001To the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands. One nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. >> Okay, >> that over on to roll call. >> Katie Casey here. >> Joel Johnson here. >> Natalie Mel here. >> Joseph Quinn here. >> Tom Schwarz here. >> Mary Shoufelt here. >> Ali Stansbury here. Everyone is here. On to consent agenda. We need a motion to approve the consent agenda as submitted. >> Motion. >> Melffeld. >> Yes. >> Johnson, >> yes. >> Casey, >> yes. >> Schwarz, >> yes. >> Shoefeld, >> yes. >> Stansbury, >> yes. >> Quinn, >> yes. All right. on to public input. I see none, but I would like to call upon principal Pitman for some recognition. >> Thank you. So, um, changing
002up a little bit, uh, this month and, um, this individual has absolutely no clue this is happening right now. So, but Lisa D. Russia, you just stand up. >> Oh, no. You probably wonder why today and like, are you going to be there tonight? She's like, yes. So, um, so Not yet. >> Yeah. So, I received an email um from Isby and stuff and so they um do every year they do a those who excel um in teacher of the year award categories and and lo and behold, as I was scrolling through it, Lisa's name was on there. Mrs. Dussia was on there and there's different some different categories in there. and she was uh in the area of award of special recognition and this is um done through Isby and they recognized 450 educators
003um in the state and so if you think about how many educators there are that you know there's a lot in the state and she was recognized and so uh she had the award of special recognition and it's for valued members of their school community who have been recognized by either their colleagues uh students families and administrators uh for their skills, passions, and talents that they bring to the school community. So, someone nominated her um to receive this recognition. So, uh for those of you, she um is one of our structure support um teachers, um some of our most neediest of students in the district. Um and I know for a fact, I see it every day, um the work that they do in that classroom. And so, uh, I was happy to see her
004name on there and it's welld deserved. Um, I didn't nominate her, but I don't disagree with it at all. So, yeah. So, I just want to congratulate her, make sure that she got recognized for that. SO, >> CONGRATULATIONS. Any others? All right, moves us on to item five, reports, and I will go through each of these reports. Stop me if you have any questions on that. 51, revenue expenditure report. 52, fund balance comparison report. 53 special education revenue expenditure report 54 impact fees 55 impressed fees or impressed report 56 transportation report 57 technology report that leads us to 58 administrative reports starting with Dr. Good evening everybody. Uh just really two things on the agenda tonight to kind of highlight. One, our summer projects. We're we're set with the roof. Everything's taken care of on
005that. Um Mr. Link is getting his list together of the other things we'll be working on. The typical things that go along with summer. Um so that should prove to be another another busy summer, getting a lot done in our buildings and getting them ready for the kids to return. Uh the other thing I wanted to share with you is we've been focusing a lot on um our tenure life safety, our priority one and twos and sending that information down to the state of Illinois. Um hopefully for them to go through and approve item by item so that we could possibly bond and then start to repair our schools for things that are um largely too expensive for us to even ever save for. Um, and so we put together a littleformational uh graphic here
006that we're going to make sure that we have in our newsletter. Um, and basically if you take a look at it, we wanted to highlight the proactive infrastructure investment that we've done. I think it's important that we let the community know we're not just going and looking for money because we haven't been able to save or spend the money that we currently have. um we've put in over $3 million and and it's actually I think a little bit more than that um if you go back to when we started replacing windows and those types of things but we've put that in um as you know with some really tight budgets uh and we've still been able to balance everything. So, I wanted the community to understand that we are doing our diligence on that. Um,
007and that we've also maximized our funding as much as we can by going out and pursuing um any state grants that may be there. Uh, whether it's the $50,000 maintenance grant or another grant, every little bit helps. So, we started there and then at the top we talked about the planning and approve approval and public engagement which will be important. Again, these are subject to change based on what happens at each step. But, uh, hypothetically, if everything goes as planned, um, we start with the HLS application and the, um, that will lead to the funding request. So, uh, that's been submitted. I've talked to the ROE. They've gone through each of the items and looked at it. They gave me some feedback and they said they passed it on to the state. So, at that
008time, you see in our ourformational graphic there that we have a 90-day window that the state has to review item by item and then send it back to us approved or not approved. Those that may not be approved are not because they are being rejected. Uh, the ROE told me it may be wordy. It depends on how they look at it. Um, sometimes they want to see more. It's end of life. It's been we've tried to fix it. We can't get parts and and and some of those other things which I know is in that application, but again, you don't know who's reading and and what they may may decide. So, if we do get some that get rejected out of that long list of items, we'll make the corrections and then we'll go back
009through another 90-day review for those and I would assume they would get passed. The $24 million bond request that we would have uh to fix these is based on an estimate. If you look at our priority ones and twos and a few of the threes that we had the hearing for, you're between upper 23 to 249 25 million. So again, that's that's the the most that you would be requesting. >> Um and so I wanted to make sure that was in there. Of course, the board could come back and say, "Hey, we're going to uh do the middle school and then only these things at the grade schools and say we're going to request 15 million even though we've been approved for the full 24 or 25." So, there's a lot of things I think
010deeper conversations the board will have before we get to that point. Um in the summer again we would talk about possibly some architectural designs uh that uh pending the ISB approval while we're waiting. Actually it'll be the ISB approval will have been here but that would be the time we would start looking at um designing the roofs, designing some of those things that we could get to go to bid uh in the late fall and then have them ready for summer 2027. Obviously, we won't be able to take that whole list and say, "Hey, 2027, here we go." But it would mark a start date. And there's things that we can do that in the summer with Wald and Allison and her team to start some of the design that's going to be needed to
011get some of those projects started. Um, fall of 2026, that's when I think it'll be very important for us to have communityformational meetings. um whether we do one at each school or how the board decides they'd like to do it. We would have more of an in-depth discussion with the the community as to why we need the money for from the bonds to fix the schools. Maybe a little bit more about the history uh and what will be fixed and what our schools will be like afterwards. We would certainly work with Allison and her team on that presentation. Um, going into November, uh, ideally we would want to do any public bidding for those summer projects. Uh, that would give us a time to do the bids, get the bids back, and then go for
012approval in December. You would want to approve any summer bids that would be paid for by bond money at the same time in December that you take or not take, but discuss the levy. Okay. So, that needs to be done at the same time. Two separate things. You could say, "Hey, I'm not we're not taking the levy." And then move on to the next vote. Hey, we are going to take x number of dollars in bonds to fix these specific things. So, there's a lot of different options there. Um, but the reason you would in November probably uh do the bidding is because you have a 30-day window then after those bids come back to award them. So, the end process would be summer of 2027 if everything goes right. Uh, we would begin to
013implement the repairs of the school. Um, and again, what starts in the summer of 2027 really depends what gets approved, where we are, and what the board has decided along with our architects and engineer as a priority to get going. Um, my guess is is that some of the things that would be uh easier to do uh for summer of 2027, meaning bidding roofs, is a lot easier than designing and repiping a whole school, which can't be done in a single summer. So there's a lot of um detail that will have to be filled in, but we kind of felt that this graphic would give uh a basic idea uh a conceptual idea of what we're doing, where we're at, and where we're headed. And uh there will be an article, a short article that
014goes with this explaining a little bit more in detail. Um so that's kind of where we're at right now. Uh there's nothing else for us to do right now other than wait for the return from ISBY on what's been approved and if there's anything that they didn't approve. >> Any questions? >> I have a few. Um this is Dr. Lynn Denise. If we receive bond funds, are they held in a a specific type of account and b do they have to be held separately from the remainder of the funds? >> Yes. Okay. >> What's that? >> Yes. >> Yeah. And I I had a talk with um our lead attorney tonight uh before the meeting. I I was kind of asking him about some of those questions, you know, uh uh are the funds do
015you do you hold them? Can they be put into something while they sit there? You know, that gains 3 4%. >> Yeah. >> Um or do they have to go what what account what legally can we deal with those funds? I mean, if we could get 3 4% of $20 million. That's that much more. But again, we have to investigate the legality of what we can do with that money. Um and and I also spent time kind of following up on this process with them. >> Okay. How old is are some of those boilers? >> It's it's interesting. So the original boiler, if you go back 78 years ago, they had a massive Kani big boiler and they decided to replace that. At the time they replaced it, was it 2003 or four? >> It
016I think it was 20 2000 because I think that's when the two districts consolidated. I think it was 2001. The the problem with the boilers at the middle school is they were boilers that were in a shop that weren't boilers necessarily being sold, mass- prodduced. Uh they were prototypes and that's how at the time the district got them. And there was someone who was an HVAC person who knew someone and they said, "Hey, we'll save a lot of money by putting these boilers on." The problem is uh I think there were only 12 ever made. We have four of them and there are no parts. Uh and they they quickly broke down because you still have the old pipes, you still have all the sediment going through them and it just ground them up. So
017the boilers actually aren't because you know the high schools are 25 years old and we're just rebuilding those, >> right? >> You can't rebuild these. >> Yeah. Just curious as you mentioned end of life, but then there's also compatibility. Yeah. >> You know, using the boilers as an example. I'd just love to know the rationale if there's any push back on replacing boilers and stuff like that. >> I would be very surprised if the boilers had push back >> or the univants. >> Yeah. Because we're manufacturing parts for many of the univvents because you can't get parts. And that was one of the things when I talked to the ROE that they brought up. If you're having to make parts, you can't find parts or they're so rare there's a delay in getting them. >>
018Yeah. >> So, all right. Thank you. That moves us on to superintendent uh the assistant superintendent of curriculum report. Good evening everyone. Udates on standardbased report cards. So if you go back 6 8 months ago, we started talking about this as a as a a committee. Prior to that, we were talking with teachers about it. And the whole idea was to overhaul the report cards and what they look like. As we started to investigate those things, the team started to move towards a standardbased report card. So we shared a three-year plan for where uh our process they would go to. By the end of the third year, we'd have full onboarding of standardbased report cards for K5. Um a couple of the big items that we have along the way are the parent focus group.
019So, we have those planned for April 9th and April 14th with a follow-up meeting on May 14th. Um, we sent out invitations to 10 uh parents from each school. Um, right now we got four folks who who responded. We just sent them out last Friday. So, we'll follow up uh to make sure we get hopefully get all 20. Um, that's one item that we're working through. The other item that we're working through and we kind we talked about this in committee um is a pilot group. And so we have um kindergarten and second grade who are open to do the pilot study for us next year. But with standardbased grading and this kind of refers to the sheet that I have in front of you. And this is a little bit out of sequence that
020we normally share stuff like this. This would normally go first go to the curriculum committee. We talk about it there and then bring it to you. But we want to get it out in front of you right now so we can um ensure that we have all our steps in place by the time next year starts. So prior to next year, hopefully in May, April or May. So with our current system, we have a quarterly report, a grade report. So every nine weeks, you'll get a student report that's based on having a point scale. So students will accumulate points and are given a grade or an assessment or identification of where they're at on those on points. Standard based report cards, the premise is based on trimesters. And because of that, the the reason behind
021that is you want to have as many pieces of evidence on a specific standard as possible, but that goes along with the instructional uh phase. So students are instructed on uh on a standard, they get to practice it, they're giving feedback to do retakes, and then the assessment. It just takes a little bit longer amount of time. I want to make sure everyone understands like how we're doing it right now. There's nothing wrong with that. There's nothing wrong with the quarterly that we're doing, but it's based on a point system. Uh so we want to move into the direction of having trimesters where the teachers have more time and enough time to get the students up to speed on specific standards because we're switching how we report out. And it's a trend grading. So you
022want to have at least three points of evidence to share where a student is at on a specific standard um versus points where you just accumulate your points and there you are at the end of the uh quarter. So I wanted to get that out in front of everybody tonight. Um, I'll share it with the curriculum committee at our meeting in April and hopefully we'll be able to talk about it again next month and look at one direction either identifying the pilot group that they go to trimesters or K5 all the alltogether goes to trimesters thinking about being the next year is when we would all be on trimesters as well. So just kind of getting that out in front of everybody right now. Happy to answer any questions because this is brand new or
023you can think about your questions throughout the month. Would the trimester scheduling more closely align the first report card with parent teacher conferences? Is that >> uh it would because it's 12 weeks. So it um that brings you to towards the end of October and then uh first week of November and then parent teacher conferences are typically the third week of November. Other questions? >> And standard based report card would look something like meeting the standard, exceeding the standard, or not meeting the standard. Would there just be those options? Is that how it works? >> Yes. So, there's there's a few different uh proficiency scales that that they that they're referred to as go one to three where you're beginning, you're approaching, or you're meeting >> or you can go one to four, beginning, approaching,
024meeting, exceeding. Okay? or there's other ones where like one one.5 two 2.5 which really gets messy um when you look at all the gradings available. So that process we're having the ROE come into the report card team to give us a a review of different op options and so the team can kind of talk about those things. We'll take that information give it and share it with the teachers so they can work through what that would look like as well. But part of the pilot group is to is to kind of work through that and have it hopefully set to say, "Okay, we'll go one through three or one through four." >> Okay. >> And the RO is going to meet with us on March 31st. >> Oh, coming up. Okay. >> Yeah. >> Is
025this what most other schools are doing the uh the trimesters? Is it a conventional or like what how common is this? This is something that's >> or standard based in general, >> you know, new thing or >> with standard based report cards, it is trimester is the the not the standard way to go. Um other school districts who are still under the Carnegie units of study by the point system or quarters and so um looking at just district school districts in M or schools in Mckenry, it's about half and half. Yeah. Thank you. Good questions. Anyone else? >> Would the middle school also be trimester then as well or would the middle school stay the way it is? >> The middle school would stay the way it is. And the idea behind that is elementary
026is the foundational part where we want to have students try and learn, try and learn, try and learn to be able to build up that persistence, knowledge base, skill levels. and moving into the middle schools where we we would start to move into this is more content based where you have the content specific experts and it is more and we'll talk a little bit later it'll be 7:30 if the board agrees to that and then it kind of aligns to the high school going forward. All right, thank you very much. >> Thank you. >> Moving on to 583 SGE report. So, um, it's that time of the year where we start, uh, looking for toward our kindergarten kickoff. Um, so we have that date set for June 5th. And so, we've already sent out the
027information, uh, to families, um, through social media, through um, daycarees and uh, the village, you know, they've sent it out for us as well. So, we're going to collect that information and get those uh, those times set. And so, um, we're hoping to get, uh, lots of them signed up. And then we do have registration open up in April 1st for all students, um, in the district. Um, so that's both at um, RGS and Springrove for the kindergarten kickoff. Uh, school celebrations. Um, this Monday kind of threw a wrench in this one. Um, we were we were currently right in the middle of our readathon and we were going to be uh uh having our family reading night on Monday night, but obviously a blizzard had to ruin all that uh for Monday. So, um
028we have actually moved that uh date to April 16th now. Um so that's our new night for that. But uh we're still um doing our readathon with the students. Um the goal is to log 20,000 minutes um while trying to raise uh $10,000. Last I had heard um they were pretty close to the goal actually already. >> Within $1,000. >> What's that? >> Within $1,000. Okay. I knew it was at $8,000 the other day. So yeah. Um so we're getting close to that um that goal. And actually we have a lot of students who are participating this year. PTO, they've really done a good job of um getting prizes. So you know, every day there's at least 10 students getting prizes. We've had um prizes for action territory. Culver's donated. Um we we it's just
029been really great. We've done traveling trophies. Um so they really have gotten into it this year. So we're happy to to see that um really flourish. Um kids are really excited about it. >> Great. Can you describe what the the funds that are raised through this process, what they're they're used for, what they're spent on? >> Sure. Yeah. So, um, actually this year, um, the PTO, um, we're using the funds to we're looking at, um, putting up an electronic sign, um, out in front of the school. Um, we're the only school that does not have a electronic sign. The village of Spring Grove, um, is actually loosening up their requirements for that. Um, because we are in the historical part of Spring Grove. Um, so I've already met, you know, with the uh um building
030and zoning uh Bob at the village and stuff and so um Rainbow Signs has been very generous to us and um looking at giving us a really good deal and stuff. So PTO um has helped set aside some funds. I've set some funds aside as well. um got some grants for that too um because it's expensive and uh so that's what we're looking at right now for that and then in addition to everything else the PTO funds um assemblies um uh prizes like like read readathon and stuff and um teacher appreciation stuff. So yeah, >> that's terrific. Even more so on those days where it's negative five outside, you can click a few buttons to update your sign rather than >> going out there and change it manually. >> Yeah, it's not that's not fun.
031>> not enough. You're right. >> Any questions for principal? >> Thank you. Moving on to 584 and the NMS reports. >> Good evening. Um, so to start with, I mention it every year, but because it's awesome. Uh our sixth grade had their Greek fest uh the other day with all the kids in toga uh running around in the gym representing their citystates and uh and I say it, they are into it when they when they're there. It's really uh fun to watch how how hard they go. It's like PE times 10. They are sprinting up and down trying to win the races. It's really and in toas in costumes. It's uh really impressive. So we had that uh also um so each at the end of each quarter our grade level teams meet uh we
032take three days one for each team and we discuss our interventions we look at EXL data we look at kids who are in the intervention we look at their grades we look at their growth um over the year over the quarter and then are we seeing success are these kids having success where they can maybe move out of the intervention um you know the team gives their input maybe another quarter. Let's see where we're at. Uh we also look at kids who maybe need to be put in an intervention or placed in maybe a more intensive intervention. So that was done the first week of March to get us ready for fourth quarter. Um that has has been great. Um I think uh our teams are getting better too at looking at data and looking
033at kids and recognizing uh what kids need support uh and and maybe even need more support. school celebrations. Uh, our winter sports season, uh, a big success. Our eighth grade girls basketball team finished nine and one, won the conference championship. So, that's back-to-back years for them being conference champions. Uh, and our wrestling uh, team lights out this year. They finished as conference champions. They finished as regional champions. Uh, 13 wrestlers qualified for sectionals. from sectional seventh uh qualified for state which was held last uh Friday. And of the seven, four uh got on the podium at state. Something tells me you'll hear more about that next month. Um when we maybe invite those four, but uh we had a great season. Coach Lesniak and his do a great job. We had great kids and uh
034and we had a heck of a of a wrestling season this year. Any questions for Principal Cre >> I don't want to spoil next month's but I went to the play. The play was fantastic. >> Play was fantastic. I was there uh Saturday night. I was at wrestling on Friday and I was at the play on Saturday and I said it's so fun to watch the kids be >> I guess it's acting but they are they do you know see come out of their shells. It is great. >> Yeah, it was a really good performance. Any other comments or questions? >> Thank you. Moves us on to 585 RGS report. >> Good evening everybody. I apologize. I'm going to stay in the corner at what everybody else has been sharing all season long. Um so
035fifth grade went for their 25th year to the Challenger Learning Center. um worked on collaboration on critical thinking and perseverance as they went through a series of different um stations throughout the child learning center uh working through mission control trying to actually complete a mission which the first one didn't quite happen uh but they retoled back in it and a second crew managed to uh get the rover launched to Mars which was awesome and then uh they did a stem coding lab for the second half of their day and we go in two shifts because we're a little bit much uh for the center, but it's something that they've been doing for 25 years. Kids love it, staff love it. Um, I get the pictures and I told them next year I'm going. It's so
036cool. So cool. Uh, we also had our winter library Olympics going for the gold. Um, so not to compete necessarily against each other, but to work together towards a common goal. Uh, Mrs. Ro has done it again by having students compete in a series of different uh, events. One of them was the overdue book Bob Sled race. Um you can see that there's a couple pictures of the kids doing some of the activities in the uh library, but also the big air book report. So for everything that they took part in, they earned points. Um the library staff took care of tracking and ranking everybody and getting everything all together. Uh and overall participation was great. Kids had a blast and it was cool to get them to see also what was going on in
037the Winter Olympics as it correlated with what was going on in the library. Uh our update uh we have had our first meeting, we're about to have our second meeting here in April of our parent advisory group uh talking with about 15 parents last month about uh some of the questions of things surrounding student learning, the environment, and what we want for all of our students. Uh we are meeting again April 1st in the RGS library. welcome. Uh that'll be at 6 pm. And then lastly, we had last week the student council skate night uh at Skate on Grand Fox Lake. It was jam-packed. Uh so I don't know if anybody was there. Uh but it was on the 12th. Everybody had a great time and Elliot and they uh coordinate everything with our student
038council. And that's a fundraiser for staff appreciation week uh with money's going to purchase lunch for staff. So kudos to them for all their hard work organizing that. and everybody came out of there on skate. So that was pretty quick. >> Any questions >> for the parent focus group? Were those targeted invitations or was it just open to whomever? >> Nope. In our Rams report weekly, we've been running an open invitation. Uh we just asked the parents RSVP so that when we do refreshments that have groups, we want to make sure we have enough facilitators to have everybody be able to take part. >> Everybody's welcome. Thank you. >> All right, that moves us on to 59. Any foyer requests? >> None. Six, old business. None. That moves us on to seven, new business. And
039first up is approving the updated dipper middle school grading scale policy. We do need a motion to approve the uph the updated dipper middle school grading policy just to pause to see if there are any questions. You just kind of go over one more time just what that policy is and you know what we're saying we're doing. >> Yeah. Yeah. And then feel free to add on to whatever I'm saying here. For the longest time, uh, we've had a 9010 grading policy and there have been a lot of questions, concerns from the public in regards to that policy and it led us into uh led us into a rather lengthy review of this grading policy which took us down the path of reviewing uh trends out there from other school districts. uh what what they're
040doing um reading uh and doing some research on those that have studied this and why the trend has kind of changed because when we did that study and we looked at all those schools I think there was one other one out there that had a 9010 grading policy the remainder of them kind of transitioned over the years into something a little bit different then you couple that with the fact that you know for those of us who have had children that have gone through the middle school and gone into high school it's sometimes a little bit of a shock to go from a 9010 10 grading policy 26040 where there's a lot more emphasis um on the work that you're doing and so um went through the process of reviewing the grading policy talking to
041those the administration at the school staff at the school and ultimately came to the conclusion that uh the recommendation is to go to a 7030 grading policy. It is in line with what a lot of the other schools have done. Also when we did early polls on this it kind of fell right in line with where u many of the folks had thought it should move to. Uh both parents uh students were pulled to and many of the teachers. Uh so that's the idea behind it. Um we'll provide the guidance to the school that that's what the grading policy should be. The administration then uh would be the group to enforce that policy and to make sure that it's applied fairly across the school. Leave anything else? No, I think that covers it. >> Will
042there be any sort of measurement say next year if we look at grades after this is done implemented to see if maybe they've been brought up? >> We have the current GPA for this year and years past. So, we can use that as a as an indicator. >> Yeah, good question. We should track that. >> Other questions? the other schools that had a similar grading percentage to this, were they also using standardbased report card? I think the reason I'm asking this is because it seemed to me like both were kind of getting presented at the same time. Um, so I think that's where I kind of have a little disconnect. Um, >> that's a great question. So the the schools that are 9010 or 100% um summitive as based on the grades uh it it's
043or 8020. Some were >> standard based but some were not. Okay. >> Um and that's like the the variance that we found is like there's nothing that's similar. So it's really really difficult to kind of gauge on something like that. But the schools that are do have a standardbased report card. Um and they have some very very specific policies on retakes uh homework and uh class whatever class participation things like that. So those are really they were really rigid on those things um who had the 9010 or even 100% um summit of assessments. >> Okay. >> And just to be clear if we did approve this tonight we would go to this for the next school year. Correct. But um that group in the elementary school would still be just a test group doing for
044standard based. >> Yes. >> Just because I guess my concern is that we rolled this all out at once and you've got kids now that are standard based then going into a grading you know policy that's different the next year. I mean there's just a lot of changes happening in that time. >> So the 7030 we would recommend the starting of the 26 27 school year for next year. So the fifth graders going up are still under the point system that um they've always had. >> The two pilot groups are kindergarten and second grade. In kindergarten, some folks maybe have never had a child in a school. So this would be all it wouldn't be like it it would be brand new to them based on what their experience was as a student, but it
045wouldn't be any different. And K2 right now is a combination between uh standards based because they get a number right >> and uh perfor and >> work habits, right? And so going in the second grade, it wouldn't be a big shift for those folks either or those students I should say. So yeah, we kind of thinking about that and it kind of landed nicely for us where it was just kindergarten and second grade. >> So the fifth grade, fourth, third, fourth, and fifth grade students wouldn't be impacted >> uh yet. Okay. >> And so the full implementation for K5, we would look for the 2728 school year. Any questions? Any others? >> Okay, seeing none, we need a motion to approve the updated Nippers Middle School grading scale policy. >> Second. >> Milfeld, >> yes.
046>> Stansbury, >> yes. >> Casey, >> yes. >> Johnson, >> yes. >> Shufeld, >> yes. >> Schwarz, >> yes. >> Quinn, >> yes. Motion has passed. That moves us on to item 72, committee updates. And uh going to buildings and grounds first. >> All right. Uh just a brief update tonight. Uh in addition to what uh uh Tom uh the updates he provided earlier, uh we also uh discussed we met yesterday. Uh we we uh discussed the HLS inspections that occurred over at the uh at RGS and SGE last month. Um no major violations found. Uh so so uh we're waiting on the ROE for reports. So we've got the the feedback from Chris from the walkthrough. We don't have reports in the ROE, but um but things are looking like they're minor minor issues
047that Chris is working with the principles to address. a lot of your typical things. Um, you know, storage too high and an extension cord being used where it shouldn't, daisy chained, uh, power strips, things like that. So, easily taking care of stuff. So, so we discussed those things and like I say, Chris is working with the the principles and the staff to address those. Um, Sync Middle School, that inspection is still TBD. Did we get a date on that, Chris? >> Okay. So, so that's that's to be rescheduled. So we'll have feedback once that inspection occurs and once we get the roe reports always takes a while for them to to generate those. We'll we'll provide those as well but uh but through the feedback from the walkth through nothing major which is which is
048great. Some of that stuff can get pretty expensive. Any questions about that stuff? >> Daisy chained power strips and extension cords that are too long. It sounds just like a project my sons were training. recently. Any questions, Tom or Natalie? See none. Okay, that moves us on to 73 special education review update. Yeah, this is something that we've been working on. Um the phase one is done. We've got our uh feedback from that. And so if you look at phase one, there's three things that we're really focused on. And and within those three things, you can break it down into all these other little things. One is leadership and governance. And that's where we're at right now. Um you know, when we read the feedback and get the feedback, there's needs to be a review
049of how leadership throughout the department is is um put together. And uh we're looking to create a distributed leadership model in that department to to improve governance. One of the things that the feedback came back is that uh at times people feel that they don't know who to talk to if they have a question. Do they talk to this person? Do they talk to that person? And we don't want that confusion. So, we want to streamline that so that um everybody within the special education department is clear as to who to talk to when they have a question about certain things. And uh that's something that we're working on right now. There will be significant changes in that uh and how we run things uh next year, but that'll more to come on that as
050we get into the spring. The other is we're looking at instruction and programming. Again, that goes into our MTSS, which we want to find, you know, students that are struggling. They they may have a 504 uh or an IEP or they may not have one yet. Um but before you go to that IEP, we want to put them through different levels of interventions to see if that won't help. And so when we look at our our three schools, we're all putting together an MTSS with very similar um interventions all based on the same type of model, but there are some variations. And I think one of the things that we have to do is and we've talked about this administratively is what's the on-ramp for an intervention? And we do have those guidelines, but to
051kind of clarify it a little bit more and then what's the offramp? At what point do we say, "Okay, we've done intervention one, two, and three. Maybe it is time now to take that next step towards the IEP." Or, "We have a student with an IEP and they're really struggling in this particular area. We need to get them extra help in that area." The reason that's important when we look at our our um statistics and and the information that we get judged on by the state students with disabilities um or students with 504s and IEPs uh their their growth is lower than similar students in the state with students with disabilities, meaning that they're growing, but when compared to other students in the state of Illinois, they're not growing at the same speed and that's
052not because anybody's doing something wrong and that's what I always want to make sure no one's doing anything wrong. We've got a great set of teachers. We've got good curriculum, but there are some things we have found uh through this audit that we need to just improve on. And a lot of it has to do with um a uniform way of approaching certain things uh interventions. And then the other is systems and compliance. And that'll be a big part of what we do. And this is all going to take time, but the system and compliance is a fiveyear strategic plan. We really need to have just like we have strategic plans for building and grounds, we need to have a strategic plan for our students with disabilities. Um, and what is our plan going yeartoear?
053Uh, are we trying to bring our students who are outplaced back? You know, it could help us uh significant financial savings, but can we serve those students? and if we can't serve those students, do we hire additional people to serve those students in their home district? >> Um, so there's a lot of things that go on with that. So, a five-year strategic plan is a a uh large thing that we have to take on. Um, we're going to start with leadership and governance. We'll be working uh putting a team together with teachers and paras and other people within uh the department to start looking at our strategic plan probably towards the end of this year and that'll be the main thing they work on next year as a special ed group. Phase two, um we'll
054be sending an email out uh either tomorrow or Friday. Basically, uh, what we're going to do is our case managers, we're going to look at IEPs and we're going to, although we do have a standardized way, um, that we do IEPs through the review, we found that there are some things that are different between studentto student, manager to manager. And one of the things that we're really trying to get a a hold on is student minutes. meaning that how many minutes with an OT we know they have that written down OT do they go with a PAR for help at a certain time are they in regular education for a certain time and we're going to kind of uniform how all IEPs are written so that those minutes and all that is easy to identify
055can be put in a spreadsheet that's easily available right now to gather all those minutes um we have to go into a state system and it can kind of be uh uh cumbersome. You know, we want a simple way that we could pull a spreadsheet up and say, "Here's our our students with disabilities. Here's where their minutes during the day are." Um that will also allow us then to go back and say, "How many OT's do we need? How many speech pathologists do we need? How many social workers do we need?" Um because there's a belief that and we don't know until we get the number that we need more in certain areas or that perhaps we can move some people from one area to another area at a different school. Um but they thought
056that we probably needed to add one or two people. And so we don't want to come with a recommendation to the board of having to hire or bring additional staff in until we have the numbers to back that up. Once we get the minutes, we'll compare that to what this the states say we should have for if you have x number of minutes, how many speech colleges should you have and so on. Um, and then we'll be making recommendations when that's completed going forward. So overall, I think sometimes it can be a scary thing for people because there's a lot of questions being asked, but it's not meant to be um a gotcha. It's really meant to support our students, support our families, and help our staff uh do their jobs even better. So, that's
057kind of where we're at right now. >> Any questions? >> So, phase two starts in April. Do you have an end date? >> Yeah. Uh so, they said April 8th um is the week we're going to start it. Uh each case manager will meet online with uh our consultant. They'll go through three or four of their own IEPs. They'll get the hang of it. Then they'll go back and do the rest of them. Uh then give those results to the consultants. It'll take a once that process will take two weeks. They think it'll take another two weeks to go through that and then come back with the second phase of the report. So, I'm thinking that we're we're probably looking maybe with some results. Otherwise, it would be early June >> because would this be
058recommendations for FTE coming on board 26? >> It could be. It could be if we find out that we're short based on numbers, then we may have to um and that's what we're waiting to see. We don't want to make any recommendations until we have the the numbers behind it. >> Yeah. So we'd be able to do that in June. >> And right now you guys are compiling the number of minutes y >> in each of those related service categories and special ed services. >> That's what the uh so we do have them but they're kind of all over. >> So and the IEPs are a little different from person to person. So what the consultant's going to do is exactly that. They're going to say here's the template. Let's go through each IEP. This
059is how we're going to record the minutes. And then they'll do say three or four students with that case manager. And then that case manager will go back and complete the rest review their IEPs using that template to get the minutes. Once those minutes are all gathered with all our case managers, we'll give those that information to the consultants who will put a document and report back to us. And then what we're going to go do from that point is keep an Excel spreadsheet, something really simple of a an active sheet of students with disabilities, what their needs are and what their minutes are so that we can quickly look at that and make decisions on on personnel. >> Will that go to the teachers as well? >> What's that? >> Will that go to
060the teachers as well? >> When it's all done? Yeah. Well, yeah. I mean, that's it'll be I would I would say all the special ed teachers would get it. I don't know if we'd necessarily share it with if I'm a regular ed teacher and I don't have that student, we probably wouldn't share it. >> Some of the kids with IEPs though are five or fours have regular >> Right. So that person would find out, right? >> Yeah. I mean there's there's nothing to hide from it, right? >> Yeah. >> When you were talking about hiring more, were you talking about more special ed teachers or we think aids or like Oh, so right now we have no idea. like budgeting wise what we're talking about salary or >> I don't think we're looking at I
061I would say when we did the initial review they thought we might need an additional teacher >> that's what they were thinking when it gets into the um pull outs or you know your occupational therapist or speech therapist all that >> um I we're going to be okay there But we want to get our numbers so that we know we're okay, >> right? >> So I don't look for this to be a large sum of money whatsoever. >> So, but we'll know more in June. But don't look for us to come with recommendations for three or four >> Okay. >> new employees. >> Okay. >> Yeah. It's just kind of a hard time of year to do it because you're using data from 25 26 students and if they move or they go on to
062the high school or >> Yeah. >> students come in those numbers are going to change for 26 27. >> They will they're always flu the the numbers always fluctuate. Uh we'll probably we could lose 40 students and gain 30 students but the core will still be there. I mean, we're we're not going to have such a fluctuation from eighth grade to the high school. Eighth grade to the high school is easy to predict. >> Um, you know, we're not going to have such a fluctuation that it would set us, you know, in a a bad situation. >> I just don't want us to overhire or then be underprepared. >> We're not going to overhire. No, we won't do that. We would we wouldn't hire anyone unless there is a definite need. Um, and the first
063thing that we would always try to do and and they do this now is uh we look at who do we have available, how are we using individuals, and is there a way to use the individuals that we have right now to maximize out um time. So, >> and I think having a standard way of recording those IEP minutes and needs over time will allow you to forecast what the needs will be not only for next year but for future years >> so that we can anticipate whether or not an FT is a short-term need or a >> correct >> longer term need. >> I think once we get through this, this is kind of the messy phase. We're we're diving into things. It it change is difficult and when people ask questions, people get
064nervous and and they don't know what's going on and stuff like that. But what we're really trying to do is get a clear picture of where district 2 is and students with disabilities and what their needs are for personnel. And once we see that, I think going into next year, we're having conversations, you know, in January about and and along with your 5year strategic plan, you can look at it and say, "Hey, we have I think we say we have seven or eight outplace students and we're looking to build a self-contained classroom where these students could be brought back into district." we can look at what we already have for personnel and say, "Hey, we're going to need um we can take this person from this program, but we're going to need to hire a
065nurse or we're going to need to hire those things." It's going to make more predictable um cost more predictable. I would say we have the study back which we still have to go through and dissect and then we're going to get some of these numbers, these minutes, you know, but going back to the first two pillars, you know, leadership and governance, instruction, and programming. Um, it might not be that we have to hire anybody, but it's who we have and how they support our students after all this has gone through that leads to >> the mixture of support staff. >> You're 100% right. And and so the leadership and governance is a big part of this. How are we going to structure special education and the leadership within special education? >> And and how are
066we going to carry out meaningful professional development? Who's going to do it? who's responsible for it? >> And when someone in in a building has a question or concern, who do they know right away, who do I go to to get assistance? >> And so that's where that leadership and governance goes. That takes away some of that um uneasiness of not knowing what what's being reported. They're not always so sure who to go to or what to talk to. I think once you get that established, then you're moving into the other things much more easy. Your instruction, your compliance. So the first one's a big one. >> Yeah. >> And I would imagine whoever's in charge of leadership is also going to be in charge of that spreadsheet which I would imagine is going to
067be a huge undertaking. >> It's a big undertaking. >> Like they were talking about every year the minutes change, the students change. One thing I'll say that the the importance of this doing this this year is next year the state's coming in and in the county they're they're going to be doing all the schools in the county for special ed but there's going to be a state indepth evaluation of I think next year six schools in the county and RB and D2 will be that's their turn. So, in some ways, we're we're going to be able to be better prepared for when they come in because I've looked at the sheet that or the sheets that they have and what they're checking. And we're kind of doing it ahead of time. >> Yeah. >> So
068that we can get into compliance. >> And is our preschool program under this umbrella? >> Yep. Preschool, all that's under there. >> Good questions. Any others? Thank you. That moves us on to close session. Did we have anything for closed session? >> I don't want someone else. >> No. >> Okay, that means we don't have any actions after a closed session that exists that moves us on to adjournment. We need a motion to adjurnn. >> Second. >> All in favor say I. >> All oppose, same sign. meeting a journey. >> Yeah. The bike to