001okay all right like bring this business meeting of Urbana School District 116 to order a roll call please remember hassanatka here remember joining us by phone oh I did it early I'm sorry vice president X I'm sorry number or here remember ogalski here remember Carter is here and president Pulaski here we do have a request for a modification to put modifications tonight's agenda we'd like to bring to move uh accommodations of recognitions and action item 11.5 Administration administrative Personnel items up to uh before citizen statements to allow those individuals to get to other uh commitments without is there any objection to that from the board no okay hearing none uh let's move on to accommodations record recognitions we have uh Karen hollett teacher at the Atlanta middle school has gotten a one thousand dollar Grant
002from Epsilon Delta uh and was nominated by one of the students uh that belonged to the fraternity is is Karen present no okay we also would like to acknowledge our national board certified teachers it's a huge time commitment on the fact of the faculty who work hard in professional development to improve uh improve their skills and and bring those and keep those skills in the district so Julia Erlanger is going to announce our new and renewed uh national board certified teachers hey Paul I appreciate that that's aimed in improving teaching and student learning and we appreciate the support that Urbana School District 116 is giving and tonight we're very proud and excited to recognize uh two newly certified teachers this year and four uh renewed certified teachers this year we also haven't attended some other
003national board certified teachers who've come to support as well so maybe I'll ask if the other national board teachers that are district-wide would stand here so we can recognize them oh I want to also recognize that yvanda Smith is a wonderful support for us as our district administrator and she's here as well new our two new certified teachers this year are Katie plotner at Leal [Applause] am I supposed to be handing this out and I think Amanda Lapin is not here but she is a teacher at Dr King's School [Applause] really removed and Amanda is here Michelle is at Thomas Payne and Amanda is at UHS and we have two others that I don't think are here Kevin Kennedy at UHS and Nick Stillwell at UHS that is all thank you for recognizing them and
004thank you again for the support for national board and USD 116. would you guys be interested of the thank you thank you thank you [Applause] next up is action item 11.5 uh administrative Personnel items so Angie sorry I was so excited about the spread back there that I'm like gotta pull up my documents all right let's see Mr Guzman Miss Kearns Miss Heinz would you maybe join us at the table please we're digging the colors thanks foreign over the past five years there have been three different leaders at Urbana High School in addition to no designated principal during the 2020-21 school year due to several concerns it was announced to staff students and families that there would be administrative changes at Urbana High School for the 23-24 school year in February the three high school
005administrative positions were posted the human resources department then sent out the UHS administrator search committee interest form and there were 58 responses sharing input some of the common themes from the respondents were that UHS needed experienced administrators and ones who were familiar with the Urbana community other frequent responses included attention to culture and climate for student learning issues surrounding student safety and improving low staff morale and staff retention when the position was posted and advertised on a national level there were still not many applicants which has been the trend for the past three years it has been posted I have personally reached out to candidates talking about the principal position and encouraging folks to apply some applied and some did not during the past 10 weeks we have had eight applicants for UHS principal based
006on a number of factors that are confidential HR matters three applicants were eligible to be interviewed all staff students and community members who volunteered to participate in the interview process were accepted to participate the interview committees had the difficult decision to recommend candidates now or recommend to keep the high school administrative positions posted for a longer period of time in hopes of drawing more candidates on Monday April 3rd the level 1 interview committee interviewed three principal candidates the level one interview committee recommended that two of the principal candidates move on to the level two interviews on Wednesday April 5th the level 2 committee recommended that the same two candidates move on to the level three committee interview Mr Jesse Guzman was selected as the most outstanding candidate in all three committees and the District administration
007is recommending his hire to the Board of Education effective July 1 2023 Mr Guzman is currently known by a family staff and the community as principal at Jefferson Middle School in Champaign unit 4. Mr Guzman has served as the principal since July 1 2018. previously Mr Guzman served as the associate principal unit 4 Middle School summer school principal and assistant principal at Jefferson Middle School since 2014. Mr Guzman has nine years of administrative experience at the secondary level before coming an administrator Mr Guzman served as an 8th grade social studies at Edison Middle School for nine years he has been in the Urbana Champaign Community since 2005. Mr Guzman holds a Bachelor's of Arts in secondary education with a concentration in social studies from St Louis University he earned a master of science in educational
008Administration from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in May 2014 and completed his superintendent endorsement in May 2019 from the University of Illinois since the candidate pool for UHS was relatively small the decision to also interview for assistant principal positions occurred at the same time this was an important consideration due to this shortage of administrative applicants in our area as an aside there were zero internal applicants meaning district-wide for the principal or assistant principal positions at Urbana High School there were eight applicants for UHS assistant principal openings many of whom applied for the principal position in the district as well out of the eight candidates two of the candidates were eligible to be interviewed which is also confidential HR information the Committees again had a difficult decision in recommending candidates to be hired or keeping
009the positions posted longer in hope of getting additional candidates the level 1 and level 2 interview committees did have enough support to recommend the hiring of the two assistant principal candidates Miss Jessica Hines became began her educational career in 2005 teaching English language arts social studies and Avid in Kankakee Miss Heinz served as a teacher and Abbott coordinator for eight years again in Kankakee in August 2013 Miss Hines accepted an English language arts and Avid position in Champaign unit 4 specifically at Jefferson Middle School Miss Hines accepted her first administrative position dean of students again at Jefferson in August of 2016. Ms Hines was promoted to assistant principal in 2018 and then associate principal in 2020 at the same school Miss Hines holds a bachelor's degree in elementary education from Illinois State University and a
010master's degree in educational leadership in administration from the University of Illinois Ms Hines is also a 2001 Golden Apple scholar and currently works at the golden apple Foundation growing and mentoring future educators Melissa Kearns began her career in education as a seventh grade science teacher at Urbana Middle School where she served for two years Miss Kearns then accepted a position outside of Education where she pursued writing grants and coordinating their coordinating their programming for Champaign County Youth for rosecrants returning to education Ms Kearns joined unit 4 schools serving as an elementary teacher at Bottenfield Elementary instructional coach at Garden Hills Elementary and magnet site coordinator also at Garden Hills following her Elementary experiences Ms Kearns was then selected as assistant principal at Jefferson Middle School in 2020 a position she has held for three years
011Miss Kearns holds an associate's degree in elementary education from Parkland College a bachelor's degree also in elementary education from Eastern Illinois University Ms Kearns holds two master's degree degrees one in curriculum and instruction from American College of Education and another in educational leadership also from the American College of Education on a personal note Ms Kearns is a 2004 graduate from Urbana High School The District Administrative team is recommending Miss Heinz and Miss Kearns to serve as assistant principals at Urbana High School effective July 1 2023 although the candidate pool was small it does not diminish the excitement our district has to hire experienced administrators with longevity in the community and a commitment to our students staff and Families so it's a pleasure to bring these recommendations to the board for approval and I thank you
012before we I guess let's get started on on voting I was reminded we need to approve the agenda first as amended so quickly is there a motion to approve the the agenda as amended it's all moved uh all in favor say aye any opposed all right is there a motion to bring the administrative Personnel items to the floor so moved that can any further discussion uh roll call please remember Hassan yes member Hall yes yes member ogalski yes member Carter votes yes vice president xim and president Pulaski yes welcome to Urbana congratulations can you say absolutely is that good right there okay um first of all I would just like to thank the board and in particular Dr Ivory Tatum and the camera and the exec team for this opportunity um it is an honor
013and a pleasure to serve as the next principal of Urbana High School um together with students staff and families we're going to accomplish great things and we will make sure all our students are College and Career ready going forward um Muchos Gracias Forest opportunity um proximo director the Urbana High School is magnifico of course I would also like because I would also like to thank the board of education on the exec team for this phenomenal opportunity I am beyond excited to work with the students staff and families in this amazing Community I'm looking forward to the upcoming school year and um I'm beyond excited and that was Jessica Heinz I guess I should just have a name no no no no just have a name with the face on the recommendations and this is Melissa
014hi everyone I'm the alumni um I just want to Echo um what Mr Guzman and Miss Heinz said about being so excited to be here um as an alumni I'm super excited to return back to Roots um to help grow a school that I actually derive from um so I can't say it enough thank you for this opportunity to serve um in this District we will make Urbana proud and we will continue the trend of making Urbana better together and we're proud of you so let's go all right thank you very much I'd like to thank the the audience for their for their patients and the take some food on your way out and adjusting the agenda oh sorry membria I forgot the miss elvir on Monday April 10th the incoming executive director of student
015services Beth Ladd who's also here tonight hosted interviews for the special education administrator opening the level one interview team was made up of Staff members parents and administrators there were three highly qualified candidates who applied and were also interviewed the level one interview committee strongly recommended one candidate to move forward to a level two interview with the District Administrative team on Friday April 14th both level 1 and level 2 interview committees have strongly recommended that Ms Maria elvir serve the district in this leadership position effective July 1 2023 Miss Maria elvir has a career in special education that spans 22 years serving students in multiple roles at both the elementary and secondary levels and in both alternative and public schools in Illinois Ms alvare has experience working in McHenry North Chicago and Lake Villa or
016Lake Villa I don't know I don't want to say that from Chicago Miss salvir served as a special education teacher before transitioning to a supervisory role at a community-based residential program that partnered with the local school district Miss alvare then was promoted to the role of special education coordinator at McHenry High School District Miss elvir relocated to the Urbana community in 2018 and has served as associate principal at Urbana Middle School for the last five years Miss elvir earned a Bachelor of Science degree at Southern Illinois University and two master's degrees one of her Masters is in elementary education from Roosevelt and the other Masters is in administration and Leadership from Northeastern in addition Miss elvir holds an endorsement as a learning Behavior specialist from Saint Francis University it is our strong and excited recommendation
017to the board to approve Miss elevator as the incoming special education administrator effective July 1st so that will they have to vote but yeah I think technically we already voted because we moved the entire slate of so you didn't even have to come yeah but so thank you for your service to the district and thank you for continuing to serve in this role okay thank you so much to the board I'm really really excited to be returning to special education I'm excited about improving student outcomes I'm excited about collaborating with families and I'm excited about supporting and retaining our really high quality teachers so I'm excited to be here I'm grateful to you all I look forward to digging in thank you [Applause] next up is citizen statement so thank you for your patience uh
018First Citizen statement up tonight is K Bell and Jennifer Hickson there we go now you can hear me I do have a good teacher voice however good evening and thank you for allowing us time to speak tonight my name is Kay Bell and I'm a former ESL teacher in Urbana school district and this is Jennifer Hickson also former ESL teacher and director of the King School of the Urbana School Multicultural program both of us are now retired and it's just with the heavy heart that we share with you that last October 16th units which passed away she was a former faculty member of Urbana schools we would like to share a little of her life with you tonight because she touched the lives of so many Urbana students today ironically would have been her 81st
019birthday born in 1942 in North Carolina to a working-class family Eunice managed to attend college and attain a degree in library science get married and move to Urbana in the 1960s with her husband Terry the enrolled in Graduate Studies at the University of Illinois and after graduating excuse me they lived in Iowa and Mississippi for a while they moved back to Urbana when Terry took a position at the University of Illinois and Eunice took the position of grade school teacher at Prairie School around 1980. she then moved on to become librarian at the Hayes Martin Martin Luther King schools eventually becoming the head librarian for Urbana School District 116 until her retirement in 2002 thus fulfilling her dream of becoming a life of being a librarian during her tenure as teacher and teaching librarian Eunice
020espoused children's literacy wholeheartedly encouraging the Youth of Urbana to read for pleasure as well as for research I do believe Eunice's happiest times are when she was seated in her special chair book in hand reading wonderful stories to children she especially loved fairy tales and established an enviable collection of fairy tales from around the world I'm sorry I'm very emotional supporting the Multicultural population of King School prior to her retirement Eunice had many interests and was passionate about them all she was an avid Gardener and can be evidenced by the yard at her former Residence at the corner of Orchard in Pennsylvania where many passersby stop to admire her strength I'm blooming azaleas and rhododendrons she was an Avid Reader a frequent visitor and supporter of the Urbana Free Library she also reviewed children's books
021for the school library journal and especially enjoyed reviewing books published for children from other countries Eunice is also a sower and hosted weekly meeting of a group of retired teachers who quilted Together made hundreds of dresses for girls orphanage schools in Zambia and fidget lab quilts for Alzheimer's patients in the Champaign-Urbana area she leaves behind many original handmade embroidered and quilted items Yuna supported many Charities and Foundations animal groups underserved World populations local political groups libraries refugees and public broadcasting she was a generous and kind-hearted person that Unice loved cats was evidenced by her collection of cat books especially vintage Puss and Boots books Plus in Boots books which which combined her love of fairy tales with her love of cats she also had an extensive collection of cat memorabilia from around the world many
022collected from her Global travels Eunice was also well informed about the political situations from the local politics of Urbana the state politics of Illinois to the politics of the national scene never missing a local state or national primary or election day she never forced any opinions on anyone but was always ready to share hers when asked as they're collected money for Unisys Memorial I received many cards from former colleagues many of them wrote a few words about Eunice all of them agreeing that Eunice was a gentle soul a kind person a wise woman a possessor of quiet sense of humor and a good friend many favorite memories were shared especially about retirement party skits but mostly how she was of such a presence in our lives at King's School Unison survived by by her husband
023of almost 60 years Terry who has recently moved to Stanton Virginia for Eunice's sister Brenda lives with her husband Tim it is our honor to have donated the amount of twenty five hundred dollars to the Urbana School District to be given to the King School library memorial fund in honor of the life of our friend and colleague Eunice week thank you I'm going to add a little bit I remember Eunice as a good friend to me Urbana staff and students she really used the library to serve the king's students and staff we had neighborhood students who hadn't traveled much and international students who didn't speak English Eunice gathered objects from around the world so that our neighborhood kids could understand their classmates better and she gathered all sorts of stuff so that teachers could use
024it to teach science and social studies in a Hands-On manner that benefited everybody but especially kids who didn't speak English and needed help understanding even basic vocabulary was more worth keeping track of all that stuff but Yuna saw the benefit of Hands-On learning and shared resources in fact when teachers wanted to make their limited classroom budgets go further they bought multiple copies of books and Eunice cataloged them and put them in the library work room so that we could pool all our resources working with Eunice whether it was with the quilting group or the school was a pleasure we all felt that Eunice would be very pleased to have our memories of her be turned to further the education of Urbana kids [Applause] all right thank you so much I I can't think of a
025more appropriate way to honor her memory so thank you so much um next up again is Jennifer Hixson for the Wiley committee statement well the second reason I came tonight was that I am concerned about the setup and charge of the Wiley site facilities committee because of what I heard at the board meeting when the committee was set up should there be more community members or more staff members the superintendent said that the principles of the elementary buildings and the Urbana Middle School must be on the committee to ensure that the staff of those buildings are informed I am concerned that a stack deck is being set up to minimize Wiley voices let's review your decisions that have brought us to this point February decision to close Wiley to do the asbestos abatement the community
026is informed that Wiley may not reopen as a neighborhood Elementary School use of the word May effectively shuts down state required discussion Community input was ignored March teachers are assigned to positions in the other five buildings not relocated for a short time reassigned I've taught at schools that received reassigned teachers in that reassignment there is one thing for certain the principal the teachers and the families of that building will demand that the new staff become a real part of that Community because to effectively teach and support students and families the staff must work together as a unit divided loyalties will interfere with high levels of student achievement and family satisfaction Wiley input was ignored March the principle is assigned to another building another school we know that that principal must put all her energies on
027the achievement of the students in that new school the former principal of Wiley must be fully involved emotionally and intellectually in this school for the same reason as above and again Wiley import was ignored March again students were assigned to new elementary schools what do parents do every year is important for learning they want their children to have the best education possible during this year they will have to support them in bonding to their new classmates and t-shirt teachers concentrating too much on the process of reopening Wiley may bring unwanted angst to their children's experience and negatively impact their growth and learning but this family input was ignored so no matter how many Wiley quote unquote representatives are put on this committee they are really tokens tokens just like African Americans who were placed on
028public committees in cities where the new highway bisected the African-American neighborhood or the landfill was placed there anyway because in those situations the decision was made elsewhere by others who wielded more power and we know how this goes use of the building site will be discussed at cabinet meetings and budget meetings and other district meetings the present day Wiley families will be the only people affected by the decisions who will not have a representative with access to any of those in-house meetings if you decide to go ahead with its plan to close Wiley and disperse its staff and families the very least you can do to make this a somewhat More Level Playing Field is to appoint and pay a retired Wiley staff member chosen by the present Wiley Community to be their voice at
029the table this person must be invited to all meetings where the principles of the other schools will be there is a meeting that even one of those principals will attend and the topic of the Wiley site will be discussed this person should also attend this person will need the means to provide information and collect input from interested former Wiley staff and Families without at least the small acknowledgment of the obstacles that did that the district has deliberately placed in the way of the Wiley families the committee set up by the dis by Urbana District 116 will be a prime example of the deliberate gagging and subsequent tokenism of a culturally and economically diverse group in the center of our community since I wrote this I've seen the proposed makeup of the committee wow it seems
030like out and out silencing before this gets underway please address all of these concerns thank you very much next up is Uli barishnikov you can't hear me is it recorded very good oh no it's not ever okay so yeah I will be talking about so why did you do it while you're assembling that the goal is clear to give legitimacy to a decision made a decision you want to sell it but guys really this is the way to sell it the committee will be selected the transparency of North Korean you know Parliament so people can submit their candidates and candidacy and you select them the foxes designing the community for him house not to mention of course how it is formed the parents from Wiley two teachers from Valley too the total number of people
031not reporting directly to Dr Ivory Tatum is 21 out of 55 and of course on top of this 55 you have members of the board other people who I mean obviously Dr Robert Adam we will be on the committee so this is a fraction tokenism is not even the word the committee is deciding the fate of wild School all the other schools are invited why well because other schools faith will be decided no it's uh just verbiage just poke verbal Fork creates it again to cover the decision which is already made you want to borrow a lot of money you want to distribute it along different people and that's how you do it that's how you provide a legitimacy of this will not work you've tried it before you went through this uh you know
032charade of this Equity audit by the way we all expect the trepidation of what remarkable audit it will be you saw this dual language we asked for you oh again to this decision Administration Until you realize that you will be not invited to the best part in a little distance so all of that you know you're trying to do it again use rubber Stomp The decisional demonstration without giving a modicum of thought of what the community wants can I understand you know Community is sort of okay with how mismanaged the district is community is a caveat you know like intimidating the parents they're pressuring the teachers all of it you know you were really excited you were put on the place so the people seem to be okay with that but you yourself how you
033live with it so again you'll see another Fiasco you'll see another unhappy teachers you know this the principal who built a school for minorities successful school who went from degrade in the State Board from the State Board of Education would be great which it was improved so this principle was kicked out by the way remember that this principle which made his school took the school from Big rate to g-grade you know he was promoted to the safe signature of whatever post he is now taking in the district if you ask of the high school which was again your rubber stop rubber stamped the decision of the board he selected who knows what and you know just to have to again replace this principle just barely two years and this tenure I mean guys what you're
034doing you're ruining the district you're ruining the town the town's future is the is given is will be populated by the you know children which are going through the schools now you're denying them their education that's what they're doing think about it again like since the community seems to be tolerating it but how you can sleep with yourself how this this thing ourselves as moral people and you do it to the disease that I don't know thank you Mr Brewster uh Emily Cohen hello my name is Emily Cohen and I'm a student at the University of Illinois and I'm one of the co-founders of the social justice initiative which is a registered student organization on campus um and I'm reading a statement from Ruth cantorevitz dear members of the board first I would like to
035thank you for your service on the board of education thank you for your time and hard work it is very much appreciated about tonight's meeting please listen to the Wily parents and the large Urbana community that supports them they are not honestly represented on the Wiley facilities planning committee president Pulaski as this committee is a board committee you have the power to decide on the makeup of the subcommittee section 2-150 of the board policy manual States the board president makes all board committee appointments unless specifically stated otherwise board committee meetings shall comply with the open meetings act a board committee may not take final action on behalf of the board it may only make recommendations to the board please note that the charge of this committee is faulty and will lead to bad decisions if
036we want to make a decision on what is best for the district we should consider all six elementary schools not only Wiley that is because if the district decides it needs slash wants a specialized School along with five neighborhood schools then Wiley may not be a good choice for the specialized school for example if Urbana wants a DL school then Wiley is way too small it was already determined at length that the Spanish DL needs more than three strand School thus DPW or Yankee Ridge are the appropriate choices to house it the board also determined already that the district does not need another school or more classrooms so doubling the size of Wiley to fit in the DL program is wasteful expensive and not in the best interest of the district Thomas Payne is also
037a better location for a specialized school since most of its population is already bussed so using Thomas Paine would not create a lot more busing the administration is trying to argue that Wiley has lower attendance as shown in the document for the upcoming Board of Education meeting and therefore should be the target for closing this is a false argument since attendance can be fixed with redistricting in fact Yankee Ridge has lower attendance but it is being hidden using the Overflow from DPW president Pulaski please remember that years ago you said that the reason you ran for the board was because the district wanted to close Yankee Ridge and you wanted to fight it Yankee Ridge has been protected since then what about Wiley thank you well thank you next up is uh Shamara Vega hello
038everyone I am also a student at the University of Illinois and I'm also a co-founder of the social justice initiative RSL and I'm also reading a statement so what has changed board president Paul palowski why is it not okay for your neighborhood school to be closed but it is for other families let's stop the deception this is not about the abatement in post-colonial theory social justice and critical race Theory actions like this are titled othering othering in its simplest explanation is when a white person separates themselves from those people who are minoritized oppressed and typically belong to a vulnerable population board president Paul pulowski you even formed a group similar to Wiley strong Better Together are you separating your experience from that of the Wiley community you had time to organize and impact the outcome
039of the decision why would you as a board president not provide for the same experience for the Wiley community some could make an argument that it is White Privilege systemic racism implicit bias and unequal power distribution which allows for the needs and voices of the 70 plus percent of mine minoritized and 80 plus percent low-income students and families at Wiley to be easily dismissed and ignored this is a brief excerpt to consider neither critical race nor postcolonial Theory can be understood apart from histories of anti-racist and anti-colonial political struggles but while their specific histories May differ what critical race and post-colonial theories share in common is the fact that they emerged out of and represent intellectual challenges to context of racial oppression while we might often think of race in terms of individual bodies and
040racism as purely about individual prejudices critical race and post-colonial Scholars helped show that race and racism are intricate parts of social history and the larger social order even when individual prejudices Wane racial inequality can perpetuate itself through larger social systems like education housing health care and wealth slash income it is not too late Urbana School Board we can undo the decision to close Wiley this fall and wait until a strategic plan and Facilities committee recommendations are are completed the citizens of Wiley call on the board to take action supports the mission of the school district the mission of Urbana School District 116 a multicultural Community committed to educational Excellence is to ensure that all Learners acquire knowledge develop skills and build character to Achieve Personal greatness and help create a better Global Society by providing
041Innovative comprehensive programs respecting individual learning styles and cultural differences and fostering caring and nurturing relationships while engaging each student every family and the entire Community thank you thank you Abigail Martinez hi my name is Abby and I am a student at the University and I'm also part of the social justice initiative today I'll be reading a Community member statement we didn't switch circling back five and a half years ago Dr Ivory Tatum and the pocket of four pack what is your legacy going to be when does it usually apply the term bid and switch to describe the ethos of a school district leadership team however some would State this term is appropriately applied to the current leadership of Dr Avery Tatum and the Urbana School District 116 school board members wedding with her her pocketed
042four pack where are the studies and opportunities for Community input and idea generation proposed five years ago were parents in 2023 even asked what they want for their children no how does a recommendation for studies and Community input made over five years ago morph into a recommendation to close Wiley for abatement with immediate board approval any respectable time for Community agency and voice to be considered how does the promise of being renovated at last end with a repurposing of the building however the Union contract settled and partially funded on the back of a closed elementary school but guys as a student healthy and safety issue this is how bait and switch works this technique is used to influence people's choices and involves three stages one individuals are led to make a rewarding decision to carry
043out a given Behavior two they are informed of the impossibility of carrying out this Behavior three a new but less rewarding decision is proposed ethos is the characteristic Spirit of a culture era or Community as manifested its beliefs and aspirations they need a deep dive to understand the operating District ethos is not found consuming the Urbana School District 116 leadership heralded and permitted District Spirit culture Community beliefs and aspirations the perpeted words are intentionally selected and used by the district to inspire confidence and Goodwill and executed the mandated disrespect responsibility of enloco parentus and loco parentis is Latin for in the place of a parent referring to the legal responsibility of a person or organization to take on some of the functions and responsibilities of a parent what the district purpose and Heralds appears to
044be merely the bait to Garner stakeholder trust the Deep dive needs to be focused on how the end users the students parents teachers staff and Community experience the district ethos and belief in the degree to which in loco parentis is actualized circling back five and a half years to statements made by board member Brenda Carter in response to recommendations from the school district facilities recommendations one can see debate the bait appears as proposed studies and gardening Community input concerning the future of Wiley the first recommendation from the community was to complete a demographic study and the second recommendation called for researching specialized Elementary educational programs possibilities at Wiley Elementary School so the second recommendation board member Brenda Carter's response was if we did a study and decided to make Wiley a specialty school it would
045be interesting to see what the community thinks about that did Brenda Carter use the word if significantly signaling her deeper understanding of the district bait and switch strategy is the actual will and desire of the community only interesting and not what should lead to the decision fast forward to today what is the lived experience of the district ethos and actions of in local parentis concerning the Wiley community Dr Ivory Tatum and the pocketed four pack what is your legacy going to be thank you Julie Duvall my name is Julie default is Julie Duvall Paul I'd like to um I'll give you I don't know if I can work up there or not I'm asking for an ADA request that I can have longer than five minutes up to eight minutes so I can speak as
046an advocate for sped students at Urbana schools the board doesn't object I'm willing to allow it thank you at an agenda set for today let me start I want to start with something positive I came here in February I think February 7th and I saw the tiger Academy presentation the next day after I saw that presentation I reached out to Dr weimelt and said oh I have a student I think that this program sounds great why don't we have a sped program like this he said we do the tiger Academy will take sped within 10 days we had a high school student who was skipping classes flinking every class seven staff members got together and worked endless emails multiple meetings to get the student into this tiger Academy she has attended every class minus a
047few days of being sick and as of last report card she aced every class at Tiger Academy the two she failed was abandoned at the Urbana High School that's my positive I came here for a reason tonight and as I sit here and I listen to people talk I'm not discounting Wiley and what's going on with Wiley but as I hear people talking about how they're being disservice I have a sped student let me start by saying since the my last meeting I have met with Angie Jennifer Todd and Beth Ladd on multiple occasions about different sped things I've even spoken to Brian trying to figure out how we can make the system work or to work together to make it together Urbana together Better Together that's no I sit here tonight and we are
048splintered I came here prepared to be really positive and not go against people I think we all need to check our egos at the door be cognizant of how other people and what other people have gone through I don't agree with this whole Wiley thing I don't get it but I know that Jennifer Ivory Tatum saved my family four years ago I sit here and listen to Wiley families and I I'm not against them I hear what they have to say I am friends with some of these people on their group but the things that they are complaining about people in sped have complained for years my son is 30 years old and we have the same problems today with my 10 year old last Wednesday I walked into the school because my granddaughter was
049hurt and they called me to come check on her I went to go look at my son's classroom my son was sleeping in class that's a form of escaping we've had this conversation about nine times this school year the school put something in place Dr Ivory Tatum was involved Todd Jennifer Hastings they were all involved and put this in place my case manager and the social worker were never informed when I woke him up he had handprints he was so dead asleep and for so long that he had fingers and and nail marks in his face I took him out of school I met with Todd Jennifer Angie and Beth on Thursday pre-arranged meeting I got a whole time Wednesday afternoon and told him what happened today is Tuesday my son has not been in
050school I have not had any word from any staff member asking where my son is every day you get money for students to be at school every day you get extra money for spent students for the last five days you have not received a dime for my son because the student the staff has not done what they were supposed to I feel for Wiley I'm here to talk about sped we are here we have not gone anywhere we are strong as our weakest player in this fed world we talk about expectations and how they are met and that everybody has the same expectations but they get met in a different way I I agree that teachers need to get a raise but they're not doing their job now they are teachers I had a class
051last week at Tiger Academy tell me how they watch teachers talk nasty and mean to students and what can they do they feel helpless my only support are building admins and this school district I understand not everybody is friends on this board and not everybody likes each other but there are more than just certain people in this District and I apologize for my anger but I sit here and I think my poor kid hasn't been in school most of you know my son no one called to find out where he was the Tuesday last Tuesday he was choked in school yesterday my granddaughter was slapped in school there is a no tolerance policy no one is being held accountable teachers don't tell admins admins don't tell the district so I encourage every sped gen ed
052student or parent to contact the district they can't fix it if they don't know it's broken and I I don't want to get into the politics of USD but if it was not for you when an IEP a 42-page IEP to the letter was written to keep my granddaughter safe that this school district or School administrators and staff did not follow my family would not be where it is today and if it wasn't for you protecting my family and the Press because of the staff that went out to the press these are people's lives these are our families so whatever you want to do with Wiley spedson been here first I expect a phone call in the morning from somebody from my district I've asked my principal three times and all I'm being told is
053you can send them tomorrow you've lost my currency I have no trust I trust some of the board member or the people up here I've lost my building staff I'm asked not to to come into schools I have principals tell me they don't want me in there this is since I've been at this board one of the principals told me I saw you at that board meeting I don't want you in my school leave I said this belongs to Jennifer Ivory Tatum when she tells me to leave I'll leave I'm not going anywhere and if I have to be like a Wily parent and come here every board meeting then that's what I will do apologize for my attitude it was always made with respect thank you so much you're welcome here anytime Mike Anderson
054can you guys hear me now awesome hello again my name is Mike Anderson I'm a wiley parents thank you for taking the time to listen to me I have a few questions I'm hoping someone cancer for me we'll start with on February 21st the district presented the renovation timeline on its asbestos abatement presentation it listed the reimagined wireless committee to begin in March and run through August anyone remembers this slide right here sorry as big as it goes it says reimagine wildly committee right there on March 21st the district presented the special facilities planning committee that doesn't sound much like the Wiley Community Committee that we were promised now we find out we will have two seats on a committee of 55. talk about a bait and switch well done can someone please explain to
055me how we went from what we were promised to where we what is being assembled today does anyone can anyone explain that to me there will be discussion item about this later in our agenda we will talk about it okay my second question I'm hoping somebody can answer is for me on February 7th presentation once again Wally was promised under here Administration will work with the Wiley community and building leaders to intentionally find creative ways to keep the Wiley families connected during the asbestos abatement project this was from the February 7th pre-vote slide um did I get blocked from all district communication because I haven't heard of people about this from anybody everybody I've talked to hasn't heard anything about it um so what what does the district's plan to keep Wiley's family connected is
056there a plan in place we haven't heard anything about it anyone no response we typically don't respond we typically don't respond is it that's not a dialogue okay but we can make sure that somebody follows up with that question if somebody can present a response some appropriate time they'll be fine the last question is on the timeline back to February 21st um on the same slide presentation it says the new roof has been slated for the spring and summer of 2024. so that'd be next summer our next spring next summer and now we're talking about getting a new refinance this spring once again I'm wondering what has changed I'm glad we're getting a new roof because we desperately need a new roof we should add new roof on that building years ago but I'm just
057curious why things keep changing on us and why you know if if the district can't put together a a proper planned out proposition and that's well thought out well organized and scheduled and takes into consideration different things if they're too busy to do their homework then they're too busy to run this project and that's all we keep seeing is just promises they can switch going here going there things change we ask for questions we never get answers we're trying to foia stuff we're getting shot down we've asked direct questions we haven't got responses so we're just asking it has a wiley Community here please somebody please communicate with us there has been no communication to the Wiley Community about this as we were promised no hey let's sit down and talk about this what are
058your concerns no you know we've talked about this is this meet your concerns nothing so I'm just still waiting for it so you know I'm kind of tempted to sit up here for the next minute in 27 seconds hoping somebody will respond to me but I got other people that want to speak so I'll be applied to them but please take the time reach out to the Wiley Community whatever way you can and answer our questions speak to us we're here we're going to be here hopefully forever hopefully while they won't get closed down but that's all I have to say thank you for your time thank you for keeping engaged Mr Anderson we do appreciate your comments uh Rob Burnett Bennett I'm sorry my glasses thank you everybody um so I had also intended
059to ask some questions I'd like to I'm kind of curious um is there an answer to why inquiries cannot be responded to during this comment time other than we don't usually do it that way or is there uh because as far as our group can tell we've looked at bylaws we haven't seen anything that says that we can't ask a simple question to get an answer so that changes the out that how I'm going to proceed but I would like to ask some simple questions is that okay you can you can ask whatever you want this is your time thank you all right so uh action item 17.1 appeared on the agenda Friday afternoon that is the approval of superintendent contract the approval of an extension to the superintendent's contract will be requested so my
060first question is who is making that request who put this on the agenda the president and then the superintendent jointly craft the agenda okay so both of you decide to put down the agenda okay the verbiages is requested so I'm just wondering who requested it so what's the joint request okay I can I can okay that's I don't feel like that's a difficult question to answer um it's been your policy but this is It's a simple question to answer and I feel like it's fairly okay so I will be happy to address my further questions and bring those to the board yeah I'm this is this is not you know I you know what we don't need to ask questions I feel like this is a pretty straightforward set of answers that I'd be asking
061for but uh here's one question why does this board now need to be considering an extension of a contract that to my understanding doesn't expire until 16ish months from now why is that suddenly an item appearing on the agenda tonight in front of a board that is largely going to be going away shortly why is this suddenly an item now shouldn't this be something that maybe the incoming board wants votes are certified are going to be considering I mean that seems to me like the next board should be the one considering this item that seems fair to me um I don't know that there's I also was kind of curious as to what the rationale was for doing this herb but I guess we're not going to get a response to that either is there
062anybody wants to address that okay that's fine um all right so yeah I would put it out there that the look is not good this is not good Optics this looks like um you know several references tonight to the superintendent and the pocketed four I'm not going to name names but I think all of us who have been here for a few months at least know who those names are I think this looks like an attempt to basically prematurely extend the contract that doesn't need to be extended tonight but we're playing it safe and hopefully making sure that results are achieved before the next board is seated I don't think it's good Optics I think it's a bad look for the board it's also a bad look for superintendent Ivory Tatum it makes a a
063look of illegitimacy to whatever's going forward so that's all I got to say thank you I do appreciate your comments sir uh Savannah Donovan hi thank you my name is Savannah Donovan I'm a Wily parent I just have a brief statement a school is the children it serves the Wily reimagining committee needs more Wily parent voices on it to serve our children's best interests Wiley is not an underutilized school that fills a need it's a fully staffed School serving a vital role in our diverse neighborhood I have three children who would attend Wiley next year I'm here tonight because I love Wiley Elementary we need to reserve educational spaces like this for the good of our community that's what this committee and ultimately this renovation needs to be used for for building up our neighborhood
064it seems like you are single-handedly trying to decide the fate of this Elementary School without any parental involvement Mr pawlowski you need to redesign this flawed committee that silences Wily voices we need more Wily parents and staff on the committee if I can sign up please let me know thank you thank you uh Crystal Hall my name is Crystal Hall and I'm a wiley parent I thought it couldn't get worse than a school closure but I was wrong I'm disheartened dissatisfied Feeling demoralized by the duplicitous double speak and undemocratic process of the school closure and the undemocratic proposed design of the facilities committee so let's review back a few months Wiley was voted to be closed for an asbestos abatement Health Emergency which has essentially become the code word for operation shutdown a majority black
065school with the highest percentage of minoritized certified teachers so let's get back to the fundamentals and consider what our school community means to our students to quote Dr Jerome Morris in his article closures of black K-12 schools Across the Nation threaten neighborhood stability throughout black his black people's history in the U.S predominantly black K-12 schools have served as pillars in Black communities their importance is second only in significance to the black church neighborhood schools help stabilize communities and Foster a sense of belonging for children serving as a foundation for academic achievement so in the proposed design of the facilities committee regarding Wiley please consider the meaning the place and the inherent function of our neighborhood School Morris also articulates in the same article what I would personally call Administration brutality I've been pondering the actions
066of the four members of the board and the actions of the district in the last few months but I couldn't quite articulate the Injustice I felt and continue to feel Moore's does it aptly when he writes amid National railing cries and hashtags at black lives matter I believe greater attention needs to be given to efforts aimed at stopping the closing of black K-12 Public Schools just as the black lives matter movement Demands a stop to the unjust killing of black people residents of predominantly black communities throughout the U.S are also fighting to stop the killing of their communities through school closures we are here to fight the further killing of our community we have been promised over and over again that this is not a closure it is just an abatement yet the very committee
067that is supposed to reimagine what our neighborhood school will become barely has any Wily stakeholder voices the administration's current design is a 55-member facilities committee composed of 17 District administrators and principals 31 percent of the committee two parent Liaisons presumably dual language three UEA Representatives um the union Representatives 12 Elementary parents two from each School six Middle School parents six elementary teachers and staff six Middle School teachers and staff three community members and that's not even including co-chairs and board members Wiley will only have two parents in a 55-member committee this is only 3.6 percent of the possible vote we deserve just as many voices as the administration currently has two won't do and I'll repeat that two won't do so board president Polaski we know you have the exclusive authority to accept or reject
068the community design committee design and you will appoint the committee members it is your decision and responsibility alone please lose your authority to represent and strengthen Wily voices the current is uh committing design continues to silence the Wily voice we have not had a say in this entire process so board president Polaski we respectfully ask you to reject this current proposal and oppose and approve a new design of a facilities committee that actually represents Wiley voices thank you thank you Brian Gaines good evening my name is Brian Gaines I'm the wrestling Arrington professor in state politics at the University of Illinois but my comments tonight are not in the capacity as a professor on behalf of the University I'm speaking as a parent of three children in the school district and two more who will
069be in the school district in short order and I also want to speak about action item 17.1 the possible extension of the superintendent's contract the point I want to make is is the same one essentially that as a procedural matter since we've had an election the people have spoken we have a new board to be constituted it doesn't make a great deal of sense to have this item decided by the current board this is a point that's strictly procedural I don't have any particular inkling about how the present quarter or the future board would be likely to vote I'm not going to make an argument about the substantive merits of it but I think that things that are is not deeply urgent they're especially consequential in forward reaching ought to be decided when an election
070has taken place not in the lame deck session but in the reconstituted session it's from lame duck is a metaphor it's used uh Loosely it's a metaphor people are free use it anyway they like but I'll clarify sometimes people say the president in his second term is a lame duck because he can't be reelected or for example an official who has not yet been reappointed as a lambdoc that's not the sense that that there's a democratic reason not to act the particular reason not to act is when an election has taken place the people who are the ultimate bosses have spoken and the new people's representatives are known but are not yet constituted as the elected body as a legislator or a collective body in those circumstances I think it's not to say the board
071can do nothing of course especially on urgent matters the board ought to act but it isn't sensible to make decisions that will have far-reaching long-standing effects when the new board will be meeting soon enough so again it's not a substantive point at all it's merely a procedural one I would say not from the vantage point of legal Authority but from an edge point of democratic accountability it does not make sense to address action item 17.1 now it makes sense to hold it off and leave that to the new board thank you very much thank you uh Ephraim Tutwiler hello um I think last time or two weeks ago I wasn't here but the idea of the Legacy that was brought up of this board it's been a lack of transparency um since I've been coming
072what I've been asking for is a plan right just some sort of idea so that heck we could bring it back to other parents and kind of talk about things because there hasn't been I have reached out to kind of get an idea my son's in sped I want to know how many kids are going to Thomas Paine how many kids are in the I never got an idea of the snapshot of what where we currently are so that you can plan for the future do you have enough staff do you not I understand that there's going to be some fluctuations with kids added and taken out of there but I never got an answer to that um there have been other questions that I've had that there have been no answers to and I
073understand that people are moving around but there haven't been answers and that is kind of the Legacy that I'm left with here for this board there have been questions that have been brought up prior to where we are now and mentioned that that's the reason why we added on to Thomas Paine that you guys added these extra classrooms for this current situation hey we never had a vote in that that was all during the strictly Thomas Paine we have not had anything for us now you guys are taking it away from us and I'm to the point where I want to cry like there's nothing nothing that you guys have really done to help us in general it was an abatement then it was a financial decision to continue forward right our community has been
074broken apart teachers going here teachers going there like kids friends get on going to different schools not that not that this means anything to you guys because I I guess it's like numbers right but it's breaking my heart I can tell you honestly I'm more connected than what you guys may know but like we've got numerous veteran teachers that are not returning due to this current situation my wife is a teacher in this District what I've got two kids right now in this school with a third on his way to early childhood why do I want to keep them here why because you guys could very well close the next one and honestly as a mad parent I could ask you why aren't we closing Thomas Paine next year instead of keeping Wiley there right
075it's not a it's a financial decision right not just but it would be unfair to move everybody right but we're having to deal with that we're absorbing all of that for next year my son's in third grade he won't get a chance to graduate from Wiley well my daughter in kindergarten now who knows because it could be a middle school it could be all these other things that we had talked about previously but yet there has been no conversations like I would like to have a conversation with somebody I don't care if they're from my sub District I don't care if they're from another one I don't care what part they're from I just want to have a conversation to understand what's going on because it's breaking my heart I have a serious passion for
076education those you those of you who do not know I was going to become a music teacher I didn't finish my degree right I had some financial aid issues and this is a prime reason why I would not finish my degree I would not come to be a teacher why this the closure of schools the the lack of input here you don't have an idea of of what's going to happen right it's a vote for people that you may not see Brian I do want to thank you my wife has mentioned that you have come out and there was someone else that came with you to talk to teachers at the school but we've not seen any other board members there I I don't know how to say it but there's a lack of transparency
077here hey honest question has anybody else been to Wiley okay two others thank you but I still feel like there needs to be more because my wife doesn't feel supported she needs more conversation she needs more I and I know that there are other people as well now I'm not trying to get my wife in trouble I'm not trying to do anything like that but I mean there needs to be more conversations here and I understand that we've got some movement around I know uh Mr gutzmer you won't be here on the oh no wrong Instagram Mr Taylor yes I was right there but yes I know you won't be on the board next year but like I know Beth is going to be taking over for you and I would love to have a
078conversation next to see what is going to happen for the spent program because we have no idea and I get that kids have the Opera or parents have the opportunity to send their kids to different schools but it shouldn't change that much there should be some idea right now of a snapshot of how many kids are in this bed program at Wiley based on where they live because we already drew the maps up where are they going we have no answer for that I haven't gotten it um how many other kids are going where I mean we're getting closer to the date we've had meetings we've had times for people to actually address where they want to go I understand that they're going to be some small changes but I mean we should be in
079the ballpark of where we're supposed to be and right now there have been any conversations and I feel like we need more support here because if there's not like we were building these we were updating this school to bring back some of the parents that came that left during the pandemic why wouldn't I leave I'm sorry I know where I'm going over time but still one last point you were in our situation 10 years ago you were in our situation you were pleading with the board to help us and right now I'd love to have a conversation with you totally outside of here because right now we have not been heard we are not added to the board 3.5 or 3.6 percent is not enough thank you Mr Weller and please reach out to me
080over email I'm happy to talk with you [Applause] does anybody else wish to make a statement before the board this evening is quickly filling out a form and it's going to be making one last statement before the board you don't need to fill it out right now just go ahead and go ahead Kanita can you hear me okay sorry um I I am speaking as a community volunteer and my statement does not reflect any of the organization that I currently served on I am asked to speak because many community volunteers cannot be here I will ask them to email you first this week is public volunteer Public School volunteer week so we would like to thank you for your service uh special special shout out to board member Carter for her 14 plus years so
081we thank you you have a very difficult job and we know that you all cannot please everybody breathe you guys second um I would like to ask you to up your game on sharing pertinent information it is really hard to watch some of the comments uh last couple of weeks since on the one hand I can see why community members are so upset on the other hand I also have seen many misinformation been spreading around so for as a person who've been in the district I too I'm sorry not president Pulaski himself was on this side of the table I was here speaking giving you guys hard time part of the Wiley Community you know then but the difference is we had the right information I felt that it's so hard it's so hard to
082see people because like when you volunteer on the ground and know a lot you know you you know think that people don't know but you're not in the position to speak and like folks are upset of course they're upset but are they upselling the right reason maybe maybe yes maybe no so you all might need to up your games and share with them the information um anyway so um my heart goes out to our student ambassador who spent their time here you have our respect it is hard um but I hope you learn from you know all this um so yeah you you really need to share some more information uh people have good intention but when they don't know information they start to you know feel and think certain way um third as you
083know you are holding very important important position and the learning curve is big anybody who has experience serving on a consequential committee knows that it takes a long time to learn about the organization when you all came first time I'm sorry you did not make any sense when I watched you on TV you know like you learn you you need a lot of time before you start knowing how to vote and all that and because of that many of us feel that for you to conduct business you know for this long we voted you in and you simply gonna say hey I'm Gonna Leave This for the next ball to decide doesn't make logical sin to us because it's you are is you're doing you have been listening studying working you know with this team
084and you'll be like I'm out like when you campaign you did not say by the way last semester I am not doing anything had you said that we might not vote you in it it is it is responsibility that you might want to look and take seriously okay lastly sorry I'm too emotional but um we thank you this is a thankless job people here with you sometimes they look at you as hero some people look at you as villain you know but the truth is you spend hours of time being here and we we thank you and we would um you know want you to still be part of our school even if you no longer serve as a board if anybody want to volunteer you have my email we welcome you thank you thank
085you very much Kanita one last call for citizen statements all right hearing none uh other no I think that's kanita's form oh oh you are Angie [Music] hi my name is Angie Franklin and I'm an Urbana resident and parent in addition I have the privilege of serving as the assistant superintendent of Human Resources I wanted to provide Clarity to our audience here tonight in addition to those watching at home since it has not been the board's practice to engage in conversation during public comment I thought it would be helpful to share information in this way despite my supervisor's recommendation superintendent contracts are worked on well in advance and this is not unusual or this is not usual unusual for our district this is the same process followed by other high profile positions in leadership in
086an educator and administrator shortage school districts and other organizations want to secure their leaders so they don't get stolen away by our competitors the current board recently approved the teacher contract just as the current board would approve the superintendent contract extension on a more personal note that I think others should know the contract extension for the superintendent was discussed being on the agenda a few months ago Dr ever Tatum refused to put her contract extension on the board agenda because the teacher contract had not yet been approved she didn't feel it was ethical to have her contract voted on prior to the teachers I think that's important for folks to know thanks one last call all right uh there is no policy review tonight and no Communications so it's time for a student ambassador's report
087Parker well as I'm sure you are I'm sorry as I'm sure you all know the school year is coming to an end um we have a lot of tests going on right now AP tests are coming up we have finals we had the ECT last week sat last week we have the Sila by literacy test this week so I just want to say good luck to everyone and that promise coming up and we're all very excited for that thank you Parker um our first administrative report tonight is uh math adoption update so okay as we get the presentation started here I have Mrs uscali our director of curriculum instruction and student learning and Mrs deakin our director of Esser and grant-based programs and they'll both be joining me this evening but what we wanted to
088do this evening was outline the process of the past two years in order to prepare for the math adoption that we will share this evening I've also have some questions that have been shared with me and I would just like to respond to those before we get started the past two years was spent on committee work and 75 teachers that conducted the math pilot at elementary middle school and high school we also had professional development with Janet Moore she is an external consult math consultant and it's also important to note that Janet does not endorse any particular program that we piloted her support guides instruction through priority standards and eight mathematical practices throughout this process you can start at the beginning John and then we'll go through I'm just kind of intro the CIT the
089CIA team so that's the curriculum instruction assessment team made a decision based on all the points that you will see highlighted in this presentation particularly when we get to slide three there was a survey that was conducted among the 75 teachers that piloted for math but unfortunately only 17 percent responded again I want to stress that there are multiple factors that we will outline that were included with this decision-making process the decision was first shared with principals and then elementary teachers were told when they were in their grade level groups it was important that the message was delivered to all of our grade level teachers at the same time if it would have been a road show and we would have went around school to school it wouldn't have been delivered at the same time
090and perhaps not have been a consistent message and that was really important to us since this conversation this unveiling of our our new math program was done via Zoom it was done in large spaces so in in libraries or classrooms and it was not individual zooms so we did not have chat or individual Zoom screens on at that time we've heard from some of our teachers that were concerned about that and we want to apologize that it was not more interactive but it was due to the nature that we had a short amount of time this was our last grade level staff development for the year and we also had several other items that were part of the agenda that day good news is we have over 50 elementary teachers that have already signed up
091for the professional development and over 25 secondary teachers for the training so far so now at this time Mrs yuskali and Mrs Deacon will further outline the timelines resources and future opportunities for professional development to support our Educators thank you well good evening I'm Erica yuscali I'm the director of curriculum and student learning for the district thank you for allowing us to share some exciting information with you tonight Tanya and I were here prior to the beginning of the school year I believe it was and we shared with you about the math Pilots that were getting ready to take place in the district and we were excited then and we are excited now about where we have gone on this next slide I'm going to start at the 912 end because it was high school
092that jumped into this first so when we began this process which we will outline in a few minutes the high school jumped in much quicker than anyone else they found a couple of different series that they were interested in and they wanted to Pilot and so they jumped in first they piloted two series one was into math and the other was illustrative mathematics most of that piloting was done at the algebra 1 level and so it went across across the school it cut across many of our students and impacted many of our students not all teachers piloted that is part of part of what happens with the pilot is they have the option to do it or not and so about half of our Algebra 1 staff piloted and about half did not at the
093end of their pilot time the high school made the decision that they wanted to move forward with a more extensive pilot of just one of those two series and so they chose illustrative mathematics and wanted to move forward with that and try it in both Algebra 2 and geometry as well and so during this school year we have had extended Pilots happening in Algebra 1 Algebra 2 and geometry the middle school was also approached about thinking about which series they wanted to Pilot as well after talking with the high school the Middle School came back to us and said we would like to move forward with the same pilot that the high school is doing and so when you see the listing of Just One Pilot at the middle school that was by choice that
094they wanted to only pilot the one that the high school was doing because they were looking for some consistency from the Middle School to the high school then we also had three Pilots that took place in elementary schools so we had Eureka squared which you may know that we have had the Eureka program as our math program in elementary for the last several years so Eureka squared was one of them which is the next Edition we also had into math which you will see is one that we did in the high school as well and then we had illustrative mathematics again so those Pilots have gone on throughout this entire school year again not all teachers piloted but a very large portion of our Elementary staff did pilot we had teachers in all areas of
095of our educational settings we had special ed teachers we had dual language teachers we had gen Ed teachers we had a variety of people who piloted these three programs on our next slide one of the things that was requested as we went into the pilot was to make sure that we were collecting multiple points of information that we were gathering data from the teachers not just at the end of the program but as the pilots were taking place weekly surveys were sent out to the staff and we did get a lot of data from them on a week-to-week basis so we were able to see what they were thinking what was going on as we were at different parts of the program we were able to glean a great deal of feedback about implementation how
096that rolled out which companies fared better than the others as far as getting materials and training into place for the staff how easy is it to use our 6 through 12 friends their math specialist that is what they're passionate about and have trained in elementary wanted something that would be a little bit more user friendly and would be well supported through training prep time is the theme that came through with all three of the programs it looked different as far as what the prep time would involve anywhere from creating centers to trying to determine the different ways that we might supplement through intervention so there was a lot of feedback provided for those diagnostic options there was concern would we lose a tool along the way I'm going to say the middle school because they've
097really enjoyed I ready for the diagnostic purposes of it but when our committee met together that was one that the committee had chosen not to move forward with um availability of products I put in the list weekly responses getting information again back from the staff we also did a presentation at the end and we asked each of the pilots to work together to create a presentation about the different programs so that they could see what each other's program looked like if somebody was unhappy with the program that they piloted we needed them to have information about the other programs what was interesting when we did those presentations is they did all come back to the concrete representational abstract methods which was one of the criteria when we went into the pilot to make sure that
098was the fundamental part map scores was a little bit trickier the program itself did not generate the data that we were all looking for in the manner that we were looking for we tried to piece some pieces together and try to make some decisions they scored within I think it was a 10 percent tile range so there wasn't one that stood out over the rest with the different pieces training has been interesting and definitely consideration each of the pilots had a very different philosophy about how they did their training and so there was a lot of conversation about what would be the best for soup for supporting our staff availability I missed Ed reports Eureka squared was supposed to have had its results come out and that has not happened yet and then into math
099was outscored by illustrative math by the experts looking at the data and making determinations on several different factors then we have the availability of Spanish resources having our dual language teachers pilot was a very critical piece to be able to see what can we support what are we going to need to do as we move forward and then just consistency throughout the district can we pair up any of the three programs with what the six through 12 group will be doing so that way we have a way of making sure that we're layering and spiraling our content so after looking at all of those pieces and looking in depth at all of the information that we received throughout the year we made the choice to move forward with illustrative mathematics that will be a K-12
100math Series so it will we will have consistency across all grade levels I looked for a description just a short description of illustrative mathematics just so that you could kind of begin to get a taste of what it is all about and so I want to read that to you now math is not a spectator sport students learn by doing math solving problems in mathematical and real world context and constructing arguments using precise language illustrative mathematics is a problem-based Core curriculum for 21st century Learners designed to address content and practice standards to Foster learning for all preparing students to solve problems reason communicate and think critically in the classroom and Beyond I know when I read that it's pretty exciting when I think about the hopes and dreams that we have for our students I
101feel like this is something that is really going to help us move forward I do want to take you back in time a little bit um and just back this up so that you can see how long this process has been in place we began this process of trying to find a new series back in the 2020 2020-21 school year that is when our math committee our district-wide math committee was formed at that time the committee began to set goals we began to look at our district data we also began to look at Best Practices and the most current Research In Math education then in 2021-22 the math committee divided into three subcommittees so there was one that was looking at curriculum and curriculum development especially within the standards reference learning work that we've been
102doing across the district we had another that looked at a variety of math series and then we had another that began to look at interventions that we could use with all of our students K-12 at that time as I said earlier UHS Algebra 1 teachers decided they wanted to begin a pilot in second semester of the last school year and we also contracted Janet Moore to be an outside consultant to work with our teachers across the district then this year we had 75 teachers so this is in addition to the teachers who piloted last year we had 75 teachers who engaged in the math Pilots across the district we had an emphasis throughout the district on the eight mathematical practices and also the mathematical teaching practices Janet Moore continued her work her work with our
103district and in the end a new math series was determined looking ahead to this spring and the summer we have a wide variety of series and platform trainings that are happening we have tried to account for all possible times that teachers might be able to train so we have some that are happening during the school day with Subs as available we also have some that are happening in the evenings and teachers get paid for their time we also have some that are available even on Saturdays so if someone has a second job during the summer and they can't work they don't want to come to training or they can't come to training they have the option of coming on Saturday we also have virtual options we have in-person options a variety of things happening after
104the school year ends as well we also have some supportive professional development in place which Tanya will outline in a few minutes we're trying to make sure that our teachers feel very supported as we make this move because it is very different from what they are used to and so we want them to have the support that they need we also have additional trainings happening with Janet Moore and our materials have been ordered math lending live libraries are in the process of being created as well so that we can get manipulatives into the hands of our of our teachers and students K-12 in the fall we will train any staff that is new so new hires will be trained before the school year begins we also are working to put in support systems for students
105as they make this transition because it will be very different from what they're used to as well and so that's our plan at this point so looking back and looking forward at where we are going with regard to our training we were asked by administrators and by teaching staff to look at a variety of ways that we can make sure that we're reaching out and providing the support so the different formats that we have worked to try to make sure math is getting a little bit of space in in the next school year our K-5 Monday meetings part of the building level meetings will be a 45-minute piece reviewing and working on the techniques that are Universal to all K-5 grades we have our unit rollouts that is something that Janet Moore will help us
106out with as far as what do we need what is the must do and what is the May do as you look at each unit in determining what is the higher priority for your students we have our K-5 grade level meetings using time on those staff development days in the morning to do some more math Refreshers when they'll be together with their grade level colleagues we have the 6 through 12 every other Wednesday work they had actually requested that from us specifically that they would like to dedicate alternating weeks using their development time on Wednesdays to work on math K-12 unit zero that is specifically focused on the mathematical practices it was fun tonight I'm a math person I taught secondary mathematics as I started my career and we did have our first session tonight
107of training with illustrative in a virtual format and it was fun to listen to the teachers talk about how they looked at things differently tonight when that was being presented to them so it was it was kind of a I loved it is a groovy thing so being able to enjoy that time and talking math with our staff and then K-12 Center and activity preps something that came through most heavily with illustrative but also with the others the creation of the centers is very time involved what we have done is we've done further research and in the last few months we were notified hand to mind has now looked at the centers that are within illustrative mathematics and then put other kits the kits are actually in District as of today and we want to
108sit with the teachers and double check to make sure that it has the contents that we're looking for and what are we missing that we might need to supplement keeping all that in mind if we can go ahead to the next then again we have our monthly coaching meetings with our instructional coaches they've requested to have some time dedicated to math so that they could better support the staff they've also asked of course to be included in the training and we're not turning people away anybody that feels that it's supportive to the work that they do they have the opportunity to sign up for any of the trainings and as Eric had mentioned we have all different types evenings virtual in person during school year outside of school year and we do have one that's
109sitting there for Saturdays hoping for a little bit more turnout for that and we can get that lined up Janet Moore is committing to us for next year more time than she had done this year we are competing with the baby so we do know that we will be doing some zooming but we had a meeting again yesterday to thoughtfully craft how can we make sure that we have what we need in place and even creating a library of sorts so that teachers can draw on that as they need to DL Math training it's a names program that Lou Lupe and the DL teachers have brought and asked it is extremely similar to what we're trying to do with Janet Moore except it would come from a DL ESL perspective we are waiting to get
110that perspective from that company we met with them again last Friday we should have it by tomorrow is what they had targeted for us math practice walk through training and data collection at our last principles meeting we asked the administrators to please give us some information as to what do you need to help support your staff in your building with the math roll out K-12 unit zero training not only from the teacher's side and implementing it in the classroom but from the administrative side what do they look for when they're going into the classroom so they know where the struggles are and what we need to do to keep it moving forward and then to solve or address a bit of the diagnostic issue we have exact path that was a contract that was signed
111earlier this year we're using it on a pilot at the moment with some of our interventionists and we're seeing some good results with that so we're hoping that this will be it aligns with map as well so we're able to take the data from map put it into exact path and use that to help the kids in intervention it is web-based so it's not the Hands-On that we'd like I think that we're concerned that the number of kids coming out that they're just not at grade level that's an attempt to try to help as we Bridge the rigor Gap that's coming into any of the three programs that was also a consistent feedback the programs were all very rigorous and there was concern about that for our kids that's not unique to Urbana you know
112with covid and which some of the struggles we've had that's something that we're going to continue to work on so we again are very excited to share this with you tonight I can say that the prospect of having a series that goes across kindergarten through 12th grade is huge for us to be able to have consistency to be able to know that Concepts will be spiraled through that students will be able to build foundations and then grow from those things as they move through our school system and so it's very very exciting as I've said before this is a different kind of series than what we're used to and so we hope that you see that all of the supports that we are putting in place are truly meant to be supportive to our staff
113to our students to our administrators and so it's very exciting we hope that you are excited about this as well thanks for letting us share thank you very much board members and any questions and Tori listening at home any questions I guess I have a couple if no one else does okay I'll go first um have you talked to uh districts can comparable to our sides who who have rolled this program out um in order to you know figure out what lessons they learned and what to do what not to do so they we could repeat um their successes specifically uh champagne four they are using it six through twelve and so we reached out to their curriculum folks and asked what were some things that you found helped with a successful rollout and this
114was after we were looking at what was our what were you leaning towards because it wouldn't help to call them if that isn't what they're using District 87 in Bloomington is also using this program and again they were able the one thing that came through just like what our staff said to us the training is going to be key you know it is an eight it's a six to eight hour training and then another 90-minute platform training Esser is paying for the training time for the staff when it's outside of the day as well to help support and move us forward it was an area we saw last spring we had a deficit in and we need to make sure that we're getting on that the follow-up question is is there like a relative cost
115breakdown in terms of financials between this and and other programs we've had in the past I can get something together for you if you're looking for something specific if you're talking about contracted amount permission just the overall budget implications of rolling out this plan as compared to what we had in the past would be useful I would have to see what that was what it was in the past I know what it's looking at right now um if I if I had to guess I don't know that you want me to guess but we're right around 300 000 once we get the manipulative kits added in there okay anyone else yes sir yes sir to catch that yeah um this is one of those moments where it's like kind of weird being a board member
116in that I'm not an expert in curriculum nor am I a k through 12 math teacher but I did I emailed Kim some questions early on that did not actually come from me they came I was in a space with some some teachers this weekend coincidentally and math curriculum was not something that was particularly on my mind but my role as a as a mouthpiece here I'm just going to make kind of a general comment and it feels really apropos of what we listen to in the public comment which is sometimes the disconnect between what we know on the inside and what others know when things are communicated um and and it was a little bit evident in the presentation as well that the data points that are used sometimes to make decisions you know
117I I know you were on limited time because we have a lot of a lot on our agenda uh my understanding from the teachers was that there was very much a feeling of a lot of stuff happened and a decision was made and communicated in a zoom format and then that was it right there's lots of stuff that's going to happen down the road and so my comment really it's not really I'm not looking for any kind of response tonight but simply we on this side of the table I think we do need to really listen and say we're trying to make decisions here that are in the best interest of people we're trying to use data we're spending a lot of time doing these things but something is being Lost in Translation and then
118the look is we've made a backdoor decision and then we've imposed that on other people change is scary there they have a lot of training to do so the the comment really is just the degree to which the dots can be connected so all those data points you used the albeit small survey sample that you got something like 20 percent if there could be you know a briefing to teachers perhaps you did that and they missed it I don't know how did we get from the pilot to the data to the decision I think that would be very well received at least by the people who spoke to me yeah I just want to share because I don't think I mentioned this that and there are actually a few more slides that we removed for
119the presentation just for this evening but this was actually the same presentation that was shared with principals first and then teachers so it they did go over those points that you know what was part of what made that decision as I mentioned on slide three that was shared with teachers this was the same presentation so I just I didn't add that earlier anyone else have any comments or questions all right well thank you very much for staying tonight uh our second administrative report is uh 10.2 Quest Food Management Services emergency food service contract proposal so I guess Katie will present I would like to invite Nick sicaro Chris Cott and Josh Bain up to um present this proposal while they're going to give a company overview and and discuss some of their proposed changes and
120also if you didn't get a chance I mean feel free they brought up amazing spread of some various Foods so which some of which they may highlight tonight when they're talking so and it's all very yummy thank you welcome if you could hit the little button at the bottom of your mic so they turn screen that'd be great awesome we're good all right I hope you guys enjoyed the food um and if you didn't again please please grab some um I'm Nick I'm the president Quest we are uh incredibly excited to have the opportunity to chat with you guys for a few minutes tell you a little bit about Quest and I think more importantly a little bit about our vision for the program here um and Josh is going to do the prime uh
121most of the talking about our vision for the program here so if you wouldn't mind jumping to the next slide please it's a little bit about Quest we've been in business for almost 40 years we're based in the western suburbs of Chicago We're a privately held company second generation the gentleman that owns our companies like 57 58 his son was actually one of the individuals that was helping put the food together for you guys today which is uh which is pretty cool we have about 150 different partners that we work with and all but about 10 of them are K-12 schools so that's been the backbone of our company for nearly 40 years it's it's really what started our company in it K-12 education partners are still what drives our business today we have about
1221300 employees scattered uh anywhere from if you go from Milwaukee we've got a huge concentration in Chicagoland we're building a presence here in this part of of Illinois we've got seven accounts in Indianapolis up to Fort Wayne in Detroit so all kind of in the Upper Midwest here um and we're at about 92 million in annual revenue we've been um ranked one of the six or excuse me one of the 10 fastest growing companies in our industry six out of the last seven years and the reason I bring that up those two numbers and of themselves don't really mean a whole lot to anyone um but what's really fueled our growth and what's allowed us to get to that number from a revenue perspective is if you look back over like the last 15 years
123um year over year we're at like a 99.7 percent retention rate of our existing clients so we are very picky about the partners that we work with we turn down probably 80 to 100 opportunities a year that we don't think makes sense to us and one of the things that we have learned about uh the art the partnership here and and the opportunity here that has us so very excited is how interested the community seems to be in food quality for students and that has been something that's differentiated us from day one and it's something that we are super super passionate about if you don't mind jumping to the next slide please one of the things that we try to do to I think put uh words to that passion is our food philosophy and
124this is something that absolutely sets us apart from other competitors in the space so things like never using any uh excuse me never using any trans fats or anything prepared in-house no MSG 100 cage-free eggs all of our all of our produce is either fresh fresh frozen packed in 100 water or juice so we're not using a lot of canned processed foods we do much more scratch cooking than most of our competition does of course we're going to still see some convenience items out there but even things like chicken nuggets for example or whole muscle meat with us it's not pressed and formed things that you wouldn't recognize if you open up uh the the Nugget what's in there and so that food quality piece is super super important to us and I think the
125food philosophy kind of highlights our our attention to that and our focus on that next slide please and then before I turn it over to Josh I think one of the things that really sets us apart as an organization is the flexibility that we provide our on-site managers so unlike a lot of the other folks that work in our space where the menus are really prescribed from the corporate entity down to the local managers we provide our on-site folks with an incredible amount of flexibility to adjust the program to meet the community's needs and that is something that we expect as the organ from an organizational standpoint it's not just something that we allow so one of the things that we spend a lot of time on and we'll talk about it towards the end
126of our presentation today our food committees where we actually get out and meet and sit with the students and hear their feedback about what's working with the program what's not working with the program we actually had our first food committees at Muhammad today we just started there a few weeks ago and so it was awesome to get some feedback from the students today and that is something that we expect all of our on-site managers to do at least once a semester at every building that they have of course we have to have partnership with the district to make that happen but then based on that feedback that they're receiving from the students we allow the them a lot of rope and a lot of flexibility to listen to that feedback and then Implement those changes
127so that the program continues to evolve as the years go on so you know I think one of the things that we typically see is a pretty big bump in participation when we first start because the food quality is there with the scratch ingredients and the and the food philosophy and those types of things but the reason that we have that client retention one of the big reasons that we have that client retention rate that I mentioned earlier is because the program keeps evolving because we're listening to the students we've been at places for 15 20 25 plus years I'll give an example of a couple of schools in Chicago and one that we started at it was a large High School District when we started there they were doing annual sales of about four
128hundred thousand dollars a year and we're north of three and a half million now and that's not more students coming into the school that's not um like you know we're not raising prices that much in that amount of time that is true really listening and continuing to evolve to evolve the program year after year after year and that really is who we are as an organization and I think you know when when we focus on the food quality the community integration we're going to talk a little bit about grab-and-go options here because that's always an option that we see especially for high school students is really underrepresented in food programs we think we've got something super unique to offer here and the last thing I'll say before we turn it over to Josh uh we
129before I turn it over to Josh is um I know we're a bit new to the area here I I get that again we've been in business for about you know 40 years I think the one thing that I will share with you all is if you guys were to choose to to work with Quest we're not a multi-billion dollar company that if we have a partnership like this of this size and this magnitude that we can afford to lose this is truly an enormous opportunity for our organization it's kind of uh a game changer for our company if you will and what I can promise you and I think what you would find from our references is that you all will get everything our organization has to offer accessibility to our entire leadership team
130support from our organization this would truly be a flagship location for us and I'm not sure that other folks that that are at the table for this opportunity could say the same thing so we're really excited to have the opportunity to visit with you guys today so I will turn it over to Josh yeah thanks guys um my name is Josh Bain I'm the vice president of operations for Quest and I want to talk a little bit more just about you know what a quest program looks like starting off I wanted to highlight to England and go to the next slide a couple of notable Partnerships that have some um you know common common ground with you all um Nick just referenced we've been working out at Muhammad for a little over a month now
131we entered into an emergency contract with them back I believe March 6th was our first day so just getting off the ground there and have had a lot of early successes as Nick mentioned we had our first food committee today and it was really exciting to hear student feedback on just how excited they are about the quality of the food that they're seeing we were able to take their feedback and um you know get back to the office look at the menus and make some immediate changes in response to that and it's part of what really is a distinctive distinguishing factor for us as a company is that ability to Pivot very quickly and to to tailor the program to the specific Partnerships we've also recently signed a contract with bourbon a53 just up the
132road we'll be starting there here in a few months and we are closing out our first year at Eureka College we really feel like this area of Illinois is an area of focus for us geographically we feel like we've have a strong presence in Chicagoland and feel like this is kind of the next next step for us as a company and to Nick's point this would be a really Flagship kind of location for us JS Morton 201 is a high school school district outside of Chicago that we've been at for a long time it's got just over 8 000 students they're actually exploring um going cep here in the near future so we've we've been with them for a long time seen a lot of participation growth and a lot of just exciting things happening
133there and finally want to really highlight the noble network of charter schools in the city of Chicago we go and go to the next slide we've been at Noble since last July so we're closing out our first year of partnership with with them and entered into a contract with them because they were looking for a better quality program the program there had maybe a little bit of coveted fatigue a lot of those convenience kind of items that that started during the pandemic were holding over you know after maybe it made a lot of sense to continue offering those types of items and they had seen a pretty sharp decline in in participation and just lack of interest in the program and we share a vision with the the leadership there at the noble Network for
134just good food and really that's been our our you know kind of primary two focuses at Noble have been on driving the quality of food by purchasing great ingredients and and assembling them in ways that are attractive and that are are what students want and then we couldn't do that if we didn't have our second Focus which is on equipping the staff the Frontline staff to be able to prepare the food to do more scratch cooking it's a lot of fun to go in and do trainings where we're teaching folks how to hold a chef knife and and what the different types of cuts are and and kind of empowering them to put out a really great product that they can they can be proud of and they've definitely got a product they can be
135proud of at Noble we've got a couple pictures on the slide that were actually taken by one of our front line employees that has kind of created her own Instagram feed of what they're what they're offering each day out at the network she has a lot of fun doing that but um you know a couple facts about Noble it's we operate 16 locations there 15 are Traditional School locations and then we have a daycare it's just over 12 000 students it's fully cep at every location um so we've been here Year we're serving in excess of 30 000 meals a day and have seen some really remarkable growth and participation which I'll talk about here in a moment really really proud of this last bullet though we've seen 95 percent staff retention we went from
136a program where the staff was taking food out of the freezer putting it in the oven and then putting it directly onto serving lines but tremendous amount of the food was pre-packaged they weren't even you know having to assemble any any ingredients we did trainings over the summer which is part of our all of our Partnerships having some intentional training time where we have both classroom and Hands-On in the kitchen time with staff and it's a lot of fun to to work with the employees and and give them a Hands-On opportunity to try out what what we're talking about doing you know we it's one thing to hear about the vision it's something very very different to actually do it we had a great time doing that with the employees got the staff to kind
137of catch a vision create some excitement there and I was out at Noble for um you know our entire first week visiting all the different schools and it was it was really incredible to watch the students come through the line and and visibly react in a positive way to what they were seeing and our staff saw that and it was a lot of fun and just really rewarding to to get to see our Frontline employees be proud of what they're putting out for the first time in a long time and that's something that we see in a lot of our Partnerships at Noble we've seen really remarkable growth so we're at a greater than 40 percent increase in participation year over year versus where they were last year and that's we've cut out you know
138there are none of the coveted flexibilities this year that they were able to take advantage of last year with with taking meals home and things like that so even in spite of the the reduced flexibilities we've seen a lot of growth and that comes from you know all the points that Nick talked about it's us talking to students seeing what they actually want seeing what's working and continue to replicate that we've we've done a whole lot of grab and go type options like like you have back here today at Noble and um students have responded remarkably positively speaking specifically to our kind of vision for Urbana we feel like it's really important to support you all with a highly qualified dedicated on-site team so this is a kind of an overview of the organizational chart
139we've got the district manager at the top and then the three positions directly beneath that are where I want to spend just a few moments we would have an on-site food service director of course that's running the day-to-day operations um you know kind of making sure that the the food service department is running well that we're making smart business decisions that we're um you know engaging students effectively and then below them you'll see two kind of subject matter experts that I think would really help to Vault this program forward the first is a dedicated on-site District Chef that would be really responsible for for not only safeguarding the culinary you know kind of portion of the program but also doing a tremendous amount of training and development of Frontline staff and functionally I think that's
140where this person would spend the majority of their time is being in the kitchens working with our Frontline employees making sure that they're empowered and equipped to put out great food the other side of the the orchard there we have an on-site dietitian an account of this size I think needs someone on site that's that's specifically looking at nutrition and compliance day to day and that allows us to to Pivot quickly to make adjustments to the menus and making sure that we're putting out um you know fully compliant food Nick said it and I can't reiterate it enough um our accounts don't use cookie cutter menus we don't have corporate menus the menu here would look very different than what we're doing at Muhammad or doing at Bourbonnais and in fact it may be that
141a school on one side of town in Urbana may be doing a different menu than one on the other side of town we really want to meet the students where they're at and meet the needs of the community that's that's just part of our DNA something that we take for granted and I think we forget to highlight sometimes how how unique that is look at the rest of the organizational chart we've um kept things fairly similar to where they're at now we feel like the Staffing model makes sense it's it's important of course though that we have all these positions filled and part of that is is making sure that we're paying a wage that's that's in line with with the market here and so that is part of what we've kind of built into
142our model for uh for Urbana is is a way for the staff that will be able to bring folks in what we've seen in Muhammad you know just down the road is that um the pay of the former vendor was a huge barrier to being able to fill positions and then it creates a scenario where you don't have enough employees in the buildings and the employees that are there burnt out and it's kind of a vicious cycle and so one of the key critical early parts of this partnership would be making sure that we're fully staffed and the staff is fully trained and able to do the work that we put in front of them think next up we've just got a couple of pictures of food um it's it's really important that that food
143looks good right it needs to taste good it needs to look good students are informed um you know buyers they they know what they want on the food front and it's important for us to offer food in an attractive way which you can kind of see in some of the packaging um over there I'm going to go to the next slide um we've got some more examples of some grab-and-go kind of kind of items yep these are all taken at existing accounts and then finally um and you guys can stop having to listen to my voice I want to talk briefly about food committees um this is my favorite thing that we do at Quest um is is our food committee meetings and these are meetings where that are in a forum that's maybe slightly
144less formal than this but we do bring in the students we have an agenda um we work with the District administration to get a representative cross-section of students so students that are participating in the meal program but then also students that aren't it's important to get their voices and to to hear from them we meet regularly and um you know just just get a gauge for for how they're perceiving the program we a lot of our recipes that we have in our database come from these meetings that come from ideas that students have had things like there was a picture of a chia pudding parfait a couple slides ago that came from a food committee at the noble network of charter schools we were talking to those folks and and they asked for you know
145some options with Chia and so we we got the culinary team together we tested it out and now it's part of our database it's a lot of fun for them to see their ideas kind of coming to fruition and making their way onto the menus at the elementary level we also like to engage you know parents faculty different stakeholders in addition to the students and then of course we do surveys polls things like that throughout the semester as well to make sure that we truly have have student driven menus and that is the end of my should be alone oh yeah yeah real quick sorry real quick if you want to jump to the next one um yeah so uh this picture on the right the gentleman up there Anthony one of our district managers
146is holding a plaque that's usually we have a plaque done with the mission statement for the food committee so that's something we can bring to each meeting sometimes students come in and out they might not remember what the mission of the food committee is you can see we get the pieces of paper on the table where the students can kind of rank some of the options that we're trying and then I just wanted to point out up in the top left there the guy in the blue shirts our owner Mike so this is something he's very actively involved into which I think sets a great tone for the rest of the organization so one of the things that we've heard in some of our conversations with um with the group here is a commitment or
147an interest in in local purchasing and it's something that is really near and dear to our hearts as well I mean great food it starts with great ingredients and the more we can uh find great ingredients and support the regional food Networks you know we're operating uh you know kind of the the double bottom line um and so as you can see you know in the the group or the areas that we do work we've built out a nice network of of farms that we work with and there are a number that we have on our list for this area and we're excited to get started in at Muhammad and Bourbonnais and and hopefully Urbana to start to grow out the central Illinois region and whether it's through an aggregator like cips or Piazza Produce
148in Indiana or going directly to the the local farms and you know working out those logistical delivery issues and and how much they can supply you know those are things that we really enjoy doing and you know feel like it really helps round out the program and make a great effort so we hope uh in the very near future to see a lot more uh representation in the central Illinois area there in my statements Kitty uh board members and any comments questions I I mean I appreciate your presentation I think um we've seen a lot of folks trying to make food that looks good so I appreciate the attention to detail and presentation that you brought for us here um I didn't get to try it all but I think that you are I'll speak
149for myself you're speaking to my heart bringing in local farmers I know that's really important to our district and I think a lot of people who live in the Champaign-Urbana community so I hope that is something that you know that continues to grow in your program but also hopefully for our school district so thank you anyone else can I are you gonna say anything Paul I do have a couple questions yeah go ahead uh one is um I mean the pictures you have looked lovely but I couldn't help but notice seeing some of the things were held in plastic items you know plastic containers is there an effort underway to detract use of plastic and drive that down in serving yes for sure so a lot of it is sort of predicated on the school
150so one is the school already using reusable trays Cutlery et cetera do they have Dish rooms and Dish machines that are sized to be able to handle that two if not does their disposal partner work with composting and or what kind of things do they do they accept from a recycling program standpoint so those are things that we always want to work in tandem with the district to be able to tackle we can easily do composting in the back of the house and even work with the third party vendor if we if we have to but ideally we're working with the infrastructure that the district already has in place to minimize the use of those things some of the items that you saw up there that we displayed some of the grab-and-go options and things
151of that nature a lot of the districts we serve unfortunately are not they don't have Dish machines that are sized to handle reusable trays or or plates and so we end up working with their disposal part disposable disposal partner excuse me on composting and recycling so we really want to work with the district to make sure that we're designing a program that makes sense and not trying to make the Food Service employees for example wash a thousand trays when they've got a dish machine that's size to handle like 40 serving bins if you will and so those are things that we just have to work with the district on on that sort of stuff for sure um in this District uh because of its SES numbers qualifies for a fairly really abusable lunch for everybody
152in the district do you uh also have other districts you serve that that fit the same criteria that we have for sure so uh cep would be the terminology that we uh we would use for that it's Community eligibility provision um so the JS Morton School District that was north of 8 000 students that Josh mentioned is cep um Noble school network is cep as well we've got a few other smaller K-8 districts that we serve up in Chicagoland some of which are even vended meals that we do cep so it's definitely something that we're very familiar with I'm sorry Josh is a vice president of operations and Chris is our vice president of Business Development so I don't think we introduced it we were that's on me I should have also sorry that's all
153right I'm sorry thank you for completing the introduction for sure I think Ann has a question oh yeah that U.S actually just asked that one so my second one was um we are we have a burgeoning farm to school program in this community that we are still working on and it's building and growing in Leaps and Bounds can you see yourselves working with that program in the future for trying to get our own local produce and our own students and staff involved with the food prep and presentation and everything yeah the short answer is yes um that's something we're really excited about and passionate about as an organization um and I've actually been having a lot of conversations very recently it's a timely question about maximizing opportunities there so absolutely we're one additional benefits to
154to partnering with one of the smaller guys like us we're large enough to have some purchasing power but we're not not so large that we're completely Shackled to contracts with National Vendors and so it allows us to to do some micro purchasing and things like a farm to school program so yes I mean just Arc you know health and wellness committee came to you and theoretically and asked you know we have some initiatives that we'd like to do with partnering and you know that you'd be willing and open to work with them and have you know ongoing conversations because people in this community myself included really want healthy food especially since we have the responsibility and the ability to feed everybody with the scrant money I want to make sure it's the best possible and
155also to get the kids involved because they they really do like helping for sure so I'll just I'll give you if I can tell one quick story I think it's one thing to say oh yes we'd love to do that it's like interviewing right well what have we done um so there's a orland uh Orland Park 135 School District up in Chicagoland so they got some grant money to do some additional programming with students this year they approached us about doing some After School culinary clubs with school students and so it's even like outside of the lunch program where the day-to-day program where we're bringing in students at every one of their buildings now they've got it's pretty cool they're pretty cool they have Administration that's doing a monthly cooking club and we're bringing our
156on-site culinary team to help facilitate some of that stuff and so for this for the younger students we might be teaching them like how to make healthy snacks at home out of simple ingredients and things of that nature or where the food comes from et cetera and then for the older students we're getting into some more complex recipes things of that nature so a lot of flexibility on that and again I think some of the things that Josh mentioned around like the the nimleness and the flexibility that we have to offer as a smaller company I think is we get excited about some of that stuff yeah I wanted to make a comment I I appreciate seeing so many slides related to student voice so as you see we have a student ambassador on our
157board um Katie Have you shared the uh we had a recent survey completed by our high school students with over 300 responses so I'm going to ask Katie to share those with you um just so you have that feedback so as a cep district and as someone who spends a lot of time at our high school in the lunchroom is very disheartening to me when I see so many of our students that are not eating our lunch and you'll see from the survey results why so I'm not going to you know go into all the negativity around that but I am really encouraged to see so many opportunities for students to have voice in the menu to have voice in the food options I don't know if Parker wants to add anything I know he
158was really looking at the slides as you were sharing them our other student ambassador is out today but as a district that student invoice is very important to us that really excites me that that is something that is important to you too it sounds like so I would just comment that requested their homework and watched the last meeting so okay I think they they saw that presentation as well good I don't know Parker did you want to say I don't want to put you on the spot well I was just wondering like earlier you were showing like the breakfast tacos and like the oatmeal and stuff like so would that I'm assuming that's an entree right so would that be like a rotating menu would there be items that say constantly and like would there
159be sides would those be the same every day yeah that's a good question that's something that we really tailor to you kind of depend on the on the district um typically in a serving period like breakfast we'll have you know one or more feature entrees that will rotate and change every day and then we'll have some kind of constants so something like a fruit and yogurt parfait we typically offer every single day whereas something like a breakfast taco maybe today we're doing a breakfast taco and tomorrow we're doing uh you know sausage egg and cheese muffin or something like that but but really that's going to depend on your kind of student demand and the facilities so for a week okay thank you yeah absolutely just if I can really quick in response to your
160comment about the student voice I think it's super important to illustrate how yes it's an it's a really lovely thing for us to do and we do it but we also do it and I think it's important to State this because I think it underscores the importance of it students eating with eating our food every day is what drives our financial success and so it's one thing to do the things that are nice to do because they're nice to do but it's another thing for us to do it because our company's life sort of depends on it we are not the type of organization that generates a lot of additional profit centers through things like rebates on food purchases and all these other things that a lot of folks in our industry do we make
161money if students eat if they don't eat we don't make money we don't have other revenue streams that come in we do not have other revenue streams coming in and so I just want to I feel like it's really important to say that because it's one thing if I'm in your shoes I'm going well that's probably nice they probably do that once a year and they're showing us a picture of it and then it goes away after the first year no if students are needing we don't make any money like there's no other place that it's coming from and so I just want to share how important that is to us Beyond just it being something that we feel like we want to do because it's a nice thing to sit to be able to
162talk about in a process like this and saying to all year so okay one last chance for questions or comments board members and student ambassador I'm just gonna say one thing I appreciate your honesty when we get sales people like you don't usually buy always what people are selling like you're you're cut you're you're selling us pretty you know pretty straight I appreciate that so thank you of course thank you all right that's it uh thank you we'll move on with our agenda huge uh we do have a consent agenda tonight um uh 11.1 hour minutes for our March 21st business meeting March 22nd special meeting at noon March 22nd special meeting in the evening March 23rd special meeting March 27 special meeting March 28th uh t-shirt District teacher parent advisor committee meeting and our
163April 4th study session 11.2 are our bills checks for February March our Ed fund bills for 1.6 million dollars o m fund bills for a hundred forty thousand dollars Transportation fund bills for 1.5 million dollars working cash bonds for 105 000 tort for forty eight thousand uh payroll salary and benefits for nearly 4.7 million dollars Urban adult education for February March for 128 11.3 were various Personnel items um 11.4 is enter fund loans uh from the working cash to transportation in the amount of two hundred thousand dollars we've already approved 11.5 11.6 is the appointment of School treasurer uh to prove Dr Preston L Williams Jr asked the school treasurer for the next school year at a salary of five thousand two hundred dollars 11.7 is appointment of school auditor so we're requesting approval for
164forvis LLP as Auditors for the 22 23 audit uh with a fee of 49 900 which is a 3700 increase over the prior year uh there will also be a 2500 fee for the Illinois Community College Board adult education literacy Grant audit an 11.8 is a resolution resolution authorizing and directing the sale or disposal of personal property in accordance with state law uh does anybody wish to remove any of these stated consent agenda items off of the consent agenda hearing none the chair would entertain a motion to approve the consent agenda as read move to approve second any further comments or discussion hearing none uh roll call please remember house nodka yes member Hall yes member or yes member ogalski yes remember Carter votes yes vice president Exum yes and president Pulaski yes uh 11
165sorry 12.1 are our gifts the district receive the following donations valued at 1900 from the estate of Mark corkins uplick uh Clear View with flex arm F-22 Nitro rolling walker with script talk and two medical bathroom safety shower benches esteemed estate sales uh usd116 retirees uh Becky Prather and Chris Herrick facilitated the donation uh Jonathan Ashley donated 100 to the Urbana High School boys tennis program rotary Charities Foundation Urbana donated a thousand dollars to the Urbana High School in Iraq club uh Michael uh fenuglio donated a thousand dollars to the Evelyn Burnett Underwood instrumental assistance program henriando donated two clarinets valued at two thousand eight hundred dollars to the Urbana School District Band program and the following donated a total of two thousand five hundred dollars to the library at ML King Junior Elementary School
166uh David Adcock Juliana Rossi uh fr ashrazi Sandy beak uh K Bell County Eldridge Pat Guthrie Judy haydel Sherry Herbert and Jennifer Hickson anahu many Maggie Kinnaman Judy Legg Debbie loan Kathy McClellan Meg Miller Elizabeth pittsley Gloria Raynor Yvonne vitusky and uh Terry Welsh this donation is a memory of Eunice wish uh former USD 116 teacher and Librarian Is there a motion to accept the gifts and send out thank yous to the givers second it's been moved and seconded uh all in favor say aye any opposed um 12.2 is an action item to reject a bid on 205 North race School District property um so we received a non-responsive bid in our last bid opening to sell this building so is there a motion to reject the bid that is inactionable so moved so it
167moved and seconded any further discussion I have a quick comment I just wanted to let everyone that's watching know that the bid was non-responsive because it did not meet the minimum sales price and it did not include the other required submittals including a signed contract and an earnest money check thank you for the clarification Katie any further comments or questions a roll call please remember hot snodka yes member Hall yes member or yes member of golski yes member of Carter votes yes vice president xim and president Pulaski yes 12.3 is a approval of a letter of intent with energy LLC for energy related projects like I said there's a quick discussion about that is is there right is there a motion to I guess approve this letter of intent so moved is there a second
168second all right so now we're allowed to discuss all right thanks so I'll invite Gordon and you'll have to enter produce your guests I don't know him from vergie we have been talking we have been talking solar for a very very long time in our district even since John Dimmitt was on our board it was something that he was very passionate about and we have never had the opportunity or the foresight to actually move in this direction but we are talking about it now Gordon has been I guess supporting us for about a year maybe a little longer and coming and talking to us about the benefits of solar and most recently the Thomas Payne and Wiley projects because they are both going to have new roof surfaces it really did make more sense to
169us to really be thoughtful about moving in this direction so I know I didn't have them on as a formal presentation but based on some of the questions that I've received from board members and from community members from the public we thought it might be in all of our best interests to have Gordon share some of the numbers the budget impacts for us the rebates a little bit I know one of our board members asked a question about geothermal which I share with Gordon so it isn't a very long press it isn't a formal administrative topic presentation but more so in response to some of the questions that we've received support well thank you Dr Iver Tatum my name is Gordon Schweitzer and this is Bob Smith my boss so feel free to say nice
170things about me but uh we don't have any pictures of food tacos but we're going to talk about solar and roofs tonight which to me looks about the same and so we keep this really short uh the interest of time and our focus is on solar primarily at Thomas Paine which has some newer projects going on and primarily a wiley which is part of the ongoing conversation about that area I do want to brag our project manager who'll be working on the project is a graduate of Wiley so he would be super close to home to work on I know we mean a lot to Jim be part of the project if after letter imprint letter of intent after we do all the engineering and get all the local bids and local material suppliers if
171you decide to move forward but this is just the first step that allows us to explore social solar feasibility and then to get more information to be able to provide that to you uh just uh page two here this is just a utility overview so one thing that's top of mind for a lot of people is ongoing Rises and utility costs and just within the last few years that at this district there has been quite a large raise especially electricity pricing uh the first number the 1.2 million dollars is for most of the buildings not as many as the second current fiscal year budget but nearly all the buildings just just a little bit under a million dollars in electricity cost uh this year the district is projecting spend roughly 1.32 million so that's just
172a 30 or so increase in utility spend we're looking at other things besides solar and Roofing but one item we're looking at is kind of low hanging fruit and how can we commission some of the spaces across the district to be as energy efficient as possible on the intent to take these savings and put them back into the district for other things whether it be Food Services teacher salaries other curriculum and needs so the intent is to take some of these operating costs and and move them elsewhere so our Taco pitcher here this is Wiley and uh one thing that's really neat about this one on the right is our it's kind of our solar modeling tool those green circles or trees so one thing we do want to take into account is the tree
173hide and everything but one thing that's really neat is potentially this this project as it has evolves may decide to go geothermal but really we're just looking at the existing footprint of the space the roofing does need to be addressed so our approach this is subcontracting the roof as part of our solar project so that if there ever is a roof leak on when the solar is on top of it the district can call one person that would be our team to take care of the roof leak whether it's related to the solar system or the roof but our approach here is refurbishing it so it would look at like the bottom left picture it would be a white coating we would take all the the wet insulation off of the roof it adheres pretty
174well right now so it really isn't a need to do a full roof tear off which you previously had a budget for so our suggestion would be to save some of that funds refurbish the roof so it's 20 to 30 years from a watertight standpoint and then maximize the solar that you can put on the roof one thing I do want to point out is that our modules would be domestic content what that means they're made in the USA and that provides more Grand dollars back to the district and this is Thomas Payne here uh the this is just a great time to put solar on the roof as the roof is brand new we're not in that 10 to 15 to 20 year kind of no man's land where you you don't want to
175take off the modules just a couple years and after the system has been installed uh one of the questions we received was is since we just did geothermal is it a good time to do solar it may be the best time to do solar largely because the district has committed to an electric heavy heating and cooling system geothermal and now you'll be able to utilize all the solar state federal local incentives to provide Power for your very efficient geothermal system so you're renewable already with ground Source heat pump system and adding silver on top of it the power system would even take it a step further so that's certainly in line with a lot of the sustainability initiative that you have one thing I'm not going to mention it's one of the uh things that
176are pretty cool from a student getting the word out their standpoint is an annual basis we are a 50-minute basis each location will have a display right you walk in the building that will let people know how much solar is being generated how much how many trees we're planting today how much CO2 we're offsetting uh what's the return on investment so uh fully transparent with all the the incentives of production how system is performing and we track it on a daily basis but just to give you an idea of the return on investment this chart you have in front of you apologize for some of the numbers being a little smaller but working left to right the green categories are either savings voided cost or new solar rebates or grants the yellow columns are project
177cost and then the blue is cumulative so the net of cost and savings working left to right the First Column is the solar generation so it's a these are 30-year warrantied modules so for 30 years they would generate power that would be used on site amerin has incentives that we would capture a big driver for a lot of these projects is the inflation reduction Act which can can receive with essentially change the tax code to allow districts to receive a direct reimbursement a lot of districts have done power purchase agreements in the past because they were not able to qualify for the investment tax credit but with this recent change that is driving a lot of solar Nationwide it is a limited fund but we highly recommend that the district take advantage of this big
178incentive because it can offset up to 40 percent or more of the project cost uh like like we mentioned Wiley does need a roof upgrade so that is cost that is in this project and then it saves district from doing a full roof tear off a major program is also the Illinois adjustable block program that is the sole renewable energy certificate column all these together equal about 2.5 million dollars of of new savings solar revenue and rebates back to the district so 2.5 million of roughly 3.1 million is quite a lot of potential dollars back to the district so pretty pretty short payback in terms of cumulative funds and this cash flow we're projecting around 2.3 million dollars in 30-year warranty live of the roof and the solar systems so after year 30 assists the
179modules are still there they're producing at about 85 capacity so this chart will go longer if it could but we we cut it off at 30 years so we try to be brief I'm sorry I talked fast but thanks for retirement attention Katie did you want to add yeah I just wanted to comment that we're working with stifle to finance this once we have more of the final design and the final numbers I've already gotten some projections from steeple one of the nice things that I've learned from Gordon and vergee um and Ann from Noble is that the incentives and the rebates you know we can only use our sales tax funding and our working cash bonds we can only use those really for facilities projects but these rebates can come back into operating dollars
180so it's a real great thing that we could leverage 30 to 40 percent of rebates that can come back now a lot of districts will use those to help make the payment or make the project you know fund the project but that's a decision that we can make once we have the cost information and so one of my ideas and that I've kind of worked with Ann on is potentially um those the amaran rebate and the inflation reduction act rebates having those come back into the Ed fund or into the operating funds but then utilizing the solar renewable energy credits that come over those first six years to help offset if we had the issue a debt certificate or something like that in addition to any other sales tax funding that we could potentially make
181those payments with um the other thing that I wanted to say about that is it was on the tip of my tongue and I forgot it'll come back well thank you Katie that's interesting news uh any any questions from from board members go ahead Robbie just to clarify you said or the payment for these solar panels will come from the facilities funds so the the actual payment for the installation will likely be hopefully um is kind of what I'm planning will be a debt certificate issuance that will be funded with um the payback will be funded with sales tax revenues and with these rebates the solar renewable energy credits so that'll be a combination for the payback of the debt certificates so we'll issue a death certificate to do the construction which is you know
182around uh three million dollars here in this column and then we'll pay that back over a period of time using a portion of this all of this funding and a portion of our sales tax dollars and you just reminded me what I was going to say so um that 67 like the board does two-thirds towards Debt Service and one-third towards pay as you go but because we've seen that increase in our sales tax funds over the last couple of years with inflation and everything happening we're not really even leveraging that full 67 percent and so there's already a little bit of room right there that we weren't even counting towards that 20 million for Wiley for The Debt Service for Wiley for doing the bond issue for the renovations and the addition so there's already
183a little bit of room there too for that death certificate and then if we leverage these srec credits against it too it'll it'll be fine so I'll work with Anne more on that once we have final figures from barigi's design but that's kind of the plan it takes about 45 days to issue debt certificates so it's really fast turnaround time that we can work with the board on so just to clarify then the death certificate is what buys the panels and installation but then the rebates will then go to the Ed fund that would be the intention the the amaran smart rebate and the inflation reduction act rebate yes and let's say they were fully built today what would we expect to get in rebates in the next year a million dollars in inflation reduction
184act and 200 000 in amerin rebates so 1.2 million dollars ish right because you were saying this is closer to 30 but in the end when it's designed it might be closer to four correct so that there's a lowest level is 30 percent if you use domestic content it goes up to 40 percent and then if you use a taxes at Municipal loan it gets a 15 haircut so it jumps down to 34 I believe that is so we're finalizing this we're hoping this is uh this is our intent and our commitment is to be within plus or minus 10 of what we presented today uh while we finalize the design engage local labor and uh and finalize all these all these numbers and get back to you well I was gonna say so um
185with the possibility of the Ed fund being negative balanced in the future years without doing this this is a way it seems to offset that for one year yes oh just for one year right because this is only a one-time savings so it doesn't help with the operating depth it would help get us through another year all right then I'll also say I really don't like the idea of proposing this all in one day and approving it at the same time in fact uh motioning to propose it before we virtually heard any single word about it so I don't like that I can comment on that as well so this is just a letter of intent to enter into design and there'll be a contract that comes subsequently and we worked with our attorneys to
186review the letter the only amount that we would pay is the amount for the actual cost to date for The Design Services so we're not making a commitment to do anything other than do the design work at this time this would allow us to get to hard numbers the actual subcontractors from the local community do all the final engineering so if you would elect not to it's not I mean our cost is much higher than that but we're kind of splitting that so if you would decide not to go ahead you know you would pay us eighteen thousand but this way we know exactly what it is and you know if you have some interest this is the time because these funds you know the investment or the inflation reduction Act and the extra those
187will eventually go away even the domestic content right now is 40 each year that ratchets up so if you have interest this is a good time your decision right anyone else and just quickly for the board members who were here a few years back when we talked about this last my memory is foggy but we talked about the possibility of solar a while ago I remember and I thought that one of the things that was a sticking point for us was that the cost of the equipment you know that you have to buy up front and with this technology being developing constantly and changing really quickly you know it's not like in the old days when you would install a heater or water heater or whatever and you'd keep it knowing that it would be
188there for 10 20 years it's like every few years things get updated right so if we purchase the equipment are we going to be guaranteed to get upgrades for free or for a discount and you know as technology improves are we going to be able to move with that are we stuck with the same solar panels for the next you know 30 years or whatever and I I think we talked about that I'm trying to remember what it's it's fuzzy I trying to pull back uh the memory of this but this is this was from several years ago prior we will be participating in a state and federal program that would allow us to install some solar and under the financing is was dependent on on a federal program that went away um basically after
189the 2016 election cycle yeah it was a long time ago so it kind of fell apart after that yeah but I mean with new incentives and stuff especially coming out from the federal government I'm hoping that we'd be able to capture those even after we've started doing this I mean just hearing about how the government wants to go to carbon neutrality by 2050 you know and that kind of thing so I'm thinking well if we lock into this now can we still keep getting the benefits I mean besides the obvious benefits okay he's got a mouthful one thing that I was kind of excited about is that we're kind of starting small you know we're taking our two newest roofs and testing this out working with vergee um and so yeah I think that we
190will be able to have opportunities to see what other incentives the government comes up with because we have a lot of other buildings so hopefully this is a starting point to getting our district more efficient and you know I I'm much more comfortable with putting an installation on a brand new roof um then you know starting big and putting it on all of our roofs but that way we can kind of see what the economy does and see what the government does with as far as you know net neutrality and all of that and yeah I think they'll continue incentivizing these things and as that changes hopefully we'll be able to come up with something something else to do and then just one last question quick question contingent on that that's probably more for Randy
191do you know that there are many companies locally who know how to service these and and I'm thinking worst case scenario we have terrible storms or tornado or something comes through and something gets damaged do we have to wait for their technology people to come out or do we have people locally who can help work on stuff I believe our first call goes back to Verity to uh and then they would call contact the local people and there are places we have a service team that takes care of it okay I mean I know because it's growing there's more people in the community we're getting it but you know it's it's still a new technology for a lot of people so thank you good question so I do I think one for Katie one for
192you um I'll ask you first which is just a sense of you know whenever you are looking at a 30-year commitment are you all going to be around in 30 years like what's where where have you been what what good questions yeah should have introduced ourselves a little bit better but we've been around since 2000 uh we have an office here in uh Champaign-Urbana area one in Indianapolis St Louis Chicago Carlinville and we've done a lot of big projects at the area we did all the geothermal systems that ran Tool uh we're doing we did a couple solar projects down in Tolono we've probably done about 70 million dollars worth of Lakeland College over the last 20 years or so since we started so we've been this business a long time and and kind of
193a word of mouth kind of company so staying behind our work and really get more work by reputation so I was standing behind this project and that's part of why Bob is here and and I can add the district has worked with vergee CTS group CTS yes when Dr Williams was here we had a performance contract with um and Carol Baker and it was a great working relationship and it sounds like everything went really well from what we've heard so there was a fighter being just a quick comment there was a really good question about technology changing but this is the latest Technologies these are the best panels or it's a bifacial panel which means you you pick up Sun from above and below so it reflects off your new new roof and and so
194you know you're going to get really good quality and it's going to last a long time and then we'll be serviced by our teams all right my second question is that you you had just said it's on the two newest roofs but I I'm completely confused with the like I get uh at Thomas Paine I don't entirely understand the Wily thing because it sounds like almost like you're gonna cover it with some sort of membrane and then stick it on which is not a new roof so is there a risk to that and B if we're talking renovation if we're talking we don't know what we're doing with the building is it in our best interest to put solar panels on a building that we're not sure what's happening with and the roof is not
195fully being replaced so help me I am still going to refer to Verity on that because they assessed the roof so I'm going to let them talk more about the actual process and what their proposal is for the roof itself great great question so uh as mentioned earlier in the present early in the night uh yeah Wiley's a great candidate part of what we do is is refurbish a route that needs replacement and then put solar on top of it so that the solar and all the incentives and new Revenue that comes from the solar system can offset the roof cost so it's with solar you either want to put it at the very beginning of the roof or replace the or upgrade the roof and then put solar on top of it so give
196them the interest in solar and the age of needing to do an upgrade at Wiley with that roof system it was one of the options that we've talked about so this saves dollars on ripping off the roof and then taking all the insulation and putting in the landfill and then putting in new insulation so this provides just general cost savings versus the Alternatives as well as putting solar on top of it so but a good question though so it's an overlay as opposed to so no tear off and put back on just put a new roof over the top of the old one right which would the full tear off would be much more expensive and it wouldn't give you any more value because we are still warranting it and there's two different Coatings there's
197a 20-year and a 30-year warranty so we would make that recommendation as part of our our study but yeah because you've got still good insulation on most of it then like core sampling we use infrared scams to see if the insulation is wet but as we replace that piece but the roof itself is still good and then there's a liquid membrane coating use a company called tremco which is the best quality you can buy and and they warranty that and we stand behind it so it's you could do the full tear off but you wouldn't really get any more benefit no more savings just pull across all right maybe last question more minutia oh your other part of the your question that they can't use yes is no matter what we end up doing we
198are still going to be utilizing the building so um we'll still be using energy and hopefully still saving money by having solar there I'm thinking more from a design perspective because I don't understand I'm not a solar I'm not an anything expert actually so but when you're putting solar panels on if you're building up and you're shaving and you're like that it seems to me that you really need to know which the BET where's the best place to put these and if we don't have a design for building is there any risk to putting solar panels on a building and then changing the design of building not really unless you're going to put a second story on that building well yeah are you done I guess I might just comment that I've also talked to
199Scott wachter about how this project fits with the overall you know Wiley Renault and or Edition and all of that and he they're very comfortable working with vergee they've worked with them on other projects so they'll work in tandem together when it gets to that phase of the project with the addition and whatever that it'll all mesh together so there was no concerns at all coming from igw as far as this piece of the project and working with Verity on it right do you don't it was minutia I think that I can get around so you know my mind's kind of small too I guess in terms of our current uh building Insurance uh if this is is will this be covered under our existing policies for Hail and weather and such things and if
200so um do we expect to see any increases because the value of these of these is higher than a typical roof with our insurance broker next week so I will ask all of those questions and report back anyone else is there asbestos in the roof and by just covering with a membrane are we leaving it there [Music] they have not uh inspected the roof for asbestos yet it doesn't have to be inspected because of a um if they were to do the roof tear off they would do though that company would have the licenses and everything and do the um proper procedure to get that taken care of um I don't recall anything in the past um yeah reports that we got that says there is any but I'm not sure we don't know and
201as part of our technical study we'd actually take core samples from the roof that we would be recovering and see if there were any issues but as long as it was encased it would be all right but we do the infrared scans you can even do the next level up is a nuclear scan of to see what's under but we do pull core samples uh when we have areas that you know we suspect might be an issue and at that time we would check and see if there's any aspects this room you have a material yeah I mean now I I would just like to be reminded or clarification like initially well we know the roof is leaking correct yes okay and the idea initially was to completely do a full tear off and replace
202with a similar is it have a rubber roof kind of thing going on right now there is a rubber roof on it yes okay and so alternatively we would not have to do a full tear off now they would take out the and they would do their testing and take out any wet insulation uh replace the insulation there and then the material that they would use is actually uh thicker than the rubber roof that we would put on it do you have the you know what those specs were it was 156 mil versus 60 finish correct yeah 60 60. it's not only in conjunction with solar additionally on top of that or is that now a roof option for the Wiley remodel right I was going to say that's that's been a roof option all
203along igw's estimate was for a full tear off because that was the most conservative estimate but they would have done the same analysis and core sampling and everything to go into that project to decide what they needed to spec for and doing an overlay with an additional membrane would have been an option if that's what was called for in the analysis so they've already done some pre-analysis and determined that that's the best course of action and I'm frankly Scott agreed with that and thought it was in pretty good condition yeah one thing to note too from a lead time standpoint if if there is interest in and moving this project along the the insulation does have a very long lead time new insulation you wouldn't think new insulation done so we'd be able to avoid
204having to do that and and show progress and doing the roof remodel work if that is a part of the criteria all right any other questions just a pragmatic question we are voting right now on an 18 assessment is that what we're approving right now just so I know what what cost are we actually agreeing to Now versus what is here yeah in the like the last paragraph of the letter of agreement where it talks about the cost it is uh not to exceed amount of eighteen thousand dollars for actual costs incurred for out-of-pocket design and Engineering costs so if they don't exceed that then we wouldn't pay that and if you would go ahead that 18 000 which is required engineering would just be you know part of the project but it was just
205a he said well we don't think we will at this time and so you expect a full decision to come back to the board and about 45 to 60 days is that correct I think we're hoping to bring the contract at the June 6th meeting is that right Gordon that's our goal or sooner if it's prepared but it'll probably take about that long to Robbie's Point that's why we're doing both things in one meeting is so we don't have to have a special meeting in July since the board is not here in July so there is a Time factor in in regard to being able to get that information back to you by our last meeting in June which is why we're doing both things tonight right any further comments questions Tori about giving an
206opportunity no okay there is a motion that's been moved to seconded on the floor uh we'll move to a roll call vote if there's no further discussion okay uh roll call please remember no member Hall yeah yeah member or yes remember rogalski yes remember Carter votes yes uh you said vice president Exum is off okay thank you and president Pulaski yes thank you thank you guys for your patience tonight too my pleasure thank you very much um okay uh 12.4 is um uh is a is to approve a new activity account for ums this would be the garden committee Garden Club is there a motion to approve this new activity account it's been moved executive twice any further comments or discussion uh hearing none um roll call please remember yes number yes member or yes
207member of belski yes member Carter votes yes vice president Exum and president Pulaski yes now it's time for a superintendents report okay okay so I am starting um tonight um my plan um I know information has been shared I sent an email to the board about the facilities committee um that clearly has been shared with people in the community um so our plan tonight was to talk a little bit about the screening process talk a little bit more about the compass composition of the committee um and then the board will have some time to discuss everything that I'm going to share but I would ask that I be able to get through the information that I want to share we can pause if you want Paul and discuss or um and I can go through
208there well I guess the rest of the superintendent report is pretty short so we'll just do it all at once so I did want to just give some perspective I know there have been a lot of comments about the size of the committee and the number of members in the committee so just to get go back and give you um numbers for some of our previous board charged just District committees so our 2008-2009 committee existed of 12 people very few were parents and staff the majority of the people in this committee were City developers people who work for the city of Urbana and some real estate folks so that was the committee that originally developed the plan for renovating the schools they went around to all the different schools and that is where we kind
209of developed our model for remodeling and the timeline of how we were going to remodel all the elementary schools and basically the scope of a new gym multi-purpose room Fine Arts spaces and then we had a 2011-2012 reduction committee and I know that is not but they weren't specifically talking facilities but it was a board charged committee that consisted of 23 members two parents from elvery elementary the principal from every Elementary School a realtor board members and central office staff and then our most recent facilities committee consisted of 17 members again mostly City developers Realtors city employees two board members a student um and then a very small number of parents and teachers so I just wanted to give some perspective on past committees the scope of what we're doing here is significantly larger and
210I would say much more inclusive of our actual stakeholders by having more parents and teacher involvement than any of these other committees has had in the past the screening process so I know there have been a lot of comments on email comments in the Wiley strong group regarding my cherry picking people and my picking and choosing the people that I want to be on the committee and that is not how this committee was set up or that was never the intent from the very beginning we've never done any of our district committees like that there's always been an application process so just to share a little bit more with the public to just share maybe some misinformation that has been put into the community um so the survey was scheduled to close on Wednesday as
211you know we put the survey Link in lots of different spaces so it was available to many many people we allowed a little additional time our first meeting is scheduled for April 25th so you know backwards mapping that we did not have you know three or four weeks to leave the survey open so we were actually able to leave it open for two weeks two weekends in two weeks we extended it to Friday to give people a little more time to indicate their interests the interest forms are currently being screened they were due today but again because it just closed on Friday I'm giving the screening team I'd say more time and some of them really wanted to be part of this process but we're extending that four additional days so they are due tomorrow
212um so there are parents teachers and administrators who are screening I am not participating in the screening process we developed a Anonymous form um many of the people that I approached about screening were a little hesitant because of some of the comments and things that have been being shared here via public comment as well as on social media so several staff members who are participating in the screening process I did guarantee them that we would not be releasing their names the screening is being done blind so everyone who is participating in the screening process is doing so without any names they all received a unique code which is how we have been sending out most of our surveys recently the code is anonymous even to us we had one of our parents email John and
213I this afternoon and said hey I I think I submitted that can you check to see if I submitted it properly and John and I have no way of doing that because we don't know that person's code so that person would have had to send us their code and then we would have to go in and see how they if they were able to submit so again it is a very Anonymous process for the screeners as well um we created a Google form electronic kind of form that they are using to go in and rates um and they're rating the questions based on the availability of if you can participate and be at all the dates and what value you bring to the committee and some of the questions uh very specifically that people responded
214to in the survey I don't know if anyone here actually looked at the survey and saw some of the questions we created a rubric using a 4321 scale that screeners are using as Educators that's what we do we create rubrics and it also helps take out the subjectivity and guessing and you know either you responded to the question in this way or you didn't and then you each screener is rating how people have responded in that form that we created so a little bit more about the main topic of the evening most people who came tonight wanted to have this information and some of them were already privy to it so now we can share it with everyone so just so the board knows we had 41 parents teachers staff and community members from across
215the district who responded to the interest form so that was great 41 I think is more than we've ever had and it it really is very much a cross-section of lots of people from Wiley and teachers support staff Community people one of our goals is to have this be a well-rounded committee as we've talked about and as you can see from this list we want to make sure that we have a lot of Elementary voice we want parent voice staff member voice Community voice as well so this is the breakdown so once we receive all of the anonymous screening forms um each form is going to generate a total composite score and basically then what we will do is take that total score and break it out by this ratio I know there is a
216lot of concern about Wiley people not being more represented maybe more so in the parent group but we do have Wiley staff members who have completed the form so there is a again not seeing the rating forms and I don't want to be accused of doing something um unethical but again I did see the surveys as they came in so I do know that there were Wily teachers who participated and of course there are several Wiley staff members and then they're Community people who participated who are also connected to Whitely so while the top bullet the two parents from each School seems very restrictive there are other areas where there might be Wily people representing the Wiley Community while they may not be just a parent if that makes sense so if you add all
217those numbers up there are 33 spots available out of those 41. that responded so this is the group of people who have been invited to participate who we did not ask to complete the survey so we hope to have two board members there was a notion in the community that the parent Liaisons when that information was shared where dual language apparent Liaisons we actually have two District Parent Liaisons we have a Latino apparent liaison and a African-American parent liaison who have been invited who represent the district not just the language we have UEA Representatives and of course I am still we have a couple of people who are interested in co-chairs we don't have a final yes yet but there are several who are contemplating it talking to their Partners it is a huge time
218commitment because the co-chairs will do a lot of the agenda planning so it's an additional time commitment for the co-chairs and so we are not we did not ask co-chairs to complete the survey so they are not counted in that 33 number but the co-chairs who are considering are both parents um uef representatives and building principals our elementary principles are participating Dr heinh Horst has removed her name and is not wanting to be part of the committee but we have invited the Middle School principal as well we all district committees I know this may not be what some people want to hear but we don't have District planning committees without our building principles represented because we expect our building principles to lead these initiatives to take information back to the buildings and to help us
219spread the word and be part of the process so to exclude our building principles is not something that is anything that I would ever bring forward to the board we have District administrators six who are basically directors so that would include people like Dr Kathy and Catherine because she's going to help us with um promoting and we're going to have some engagement opportunities hopefully through the process where we would get information out as the committee is working so that six includes Dion Webster she is our district family engagement person so that six includes District directors well then we also have as part of that central office number that has been shared five district administrators who would be considered non-voting that would be people like Randy and Katie and John and Kim I know it feels
220like or the comments that I've heard about administrators being part of this process well I hate to say this folks but the administrators are the ones that are going to be doing most of the work we don't ask our co-chairs um to give up hours and hours and hours of their time and a lot of the information that we need in between meetings they would not have access to so we're looking at student data when we're looking at um racial demographics when we need to pull numbers of who's how many butts we have sitting in chairs in specific classrooms or grade levels that information is at the fingertips of our district administrators and so they they need to be part of this process however as we have done in the past they don't have to
221all be voting members so at just like we did with the Dual language committee myself Mrs Dr Norton sorry Dr wiemelt and um Lupe riconi we helped facilitate that group but the four of us never voted in any of the recommendations that were brought forward any other recommendations that we took to the committee we did not vote in those spaces and we would also have a district these five district administrators would also not be voting members but they would be part of the process because they need to help with data collection and sharing data and all those things that our district administrators are paid to do um so this would include 27 additional invited members so the size of this committee is large um I know I've had a few large District committees like this
222with teachers you know when we were doing our remote learning planning committee and some of those other committees we've had you know 40 50 people but to have 60 people outside of you know with a lot of people who are outside of the scope of um the purview of the district is going to be challenging but we're up to the challenge and we're going to do everything that we can to make this experience the best that we can for these 60 folks I think that's one of the reasons we're having such a hard time getting co-chairs to agree to do this um as you saw tonight some of the comments and some of the things that are shared you know when if someone takes on this responsibility not only is it going to be a
223time and effort commitment on their part it is also going to be challenging to have their name bandied around in some of the decisions that might be made moving forward so we don't want them bearing the brunt of any of that that's why we have District administrators on this committee because if people are going to be mad and angry we want them to be mad and angry at us not at our people who are giving up their time and energy to help be leaders of this work um so we're going to do the best that we can to make the process um ethical clear transparent having a public meeting with 60 committee members is going to be also going to be a challenge but we are going to do the week best that we can
224and utilize spaces at ums to make that happen I also wanted to share so so we took that information that you just saw in those last two slides and created basically a couple of pie charts that might make it a little easier for you to visualize I'm a visual learner so if you're a visual learner this might help you as well so if you think about those 60 people 33 of them will be parents um 25 of them will be teachers um 30 will be administrators and almost 12 percent will be other and that will include the district liaison the board members um the community members are included in that group of others again another way to look at the makeup of the group um just so uh to also give another visual so if
225you sorry I have to look my screen so that 30 percent um we kind of have the the blue is where that chart kind of starts to wrap around so that blue is the biggest part is Elementary because again this is we're really talking about a big impact at the elementary level we are talking about um impacts to possibly ums that was two of the bullets that we will be considering are things that would impact the middle school so it's really important that middle schools people are in this space so the two blue are our parents Broken Out by elementary and middle and then the two green pieces of that pie there are teachers so the elementary teachers and Middle School teachers is a pretty Equitable Breakout um and then move to building principles who
226again are core members of any committee work that we do and I would strongly uh be I would be really concerned if we didn't have building principles at the table as we have these conversations and then the district administrators and then those smaller pieces of the pie represent some of those other smaller groups that we had in that others category in the other slide so now I'm going to move to some happy news and some exciting things to share so this past Friday I know Kanita was here tonight we recognized her at the CU schools Foundation our reception for the Local Hero award she's pictured there with Dr Ken Roland who was the Urbana distinguished alumni Award winner who is a cancer research cancer doctor at Carl UHS Alum Jerry ragle who runs Regal Labs
227was the local business Community impact alumni honoree um so congratulations again to kanitha to Dr Ken and um to Jerry for their commitment to and service to Urbana schools so they were really honored to be recognized and it was a really great event so congratulations and thank you to see schools foundation for recognizing them I know Michael's not here tonight but Michael has as you know he is an orator and he has been out in very several District competitions this spring and he placed second in the Southern Regional Regional oratorical contest he will now represent the district in the finals later this month um so congratulations to Michael this Saturday several of us participated I know Maria elvir is in that picture with Dr Franklin and I and then the picture at the bottom has
228Dr weimelt and then we had a large group of students from the tiger Academy and freedom schools who also represented the district at the CU autism Network walk and resource Fair out in Savoy on Saturday so it was a great event um it was wonderful for our students to see a community come together around supporting students with autism and as a district we were just happy to be able to be in that space and show our support for we saw many of our families there with their students so it was a great event Julie Duvall who was here tonight is the cuan president right now so hats off to Julie this was a huge event and yeah they did a great job um Saturday uh I was out also before the cuan at the inaugural
229Family Fun Fest at ums I know there were a lot of competing things happening on Saturday the Boneyard um there were several sporting events so we had students doing soccer and track and so it was a busy day but it was a well-attended day and a lot of fun was had out in the field there at UMass for The lgbtq First Family Fun Fest so congratulations to the committee for getting that kicked off there were with a lot of Community Partners there food trucks it was it was a great time and the weather was great for that so congratulations to them and to all the people who came out to represent and to demonstrate how welcoming and affirming Urbana school district is to our lgbtq plus community so hats off to the the group for
230their planning efforts as you know the student ambassador applications are open they are due on Friday interviews are Monday May 8th at UHS We're Going to Miss Parker and Michael but there are students that are really excited about an opportunity to represent as student ambassadors on the board so we've been sharing that application um online registration so this is something new we have typically since covet when we started online registration we have waited until the school year ended before we opened it but this year we really want to be um thoughtful and get as many families registered as we can this spring and we have several incentives so if you saw the superintendent update last week I talked about some of those incentives uh the elementary principals have a lot of fun ideas that they're
231putting in place to try to get as many as our especially our elementary families registered before they leave for summer break it is really hard once everybody goes we send tons of messages and it still feels like when it's time in August we have a large large number of families that are not registered so we're really trying to avoid that and be proactive and keep that from happening we are going to be offering a tech night on May 10th at ums we've been providing tech support in July but we thought we would front load some of that tech support for people who have a legitimate Family Access issues and are not able to get into the online registration module and do some of the things that they need to do because they forgot their username
232or their password or any of those things so we'll be available on May 10th at ums to support those families that need that help um we've talked about sixth grade night is coming uh Thursday April 27th I know ums has been promoting that and they've been having a lot of fifth grade transition meetings to get ready for that ums Broadway on Vine I think we talked about this before if you've not seen one of the Broadway I'm fine can you go to the next Slide John presentations they're doing into the woods they are a great group of actors and actresses and they're they do a phenomenal job and that is all to credit to our fine arts program the fact that we have a phenomenal dance and drama program and music program at the elementary
233level those students have an opportunity through Broadway and Vine to just continue um and just continue with being fine artists and they take that with them to ums and then they of course go on to the high school so that is April 20th and April 22nd and last thing is dates I've already talked about the online registration UHS spring musical is May 7 5th through the 7th and the Thomas Paine Carnival is always a fun event so do you want to read all these or we didn't talk about that you try or we can split them yeah this is going to take a while so these are all of our completed foyas uh first is from Smart procure for all current employee staff contract information otherwise for quiet uh Perkins Williams for a map of
234the location the families who are bust out of DPW to other schools due to overcrowding for the 22-23 school year uh Mike Anderson for all emails and internal documents that were composed or sent one of the following is sent to one and or more of the following Dr Alfred Tatum Lori Johnson Dr Norton Marty Stenberg and Rodney Ashman Piper Harvey poploski Brenda Carter tari X from Anne Hall Robbie Hassan Brian okolski and Laura Orr between October 1st 2022 through the present day that mentioned Wiley and one of the following words HVAC Chiller chillers boiler boilers heating cooling lead times timeline radiators renovate renovation Steam igw architect engineer remodeling reimagining AC valve asbestos abatement ventilation concept planning roof Roofing surface upgrade remediate glue dots electrical outlets are Electric electrical Plumbing sewer lighting window windows plaster drywall
235flooring construction Renault containment and contractor stakeholder bid bids bidding ceiling tile Edition MEP fire protection Life Safety Bank oil Hazmat caulking glazing conduit geothermal strand ducting doors Abate insulation inspection Loi RFB RFQ RFP remediation print specs EPDM pneumatic leak blueprint compressor an air handler from local Labs Vince Espy copy of your District's current mission statement and copies of any previous mission statements provided they have changed them in the recent past another from local lab events SP copy redistricts current mission statement uecs copies of any previous mission statements provided they have changed in the recent past from local Labs copy of your District's current mission statement for King copies of any previous mission statements provided they have changed them in the recent past uh rakaya Perkins Williams list of families that are assigned to DPW but
236are being bust out to Thomas Paine due to overcrowding dodge construction Network the water contractor and their amount start and completion dates for Urbana High School Band Room expansion renovation another from Mike Anderson all emails and internal documents that are composed or sent by one of the following and sent to one or more of the following Dr Robert Tatum Lori Johnson Dr Norton Marty stanberg and Randy Ashman Piper Harvey between October 1st 2022 and the present day that mentioned Wiley and one of the following words HVAC Chiller chillers boiler boilers heating cooling lead times timeline radiators renovate renovation steam igw architect engineer remodeling or imagining AC valve asbestos abatement ventilation concept planning roof Roofing furnace upgrade mediate glue dots electrical electric electric electric electrical Plumbing sewer lighting window Windows plaster drywall flooring Construction Rental containment
237contractor stakeholder bid bids bidding ceiling tile Edition MEP fire protection Life Safety fan coil Hazmat caulking glazing conduit geothermal strand ducting doors Abate insulation inspection Loi RFB RFQ RFP remediation Prince specs EPDM pneumatic leak blueprint compressor and air handler um now it's time for our board report so here's an opportunity for us to revisit the discussion and composition of the facilities planning committee I wanted to give the board an opportunity to publicly discuss this and provide feedback to Administration so just a question about these numbers and that is uh of the it was like 40 applications I guess or was it 41 is there enough people like the two people from King apply the two people from Thomas Paine block like I can't imagine if you have 41 that you'd fit all those categories so
238we have a lot of people who applied who fit multiple categories so they have a kid at King at middle school and at high school um so um there were a couple of people who applied who were only just a wiley or maybe just a Thomas Payne but I would say the majority of the applicants several levels I was asking that because then if there's an empty slot then what happens to the empty slot yeah so we did not go oh so that is a clear question so thank you yes um so if there were not a parent from King then um I if the board would like me to slide a Wily person into that space I mean that is something we could talk about um but we didn't make any decisions about that
239until we see how the scoring um how the scoring comes out anyone else does that answer your question yeah I just was kind of curious I know you reviewed a couple of the former committees that have been made in the past um I was just kind of wondering if you could explain if you know I'm assuming that all those committees directly had to do with like Thomas Paine renovation or Leola Innovation or um you know DPW and how those committee like the first and the third committee were assessing basically ranking all of the potential projects the district might take on over the next 20 years for the first committee and 10 years for the second committee okay so for example the Thomas Paine renovation committee how many what was the percentage of like Thomas Paine
240Families versus there wasn't a Thomas Payne reservation it was it was it was feedback or exactly here are all the potential projects the district might take on there were projects of the middle school there was finishing all of the remodeling for elementary schools and it's basically ranking them in priority order that's that's what that's when your school came up right then it's it was really interesting um I was a member of one of those committees there was very little USD 116 boy six boys committees most of the people were not even stakeholders in our district so Realtors Developers city employees oh yeah Carl going out from from uh MTD was on on one of them that was why I shared that because yeah take on it but yep um I guess my other question is
241and again correct me if I'm wrong in the interpretation the second slide I believe where you were listening like co-chairs and other um that invited people who didn't right those were invited not they didn't applied our either of the co-chairs Wiley parents no and is that something can we have a co-chair as a Wily parent who's selecting that you guys because the um I don't know that anybody in that particular group asked to be a co-chair I think we have a volunteer but saying I think that that would maybe a better mitigate some of the tension if the makeup is you know selected from the survey like the people who applied you have an opportunity to slot in in other roles um that voice and I think that that would go a long way I
242think all the people that have we have talked to about being co-chairs have been people who have not been as involved in the process who have been neutral and um have not been coming and sharing a very one-sided opinion about it and my perspective and again this is a board charge committee so you guys can change that is that our co-chairs should be people who are neutral and have like not already made an opinion don't already have an opinion about the direction that the committee should go and I I think that is fair and I think that's but I also would argue that like we're loading it with a lot of voices and I think that's I think it's going to be challenging but I think it's important but I also think by inviting the
243people that are expressing the most concern and giving them opportunities to know more which is what they would like I think you are setting yourself up for more success in having the outcome be well better received because that voice then becomes the sounding board for the larger Community yeah and again I think I don't have you ever been on a district-wide committee Laura maybe is your time or you were at Leo yeah I mean I just want to say also committee work is not easy it's a really hard and when you put this many voices in a room and you have people who um have very strong opinions it's hard when you're in a space and just thinking about some of the people that I know who have applied we don't want to diminish other
244people's voices and when you have voices that um tend to overpower that that is why we have people who drop off committees or they stop coming or they are in the space and feel like why am I here if I'm not able to be heard so I think that is a um that could happen I don't know if it would and again crystal ball moment we don't know until we get to that space um but that is something I think we would have to consider I will add to a larger said is uh if you had someone like Mike Anderson as a co-chair then whatever the committee decides you know there's buy-in and they feel like they have their their say you know if it's a totally chosen committee is it sounds like it's potentially
245going to be then it's going to be us versus them you know so that is uh if you want the Wiley Community to be satisfied they need to have somebody as the co-chair and the point of co-chairs is that the other person can keep that person in check you know so that's why there's not a single chair so if there was a single chair as Mike Anderson I could see what you're saying that he's going to silence all the administrator voices when they talk he'll just cut him off and say you can't talk anymore that's possible but that's why you have a co-chair so what if you have I I would concur with that frankly I mean I think if having having somebody from Wiley as a co-chair I think would help and not hurt
246um making sure that uh discussions and interactions are moderated frankly as long as as long as as the person chosen really understands that this the purpose of this committee is is to make a decision for the entire District I mean I know it it adversely impacts Wiley I mean it's not adversely it disproportionately affects the wildlife community and as a result I do think they should have a larger voice in the discussion you know in terms of like a plurality but um let's see but uh it's important that people understand this is a decision that affects the entire district for a very very long time I mean I guess I would also just Advocate like in process I know that yes I mean committees are complicated because humans are complicated but like I also think
247like you you could try to right you could you're going to probably have some kind of sub breakout groups or some sort of breakout at some point within this right so I mean I think that like that will also inform and allow for hopefully people to feel empowered to speak in smaller platforms some of those platforms even without admin in the space some of them being maybe with you know I mean I think you have to kind of yeah you're going to have to be creative and thoughtful but I also still think that like within that you know yes in inviting yeah people to the table that are asking to be there I think they're going to do the work and I think that we you know they're going to be dedicated and that's also
248what you want in a committee well I would hope out of all the 41 people who signed up they signed up because they wanted to do the work and they wanted to do what's best for the entire District which is was basically one of the questions that we asked in the survey is do you feel um that you can represent the entire district and be a good listener and um and make decisions that you may not agree with Facebook that's part of being on the committee and I mean and we all committees suffer from attrition for various reasons regardless of some of the things we're talking about but I do think like yeah I guess I I know I don't have a Chris of all but I strongly feel that people in the room would
249stay and remain dedicated to the process and we're going to set Norms at the very beginning which is a standard for all district committees that we do and one of the the co-chair responsibilities will be to make sure that all members are following our Norms um because Robbie's right there is very much a in US versus them mentality um in the districts at the elementary level and part of this committee that has been that has grown through these conversations so so we will have to have some healthy bonding at the beginning which will be a challenge too so I was just going to add as a co-chair I'm sure Paul will attest too that it is a huge huge time commitment and oftentimes people get into these committee meetings and sometimes even if you miss
250one you're missing out on a lot and it's hard to pick up the meeting that you missed you know so I think yeah I mean it's it's a huge time commitment Paul could tell you from the Committees he's been on before and I was on one of them at the very beginning when I first got on the board we met quite frequently and everybody's voice was heard but in the end you have to go in and have a neutral um idea and be open to different things because if you go in with a strong feeling which is sometimes hard you have to be able to have the listening skills to listen to all the sides because it does affect the whole District not just one building or two buildings what were what the facilities deciding
251on affects the whole District I just want to read a point that Dr Robert Tatum made the yes the chairs do put in a lot of work but there is so much to work for committee that happens outside of the committee meeting hours the last committee we had to do facilities for example we just tons and tons of collected data and paperwork that were done outside of that time uh by Dr Owens administrative team at that point and um it really is essential for the for the if the worth of committee is going to get done especially on the timetable we're looking at now that there has to be administrative involvement um it's because it's yeah so much goes on has to go on during nine to five when this committee is not meeting so
252observation or questions um the invited board members have are those people who are continuing currently I've asked the three board members the new people when we I've had one-on-one meetings with them and we asked them during their board orientation so we don't have commitments yet so okay so it was an open invitation that has not been filled that has not been filled except the only person who said they are not interested is Paul my other comment is five administrators labeled as ex-officio six not and then the board members I think by default are ex-officio on a committee because they're going to vote here oh I should have put it yeah so just making sure that's clear but the distinction between those like the building principles as voting members makes tremendous sense to me uh I
253I think building principles I mean they're the boots on the ground people they're in the buildings they know these they as as much as anybody some of the people that you listed as being voting and I want to call out names but are slightly puzzling to me given the type of work that they do relative to what would be a voting member you know for example Communications like super important role slightly puzzled by that would be a voting administrator on facilities so I'm wondering why have why have District central office as voting members on this committee if that is the will of the board then making sure that votes are very transparent about broken down by role as best we can parent votes versus administrator votes sort of thing so administrators can also be objective
254and they have their own mind and they vote based on the data and what they see as the best option so I think our district administrators who might be voting can also do that yeah it wasn't an indictment of them not being able to be objective it's thinking about the the purpose of the committee and that person being invited because their role is incredibly relevant to this particular committee as opposed to every director is on the committee regardless of what they do so not every director is on the committee it is a very it is only six okay yeah I mean I don't know who those people are necessarily but I'm just suggesting that we think about under what conditions central office should be voting here versus having a voice at the table more regularly
255and that actually the people who have the voices here you've we've decided are not voting but perhaps they are the people who should be voting I don't really know the answer I just don't quite get the distinction why five get to vote and six don't and on what basis do we decide wow honestly the five that are here in this space are not voting because we don't want to be accused of being unethical and doing not being transparent so John goodspor is not voting but should John guzmer be voting he probably should because he's one of the people who sees every little piece of data that comes through the district but he's not going to vote because it makes it a more for Optics purposes um we don't want to be accused of doing something
256that we shouldn't be doing so the five people in this room um who are going to probably be doing most of the work are not going to be voting and I'll speak for myself I can't speak for everybody but some of the public comment and email emails and vitriol like I thought it was best for me and we kind of discussed as a group if we just removed ourselves from that part there's I think a lot of work that they probably want us in the room for but uh just because of the kind of heightened emotional nature of this we kind of decided to remove ourselves from them all right uh anybody anybody else like to chime in real quick I'm sorry if you already addressed this but could you just remind me the UEA
257Representatives would they be part of their own exec team or could it be just any teacher who is a member of UEA what we we how we handle UEA Representatives is they choose the pictures not okay so that is why they are not completing the survey yeah um because when they're on committees they are represented at UEA and thinking about our contract and impact and the bargaining impacts and implications or anything that we might be discussing so the UEA does their own survey and elicits their own volunteers so the UEA people are not actually actually one of them is from Wiley I'm a wiley teacher but they are not from the UEA leadership team right they're they're Chosen and their names are submitted from the UEA okay thank you yeah that was a good question
258I should have said that right and they will just be on whatever like as we break in groups they just they will function on the committee just like anyone else but they're there because they were chosen by the UVA to be there did this the story of a question okay so if the way I'm reading these numbers right so we have 60 total committee members but seven of them are ex-officio right so we're left with 53 voting members um and again we can have more board members I just defaulted to two because two is kind of our natural default but because these are public meetings if there are other board members that would like to be um I would ask that board members not just pick and choose I'm going to just of course any
259board member could come and watch because it's a public meeting um but if you're going to be on the committee we ask that you completely be on the committee and you come to all you know you're in all the meeting spaces like Brenda said it's really hard if you just I'll come to this one or that one and you will miss a lot but we could have more than two so but yes as it is uh flushed out right now it would be minus seven people voting yeah so 53. my recommendation frankly would be to add two more parents from Wiley to get them to give them give them more at least two more since we since we had you know the the two board members aren't voting so it would take us to back
260to 55. uh I think I said that already I mean I think I yeah I agreed with no oh I I I think that it would strengthen the purpose of this committee right is to really get District the cities opinion and and recommendation on this question we the last thing we want to do is to do all this work for a committee and and give them the trust give give them the ability to bring a recommendation to the board but have the composition of the committee be such that the recommendation is called into question because the composition the committee you could then that's a situation where the where the next board is going to come in and probably disregard it because they don't they don't respect how the process was done so I think it's
261imperative for this committee to be viable that um that we we heat some of these voices that are that are talking to us and expand the role if possible of including um you know all voices in this in this matter so yeah I I would like to see somebody from the Wiley committee as a co-chair as well myself anything else did Tori have anything else okay thank you I'll I'll go back we'll wait until we get all the responses and now that I think about it there might have been somebody in there maybe one or two who said they would be willing to co-chairs so we'll go back okay uh so we're in board reports does anybody else have a board report I have a quick shout out um I was at Thomas Payne a
262couple of days ago and there's a rock star Mr Williams who does safety patrol and he had this ceremony for these kids who he has an interview process they put together applications he teaches them like real skill job skills marches them across the stage pins them all with so much enthusiasm it was one of the coolest things so shout out to Mr Williams at Thomas Payne for doing something that is like really a life skill they don't always the kids maybe don't know what they're getting from him but he's he's awesome any other board reports I just want to take this opportunity to thank the outgoing board members for their dedicated service we've been appointed for 16 years but all of you for however long you've been on the board your work is so appreciated
263here this is a personal thank you yes I know but it got better no I know it's gonna happen officially when when the you know when the county clerk certifies the election we but I still want to do it now all right it's a late night we got still more work to do so the chair would entertain a call to go into Ezekiel session uh for basically Personnel mappers but what we're doing is is um uh superintendent evaluation and And discussing uh contract situation with with the superintendent I would move but with uh and and there is potential for action after the meeting I would move with a five-minute recess beforehand uh it's been moved is it been seconded second roll call please remember house nadka yes member Hall yes member or yes member yes
264member Carter votes yes vice president xum president Pulaski yes a five-minute recess and then we'll be in closed session uh potentially when we're gonna enter Open Session afterwards no but we'll yes