001I'd like to call to order this board of education regular meeting, Tuesday, April 15th, 2025 at 7:02. Can I have a roll call? Mrs. Theodore here. Mrs. Mel here. Mrs. Irvfield here. Mrs. De here. Mrs. Lavala. Mr. Rarity here. Mr. Trapuzzio here. You have a quorum. Please stand for the pledge of allegiance. To the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for it stands one nation under God indivisible with liberty and justice for all. Mission state repeat mission state. The mission of the school district is inspiring educational excellence in a nurturing environment. Thank you. Celebrate the success. Great. Thank you very much. So today we have uh a couple of things that we're celebrating. First, we want to welcome back Mrs. uh Theodore for her um election onto the board of
002education for another four years and uh Mr. James Coljack who also was elected to the board of education. We want to welcome him as well informed of the May 1st meeting and then I've scheduled time for a board member training with him um in May as well. So, congratulations to both of you. And with that, we want to say thank you and goodbye. This is Mrs. Duck's last meeting. Mrs. Lala is not here this evening, but Mrs. Duck. Sorry, I thought I was Well, she was. I think something just came. Oh, no. Tonight, it's for Dr. Society. Great. So, we want to thank you for your four years of service and for the time that you've taken out of your family life and your life to be here with us and for the decisions that
003you've made for the students in Orangeville District 8. We're a better place because you are here with us. Thank you. So, thank you for joining us. Thank you. Uh just as a quick reminder and I think I have this later in my presentation the we have the last meeting then of this board really is on May 1st. You're welcome to join us of course and then we will end that board the board this board will approve any minutes that are outstanding like the minutes from this meeting. We'll end that board. will swear in the new officers um when the returning officer and the returning member and then we will um start up a new reorganization. Also for celebration tonight, I have all the celebrations tonight. We want to take some time to celebrate our two
004wonderful assistant principles, Mrs. Arenss and Mrs. Gulo. Uh, April is the assistant principal recognition month and we want to celebrate both of them for their hard work that they do here in the district. Mrs. Arens, as you know, this is her fourth year here in Nor School District 80. She has really blessed us with working with our our older students and our younger students. So, we want to thank her for her work with us and her wear gym shoes cuz she is off and running in the hallways and taking care of all of our our needs all throughout the building. Uh, also want to thank Mrs. Gulo for her work here with us, her first year with us. I think she's off to a great start her ad uh admin career and it was a
005great place to start here with us in Orange School District 8. So, we want to thank both of them for all of their work, all of their hard conversations that they've had with students, with parents, with other administrators as well. And thank them both for their service. So, thank you. We have a little to gift token for them to thank them for their work. Also try to get them on correctly. Thank you. Thank you. It matches your outfit today. And it's J's purple. Thank you. Thank you. Purple. Any other celebrations? Um I'll take this opportunity to uh celebrate um Autism Acceptance Month every April. Um it's a time to just kind of recognize our individuals with ASD. Um right now the current statistics is I think about one in 36 uh students with are diagnosed
006with autism. So it is a disorder that impacts the way that they communicate uh interact with others, perceive sensory information. So it's just a nice opportunity for us to to really recognize and celebrate just the unique people that they are. going to add quickly that uh we students raised over $14,000 for the kids art challenge. Um and take night we had the fourth grade versus staff basketball game uh before spring break. So it was a really nice time. We like to celebrate our band. They had a solo competition this past Saturday at Gio School. The students did an amazing job. Uh so we'd like to celebrate them and all the amazing accomplishments they had. And then finally, we're done with our A testing. So we're extremely excited about that as well. Uh action item consider
007motion to approve the agenda as modified. modification being the removal of action item 18C. Can I have a motion? Motion. Second. Renzo, the vote, please. Mrs. Ste, yes. Mr. Bardi, yes. Mrs. Theodore, yes. Mrs. McFillips, yes. Mrs. Urban Barfield, yes. Mr. Yes. Motion passes. visitors and visitors any correspondence. No public participation that couldn't be any last we've had a remaining month of Yeah. Um and all of these will be posted on the website. The first one you see in a here is a a repeat public foyer that received the same uh the same type of information was requested just a different use. So on page two, you can see all of the different dates and times that we received the um to presentation student services. So I've asked um Mr. Masters. Yep. I didn't know
008Joe was coming to present um today about student services which is his department which includes special education um multilingual services and preschool services. So he's going to give you kind of a brief overview about some of the services that we offer and also discuss um the future. So well thank you. I appreciate that this episode too because it is uh it's it's kind of a lot when you think about student services like what exactly does it really know? I know that previously this board has known that I have a role in for special ed. What's the difference? And the big piece is really as kind of as pointed out there, there really is three comps. We talk about special education. We talk about the the multilingual piece and now PFA or preschool, which is kind
009of somewhat related in its in its various forms. But to really kick things off, it's it's really important to understand where special ed comes from because that is a big part of a lot of what we do. Um and this basically special education comes down from federal law IDA um individuals with disabilities education act and really and truly there's two components of special education. It's really the core values that kind of operate the whole process. Free and appropriate public education which is basically that any child who has a disability has the right to a free appropriate public education which gets a little bit more into detail, right? That means that their families cannot be charged for the education that they have. It must be individualized to meet their needs and it does need to give
010them that access to the general education curriculum. So that's going to come up a little bit later. So just kind of file that in the back of your mind. The other piece is the least restrictive environment and that's really where are the kids learning with as much as possible to their non-disabled peers. Again, we're trying to really focus on that general education setting. So it's helpful to kind of identify like who are we talking about? So under ID there's actually 13 different categories that we have to recognize. So when we actually fill out all those paperwork all that massive paperwork 50 plus pages. One of the crux of the uh the the paperwork is basically what are we looking at? What are we looking at when we talking about a child disability? There are 13
011categories which you'll notice that there's a 14 here because in Illinois we do recognize a developmental delay. So that's a child basically 3 to 18 and that kind of is a catchall. We're not quite 100% certain what the disability is, but we kind of know that there's a deficit. That's really the key. You'll notice here that I highlight this in blue. These are the top disabilities in terms of percentages that we see within our building. So, a lot of times people think, oh, a disability, oh, it's probably vision or it's hearing. Those are actually fairly rare. What we are tending to see a lot more of autism spectrum disorders, developmental delay, like I suggested earlier, the other health impairments. So that could be something from ADHD to, you know, other conditions that could impact much
012more widespread events that could kind of impact child learning, a specific learning disability. So reading, writing, math, and then speech and language impairment. So one of the tasks that we have in the department is that we actually do need to do a child count every year. And this year, as of March 5th, we are currently servicing 161 students with disabilities. It's actually up about uh 13 I think from last year. Um so it does include a lot of students with those disability categories that we just talked about a second ago. So the bigger question that comes in is we have we are running 161 individual grants for these kids. So what does our service look like? How is it actually executed? So this is actually a nice kind of continuum. It's a nice visual to
013help understand what we're looking at when we say okay where does the child are? Um, and you'll notice that it kind of it starts out larger and kind of goes smaller. Again, going back to that principle of are we giving the child a chance to learn in the genetic setting as much as humanly possible appropriate level. As you go on, you'll notice that it gets a little bit different where we're talking about different types of special education support. So, you'll notice here we have some supplementary aids that might be accommodations that could be a co-teer what we called in the past. We're talking more about inclusion practices, which I'll talk a little bit about the difference in a second. Then we're getting more into resource which is like a specially designed special education classroom focus
014on reading and math. We start to look at our self-contained placement. So we're talking about we're actually pulling a child out and giving them a specialized classroom to focus on their specific functional needs. And then we'll also talk a little bit about separate special education day schools. So like our therapeutic schools, we sometimes will see some of those lower categories, but that's very very rare. We don't typically see that top often. So what specifically does our services look like? Well, like I kind of alluded to before, we have kind of what we're starting off as an inclusion. This is basically where we are pushing into the genet setting and we are giving our students that opportunity to learn in the gened setting with their non disabled peers. When we talk about pulling out, we're talking
015more about resource instruction. So again, we're providing a separate class for them to learn reading and math. really really digging in giving them that separate instruction to give them at least a part of their day still with their peers but a little bit out there where they can learn at their best. The self-contained is again we are giving them an entirely different kind of mode of instruction or potentially curriculum um depending on this type of self that we focus on and then our out of district placements. That's where you'll have a lot of those discussion points about like okay what are we what are we looking for in terms of this therapeutic versus that therapeutic and what kind of service they provide. So, one of the things I wanted to make sure that that you
016know this board understands too with us is you know when we've talked in the past about co-eing we really are kind of using that a little bit liberally in terms of what we're actually talking about. When we're talking about co-eing we're actually speaking about inclusion support where in we are actually pushing in and kind of allowing our students to get those specific instruction that specific instruction from the special education teacher. And it's it's really more more focused on are they with their peers learning the same curriculum as much as possible with some assistance from that special ed teacher. Okay, co- teaching is just one strategy that is used to kind of implement that inclusive practice and inclusive and bringing everybody together. Um and the really big piece is are we actually planning together and delivering
017that instruction with a mixed group of students. So kind of thinking of it as an umbrella, right? which is like there's big idea but co- teaching is one specific practice that we have used in the past. So just trying to make sure that our language is a little bit more aligned in that space. Now resource is again that pull out piece where we are pulling out kids and we're talking about a deliberately smaller classroom size a small a slower pace but it is still focused on instruction in math and English learning. They're still focused on priority standards and we are still focused on their success in the future. So that's the whole of special education in a very brief nutshell. So that the next piece is going to be multi education which is a big
018focus for us this year. Um and it's one of those that it really is kind of summarized best by equity and not deficit. So multi learners are basically learning a second language. That's all there is to it. But it's very very easy for them to attract that deficit. And the best way to kind of think of it is that this is actually an asset. it's not a barrier to learning. Uh second language, you know, it does take time to develop that language skill. Um the research is kind of indicated between 5 to seven years. So we really have to figure out how is it that we can best help our students who are still learning how to you know get this this English proficiency that they go through. And the other piece is that this
019is a civil right piece. This has come through with title six of the civil rights act of 1964. So we are really focused on making sure that they get meaningful services and supports. Um this is actually an updated number. We have about 30% of our students who are considered English language learners which is also multilingual. There's a little bit of disturbance in some of the names sometimes but in other words we have about one in three of our students is multilingual learners. So that really covers quite a big spread and it does represent 23 different languages which you'll see in a little bit. So again how are we servicing our kids? Um, as you'll see here, there's a lot. This is this is, you know, impossible to tr really truly try to get a bilingual
020educator for every single language. So, we really need to think about what is it that we can do to maximize the opportunities for students and still make sure that we're making some educationally sound decisions. So, one of the things that we look at or there's actually two basic models that we're looking at. TE, which is transitional bilingual education, and CPI, which is transitional program of instruction. And basically it comes down to numbers. If we're looking at a TBE, if there are 20 or more students with ML in the same language background, now we have to start looking at that TBE program, which we'll get into a little bit later. If you have 19 or fewer, TPI and that could be actually the big difference is are you getting a bilingual educator or are you having
021an educator who is uh certified as an ESL, so English, I'm sorry, um uh multilingual. So basically they can teach that language skill within the classroom that English is the second language. So there's two different types of TPE. You can have full-time TPE which is basically you're getting full instruction in all of your areas throughout the day or you can have part-time. So it's kind of like we're getting some very specific pieces to it and that's based on the access score which is one of the assessments that we offer to all students who have identified as speaking a second language at their home. and they have certain cutoff scores that basically determine their eligibility. So these are just kind of some overall models of what bilingual or multilingual education can look like. Um I will
022say that our TED TPI screening um are options that are at both schools. Our newcomer is off at the Giles within the wind program. The shelter we really don't offer but think very similar along the similar lines of that push in versus pull out special education piece. So this is actually what we are currently working with in terms of me versus child. So you'll notice that we right now have TBE for Ukrainian and Polish and we have TP I think CBI uh or no I'm sorry T for Ukrainian Polish and Spanish. Giles very similar but the only difference is that Spanish will be added for next year. So we'll be talking a little bit more about that that will be very and the last prong of this is basically preschool. So preschool you'll see a
023lot of overlap with special education but there's also other part which is PFA. So PFA is a state funed program that provides free preschool or all that's what PFA stands for for children 3 to 5. Okay. And we do look for for certain characteristics, right? We're looking for family based on needs. So income, language, special education needs, homelessness, those kinds of pieces. Um, and we really are focused on early learning standards, getting them ready for kindergarten. So it's again trying to find that high quality education, making sure that we are trying to close equity and educational and achievement gaps so that we can make sure that they are the best success for their future. So again, focus a lot on my re uh very research based curriculum trying to make sure progress as the time
024goes on. So again, how who do we serve? Now, this is where it kind of gets a little bit murky with some of the stuff that I was indicating about sexual education. As a district, we have a child find obligation, which is our legal obligation to basically find children who have disabilities. And this does start very early. So you'll notice that basically we are looking for birth to 21. Now for we're a little early there's a little bit more to that which you'll see down here. There's actually two parts of IDA part C which talks birth to three and we don't do that. That's going to be something that we work with early intervention. So there's a whole host of networks that we can actually work with. Um Easter Seals is one we work with
025a bunch of others where they will kind of get students or young children rather. They'll work with them if they're displaying some type of deficit. And then once we get to age three, then we start to take over and we talk about that preschool program. So our responsibility is to seek out and evaluate these kids to decide do you have a developmental disability delay or a disability and if so that faith in L3 appropriate public education restrictive environment. We are doing a lot of coordination and we are really doing all of those IEP. So all of that documentation is coming up on a lot of the process that you see a little bit later as well. One of the things that we do in our department is when we have we have basically what's called
026the 27 office that's put out by the state that kind of says, "Hey, we have these children out on these early intervention programs." We are recognizing that these children need support through early intervention. Now, you guys need to start taking them up when they hit three. So, we start coordinating that with all these different agencies and we are looking and and evaluating to see, do you need an IEP the second you walk out of the door? Um, as of right now, we have 93 students who are attending our overall present. That's not 93 students who are ready, but we have bookmarked up to 103 students, I believe, is our final number for this year. And that's accounting for the children who are still remaining at our 27. So, next year we're looking up to 120
027students because it does continue. So, the way that our services generally operate in terms of where they're at is that we offer a blended preschool program. So, what does that mean? is basically a model where all abilities of children learn together. They're learning. They're play based. So, it's a lot more fun. You're learning through exploring and interacting with their environment. Um, it does include our children with child through that we've identified through the child process and also our PFA uh risk factor. So, we really kind of hit everybody within that model. Um, with regard to our specifics, we have three preschool teachers. We have two sections of each. So we have an A and a PM session about 17 students as of right now for each classroom and we do focus on that early intervention
028that equity and that access. We again are focused on that play base but we are trying to prepare them for kindergarten and we are trying to promote that social emotional growth. Now, the one piece that I will say is very important to kind of underscore here is one of the other pieces that we try very hard to kind of you're clear of is a 7030 rule of special education. And that basically applies to everybody in the entire district, every classroom. We cannot go over 30% of students with IEPs in a given classroom. Now, that does not include children with just speech only as a as a part of their IEP. So, if they're only receiving speech language services, that does not count. But if the child has a reading deficit, we start counting each child
029and we cannot go past that 30%. That becomes difficult with the preschool program because as you might guess a smaller classroom, it becomes very difficult very quickly because one one child will make a very large percentage impact in the cities. So we really have to balance that very carefully. So what are we looking at for next year? So all of this kind of kind of paints a picture of like what are we looking towards the future for? So, one of the pieces that we'll focus on is actually adding a new self-contained special education classroom. Um, that's basically going to kind of cover off on that preschool to kindergarten transition. Um, the current group that's transitioning are a wonderful bunch of students. We do recognize that there is quite a lot of need and they are
030not needs that can necessarily be met in that inclusive setting. We recognize they need a specialized type of program and we have identified some key ways that we think that that can be met for those students. So, we're looking at a classroom of about six or seven students. In terms of multilingual, we kind of talked a little bit about Spanish. Again, we're we're starting to focus in on that point where we're over that breaking point. So, we will need to look at that that Spanish teacher. Um, and then we all are also looking at that additional pair of professional Polish equally just to help make sure that our needs for the Polish community are supported or our coaching community. And then lastly, our preschool. Our goal is to actually increase the additional pair of professional
031support by one in each classroom. Um, again to kind of help meet those needs of all of that variety that our students are seeking, you know, and we want to make sure that we're giving that inclusive equal equitable opportunity so that the kids can learn and really get them set up for success. And we think that an additional parallel will provide them with three adults in that classroom. And are there any questions? Yeah, that's a lot. Oh, I'm so sorry. I was five minutes over. If I could just go back to this slide and comment the um we are looking at a new self-contained special education teacher. As Mr. Masters mentioned, this is a net zero addition for us though because of the changing around some things within his department that doesn't even require a
032new teacher. I mean teacher but not a new position. The Spanish teacher is something we're mandated to have next year. We have over well we have to get access results first, but we believe we will have over 20 Spanish speaking students at Lean Giles. We do believe we can do a half day at one school and half day at the other school so that person would travel in the day. Now this is not teaching Spanish language. This is providing support for students who are multilingual and Spanish speakers. Um, and then an additional, if you might recall, we had a midyear we hired an additional pair professional for the ML program for Ukrainian. This would now be an additional proposal. And then um, and this would for the preschool, this would be grant funded an additional
033care professional each of those classrooms. As I'm I'm sure you have heard me say many times, we are seeing high needs, especially in our 3, four, 5year-old population. So, we want to help support those classrooms. Um and this would be completely grand but it is yeah those are additional positions though those three and the additional professor at the end will be position as well as the Spanish you have any questions Thanks to administrative reports presenting this report in discussion. Thank you. Special education, Mr. Bastard. Yeah. Two quick notes is uh one of uh the first pieces we are actually in the final steps of preparing for our extended school year program. We just actually closed the uh the signup sheets for parents. Uh so we have the final rosters. We're building classes. We're getting our
034related services all lined up. So that should be up and running by the beginning of May. Um and then in our multilingual world, we actually just had our most recent multilingual event on the 10th. Uh it was really great. They had an opportunity to share uh stories in their native language and they got to just have a real nice appreciation appreciation of different cultural traditions. Out of curiosity, is that school year of registration? Uh what is the total students numbers compared to last year? It is down I would say I think it's down five students from last year. So, it is um it's ESY is a very specific type of summer school where we don't open it up to all students with special education needs. It's it's much more need determinant. Um but last year
035I think we had 19. This year we're down to 14. It is mandated that we offer ESY to no cost. So that's not the full summer school program. Correct. Just we do run DSY at the same times as the full summer school. Okay. Thank you. Uh let's see. Yes. Friday, April 25th, our uh our eighth grade students will be going to Rididgewood High School for transition day. This is an opportunity for Rididgewood High School to showcase their building, their programs, their staff. So, our students will be placed in groups and will have an opportunity to learn everything Rididgewood High School from technology to their uh activities, athletics to academics, uh the works. So, we're excited for that program. And also uh uh on Monday, we had a PTA assembly. It was extremely exciting. It was
036a storm science assembly that our students were uh were able to uh observe. The funny thing was it was the gentleman that came out to do the presentation. He did this a science experiment where it created this cloud and the smoke went up to the ceiling and he was so excited about he's like it's going to be so much fun. And I explained to the him that his fund and my fund are two different things because when he shared that with me, I then had to call the district office, the we had to call the fire department, the 911 dispatch center. We had to put everyone on alert, the alarm company, uh just because in case of the fire alarm going off. Um so I was very nervous. The kids were extremely excited when the
037fire alarm didn't go off. I looked at Alyssa and I was like, it didn't go off. in shock. Uh, but it was really it was really fun and so thank you to the PTA for doing that and I wanted to share that with you. So, thank you school. Dr. Reviola, I just want to share a couple upcoming events. Uh, tomorrow night we have our first reading night which we're really excited about. And next week, April 24th is our art night which is There's lots of fun things in school including a global room which I'm really excited. Uh and then also just wanted to share out that our building leadership team has started working in our school improvement plan uh in early May. We'll get all of those end of the year assessment results and we
038finalize um some of the goals and look at that a little bit closer but that process is near. Thank you. Discipline reports Giles Mrs. We had one inschool suspension in violation of board policy 7 colon 199 and 21. That is my report. school versus errant in school suspensions in violation of board policy 749 board committees education nothing to report policy development uh looking at the 500s and next month we look at the 600 correct brilliant rounds uh ongoing plan for the summer. I probably touched it on something in discussion. Uh behavioral intervention, nothing to report. Negotiations, human resources just discussed in close session. Finance, nothing new reported. Communications, nothing new at the moment. and New Park District. Uh there was committee meeting last month and later this official action item for a contract petition on
039two discussion items. Okay. Okay. So, I'm really excited to announce that uh in fact it happened today and we need final approval to continue organic life for 256. So, I want to thank Moyer School um Rich School and uh Rosemont for allowing us to remain on their contract for another year and not so excited for that. And we're not looking at at this moment an increase in the cost which is wonderful. Um, it should be finalized soon and then the kids will be able to continue to uh enjoy organic life which has been very popular. Just a again a reminder, I'm always going to say this that you can pick up lunch anytime you'd like, but make sure you pay for it in push point when you pick it up. The parents do receive a
040little email, you know, hey, your kid picked up lunch or whenever they lunch. Yeah. U Memorial Day events. I have the information here. Uh the board may recall that every year the village of Noridge runs a Memorial Day remembrance event. Uh this year is Sunday, May 25th and we have been invited to participate. This is something that we've always done in the past. Um it is at the Village Hall Memorial. Um we need to know probably tonight if you're going to participate because we need to order the wreath because we lay a wreath at the memorial. You want me there? Okay. I know I did everyone there. Thank you. So, I wanted to uh talk a little bit more about a reunification event that we have planned in Norwich. And this is September of 2026.
041And that is 2026. I know you might think, "Oh, she made a mistake there." No, that is about a year and a half off. An event like this, we're working with Norwich and Howard Heights to host a schoolwide reunification event. Um, an event like this takes some time to plan. This would look like a full scale some type of something happens at one of the schools that are involved whose schools are listed there in our neighborhood schools of Union Ridge, Bridgewood, Neuer and Leon Giles. Something would happen at one of the schools that would make it not safe for the students to continue with that school and we would actually move the students to another school. Now, the students will not be in session this day. This will just be this will be a teacher
042institute day. So, this will just be staff um from all of those schools uh districts and possibly some community members that may want to get involved. Possibly some older olderwood students that may want to get involved. Um so, we have started the planning of this. Who's involved in this? of course are the school districts, the Norwich, the Howard Heights and then surrounding police departments like Shil Park Police Departments uh Nor Park Fire uh department, the park district is involved and we've started these about twice a month meetings to plan out what the event is going to look like, how we're going to um lack of a better word, advertise this because uh this will look very scary um to anyone that is doesn't know that it's happening. Um and um one one of the reasons
043we do it well two well I'll share two on our side it is so that we can practice what reunification looks like. If there ever were an event that would happen the police department fire departments they have their own plans of what they do and this will allow them to practice that and then once that everything is secure everything moves back to us again. now the school district to take care of how we are going to reunify families back together. Uh move kids out of uh the the zone that they can no longer be in and just practice that. We have um already have some plans in place and have already the admin team has already attended some trainings on that and there's two more days in June that most of the admin team will
044also be attending. So, this allows us to be able to practice. I want to formally thank Norwood Park Township because they did uh donate the reunification materials, about $8,000 of like kits, um uh vests, different kind of lanyards, um different kind of signs, and those will all be held will be kept at all of the schools. If there ever was an event that a school like needed to come into one of the other schools, we would use that for reunification. So, Nor Park uh paid for those and Richmond High School put them together. So, I want to thank both of them for all of their work. That was a great deal of work uh to put them together. And then in 2526, we'll be practicing within our own school district on all the different roles
045and what that will look like. If there was an event in one of our schools, we would then go to another place and that is not something that I share on what that place is cuz that's not shared out to the public. And then people would have different roles there. Along those same lines, if something happened at one of the other schools, they would go somewhere else also and we might our staff might go there, they start our admin staff and help with that reunification process. Even if those are not our students, we can still help with that process. Um, so this is going to be a big deal in Orange in 2026, Orange and Cover Heights. So, I'm probably going to be talking about this a little more. I am meeting with the association
046the teachers association let them know that this is what the plan is for that day and just I think as much as we can communicate and let people know what's happening the better the better we are we are working with people from Addison who have done this event in their schools and also did the event at a Marcus community leader where they you know had a reunification event from what happened at the market. So, they've had some good um lessons for us to learn and some things that will help us as we go along in this process. Just want to share that with you. Any questions about that. Speaking of the Norwich Police Department, uh want to mention a couple of things that we've been working with them on recently. We have some new names
047and titles for our safety drills. We used to kind of call things hard lockdown or soft lock down, but we've now really defined a little bit clearer on what it is that's happening in the buildings and on communication. We have some written communication that is standard between all of the school districts, the three school districts that we work with. Um, a hold is means that the students hold where they are located. This can be used for something like you need an ambulance to come in cuz the student fell on the playground and hurt their knee or hurt their leg. Then the students would just hold in place where they are in their classroom or outside or the place that they're in until that situation is cleared up. Secure is a word that we will use
048if learning continues within the school but no visitors and nobody can leave or remain in the building. So secure just means like everybody stay where they are, stay in their spots. If you're outside, come inside. But we continue learning. Lockdown then will remain is the last word that we'll still use. And a lockdown is a shelter in place. What you think of as a lockdown. Everyone go into a classroom, lock all the doors, turn off all the lights, be out of view um from the public space. Now, it's really difficult when we run these drills. The teachers always have a lot of questions like, "Well, what if this happens? How would I handle this? And what how would I do that?" So, the police department has been working with us on some tabletop exercises. We
049had the first one at Giles a couple of weeks ago. Um, the next one will be at Lee and then we'll circle back for another one at Giles and another one at Lee. Session one focuses on how to react to different scenarios. So it has a a narrative scenario. This is what happens. You know, this is what it you should do. Um and then session two is actually acting out of the scenarios. That'll help our teachers to know in this case what is the best thing to do. Obviously we all know that if there is a lockdown called it is best if safe to get out of the building however possible as long as that is safe. So that'll kind of help our teachers to feel more empowered on making those decisions in the moment
050if something like that ever had to happen. Uh the exercises, the tabletop exercises have just a lot of different topics and I thought the first meeting which uh the police department and Mr. Baki facilitated went very very well session one uh the teachers were very responsive. I had a lot of good questions afterwards and I really looking forward to it being done at leave in the very near future and then the session two with the acting. The other area with the police department is they are like 99% sure that if everything stays as it is right now, we should be welcoming a school resource officer in the fall. There will be an opportunity for interviews. um the um IGA that we would have with the police department, I believe we will have to resign. We
051have already agreed one, but this will be resigning with the police department um sometime in the summer if this um actually finalizes hearing. So exciting things going on and a wonderful collaboration that we have with the Norwich Police Department. So thank them for all of their hard work as well and their support. you know, we we call the police department. We have called the police department at 10:30, 12:00 at night and said, "Hey, can you go out and check on this or hey, can you do a a wellness check? Can you do that?" And they are always willing to help us. So, I'm always willing to help our families. Today, in consent, I'm asking you to approve the following calendar for 2425. When we put together the calendar for ISBY back in the previous school
052year, we build in five emergency days. Um, now ISBY would like us to clean that up, clean up any unused emergency days, and then submit the final 180day calendar. We do this every year. Registration fees for 2526 are moving along. Uh, registration itself is open currently right now. We are kindly asking people to please complete that by May 31st. We do understand that that is not a hard and fast deadline. We are asking kindly for people to complete that by May 31st so that we can uh plan for our staffing and our uh classroom students. So students who are returning in preschool and first through 8th grade can do that all online through power school. It's actually much more. It's much more streamlined now. One form instead of all those different forms. It's really not
053bad. Much easier. And you upload right into it instead of having to send an email. Much easier. So, thank you. The uh kindergarten registration, that is the only one that's still in person. kindergarten registration is a little trickier because of the half day and full day options and that we need to get a deposit on a full day if a family is going to move to full comfortable deposit. So that is um required and Mrs. Dynthio is making appointments for that. So contact her if you need an appointment. Uh curriculum fees have all been loaded into Pushcoin. uh they're $275 if paid by May 31st. If paid after May 31st, they're 325. So think of the $275 as your early bird fee and 325 as your not early bird fee. So if you have not
054paid that, please reach out to me that now to save the the funds. Uh next week, we're also going to begin registration for band. band is $245 and we'll be um beginning to have student parents, families uh complete that registration form for it. And then the fee um is due at before the first practice at the time. So families can make payments over the summer and get that in before today. You also have anou in the board packet um with Easter Seals. So the preschool for all grant requires a memorandum of understanding with Head Start organization. Mr. Kletus has secured an MOU for SCA. That is something I was unable to do in the last year. So he has worked very hard on that and we are asking to keep this. Speaking of uh the
055preschool for all grant, we are in our 3-w week window right now where we're waiting for the state to come in and monitor our program. They give us a 3we window any day they're going to come in. So, um it's up until what? May 2nd. May second. May 2nd. So, we welcome them whenever they whenever they show up on our door. So, we're ready. And that is really due to Mr. Kletzos's hard work with our preschool team. They're a great team. Today in policy, you have in fact the three policies we're going to talk about um in front of you. If you look through them, you should see a line uh I think it's blue actually that shows where we're adding um language or removing language. So in um 5 col20 in the exhibit that
056exists we are looking at updating the date and then uh the signatures of the board president and the board secretary is the names of it that won't actually be the signatures because that's not something to be uploaded press but we can upload the name. and then up that the date um of which they on 5 col 30 we're simply adding the word design um after board president and then in the situation so this one talks about investigations and assures that uh that there have been criminal um fingerbased fingerprint based criminal history records, which we do. Um, the only time that the board president is really involved in that is when it's on the superintendent. Um, so we're just clearing up that language and adding board designate and then the superintendent candidate would be who the
057board president would have the conversation with if there was something that needed to be had because the superintendent candidate had something in their their finger base, fingerprint. which I hope you'll have a week that I need to show you. So, you'll see that uh a couple of times on page one and then one more time on page three. The last part is just simply a language cleanup on five one which is on um I think it's page two. Yep. page 200 eligibility that we're following these and as um Mr. Chibi mentioned we'll move forward with the fives next month as far as action items and then we'll also be looking at the sixes. I will um ask the board to reconsider having when you have your reorganization meeting on May 1st I'm having a policy
058committee. I I truly feel that if we had a policy a smaller couple board members that were really looking through the policy each month that might be more more acceptable. Um so but that's something for you to discuss at the first organization. We're going to get into a lot media policies. The six and 700s are are especially when you get the student instruction buildings and grounds. Um today I have an action item for the summer workers hourly compensation. Um we are proposing uh a first year compensation of $15.50 an hour and then if someone has continued with us for the second year and third year that that would increase by 50 cents each year. We are very fortunate this year to have two individuals coming back to us for the second year and two individuals
059for the third year. This makes a big difference because these now are people who have been with us two summers or three summers that we can say, "Okay, go and do this." And they know how to go and do this. Um because not only are they um you know, helping us, which is great, but they're also building skills. You know, we're teaching them how to do many, many things as well. So, I would um I'm asking the board tonight to approve that hourly compensation for our children. And then just an update on our architect search. We have uh interviews planned for April 23rd with five different firms. These are interviews are during the day 45 minutes in length. Uh everyone is scheduled. Mrs. especially scheduled everyone get a followup emails everything is all set and
060um the f final firm uh hopefully will come to the board on I think it's May 22nd for approval and then we'll hit the ground running is very excited and wants to get going today also um you will see the approval for or the acceptance I'm sorry for the single audit uh we just received this. So we are required to have a single audit performed when the district has over $750,000 in uh grant revenue uh for the 2324 school year. That amount actually is going to stay for the 25 2425 school year. However, after that it'll move up to a million dollars in grant revenue. I don't expect that we'll hit that threshold, but if we do then we also will have to cons continue a single audit in that year. our ESSER um uh
061grant revenue area was the one that was audited. We had no funding. Next month also I am going to bring you the engagement letter with Bitfleet, which is our audit company. Um it is likely that we'll have a single audit for FY25 that we hit that $750,000 threshold, but we won't know till we get a little closer. But that is very likely and that we would like to engage have another year ofly doing our operates which usually takes place at the end of the month. Mrs. D'vor does sits with the auditors for dates prepares all the information and then sits with them everything that they need plus um donuts because they love you. Um, and lastly on the community side, I want to I'm really excited about this and I don't know actually if Mr.
062Byki or Dr. Rabiola have anything to add on this, but Nor is celebrating kindness day on April 26th. So we are actually merging district 8, our parent teachers association is merging with gratitude generation. If you're not familiar with gratitude generation, it's definitely something that's worth looking up. Um, this is an organization that has a Norwich chapter and also a Neapville chapter and they really are founded on the belief that we need to teach kids how to uh have gratitude things that they have in their life. So, it's not just being thankful, but it's about gratitude. Um, and they really try to teach kids to think outside of themselves, think of others. It's a wonderful organization. So, they will be joining us here at Lee School. Um, and the gratitude generation activity will be making bags
063for local first responders. And then our PTA district activity will be to make family gratitude journals. These really go hand in hand, work really well. We decided to put them both together here so that we can make sure they're both representing both of the programs here in North School District. Was anything discussed at the PTA meeting today? [Music] Yeah, we're really excited. This is a I don't know, maybe year three or four time. So, we've always had something here at the school. Um, and we're really excited. Mr. Beck is going to be joining here this year. So, we're excited to have follow up in future. As I mentioned, May 1st, we're going to have that board of education reorganizational meeting. We'll welcome our new member We'll end the current board. We'll approve the minutes. We'll
064have the oath of office for new members. And then we'll do what's called adjourn, sign, or die, which sounds funny. So, I'd like to include that. So, that'll end that 2-year board. We'll start a new board. We'll elect officers. We'll approve the calendar. And then we'll uh set committees and membership. Uh you may notice if you're counting on your fingers that the board of education has seven members, and currently right now, we only have six. So, the board will need to open up following board policy, we'll need to open up a search for another board member, which we'll probably discuss also at the May 1st reorganizational meeting of how the board would like to do that. Our policy really dictates that we need to open that up to the public. We need to have a
065process for interviewing and then the board gets to appoint uh that next board. So that will be something on May 1st that we'll go into a little how the board would like to follow that and set up some interviews if there are multiple people. And that is my report. Thank you. Consent agenda. I need a motion to approve 15 A through 15 F. That council A. Uh any discussion? Okay. Roll call, please. Mrs. Garfield, yes. Mrs. Theodore, yes. Mrs. Yes. Yes. Mr. Mr. Yes. Motion passes. Any board comments? I have one question. So, breach. Correct. What what has transpired with that? Sure. Good question. Um well, the what ended up happening is P school reached out to allow people that had the data breach and offered uh services for data monitoring. I believe it was
066a couple of years for that. Um, as far as anything coming down from the federal government, nothing has been finalized on that yet, but they did offer uh the data monitoring for everyone, which we sent out to all of our families, but they also sent out individually to everyone as well. And it is important to note our social security numbers are not kept on our school. We don't have social security numbers or anybody or we do for our staff not kept on. So then we're not social security. Some people do and we do not. Um, but I mean it is still very serious. They did pay the ransom. So they do believe the information was not actually shared. But that's public so I can share that. And uh I need a motion to adjourn to
067close session. We discuss the appointment, employment, compensation, discipline, performance, or dismissal of specific employees. Collective negotiating matters between the public body and its employees or their representatives or deliberations concerning salary schedules for one or more classes of employees. the purchase or lease of real property for the use of the public body, including meetings held for the purpose of discussing whether a particular partial should be acquired and review of close session minutes. I have a motion. [Music] Lauren, roll call, please. Mrs. Bever, yes. Mrs. Irv, yes. Mrs. Mc Phillips, yes. Mrs. De, yes. Mr. Yes. Yes. The motion passes. Let's meet in the conference room at uh 10 after 8. All good. Okay. We are now back in open session at 10:16. I'm going to move on to action items 18A 18 B. And I have
068a motion. Motion second. Uh, amenda. Roll call, please. Mrs. McFillip, yes. Mrs. Herrera Barfield, yes. Mrs. Diodor, yes. Mrs. Deck, yes. Mr. Bardi, yes. Mr. Trausio, yes. Motion passes. Personnel action items 19A, resignations. Consider motion to accept the resignation. I can't see no science teacher at the conclusion of 202425 school year. Can I have a motion? Motion. Renzo. Second. Bannon. Uh, roll call, please. Mr. Bardy, yes. Mrs. Theodore, yes. Mrs. McFillips, yes. Mrs. Irv Barfield, yes. Mrs. Deck, yes. Mr. Trabuzzio, yes. Motion passes. 19B1 consider motion to approve FMLA FMLA leave for Antonetta Pali for 12 weeks. Can I have a motion? Motion. Second. Amen. Roll call, please. Mr. Bardy, yes. Mrs. McFillips, yes. Mrs. Theodore, yes. Mrs. Botfield, yes. Mrs. Deck, yes. Mr. Dusio, yes. Motion passes. 192 consider summer workers compensation plan. Can
069I have a motion? Motion. Second. Amanda Lauren. Roll call, please. Mrs. McFillips, yes. Mrs. Irv Burnfield, yes. Mrs. Theodor, yes. Mrs. Deck, yes. Mr. Bardy, yes. Mr. Yes. The motion passes. 19B3. Consider a motion to approve FMLA leave for Alyssa Bulo for 12 weeks. Motion. Motion second. Lauren, roll call, please. Mrs. McFillips, yes. Mrs. Barfield, yes. Mrs. Theodor, yes. Mrs. Deck, yes. Mr. Gardy, yes. Mr. Tuzio, yes. The motion passes. Board meeting reflection. We need a motion to adjourn this meeting at 10:19. All in favor say I. All oppose say nay. Mean ster.