keep her employed even with the other teachers return this fall as French enrollment is growing and new teachers will be required in future years we've we been told our grade level and class enrollments are too low but our second through fourth graders are at 10 to 12 students per grade level Thomas pay has enrollment of 11 to 13 students in their three kindergarten classrooms our current first graders which are being proposed to combine next year has 15 students six other Elementary classrooms in the district have 15 or less students includ excluding the special education program so if it's a matter of fairness among teacher workload what is the district doing to distribute

019those unfair workloads the superintendent has referenced fairness among other teachers with respect to classroom size and difficulty recruiting qualified bilingual teachers to justify the split classrooms it seems to me that's unfair for a teacher to have the largest classroom in the school and be expected to teach two different grade levels in the same amount of time and we have the perfect opportunity to retain a qualified bilingual teacher next year so please consider reducing the split classrooms or adding a team M team member to lessen the burden of the crowded split level classes um being created in French thank you thank you um Molly hkey hello I'm Molly hkey I've been a teacher in the district for 22 years I have taught a lot of classes I've taught some splits I've taught small classes I've taught

020large classes so I'm here just to ask you all have you been over to observe any of the classrooms have you seen the classrooms that have 10 or 10 to 20 kids versus the classes that have over 20 kids our kids are not getting easier they are getting harder and when you have are anybody good at juggling anybody can you do that three things at once well you know what that's what you are asking us to do and I can tell you that we have a lot of young teachers and they have a lot of energy but we need to think long term and so longterm is not shoving a lot of kids in class and so I'm asking you as a longtime teacher to think carefully about what you're doing and class size Matters

021I've been over the last five to 10 years I probably had 20 kids in my class yes it is still hard it's not as hard as when you have 27 kids that is a long line there is a lot of kids some of those kids need me I can't get to them when there's a lot of kids in in class and so the smaller the class the better it is for our kids and I think that's what we're all here for whether it's French Spanish or English but we have to do something different because sometimes we keep doing the same thing and we're getting the same results so I'm asking you to think can you juggle have you observed a class of 27 kids have you tried to teach two grades at the same time

022you guys are asking us to do impossible things and then you're saying oh guess what now do more we can't do anymore we're doing teachers we are doing the best we can but we need your help and your help is to quit saying you can have more kids and you can do it we can't so we need your help so please think about that would really appreciate it my co-workers would really appreciate it thank you thank you and thank you for your exemplary service this District um Lacy Elliot good evening this is Hannah she's gonna help me tonight um so uh real quick before I start well I guess I already started um I just want to say there are other families in the French program who wanted to come tonight but are feeling uncomfortable

023um being in public space is and saying public things because of our current um immigration stuff going on so just know that as I talked tonight no it's my voice but it's also other people in the program who didn't feel comfortable to come tonight so um I have two kids in French at Yankee Ridge in first and third grade Hannah will start in 2027 um and I'm here tonight the same reason other people are to ask um for you to implement a policy in Urbana that limits um oh let not push that's not that um that limits split classrooms for two years um of of our kids careers um I have others have mentioned our current second graders have been and will be in mixed grade level classes for their entire Elementary School experience besides

024kindergarten other teachers have two c sorry our teachers have two curriculums that are scripted now um math and Ela for a set amount of time each day plus the French content to get to and so um there aren't just aren't enough actual hours in the day and I think for one or two years you know that's sustainable for for an entire Elementary career it's too much it's not possible um I'm not against these curriculums I think it's great that we have research-based curriculums but I would like my kids to actually have the opportunity to finish the curriculums and they just can't get to all of it um looking at our current numbers at Yankee Ridge I noticed that Papa John's class is larger than every other second or third grade class by three to five

025students and looking at the numbers for next year the second and third grade combined classes um the combined class will be 26 which is six to eight more students than any of the other classes and those classes are only trying to get through one grade level worth of material and I do get the need to be fiscally responsible and having a third grade class of 11 it does sound small it does um but right now two of our third grade classes are 18 so the difference between 11 and 18 is seven kids next year you know to have 26 kids in that class the difference is eight kids right so I just I don't get the logic of 11 being too small but 26 not being too big right it's seven kids eight kids you

026know it's it's the same pretty much um so yeah and and with the scripted curriculums I just think it's too much to try to have two grade levels in a class of 26 the largest class in the school I just I don't think I think that's a recipe for failure um so I would love to see the district Implement a policy that student students can spend a maximum of two years in a split classroom starting next year thank you for considering thank you Janelle Elliot hi I have I'm Janelle uh my daughter Macy graduated from yany Ridge as a French dual language participant from K through 5 and she learned so much it was amazing I am an evangelist for the French program at Yankee Ridge um we love the teachers dearly she still is

027keeping up with her French um she plans to learn Spanish I think it's just like opened her mind in ways that we could not have imagined when she asked as a kindergarten if she could go learn French um I now have another kindergartener girl Jada who just started this year and um I'm in that class just once a week and seeing how much they're learning I'm a huge fan of the new curriculum um my daughter my sixth grade daughter keeps remarking oh my gosh she's learning so much they're challenging her she's coming home with homework reading Madame quy and Madame romanchuk are amazing the best team um and so just watching what she's learning and I feel great about the amount all of her classes getting to learn I cannot imagine having two grades having

028to go through what is kind of an intense curriculum that we've adopted given what we did last year um and so I just asked can we feel good good about and are we actually allowed to set up a classroom knowing that the the kids in each grade won't actually get the opportunity to complete this curriculum This research based curriculum that we know is good for them um and we're combining them knowing there's no way that a teacher can get through both of those sets for each grade and while they learn a language um also last year I was at a French bpack meeting and I was told by admin and I don't know that this is a written rule but I remember explicitly being told that in dual language classes or classes that are predominantly

029um yeah learning a second language um that they would there's a cap but it would be 20% less if a class is a dual language class or a higher percentage of ESL students um and so we had talked about that and if you go over a smaller cap then you get an aid Etc and so I see the cap of 29 but from what I was told I think about a year year and a half ago if it's 20% less than I thought the cap would be 23 and that's with it not being a split so um I'm not sure if that's no longer a rule or recommendation but I think it would make a lot of sense um and then lastly I'm reminded of Wy um I remember they had smaller class sizes and

030they were seeing really good gains um and so I look at our French program Spanish program all the classes really and wonder if we able to reduce class sizes and give the kids opportunity to get through this really good material um I think we'll reap great benefits I think the kids will be learning they'll catch up and perhaps when we get onto other grades um yeah they they'll be able to handle what's in front of them and maybe less Services needed um and so if we take that time now to help them get through the curriculum I think it will be really great for our students thank you thank you um last up is uh Florence Matthew if um any else wishes to make a statement before the board you still have time to fill

031it up one of these sheets and hand it to Lori Johnson dear board members and superintendent my name is Florence Matthew I teach first grade in a French deal program last year I taught a first and second grade split class of 24 students plus one part-time student from the incentive instructional program last year we had a first and second grade group together in my class as well as third and fourth grade group together with another teacher these students who were in fourth grade in a split class are now in another split class for fifth grade this is their third consecutive year being in a split class and the situation is taking a to or performance especially in math for evidence six out of the seven fifth grade French DL students who took the math map

032test in December scored at 60% or below on the test that's six out of seven students the fourth graders who took the math map test in December who are in their second consecutive year of being in a split class also scored low on their math map test in December eight out of 10 fourth grade DL students scored below 60% on the test these numbers are very different from the numbers we typically encounter in our French DL classes for example in my class this year only five out of 14 students scored below 60% with 60 Minutes of class per day that only gives 30 minutes of math for each grade for split classrooms that model might be sustainable for one year but not for two years especially not for two consecutive years and it's absolutely not

033sustainable for three years especially not three consecutive years no other students in a district are placed in Split classrooms for more than one year except the students in the Intensive instruction programs which have been um a much lower ratio of students to staff being in a split classroom doesn't just affect our students math performance their math learning time is reduced in half but so is their English learning time their French Learning Time science social studies Etc we have received emails from the director of Cur culum with ideas of adaptations for IM am math in our new English curriculum CA we have already made adaptations to our curriculum to cover parts of each grade standards however it is simply impossible to teach all of the lessons and all of the standards in the same amount of

034time for two grades our fifth grade French DL students who are in Split classroom for the third consecutive year this year have accumulated three years of delay in math in English in French and everything else how are they supposed to be well prepared for sixth grade how can you let this happen especially in a time when there's so much talk about equity in a district the situation is the opposite of Equitable the split classroom situation is also discouraging new parents moving to Urbana from enrolling their students in our freno program which will hurt our enrollment numbers in the future as of right now the plan is for my first grade students to be in a split classroom next year when they will be in second grade they would share one classroom with the third grade

035students there would be 20 six of them in a second third grade class I'm asking you to please reconsider this decision and allocate more resources to our program so that we could split these two classes thank you thank you uh one last call is anybody else wishes to speak before the board tonight all right thank you um there is a call for an executive session after tonight's meeting for the purpose of litigation against the district um there will be no action taken Bo by the board after the executive session uh is there a motion to approve tonight's agenda is there a second second been moved and seconded uh any comments discussion roll call please member Jones yes member Hixon yes why we call I don't for oh I'm sorry I'm I'm I'm really exhausted I

036skipped ahead to the to the action item it's my fault all in favor say I I any opposed my my apologies um our first action item tonight is uh is an individual action item for administrative Personnel items and is she here um maranne okay go ahead Maryanne thank you bear with me I know I'm not Angie so I will try to do my best uh Janette if you can please come up to the podium tonight we have Janette Delgado she's a dedicated educator and teacher leader for the past 12 years here in Urbana Janette has spent the last 12 years working with the Dual language program at Dr Williams as a primary teacher and then moving to Le as an instructional coach she is currently the curricul implementation teacher at Yankee Bridge multilingual School beyond

037the school and District accomplishments Janette has been a fellow and Senior fellow with teach plus from 2020 to 2023 where she's had the opportunity to publish research articles and present to stakeholders at various conferences currently Janette is on the educator advisory Council for Advance Illinois Janette holds a bilingual bicultural education and Spanish bachelor's degree from Western Illinois University and a MERS of education and educational administration degree from University of Illinois champagne Orana Janette is excited to continue working in Urbana as part of the Sixth Grade Center team and getting to help establish a strong Foundation of education and success for students at the new building thank you for Prov the context to the motion um is been is there a motion I'm sorry I'm really out of it did we already move okay is there

038a motion for the floor I move second it's been moved in seconded any further comments or discussion roll call please member Jones yes member Hixon yes member Baxley yes member langendorf yes vice president exom president palowski yes members member Stanton yes motion passes [Applause] congratulations um much for I want to say thank you so much for this opportunity um Urbana has been my home for over TW for the over the past 12 years and I am Overjoyed to say that Urbana is still my home I have learned so much and have had some of the best mentors here within the district I am honored to be one of the first administrators for the Sixth Grade Center and to be part of the 12% of Latinos who are administrators in schools across the United States I

039am thrilled to continue to serve our students and families thank you all so much thank you congrat right and next up is our student ambassador report okay um I'm going to be covering four different topics today and um like I did for last month I'm going to be doing just some brief history because uh yesterday was the last day of women's History Month um so starting with Janette Ranken was the first female to hold a federal office as a House of Representative or in the House of Representatives um and she was also the only one to veto against uh entering the war or declaring war against Japan um next we have Roberta Bobby Gibbs who was the first female to complete the Boston Marathon and she had to disguise herself as a male to actually

040be able to race um and this broke a lot of barriers for women in athletic fields so next slide please Madame CJ Walker was the first female first selfmade bill uh millionaire in US selling hair care products for African American women um and was just a Forefront leader as an entrepreneur and Alice Paul was also a Forefront leader as a women's activist a women's right activist um and was one of the Forefront leaders uh campaigning for the 19th Amendment which gave women the right to vote um so we had the talent show this past Wednesday and we had a lot of fun acts um we had like rock bands some singers of course um the Mariachi florico um and solos Duets all just kinds of things and it was really nice to see the high

041school students uh showing off their different talents they had uh next we have UHS baseball which has a new coach this year and they're doing really well um they had a 3 win start that was like the first time they've ever gone 3 um in the beginning of the season for a while so they've been doing really well under new uh guidance see UHS track uh just competed at Illinois top times uh five athletes compete competed and three one medalists um the one on the very left Arland or uh got second overall in the 800 Kaylee Bell in the middle got eighth overall in the 60 meter um and Jeff and judai Al uh placed eighth in the 800 and they've all been breaking records during the indoor season so can't wait to see what

042they do in the outdoor and oh that was it thank you thank you now it's time for board reports is anybody wish to give a word report this evening go ahead Sherry I had the opportunity uh yesterday to go to central office and help put together um packets or bags for incoming kindergarteners um to help them um be prepared for their new school experience with materials um that will help them with pre-literacy and numeracy skills and I I understand that as students uh register for kindergarten that they will receive a bag um which also includes a new book for children to have at home as well and the books have materials in English Spanish and French so um I'm glad that we were able to do that for the district it was a part of

043a group of crusin who also uh committed $750 I believe to the project I think that was the amount um so I was excited to see that and look forward to the families receiving them um the other hat I wear is with the pantry and I'm um this is a new experience this semester going into and being in the entire lunch uh um periods for s a single day or twice a month and we've I don't have the exact amount for this month but through the semester just being there two times a month we have had over 140 kids come at least one time to get food and I think that number is going to be increasing so I'm I'm glad that we have that opportunity to do that so that's it thanks anyone else

044go ahead go Jennifer evening I just wanted sorry um I wanted to say really quickly that um I I don't know that we have had anybody apply yet to be on the board I'm going to talk about that oh okay well I was just going to we one application but we still have one outstanding so if you're going to do an appeal go for it okay that's what I was going to do absolutely um I was just going to say I am the newest yet oldest person on the board um and I would be very happy to meet with anybody who has an interest in being on on the board we're interest it is if you want to know about how much time it takes and um you know what it's like if you look

045on the board website each of us has our own email address that goes to us and you could email me and I would be happy to arrange a time to talk with you if you and we do all sorts of interesting things and think about the people that were just speaking to us they all made a really good case and what we do is decide oh my gosh that's a really good idea can we do this and this or this or this or this or that and um your voice other people's voices would be really welcomed and so if anybody has an interest look me up on the board I'm Jennifer Hixon not Jennifer Iber yeah so go uh go ahead going to bring this up um during the superintendent report but since you made

046a great segue I'm just going to talk about it now if that's okay with the board we were going to give you an update on how many applications we have um so we do have one applicant for um sit L seat but we did not receive any applicants and and our window closed yesterday for Tory seat so um I mentioned to Paul this would be a good time one to figure out when we would like to interview the candidate I mean we only have one so I don't know if we need to entertain an interview or that's been our process in the past or if we um so we can talk about that and then secondly um how would you like us should we just go out and kind of read vertise again and um

047do another appeal um to the public to really try to Garner some interest in the um subdistrict one right so I mean legally we have is it 30 or 60 days uh it's 45 45 days I split the difference so once once the election results are certified in the seat for subdistrict one um is empty we have 45 days to fill a seat before the regional superintendent then would have the power Just appoint anybody they wish to that seat um I would rather I think go through the process again and try to make another appeal personally but I like to hear what the opinions of the other board members are on the matter I'm so six six I'm sorry one you're six I got I got backwards I did it um anyway what what how

048do other Bo rers feel should be like reopen for another two weeks for just sub six absolutely I mean I mean we need to could we like put send Flyers home at King yeah I was thinking about that we could do a sky alert message I think we did that at the beginning but we could do it again and maybe we didn't do backpacks home we did a sky alert so we can do like a flyer that we send home and kids backpacks that's a great idea with with the app on it so people okay Y is it just the king or there other schools no it's not just king king king's a big part of it yeah that be they're like a great audience to hit first there's some Leal to yeah a little

049bit and then right and again of course there's probably kids that Yankee R Who attend to that that subd District too or from that subd district and we would just be opening it for the one subdistrict M yes yeah yeah it wouldn't be fair to no I agree oh yeah just for Tory seat yes okay we can do that and we can hit our social media again um I don't know if there are any spaces that you can think of that we didn't advertise that maybe we could this time we didn't do anything at any of the churches like there are a few churches in that neighborhood I just thought of that that might be something we could send like a flyer to those Church purchas to post or something it was posted the News

050Gazette um we did not put it in the News Gazette the articles there was a yeah there was a story they interviewed they interviewed member Hixon for it um but I can't I can't hurt to reach out to Jeff and for viewers watching at home uh that's posted on the screen there momentarily the map perfect thanks John good idea and Tuesday that's the blue one is District Six blue teal Church truce I said Tuesday I didn't mean that tomorrow is the conversation with the king oh tomorrow is and I thought maybe if I went to that I could make another appeal and see if sure I know they sent home a flyer today about tomorrow night they put something in their class dojo today about it so hopefully we have the weather's not supposed to

051be great so what should we set the closing date for U application you say two weeks or so April 15th then okay that's all good speaking about April 15 Friday what's is Friday the Friday would be the the 11th well if we did the 19th or 18th 18th Friday is good if we did like April I'm I'm okay with the 18th okay I'm not sure about people's availability but to interview the the candidate um is it Poss possible to do it before a meeting on the 15th because we'll hopefully all be here I don't know what time people can get here before the meeting when when there was only me um as a candidate you didn't interview it yeah I was going to say say do we need I don't think we need to interview

052as long we all we really need to do legally is like make sure they live in the in the subd district and we can still share the application the resume just you can you know you'll learn a little bit more about her if you we can do that for sure but yes you're right we did not do interviews when we just had one person right um and she's a current parent at Thomas Payne so great and she's a student ATS and at Thomas pay excellent okay so um the other thing that I wanted to ask is uh we have until May 12th I believe to seat the new members and so I was anticipating at least for this person we would do that for our first meeting in May that has been our standard what

053we've been doing so is that still yeah I mean how we've done it in the past is It's usually the meeting after we get the election results from the county clerks so sometimes that's been like the the first meeting in May there's been like once or twice it slipped into the second meeting and may based on you know what's happening in the county clerk's office but this in this case Jennifer's unopposed well yes well I know we know what the results are but they still need to be certified yes yes right so um I'm anticipating the first meeing in May but okay so that would be May 6 but you know it might slip but I'm guessing it will it won't so you wouldn't have to be here but it's kind of it's kind of

054tradition for the outgoing member to be honored on their way out yeah we usually will honor you and thank you for your service and and so after after that you're welcome to go there yeah you don't have to go sit in the audience you could go I mean nor yeah normally they they show up for roll call we say we give we say thank you and then we SP the new members and then take your picture and and then that's it and then the agenda on that evening is usually pretty light too usually not always well may is pretty bus yes okay all right thank you that is what I needed so thank you for that we don't have to do it later any other board report so we're here okay uh we do have

055uh three administrative reports tonight the first up is our SRO program review okay so I am going to invite the rest of our Focus except with the exception of the um District calendar discussion which is part two of that is on crisis and safety so um in the audience we have our school resource officers who who I'll invite up Lori or John do you want to put an extra mic up there maybe but um I'll kind of go through our uh introductory slides we're going to talk about the agreement um and then we have a a new topic in the study topics uh related to um safety for our students and then John is going to talk about um security crisis so tonight is crisis and safety night so um we're going to start with

056talking about our wonderful sro's um we have uh Chad Bernett here from Urbana High School and um Michelle Robinson from uh Urbana Middle School and currently next year she will serve both buildings um as the school resource resource officer for Sixth Grade Center and fors so I'm going to kind of just go through these initial slides this is just our um introduction for anyone not familiar with the SRO program I know we are um we we're in year five and um we'll talk about the agreement next but a lot of this is repeat for board members who have been on the board for several years um but I know we always have someone new out there who maybe doesn't know the background and the kind of our philosophy of how we run our SRO program

057we also have a couple of Urbana police officers who work really closely with the district um either through crisis team our crisis committee or our kind of our Liaisons for other things so they are in the audience with Mr Guzman principal from Urban high school and Mr Cooper princi principal from Urbana medal school so um if the board members have specific questions when we get to the end we we're have the principls are here and they can jump up and kind of answer specific things if you have specific questions but otherwise um officer Bernett and officer Robinson will share at the end of this so okay what is the school resource officer um so by federal definition um of our school resource officers and of course the definition is their career law enforcement officer sworn

058um Authority uh to and who is deployed by an employing Police Department or agency in a community oriented policing assignment to work in collaborations with schools I should just read it instead of trying to paraphrase um our uh school resource officers as you know are actually employees of Urbana Police Department um but they are also uh we consider them ours as well um but they technically are employed by Urbana police and they serve in the um they serve in the role of a career law enforcement officer in our schools um the primary goal of the SRO program is to maintain a safe learning environment and build positive relationships with our school communities okay why does Urbana have an SRO so our sro's um Foster positive relationships between our young people um and the police they

059strengthen police Community connections and support safe learning environments by protecting our students and staff from high threat situations that either start inside school or that have the potential to come into our schools from the outside in the community so um that is the overall general purpose and the um one of the reasons why however um we uh as a district also um believe that our sro's also um they are that front line of communication for us I think we all feel safer knowing that they are in our schools um and that they're dealing with really high need um situations they are also the liaison for the uh police department and the school district so when there are things that we need to know about um in a timely um just right away crisis moment um

060they are those people who are also serving in that role for us as well our sro's are trained specifically to work with students and intervene only in specific High threat situations so on the next slide we talk about the fact that that um they are not there to serve as Deans or break up fights and um deal with some of those High um kind of day-to-day behavioral issues um our s SOS do not engage in Behavior matters with students now they do have to intervene sometimes if it uh maybe a high threat situation that their presence can help diffuse or um if they intervene that that is possible but they are not there for for behavior management purposes to deal with just everyday student behavior um our administrators and staff um who are trained our

061Deans um manage those um situations they're responsible for student discipline issues but of course um officer brunette and officer Robinson are go-tos they're in the building so they definitely are sounding boards for our administrators when they um need to talk through something that they're concerned about um just having them there is um helpful as well the sro's collaborate with the administration on arrest decisions and divert youth from the criminal justice system whenever possible and appropriate I know when we initially um started the SRO program several years ago this was a um a a primary concern from um members of the community who came and spoke um I know I went to several uh City Council meetings um years ago where a number of people came out from the community concerned about um the prison Pipeline

062and that having sro's in our building um was um kind of feeding the prison pipeline well that is the opposite I feel of what how we manage our SRO program I can't speak to what other districts or what other schools do um but in our program um our last resort in any situation is an arrest um we want to do whatever we can to um get our students support to get them Services um if that is connecting them you'll see when they do their reports I'm connecting them with youth youth Assessment Center or any other social agencies who might be able to work with the family or work with the student um we do have to arrest uh students sometimes and it's the nature of being 2025 and things happen that did not used to

063happen in high schools that now we do have to address and sometimes there our students um are involved in Criminal activi in the community and we have to address that um especially if that criminal Community has the potential to seep into the building so um but those decisions are never made in isolation our SRO are always uh collaborating with the administrators they are really good about um making sure that they reach out to me so I'm not surprised or um if there are things that they're concerned about and they want to talk it through and say you know um we found out from the police Police Department that there is one of our students participated in a criminal activity and um they're going to be arrested so our SRO might then intervene and say hey

064I have a relationship with that student so I'm going to be the one to go and do that instead of having someone from Patrol do it because um we want them to be that person that our students see and Trust um instead of a stranger who they don't know and don't have a relationship with um being that person who um has to intervene and make that arrest that doesn't happen very often you'll again see that in the data that they share today but there are times when it has to happen um but to um say that we were diver uh diverting our youth from the criminal justice system I think is a really appropriate comment because we do that as much as we can and then what are some of the ongoing duties so um

065I haven't updated this slide very much because this is still what they're doing so um as I mentioned earlier they definitely liaison between the police department and our schools um and that is not just from 800 to 3:15 at the high school or 8:30 to 3:30 at the middle school that is after school and on weekends I mean so they're um staying up to breast on things that are happening they let us know first thing Monday morning hey here's all the things that happened over the weekend that you need to know about um so they are that liaison just just um pretty much all the time they need to be so they're that is kind of part of their role to make sure that we are not surprised um and have things that we don't

066know about that we need to know about um they also are the liaison between our schools and the juvenile detention center I just realized that says jdc but that's what jdc stands for so again as I mentioned um we do sometimes have our students who they don't make good choices and um when you don't make good choices and you commit crimes there's there are things that happen right and sometimes our students end up um here in town at the Juvenile Detention Center so they work as a liaison um between the the jdc with the parole folks um and they're also um keeping us the breast of things that are happening through that Justice lens so then we can make connections with our students and their families to make sure that we're keeping them connected however

067we can um they're member of the school threat assessment teams um I think Michelle is a member of the district threat assessment team um they both participate in the district crisis committee and on their school crisis teams um they definitely are resources for students navigating the court system and legal questions so not as much at the middle school but I know Chad has shared examples of students coming to him and saying what happens if this happen or um they may have a court date or um we have students or maybe their family members who go to court and they aren't quite sure about the process and they may come and say hey what does this mean um what is or what's going to happen when I go to court um at the high school of

068course we have driver's ed classes and so um one of the one of our roles is we want to get our SRO into classroom spaces whenever we can so driver's ed is one of those very natural spaces where um it makes sense to have a police officer to go and say hey um you know you should not be texting and driving and hear some of the things that can happen if that um happens and I think Chad is also still continuing to go to the business law class um when invited um they provide countless rides to students um needing additional safety measures or um sometimes we just have students that might be afraid um who they've been involved in something in the community and um they don't feel comfortable walking home or um you know

069going home on MTD and so they might approach one of our officers and say hey can you give me a ride I need to ride home and I don't feel safe to do that um and the fact that we have young people who do that speaks a lot to their relationships with the students that they would come and say you know I don't feel safe going home can you take me um attending meetings they are they are um available to attend meetings when there are possible threats or safety concerns are made um as well as those threat assessment um situations where we have a student that we're concerned about and we might involve them in that conversation of course um one of their roles unfortunately is uh confiscating items that don't belong at school like

070uh drug paraphernalia or uh vaping devices um and also we have had accidents on site and so uh I know that happens when you have young drivers in a parking lot right um so assisting students and staff when there have been accidents on school property and so they have kind of had to intervene when that has happened as well and you guys can stop me if your questions as I go along so that was my portion of kind of just the review of our program um any questions before Michelle and Chad jump in okay um oh go ahead sit l have question yeah how the students approach them when they need a right oh yeah you want you want to share yeah students will either approach me personally or they will approach their Dean and

071ask if they can contact me and see if we can make arrangements typically my policy with the Deans and they understand this is I have to have the permission from a parent to take them home so we make a call home and say is this okay if your son or daughter is is transported home by Officer brunette and generally they've never said no so that's that's my policy I won't transport a student home without a permission of a parent or guardian and the transportation is a police car it's the squad car the SRO squad car yes okay and this is uh until the student feel safe or it has like a limited time say that again it has a limited time or is until the student decide that it's okay to go back home by

072himself uh it's it's only when the student ask for the ride I mean if if is that what you're saying yeah yeah um some students may say I need a ride all week and we can make those arrangements you know I've had to take students in not this year but in past years I had to take one particular student home almost daily um and that was just the arrangement that we had and we wanted to make sure that he kept himself where he needed to go and got there safely so it it just depends on the situation thank you any other question okay I have a question I'm sorry um I guess it could be for either one of you but I know we talked about this last year also about the the vape stores

073and you know has that gotten any better because I know it's still showing up at the schools and I'm just wondering if there's anything you all could suggest that what can we do about that because I know that that's causing a lot of problems in the schools so one of the goals that I have that I've been working with I know my admin team is we are trying to bring in a new alternative for students that Vape because unfortunately right now um it's in school suspension or out of school suspension when they are caught with the device which we are starting to prove with Statistics and a lot of training that I've been through this year that if a student is vaping in school we already have an addiction so the reason why it's an

074to me it's a big like it's bad I mean my I have sixth graders that were it's it's getting bad but that being said we're going to try to go with a almost like a drug and alcohol counseling um for next year we're looking into if they're in school suspension so one of the reflections would be kind of like like the training that we sometimes have where you watch the video and then you've got to answer questions and it kind of gives like the what it can do the mental health those kinds of of things and it's something that they would have to complete as part of you know the the in school suspension um rather than being out of school and so we're hoping that those things um will correct it and change it

075if it doesn't then we are trying working with the mental health department at the school I'm trying to bring in like legit drug and alcohol counseling it's just a matter of trying to find the right mental health because you need a specific degree to do that and so it would be kind of kind of part of one of our like the stage groups that we're trying to get really implemented in the school so hopefully next year kind of things are changing we're trying to bring these new things to try to back off of it I can say my numbers have gone down from last year so it is kind of getting better but we're getting younger so well that that's really great I mean that's ins inspiring just to hear that something is you know

076in the works for that because I mean just hearing about sixth graders getting a hold to stuff like that is that just blew me away I mean for real but um I also really appreciate you know you going that extra mile and doing that that that makes a really big I mean it'll make everybody's life a whole lot easier and it'll save some kids right so thank you both schools are also implementing Vape sensors and bathrooms trying to just another level of prevention just to you know so that we can get on top of it faster um how they're getting them and how they G gain access to it I know that was your question they it's out outside of the schools I mean they're not getting them in the schools it's outside of schools

077whether they get an older brother or sibling or someone to go buy one and then they either steal it from them or take it from them or they they getting access to them and it's unfortunate because I think I think it's get like Michelle said the age that these kids are getting them is a lot younger than it used to be and my younger kids are just picking them up off the streets so they they're walking around find them on the ground at the bus stops they're just picking them up and next thing you know they've got one and they're using it so I remember you know just what what it used to be over here just like tiger Academy used to be a candy store and that's the most of the thing that we

078were worried about getting caught with so it's just blows my mind but thank you both appreciate it so um oh go ahead John um last last um spring I think it was when we had our um report from the sro's um it was recommended that we have an SRO at the Sixth Grade Center and um we're not recommending that now I'd like to know what changed and then will one or both of the SRO that we hire fors and UHS share some responsibilities for the Sixth Grade Center and if so will there be some dedicated space for SRO work time at the Sixth Grade Center that's required by the contract and then um do we have data to tell us the numbers about how many incidents there were this year in last year for the

079different grade levels so in other words when I looked at the data that you sent us um there were lots more fights and just as many weapons at as at UHS even though it's three grade levels instead of four um what we don't know is if these incidents were mainly involving the seventh and eighth graders or were there a s significant number of incidents involving sixth graders obviously you said The Vaping was sixth grad um so I was just wondering you know how important is it that the SRO be there fulltime have a full-time Presence at each school and therefore as they're taken away for some specific times at the Sixth Grade Center or I was just wondering how you were thinking that would work so I'll speak to the third SRO part first and

080Michelle you can talk about the seventh and eighth graders um so I think when we talked about the SRO we said that that would be we didn't guarantee that we would have one at sixth grade we said it would be something that we would talk to our band of police about um and of course any third officer that we have we have to pay our portion of that person's um time which is a significant budget increase um but again at I think at that time um when officer Bane and I talked about it there were staffing issues within the department we had people on leave people injured not we they had people on leave or injured and um at that point they weren't even sure if they would have an available officer to give us

081for the Sixth Grade Center um and so when I met with them that is uh still the case I think right now uh before they give us the third person um out of their rotation because if we if we take an officer that's taking somebody from Patrol or taking somebody that they desperately need right now to cover their own staffing needs so uh what we agreed to do for this year was to since it is the first year um is to see and Michelle can talk about most of our incidents are with seventh and eighth graders but um what we decided because of that because most of the incidents are seventh and eighth grade related that we would um just kind of use this year as kind of our temperature check to see um how

082often she might be needed down at sixth grade um what you know what incidents or what are the um real issues that would call her down to the Sixth Grade Center um and just kind of see how that goes um one then that is a kind of a good data collecting year for us and um two it gives the police department um the possibility to you know see if they're even going to be able to spare a person I know just from me following the conversations that happen at Council I Know Chief Boon has asked for additional officers and I don't believe believe that those have all been funded and approved um through the council yet so I think until the council approves add additional officers for their Department um I don't know that they

083have a third officer that they could provide to us for this next year now if we see a huge need and we see that there um which I don't anticipate but if if for whatever reason we have lots of new kids move in or something change from fifth grade to sixth grade and we really went to the police and said hey we really need that third person if the board was willing to pay the additional money um then that would be something I could go back to the Chief and Deputy Chief and um talk about but I think this year we decided we want to kind of do a wait and see collect data um and Michelle when it come I don't know if we want to jump we can just go to the Middle

084School slide if we want have you care Chad if Michelle presents first um and Michelle can kind of talk about the incidents that she's got listed here um I know we didn't we don't usually parcel them out by 6th sth or eth because most of them are seventh and eighth graders but Michelle can talk about that when she kind of goes through her data so I'll start with sixth grade for me is more of relationship building it's more of counseling it's more of mentoring getting to know the kids um one of the things that I do this year is spend a lot of time I'm meet and greet so I work at their door so it's just coming in and you know good morning morning smiles um I don't spend a lot of time in

085the sixth grade Wing I'm it's one of those things where I'm called to address something a lot of my stuff on that side really this year has been more threat assessment based than it has um anything else um a few Vapes but that like we're going to say it sixth graders do great the first semester second semester starts coming around and we're getting comfortable and things change so that's one of the reasons why we want the sixth grade centers we're hoping that we can have you know a uniform year with them that we don't lose them that second semester but mainly that's what it is with sixth grade it's just building those relationships getting them to know me at a friendly level um I spend more time between seventh and eth grade a lot of

086time in eth grade so by the time your eighth grade students they are unfortunately doing things that are more adultlike that more of your high schoolers are doing so I spent a lot of time in with my eighth graders seventh grade is just that transition year um yeah that's all I can say about my seventh graders but that's where it's at so I think the goal we have not figured it out yet um Miss Carr and I are going like that's the goal this summer is to kind of sit down and work on that and kind of figure out how we are going to split that time I know that it's been mentioned that most of my time will be spent at the seventh eth grade building on call for the sixth grade building I

087would like to spend time in the sixth grade building because I won't have that morning arrival time that I have with them now or lunch with them so hopefully things get better to where I don't have to be at the seventh eighth grade building all the time because I always make the comment if the cats away the mice will play that's what we're trying to you know reconfigure so that I can spend more time at the sixth grade building and kind of go back and forth between the two is the plan so just to get into my numbers for this year um we've had nine police reports this year and our police reports were due to the seriousness of incidences um all of these reports were some pretty serious situations that needed to be documented

088um and they were at this point I think well two of them were threats again which is one of the last of the bottom two of them were threats against School staff or students so those were either verbal threats to cause great bodily harm inside the school or they were social media threats to cause harm to the school or students within the school um and then the others were mainly fights that ended up with injury um I had four youth assessment referrals and those were due to seriousness of victim injury so all four of those we had some pretty serious injuries in those incidences three of those Yak referrals were from one incident most of our serious incidents are happening on the MTD buses on the way home a lot of that has to do

089with the fact that we have Yonder pouches now and no cell phones so we don't VI we can't videotape those confrontations inside the school so they're doing it on the MTD buses so they can um vandalism is at 19 and we kind of went through these because vandalism like all of these categories are General so we looked at some little things so like vandalism can be we just write on the desk these reports are serious vandalism so damage to something or permanent damage or time where our custodians have to go and repaint or clean things um we had seven thefts this year which is a big drop from last year um out of those seven thefts four of the items were recovered within the school day or within a couple of days of the school

090day and then three of the items were not recovered we had um a drop from last year with Vape devices we ended up um only confiscating nine I was very shocked when I looked at those numbers and thought no I'm pretty sure more well I I keep them so I have I have to originally eventually use for riskwatch um counted them we we've got nine Vapes so that's a that's a big difference um we have five Under the Influence or possession of control substance so our Under the Influence is going to be cannabis use so we only have five which is a drop from last year as well um I know last year reported at the end of the year and was really upset to give us our fights but we are down 100 fights

091from last year which that's a big drop but 187 fights without injury we had 18 fights with injury and then we had six assault and battery with injury what we document assault and battery in within the school system is a single person so meaning that a student comes up hits another person that other student does not defend themselves or fight back so it's just one like one person injuries have happened with that and then like I said the two threats against the school um on social media or verbal and then we went down in weapons as well so metal detectors are helping um we had four confiscated weapons so one Orbeez gun one knife that actually came in second semester so we made it all the way to second semester um we did have a

092student bring a pair of brass knuckles and then one razor blade um none the way that our metal detectors are and I just want to put this out there the way that our metal detectors run is that I can say this much none of these came through the metal detectors so we only have metal detectors at one door and then we have a two separate in in or entrances that kit students can come through so either they came in after a certain time period we don't have enough staff to staff the metal detectors all day so they don't go through the metal detectors after a certain time of arrival all of these did not come through the metal detector on the days that they were found they came from Word of Mouth of other students

093reporting to teachers or Deans that so and so had this so that's how and then there were no threats attached to any of those um I've done multiple transports rides home a lot of kids I miss the bus can you just give me a ride home type thing those are kids that I'm I know families and I'm exactly like Chad and that have to have permission from a parent to do so but a lot of my after school transports are kids that I I know the parents and they would rather me just take them home than them walk home and then I've done several home visits um we are working I'm working closely with doing a lot of treny visits these days trying to get um attendance back up and running for our middle schoolers

094because we got a lot of ones that out and then um working with SAS and DCFS so good news to report that the youth Assessment Center um has upped their staff and so they are going to start coming into the school so I've had the opportunity to meet with them so they are going to be able to start doing a lot of their visits at the school so that's one of the things that Chad and I will get to do to bring them in and are not all referrals to youth Assessment Center are through the police department school districts can also refer their students for additional help and resources that we don't have within the district so those are my numbers for the year questions from Michelle before we I had a question yeah um

095with the Vape device confiscation um is this something that's like students are actually using less or is it a thing where it's like they've just learned how to hide it better where it's like oh strict parents like raise sneaky children kind of situation so one of yeah one of the things I can say is tobacco use is used as a form of self-medication to relieve an anxiety so a lot of students that you My Vapes are all tobacco so none of the Vapes have been anything other than tobacco Vapes um so a lot of them are are hiding them our metal detectors do not catch Vapes just like you can take them on an airplane because you can go through the metal detectors at the airport and they don't go off they are getting very

096sneaky at where they hide them because it's in places that we are not allowed to go find them so for us it's we may get an alert and it goes off we pull kids out but District policy is if we can't find it on them then there's no way to prove so we have a lot of passing off back and forth um they're hiding them in the bathrooms so there's some like I said there's some things that we're implementing for next year to kind of change that and go from there but yes it is they are getting very sneaky and then parents don't understand where they're getting it from because it's not something that's condoned in the home it's just happening outside of the home or in school is the plan for Yak to come

097in will they have a like a targeted group of PE of kids that are maybe considered more at risk or have had um some of the issues that are mentioned here or is the plan to try to go in and reach all kids in some sort of so as of right now the goal is so back when I was in the school started in 2019 we had a specific um case worker that worked with Urbana and so it's it's hard hard for especially younger students to get across town to where Yak is and so what they were realizing that when you come into the school and do their check-ins at the school they're more successful with the program and so they like everybody else had staffing issues and were really low so the goal is

098to there will be ones that have been referred by either Patrol or um chattery inside the school but then if if it's a if it's a school youth assessment referral that they need like any kids that are slipping that we kind of see them going down that wrong path we can get that we can put them refer them to the program and kind of get them reset so they will have their own case load now I do know that um it's Stuart Williams he mentioned that that is one of the things he would like to start doing is kind of come in and which of course all this will be next year come in and kind of do more of overall with students and um be able to answer questions and address what the what

099the uh youth Assessment Center is and what it can actually help with because it's not just to prevent kids from being in the criminal system it can also help families with resources that they may not be able to find or provide for themselves I just wondered if it were more referral based just for the kids that have been referred or there is some of those conversations both prevention and services that'll you know happen at a bigger level or not that's a goal we got big things for next year okay yeah I was gonna ask that question too because I had not heard that yet so thanks Michelle for sharing that you said that you spend a lot of time developing or trying to develop relationships between yourself and students and I was wondering if you

100could convey some positive changes that you've seen in in kids because of your relationships with them so it comes down to when you have a good relationship with a student you can kind of get them to do what they need to do and there are students that will not respond to general staff in the building and then I get a call over the radio hey can you come help and so even though we don't address Behavior if you're a mentor and you have that relationship I can talk a kid back into class I can talk a kid down if they're in a heightened state if you have those relationships you're talking them down so they may be cussing out a staff member cussing out a Dean on the ver like things that we learn as

101officers they're they're clenching their fist they're on that verge of leave me alone or I'm going to cross the line I can come in and bring them down and they'll go with me and we can go we can talk we can get things calmed down and so we we're avoiding situations which a lot of times with the kids that that I have like my group is what I call my kids what my group of kids is that we're talking them down enough that it doesn't lead to them getting in trouble in the school so when they get to that heightened State then of course they do something so now they have to be disciplined if we can keep them under that state then we're avoiding the in school suspension the out of school suspension and

102that type of discipline that they're getting okay Chad UHS okay so my numbers are all f a little bit lower than they have been been in the past but we had six police reports one youth Assessment Center referral um one arrest I can explain that later it was it's titled an arrest because handcuffs were placed on a student although the student was then released to a parent um we have to title it as an arrest and I have to write a report on that because we placed him in handcuffs but he was so out of control not compliant with anyone he wouldn't leave the building until Patrol and myself placed him in handcuffs and his mom showed up and then he eventually went and it took his mom myself and Patrol to to get him

103out of the building it was just an unfortunate situation but we did release him to his mom and you know he's he's still not with us unfortunately but he's got other services right now that's available to him um I assist with EMS when they respond we had six cases where emergency medical responses required ambulances um seizure PE injuries um just sickness U things like that nothing related to any fights or anything like that um we had 27 incidences of with drugs drug paraphernalia vaping kids being under the influence of drug or alcohol we did have some alcohol incidents this year we had marijuana incidents um we we do have vaping with both tobacco and THC within the building at times it's not just all nicotine um the number is probably a lot lower than what

104goes on in the building I'm going to be honest we have sensors that go off sometimes we don't get to the sensors before the student or the person has left the restroom um and as Michelle said some of these students are being searched by a dean and they're putting these things in places that the dean is not going to they're not going to look for it so there that's probably a little bit low and could be doubled probably if not more but it is lower than and there's been less I think there's been less THC marijuana in the building than in previous years that would be my personal opinion um fighting has gone down we had 24 fighting incidents involved with and without injuries that involved 54 students roughly which means you know they weren't

105all one-on-one fights we did have a couple fights that involved more than two people um 40 incidents of gross misconduct which that can be also can be a fight it just could be a fight including after the fight then they're cussing out a teacher and then they just titled the consequence gross misconduct um there's were 40 of those this year there were a lot more of those type of incidents last year um we did have five weapons confiscated two of them being Orbee guns we had a little party in the parking lot with Orbee guns where students decided they were going to play with them like an orig gun is basically a plastic like shoots a water pet basically it's a like a a round bubble that's filled with water it's what an Orbee gun

106is they're not supposed to be on the property um our high schoolers tend to do it at ends at the end of the school year at certain homecomings different things um we we find them every once in a while um and we just confiscate them we had one knife we had two mace um canisters that were recovered again those weren't used in threatening manners but some of our [Music] students carry M some of our I would say our older female students more so carry mace on their keychain forget to have it and they know then someone sees it alerts somebody about it and then we have to remove it from them that's generally what what that is um excuse me what is it's pepper spray uh pepper spray or may you I mean it's another

107term for it it's just a small canister that you know self-defense type thing um I I dealt with eight parking lot CRA traffic crash incidents this year year where someone backed into another student or a student backed into a teacher's car or there's a minor Collision on the property um those happen those are things that I take advantage of that time to talk to both parties both families and try to educate the students what they need to do when those things happen I just use it as an educational moment because we're not going to write citations and do things like that at that time so we have to make sure that the information's exchanged um they have the right information on their on the person or in their car just explain the whole process that

108they would have to go through if they if it happened to them on the street um just explain the differences um we have multiple transports home I get asked by Deans to take students home whether it's a disciplinary issue if they don't have a ride they they can't get away from the building or they just need to leave the building for the day for some other reason the nurse or school nurse calls me at times because a student is ill and cannot parent can't come get them so I make sure they get home and get to where they need to be safely and then just students will come and request at times they miss a bus then they're panicked and you know we end up taking them home so just for various reasons and again

109I get calls from our social work office they have questions you know this student came reported this are we on the right path and what services would you recommend they typically have all the right answers but we collaborate together and make sure that whether it's a student that lives um in her's jurisdiction or the champagne County's sheriff's jurisdiction you know we get the right people to them to help them get service the way they need um we involve SAS DCFS we talk about Youth and youth and Center for Family Solutions to help coordinate some you know some families may be struggling we set we've set them up certain families up with them uh just to try to to bridge some gaps there um we do that so I would say overall our numbers are down

110I think there's several reasons that um that go play a factor in that one is the overall maturity of students in high school is a little different than in the Middle School level um you asked specifically if we had it broken down by grade level I don't have it broken down by grade level but a larger number of our fights are with our freshman students that are just coming in and learning the processes that we have in the high school and the numbers have consistently gone down each year I think uh this Administration now has has laid the groundwork in in our building that we we don't like to have the fights we try to get them stopped before they start um they're very proactive and and they've built enough trust with their students and

111students will come to me if they have a problem I can work with the administration or odine go directly to them and we can get ahead of it prior to it developing into a major you know distraction in the building um and we we respond very quickly to a fight taking place to try to limit the distractions so if you can eliminate the show from from prolonging then it it definitely helps the situation you don't have to have the hallways closed off for a long time you don't have to um distract other students from their learning environment we just try to keep people moving and get the problem to an office and if we can't do that then we make the or I make the decision I'll tell talk with principal Guzman I say hey

112we need to get some more help here and we'll just do some walkthroughs and we get and we don't have to do that very often we we cover it pretty quickly we've had to do that four or five times maybe with fights where hey this is out of hand we've got one popping off and then we've got others wanting to do this we just need to have a little bit of extra presence and they don't even walk through the building necessarily they just start showing up the parking lot lot and kids typically just start doing more of what they need to do so we try to limit that but I mean it is and at the high school level the the size and the you know strength of students is a little bit different than

113the Middle School level and sometimes you need more help and you know there's a greater chance for serious injury at the high school level luckily we haven't had we didn't have that this year we didn't have a serious injury per se we had some scrapes and stuff you know we've had had some injuries but not broken bones or serious concussions or anyone being knocked out or things of that nature so I think we're working well together um I think the trust that and the relationships that we have that from Administration level with students Deans all everybody's my relationships that I've built with some students I think it helps and is is just continuing to get better every year here so if we can keep laying that groundwork and um building on that then we're going

114to continue to have a better learning environment for our students and it's just the other things we do as Michelle we also attend games we provide supervision for games we're at their homecoming dances we're at their proms we're so they see our faces and know we're there to protect them and just to make sure that they can have a successful a safe environment so I think the more we can do that the better as well so that's I I enjoy what I do so that it is fun so I had a I'm just going to share this story today because of today's date it's 7:30 this in the morning and I left my office go to the to a hallway station and I see a young lady who I'm Who I'm familiar with um she

115had a rough start to the school year but we built a pretty good relationship she said Mr brunette I said what do you need Kylie shouldn't say the name and she's like there's going to be a fight I said where she's like April fools how I said you don't need to start our day that way but it was funny it was comical and and we we we had a good laugh first thing this morning about it so you know it's just those little examples of relationships that you build with your some of the student body that they know you're there and they real you're there and that you're there to help them so questions for officer Bernett of the U the 24 fighting in were they all in the building or were some of them

116on on buses is there like a breakdown between the two there were a couple on buses but most are in the building at our level most of them are in building we've had some on buses in the past as well but primarily these are in the building fighting incidents yes I mean if I know officer Robinson you had more of your fights on the on the buses I just wonder we to partner with MTD or something trying to figure out what we can do possibly to help alleviate that going forward it's been a struggle so we've been trying to do things um for the past several years actually um like I said it's just gotten worse this year but it comes down to we you look for that smoke signal to put out the so

117it doesn't happen in the school especially like for us our biggest thing is in lunch room um so then you put you know you put the smoke out or and you you got to always listen to what kids are talking about for the day but a lot of it just they just it pops on the bus like they there's there's a there's some of them that can keep it quiet all day and then they get on the bus and things just go from there and a lot of it is it's kind of hard to determine who's in it if you don't know because we have so many students on those buses um Dr I can contest to that because we've even had MTD come and like literally count the kids as they're going on but

118they're covering the cameras um you know it's they think they can't get in trouble if it's on the bus by the school so or they get off the bus and then they're walking home and then when they do come back to school the next day and they get in trouble at the school it's like threshold to threshold guys it's still so those are the they're trying to get it away from the school thinking they're not going to get in trouble at school so that's why it happens where it is but I mean it's far in a few I mean we still have a good ones that just pop off in but our major incidences have happened on the bus yeah or say or the bathrooms right the bathroom's not So Much Anymore for us and

119that that is a cell phone thing so they were so we had fight clubs the last couple of years where kids were going into the bathroom and videotaping the fights in the bathroom now that we don't have now that we don't have cell phones or if somebody does have a cell phone and they get caught videotaping a fight they're now getting con quences and then everybody that's seen in that video with a cell phone is getting consequences we're not having the fights in the bathroom I think I mean our fights are very minimal inside the bathrooms now so so I was going to address the MTD so um Maryann and I have met with MTD a couple times and you know some of those videos are hard to watch so um when we have had

120incidents where um I'm going to use the green bus for example the green bus at um is a a lot of kids and so we've talked to MTD about um moving forward like the like Michelle said we've had if I see something on a video and I'm like there's way too many kids they will they have a little counter um so I can ask them to run a counter check on the bus or they will send one of their folks out to actually just count to see how many students are getting on that bus but for next year because the green bus I think is one of our biggest concerns ATS um you'll see this when we bring the MTD agreement in April um well April 15th I think we're bringing it at the next

121meeting um we are asking uh we've asked them to split the green bus um so Sixth Grade Center will have their own green bus that bus will just go to Sixth Grade Center and and pick up sixth graders and that's it um and then we're going to actually split the green bus that goes TOS um so that will they they right now have a really long one um so they're going to have one two of the shorter ones um so we think that will at least um solve some of those issues and then U we have another route that we're going to add um a gray route um which will help alleviate some of the bodies on some of the other buses um but the green bus has I think primarily our biggest issue so

122that'll you'll see that um in the contract it'll be a little bit of an increase in cost but we think it's worth it um for the little bit of extra money that we're going to have to pay um for our MTD contract and it wasn't as much as we thought so we'll let J rank um come and talk about that but um but yeah it it was it's it's worth it for the little bit of money we're going to add to our contract to have those kids spread out um significantly on the green route and then adding that route to pull from like the gold and the orange and so yeah I had a question is it only the MTD buses or is it like also the yellow school buses as well mainly it's the

123they're they're packed I'm gonna say it they're packed and they're like sardines so you have all these kids in there they're not sitting down they're standing up when a fight happens unfortunately the kids that are sitting down now they're trapped so kids are climbing over them to get to see what's going on and so it just I mean I don't I don't know how the bus drivers handle it I me we've had to have admin ride on buses to try to prevent things from happening and they're allowed to stand up not everybody sitting down they pack on so we can't really separate the large group to like put certain kids we know that don't get along with others on one bus to the other and that's the issue because they don't I mean everybody's short

124when it comes to staff members and working and it it comes down to that we share it with champagne so it's route in time and then it's a matter of getting drivers that will actually do those particular routes so okay I think we if we if the board's okay can we go right into the agreement yeah okay is that all right so in that way I can leave Michelle and um Chad there so um we also have our representatives from our band of police here so um the agreement is basically unchanged so we have had no um parent complaints we've had no administrator issues related to the um our last agreement so unless the board had specific areas of the agreement um this year we did things a little differently in the past we have

125gone uh we've taken the agreement to city council first um but this year we this this um three-year plan we did it a little differently we're starting with the district first so we can talk through um if there are areas in the agreement that we have concerns with before we go to council but um so I'm looking at the one that says school resource program intergovernmental agreement so we're asking again for a three-year agreement if possible um I know our last three-year agreement went very well um the language that's here is basically the language that we kind of negotiated um the last Go Round And so we didn't we've not seen any um any incidents we've not had any uh major complaints about searching or metal detectors or um you know how the sro's are

126communicating uh with families or with the district so we basically um Susan looked at this as well have really no changes um to bring forward the only change really is the budgeting change um and I met with um Deputy Chief smiser and um I'm not going to be able to say her last name Elizabeth what is her say it again Hannon the um CFO role at the city and we talked about the budget and so what you have on your budget page you have a single page um that should have the budget breakdown for you and um that is a oneye um that is the the costs for um the year to come for 25 26 uh we are in the middle of a um Union uh negotiated agreement and so this is this is

127what we have for the year to come and then um once they negotiate their new contract with the um Union then we will get an update on that and I am not finding my one pager H yes so did you print yours or did okay thank you okay I get my mind I'm just gonna use Sher so and I'll give it back to her so um we have the comparison there for FY 25 which is current year to FY 26 and um I know if uh Matt or anybody from the police want to address any questions you have this is the standard billing um that we had last time where we have the salary uh we have just basically the negotiated agreement that the council has with the police Union um uniforms are included here

128equipment uh we Pro we pay um into um an amount for them to do their training which they typically do um in the summer and when we're off of off school um summer breaks things like that we also we want to make sure that they stay nazro certified which is the National Association for school resource officers there are courses that they can do online um or in person so there's some money there for that um if you remember uh what the police department does is they take all of their equipment the radios um all of those things and break them into like a replacement cycle for the costs um so we're not paying all the costs at one time um they take the cost and spread it out and then we pay a chunk um

129each year as part of their agreement um vehicle maintenance is there I know one of the one of the vehicles was having a lot of issues there for a minute that needed a lot of work I don't remember which one it was um and so if you look at the costs for this year compared to last year so last year um 391 533 for two officers and for next year including raises Insurance changes benefits things like that um the cost would be uh 410,000 for the district and that's our portion um and then the city pays their portion is 25% and ours is 75% so any specific questions about this this is the same spreadsheet that we've had multiple times just with different numbers and this is first read so um we're not asking you

130to votee on this tonight so if there's feedback um from the community or if we have any PE stakeholders who want to share feedback um if you could do that in the next two weeks and then we'd like to bring the agreement back and the um budget as part of the agreement um and ask for a three-year um threeyear renewal um and once the board votes on that on the 15th then I can pass it back to officer Bane and and he can take that back to Deputy Chief smiser and they can have this same conversation at the city council level in May I think right early May or something any questions from the board questions this I I last time three years ago I remember watching it all the um meetings here and also

131at the city council um and the discussions that were held about the positives and negatives and obviously we know the positives but a lot of the positives cames from the family and the students and I was wondering if there any students that we could get some testimony for to see how it's impacted their life and I and I think that that's was I was getting toward too when I asked about some positive things that have happened at the school because I know even the after some of the hearings that we have held some of the parents have said you need more security you need to protect our children and um it would be nice to get those parents you know to to um indicate what their needs are as well and that we're responding to

132their needs and to the students needs so would you like us to do that maybe have you come to the school I think that worked um I mean last time we had one of the we had we set up a time and City Council Members came over and met with um they met with Chad they met with teachers they met with students so that's something maybe Mr man could um facilitate and set up a time I think we just well in fact I would offered for City Council Members to also be present I mean do do it jointly with City Council Members yeah yeah that's okay the two bodies that have to approve this yes yeah so we can work on that and set a date and you know inform our city council folks between

133now I don't know if we in the next two weeks hopefully between now and the meeting when we would ask you guys to vote on this on the 15th um we could probably set I'm looking at Mr boozman you think we could do that okay yep okay and they and I'm sure you know the our sro's probably know the names of some students that they could recommend or parents to come and be part of that so and possibly some of the and possibly some of the parents who have spoken to us about it as well if you have those names yes specific people do you want to do it ATS too or or have see if we could combine some I know last time that was just at the high school right we felt like

134our high school students are a little more you know um they have the ability to inform an opinion and really share and um so I think that's why we hosted that at the high school last time maybe some of the teachers from the Middle School oh okay that be good okay so offic Robert could do that right anyone else right thank you okay thank you our last administrative report tonight is about the dist revisiting the district 2016 201 2017 calendar so you guys don't all oh Mr Cooper you can go but if you guys can stay for the Handle With Care I don't know ify Corey yes okay so Michelle and Chad thank you thanks Mr Cooper we'll try not to have this take too long yes um so the district 2026 2027 calendar oh

135did I give her her she's found another one okay um we're going to talk about the calendar really quickly so something that um one of our committee members uh brought to my attention and this is um an oversight on my part when we brought you the previous calendar um we neglected to include election day so um I was working under the mindset of Elections happen every the major elections every four years um and we forgot that two years ago Governor pritsker um passed legislation that in Illinois um election day is to be a school holiday for schools and so um because um we approved for 2526 it did not impact that calendar however for 2627 uh we neglected to include election days so in adding election as you will remember um when we brought you

136the last calendar um we have to make some decisions when we only can have 176 student attendance days um it isn't as easy as um just adding election day and saying okay we're going to you know add another day um it's it's really hard um sometimes to make those adjustments and to make things fit so um what we did is you know how committee Works committees work works so I I took this information back to our committee via email and um asked them to share their um insight into uh or their thoughts around what should be the district's approach um and so what you have is a little picture with a pie chart there um that shows you uh some of the options that we asked the committee and I actually these actually came from

137the Committee Member um suggestions of what could we um do in adding election day in um what would be some options to consider um as tradeoffs so to speak of how we can fit in one day and take something away um on the other hand so uh we talked about four different options and know that these were shared with the committee via a Google form um the first one is um as previously discussed so this is something the this is the language that the committee saw exactly so I just copied it for you um at one of our meetings we talked about the fact that there were would be years where we would um not be able to for different reasons have um all three of our cultural holidays a good Friday yam kapore and

138Eid within the calendar so next year um it it just depends on the days right so for 25 26 and when when some of these um moving holid holidays I because they're on a lunar calendar when they fall um sometimes they're going to fall on a year where it is a school attendance day and sometimes um they would be observed on a weekend so um we looked ahead and we said that as a calendar committee one of the things that we could do is do an alternation so to speak so in a year where we would have um we would have Eid as a holiday um or an observance then if the next time we needed to make a decision around um one of those religious holidays then we would um do a trade or

139alternate um with yam kapor so um that was one of the first options that we share with the committee so to add election day to to November 3rd we would keep uh Eid on March 10th 202 7 and because we're celebrating Eid and I mean we're observing yam kapor next year um in the following year in 26 27 we would observe Eid instead so that was one of those options um we also have the option of extending the school year which means adding a day to the end of the year um it's really hard um asking uh staff members and students to come back after Memorial Day yes we've done it um but that was back in the days when we had snow days and we usually had days to make up but now that

140we are not utilizing snow days at the end of the year um thinking about what the attendance would be on a Tuesday after the Memorial Day holiday weekend would be um pretty minimal so that but that was an option that was suggested um Chang the proposed in the first semester which is what we're doing for 2526 we added that additional day um in De December white right before winter break and that is a um going to be a remote day for staff so we added the day um we added a student attendance day so the students in there winter break on a Friday and then staff come back on Monday as a virtual work day for them um so we said hey we could do that again as an option maybe to add that day

141at the end of the first semester and this was a um unique idea that one of the uh committee members came up with that I did not think of is um moving parent teacher conferences to the Monday and Tuesday of fall break and then we have a shorter fall break um that Wednesday Thursday Friday would be fall break and then we'd go into the weekend and that the teacher um we wouldn't have to make some of those other changes to the end service time so you can see below um the break down of how the committee members voted so we had 24 responses I think we only had one or two people who did not vote um one person voted to extend the school year three people voted to add an additional date to the

142first semester uh five people voted to move conferences to fall break and have a three-day break and 15 people voted to go to an alternating model for um observing yam kapore and Eid when we would need to do that so um Sherry as a member of the committee and then um one of our um administrative assistants Julia stelle looked ahead and that document I know but I think we'll we'll just look at Sherry's as a way to just kind of talk about the concept I think mine is different because it says a school year and we looking at it the school year so if you look at this little chart that says from Member langendorf it gives you an idea of what that alternation might look like so there are some years where we will

143be able to um celebrate and observe all three both yam kapore and Eid but on the years where we have um election day vows would be the every other year where we would need to make a decision about which which um religious day do we observe and which one do we not it's also very complicated because they both are moving dates so they aren't like I set day of the year like it's not like July 4th whereas July 4th no matter what um these days kind of um move on us and so what Sherry did here is try to kind of look forward for a few years to give you an idea of um what that alternation might look like the date on the 20 2026 2027 for e is March 9th and 10 yes

144March 9th and 10th thank you um so that's I just wanted to give have a visual for you to think about um what that looks like because I do think there the years where we don't have election day we'll be able to do both if they fall on a um school day um one thing that I know Sherry's pointed out is um the we do have a religious leave day and I know um sometimes our staff members take that but there we need to do a better job as a district to promote um and remind staff members that they have that religious leave day available to them um and so if it is a year if you know if you're um you want to celebrate yam kapore and it is not in our calendar or

145we're not celebrating it that year then we definitely have um that religious leave day available to staff and the same thing for Eid um and I know our um people who uh celebrate the Christian holidays don't have to do that because Good Friday is is one of those days that is um just always a day off for us so it it it kind of isn't um not it's not equal because our our Christian holiday we don't have to make that choice so I am going to stop talking I know Sherry's on the committee so I'll let her uh share um any comments that she wants to add um yeah I I just want to convey that I you know I think that the the dates speak for themselves there's not much that we can do

146um we try to choose the best one the one objection that I have is that you're you're conveying or you're giving the impression that you're alternating you cannot alternate if a if a if a holiday falls on a weekend that person who celebrates that holiday doesn't have to make a choice but the person who does have a holiday during the week and that and doesn't have the religious day off that person has to make a choice that student that has to make a choice whether or not to come to school that day or to follow their religion and it seems like every year and that that that Eid has a day off is um a day um they don't have it is a day that it's a weekend so they're not really being able to

147sacrifice anything it's it's pretty easy you know to see so the only um exception or the only requirement I would would be is to take off alternate because that gives a a um an an impression that somebody is giving up something and someone's making a choice and it's not it's you're not alternating it just to be fair you're alternating it but it just so happens that it works out that one day is on a weekend so that's really not alternating it's just the way it worked out um the only thing else that I would um ha see if we could consider in the future for staff on staff only is that when there's a um a year and there's just I think there are two of them where um yum kipur is not given I

148believe um that doesn't yeah what one there might be just one next within the next five years but if um staff could be given an additional religious day so that they can take religious day for rashash Shana and for yumore and not have to use a personal day for a holiday in as much as they're not being given that day off sure and I and one re one relig just yeah there's one relig so yeah so um and as I shared with um Sherry is um because our benefit time is part of our contracted agreement with the Union that would be something that we would have to next year when we're negotiating our next contract um talk about that as a additional benefit leave option um with our UA I think that would be fair

149and reasonable so thank you yep and again um you know I don't know um I know this is definitely something that is a a governor pritsker initiative and you know I don't know um how long he may be you know I I've heard that he may run for again for governor he may not but um I do anticipate if and if he is no longer the governor in this next term we more than likely would probably go back to only having days off for presidential um you know national elections but this is where we are for now so just to project it out we thought it would be useful to let just allow you to see that so I wanted to add that at the delegation um at the conference it did come up and

150it was supported that if your school um does is not a election poll location then the school or the district can apply for an exception to having that day off just like some do for Veterans Day as well so because there are lots of opportunities to vote except for V right okay so this is just for you to this is a first read of the change again so we're not asking you to approve this tonight um we wanted you to bring back a what again we this is 2627 so we've got time um so we're not going to vote tonight but we wanted you to have the information and have the both of the charts to look at and to go back and um we will look at an approval for our April 15th meeting

151great thank you and thank you to the calendar committee for your continued hard work on on this it's not easy very patient yes um our study First St topic tonight is lifting up uh for Handle With Care presentation okay so we have and Katie Kelly is joining on Zoom so okay I was going to introduce her so Katie Kelly um is the uh CEO and founder of um Handle With Care and so I'm going to invite um Cory Coker and Matt are you coming up to perfect um to the table it is a um a a kind of new initiative to East Central Illinois but not new um in the state and so uh Kelly I mean Katie Kelly is going to hop in there um her presentation is the Handle With Care and this

152would be a collaborative effort between Urbana school district and Urbana police um which is why we have our guests from Urbana police here joining us can you hear us can everyone hear me okay okay yes all right fantastic well thank you Dr Ivory Tatum and um Schoolboard members it's great to be here here this evening my name is Katie Kelly and I'm originally from Poria Illinois so Central Illinois has my heart my background is in local government and nonprofits uh specifically at the intersection of Juvenile Justice public health and education oh are you ask my video Let's see you guys get to see my face I don't know it's dark over here if you want so you can still see me uh didn't look like it turned on it it's fine either way okay I'll

153I'll stop it so it doesn't keep trying to take bandwidth um so I used to work for a research institute that facilitated countywide efforts to support um Youth and stem the school to prison pipeline I then worked at the Poria Police Department as a management analyst working on our violence prevention grants and that path led me to creating lifting up and the reason behind it was that every day I got to see the school to prison pipeline in action I would hear about incidents happening in the community um major SE search warrants being executed youth being displaced from their home for example and then sure enough the next day or within a couple of days before the end of the school day we had some of those kids involved um being picked up and brought

154to our juvenile unit for fights or other Behavior the problem with all of that was that no one at school knew what those students had been through so as was mentioned earlier by the SRO when the students were in that fight or flight when they've had the clenched Fist and they're they're feeling that aggression that can because that can be because of their experienced trauma but if School staff doesn't know that they don't have that background they can only take the behavior on face value so what Handle With Care does is helps connect the dots around the occurrences of traumatic events or adverse childhood experiences between First Responders and schools to let key staff know in your buildings hey something may have happened to this student and so they are ready with their trauma responsive

155supports and processes what we do that's different than the national model is that we automate that communication uh in the typical Handle With Care model that is being implemented across the country and throughout the state of Illinois the burden is on the officers to recognize the situation fits the criteria identify that youth are Pres present and then take the extra step to communicate that information to the school either by filling out a form opening an app sending a text or sending an email that might seem like an easy thing to do but when your offices are going to dozens and hundreds of calls for service each shift that is just one more thing that can fall through the cracks what we do with lifting up is tighten that net and automatically send the communication if

156the data fits the criteria so here so here's how it works we start by receiving we lifting up start by receiving a data export from the police and the Sheriff's Office this data is very limited we have very few pieces of data it is incident date incident ID incident type and incident location we only receed this information for incidents that are related to adverse childhood experiences because that is what we have information about from the research so it's not every single police contact it's Focus to those incidents that we know can cause students harm in their central nervous system and impact their ability to learn and engage at school at the same time we receive again a limited data export from the school with certain key pieces of student data including uh their basic demographics

157their school and the grade and their custodial addresses and then we process those two data sets in our secure Cloud location and if there is a match meaning a qualifying incident occurs at a student's home a very discret email is sent to specific trained individuals at each school that would be the principal and a designated and trained student support staff member and possibly the SRO now why is this important because as we've heard all day you all are working hard and the school staff are working hard to keep kids in school you want to increase attendance you want to improve academic performance you want to increase graduation rates but adverse childhood experiences can undermine all of those efforts and impact the education outcomes of students who experience them through no fault of their own but

158that is not their Destiny the negative effects and possible risk factors of Aces can be mitigated one of my favorite studies and I cite it all the time was done by the Illinois Aces response collaborative they studied students at Chicago public schools and found that students that had two Aces and two protective factors had a 53% decrease likelihood of mental health problems specifically suicidality compared to their peers that had two Aces but no protective factors that that is powerful enough as it is but it gets even better when you learn what those protective factors are they are a trusted adult at school and they play a sport not that they have access to impatient treatment or weekly mental health counseling or a higher socioeconomic status they just need connection and that's what schools have an

159abundance opportunities for connection the problem is because you have so many students in your buildings and in your classrooms it can be hard to know which student needs help exactly when they need it aces are like an invisible weight that students are carrying in their backpacks and into your schools but on the face of it on the outside you can't tell which one of these backpacks is heavy that's what handle withth care does we tell you look Josie in the pink backpack she is carrying extra weight today she needs extra connection and support so it helps pinpoint and direct resources and staff time to students who need them exactly when they need them so that we can can effectively have early intervention and prevention of those negative outcomes our goal with Handle With Care is

160not to pry it is not to dig into students family lives however the effects of adverse childhood experiences cross into your buildings and so the whole goal is to help students get out of toxic stress and be ready to learn by making those connections we know that when students feel safe and they have an opportunity for connection that is when they're able and ready to learn and the handle withth care response process pardon the incor incorrect acronym right there um one of the communities we work with calls it youth tip the Handle With Care response process supports this when that staff received the email each day they work together as a team to figure out who is the best person that contact make that connection with the student do they already know the student and

161have a relationship or is this going to be an opportunity for an introduction once you decide who's best then someone is making that neutral connection through a check-in and this is all through an indirect neutral process the staff are not referencing anything that happened and they go through a training so that they know the best way to connect with the student in this way and it's just to speak with them and connect with them as humans as people we care and it lets them know we care about them both in their life outside of school and within the school building with the ultimate goal of getting them back to the classroom through support and consistent connection over time so it's not just the and done there's that neutral checken because of the notification but then

162there should be opportunities to continually engage very quickly two minutes throughout the year so that that student now has someone that they trust and this model that that multi-step process is rooted in brain science I don't know if any of you are familiar with conscious discipline by Becky Bailey but she walks through how a child's brain reacts in their different states so if you look to the left when a person anyone experiences a traumatic event or an adverse childhood experience you might know this as fight flight or Fawn those innate reactions that we have to trauma she references those as a survival state so a student can still be in survival State even the next day and and they don't even know it their central nervous system has reacted and the only way to get

163someone out of survival state is to make them feel safe but that doesn't mean everything's okay there's actually a step in between so the next stage that a person goes through in their brain is then they reach this emotional state they've moved into their lyic system and now the only way that they can move out of that is through that connection through that neutral check-in that we have established then and only then is the student moving into executive state which is the place where they're actually able to engage their prefrontal cortex and be able to learn if a student is not in that place it doesn't matter how many hours they spend in the classroom they are not able to learn so the Handle With Care model helps us to quickly and effectively get students

164who may be experiencing trauma brain or this survival State all the way up to Executive State and ready to learn in just a few minutes so here is just a quick snapshot of what the email looks like it will have the name of the building and then a list of student ID numbers that's it we do not share what the incident was or any details number one because we don't want to pry we don't want to violate any privacy but mainly because it shouldn't matter the person who's doing the check-in should follow the same protocol regardless of what the incident was they're going to check in with that student and so we keep it neutral in addition uh if your District were to implement this system everyone who receives emails and anyone else that is

165um at District leadership will have access to a data dashboard where all of this data is tracked and visualized for you this H this is visualized at a district level so where you can see here total impacts by grade that would instead be total impacts by building and so you all can make decisions around once you see the the level of trauma exposure that's happening you might make decisions about resource allocation and things like that and then for example a building principal would be able to dive into their building and see the same information but on a grade level again so that they can make strategic decisions you can also track here in the bottom right corner this is one of my favorite impacts of Handle With Care in our system is that we can

166track the cumulative impacts of these events per student because we know that that when a student experiences four or more Aces their risk for negative future health outcomes and Criminal Justice System involvement goes up exponentially so as we see students trending towards that number we can make sure that resources are available to help with that early intervention and prevention and that really follows your existing multi-tiered systems of support um within it by the way this is a real example from Poria public schools with the student ID redacted of course um the team can also and is recommended and encouraged daily to go in and actually click on the student ID number to see the details around that student specifically their cast exposure to these types of events this is where for example the social worker

167would or the counselor would be able to see oh is this their first or is this their third how close together were these events and what resources might I need to be prepared with when I make my check-in with this student so they can go in prepared you can also take a look from an incident perspective so by clicking on the incident ID you can see all the students that were affected by that incident so basically you're getting the household perspective those students might all be in the same building they might be in different buildings it allows for opportunity for coordinating care for the family if it ever Rises to that level and as I mentioned the intervention process is not uh we are not standing up anything separate anything new the Handle With Care

168notifications simply activate the existing multi-tiered systems of support that are in place in each building so um before we were to begin every building would fill in this flowchart which people do we have available at tier two and tier three what resources do we have available at tier two and tier three and what are the protocols so that those are naturally activated if the student is showing that they need that higher level of support and in addition again this follows mtss but I always like to show this slide as well to serve as a reminder that Handle With Care is not one-dimensional adverse childhood experiences affect every conceivable component or element of a person so it's not just a mental health issue it is not just an academic issue it is not just a safety

169issue it is all of those things and so when we will train your staff we go through a lot of exercises to get them to think about this from multiple perspectives how does attendance play in how do nurses visits play in how do discipline referrals play in and what about IEPs for special education students these are all factors and Handle With Care is just one more piece of data for your team to consider as they work to support the whole child um I'll just touch on this briefly it's in your packet but as you might be wondering how is it legally possible to do this there are a couple of key steps that need to be taken um in order to allow the data sharing that will need to happen so um the first step

170that we have here today on the agenda is a vendor contract that basically makes lifting up a An approved vendor and allows us to receive your student data according to furpa and soapa standards and then once that's executed we would facilitate an intergovernmental mou between you the police department and the Sheriff's Office because basically the data is coming from First Responders to the school lifting up is simply the intermediary that we are receiving the data and processing it on your behalf for you you own and control the data if the contract were to end for any reason you receive all the data and we delete it and then from there it's a very simple process um we have already verified that all of the records systems of all three agencies have the capability to set

171up the data exports that we need so the data will come automatically and daily without anyone needing to do anything each day once that is set up we would then schedule um the implementation training with staff so that we can be very sure that everyone knows how the data is to be used how it is not to be used and how to connect with students effectively appropriately and in a research informed way we will also maintain quarterly contact with the team for support to answer questions to share stories and data across buildings and really create that peer learning cohort okay that was a lot of information um does anyone have any question questions I can go back to anything and I know we also have several folks here who can step in and add anything

172that uh I might have missed board members any questions uh guess one I have is like um how do you ensure uh the a correct match between uh the uh the police report and the student in our in our database very great question so that is all done by address matching um there is a step that is done during the during the analysis process which by the way happens in like three minutes um W with both data sets for every address we first verify that address independently um to match it with USPS standard addresses so then once both addresses are standardized then we're able to effectively look for a match in both data sets we we are based on location as opposed to for example student name for a couple of reasons number one is

173that addresses are easy to standardize um and names are not there are often many people with the same name even if you collect date of birth there are way too many um opportunities for misspellings but then also what we have seen in other communities where we have both an officer initiated process and the automated process operating together sometimes the officer only sees one sibling the others might be upstairs or they might not be home but that doesn't mean they aren't impacted by the traumatic event that happened and so um that's why we use address and that's how we Ure the match we have a high number of unhoused students in this District as well as students with high levels of Mobility the district has a hard time keeping up with with student addresses at times

174so I'm just I mean I I I like this program I'm just giving you a heads up that um for some of our student body it's going to be a challenge to make sure this is accurate agreed yes that's definitely um that's definitely a challenge that we face with with every school district we work with the other question I have is I mean I'm not 100% familiar with with fura or soapa but uh what assurances would the district have that uh uh you know these student addresses aren't shared with any any outside agencies federal or otherwise I can talk a little bit part the security stipulation but uh yeah so we have with all of our uh people uh I have our student D data privacy page here uh which answers kind of all of

175the the things that govern our uh data so uh for all the companies that we work with that we have any data sharing we have to have data agreements in place uh just to kind of how they maintain that data and how they do it uh it's all kind of outlined on this page uh if anybody's interested there's some videos that cover each of those topics as well if you're asking specifically about what internal precautions they're using I'll kick that back over to Katie but uh we'll have data privacy agreements uh legal agreements with them uh in place for to protect the district and our student data anyone else and that's covered in theou um with the Urbana police that we have here too about the data sharing yep and there'll be a separate we're

176required to have a separate soapa agreement I think the other thing that um when our attorney um re previewed this and kind of she was in communication with Katie is Katie mentioned that um the people who would receive this information would be trained um and you know when we've talked with her that would be a small Core group of people it wouldn't be like the whole threat assessment team um because we want the people who would be interacting with the students um to be trained because we of course we don't want to ret traumatize our kids we don't want to bring you know K when Katie's Zoom with us she gave us some really um very clear language that we would train our sta like our social worker or the principal or whoever might go

177to the student directly um and how they engage with that person around you know you don't say oh I heard the cops were outside your house last night I mean you know and that and that happens right like kids say that to other kids um unfortunately we might have adults say that to a student I heard the you know I heard the cops were outside your house last night so we would have be very intentional in the way we would train those staff members to approach our young people so again not to ret traumatize them um but I think the keeper of the all of that information um we're going to have to really talk with those folks that are trained about the importance of that confidentiality and that they're the keepers of that information

178and it isn't something that they come back to the building and talk about in a lounge or in other spaces so um I think the training that we received from Katie and her team um are going to be critical anyone else I have one last question what is there any financial obligation from the district so on the at the last page of the agreement um there is a um Handle With Care implementation using uh lifting up fees so um this was brought to me very um interestingly um from officer Coker from Urbana police but also um from the United Way so um the United Way be Baker who um is one of the executive leaders leaders in the um United Way of Champagne County um they approached me with this program um and said hey

179we really we really want to support you in um offering this to the young people of herana and your Ned way would like to be a partner with you in this and so um because we are kind of calling it a pilot we're saying we're going to do it this year as a pilot to see um I think the one thing I Mr Guzman is still here in the audience but we've had um a couple of zooms now with um District administrators um Matt Bane is part of our district uh crisis committee Tori is one of our crisis reps so we've talked about this at the crisis team and there were concerns not so much around data sharing but just the number of reports that we might get in a day and I did not

180um recently until very recently as as we've been going through this and talking about it um I've been in a space with Chief Boon and we talked about it and I've heard numbers from our officers I didn't realize with our small community here in Arana how many police contacts there really are um and especially like even incidents like of domestic abuse and intimate partner violence I did not know the number number of just the sheer number of calls that they're going out into our homes um and so it when Beth Baker and Corey came to us with this we thought wow this is great but then when we talked about it we thought how are we going to manage you know if we get a hundred of these or you know how many are we

181going to be getting on a daily basis and so in our recent um interactions with the police we we've said that we are one going to make sure that we can manage it on their end and our end and that we're not overloading our administrators or the very small team of people who would be getting this information so um but then we asked that question of Katie um I can't remember what the number was Katie did you say not more than like in Peoria are you see and Poria is what four times the size of orand maybe five in ter well I mean in terms of their students um go ahead Katie um if you don't mind would it be okay if I popped up another slide sure I think I can replace okay so

182you know no Community is exactly like another yes um but I did want to share with you some comps from other communities um I expect that you will be around 500 for the year um or so and I kind of ballpark that based on what we've seen and and we tend to get around found 10% of a student body um numbers wise this is from our school districts not including Peoria Public Schools in peori and tazwell counties Peak and District 108 is most comparable size-wise um I don't know if it's necessarily comparable from a crime rate perspective but based on the number of students um they they do have quite a lot of calls for service so I think that's one way to look at it and before we get started our process is to

183run a historical analysis which is not 100% accurate of course because we're looking backwards but we take one point in time attendance student data against one year of the qualifying incident data from the police and the sheriff and we populate that into the data dashboard for your team before the school year starts and we found that that's a great way just to give everybody an idea of what to expect for their building CU like your high school might have more activity than one of your other smaller buildings or it just very much depends you all know your neighborhoods your school buildings and how many students you have at each so we think that will be a way to prepare people and if we need to adjust the filter criteria of what incidents are included or

184excluded we can yes and then just one more point it's not necessarily exactly on topic but what we have found this is Pur anasl but it is true for deal and it is true for the five districts we work with in New Jersey the mo most common is adult arrest that is usually between 50 and 60% and then the next most common is violence incidents but we do capture things like mental health calls um deaths certain substance abuse related incidents fires child welfare those kinds of things that crosswalk to Aces and then we will provide a breakdown for you of the different types of violence and for most communities by far domestic violence is the top but there are also of course weapons charges sexual violence and general violence and by that I mean um

185your assault your battery uh things that aren't specifically domestically labeled that that more General violence of fights things like that so um Dr Ivory Tatum and her team will get this usually twice a year but we can do it more frequently that aggregated highlevel view of what's going on and what are your students experiencing that they are bringing with them to school thank you Katie that was really helpful um and back to Paul's question about the fees so I mentioned United Way because they um have agreed to help fund our pilot this year and cover the costs um and the Community Coalition um is the other group that is um has stepped up and said that they really want to um they want to explore the opportunity of maybe this is something that we might

186do in Champagne um and because we're a lot smaller and because of our um our relationship with Urbana police I mean we have a very collaborative partnership um so we are a a really good Community to do this um piloted here and I I believe their conversations about possibly um doing it in champagne and so the community coalitions uh stepped up and said that they would pay for the other uh portion not covered by United Way so those fees of um $7,997 would be covered by our um Community Partners that's per year um that is per year okay all right any other questions thank you for having us by the way uh my name is Cory Coker I'm a lieutenant with youra Police Department I oversee the criminal investigations division or the detective Division I

187can assure you it's a lot more cooler on TV and movies than it is in real life uh but cool nonetheless um I think it's a wonderful idea I actually helped implement the crisis co-response team for the Urbana police department and with any additional uh resources to have is better than not having them uh and I think it's just a better uh clear communication line to the school officials uh and using Katie as our vessel to to get that information to uh take a look at some kids that are having some issues uh that that need some attention I think it's extremely important that we're that we're all taking care of all all of our kids anyone else I mean I think the training alone's probably worth the money even if we had to pay

188it ourselves so oh absolutely absolutely um I mean I'm I'm in favor of progressing forward so you have the agreement and um anou from our police I just realized that the one that you have a copy of theou has um some highlighted areas that we'll make sure we fix um by our next meeting before Paul or the board approves it if you approve it so we'll make sure we get the 2025 date on there that one still has an an older highlighted date on there that we need to change but we'll make sure that the um for the uh approval meeting you have the um right date on the back of thatou and um we'll be asking the board to take action on this at our next meeting anything else you guys want to add

189okay you thanks thanks for your patience and hanging out tonight thank you Corey and Matt you're staying are you gonna stay in for the crisis committee I can okay it's yours it's mine you guys have made it so easy on me so far tonight like all right uh next study topic is security and reification and thank Katie thank you Katie thank you all so much for your consideration thank you have a great evening you to uh study topic 11.2 is our security and rication update love be John yeah and we wanted to just go ahead and uh provide some information uh about some of the updates based on some of the trainings that we've been doing uh some of them uh combined with law enforcement and other Emergency Services uh about kind of our crisis

190response and reunifications uh going forward so we've been going to a couple things uh through the I love you Foundation uh if you guys haven't heard that uh it was founded uh by Ellen and John Michael keys in 2006 following a school shooting that took the uh life of their daughter Emily and so as that was happening uh in the classroom the last message she sent to her parents was a text that said I love you guys so they kind of took that uh that name and started a mission to uh kind of standardize and uh Elevate what we can do for uh incidents in schools crisises and emergencies to have a better response uh and then a better uh followup of what we can do after that with reunification uh so right now it's

191used by thousands of school districts uh and organizations Nationwide uh one of the nicest things about it is all of their resources are 100% free they don't charge a licensing fee or anything uh some of the trainings have some Associated costs but uh if you any District wants to use any of their stuff it's all free uh so this is broken down into kind of two separate parts uh and feel free to jump in if you have anything to add uh but so the first part is the emergency so this is the crisis uh and there's something called the standard response protocol uh so this is based on five uh actions and each action is followed up with a directive so the five actions as it happens uh correlate very well with our uh crisis

192go uh system that we've implemented they have like a few little tweaks in there uh but all the graphics all the words that they say and everything uh corresponds to what we already have in crisis go uh all of the checklists that administer rators get are also based on the I love you guys protocol uh so that works out very well so the five ones are uh hold which is basically stay in your room stay where you are uh secure which is if you're outside get inside but then you can kind of continue going on having your school day uh we had an incident outside of one of our schools uh a few months ago I think where uh police were looking for somebody outside the school they weren't anywhere near coming in the school

193so they were able to uh come in from Recess stay inside and continue with their day uh lockdown uh is the kind of uh something bad is happening in the school so get into your classroom uh and then it comes up with a little message that says lock Lights Out of Sight uh evacuate is that you need to get out of the school and then shelter is kind of for uh more or like weather emergencies or uh I think there's maybe if there's a chemical spill at the University so clear simple instructions uh all of this is based on uh the national instant command system uh which kind of uh has a hierarchy of who reports to who uh so when things come in you automatically know uh what you need to do next and

194who you need to talk to next uh improving coordination between students and staff uh but especially improving coordination between First Responders uh and reducing commu uh Confusion by having common uh terminology and language uh so this again as it is tied in with our crisis go has like uniform things that you can do for each incident uh again we provide people the latitude to make good decisions and make changes but if you're in an uh incident uh it's nice to have kind of a standard operating procedure where oh there's a weather incident and it says get people in get them into an interior hallway and it tells you what to do and you don't have to spend a lot of time thinking about it so uh we did do a training uh at uh IAS

195the uh Illinois Law training uh Institute on the other side of Urbana this was a two-day training uh with law enforcement uh School Personnel fire EMT and some University and Aaliyah staff were there as well uh so this kind of walked through from the very start of an emergency uh how you put people in command how you formed task force and groups and what everybody's role was through the whole uh participation so we did a couple of these exercises from start to finish uh from like the first like we did a mostly active shooter so from the first like notification uh all the way through reunifying students with their parents at the end uh of the training so it was very valuable we sent five staff members uh to that training uh where we were

196able to get a lot of this information and bring it back uh and before I go on we'll be updating uh some of our documentations in the school at the start of the next school year uh right now now uh we have kind of the opposite of standard terminology where some schools might call something a hard lockdown or a code red or a code blue or like they all kind of have different things uh but standardizing them so that as students go through different schools and staff might change schools uh that everybody has kind of the same thing to work from uh just a little bit about the crisis go I know a lot of you were here when we implemented the system so I'm going to go a little bit quicker but uh stop

197me if you have any questions uh crisis go is our emergency notification system so this has uh as people something's happening in the school it makes it very easy you don't have to think a lot about it if you click on one of the things if you see something that looks like red Flames click on the red Flames uh it will automatically initiate a call to to 911 to notify them and then it will for your school automatically initiate uh that incident at your school uh it has a checklists for what you need to do if you have a medical emergency call 911 notify the nurse uh it also has as you're in an incident it has all of our class rosters so you can send out a roster event to teachers and they can

198tell you who they have with them and you can find out who's missing or who you still need to find uh you can also send really Simple Communications back and forth uh between teachers and administrators where you can ask them is everybody safe do you need any medical attention when we had the lockdowns at the high school we use that a lot for people getting escorted to the bathrooms and easy things like that um yeah all the teachers have already implemented that app in their funds uh we highly recommend that teachers put it on their phones but it's not required but all the classroom computers that they have also have it uh pre-installed on their computers uh and those are our devices so we just push it out to them uh one nice thing since

199you brought it up since it's on the computers and on our district stuff uh whenever a a crisis does get initiated it also for all the uh view boards that we have in all the class classrooms they will turn bright red and have just the like notification of the emergency on The View boards as well if they're turned on if they're turned off is access accessible for parents uh this part is not accessible for parents okay uh but there are some Cory products that you can set up groups for parent notifications and uh student notifications uh there is also in here a way to contact parents directly from the app but it doesn't push out the notification like it does for the school uh so I am I think hopefully enough people have this here

200so I am going to go ahead and show you how you can uh initiate an incident so I will set this to our training group uh and I will say it's a drill and I'll say test again and then when I go you just slide descend at the bottom and it should Jennifer must have hers turned off I turned mine off from a meeting I was in okay so that's what it sounds like for the team teachers and then from there you can also start to give them updated information uh so like the directives like oh if you're in the East Wang evacuate if possible uh uh we have been using this also for all of our drills throughout the year so as we're doing our drills uh it's kind of a nice reminder for

201teachers in kind of a safe environment like oh this is what you're going to get and like it's a fire so we're going to head outside now um sorry a question I question why the why right now recommended to the teacher and it's not like made them to have it uh so their personal devices uh we don't really have uh the ability to require them to do things on their personal devices I will say I think a large number 90 to 95% uh as I've been going through doing the trainings have it on their phones uh but yeah and one of the benefits is like in in a real situation you're going to be getting all the communication through the app telling you um you know when the event is over where to go um

202and so if you are one of those people who has chosen not to download it on your phone then you're not going to be getting those on the minute responses and notifications and so um I think at this point this is what year three yeah most most people have downloaded it at this point the only people that I think don't are the people who don't use smartphones like who just kind of there are still people who have older phones that um you know are not using a smartphone and for some of the messaging portions of it you are able to also send out math texts yeah or emails but you kind of have to click a couple extra things so I think administrators In the Heat of the Moment probably aren't always doing that but

203we did have this we had a small fire at DPW I think last year uh and this was very helpful for that as well it wasn't a real fire John it was more it was a small fire in a utility room that Elric yes it was there was not a danger yes okay I saw Paul look at me like a fire teachers who don't have smartphones then um are they being given like one of the little not a laptop but the little they are iPad that they all have a district assign laptop and and then they have the vi Sonic monitors and I know they have a laptop but I mean the the smaller one the tablet no we don't because that would be something they could carry with them if you had to most

204of the people who haven't downloaded it is also because they you know don't want I don't know Big Brother um kind of you know like it is kind of a big brother thing right like to download and everyone kind of you know yeah so yeah and when you install it I've explained it I think multiple times but if your phone is on silent or vibrate It overrides Whatever setting that is and goes to maximum volume sorry Maryann uh but uh so like when you install it you do have to click like allow this app to like change my volume and stuff so it like requires a few extra permissions uh so that is the standard response protocol this is kind of the emergency where everything's happening uh once the emergency is ready to kind of

205transition to the reunification phase so the emergency's been contained uh whatever is happening uh there's no more like imminent uh then we move to the next phase which is reunification so now we've got 400 kids and 400 parents who really want their kids uh so getting through that in like a really consistent and like organized way but also doing things as quickly as we can uh because parents really like to have their kids back uh so the next portion is the standard reunification method uh so this is a structured process to reunite students uh it's again kind of very organized and rigorous uh that it makes it so you kind of minimize mistakes and ensure like the maximum amount of accountability will still uh getting through uh the system so we did have a one-day

206reunification training also at Alias uh that we sent six six staff members too uh so during this training this was focused a lot more on school personnel uh although there was some other law enforcement there as well uh but we went through kind of several iterations of the reunification uh all of the different parts and roles of it uh we were very happy as we were going through it I think to uh realize that our current reunification system that we had designed a couple years prior uh really correlated really well with the uh the reunification from this system just with some common terminology and like titles and names changed uh so we will be running a mini training at our next Crisis meeting uh also as part of the exercise they let you check out

207the uh reunification uh training kit so we have this this is full of all the kind of bits of how you can reunify students uh so again consistency and clarity uh effective rapid responses oh and uh so I'm going to walk you guys really quickly through the reunification process here and I've got it up right here uh so step one as people come into the reunification area uh they're greeted by uh someone at the door a greeter uh who uh explains the process to them and gives them a clipboard with one of these cards the card is a two-part card uh that has the student information on the top along with the parent information and signature and then at the bottom it has the student information again uh so that this card gets separated and

208now you have a way to track uh the student going through the system so parents fill out that card uh they come through the next station is the checkers uh who take the card card uh verify the parents identity uh to make sure that they are who they say they are uh if they don't have something that they can easily verify their identity right there uh there's a secondary Checker station where they can use some other information from our student information system to verify that identity uh and then this card gets separated at that point uh one card goes to somebody who does kind of the master accounting of what students we've released least and then the other portion goes to a runner who uh goes to get the student so here's you've got parents

209parents parents uh the greeters kind of get them lined up and going in the right direction uh and then the checkers are there to check those parents in so once they have that a runner will get the student from the student holding area uh where you also have uh the oh I think I left that one in the box but the teachers are staying with the students to kind of manage them in that area there's we have some snacks stored and Waters and uh entertainment for the students while they're there waiting to get picked up uh and then the runner here in this the re unifier in this uh green shirt here Will get the student and bring them back to their parent uh there'll be hugs and hearts and then uh one more step

210on the way out is the exit accountant uh who will be there to make one more make sure one more time that this is the right student with the right parent and then to exit them from our system so that we know that that students been released and no longer in the building so I do also have a one minute and 20 second video uh this is the reunification drill that we did uh a few years ago now uh with the middle school so I'll play this for you hopefully I will not play this for you but I will pass around uh kind of the stuff that we have uh ready for when we're going to do these reunifications and I'll just pass them around this way that's okay so and then if you notice

211on the badges whenever people come and they get their vests and radios and badges all of the badges uh everybody will have been trained at some point but all of the badges in case you forget also have on the back uh the like very brief list of what you're supposed to do let me okay here we go on April 28th 2022 Urbana Middle School 7th graders conducted a reunification drill at Stone Creek Church to reunite students with their families after a simulated disaster at the school as part of the drill students were bust to the district's reunification site upon arrival teachers LED their students to their designated area inside and took attendance using class rosters first aid will be available for any students with minor injuries there will also be counselors on site to assist

212students as needed prior to students and teachers arriving the reunification team set up brief staff and distributed supplies greeters were stationed outside of the entrance to guide parents and Guardians as they arrived they were given a form to fill out and directed to the check-in table where their identity was confirmed once checked in parents and Guardians proceeded to the waiting area and their students names appeared on a video board this board signaled to staff inside the student waiting area to bring the student out to complete reunification once reunified with their students parents and Guardians proceeded to the checkout table where their identity was checked a final time before leaving the building with their student so again uh you might notice some of the names were a little different from what I had mentioned but the

213process again very similar uh so that is the updated uh standard response protocol and USD reunification plan uh the last did you guys have any questions about either of those before I moved on no okay oh so the reunification happen outside of the school uh all the time yeah the reunifications pretty much always happen outside of the school uh there is a evacuation site that each school has a different evacuation site uh but in order to process all the parents and students the reunification happen somewhere else typically if there's something that requires a reunification now the school is a crime scene fire scene medical scene and whatever's happening at the school uh if it was I think we had some tornadoes recently so if there was a tornado at the school you don't want people

214coming to the school there's going to be lots of people with lots of Blinky lights at the school you want to be somewhere else so we take the students with buses to the reunification s how the B know where is the site uh they'll get notifications right at the beginning of where to go and what the basic instructions are of like traffic flows and how to get in so so the last part I had to talk about was some of the uh security enhancements uh coming this next year uh so Urbana Middle School for the past year I think as we had alluded to earlier uh when Michelle was talking uh we've been primarily screening students at door one with the metal detectors uh which I think she said that sometimes there's kids may be

215passing things to other doors we've been doing random screenings at the other doors on uh kind of different days at different times but it's impossible to catch everything uh starting next next year we will have uh metal detectors at both of the two main student entry doors every day for those students uh we can do that because there's a third less students so we can handle the throughput a little bit more uh but we'll be able to get those through for each grade level uh also we'll be using clear backpacks uh currently with the metal detectors at the middle schools we're having to do bag searches with is incredibly time consuming uh so we're hoping the clear backpacks will be able to expedite that process we will still be screening at door one but only

216for visitors so students won't be coming in through door one anym uh and then door one will also be uh redesigning the entryway right now when you come in uh the uh kiosk is kind of all the way to the right and back like 10 ft so the kiosk is going to be getting moved right kind of in the front of the doors so if people come in they kind of have to go through that little security secured area when they come in I was going to add that um the screening students would steal if they arrive late so that was one of the things that Michelle did mention I know John said kind of maybe some of those um weapons or or things were passed to other grade levels but I I think what

217Michelle found um is those are those were students who arrive late sometimes and we don't have the uh staff to have two or three people at the door one um metal detection all day because we need those people supervising throughout the building so um she has found that that has been one of the ways that um a weapon or a knife or those brass knuckles or whatever came through is a student who arrived late and they weren't screaming in the normal procedure that everyone else was screened and if you remember when we first started talking about Metal Detectors the reason we had door one be our main area was that's where the eighth graders have to go through and the majority of the students that we seem to have these concerns with were our eighth

218graders which is why we we positioned um our main metal detection location to be at door one for the eighth grade students and then so sixth grade next year we are not going to be implementing metal detectors at this time uh if things change in the future that's always an option uh but that hasn't been the majority of our issues at the middle school this year uh we will be using still clear backpacks at the Sixth Grade Center so uh just make it a little easier to see things and have visibility on what's going on uh so these I think this will be a lot better for the Middle School the security changes having screenings at both doors every day a lot less opportunity for uh kind of pass arounds and avoiding uh the metal

219detectors uh it should have a lot better throughput and better visibility and safety for the staff and students in the school so next steps for this is uh Communications with parents and students which we'll be working with uh the middle sixth grade administrators uh coming up this next year uh we will have to purchase one additional metal detector for the visitor entrance now at door one uh and then working with staff on training and implementation so that's all if you guys have any other questions I'm happy to answer them more members any questions any questions for Matt [Laughter] I would ask you one but I'm on the committee make sense so what did your role in all these what is your role on what how did you participate here oh his role yeah so my

220role is I let me back up a little bit I was uh the SRO for four years um from 2014 to 18 um and then since then I have been involved with supervising the sro's and been involved with the the crisis committee so that's really that's really my role I attended the same training they they did as well as several others in that ASM program and um you know we had a great turnout um I I will commend them they they kind of already knew what they were doing I'm sure they picked up some things but you know from what I've seen they they're they're doing what they need to do um to keep these kids safe and to do things um as seamless as possible and um I'm happy to be part of it

221and and help um I too am for the Handle With Care Program I think that we do um miss a lot but you know when when um Miss Ivory Tab and I exchange uh text message Mees and phone calls on the weekends and at we hours of the night sometimes um our s do a good job looking daily at um the reports and and notifying their appropriate people about reports but some are missed so I'm for that um crisis go still scares the crap out of me when I get an alert um for the fire drill that's going on and they're practicing because I'm like running in my car already but um I think that is is excellent um you guys make my job pretty easy you did tonight um but my main role is

222is to be another type of liaison um for the school district from Miss Ivory Tatum through the police department um have having kind of been there and done that um I think that the relationship's working pretty well and my role is to to bounce ideas off and and to give an opinion from a law enforcement perspective to the group anyone anyone else thank you John thank you officer ban thank you good night that concludes our study topics for this evening I'd like to take this uh moment to thank Anna Seaman who's been running our cameras tonight and for most of our meetings which I've neglected to thank her for but we really appreciate everything she does here um there is no call for future uh special executive meetings um we will have one in a

223few minutes uh superintendent's report okay so I'll go through my regular superintendent report and then we have an additional information to share so um U ofi athlete classroom visits um students at King school and Yankee rids were greeted by athletes from the University of Illinois last week um the athletes read books to several classes at both schools and participated in their morning meetings um we want to give a shout out and thanks C schools foundation for helping to coordinate this uh great opportunity and experience for our students at um at King and at Yankee Ridge so here are a few of those photos track I know sit L has already shared a little bit about Kaylee and Javon and arand so shout out to them and the whole UHS um indoor track team um so

224we are just really as uh s l said that we we've seen broken records this year and new personal records for uh for the students um so we are really looking forward to um outdoor season which starts like right now so it is great um if you remember our board member Laura or her son Aron is there um and so he was a great athlete in the middle school he's kind of just kept it going through high school so uh go Tigers congratulations to them and coach foki and the whole team kindergarten registration is April 10th um so we've been sharing this every board meeting um but that is right around the corner now so if you know of a family with a um 5-year-old turning five honor before September 1st please please please send

225them the information about kindergarten registration so we just it's always hard when we have those kindergarteners that we don't know about that we can't plan for who just kind of show up on the first day of school so as much as we can um know where they're going to be and um plan accordingly for enroll moment and projections and FTE that is very very helpful Broadway on Vine so I am so excited we're doing Moana Jr um and Broadway and Vine at the middle school um so of course board members are invited um April 10th at 6:30 on that Thursday is the the um public performance um there are going to and on April 12th at 3 on a Saturday afternoon um there are performances that are going to happen during the day at the

226school but those are for our elementary schools so the elementary school students are invited over um I think they started like fourth grade so fourth and fifth graders um get to come over as kind of like a little field trip to see the um see the performances and then it's a great way for them to be excited about coming you know being a middle schooler and being able to participate on Broadway um as a member of Broadway on Vine so we've seen some fantastic plays we we had The Little Mermaid last year Annie the year before that and so we're really excited about Moana Jr so join us at ums Boneyard Festival so um as you know we are a district that is committed to Fine Arts um especially at our elementary level with our

227dedicated Fine Arts teams so this weekend is the Boneyard Arts Festival so we always um make sure we have a presence there um so we brought we brought back the flash mob last year um so we used to do that where the students um have a location in downtown orbana and they show up and they dance to a song and they just kind of do a public flash mob um impromptu dance dance performance so that is um and outside the courthouse by the Lincoln Square side at 2 p.m. um Le and Thomas pay oh can you go back down the Leo and Thomas pay choirs will be performing um at their bannerfree Library at 3 um on Saturday by the um buy Mills reading space um there'll also be art artwork from elementary students on

228display in the children's department at the urban Free Library during the regular business hours on Saturday so we have all of our disciplines represented dance and drama um music and art so go congrats to our uh Elementary F Arts teams and parents um drop these times down so you can make sure you get your young people out out there it'll be fun hopefully the weather is good um dates so tomorrow night as we've mentioned we have the King School our last listening session I do need to mention that we did not have the Ivan ho um meeting um last night out in ivanho um we canceled it on Friday just with the cold temperatures predicted the wind and um at that time they were predicting rain as well so it didn't rain but it was

229pretty cold to expect people to sit outside and eat and have conversation about strategic planning so we're going to reschedule that for in May and instead of getting their input before the planning uh strategic planning we'll be going back out there and taking the Strategic plan um as it has been written with by the uh team but sharing with them how they can be involved um uh principal Valente already had some great ideas of um how we can take the plan back out um to the Ivano community and give their thoughts on how we can um improve outcomes for kids through the Strategic plan so we kind of shifted our focus a little bit when the weather didn't cooperate um but we still are planning to go out and engage um that Community the mayoral

230recognition program if you've not been included on an email yet from kenita you will be getting one um because this is Mayor Marlin's last program recognition um as her term as mayor of as the U mayor is ending and so um we really want this one to be um one of the best yet um so April 16th will be at UHS um the 5: through 7 p.m. um I know K has some surprises that they've been working on so um of course board members are always welcome to attend those and then we're opening online registration on May 1st for our returning students only so new students we have dates for you in July but online registration will open for our current um USC students on May 1 um also on tomorrow the Yankee Ridge PTA

231is going to have their multi Multicultural fair oh that's right at six o'clock so that's right oh I don't have the peace walk written now what time is itay oh a king yes the king peace walk got it yes with the park district they usually walk from King to yep yep yep thank you T we missed those two dates we'll put that put those on there for um when we send it out electronically tomorrow um and then we have one more piece of the um well I don't know do you want to kind of mention that the foyes were completed we had an update for the board around Foya and om summar so John is is actually going to kind of Take the Lead as our chief financial while John's getting that up um there

232were a series of Foy are successfully processed as published in their agenda yes so as our CIO he's um really takes the lead on a lot of the Foya um responses with our attorney um from Robinson schwar so he's going to take the lead and share uh just some updated information for the board yep thank you and just a little background uh I think you guys probably by now already what a Foya is uh but this is a freedom of information request that you can send to any government agency to obtain records or information uh one part people might not know if you don't agree with the response from the foyer request an applicant uh has the option to refer to uh submit a request for review uh with the Illinois Attorney General's Public Access

233counselor office uh I bring that up because that's uh something I'll be referencing later uh so there was a verbal board request for a summary of foyer related legal fees and staff time that have been incurred uh in the past year for repeated requests uh so that was what we had asked our uh lawyers we've actually had to retain a whole additional lawyer uh just to deal with some of these uh repeated requests that we've been getting so this is the uh Financial summary of legal fees for the lawyers uh legal fees only so uh the primary uh requestor has been from Tom Schroeder I think we had uh three on this meeting's uh list uh so of the total foyer requests we've gotten about 78.5% of those have been from Mr Schroeder uh that

234accounts for 43,00 $37 of legal fees uh the other legal the other foyer requests that we've gotten for that same 12-month time period were about $1,800 uh so the total for that period was uh almost $555,000 uh for that February to February period uh in addition we had a large number of uh pack request for reviews uh from Mr Schroeder those accounted for an additional uh $25,800 uh in legal fees uh so between the foas and the request for review from the pack uh that uh accounted for approximately 85.3% of our total legal fees for those uh in addition we had one uh uniform grievance investigation that the board undertook voluntarily uh that was an additional $1,200 uh bringing the total for Le legal fees for uh Mr Schroeder up to uh just over $80,000

235for that 12month period board members any questions or comments I think John had one yeah so we also no we we also uh accounted at the board request for uh staff time internally uh so District staff uh at the school district like most school districts don't do an hourly accounting of time we don't fill people so we don't have to uh so to fulfill this request uh I found all of the people who had worked on foas in those 12-month periods and talk to them each and individually and ask them for kind of what their estimate of the minimum amount of time that they spent on foyer requests during that 12-month period was uh we uh calculated those and we were able to take them times their hourly rate of pay for those individuals uh

236and then we talked to some department heads for foas that were processed within departments mostly sped HR and The Business department to get a kind of lowball summary for their people in their department so the results of that were that there were 17 staff members uh who worked on processing those foas between February 24 and February 25 uh the bulk of time was spent by Dr Ivory Tatum uh myself and our Foya officer Lori who is great uh and that added up to about 600 85 hours a large quantity of that was uh for the text messages that we produced voluntarily after several uh back and forth with that approximately 73 hours were spent by other directors and the Departments and the uh HR sped and business departments uh taking that times everybody's individual uh

237hourly rates of pay that accounted to an additional $60,000 of internal time uh bringing the total for uh Mr Schroeder up to approximately $140,000 for the district uh to go over our uh request for review uh just a summary of those uh so we have not received I don't recall receiving another request for review from the back in the time I've been here but for this 12mon period we received 18 from Mr Schroeder uh six of those reviews are still open uh the uh Public Access counselor office for our foas we have a five day five business day time limit and then we get another five days if we file an extension they don't have that very reasonable 5day uh limit so some of theirs are still open from uh months ago but uh we

238haven't received any action from them on any of those so far and we don't anticipate that uh nine of them were closed and warranted no further action by the pack which is in effect them dismissing it uh one was closed voluntarily to limit additional legal fees uh one was narrowed by the sender in a subsequent foyer request making the initial request uh not needed anymore uh and then there was one om finding where the pack did request that we had a board re uh board revote on a matter om findings are we track separately from Foya so overall there have been no findings against the district from the pack for foas for that time period uh and then as I mentioned there have been no pack RRS from anyone else in that time period which

239is what we looked into thank you for that report um there any other questions uh the chair would entertain motion to uh enter Clos session for the purpose of litigation against the district has published in their agenda after a 10 minute recess to clear the room I move that we go into recess second follow by executive Follow by executive session there will be no action after and there'll be no action after thank you for Tor all right uh roll call please member Hixon here yes member Baxley sorry member langendorf yes vice president exom president palowski yes um member Staten yep and member Jones yes all right we'll take about 10 minutes to clear the room and then we'll begin our executive session