District 96 Board of Education Regular Meeting 06-18-25

001[Music] All right. Uh, tonight is, let's see, it is Wednesday, June 18th. This is the Riverside School District 96, uh, regular board meeting. Um, Kathy, could you call the poll? Okay. Mr. Barati, present. Mr. Olick, present. Miss Claps, here. And Mr. Mad here. A quorum is present. All right. Um don't see anybody here for public comment. So I'm going to give it up. All right. And then so we uh any changes to tonight's agenda before we get into it? No. Or any proposals? No. Okay. Uh I will then hand it over to you. All right. For your superintendent report. So I have two items. One is just an enrollment update. We used to sort of uh in a very detailed way go over enrollments because uh when we had formal class size policy actually the

002board would have to override any class size changes. Um that is really not what the information is for. We just agree that we would um keep you up to date periodically on our enrollment. So uh there's a number of attachments here. I think maybe the enrollment comparison is the most interesting one. On mine it's the fourth attachment down. Um mostly we're really obviously carefully monitoring our kindergarten enrollment. Um it is not where it was at August of last year, but we also realize that a fair amount of enrollment can happen between in the June, July, August time frame. Uh one of the things we do by June 30th is we uh run through our formal school assignment process. We use our student assignment algorithm and all new families um in particular kindergarten, that's where we

003get most of our new students, but sometimes also new first graders, etc. um all new families uh will receive notification of their school assignment by June 30th per our board policy. So that is all in process right now. And then um the other thing that I have for all of you and I'm actually going to ask some of my colleagues here to help with the update is a strategic plan endofear update. And we have our scorecard. It's up here on the screen and it's in your board book. Uh this is the same scorecard we've been using for several years now. um through a process that we had all agreed on on the key performance indicators and um sort of a rating of progress. So, uh Angela, do you want to talk about goal one? Good

004evening everybody. Um so, as you know, I am the goal champion for goal one, which is uh student growth and achievement and ensuring high levels of learning for all students. Within goal one, I also have the um strategy of working towards standardsbased grading and reporting and um equity which covers all five goals, not just goal one, but it sits under goal one. And then uh full day kindergarten was also part of goal one. So we know where we're at with full day kindergarten. Um with equity and opportunity, we continue to look at how our programs and our academics um how we're making sure we're ensuring the needs of all students are met. And then with standardsbased grading and reporting, we um continue to work towards implementing a standardsbased report card K5. And then um communicating

005how assessments and assignments are aligned to standards 6 through 8. And so what will happen with that is we are looking at a partial implementation for next school year where um the K5 report card will be standardsbased for math, science, and uh learning behaviors. So that was either study skills or work skills um on report cards previously. We're now calling them learning behaviors and they're consistent K through five. They'll be the same eight learning behaviors so you can see how your child is progressing on learning behaviors from kindergarten through um fifth grade. And then uh the following school year, we'll have a fully standardsbased grading report card because we will add in then English language arts, uh social studies, and special area classes. So, we're doing a two-year implementation for standardsbased grading reporting. This upcoming

006school year right off in August, we're going to start with some professional learning for our teachers on how to use Power Teacher to align or to um assign standards to the assessments and assignments that they're putting in the grade book. and then on how those final grades will report out at the first trimester, second and third trimester. And uh we'll be doing family communication at parent night on the website and um through newsletters from principles and teachers to just make sure parents are aware of the change and why the change and what the change means and how to read your child's report card. Um then moving on to our key performance indicators. I'm going to uh kind of bounce around but um and start just by saying that we're actually doing a pretty great job.

007So you will notice that there are um Can we go down one more just so I can see? Yes. So go ahead and go up um to the top. I did not tell Charles I was going to bounce around. So I appreciate his flexibility. Um one more. There are two red dots out of all of goal one and those two red dots or for um not needing for fastbridge reading composite for kids. Let me back up. Um the goal for our reading composite is that the percentage of um go back up for me. Yeah, perfect. Right there. The percentage of students for grades K through one. So it's not all students, it's kindergarten and first grade. um their spring fastbridge reading composite will meet or exceed their fall fast brbridge reading composite percentile and the

008goal for that for this year was 55% and we did not meet that but it's important to note that one 50% 51% of our kindergarten and first graders did meet or exceed their fall Fastbridge composite percentile and that 51% is actually an increase from last year last year it was 46 six um 47% of our students who had met or exceeded their uh fall composite percentile and this year we went up to 51%. So we're showing growth. That 55% goal was a stretch goal that I had set hoping we'd be able to reach that 55%. So we didn't quite reach the 55% but we did still show growth and that's part of what we're always looking at with the KPIs is how are our students growing. So I do want to point out that while

009it's while it is a red dot, we are still growing. And then the other area that we had a red dot is with our NWA ELA math um students meeting their meeting or exceeding their um grade level growth targets for the percentage of students who met or exceeded their grade level growth targets second through 8th grade on NWA reading and MAT testing and we you can see that seventh grade students 72% of the students met or exceeded their growth goal and the goal was 62% %. So, seventh grade met or exceeded that target, but you can see that the other grade levels did not. And so, as you know, I will be working with principles to determine um specifically working with Mr. Aval and Miss Ka at the middle school to see what we can

010do at sixth and eighth grade to continue to work on our percentage of students who are meeting or exceeding their goals. But um at the elementary level, I'll also be working with the principles, but it's a little bit more focused because part of what we want to see is how the implementation of CLA impacted um those scores. And we talked about when we adopted a new program that there's often an implementation dip. So as you're learning a program and you're learning the ins and outs of it that the scores that students have might drop. Um and so we want to make sure that we're implementing CKLA with fidelity. This year for the first year of implementation, CKLA asked that kindergarten through third graders spend 120 minutes um in instruction CKLA whether it's straight 120 broken

011up 60 and 60 or so or 30 and 90 however that might be. We had only had 90 minutes of instruction time available for CKLA. So right there, that's something that we have addressed for next year. And kindergarten through third grade will have the full 120 minutes so that we're able to cover all the material in CLA because we weren't able to do that this year. Another reason why we weren't able to cover all the material in CLA is because with it being the first year of the program and just learning the program, you're still trying to figure out the scope in sequence. You're still trying to figure out how long do I spend on this topic, on this lesson, doing this activity. And so now we have a better idea of what that should

012look like. And then also one of the things with CKLA is um and that they've addressed and an updated addition that they have is that they had too many units. Um I believe there were 12 units at the intermediate grade levels or 12 or 15, I can't remember the number, but they've decreased that now in a later edition. And um that later edition now has less because they recognize that they had too much content to be able to get through in a whole year. So, these are some of the things that we'll be working on to address implementation of CKLA. Um, the other thing we're going to do is every grade level we'll be working with the CKLA coach to do what's called a learning lab. And so, one of the teachers will volunteer to

013have half a grade level team come watch them teach and watch student in the students learning. And the coach will first plan with that teacher. Then half the team will go in and watch the teacher do the lesson. And then after that lesson, we'll debrief on what we saw. And the coach will then talk about with the teacher, the teacher explaining what they felt went well or what they might have had questions about. The coach will add some suggestions and ideas. And then it's a time for the team then to also ask, well, what about this or how could we do this differently? And so we're going to do that for every grade level next year. Um, so we'll divide every grade level up in half because you don't want eight teachers staring at one

014teacher teaching. So we divide them up in half um and do learning labs like that. And then I'm also going to be doing walkthroughs with our principles every month on how's our CKLA being implemented in the classrooms. And we are going to this summer the principles and I will work on what does solid CKLA implementation look like and sound like so that we know what our look fors are when we're doing those walkthroughs throughout the year. So those are some of the ways that we're looking to address um how we're doing with our reading um growth. But I do want to also say that while we didn't meet our growth targets, our achievement still remains at a high level. So our achievement isn't suffering because of CKLA, but we want to make sure it doesn't

015start to suffer and we want to make sure all of our kids are growing as they should be. So those are the things that we'll put in place for that. Um, as you probably saw, we also then for goal one have um a few blue dots, which is exceeding. And these are areas that we have to be very proud of. Math instruction. um our math growth for uh NWA MAP for second through 8th grade exceeds all of our grade levels met or exceeded their target um for meeting the percentage of students who would meet or exceed their growth target. Um in our placement for our middle school at the English language arts level, we have a goal of a third of our students who are in English 8 will place into honors English and we

016had I have the number if I was there we go we had 35% of our English 8 students place into honors English and then we had a goal of 90% of our students who are in advanced math 8 would place into honors geometry and 100% of the students who were in advanced math 8 placed into honors geometry so um we are doing very well and then advanced DLA sorry advanced DLA We would like to see 60 what is the number n what do we say 90% of the students in advanced ELA would place into honors English and 97% of our students placed into honors English 9. So our curriculum is rigorous at our just throughout um our district. But when you look at how we're preparing our students for high school, you can see that

017while being in advanced math will place you on that honor geometry path, which is great if your child is looking to get into like calculus A or B by the time they're a senior. What this is showing is that it doesn't hurt you if you are in a core math or ELA class. You still have ample opportunities to get into an advanced class when you get into high school, to place into an advanced class when you get to high school. Um and then finally, you see that we don't have dots yet for AR and that's because while the scores have been preliminarily released, the state is looking at um adjusting the cut scores and they're going to give us more information on that in the late summer, early fall. So we are all waiting to

018see what that adjustment means and how that impacts then the percentage of students who meet or exceed. So that's goal one. Any questions? I should know this, but can you just explain to me on one 12A and one 12B? Is the cohort goal based on the cohort average or is the cohort goal based on the percent of students who met or exceeded the growth goal? So the cohort average is the average over the time that that grade level has been in school looking at that cohort. So if we look at se 8th grade from 2 through 7th grade the average percentage of students who met or exceeded their growth targets was 60%. So I look at that average but then I also look at the past trends for that cohort and set a realistic stretch

019goal based off of that to determine then what their target should be. So, when I look at the eighth grade scores, their scores were it was set at 65. Their scores were um in second grade, 70% of them met. In third grade, they didn't take it because of pandemic stuff. In fourth grade, 45% of them met right after the pandemic year. In fifth grade, 57% met. In sixth grade, 61% met. And then their seventh grade year, 67% of them met. So looking at all those numbers and looking at that average, I set the goal at 62%. Okay, because that's about aware around where they were and I wanted to push us to continue to go higher than that previous time that we were at. Okay, so we really should be comparing the top two lines

020in each of these segments. And then just based on like I know that specifically in ELA we didn't meet our goals for most of the grade levels but like I love that you presented it alongside with actions that are going to take place over the coming year to work towards improvement on this. Is there you in in the when you presented the fast bridge you sort of said this is what we've been doing over the last couple of years. Is there a reason to think that a lot of the actions that we're taking is because the performance was significantly under what it had been in the last few years and the CKLA roll out kind of stunted us a bit in this past year or like you know like I there's I don't have anything

021really to compare this to in front of me. So I'm just curious like what the cohort averages were over the last few years to compare to what it was this past year. Does that make sense? It does make sense. Um, so I did not have the 24 average on hand, but the like I can tell you the 23 average was for eighth grade was 57.2%. Um, for seventh grade it was 59%. For sixth grade, this is in 23, right? So sixth graders in the 22 23 school year it was 58%. So we looking at mostly 50s in the elementary levels in the 22 23 year. Okay. Um where you can see now we're in 60s for the second and third grade and then the upper 50 for fourth and 53 for fifth. Um and then

022it was at um 71% 70% and 64% for the middle school. Okay. And that's just from tracking it since we started the strategic plan. Yeah. I think it's not the it's not the top two lines that were comparing, right? It's the bottom one. It Yes. Um you want the goal and the actual. Yeah. The bottom one is the actual and the middle one's the goal that was set. And the top one was the series of numbers that you were reading off to get their average, right? It's the average of how they how many students met or exceeded over the course of your baseline testing, right? And then the middle row was what we were trying to push. So like staying on seventh grade, we were at 55, we're trying to get to 70 62. They

023got to 72, but everybody else fell well short of what our target was, like below where they even started. So that was the stunting thing is that I just want to make sure I'm reading it correctly because if I need to change it, but I looked at it the bottom was our actual compared to the middle which was our target which was based on the top which was our starting point. Yes. So then the stunt the stunting thing was kind of where I was going with that. Like did that set us because I mean these are like huge misses. So is is it based is it is that what the wonder is right? Is it because of the implementation of CKLA? And that's why we're putting in things in place to make sure we are

024consistently implementing CKLA the way it's supposed to be implemented so that we can see how the results fare from there. Okay. All right. So then how should I think about so we don't have the fancy comparison like you gave us for the midyear. I went back and looked at the midyear. I was I was a little surprised by the red dot, right? And I was like, wait a minute. So, how did like it seemed really good. It did. So, wait, we don't know what happened. That's where So, these are all this is all the data that I have right now, but we haven't had a chance to talk as leadership team yet. So, that's where the conversations with the principles come. And then when I do the report in um October, November when we get

025the state report for everything, map is one of the things we'll talk about and I'll have more information for you then. Okay. But I also, it was jarring for Martha and I to see also. Um, but I also don't want us to worry about it yet because it was the first year and it was a rocky first year of implementation. And so we're going to put the things in place to make sure everyone has the support they need and the professional learning they need so that we can continue to rise. I hear you. And this is the third year that we have not even seems to come. I mean, we were approaching approaching and now we've taken a back track. So, that part makes me nervous a little bit. Just throwing that out there. Agree

026with you. Okay. But my job's to work on that and to address that. I also appreciate your action items that you laid out to back up Selena on that one. So, okay. Yes. Yes. And I will update you more then in the fall. Um, on a more nitpicky note, the 14s one 1415. So you said 33. 33 was our goal. 35 is what made it. Yes. Why blue? Yeah. Because still feels like medium. No, because there were 26 kids. So for ELA, for honors English nine, you they take your reading score from the placemaking exam and your writing score. And there were 26 kids who missed the writing score by one point. And had all 26 or even a portion of those 26 gotten that one point on the writing score, they would have been

027an honors, they would have placed an honors ELA. So being that close to me really told me that we are exceeding. When you think of a standard deviation and you think about on any given day, a kid could have done one to two points better, one to two points worse. It can be green though if if if that makes some people I have this argument at work all the time right when you're when you're like evaluating people and stuff like how much of a deviation it gets into like a next like so I don't know I I'm not going to dwell on I was just very excited about how close Yeah. Yeah. No, I hear you. What goal are what? Well, compared to 15, you said 90 verse 97. That is clearly exceeding to me.

02835 verse 33 didn't feel like exceeding. So that's I was just curious why we went with the blues there. Could we throw those numbers in here because I think on all the other ones we have it from and you have historical data too. Yes, I can get those in. Okay. It would be great if if the board agrees on 11 1 and 11B if there was also historical. I could do that too. Um I don't know that we can get it. I mean with all those it'll be a big long document but I can do it. Could we just or like an asterisk and an attach page? page. It's just It's just a couple lines. Just for one grade, she read off seven different numbers. Oh, no. For 11A and 11B. Oh, the kindergarten ones.

029Oh, the kindergarten first grade. Update it. Um, is that like this is the one remember we had met and we talked a little bit about that. That's the fast bridge one. Um, so yes, I will I will make sure that's updated and you have access to the updated one. Sorry, I was on one two. I thought there's a lot there's a lot of lines. Um, yes, I will get the the data for that in there as well. So, yeah, I don't mean to be nitpicky, West, but I guess the thing is I I agree we're close and the kids missed it by one, but I guess my question is, did those kids then get into honors even though they missed it by one? And this is what we um Yeah, just a reminder that this

030is just the placement test. teachers then have conversations, our teachers have conversations with the high school and say this kid does is would be fine in this class. And so while the placement exam is the baseline, there are numerous kids who still get put in honors classes once those conversations are had. But because I don't always get involved in those conversations, I didn't use it for the data because I don't have the actual numbers for everyone that gets put in even if they didn't have the exact score. You probably don't know that as of today anyway, I'm guessing. Right. I don't, but I could find out from Have they already made those decisions? Their class schedules are being worked on at the high school, so I'm sure they I'm sure they have. Okay. Look, I

031I think that with the, you know, with with the LA specifically, I think there's obviously concern in the direction that it's headed, but I do appreciate that you're setting goals that are stretch goals, and I know that that often means that there are sometimes going to be colors on this chart that are not what you want to see. But I do think that there is power in setting goals that um uh you know help us drive towards excellence and continuous improvement in our schools. And so uh I appreciate that. Thank you for that feedback. All right. Invite more of um and Speaking of data, I realized that I updated the 21 and two. Yeah, 21 and 21A uh with the actual number for this year after Martha said, "Hey, we I you didn't put in

032the actual data for this year. You just put in the green dots or the dots." Um so, but I can share that with you now. And I can tell you that that first green dot is actually a yellow dot because the goal was 94.3. and I did a rounding error and we're actually at 94.2%. So technically we are not um we're off by a tenth of a percent. So that initial green dot should be a yellow one. Um but we are still um performing really strongly there that um you know and holding largely steady. You know a tenth of a percent in overall attendance is somebody missing an extra day or two. Um, in terms of chronic absenteeism, um, we see the blue dot there. Our goal was to be at or below the three-year

033average of 13.93, and we are at 9.3% uh, in chronic absenteeism, which is a pretty significant change from the last um, three years of data. Um, which again is a celebration. And I think there's really been a push with our building leaders and with our teachers um and our uh building staff in general to really target those students that were um just demonstrating more chronic absenteeism and try to add additional supports and kind of understand what the need was. And we're seeing a nice decrease there. Um the past administration that is now called the Renaissance, but I left that language in there. That is our student screener. Um we continue to maintain um by building uh average results across these domains are um still uh they're maintaining with themselves and you know year year-over-year but

034also staying within the above average range for expectations on the national norms as those are updated every year too. on this um this specific uh sub goal. I just wanted to highlight too the um pass renaissance was um selected by a committee uh four years ago the year before I joined um and there have been more tools created in that time. Existing tools have um kind of been revamped. So over the course of this year, we are again going to have a community look to see is this still meeting our needs? Is there something out there that could be more effective? Uh give us more useful information. There are many good things about the past, but it's um it's worth I think looking to see is there something that could give us more um more

035actionable information. Um and the the final one 2.3 our district uh goal two action team did not have a meeting in May to complete this kind of recap like we typically do. This is the castle um survey for systemic district district approach. It really is a um a survey that looks at how are we kind of capturing all of the components of uh prioritizing SEAL across our district practices, our instructional practices, etc. We've taken it every year as just a check-in for ourselves, but we'll take that at our first meeting in the fall to kind of again take the temperature check on are we maintaining that broad focus that's necessary for this to be a sustained area of improvement rather than just a uh one and done uh approach. Any questions for 22? I was

036just curious as I was reading this. We had that World Cafe thing that happened. I think that was kind of a oneoff one time type deal, but like does that type of thing feed into this goal in a It feels related, but I don't know if it is related. Yeah, I mean it's it's related in as much as it's, you know, um kind of a temperature check of student beliefs and um thoughts about their specific schooling experience at either their elementary school or at the junior high. Um it's not directly tied to like the categories in the past. Um but it it is uh to be honest, it's one of the pieces of data that also is like aside from it just being time and the cycle and our questions about pass. It's another piece

037that makes us want to look and see is there another tool out there that could there's nothing that's going to give us the rich data from um World Cafe in a survey form. The the formats are just too different. But is there something out there that could give um a a more thorough picture maybe? So the world if I remember your thing on it correctly that was more of like a conversation that we got gathered. This is like on a scale of 1 to five students specific questions led by a facilitator but just free form feedback. This is like numerically tell me how you're feeling. Yeah. This is the actual opposite of that. It's just a series of questions that you Yeah. rate on a leard scale, you know, one through five. Okay. I just

038I don't know if we could replicate that world cafe thing, but there are some really good takeaways out of that. Yeah. I mean, we could certainly replicate it with students. Um, you know, we would ask is there value in doing it yeartoear, but I think doing it periodically is valuable. I think getting real-time feedback. I think we are still I know our family community partnerships took a close look at it. we still have it on even our like our leadership team agenda that how do we make best use of this data right and how do we let students know that we make good use of this data I think that's still evolving yeah I think not directly related to this but I just I got thinking about that as I was looking at this scorecard

039of just this is very like here's a specific question give me a number on how you feel whereas the other one's a little bit more free flowing you'll get unargeted things out of like how could we try to incorporate more of that and just different points of feedback and stuff. So I just I was curious if there was any kind of correlation between them. So kind of all right. Um can I just give you the benefit on the opposite of what I said to Angela? Like I think 94.2 versus 94.3 is I mean I would call that nothing without a percentage point feels good enough. I was if I'm going by the letter of the law I was going to say it's not exactly and I even it's not even like you know it's a

0409.355 it was 9.31 or something. So I appreciate you very specific and we have the much more detailed overview of the chronic absenteeism also attached because we've been doing that trimester by trimester. So, thanks to our tech team, they pulled that together, but it's it's a goal two area, but it's I think we've agreed to that format of reporting 2.1A um I think we just added that one last year as a specific u KPI. So, u because I mean sort of because we were kind of tracking it anyway, but because we felt it was uh important enough to have a place on scorecard. And if I remember what I was looking at correctly, weren't we at like 9% for the third trimester or something? And like so it averaged to 11, but no, it actually

041sorry that that number is last year. So the goal was 13.93 for this year. The go the overall for this year, which I haven't put up here, which I didn't add to this yet, but it's it will be on the uh the final um version of this report card was 9.3. 36 was that our total? Yeah, I was just trying to pull it back up. Um, that's the average for the whole year. So, like last year was 11, the year before was 15.6, this year we're at 9.4. And I think our note is that pre- pandemic was 9%. So, we're really, you know, very close to prepandemic levels, which is exciting. So I I do have a I mean I don't want you to jump ahead but I noticed that the absenteeisms in the smaller

042schools are significantly lower than the larger schools. Is there do we ever I know there I mean I know I brought this up before. Is there did we ever look into why that is? I mean is it just sort of dynamics school dynamics? I mean not school but like student dynamics because there's more kids. I mean it just it it was just pretty significant that I was like why is like Hollywood the lowest and Ble Park pretty low as well and then all the other schools are in double digits. I think there is a piece of it that it is school size. I mean, it's not like our central and elementary are, you know, these college campuses or something, but it is just a bigger uh environment. Can be harder to feel that same, you

043know, you're not going to see the same sense of community in any two schools, but um I think it's it is a um you know, it's just it's a bigger building. Um I think it could just be a matter of uh you know, what the demographics happen to be in various buildings at at points in time. um of who's experiencing more um complex situations outside of the school day than than others. But yeah, I don't I don't know that I could speak with certainty about what is in terms of like supportive assistance really ratio wise it's the same you know so it's like oh is there more support for a child who's maybe struggling to get to school? Mhm. I mean, I I appreciate you're calling it out and we've certainly talked about it and

044we don't see some direct line in terms of like the number of adults available. I think of like social work support is one of the things I think of. Is that standard in other districts like bigger school the numbers are higher? That's a good question. I have we'd have to do some digging to figure that out. Um, actually it is reported now by by districts on the state report card. So it probably wouldn't be that that hard to sort out. Um, yeah. I mean, I think I think just this whole attention to chronic absenteeism has really kind of evolved at all schools part of the state report card. Yeah. And then trying to decipher like what are some there aren't a lot of one section schools like Hollywood, but there's probably a decent number of

045two section. We could sort that out some maybe. summer research project. Yeah, that's an interesting question. And Selene, I'd like to give you some some credit for the chronic absenteeism and stuff because I mean it's something we were kind of talking about, but I think you really pressed forward with really like staying focused on it and the reporting and stuff like that. So, I don't I don't know if that changed what we were doing in the school, but at least us talking at the table definitely brought more attention to it. So, definitely. Well, the hard work going on with the teachers and the principles and Nora. So, thank you guys. Yeah, the building staff for sure. Well, and you and um Pete Gats attended a like a really a national workshop, multi-session national workshop to

046really dig in. I mean, what are the best practices? What we know it's that being connected, right? And feeling accountable, which it doesn't mean to be feeling punished. It means why why are you not getting to school? What's going on? what are the you know contributing factors there that we can you know and what's within our control to to address. So I think I think we've been able to anecdotally you know I was able to be a part of that learning experience last week and it was uh international actually there were people from all different countries but also I think 26 different states or something um and chronic absenteeism every hand went up that those numbers are just high for everyone. Uh the flip side of that or you know maybe a celebration for district

04796 for the um the idea of having a universal student screener for mental health um is really an essential part of having good systems of practice in your building and I was one of I think four hands in a room full of 50 people that went up. So it really is that also is evidence of this is a new thing and there have been changes in the last few years and so it just kind of reinforced both the celebration that we are kind of at this point but also the need to look and see what else is out there now. Cool. And thank you for the note on your um thing or whatever the Harvard thing that you went to that sounded like there was nothing wildly new. we were kind of touching on a

048lot of those things. So, that was good to see that we're moving in the right direction and sounds like you got some good ideas of how to keep that going. So, I'm glad you're able to attend and thank you for the note. Yeah. All right. Goal three. Thanks. That's that's that's me right now. Um so, as you know, Don Tfano, our now retired director of technology, is our goal three champion. And I'm also acknowledging that that's not an automatic handover to Molly Mark, our new director of technology. we're going to let her uh get her feet wet in the world of technology and not necessarily in a high quality high quality staff. So, I envision taking over goal three for this year and then we'll evolve into a new strategic plan. But, uh actually Don

049Tfano did do the strategic plan scorecard here and provide these updates for all of you. Um and so you can take a look and yeah, Charles, we're on three. So, thank you. Yeah, down there at the bottom. And then moving forward. So, um, it's interesting to to note that our teachers with master's degree or higher on this three-year rolling average actually tipped back a bit. It would just be indicative of of sort of a changing constellation of our staff, perhaps bring in more new hires over time and more uh, senior people sort of rolling off that may or may or may not have had master's degrees. Uh so I don't have that specific data and I didn't do the the analysis so I I don't have additional detail to add there but could certainly look

050into that if that's something that uh the board is interested in. Um I think again continuing to look at our hiring practices and building on diversity of experiences and diversity of hiring. Uh it's an area that we continue to think about and work toward and um not really progress but um but certainly not falling behind in that area. We'll have a new uh team of teachers joining us here in August and that hiring process is underway. So we also could share updated data with all of you at the end of August. So for those two those were just around changing recruitment practices. So what about that is still approaching our our desired state you know again because I didn't do the actual you know sort of number analysis here. We have done a variety of

051things in terms of our practices. We changed actually our application to be a more kind of user-friendly application. We made some specific comments in the application about sort of uh being a welcoming and inclusive environment for employees. Uh we've used a little bit of social media to recruit. So there's some some shift in practices, but I wouldn't describe it as sort of uh revolutionary shifts in practices. But are we not so like we made because I'm trying to think of the last time that we had a deep update on this. I remember Don standing up here kind of talking about those changes. I I couldn't remember when we did that to go back and and look at it. We we did make all those changes. So, are we saying that we're just not receiving the

052applications that we were hoping for or is there and if if you don't have the information, that's just what's in my head of like, so what about this is not getting also as I'm aware of our new hires because I'm the one doing final offers. Um, I do believe there's some reflection of diversity there that perhaps hasn't been there um in other areas. So, I'd rather sort of take a deeper look and then um come back because the the yellow dot is only but so indicative of of the actual um numbers that are underneath all that because it sounds like we did a lot of things to make the process easier, less cumbersome, more inviting. We were doing some targeted recruiting and so I just I was trying to figure out what's the thing that

053we don't feel that those changes are meeting and is that because we weren't getting enough recruits. But if you're saying we're getting recruits, this wasn't about actually hiring them, right? This is just the pipeline of candidates so that you can pick the best of the lot and what would we get it to green? I think yeah, what do we need to do to get to green? I think that's a really good question. Um so I appreciate you put this together. So those are just some of the thoughts that were in my head around this. Yeah. And then um the exit interview process, we have been doing that exit interview process. our sample size is small um just because the number of people that leave the district yeartoear and that's good news. Um but again bringing

054forward aggregate data in a meaningful way that's not sharing confidential data with you is is also just a little bit of a challenge but for us to what I would say is the the flavor I can speak to this one because I actually do exit interviews. Um it used to be more sort of informal and not as formatted. uh any exiting employee is given a a ability to take it in a survey format and then um an opportunity to meet with me if they would um prefer to do that or a supervisor sort of their choosing and several people have participated in inerson exit interviews and that's been valuable and I've appreciated those conversations. Um should we maybe try change goal 3A or 3.5 then to NA? I mean, it's like it's not applicable because

055we're never getting Yeah. What I the board is never seeing a report on this. Right. Right. Um that's a good question and I think we want to certainly be and this is sort of a to me true of a small district, right? If there's three people participating and we were to share those results, it's not confidential, right? I mean, no. Um when they say they were in this particular setting, u building, grade level, whatever it may be, role. Um, so I I'm and I know we're heading into year five of a five-year plan. And so over time we'll I envision that we will have a goal three or pillar three, whatever we call it, that the high quality staff is a key part of any strategic plan. So I don't think we're moving away from

056this, but as I just said, I will dig in more and um I need some time just to go through this in detail and and look at some of the context and background around it. And I I appreciate the questions and appreciate the are these ratings scoring systems even the the most pertinent for for this area. just I I will move on but I I appreciate the questions and comments and I'll make some notes and um figure out where how we move this one forward and whether it's an NA whether it's a different goal you know is should we be rethinking some of the goal structures here and I think this one was another area where it was hard to even come to what is it that we actually want to measure and bring forward

057in a public way. So just just out of curiosity is the exit interviews are those just for retire I mean people leaving voluntario or is people who are leaving plus retirees or ret leaving what do we say voluntarily leaving include retirees? Yeah it would include retirees but it's also uh resignations. Okay. Yeah. Right. Right. And so we had did we we then must not have had more than seven people leave voluntarily or who took the survey, right? Or who took the survey or participated in the interview. Because like if if we're getting a a blue light on 3.4, it means that no more than seven people left the district, right? Because otherwise we would be getting a report. The board would be getting a report because there would be at least six interviews for 3.5.

05885% of all employees who chose to leave the district will be invited to participate in an exit interview survey with the district office administrator. So I think what the blue dot is saying they were all invited. Oh. But they didn't take you up on the offer. Yeah. Yeah. So I I don't know the actual number. I know the actual number of people came to meet with me directly. Got it. Yeah. Yeah, invite. Like I personally think that if the goal here behind three is to recruit, develop, and retain exceptional personnel for all positions, just sending somebody an invite doesn't warrant getting a blue light on this uh thing on this. Like I I I think that what I guess I I just think that maybe we could find a goal that better achieves the purpose

059or a better fine-tune a smarty goal that better achieves the purpose of goal three collectively. Yeah. And and real honestly, Sel, I have some of the same thoughts as I go through this and try to sort of interpret for Don and my interpretation and is this meaningful data, right? Is this meaningful data around goal three? And I think as we head into a new year, as I said, a new strategic plan, I'm happy to do more sort of um bring more context to all of this. But I do recall even when we developed the report card that we struggled a bit um and had conversations even here a bit. I remember talking to our strategic plan consultant like what are those meaningful things to measure in goal three? And as we look at this here,

060you know, four years in, and even just some of the questions, some of the feedback, it's like, is this is this the right stuff? And I I I hear what you're saying, and I I need a little more time to to focus in on that. Yeah. And I understand that you're taking over this goal, but I do remember sitting at this table last year and basically saying the same exact thing. And I didn't, you know, no, nobody else on the board sort of chimed in to support this idea that maybe these aren't the right metrics to be. So, this could just be my, you know, personal view. Um, but maybe it's, you know, something that the personnel committee should continue to consider here. No, I think it's fair. I think the invited to participate part

061is just something that for whatever reason didn't click with me because I've been reading this as participated, not invited to participate. Yeah. And now and even when I like invited to participate blue, right? Like they're all invited. There's a process now for inviting, right? Where there wasn't a process even for inviting or having and inviting. Um so that's a gain just for us internally structurally. Um but is it a meaningful measurement, right? Is I think a a good question. Um I don't know if this is where you're going, but how I would interpret that is you want people to give you the feedback. So, do we have a problem that people don't want to give us the feedback if they're voluntarily leaving? So, I think that would be okay. But then to Selena's point, if

062it's six or greater, which I think that is the right number, we use Qualrix at our company and they do not give me results anything less than five. It has to be five or more. Um, which still seems a little bit low, but um that's how they use it. So, I assume there's some statistical something around that, but that would be seven people. If 85% participated, that would get you to six. So, if we're if we're doing that's how I was kind of looking at it, but now that math doesn't line up because it's just how many people are leaving and if it's six or more then and we have feedback from six or more then we should get a report on it. So, yeah, we probably need to look at Yeah. And are we

063looking at a departing custodian as well as a pair professional as well as a teacher? Like I mean, and we are right. We're offering exit surveys to all. So would you even when you say the number the number in my head might be certified staff but you're the question is really broader here. So um I do need more time just to take a look at it and potentially bring forward some change ideas and maybe it's something we could look at. Yeah. From a personnel committee. I mean just Yeah. No and I I agree just sort of looking at this. I mean these are all great numbers. I guess for me this doesn't um it's just it's I guess it doesn't provide much information. Does it tell our story? Right. And um you know I think

064qualitatively of course we have been successful recruiting. um we don't have a high turnover rate right so our retention is considered to be good right is there is there a better way to put a measurement on that and um so yeah I think I would say absolutely like the way to put a measure on that is to say did we retain this percentage of our employees in any given year and set a goal for that right and like that's something that many companies issue in their annual reports every here and it's a good number for us to just keep track of over time. Yeah, it's an indication of management practices, right? Do people want to stay at this company or not? And I have to look at our state go back and look at the

065state report card, too, because the state report card published well, they published the master's degree number. Uh I I want to say they say something about a retention rate, but I I do have the retention rate. Okay, there we go. Yeah, on our community part and I like that's something to be proud of. But I I guess to to the point to your point though that that is I mean that is I mean a lot of companies report my company reports. I mean I don't know any company that doesn't. But I guess my thing is it doesn't tell the story though. It's like if it's green great if we retain like 95% of our staff. But my thing is what's if it dropped to or only retain 90% or 85%. We need to know sort

066of why people are leaving sort of the reasons behind this. Absolutely. Like a number always can use some qualitative context to back it up. Right. But like tracking that number is a good indicator for us. Right. Right. But I but I would also stand by the argument that if you have less than six people having a public dialogue about I mean I don't know. It's it would be confidential to us because I don't know who you Well, I guess I could go back and figure it out. I don't have the time nor the desire to do that, but I could, I guess. Um, so it almost feels like 34 and 35 could probably be rewarded into one goal that just better gets it. I guess the thing is though, maybe just as part of personnel,

067we can maybe start looking at sort of the exit interview like that survey because while that's confidential, we could still sort of have the same questions asked and sort of report off of like um why are you leaving? I'm just like why are you leaving? Is it money? Is it like and we could just sort of like money opportunity different you know and I think we do ask something like uh will your next job be in the same field or you know so we can just start quantifying or quantifying that that would help yeah retiring is different than going to another school. Yeah, it's rare um but it has happened um for somebody to leave this district to go to do the same job in a different district. You know, it's often leaving the field

068of education, um an opportunity for advancement, uh decision to sort of like change in family dynamics, maybe staying home or something. Just trying to think through those different resations. But I'll tell you what, like one of the things that will sort of resonate is somebody taking a teaching job in a different district doing the same work. Then that's like, okay, so what is it that's different or better about a a different district? So, um, sometimes it's straight up geography for people. I mean, there's there's a lot of factors there, but um, yeah, I think I think we can. So, if you don't mind giving me some time to kind of hone in on this with your feedback, this is helpful. Maybe David, you and I as personnel chair could take a look at some things.

069and um change this and I don't mean to gloss over the other parts. um you know we for example we gave it a TBD around the um competitive compensation as we know we just approved a contract um and we had done some analysis there certainly as part of that process u we did um we have been rating very specifically key items into the professional development that is a regular survey that is given every time uh certified staff are participate in professional development and we have seen some valued growth there. We have also continued to use a employee satisfaction survey. Trying to think why this would be NA. I think we didn't really hone in on a goal area within the uh staff survey. I'm trying to think of the last time we actually brought one

070of those. We used to do it with Nate and then there were some changes with that organization and then I think he sort of fell off for whatever reason and I think we've lost track of it. I I can't remember the last time we talked. We did it by way of an executive summary and not sharing the actual metrics on that one. And that was also intentional in order to invite people to participate fairly and openly and not feel that the reporting came um directly back to the board. We had done an executive summary level when it was um Eklan consulting then they became vital network and then we moved from vital network to a company called EAB and um my view is that those uh morale surveys are all very very similar one to

071another. So I don't know that there's a whole lot of change to go from vital network to EAB. I think you're there's still valuable information and I'll tell you where it's most meaningful is with the principles and their uh building leadership teams to really dig in and talk about sort of how to shift and change culture in a very uh employee to employee teachertoteer way in terms of building climate and culture but it is something we all take a look at. So it's NA because we're not I think it's because we're not bringing the actual data forward um is what we've talked about. Yeah. The goal sounds like the invite one. It's like it's in place. We meet it, but now we're meeting certain numbers. Is there I think that the like what what is

072consistent is that the teachers and other building staff are are taking the five essentials survey. We're just Yeah. not and and those results of those five essential surveys are actually online. Yeah. in the report card. So, they're accessible to us, but they're just not presented to the board. Right. And this is something different than five essentials. This is a separate uh specific staff morale survey. And there's a staff, you could argue that five essentials is also a staff morale. It's also a student and families, right? It's satisfaction, which satisfaction and morale I think are handinand. Um we have also over the years over time right talked about the value or not value of the five essentials data. So um this was designed to sort of comment on a different a different survey that's a bit

073more customized and a bit more directed toward teachers. They actually take it three times a year, a fall, winter, and a spring. I guess I'm looking at 3.8 8 where it says a smarty goal using the initial survey data and the five essentials results may be written at a later date. And if we're not doing some some other thing that's very capable of being compared from year to year, what we are doing that's capable of being compared year to year is the five essentials survey. And so maybe that's the thing then to present. And the five essentials usually is like we struggle to get parent feedback at that 20%, but I think we get we get really happy participation because because we Yeah. Because we provide them time. Yeah. Yeah. We make them do it.

074Um Yeah. No, we give them time to complete it and ask them to do it. So come out of those What's that? Have actions come out of those surveys? Like have we gotten actual feedback that something can be done? That's a good question. I would like to say yes, but I don't think it's particularly five essentials driven. I think it's five essentials in combination with the other staff morale survey, in combination with just the qualitative real-time feedback that we get, right? So, um, so yes, but it's it's probably not actionable enough, you know what I mean? Like tied like the five essentials told us this, so therefore we are going to start doing that. Yeah, I think that's an area for certainly to grow. So I think that the staff morale would be important like

075for retaining people but if people aren't happy for whatever reasons that's another thing to address. Yeah. I mean I guess the thing is that for me it just I understand trying to keep it confidential. I mean we do I mean every company I've worked with they've done some sort of engagement survey but we always get the results of like where things like where the what the results were and so there sort of aggregate right. Um, and so I'm just wondering if we can somehow get some sort of aggregate data on the key topics or key subject matters that we're trying to look at. So yeah, let me let me think on all of that. Then this might be a good one to bring up when we get the A results because it is it is

076part of the state report card thing, but we usually just talk about the results and maybe once we get this year's data from a five essentials perspective, maybe we can come back and revisit this one, but like looking through what the five essentials does give us because I've looked at it online and it's like five categories. They've got the square with the circle in it. I can't remember what they all are if I'm thinking about the right one. Yeah. No, it's like a it's a like a heat map and it's uh you know like leaders and collaboration something and something parent involvement. Yeah. Um yeah, I think I think you know to me this is also just a lot of really good food for thought also about how we potentially make some shifts around goal

077three this year but make shifts around goal three for coming years too. Yeah. I mean like we're especially given where we're are where we are in this strategic plan cycle like it seems like by next year we should not have an NA in that category, right? We should be able to figure something out for that. Yeah. And I think we we want to just have more conversation about that. Yeah. And then the last one is uh is more, you know, qualitative. It's the adding the staff over time, which um this is the the staff that have been added this school year as we head into next school year. So, and as you also know, there had been a lot of staff. How is this not green or blue? I know you said it's qualitative because

078we don't have a number associated, but I'm like, man, look at all this. Yeah. And I'm trying to think like how the um response that these are students. I'm looking to see like what the like all these are added. I would agree with you, Wesley. We're gonna be bringing you a revised scorecard because I think we've talked about revisions in every area so far. This is why we have these conversations. No, I don't think Don will be here to revise the scorecard, unfortunately. So, um, but I know we've talked about some revisions for goals one and two also. So, yeah. Okay. Um, no, this is this is helpful feedback. And as you know, this is one where also Don as the director of technology took on a very human resource related goal area. Um, this

079is an area where we have a wonderful person who helped keep us on track with all of our HR practices, but we do not have a director of human resources here in the district. And um, happy to sort of shift into that direction. And I do because that's it's key part of how the district runs and operates, but some of the specifics will we'll dig in and make some decisions. Yeah. So, I think it's good, too, because just making sure we're on the same page with how we're evaluating these goals and what good looks like and what succeeding looks like and everything. I think it is a discussion, not just a this number met or didn't meet and it's off by a tenth of a point. I'm not trying to knock everybody down. I'm trying

080to let's talk about it and agree that we agree on on how we're evaluating these. So, this is Yeah, this is good. Yeah. Um the family community partnerships, I am the gold champion for that area. Um giving myself all green dots in that. Um Uh but this one is is also very different from a measurement perspective. Just sort of acknowledging that um we did intend to do a family engagement survey separate from the five essentials this year. If we recall we decided to do the advanced learning survey at the same time and so we decided to hold off on the family engagement survey. We are the committee reviewed and did make plans to do the family engagement survey next fall um in addition to five essentials. So, Five Essentials is in February. Uh, again, kind

081of Wesley, what you're saying is we don't think participation rate for families is great for Five Essentials. We're not sure how meaningful the data really is when you only have 20 to 30% of your families responding. Um, there's a lot of people, so there's a lot of context around five essentials, and I don't mean to knock it, but there's um just historically been a lot of context that schools don't necessarily find it to be the most meaningful um data points. it's a survey that's normed on a K8 Chicago public school setting like is it asking the kinds of questions we want to ask and so what we've done is supplement it with a family engagement survey with our own staff morale surveys but again being able to bring you better information about that um and

082and to you know we do it probably every year we take a closer look at five essentials kind of Matt to your question say like is this a meaningful survey is are there meaningful results if so what are we doing about that and um we need to continue to to think think about that. So, um the family what I did here under goal four is just try to um articulate some of the specific things that have some of them that have I think truly become operational. One is a family learning night that we have now had three years running of uh family learning nights with different content areas and I think that's been a success. Um if anything there's been a question of like could we do more family learning nights? uh one book, one

083school. Uh that was really one of our goals was that that would happen at all four elementary schools. It really truly happens at all four elementary schools and it really is a great celebration of literacy and families reading together. So that that feels again like a a notable success. I think there was talk about one district one book. Did that ever materialize? Yeah, there was and and actually all the schools said no, back off. We love it at our school. you know, it is a great and I know you've been very involved with it um through your PTA role too. It's the schools love it. The schools take a lot of ownership. The PTAs take a lot of ownership and there was kind of this idea that, you know, let's let's keep it as a

084school event and not a district event. So, um it's a great it's a great question. Um the family engagement guidelines, if you recall, we published those last year at the end of the year and then we worked hard to get them out. But I know they sit framed in all the school offices. There's some teachers that have attached them as their signature line and sign off. Um we've shared them in a number of places. We share them at our district office and um I think I think they've been valuable. I think the teachers felt that there's a lot of value in um just articulating things that are our expectations but that was really last year and sort of um just keeping them as part of our system here as we move forward. Uh we shifted

085to a new website provider as you know and also a new app this year and still um with Molly here, our new tech director and Molly Caster, our part-time communications vendor, um they've already been looking at the website and looking at ways that we can continue to enhance and improve ways that we communicate and that's an ongoing goal. And then um family engagement survey that we will conduct next fall. So did I I scrolled I guess we scrolled up too. I guess it's the blue up there, Charles. And yeah, I was reading from my computer screen. Any questions about goal four? I I mean, it's it's been relatively limited, but the family night stuff seems to really be kind of growing from just observing a couple that I did. There seems to be more people

086showing up at the thing. So, I I don't know what exactly is driving it. If it's the content, if it's word of mouth that it's fun, engaging, whatever. But, um I have heard some really positive stuff about the different events out there. So that really seems to be going well. I think this has been a really tricky one because it's so open and not really quantif Yeah. numerically quantifiable, but it feels like we've made a lot of progress here over the years. So Norah also got to hear one of the gurus in family engagement at the workshop that she was at last week. So she's shared the latest greatest book that's out there. I mean, in all seriousness, it's um it truly is the research says that engaged families, children achieve and do better. And

087um that's really kind of been at the core even of some of our conversations is how do we really improve that and having schools as inviting places fun events our PTAs and PTO's add so much in that area. But um it also ultimately kind of distills down to this how do I really help my child with their student learning and um we were just talking about learning management systems and communication tools and um that's some of the conversation that's been happening at the family community partnerships action team level is also like how do we do more of that? Uh Marlo and I I know Marlo's not here tonight, but we did some brainstorming last week and family information is also, you know, we've talked about like cyber safety is a really important topic for families.

088Um but there's so many others and I know one of the teachers who's on the committee shared that um for example she has her own children now at Riverside Brookfield High School and that they do a lot of like parentto parent panels and it's been so valuable to go and hear other parents talk about a topic um not necessarily needing to hear from an expert but you know people's sort of lived experiences and it's been like about college readiness and some of those but um so is that something similar like the first thing that popped in my head as we do all this transition to houser stuff would that be like a version of that. Yeah. Not just how the kids prepare, but how do you prepare for your kids to transition? Yeah, I might

089have been able to use one of those. I don't know. Right. But it that was a that was one that like really resonated with me. It's like yeah, sometimes it's hearing you don't need the real life. The real life experience people are going and I bet there are parents that would sit on a panel like that. Um Sure. The fifth grade games night the principal they do now information session. Oh, okay. that could be interesting to do a parent to parent panel, you know, even if it's a short Q&A or something. Yeah. So, I think there's a ton of parents in other areas um to enhance the things we do and some of it's that it's like just driven by ideas that that make sense. I'm sure the PTO's could probably I mean, I'm looking

090at you just because you were on the PTO, but um I'm sure they would be happy to try to assist in recruiting parents for something like that, too. Um, goal five. I get to turn that one over to Jim. You can see the dots have changed. Well, the first one is the financial profile. It's an annual rating. So, every fourth quarter we were going back, but we've had the highest rating of 4.0. you know, um kind of m maintain that the fiscal year 26 operating budget when we adjust for some of the new newly approved positions um that comes in within CPI. We have um all the projects all the maintenance and capital improvement projects were on time and within budget. And um our uh ticketing response for um tech buildings and grounds, we've been

091responding within 24 hours. Um not always completing them. And the tech department has been responding within eight hours. There's a few more there, but the the lunch program has been going really well at all schools. Anyone have any questions, please? Uh maybe like the only thing was like the renovation and reconfiguration of the library media center is yellow. Like is that we really haven't talked about that all that much. So is that just we haven't gotten to it yet or Yes. Yeah. Okay. I believe that one is a is its own goal for the future strategic plan. You know, like I mean there's just been a lot of conversation. We've had a lot of conversation about and it's not it's not all about re renovation and reconfiguration. It's really about what goes on in libraries.

092We talked about some of this at facility advisory committee along the way and felt that it's it's big enough because it encompasses curriculum and facilities and really student use. So, I mean, this idea that we still want our libraries to be a place where kids can access high-quality literature and great books and check them out and take them home, like there's a traditional part of libraries that that's very valuable and very important. And so, I don't want people to hear that I'm talking about that going away because we are not, right? But, um, as our world becomes more and more digital and we're hearing more and more about the challenges that kids face with AI and now and everything else is that that sense of digital citizenship, digital responsibility, we have a curriculum. Um sometimes

093I think we ask ourselves is it being implemented with enough fidelity? Um a lot of times it's the library person that can sort of ensure that there's some fidelity of implementation there. Um the other thing that's really uh occurring more and more in elementary libraries in particular and a lot of school districts is STEM and STEAM education. And so that's another area. So I I I'll preempt that one as a future goal. Um, and I think our libraries, um, like we know the Ames library is renovated and reconfigured and could easily integrate that level of programming. Um, I think central maybe with some physical renovation there is really challenging because there's some really challenging ADA issues in the library. Just the way it's set in the building for people that don't know, you step down

094into the library, but it's a big library, right? I think it just could be reconfigured internally if not fully renovated. Um, Hollywood is small, but it everything at Hollywood is a bit smaller. And I think it still works for the student population there. And same at BLE. I think with that, if you recall that portable door and going into the music space that I think that could still be used in creative ways. My head was at I guess I should replace library media center with Hower Learning Center. This is more than just the Hower Library. We're talking about library in general across all schools. Okay. Yeah. And I didn't even comment on the Hower one. The Hower Library media center I believe also could use potentially some true renovation and reconfiguration. As you know, it's

095set up as a very traditional library. Also has a lot of um I'll call it real estate around it. Um our instructional coaches are now we've moved our tech team over to the district office. They were in the Hower Library. Um the area that you often face, the circulation desk, there's a lot of space. We've had our architects take just a informal look. And again, I think it takes some true buy in, some feedback, more than just again my idea, but um would be really eager to gather more community feedback and staff feedback about our libraries and how we're ready to change. Do you know when that'll be a I guess a main topic to address? So, you know, next year, I envision next year, December, January, February, we're writing a new strategic plan. So,

096we're seeking community engagement through community member. If we do it similar to format that we did the last time, um there would be parents and community members invited to the table to sort of um in real time participate in conversation and planning together and then usually we would do is like supplement it with another survey. So strategic plan is team is considering this what's your feedback on um these are significant renovations and so I think discussion starts next year um planning and then moving it into is it goals is it like are these you know is this just something I'm thinking is make sense but um I don't think it's something that it's just I'm thinking I think it's a districtwide plan that this facilities finance curriculum, instruction, scheduling, programming, all the things. So, yeah.

097Yeah. So, long range because of the the money, the whatever that needs to go into actually doing the renovations, but curriculum is almost part of like one of the maybe goal one or something. Maybe not goal one, but yeah. So, it's it's kind of a multi- goal. Yeah. It cuts across. I think it's also the family engagement piece. I know we've had families say like don't like that was like when we talked about even as a facilities advisory it's like it's not a fac just a facilities issue. I mean it's really there's a lot more to it and so felt that needed a broader scope and a broader audience for discussion and input. Okay. Well, I'm glad I asked that question. I don't even think that's what you meant. Um Okay. I'm glad hot lunch

098is going well. We had a lot of debate on that. So glad to see that it continues to be successful. Yeah. Thank you, Jim. All right. And that that is the superintendent's report. 1 hour and 15 minutes into the meeting here, but I I mean obviously really important that this is the strategic plan. Your feedback, your questions really help us. Um I I I all kidding aside, would like to bring a revised scorecard forward potentially at the July meeting and um may need more time on the goal three as we take a heavier sort of look at that. And I have some thoughts on that. Um, anything else just about strategic plan and the scorecard and the report? There's a more narrative report attached as well, but I think we covered that through the the

099conversation. Yeah, the the executive summary piece of it was pretty helpful too as it was going through the dots and stuff like that. So, thank you for putting that together or whoever helped you put that together. Uh, AI. Oh, okay. and the team. I mean, five different people gave input and so then we also knew that we needed to clean it up for format and continuity. Well, well written then. So, good job. Yeah, I think we're supposed to credit, right? Whatever we're using. I think it might have been Gemini, but I'm not sure. Okay. Uh, so we move in consent agenda. Okay. All right. So, uh, Dave has agreed to play secretary for us tonight. So, Dave, could I have you read the consent agenda? Sure. So approval of tonight's consent agenda includes minutes from

100the previous meeting uh May 7th by um bianual uh May I'm sorry May 7 2025 bannual organizational minutes uh May 21st 2025 regular business meeting uh the close session 1 and two May 22nd 2025 uh the personnel excuse me um the personnel report as presented the payables pre-list list of May as of May 31st, 2025. The payables pre-list as of January June 18th, 2025. Uh the non-UN salary salary recommendations 2025 through 2026. The consolidated district plan at the I AGA, excuse me, with Riverside Parks and Rex's final version. I might just make a comment. I did I double checked with you like nothing really material in that parks and wreck IGA like a lot of um I don't want to call it ticky tech but like very fine detail type legal just blocking and tackling

101type stuff is how I would call it. Yeah. And if you recall you approved it pending legal with uh pending legal review but from both the village and from um our district uh attorney also. So even technically you don't have to reapprove it, but I just I know there's been a lot of attention spent on on this one and it it's very visible to the community and so I just wanted to make sure that it reappeared on the board agenda. Yep. Just as we're throwing it on the consent agenda. Um and I'll ask if any of you want to take any of these things off, but just if we don't, it really was no material change. It was really minor stuff that the legal teams kind of ironed out. So, um, just in case there

102was any questions around sliding that into a consent agenda, but does anyone wish to take anything off for further discussion before we vote? Okay. Uh, Kathy, could you call the role? I'm sorry. Was this like the fourth meeting in a row that I've done that? Is there a motion for the board of education to approve tonight's consent agenda as presented? So, move second. So I need one of one of you two. Um Kathy, could you call? Okay. Miss Claps. Hi. Mr. Ole. Hi. Mr. Bari. Hi. And Mr. Mayorhead. Hi. Motion passes. Okay. Um any comments from RBC tonight? No. Nope. Okay. Um any board member comments? I think. Nope. Okay. Uh, old business, approval of the Teamster contract, which is our custodians only, right? I think correct. Um, so is there a motion for the

103board of education to approve the Teamster contract for the 2025 to 2030 school years as presented? So moved. Second. Kathy, could you call the RO? Okay. Mr. Olic, I. Mr. Barati, I. Miss Claps, I. And Mr. Merhead. All right. Motion passes. Next is the approval of the proposal for the Ble Park playground. Uh which is identical to what we discussed at our last meeting. No changes on this. Okay. Um, is there a motion for the board of education to authorize the architect to provide professional services for the project identified herein, which professional services shall be subject to all terms and conditions of the master agreement B101 unless specifically provided otherwise in the scope in this project scope of work proposal. So moved. Kathy, would you call the role? Okay. Mr. Barcati, I. Miss Claps. Hi,

104Mr. Olic. Hi. And Mr. Mirhead. Hi. Motion passes. All right. Let me see. We are at This is just Okay. So, this is the resolution for an emergency expenditure of funds and change order for the masonry work at Hower Junior High. Um, so this is a $156,600 additional cost due to lentils that were not in good repairable condition. Repair in we need to do more work than what they anticipated. It's the same problem we had on this building in the front. Once they started taking the bricks out, more issues than what could be observed with binoculars were found. And this is more than a what's we're bringing this up because it's more than 10% of the contract uh which was 1.1 million roughly. So the emergency nature of this is same thing we talked about

105with this building of we got to keep this uh we have to keep the schedule on track uh and not delay it so they can have this done before school opens and we don't want workers or bricks or anything else that are getting in the way of students coming and out of the building basically. So, we we need to get this approved so that they can get this done before school starts. Um, is there a motion for the board of education to approve the additional work of $156,600? And Vistara recommends that Riverside School District 96 approve this the funds for this work. These repairs should be considered as part of an emergency repair that would alleviate an unsafe condition at the school and result in longlasting repairs. MBB's contract will be increased by 1,100. That's

106not right. 150. Their contract will be increased. So, it's 1,100,000. That's the new will be increased to the total amount. Yeah. Yeah. Not by, but Yeah. All right. I'm going to start over. Is there a motion for the board of education to approve the additional work of $156,600 with Vistara recommending that district 96 approve this work because the repairs should be considered part of an emergency repair that would alleviate an unsafe condition at the school and result in long-lasting affairs repairs. MBB's new contract will be increased to 1,111,39. So second Kathy, would you call the role? Okay. Miss Claps, hi. Mr. Olic, hi. Mr. Barcadi, I Mr. Mirhead. Hi. Motion passes. All right. These capital transfers my head through that. Okay. So, new business uh fiscal year 26 draft budget. I don't have a written

107motion here. This is just do we need to talk about this? This is just initial preliminary discussion and Jim Okay. Yep. No action. The next one's the action. Okay. Maybe Jim wants to prov do you want to sort of provide overview on all the the draft budget, but also links to the fund transfer. Potential action items. Okay. Well, the first one is $600,000 transfer. Actually, do you want to start with the draft budget that is that next on the agenda? Yeah, I think it makes me well these these approvals are going into the 26 budget from the memo that I read if I understood there. Okay. So, why don't why don't we start with the two why don't we just lump it all together and then I'll go through line by line with the approvals

108that we need. So, if you want to start with the two budget approvals that you're requesting and then we can lump that into next year's tenative budget. So, start with the transfers. Yeah. Okay. Uh the first one is a request to uh transfer $600,000 from the working cash fund to transportation fund. The uh working cash fund is uh we do get property tax revenue into it and then it's you can't spend out of it. It's there to be moved to other um funds and uh I recommend moving it to the transportation fund only because we will go negative and but you I mean you can see from my table that we were 3.7 million negative at one point but I just think it looks a little better to have it. We want to move it

109anyway. We're going to have to cover it. So um if you remember in a bad way you can see from my list here that we got up to 10 times the annual expenditures in there and that's when I started trying to kind of under levy and we transferred 2.9 million but then the first column there property tax we kept dropping the levy to try and get the fund down to match the overall overall. So around 50%. And one of the one of the things that's an issue now is we won't get our claim money till after the um the year's closed. So even though that line looks like um we won't be close, that'll come in. And then my target was to get a 50% after the transfer and then that last check run that

110um there's $103,000 that's going to come out of the transportation budget or accounts. So how do I read this table? You're currently is it the expenditures total that I should be looking at in the table in the in yeah in your in the table that you put in the memo the first column is uh the property tax we collected yeah based on the levy the we also get some interest or investment or interest income not not so much from that and then the state transportation claim were able to get some of the spending back. So the total revenue for like FY25 at the bottom there's 542,000 and the expenditures total up to a million dollars this year. So that number has been increasing also. Oh, the change is we're we're going down 500,000. I'd like

111to transfer in 600,000 to keep us near the 50%. We had those really low years during well I guess kind of postco or whatever you want to around that time. So, we were using and so now those expenses are starting to come back up, but we have been bringing the levy down because we had that one audit that's like you're way too high and you need to adjust it and we did immediately and so now our expenses are coming back up. So, now we're adjusting back. That's sort of how I read this. It's a lot tighter than when I first got here. We fund balance and we don't talk about the transportation fund very often, right? Uh this is more than just the buses and stuff, right? or is that's mostly special ed transportation. Oh,

112okay. Okay. All right. Can you like So, in I guess starting after fiscal year 21, we had a pretty significant drop off in the property tax collected for this. Yes. We don't have any expectation that that will recover. Well, it depends what we levy. So, I purposely lowered it. You purposely lowered it and we to try and bring Okay. bring the balance. And so, you would Going forward, we would just keep that allocation low. I I would recommend that we go to the kind of the annual amount we expect to spend. Got it. We just don't want it to be so high that someone could wonder why we're levying it again. Right. Okay. So, the difference in this went into the education fund where we see the reductions. Okay. And the 2.9 million transfer was

113part of that strategy, too, is we just took we w we knew we weren't going to spend down. If I recall correctly, we weren't going to spend down fast enough in addition to the lower levies. We had the major capital projects going on, so we transferred it to get it down. And now we just need to levy appropriately. Yes. Going forward. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. That's how I read this. I just wanted to make sure I was reading it correctly. Okay. Okay. Um Okay. I'll do all the motions after. Do you want to talk about the $2 million one? Okay. The other um fund balance transfer is going from education fund to capital projects fund and that's really just to cover the cost of the three recently approved projects. Um and then it's in the budget.

114the um duck point in the boiler replacement and the lower roof at Hollywood. So they total up to 2,ion4,439. So I was recommending transferring 2 million to 15,000. Does that have to increase 156,000 for the emergency amount just add money? Oh, it doesn't have to include that. Okay, that's included. You've already included that. 954 for the tuck point. We do have a balance in there always. Again, like to keep a bit of a balance. Yeah. So, we can cover a change order with that current balance. So, you got it covered. Okay. And just the I think with all of our capital projects we've done, it's it's mainly been an education fund transfer to capital, right? Because that's our biggest bucket. Yeah, that's I try to levy what we want to have in the smaller funds

115and then everything else goes into education and then sometimes we go back and so we have enough of a cushion there for all the education needs plus other things. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. That's generally where the uh profit goes for the end of the year. Yeah. Okay. Um All right. So, do you want to talk about the tenative budget then? Sure. Since those kind of feed into how you've been planning the budget for next year. Is everybody okay with how I'm doing this? I figure I'm trying to put the whole story together and then we'll go through just make sure there's no other questions. Okay. So, the FY26 budget will um be in effect from July 1st, 2025 till June 30th, 2026. Um this is um this is not the budget. This is the public act

116where we need to show recent fund balances. So I'm just kind of keeping this slide in every presentation. We only need to do it once a year, but I thought this way I could keep it up to date. I have the I we have the FY24 audit which you've already seen and now and then you put the budget in and then I have the new budget. So it just has to be publicly disclosed. Um so uh here's that timeline. We did the calendar back in February and we're presenting the tenative budget tonight. In July, I'll um put a notice in the papers so everyone knows that we're going to have a budget hearing and then we'll have the hearing on August 20th and hopefully uh approve the budget. We have one more month if we

117want. So, it it really has to be done by September. I think we've listed both, Jim, but you want to go with the I know we've been back and forth just with the transition. It it must be approved by the end of September, but we could do it in August. We've typically done it earlier, right, in recent years. So, just clarifying that. And then I just have to file it. I will file it by September 19th, but it has to be filed in October at the latest. Here's some assumption in analysis. Um it's uh there's a 7.6% increase in revenue and expenditures. When we compare it to the FY25 budget, the operating revenues for the new budget are um well 7.6 six or 2.7 million higher than the last operating budget. Now the are only

1182% higher than where we would really expect FY25 to come in. Um if so I've got the revenue from through May and so I just look back at last year's June. If we have a similar June to last year, um, we'd actually have more revenue in FY25 than we're budgeting in FY26. So, I know the 7.6% looks like a large increase, but it it's a large increase over the last budget, not over what's happening. and the expenditure side the salaries and benefits is over 70% of the budget. So when the contract was approved, we copied last year's database over to make the new one, put all the uh all the changes to people's salaries and wages and then ran the payroll for the whole year. So if there's an open position or people changing, we

119wouldn't necessarily get that exact, but 90% of the employees will be, you know, do a couple pennies and that's a big part of the budget. As far as um like services and supplies, we met with each administrator who has ownership of some of the budget and went line by line. A lot of it's repeats at the big time, the things that go annually, but we did go line by line to justify each one. You can see in the blue box there that it came out to a dollar. I got to work on my rounding, but we're 38 million15955 on both sides. And you can see in my memo that if I wanted to predict I would say there's a 1.3 million and pushed in in the revenues that hopefully we'll be putting into savings at

120the end of the year and then I list the transfers on the right. So, we uh we're looking at 53% as our fund balance and ending next year at 44% because of the 2 million we're taking out of fund balance. You see next to fund work 346%. So, I've been working on getting that down too, but that's a really small number to begin with. So, We really just pay our liability insurance out of that. Out of which one? Out of tor second one. And we are working the balance out on 346 to 248. And your estimated 1.3 million is not on here. That's just that when I think of the 53 and the 44 and I think about your line chart, that's where that surplus always kind of pushes our line chart out. That always

121comes in better. Here speaking. Oh, this one. Yeah. So, the red line represents audited fund balances through June of 24. That's where I put the line. And then the next two years, 25 and 26, are just the budgeted numbers in there. Um, and then the rest are from the last projections I did we worked on in August. So, they're adjusted up based on 25 and 26, but that's the same arc we would see in uh in our last slide we showed. So all the way out in FY33 we will cross the 40% of the the blue line is the expenditures and we 39% of expenditures. So our expenditures are going up every year. So even if our fund balance stayed the same the percent would drop a little bit. This is a chart of our

122FTE. You can see in FY24 we had about 264 um FTE and FY25 we went up to 276 and the difference is noted there the 12 and what the positions were that we had. um prel coach, social worker. Um we added cafeteria manager and took the expenditures out of services of Quest. Um we added another caf cafe worker and a halftime custodian. And then last year we added five paras. This year we're adding three and a half parents, one PE teacher, one coach, and uh one elementary coordinator. So now our new total is 282 for full-time. The coach we're adding is getting us up to three now, right? Up to four. Four. Four. Four coaches, right, Angela? Yeah. Yeah. Okay. So we have three now. Yeah. Okay. Any questions? Uh just a comment. Part of

123the reason I went in that order is what I always have to remind myself is the calendar year is not the fiscal year. And so we are in we are ending a fiscal year and transferring all this money to money that technically will get paid out in the next budget. Yeah. So this this is the 25 26 year that we're going into. So all these transfers are just balancing everything out where we made the decision already but we don't actually pay for it till the next budget year. Right. So kind of getting back to some of the architect I'm trying to think of what the other thing the window like some of the other big budget items we did a couple months ago where we were talking about all that money but it technically isn't

124paid out until a different budget cycle. So you're accounting for all of this and just from where the technical way of where the money goes and what years it gets spent. We ask them to bill us through 6:30. So whatever work they have, give us a bill so we can pay that out of current year and then everything after that doing the next fiscal year. That's the kind of thing an auditor will look for. Where does that cost belong? Yeah. making sure that we're tracking where all the dollars are going and it it's in the right plot spots and yeah okay so I guess where I I on the and I grant I didn't go through the entire 20 pages but is what is there have we accounted for possibly loss of funding from federal

125government I know it's a small small percentage but no that doesn't reflect losing any federal income or revenue so we get about 1.2 if I remember a mill been from 800 to 1.3 million over the past few years. Um I believe this year we're over budget with the revenue. Um well this current year that's about to end not necessarily federal. It's the uh interest and property tax of course. If that were to happen, we do have funds to make up that shortfall. If we if I took it out of there and assumed we weren't going to get it, then I have to be much more exact on the property tax. So, we should cover it. Those two things are not in the budget kind of offset. That is part of that's one of the core

126reasons we always talk about that fun balance stuff is like making sure we have that cushion in there. So, like when I think about that red line, without getting too deep into details, I just sort of look at that red line and go, "All right, we've got enough of a gap." So, 16.8 versus 15.2, we're going to get really close to that line if we lose that federal funding, but it's not going to like it's not going to be detrimental immediately. But then long term, not having that money, we'd probably have to make some adjustments because that curve is going to cross that blue line. But I think the the the minimum recommendations like 32 or 33 or required minimum or 25. Oh, it's 25. Oh, okay. For the state. Okay. Oh, got it. Okay.

127The 25 is to get the four, right? So, but we we have chosen and have for a very long time to be much higher than that so that we can Yes. keep ourselves. Those yellow boxes at the bottom are what we spent on capital projects. Since um I've been here anyway, it's been about 35 million. Yeah. So, as you think historically, we started banking a whole bunch of money knowing that we were going to do a major well, I don't know how how soon we knew, but for a few of those years, we knew we were going to do a major project. And that's where you see that big drop. And then we had some good years where we had more do we call it surplus is the technical term. Yeah. Profit, surplus, whatever it

128is, extra money. And then we we put that into like a savings account for other large capital projects and that's why you kind of see it starting to go back down again. And yeah, it's really funded all our capital projects. We no referendum debt, right? It's really trying to avoid debt and property tax asks as much as possible. So far, we've been okay. I'm hoping for the next two years, we're going to continue to hoping for longer. Hopefully for longer than that. Yeah. All right. if that's helpful context. Sorry. Yeah, it is. Any other questions for Jim? No. All right. I will do the two motions here then. Uh, is there a motion that the board of education approve the resolution transferring funds in the amount of 2,15 $2,15,000 from the educational fund to the

129capital projects fund as presented? So moved. Second. Kathy, would you call the role? Okay. Mr. Barati, I. Mr. Ole, I. Miss Claps. Hi. And Mr. Mirhead. Hi. Okay. Motion passes. All right. And the second one is the uh is there a motion for the board of education to approve the resolution transferring funds in the amount of 600,000 from the working cash fund to the transportation fund as presented. So moved. Second. Kathy, would you call the role? Mr. Ol. I. Miss Claps. Hi. Mr. Barati. Hi. And Mr. Mirhead. Hi. Motion passes. All right. Uh, do we have any other public comment tonight? Uh, any other public comment? No. Okay. Uh, with that, we got future meeting dates. July 2nd is cancelled. Uh, it would have been a committee of the whole meeting. July 16th will be

130a regular business meeting at 7 p.m. in the Hower Learning Resource Center, a potential close session if necessary. August 6th, committee of the whole meeting, 7 p.m. at the library at Ble Park School. August 20th, a regular business meeting in the first day of school at 700 p.m. in the Howard Learning Resource Center. Uh close session if necessary. And September 3rd, 2025 will be the board self assessment uh which we actually had to reschedule from June 4th due to some scheduling issues with uh um so that'll be just a full closed session with our ISB rep uh for our self assessment that we were trying to do this month. Uh and then with that this meeting is adjourned. Thank you. [Music]