District 96 Board of Education Committee of the Whole Meeting 02-02-22

001[Music] uh this is february 2nd uh the committee of the whole meeting for district 96 uh kathy can you call the roll okay miss murphy here sorry present mr marhol here mr barsati listen mr meerhead here ms gunn here ms kleiber here mr hunt here okay we have a quorum all right uh the first item is public comment uh i have two emails for public comment i can read them both the first one is from matt johnson uh and it's titled teacher-led instruction versus lexia dreambox in class and it goes uh hello my name is matt johnson and i have three kids enrolled at hollywood elementary currently we have amazing teachers here in d 96 and my wife and i feel very lucky to have found such a great district for our children teacher led

002and or guided instruction is the gold standard in which our students grow the most technological advances coupled with the pandemic have put school districts and teachers in a unique position in terms of what to do with virtual learning tools like lexia and dreambox while these can be nice supplementary learning experiences i do not believe they should be used when in class with teacher prep with the teacher present my ask is that the board coordinate with teacher and administrator representatives from each school in the in the district and draft a policy on the use of these programs inside the classroom my belief as a former teacher parent and taxpayer is that the use of these programs in class should be severely limited if permitted at all naturally i leave it to the professionals of d96 and

003the board to draft a policy that you all believe benefits our students to the fullest i appreciate your attention and future actions in regard to this matter thank you uh signed matt johnson all right and the second email i have is uh from nicole melodic i will take adventure on that my apologies if i did not pronounce that correctly uh the subject is public comments and it reads first i'd like to acknowledge my appreciation for the wonderful and talented teachers and staff at d96 i have a son in kindergarten and it is obvious how hard they work and how much the kids love their environment in fact today's remote learning started with a robust round of we love you mrs m from several students in the class i would like to voice my support for

004full day kindergarten every day i see the gains my son is making and yet every day i see how much the teachers are packing into a shortened period of time it seems there is never enough time to fit in the impressive academic curriculum the critically important social emotional work the specials that our kids love and the extracurriculars and programming that could really enhance their learning my son was dismayed to find for instance that there is no science thursday as he had in preschool for weekly experiments he would love to spend more time learning in class and engaging with his friends we personally are supplementary supplementing without school occasionally diy workbooks and learning apps and taking part in this in park district steam programming but i would so much rather this be built into his school

005day in a familiar place with educators who know our kids there is so much more these kindergartners can learn from their teachers and each other with an extended kindergarten day given the report that space is not an issue in the relatively affordable cost i wholeheartedly support an option for full day kindergarten and hope the board will support it for our kids as well thank you for your consideration nicole melodic mcnamara from riverside okay kathy are there any other uh public comment emails sorry kathy i didn't hear you i'm sorry or were there any additional public comments that came in no just the two of them okay all right and was anyone in the waiting room for signing in as a participant i don't see anybody don do you see anybody we we have additional attendees

006than when we made the announcement about typing in the chat so um i guess i would say if any of the webinar attendees who are wishing you a public comment please use the chat to to say so so that we can call you for public comment and there haven't been no uh additions to the chat okay well then at this time we will move on uh so the next item on the agenda are there any proposed board member changes to the agenda and if not then we will move to board member comments how did elearning for everybody go today it worked yeah okay yeah worked we went pretty smooth so that's all you can really say we'll get through it i know that uh my younger kids were pretty excited about uh the novelty of

007it today and they had a lot a lot of experience obviously from last year knowing how to run zoom so it all worked out well for them today they both seem to enjoy the time i believe my wife actually sent uh sent our first grade teacher miss pinta an email marveling at her patients for uh at one point during the break it was supposed to be a 15 minute break and all the first graders stayed around and she she was a game to entertain him and keep him going keep everybody happy and smiling so you know kudos to her thanks to her for that it was a pretty good day here in our house anyway i will say one thing that was kind of a pleasure was it was my daughter's uh special for music

008today and they were singing with mr house which i know they don't always get to do depending on the covid scenario so that was really lovely to hear them singing because they didn't have their masks on and that was a little one one bonus of being at home even though she'd rather be there obviously but it's neat to hear them so yeah that is good that's good yeah i just you know applaud our our teachers and and even the students for how quickly they're now able to pivot to this new normal world of remote learning i mean i'll overhear them my daughter be like okay i'm going to set up the breakout rooms now she can come run my work meetings um and just you know as a parent as a working parent as well

009thankful to the email communications the night prior which has allowed me to you know make plans with my own team and and boss um not having to watch the news the morning of so i've appreciated that so as good as could be expected dan yes okay so we will see how day two goes tomorrow right as i say dan and the email just went out to our community and all of you um we are going to another day of e-learning tomorrow and i was sharing that this was a hard call to make but there were some changes in the weather forecast just this evening and we again we feel it's the safest choice for our students and for our staff to have another day and it's certainly great to hear that it went well and

010that that there's even a factor of novel to be novelty because as you know by uh last spring or you know whenever whenever we had our last uh pandemic all e-learning days um or many e-learning days it started to feel kind of commonplace and maybe even frustrating some days so i'm glad it felt kind of fresh and novel and a little bit fun today absolutely absolutely all right we will keep moving down the agenda definitely a big agenda this evening so we will move to committee reports the first committee listed is the education committee so sherry and linda well i you know i i don't want to say too much linda because we obviously have a lot of people presenting today and we're thankful for the teachers administrators that have come to uh talk about

011all day kindergarten so that's i don't know if linda has anything else to say but that's really what we're here to hear about today so thanks for all that could join us and all the hard work you did to prepare for your presentation so we look forward to hearing it good evening everyone thank you so much for uh allowing us this time to share with you what we learned as a uh as the full day kindergarten action team uh the team most the majority of the team is here tonight uh some will be speaking some are here to show support to the team so if you would all like to go ahead and turn on your cameras all right so as i said we are very excited to be here tonight to share with you

012the work of the strategic plan exploration of full day kindergarten we had a solid team of teachers representing special education classroom or kindergarten teachers early learners first grade teachers school psychologists and our english language learners so i just want to thank our committee members brittany basic karen bat karen bassing rebecca borges carolyn darienzo alicia guevara tracy hyland brianna kwazaborsky renee lebegg jennifer maslowski kristen mcpherson molly kiros cara cruz allison solida and then kasmira gorman for joining me in leading this team principal of life park and then myself on the team so a great group of people who spent a number of hours looking at the research for both half day and full day kindergarten and we'll go ahead and start talking about that just a bit of background on june 16th of district 96 board

013of education approved our five-year strategic plan and within that five-year strategic plan we have five goals and goal one includes a student is about student growth and ensuring high levels of learning for all students within that goal we have three strategies we have opportunity and equity gaps standards-based monitoring reporting and the reason why we're here tonight exploration of full-day kindergarten implementation hello everyone good evening board of education um i wanted to give you a little bit of background on the committee so the exploration of the full day kindergarten um the committee was charged with a few things we were looking to explore the research on the effectiveness of half day and full day programs we were looking to explore community feedback from a community survey looking at the financial implications of fully kindergarten occurring throughout

014the district and then share any of our professional thoughts following the research and the financial implications so as dr dos noted the exploration of full-day kindergarten was a part of a charge of our strategic plan and that was sushi plan was formed of spring of last year and our committee our kindergarten action committee was formed in october of the past year when we were looking at our committee and who would be on that committee we were looking at professionals within our district uh who were just personally interested in exploring the possibility of having full day kindergarten we were also looking at those individuals who have experienced the half day program here in district 96 but then maybe possibly had worked in other districts where there was a full day program implemented and then finally we

015were looking at professionals who had specific expertise um in the experience with and and the knowledge of just children of this developmental age and so early learner kindergarten and first grade teachers joined us and english language learning teachers specialists special education teachers and a school psychologist we met seven times from the fall of october uh i'm sorry october 21 to the end of january um we reviewed numerous research articles so we read and discussed a lot um the research articles spanned probably 30 years so we were very cognizant of looking for articles that were factual incredible um and that were more recent as you know some were going back into the early 90s we were also looking at making sure that the articles that we read had balanced perspectives of looking at full-day kindergarten options

016and half-day programs and the benefits and the challenges of each one we looked in our as a committee we also discussed the needs of each one of our elementary buildings with regards to facilities and personnel just the structure and processes of the day how it works now with the half day program and what things would change if there was a full day kindergarten program within the school we helped create the community survey and also then review the results and the feedback that the survey gave provided us and as many of you know the survey was open from the beginning of december through and it closed in the beginning of january so we looked at the half-day kindergarten research what we found was that it was less about supporting a half-day program and more about arguments

017against full-day kindergarten so when you look at some of the main points that we pulled out of the different research studies you can see that it talks more about negative points about full day kindergarten but that was its way the research is way of showing the benefit of a half day versus a full day program so in the research we saw common themes of attending six hours of school may not be appropriate for some five and six-year-old children there was mixed research about full-day kindergarten social emotional developmental benefits there were statements about long-term effects of full-day kindergarten still being studied and that some researchers have not found significant differences in the academic achievement of students in full day and half day programs as well as a number of studies had stated that children may become

018overly tired in a full day program so looking at the research in sort of a full day kindergarten program uh the first article cited here from 220 noted that in a full day program kindergarteners exhibit more independence they're more involved in classroom learning and discovery more productive in their work and seem to show more reflectiveness than their half-day peers we also know that center-based and child-directed play there's a lot of research just studying the benefits of that but in this particular research article it highlighted the vocabulary skills um showed advanced vocabulary skills of those students and just a more positive and just more positive approaches to their learning um in article in 2016 um it noted looking at achievements test scores i noticed that students in full day programs had higher math and reading achievement

019and they also had greater language abilities as they emerged into the first grade classrooms uh this next bullet looks too at something that's more that speaks to our present time and just knowing um um the experience of children in the past two years as we've looked through the code pandemic and hopefully are coming out of the copen pandemic that a full day program would offer more opportunities for um academic um academic growth in terms of addressing the learning loss and then also in terms of the social emotional struggles that many children may have faced um as they navigated um you know this uncertain time finally in the last bullet um that's an albuquerque a study from albuquerque that took place over the course of a school year um and it just found a group of

020students who came into kindergarten um and didn't possess the same early literacy or numeracy skills that you might see of a child typical a child of that age and what they notice is that children in a full day program made academic gains equivalent to 16 months which is tremendous compared to their half-day peers who grew about 5.4 months and just continuing on with looking at disparities in academic readiness so this came from an article just build a kindergarten on reduced achievement gaps by gibbs and it looked different subgroups so in the bar graph that you see here highlights or students from a low income households and compared to those with from non low income households white students versus non-right students and students of hispanic descent compared to those who did not have hispanic descent and

021it's showing that the academic readiness um has been reduced for students who are in full day program and it's still very great for those that are highlighted in gray and those are the students that attended the half day program continuing on uh with social emotional um this first bullet point was mentioned earlier in the slide but it applies to social emotional as well um so just looking at you know utilization of small group activities um we know that when teachers work with students in small groups there's that sense of personalization and they're learning but there's also the opportunity for students to have peer modeling and peer interaction we know that's great for all human beings but it's it's particularly effective for young human beings in noticing in full day programs that student attendance was more

022consistent than in half day programs and on average students learning gains translated at least to two months of additional schooling when attending a full-day program students exhibit increased learning classroom involvement productivity and work with peers i'm sorry that was the goal that was mentioned earlier before obviously that's those are academic gains but those are also you know those soft skills that we talk about in terms of independence and collaboration and fortitude and the ability to reflect those are all skills um that are not just wonderful for right now in life but also our life skills that that all human beings need uh and then finally the last uh bullet point uh connects back to more with its small group activities it's just the personalization of learning it's just the opportunity for teachers um to encourage

023and really understand and know their students and people so they can encourage them to continue to be curious um to stay engaged and to ask meaningful questions and really just enhance their overall learning experience go to jim fitton he's going to talk about the financial implications of full day kindergarten in district 96 this is a list of the first year costs related to full-day kindergarten we would need to add four full-time kindergarten teachers about 44 000 in new furniture and the first year of supplies possibly a part-time midday assistant at each elementary school so we're putting in four of them to make sure we're covered for that and then at the bottom section there we would add three full-time teacher specialists for art b and music and i just want to mention that those special

024teachers aren't just because fully kindergarten it's kind of that's the one thing that pushes us over to needing them but they will obviously not just work in the kindergarten so we also as uh kazmira said because mayor gorman said we released a community survey on tuesday december 7th and closed that survey on friday january 7th we were pleased with the response from the community regarding the survey we received 793 responses and then we had an open-ended question at the end of the survey that asked is there anything else you would like to share regarding the potential implementation of a full day kindergarten program and also again please to know that there were 389 responses to that open-ended question and when those open-ended questions were our comments were read through they were placed in one of

025three categories either support for full-day kindergarten opposition for full-day kindergarten or if they were a comment that was neutral had no preference or was just an a comment that was about something related to kindergarten but not necessarily whether or not there was a support for or against folding in the garden they fell into that neutral no preference other category so as you can see we had 283 comments that supported full day kindergarten 27 comments that opposed full-day kindergarten 79 comments that were neutral or had no preference or another type of statement and now i am pleased that four of our kindergarten teachers are here tonight to share with you uh what a potential full day kindergarten schedule would look like and how it would work for a half day program that we would have as

026well um if we move forward to full day kindergarten we would like to make it known that there would be a half day option available should parents choose it it would be part of the full day program so students would come in the morning and the teachers our teachers our wonderful teachers are going to talk more about that in detail now hello i'm kristen mcpherson just a little background on me i teach kindergarten at ames i teach am and pm and this is my fifth year there and then prior to that i taught in quincy illinois and i taught full day kindergarten there for three years um so i'll go through the beginning of our schedule so we would arrive at 8 15 just like the rest of the school does at 8 20 would

027be our calendar weather and sel and this is a time where a class comes together gets a chance to settle in we'll do our morning meetings we'll get to greet each other we'll learn each other's names we'll do a share so i'll get to share something fun um that's also good for their language and then we'll do a morning message and talk about our schedule for the day we'll do calendar where we talk about days of the week and then we'll also do weather and then that will also add on about 10 minutes extra from what we have now so that really gives us the time um to go through the full morning meeting and 8 40 will be math this will look pretty similar to what we have now but it will be a

028little bit longer time at that part we'll go through the common core math skills and that will be a whole group lesson and then at 9 20 we'll have specials or recess and like angela said in the morning if the kids leave the afternoon every kid will at least get one special so we'll have pe one day music art and library the other day we'll have recess and then phonics and handwriting will be at 9 50 and this again will be an extended um amount of time from what we currently have and this one on the left you can see is phonics so for that we work on letters and sounds and a lot of those foundational skills that they need as they begin reading and in the older grades we also work on sight

029words and then handwriting is how to make the letter so we do that in their handwriting journals it might be with plato we make them in the air and then in this picture they have the little building blocks and they learn how to build the letters with that my name is karen bassing and i would like to talk to you about our reading writing guided reading and second step part of the day just a little background about me as i've been at blake park for 11 years and i've been a half day kindergarten teacher for the past 18 years so um i'd like to take the opportunity to share what a reading writing and guided reading literacy black would look like and as you can see on the schedule it would potentially be from 10

03020 um to either 1105 or three days a week it would go to 11 20. in kindergarten we use the benchmark advanced literacy program and this is a balanced literacy program and so what that means is it covers reading writing phonics speaking and listening skills so you can tell that there are many components to a balanced literacy block the additional instructional time will allow us to teach a full literacy lesson as well as incorporate small individualized group instructional time during our instructional time we teach learning to read through explicit phonics lessons but also we use predictable charts poems sight word instruction and small group we also enjoy reading books we work on developing comprehension skills and just to name a few of the things that we work on in kindergarten we include making predictions we

031compare and contrast characters and stories and we also look for evidence in the text our extended literacy block will allow us ample time to really dig in deeper and really strengthen and develop those skills and strategies that good readers use writing is also a pillar in the balanced literacy program and during this time we would work on extending our writing to include more of the writing process this additional time would allow us to have a conference with each student and work on improving their writing skills as individual writers and lastly speaking and listening are the last two pillars and they round out and complete the balanced literacy program this extended time will give us a chance to focus on working on these important skills with our young learners a favorite part of every kindergarten teacher's

032day is our guided reading time this is where the real magic of reading comes alive during this time we get to meet with small groups of children we work intentionally and directly with children at their own individual level also science and social studies integrate beautifully in the kindergarten level with a full day program we can extend the important concepts and again dig deeper to gain better understanding of these real world concepts two days a week we can also incorporate direct instruction of our social emotional program which is second step during this time we work on developing active listening skills social regulation skills turn taking and problem solving with our extended day we're allowed to practice these skills and apply them in authentic and real experiences then at 11 25 it would be the dismissal for

033those that are attending the half day program and for those attending the full day program would move on to lunch and recess this time provides a break both physically and mentally from the instruction and allows children to relax with a lunch and a chance to move around and play at recess before getting ready to join for an active afternoon okay hello everyone my name is brianna kosoborski i'm currently the kindergarten teacher at hollywood elementary school it's my sixth year teaching kindergarten and i have in the past taught both full day programs and the current half day program over at hollywood i'd love to thank you all for letting us present and speak we have really had such an awesome time working on this committee and collaborating together um and for the last half of this

034model schedule we decided to incorporate some photographs from past classes to kind of help show the idea and what type of activities that we would incorporate into a full day schedule and you'll see that lots of these photographs have kind of those little magical moments about kindergarten that we all love so much you'll see children building and exploring together problem solving sparking their creativity and trying new things and taking risks and in our current half day program teachers work really really hard to incorporate times for these magical moments sometimes at an indoor recess sometimes if we end a whole group lesson early but we aren't getting a whole lot of time to incorporate a lot of this free and play-based exploration so this would be something that a possibility of a full day schedule would

035really allow us to incorporate more of um and so looking at that first part of the afternoon it was important to us as a committee to provide a time for our young students to kind of have a time to rest and recharge after a busy time like lunch or recess and so this would be a time to incorporate more of a calming sensory experience where each child could practice the calming strategies that we learned during those second step lessons and work on kind of refocusing their body after such a busy time and this would also be a really great time for teachers to kind of check in individually with with students as well by going and sitting with them reading with them especially if we do notice students who are having a challenging day or

036a sensational day it would be nice to have some extra time to go and work on that one-on-one connection with them that we know is so important um and in the full day program we would also love to provide more opportunities to incorporate science and social studies extension lessons um so in our current half day as karen mentioned we really try our best to incorporate all of our science and social studies concepts into our current reading curriculum um and as you also mentioned it's it's a very whole balanced literacy block and so it's really sometimes a puzzle to get all of those pieces in there so to have a little bit of extra time with that um is a great possibility especially since teachers were recently trained on the new define stem program it would

037be beneficial to have a little bit more time to incorporate some project-based learning um that we've learned a lot of great new skills about so incorporating these types of things into our animals unit learning about weather and learning about plants are just some of the things that we would um grow on in our kindergarten schedule and then additionally a full day kindergarten would provide some more extended time for students to work on some more academic centers around the room um so i think if you were to ask any of the kindergarten teachers are really any specialist or interventionist that works with kindergarten what their number one wish would be it would be more one-on-one time to really meet students at their level and really deepen their understanding on different skills because we know not every

038student is the same so that really small group time is important for them to grow those concepts so not only is that working with teachers like karen mentioned we could do um both in the morning and in the afternoon but working on different skills around the room that are differentiated at their own levels um some students are still working on letters some students are working on full sentences um so it would be a great time for that and then um on our kindergarten team we also have a lot of intervention interventionists and specialists who also mentioned that it would be awesome to have some extra time for them to come in and work with their students that they service too and this could all be happening inside our the classroom all working together kind of

039independently independently around the room so it's little moments like these where we would find amazing learning to be happening and the possibility of a full day schedule would just incorporate some awesome time to add more of those thanks so much free hi everyone my name is alicia guevara and i have been teaching at ames just exactly for a year just across the one year mark and so pretty new to d96 but not new to kindergarten or to teaching so came from a few years in michigan teaching half day and then i did five years teaching full day in austin texas and then have moved from there to here and um just would love to wrap up the day um as we talk about our schedule so looking at that 150 spot um thinking with just

040that the whole day in mind um we really are keeping whole child in mind as well so from there we may have had a special in recess in the morning but we probably would need one about this point in the day too as we look at a little over an hour left of school um so taking that break that recharge i know whenever my kids even just run outside even on the sidewalk if it's cold or rainy that resets their mind and heading to specials is another chance for just another um type of intelligence we're going to do music or pe or art and gives them that chance in another setting along with whole child in mind but something kind of new to the schedule is just a child-centered or play-based exploration maybe if we

041think traditional kindergarten we might think of like okay go do free choice and um the so the house and plain house or the dolls or a doll house or blocks um and whatever they would you know generally do well teacher maybe sips a cup of coffee and checks or email and instead of that we are thinking more along the lines of that combination social emotional learning um with that play-based exploration so maybe if we're talking about cooperation this month um that we would have a little mini lesson prior to setting them spinning in their centers and be talking about how are we going to cooperate today let's focus on that and even maybe change up some of their manipulatives or their opportunities in their different centers we've already done a few centers as you saw

042in our schedule with maybe math or ela but these would be a little more on the fun side the hands-on and what we would consider more toys or problem solving um so for me i i see again that opportunity for five and six-year-olds doing what they love but with the guide and the connection of a teacher who cares a lot about them i think of some of my highest points we talked about the kindergarten magic appreciate that but just the the gasp of the first couple of times that i sit on the floor with my kids and say how about i be the elephant and you be the mom and i use a voice and i'm interacting playing alongside them and taking notes in my mind or on a quick chat chart so that i

043can um just watch how they're interacting how they're growing as whole child children um and combined with that then is going back to that that endpiece sel social emotional learning we started our day with that with our whole group meeting calendar weather sel and then to end that way as well i'd say we start with a heart we end with a heart um we reflect on our day how do we do today did we set a goal with how we were going to raise our hand did we set a goal how we were going to cooperate let's give some feedback i'd love to hear from you and then what are our goals for tomorrow um so ending just with a reflection piece a chance to share what did they do um and as i think

044of just that whole day as we head to dismissal i'm reminded of my dad teaching me how to shoot a basketball um i never got really great at it but i do remember the lesson um how he talked about um it's very important you know letting the ball go but the biggest part is the follow through and letting your both your right and left hand completely follow through even after the ball has left your hands with this whole day opportunity i just pictured this is finally letting us have that follow-through can we actually pour in in the morning that direct instruction that often feels so fast-paced and not quite fleshed out like we would love or quite the opportunities to get that individualized time and then with adding this time in the afternoon that we

045would actually get to watch our hands go all the way through into this shot and along that it's our one voice um instead of passing them off to maybe a daycare or another preschool support our voice is that consistent harmonious i taught you literacy in the morning i'm listening to you reinforce it in the afternoon and it allows for that opportunity too for that creativity just really seeing their personalities in structured settings within that unstructured we really appreciate you listening to us as we have put so much time our experience in our heart and as you've heard just a lot of research so thank you from behalf of teachers and our team thank you kindergarten teachers for that piece thank you for adding that personal information it really does help explain the changes that would

046be made between a half day program and a full day program our kindergarten teachers these are four of the six that we currently have they work really hard to provide our students just a well rounded rigorous education a half day but there would be educational benefits for our school district should we have a full day kindergarten and riverside district 96 that include increasing our contact time with our students just doubling that contact time from 785 minutes a week to 15 70 minutes a week it that double of time that doubling of time would give us adequate time to dedicated to academic and social emotional programming currently our kindergarten teachers take our academic programming and that's built for a full day program all of our curricular resources are structured around full day programs they take that

047academic programming and they adjust it and change it so that they're pulling the important pieces most important pieces out to be able to teach in a half day to have that doubling of time it would allow them to utilize our curricular resources as they're designed it gives us the ability to address the needs of the whole child as all four teachers described in the different parts of the day that they were talking about the ability to develop the social emotional skills through play-based learning as uh miss gurvara had discussed when talking about play-based exploration and then the ability to provide additional opportunities for enrichment and support as was mentioned by our teachers our interventionists and our specialists including our english learners teachers our reading and math specialists our special education teachers they all know that

048to go into a two and a half hour program and try to pull a student or even push in is a difficult is difficult to do the instruction is so quick pace because there's such limited time in a half day program and it's usually all whole group that it's hard for our interventionists our specialists our english language learners special education teachers to go in and provide the enrichment or support that students need but with these with the doubling of that time we are able to then as was mentioned by the teachers work to meet the individual needs of our students so maybe a classroom teacher is working individually or sing side by side and observing and playing and interacting with their students and while that's happening with the classroom teacher an interventionist might be coming

049in and reading a book with one of the students that they're working with or working at a math center with one of the students they're working with the gift of time can't be underestimated with a full day program jim i think oh go ahead i found the space failure but the long-term cost so we showed you the first year but the long-term costs over the 10 years are included all the way out and um i'll show you more detail on that later and um facilities we wouldn't have to make any major changes at any of the buildings so i to summarize finances and facilities they don't really they don't present any obstacles to whole day kindergarten and then i know i i just want to take um a few minutes thank this committee this exploration

050of full day um kindergarten you did a wonderful job presenting tonight i know you have done just tremendous amount of work meeting and talking and meeting and talking and i will just share with the board of education that this group really set out to be as objective as possible with a careful analysis of half day kindergarten and full day programming comparing the research looking at the research really looking at what it would mean for schedules what it really means for curricular implementation jim fitton has done a really great job in looking at our finances and facilities our board of education you've all had an opportunity to look at this kind of along the way as this group has been doing their work really since the start of this school year ever since it was identified

051is really one of the key goals in our strategic plan so thank you committee for being just very thoughtful and being very objective balanced and also so passionate right about about this work and it is clear from hearing this committee i know as much as they have looked at balance balance balance and being objective that um really we see that the the balance tips toward the educational benefit as this group has pointed out um just maybe some of those intangible the magical moments brie as you point out um that are you know the opportunity to have just more of those with more time for our students so as we put these four really pillars together around full day kindergarten it seems that there is you know evidence that says there is educational benefit for students

052the fiscal summary for us is that it does not have it does not present a barrier for us in terms of long-term financial projections the facilities work that the district has been committed to over the past several years really gives us adequate space um to offer full-day kindergarten and i think the community feedback even just the sheer volume of responses that we had really speaks volumes around the desire of the community as well tonight is not the night where where the board of education is going to vote on this this is really the evening to look at this uh comprehensive overview of all the information related to full day kindergarten and so now it's really um the board's opportunity to ask um any of you or all of you questions and i just again want

053to just uh offer a huge thank you not just for your time tonight but the time that you have really put in um since the beginning of the school year doing this careful analysis so exploration of full day committee action team thank you so very much thank you martha for that summary and i just i echo all your thoughts with this team it's a strong team we are so lucky to have these wonderful professionals here in riverside district 96 and um i've been just so appreciative and grateful to have worked with them on this action team and so with that um board members are there any questions angela thank you very much um this is this is all very good background and then explanations of the implications where does kite fall into this and i

054i might be misremembering something so so um kite was uh our intervention program for kindergarten students and we would identify a group of students who might need some extra time in the day for intervention services and they would come to school and the we had a morning kite and an afternoon kite so they had their assigned canary in class and they would come to school then for the other part of the day we didn't provide lunch or transportation so um so participation in kite was truly up to parents and it was up to them to pick up their students for lunch and then bring them back after lunch whether it was for their career in class or for the kite program and what we noticed is that we weren't able to truly meet the needs

055of all the students who needed intervention and then that also we were also only focusing on intervention we weren't able to focus then on students who needed enrichment at the kindergarten level as well so there was a piece of that that as we think about our strategic our current strategic plan there was a piece of kite that wasn't really addressing the opportunities for all students it was the opportunities for students who had the capital and the ability their families had the ability for transportation between the two the am and the pm day thank you i just have one question um can you talk a little bit maybe one of the teachers i don't know who wants to take it could talk about how the science instruction in the afternoon would be different i know just

056from being a central parent we used to have the pto involved for science in a camp because they just didn't have time to do everything that they needed to do in science can you talk about what that would look like i saw a little bit of the photographs but are you excited for hands-on science like tell me what that would look like i could i can talk a little bit about science and then i know that some of the kindergarten teachers um have been planning kind of based off our defined stem training some new units as well um but really what that would look like is a lot more hands-on learning projects which is kind of what the define stem program is all about um so kind of right now with our science science and

057social studies we're learning the concepts and having discussions about them but it would be really nice to provide that time for kindergarten students to really dive in and explore it themselves and that can look a lot of different ways but a lot of times we kind of want to give them some information and have them kind of choose their own questions and things that they'd like to learn about so thinking about like a live animal unit um kind of having them choose their own animals and be able to create different different products and different diagrams and things and kind of making it more of a whole process where they're asking a question making some predictions learning how to complete research and what to where to even go for that um so using different resources like

058epic and non-fiction books um and then kind of developing in their own way and the way that works best for the way that they learn a culminating project so one student might want to create a diagraph about a different type of type of habitat that they learned about or another student might want to create more of a video i've had students on i did a defined stem project uh this past year just kind of piloting it and a lot of my students kind of created different green screen backgrounds of different planets and kind of wrote about things that they would take to those planets um so it would just kind of look like a lot more of that hands-on learning where the students are taking a little bit more ownership and we're giving them a

059little bit more time to explore it on their own um so that's something that i would be really looking forward to is just giving them a little bit more extra time with that um and then any other kindergarten teachers i'm sure you guys have things you might want to share as well so basically like a fuller a more full extension of the scientific method for the little guys that maybe just get a tiny peek at it is that does that sound right okay may jump in there too just for one additional comment so i know that's why one of the reasons why we brought our early learner team on because a lot of times what will happen in the morning is what students will naturally they're naturally curious they're going to ask questions they're going

060to wonder and the center-based learning that we were speaking of in the presentation that's where those questions um can be explored inserted so teachers can take almost what the teacher what the students are sharing with them in the morning and during their you know during their questioning session or their discovery session and somehow um implement or put that question or that discovery piece into the center so that children discover it naturally and kind of come about the answer on their own um because we know that when you know they have that inquiry within them and they want to understand and learn that's where real learning and that's where real understanding happens and so that allowing for that more that more center-based learning in the afternoon that pairs with the learning in the morning um is

061just going to enhance the overall experience for the child thank you because i it's been a while i might i only have a third grader but it's been a while since we've done the the science projects that will just help give a better picture i appreciate it thanks uh one quick question about or maybe depending on how quick on slide eight the one with that chart um i think that's to me that was pretty staggering when i was looking at that prior to the meeting but i wanted to make sure i was interpreting it correctly so i don't know if we could flip back to that real quick but as far as like gap size could you kind of help me understand what exactly gap size is measuring like what does the 0.32 actually mean

062and then on the on the non or yeah not low income versus low income is that saying that the gap size between those two is what we're measuring here [Music] because mary do you have that in front of you um i don't have it right this slide in front of me i just i know that it was it was looking at the disparity in terms of their academic readiness overall in terms of how far um behind they were with their their age uh their typical age peers and it was just looking at when you had half day programs compared to full-day programs that the disparity wasn't as significant that that was able that during those early years those formative years with the extra additional time teachers were able to progress their students achievement further and

063address those needs so that they entered first or second grade uh more on par with their peers okay so wesley to your question um also to your question i would i would like to look at and then i can also email it to the board is um an email or we can communicate it is is that like when looking at not low income versus low income is that 0.5 1.51 year months is that 0.51 yeah percentage point second i want to look at the report to see what's the unit of measure for that 0.51 compared to 0.32 yeah that that's that would be helpful thank you because i wasn't exactly sure how to interpret that was that because i assume 1.0 is is equal and then anything below that would be a negative or a

064detractor or however you want to look at it but i wasn't sure if that was like 50 percent or like is that a percentage or what so yeah that would be helpful if you could look that up but i mean just looking at this chart like the visual really stood out um pretty glaringly so i just want to make sure i was interpreting that correctly but so then the on the the bottom portion of it that's saying that um not low income students compared to low income so not low income students would be the 1.0 and the gap is the gap of low-income students compared to not low-income students is that accurate it could um it could be 1.0 it could be that low-income students performed at one place and not low-income students performed at

065another place and the difference between those two places was .32 i think i had looked at that angela i'm sorry wesley i was just thinking i remember looking at this when you had sent us all the research i thought it really did have to do with reducing the disparity and the gaps when they entered just looking at the subgroups am i correct so depending on the subgroup then they're going to come come there with a certain level of preparedness and so that's really it is even i think even if it averages out by third grade you're still letting everybody come at the same playing field i think is what i thought it was saying in the article i could be wrong but maybe angela can no i think i think that's helpful so i need

066to get like 1.0 is not a starting point or an equilibrium point that's that's just a number that's on this chart so okay all right now that's helpful um in making sure i'm just understanding this so either way the visual of the gaps here are pretty glaring from this particular study anyway and that is what the study was trying to show is that when you have that again that gift of time you are able to address the needs of all students so that the gaps between students are you can see they're significantly lower in the study than they were for the half-day program students of the same student populations um with the gap disparities that they had yeah yeah and just thinking of our other one of our other objectives of equity i mean i

067think this this chart really plays into that component of it as well so i have the article i do have the one it says here it says that it shows the impact of fully kindergarten on the end of kindergarten literacy skills the effect size for all children was approximately um 0.3 standard deviations with hispanic children experiencing particularly large gains okay so it's a standard deviation that makes sense okay thank you kazmira yeah thank you uh i had a question really quickly um just wanted to make sure because i after reading the community survey just i know there's a few questions that maybe the community has um just wanted to make sure two things one um when jim described that there's no finance like that we're ready financially like we can absorb this does not mean

068we are raising taxes or anything i just wanted to be um make sure i was clear on that that this this plan does not uh affect the tax bill necessarily you know um because i feel like that's something in the community survey we that was reiterated like don't you know um so i just wanted clarity on that no sorry go ahead john go ahead sorry dude no jim's gonna i was just gonna say jim's gonna get into more detail on that in the finance sections but no the the current fund balance could very easily absorb um the additional uh personnel costs for a full day kindergarten it actually should be more i consider it more for just a footnote yeah i and i you're correct to dave and linda i think the the aspect is

069simply that we have a very good fund balance and our current revenue tax dollars is sufficiently above our expenses that it we still have a surplus no no and that's your point exactly joel i mean we uh put together we we spent um we put in our reserves 4.7 million dollars last year so our expenses were a lot less than what we brought in right i appreciate linda saying it though because i know there were people that said if you pass this it means our taxes are going to go up so i do appreciate her saying that because i think there was some misconceptions about how that would be paid for so it's you know something we didn't specifically talk about um so i just wanted to make sure that was clear um the other

070quick thing i wanted to quickly ask is just so right now we really value the size of our classrooms uh in district 96 um so my assumption is um you know we have nine sections of kindergarten we will still have those nine sections they will just be extended a full day um um just making sure we're also very cognizant of the fact that we don't want our class sizes ballooning um so i just wanted to make sure we were you know that was still part of this plan is that we're really you know uh cognizant effect that we're we're maintaining our class sizes it really won't affect the you know besides the extension of the day the actual like classroom um size yeah i'll i'll take that one um i think it will probably expand

071the enrollment per classroom in kindergarten but again i looked at the district head look at full day kindergarten analysis back about 10 even 15 years ago they were looking at nine sections of kindergarten we continue to look at nine sections of kindergarten one of the interesting things that happens in riverside district 96 is that we get a good number of new first graders and we actually get a good number of new second graders and we think what it is is often it's families that are pursuing a full day kindergarten option elsewhere and then deciding to enroll in the public school perhaps as first or even second graders so i anticipate where we may be in the high teens let's say in our kindergarten numbers maybe we are closer to that 20 21 22. so i

072think our class sizes could be a bit larger than they are in kindergarten but i don't think they're going to be larger than what they are in our primary classes and martha that's pr that's an act i think that's an accurate prediction based on what we've heard in the community that there some families choose to pursue a full day program elsewhere and then when the option of regular full day in the elementary is available that's when they switch over so i that's certainly out there and that's i think that's fairly accurate the one the one variable that might be hard to figure out is the parents that choose to go to a full day option and then never return to d96 that might go into d96 um like as those new first or second graders

073those that that never left so to speak because they're gonna enroll in kindergarten i think that's a harder number to figure out but there's only so many houses in riverside i mean our community is landlocked so i don't think it's gonna balloon like some of our you know near west and or like western and southern suburbs where you've seen like just massive population expansion we do have some limitations on that so i don't think it should be too much of a problem that we couldn't absorb that well to your point west go ahead martha oh i should say we did that demographic analysis um i mean there is there is a risk in that that piece right i mean there are communities that describe that many more families then come to the district um we

074have nine sections of every grade level throughout our elementary programming throughout our you know k through five programming and as you all know we've worked hard to kind of have that balance of three sections at ames three sections at central two sections now at blyth one section at hollywood a significant enrollment increase would be would certainly be a challenge for the district if we had to add one more classroom if really one more teacher about fifty thousand dollars if we got a first year teacher and possibly at a classroom somewhere so it's not going to blow the projections by a lot i would guess would be more of a space issue than a financial one correct martha yeah exactly well then yeah if we have those additional students then that problem grows and gets one

075classroom bigger or however many classrooms bigger each year right yeah but again there's there's only like like that could totally happen but there's only so many houses in river like that feed into riverside so you'd have to have people selling to families that have specifically kindergarteners um because really that that problem isn't any different for first second third you know through eighth grade type thing so it's definitely an unknown but uh i think it's somewhat of a controlled unknown i guess if that makes any sense that is i i do have i do have a question i guess this new question and i don't know if you have this answer martha but i also do know there's a certain amount of attrition too those who have started in district 96 and then have left to

076go to a private school do we have any sense of what the attrition is like um um that's a great that's a great question david i'm sure we could analyze that there's not a lot of attrition it's more the other way we tend to grow as the grade levels go up um rather than the opposite i mean there are families that move for whatever reason it tends to be that that you hear about a family disenrolling because of relocation okay before we get too much talking amongst ourselves i i did have a question for a couple of the uh the the kindergarten teachers who were on tonight and i hope i'm not putting them on the spot but i i noticed i noted some had experience of teaching both in half day and full day

077programs and i'm i'm wondering if they could share their experience with that and again my apologies if i'm putting anyone on the spot i'm happy to share uh definitely i went from half day to full day then back again to half and for sure i i wondered some at first of like is it my personality or is it that i just i like to be able to take my time and flesh out what is needed to be taught and then reflected um definitely felt like moving to half day has been if you've ever had to move from a big house to a smaller one and try to fit things in the cabinets um so and been doing a bit of that on the bright side i i've loved working with kristin mcpherson she's really great

078about staying on schedule and she'd been with the district for five years so she's been really good about making what we have work well with having kids really learn to read and get their standards mastered so the job has been done and kids are being loved and cared for i just picture there could even be more and i remember that really well from my full-day experience i'm just having that um also just that single-mindedness when you don't have two groups that you're juggling and 40 parents um you really can put that time and attention into making that group your group and so that part is definitely a gift and i know we'd all really welcome that sorry i don't want to interrupt another teacher or anything i just once one thing that i appreciated learning

079um from this whole study was the concept of the consistent caregiver throughout the day because i would venture from the responses that we got that the majority of our half-day kindergarteners go to a different program in the afternoon or vice versa and so they're with a different set of caregivers and so we have different sets of experiences good or bad whatever they might be but i do like the idea of them forming more solid relationships with all of you so i appreciate your feedback did any other canadian teacher want to share i can speak to it a little bit um so my full day before it was unfortunately more like academic based we didn't have much of the play base but i think the biggest difference is before we just like alicia said we had

080time nothing was rushed in here it's like we only have 20 minutes now we need to do writing and i feel like sometimes the kids are rushing and then it's like they barely even got to finish their work all the like all the way so i feel like just having that extra time of follow-through and actually having the kids um get their work done that's helpful and then i'm on the science committee too and planning those lessons right now it's kind of like we're planning them but when to eat when do we do them so just having more time for that and i think relationships are good not that relationships are bad in half day like love the kids they love their teachers we have fun but having their relationship with one set of kids

081all day i think that's a benefit too yeah i i really agree with both of the teachers that spoke i i really just also think that um we really need to credit these half-day kindergartners that kind of get through this day because i i've heard year after year from parents that you know they come home and it's just like like they have have really just spent their whole day you know less and through lesson through lesson um so i just kind of feel like with my full day program one of the biggest difference is was being able to follow through with um just sort of those seo components you know if something does happen during our half day program an issue between peers or an issue that you know just kind of happened at recess

082it's harder to find that time to really sit with those students and talk about what happened and teach them strategies to kind of move forward from that so i kind of feel like when i did teach full day programs there it almost was more of just a relaxed type of feel like you could walk in the room and students are working independently and there are some days um in half day that it is like that but it is a little bit more of um you know are we going to finish this lesson can the kindergartners retain that memory if we have to stop at mid lesson and revisit revisited another day because we didn't have enough time you know or is it even beneficial at that point um so i'd say just overall just having

083that time to breathe and relax and really talk through those problem-solving concepts is a big difference for me and although i haven't had the luxury of being a full-day kindergarten teacher being in a half-day program over the last 18 years i can say that 18 years ago the kind of curriculum and the kind of activities that we were doing are vastly different than what we are doing today and the rigor that we have today is um the children are doing it and they're enjoying it and they're learning and they're making growth grains but i feel like it's a pace that for some it's unsustainable and i do imagine that they go home and they say i'm exhausted because i just went when i went and we don't have that luxury that gift of that exploration

084that inquiry that let's take this to the next step it's really a quick pace and um so i think from my perspective just having that oh we want to talk about this a little bit more we want to go one step further we want to look at this from a different lens through a different perspective would really be a gift thank you now thanks everyone for answering answering my question on that uh now i i have a recollection from when we've discussed this in the past and i think sherry alluded to it a little bit that i i definitely i i it might have just been one study that we were appointed to but i i recall seeing that in the early going uh the academic preparedness of kids who participated in full day program

085versus half day program definitely was measurably greater however by the time those kids got to i think it was third grade those numbers kind of even out or wash out um and start to the the other kids who are in a half day program tend to catch up i wonder if that was something that was observed in any of the studies or is that i think it was an old study at the time so perhaps that's no longer uh no longer an accurate statement or or could someone speak to that i can so the studies that we looked at for half day um that is some of the like the comments that were made that we need to still continue to look at the longitudinal effects of half day versus full day kindergarten or that

086the uh the gaps between performance level off in later academic years the one thing that i'd say to that is thinking about our strategic plan if we can help our students sooner with a full day program rather than continuing to have students who are struggling because they've been in a half day program and continuing to need provide interventions because they've been in a half day program i think that's better for them and it also addresses our strategic plan of looking at our equity and opportunity equity and opportunities i think the benefit of a full day kindergarten program meeting needs earlier rather than continuing to need to provide intervention to get to that point and we some students we know from our half day kindergarten programs don't always get to that point i think there's just

087a benefit the benefit of even if it levels off the benefit of bringing them together is very important i think one thing that i really appreciate about however you guys made the schedule working together for the potential um you know full day schedule was that the inclusion of the sel in play was very um deliberate and that that i think for me i i i really would not be in favor of it if they were going to be drilled all day pushing papers and on devices really that's you know from what everything that we read i really did appreciate the benefit of play for the children and hearing you guys talk about your relationships with them and and social emotional talks that you can have i think that regardless of what happens in third i

088think those are beneficial to our community and everything that we've been through being at home during pandemics so i did appreciate what angela is saying looking at it in a balanced way and certainly the equity of those that don't have the same experiences in preschool to bring them up to where they could be if they had the right you know the proper interventions earlier so um i had a question so i just want to echo my thanks and appreciation to the kindergarten action team for all the work that you did to bring this report to us and just your thorough analysis i really have a great deal of respect for all of you and really value your professional opinions so thank you so much um i guess one of the questions i had was i'm

089curious to know some of the conversations that happened landing on the option for the half day for the families that choose to participate in a half day program only on the one hand i like the idea of providing families with the choice to make the decision that might be right for their families and learners but on the other i look at some of the data like that wesley was talking about with some of the achievement gaps and i get concerned with providing the choice although i know that many of our neighboring districts and some of the studies show that the students or the districts that began with the choice for a half day either no families took them up on it or within maybe a couple months time they had opted into the full day

090so maybe i've just argued myself in a circle but i'm just curious what some of the conversations were uh to land on the option for half day for those that should elect it martha where am i wrong that you had told us that this is really the state requ requires us to allow for a provision for half day or am i incorrect in thinking yeah no you're correct um so kindergarten interestingly is not mandated um and school districts if they do provide full day must provide um you know yeah our in our decision to kind of embed the half day into the full day potentially is somewhat driven by space also to be really frank about that and certainly looking at some of our neighboring districts that have recently added full day kindergarten what they

091have shared is it's near zero if not zero families that decide to take advantage of the half day only so um we'd we'll have to wait and see on that um but um but yeah it is not a ch we don't have the choice the state requires us to provide that choice no that's a helpful reminder thank you so i think there's a good point though stephanie what you're trying to get at or i think what you're trying to get at is like what i was looking at i i sort of had that in the back of my mind when i was looking at that what is a what does a day look like in kindergarten and it felt like whether that was intentional or not it does seem like a lot of the um

092academic part of it was skewed toward the earlier part of the day and the latter part of the day was like reflecting on it or supporting it or something like that so like from an equity standpoint do we feel like uh if if a parent were to choose half day that they would still be getting um maybe for a lack of a better way to phrase it like they're still getting kind of a quality education they're just obviously they're going to miss out on that second half of it and that's just a time factor but it seems like we've kind of scheduled it so that the a lot of that important learning that they would they would get is at that that uh that morning section before they would leave um i don't know if

093that's a true assessment from what i'm looking at but i think it's kind of a good question like are we kind of accounting for that as we build out that schedule just to try to do do whatever we can to to help those students that that do choose or parents that choose a half day option yes so when we built the oh go ahead kazmari yeah you go ahead yeah so it was it was intentional in terms of how we created that schedule um because we didn't know that there could be parents and families that that did up for a half day program um based on you know their family situation and we wanted to make sure that we looked at the half day program and that all the content and the standards that we

094would normally provide like typically provide this year to our half day students that those students were still receiving that experience we also talked about things like specials like right now kindergarteners receive one 30-minute art one 30-minute music 130 p.e session per week that would go to two and we would have one of those classes happening in the morning and the other set happening in the afternoon and that it wouldn't be any new content being taught in the afternoon it would just deepen whatever was experienced in the morning and that way the students did receive the content and no one was at a disadvantage um but it does create that opportunity like you noted that the the play base the center base things that you know maybe possibly are limited or missing in the curriculum right

095now are happening in the pm am i now i i work with little ones but in a different context but i i have noticed that they are if you're trying to get them to absorb something more detailed in my opinion my opinion from working with them that in the morning they are a bit more receptive and fresh versus the play that they might benefit from the afternoon i might be generalizing too much i don't know if the teachers can speak to that and so i kind of like what kesmir is saying that if they choose half day it's it's fairly equitable and they can still get a special in but i i do think they have a freshness about them which is why they're they're up so early and ready to go before anybody else

096is ready like my teenager is much different so someone can speak to that but i mean i would just agree you know that you know we do you know i think that i think everyone feels that way i think that's why we have such a high demand every year for you know parents asking for am sessions um you know that's it's always the principal's best time of the year when we have to give those decisions out but um but yeah no i think that you're right it's it it definitely is something where you know students um and i think mostly people too i mean even if you're not considered technically a morning person um you might be more you know open to to learning new ideas or you have more energy or more my space

097in the morning to take more information in but just going back to what you know i was like i said asked it was intentional in terms of how we created the schedule and and it was a very thoughtful um lengthy discussion among the committee members as we created it which then i think it it seems like if anybody chooses half day it would be a morning half day like there would not be a pm option right that's correct it also maintains the neighborhood school balance that you know we kind of thought about should one school offer a half day program that gets into that whole transferring away from your neighborhood school that's so complicated here so this embedding it within the full-day program really seemed to make sense on a number of fronts wesley i

098don't know if your question meant this but i also feel like you're implying this idea if there's a student who's demonstrating maybe an academic or social emotional need and they're in half day and we might prefer that they're in full day because there's an opportunity to extend some of those whether it's intervention enrichment additional social emotional supports the thing i would just say is that even in my whole career where there's been half day kindergarten you know here in riverside we had the kite program that we invited families to have their children enroll and to get that additional support i think that it's very likely that if we had a child choose half day that we really felt would greatly benefit from that full day because of some additional needs that we would really work

099with that family to invite and encourage them to enroll in the full day program yeah martha i'll second i'd like to support what you're saying and that we would have an obligation to recommend that the child in question gets that extra intervention and support i that goes throughout our mission and that is any child in the district is we we give them support we recommend additional helps where necessary exactly so it seems pretty obvious but it feels like we're coming to the end of the conversation maybe um and it wasn't explicitly stated on a slide so i'm just going to ask the recommendation of the committee is to implement full-day kindergarten correct as we went through the procedure looked at the research really tried to be balanced i will say that even with the research

100you know there were multiple slides about full day kindergarten one slide about half day even with the research when we divided up as a committee some working on full day research some working on a half day it was a struggle to find articles that outright explicitly supported half day but yes the gift of time is the biggest piece and being able to not rush our students not rush the teachers the committee's recommendation would be full day kindergarten thank you angela oh thanks for that question uh wesley that's i had this exact same question so thank you yeah i just i like making sure things are straightforward and clear for for everybody i i'll just reiterate uh i appreciate all the time and effort that all of you have put into this angel has been keeping

101us up to date on on all the hours spent and just in meetings and all the prep time that goes into it so as everybody else says i agree i really appreciate all the work that you guys have put into trying to be fair and balanced and objective about what to do here so thank you yeah second that for sure yes no definitely thank you very much definitely yes thank you because as we know um after last year it's not like you have nothing to do it's been a really hard two years and committee work as you know is a lot of hours so thank you so much you know just really quickly i think about you know the last two years we've been in a pandemic but when we you know think a little

102higher um we've gotten through strategic planning we're having this conversation i'm really proud of this district for continuing to move forward while it felt like we were so uh stuck so i just wanted to thank the administration the team for doing that because um i've been uh in the district for 15 years i don't have kids in the schools anymore i have high schoolers but i've been waiting for this conversation for 12 years so i'm really excited that even in the midst of a really you know challenging time um we're taking on these opportunities to move forward so i appreciate everybody's work you thank you all um and thank you a huge thank you from me to the committee and to mrs gorman for her assistance in leading the committee um they've just they've done

103a great job as you all have seen and linda i think it speaks to this committee absolutely certainly to the administrative team but to the board of education as well right you know this has been you know how do we in the midst of a global pandemic not only keep our kids in school as much as we possibly can and keep them as safe as we possibly can but to continue to move forward with some big ideas that we've really been wanting to um to address so so thank you all as well i'm just ecstatic we have space to make these kind of choices that we never had like linda was saying so many years ago it was never ever ever a possibility we just had nowhere to put them so i'm so thankful for

104everybody worked on that the other projects the facilities that allows us to have these conversations because i mean you have to have a reasonable teaching environment so thank you to everyone who worked on that and just one more final thank you on behalf of the committee uh just a big thanks to um tangible dozel and dr ryan choi in the board of education for allowing the committee to be formed and to explore just this you know very important um and obviously um [Music] passionate group that led this uh charge to to research fully kindergarten extra implementation in district 96 we're so appreciative thank you indeed thank you indeed for your time i know we have a few other education committee items um that will be much more brief than this one um also is just

105a huge thank you to the committee again and again and again but you are also welcome to stay and you are welcome to drop off the zoom if that um is easier you have to get ready for your e-learning days tomorrow yeah that's right good point martha right i don't think they like us and now we're on to the second part of our our very long agenda i want to happen and then we've got a brief update on goalie or is one two and three and then calendar and math angela so i will start with goal area one um because i will be very short so first update would have been the exploration full day kindergarten as one of our action teams and that was just done and then the second update is on uh

106the second action team under goal area one which you haven't heard much about this year but that's our standards-based reporting action team goal and so the action team leaders for our standard space reporting goal are kim hefner who's the principal at hollywood elementary school and katie casta who's the student coordinator at hauser junior high they'll be working with me to lead that action team and we are meeting um myself with the two action team leaders in the next couple of weeks to begin to identify our smarty goals as well as our timeline and uh potential outcomes and real quick the smarty goals are what we've worked on with cec for any of our action teams that are in progress and um we're all aware of smart goals the specific measurable actionable timely i forgot they

107are realistic the ie is a newer piece that it talks about inclusion and equity which fits perfectly with the third goal under goal one which is our opportunity in equity and we are addressing opportunities in equity throughout all of our goals and that's why we've looked at smart tea goals instead of smart goals and i can address goal number two as we look at the strategic plan and the goal number two which is learning environment and culture the last time i met and shared with you in november i shared the actions of the different teams and what they were all working on at that time the three action teams under learning environment culture is social emotional learning culturally responsive and student-centered learning and when we met in december with the action team leaders and the

108district leadership team working with cec it became very evident as we were talking that there was concern by these three [Music] action teams under goal number two that much of the work that they were doing had the same goals in mind and there was concern about the fact that they did not want to do work in silos that much of the work that they needed to do needed to be done in tandem so as we move forward through that meeting we discussed that the team that the three action teams should become one but with that they would still take on the research of their own individual areas as each of these are very big ideas and very important ideas that require research and attention and expertise so moving forward we will all be one team

109um we've even worked out schedules for the remake just yesterday actually for the remainder of this school year of how we will meet and some timelines of meetings for next year and what we're looking is that when we do meet we will meet as one whole group then the teams will break up into other groups to work on their specific information and bring it all back to make sure that we're all working on the same path there was a concern that we would be doing working in silos and some of the work overlapping so now we'll be working in tandem more as we move forward and before we put this in place i did meet individually with all three teams from december to the end of january and we discussed how we would do this

110everyone is on board and they all seem to think it's a really good idea and a positive way to move forward with goal number two are there any questions okay thank you good evening i'll be giving a brief update on goal three which is high quality staff uh there are two action teams associated with the skull area the first update will be on the personalized professional learning team uh angela dozil is the lead action team leader who oversees the committee's work and will be providing an update on the progress angela so for our professional personalized personalized professional learning as you know we've been working with our newly implemented professional learning planning team our plpt which is comprised of staff members and administrators and myself and a consultant from west 40 as we work on personalizing

111our professional learning throughout the year we've been working on what we call a mastermind structure where staff members have been focusing on either culturally responsive practices or social emotional learning following each mastermind session each 75-minute professional learning session we collect survey data from our staff members to see how the professional learning session went and what went well and what might need adjustments and we continued to make adjustments based off of that so we had our last 75-minute professional learning mastermind session uh in january and the beginning of january and we have reviewed that data we have another one coming up in march and so we're using that data to continue to refine the process and to look at how we want to structure professional learning for the 22-23 school year so the team is working

112together each month we meet we're working together to continue to refine the process for our last three 75-minute professional learning sessions this year and working to develop our overarching goals for professional learning for next year as well as a timeline for the 75-minute sessions and the structures that will be used thank you angela the second action uh team associated with goal three is focused on diverse workforce i'm the lead action team leader for this group we've been meeting about every six to eight weeks and last met formally in the middle of january at that time team members provided updates on tasks that they had been assigned we also reviewed the first draft of our action plan was able to add some additional elements based on our discussion items that day a working draft of our

113action plan including some of the action items we've identified for the first phase of the plan was provided via a memo and shared with the board additional details regarding the work we're doing were also included in that memo earlier this week a subset of team members actually was yesterday were able to meet again and additional progress was made on the implementation plan including proposed timeline and budget estimates for the first phase the draft plan will be continually refined and reviewed with the cabinet team for feedback in the coming weeks and the team will meet again on march 10th any questions can you summarize and this might require some input from martha and angela how do we currently go about advertising for positions i know in theory but is it mostly through our own job boards

114um so you know we certainly have a requirement we post internally first to see if there's people that might be interested and then we use this k-12 job spot which is really like a state board of ed hosted site um but donna shared they go out to that then takes it out to other sites like indeed and a few other things down you may be more well-versed on that than i am um yeah i know that the jobs are often end up in like the i think the iasb has as a job board that ends up there i'm not sure about the i can't speak to the indeed portion um but those are some of the things we'll be looking at in terms of how to broaden um the uh where where their where jobs

115are posted different job boards but also job boards that maybe are targeting diverse communities our diverse applicants creating partnerships with universities that could could once again bring in you know more applicants and that's kind of where i was going is with the current method we're probably getting in front of a typical pool of candidates and so how do we shift that focus towards the more diverse i'm assuming that we are evaluating right now that our typical pool isn't quite as diverse as we'd like i realized yes it's somewhat of a rhetorical question no i said i think that that's probably fair to say although haven't really delved into you know the the you know if there's any if that information is really statistically available um because a lot of applicants you're just seeing names um

116so one of the things one of the new things we're doing uh is there is a diversity in education job fair virtual job fair this april that we have signed up for and that's that's in in that draft plan and but we have already signed up for it and we will be attending attending that there are some other there are local area schools that attend that is a national um job fair but uh i know that uh cps uh hinsdale i believe woodridge um i can't think off the top i had the others but there's about four or five area districts that participate in that and i did contact um some individuals within those districts the suburban ones not cps and uh then got positive feedback on it although it it is you know depending

117on on the um again depending on the area where the candidates being pulled from oftentimes some minority candidates are more interested in working with populations that have higher higher minority population than we do as often as the case so it has been a real learning process just uh you know getting um you know working with uh connecting with other school districts just gathering information getting feedback on what their experience has been and uh given that kind of the timing of when we're we're starting you know we wanted to get we wanted to get some things accomplished before this hiring cycle which really begins you know february march where we started advertising uh jobs for next year so it was kind of a tight window for especially this phase one but given the items that uh

118we're going to try to get accomplished over the next uh you know six to eight months then really next year even have a better feel for possibly what worked and continue to build on uh and expand some of the strategies uh around this uh this topic and that makes sense i mean realistically this is to make a change in hiring in our hiring candidate pool is going to take time it's not this isn't a one-year effort by any means this is it's a forever effort really right and once we fully support that it's going to it's going to take some time to see results so don't let this committee get dispirited by a longer timeline no and and we knew that we all knew that kind of going into this and actually uh martha and

119wesley and i had met uh previously and talked about that this isn't it's not a quick fix and we don't know what type of um uh you know we don't know what progress we might make in that area um and that it is it is a a long-term plan it's really more about making sure that we have the right you know those right strategies in place that that will at least you know recruit you know we'll at least get more applicants in and then after that well we're also we also want to take a look at what our just what our internal practices are uh like with our with administration and just um look at our actual interview and hiring uh or you know our interviewing and recruiting practices as well yeah i mean this

120is even this isn't even really a five-year objective like i appreciate you saying that joel like this is a forever effort right like this is an ongoing thing that we always have to look at um and it's not easy either and so i think i i don't really have any questions i'll just comment like i really when i when i first saw this um this draft that was put into board book i really appreciate the effort you guys put in like the broad-based thinking around the different things that we need to do to try to tackle this and that to me that was kind of the year one thing is just figuring out where are we at and then like year two is how do we improvement prove it and then year three is you

121know if if it's not improving what are we doing wrong because like you you can't do anything if you don't have candidates in the pool but to your point don just because you have candidates in the pool doesn't mean they're going to accept an offer if we make one and we're not going to offer just because right like it still has to be the right candidate so there's a ton of variables that go into this so this is really more of a mindset like making sure we have the right mindset in how we're bringing high quality staff into the district and then retaining them and making sure that it's representative of all the experiences of everybody all the students being reflected in in the staff and all of that so this is a this is

122a very complex one that is the needle is going to move pretty slowly i would expect on this one over time but it's just one of those like we've got to be very intentional and diligent in in how we facilitate this so i think this is a great foundational starting point for where we're at really uh what six eight i don't know i guess whenever the the plan was officially kind of set in motion um we're very very early on here so i i think this is a great foundation for what we're trying to do and a good starting point so um i really like what i what i saw here so thank you and then just one other put to your point um was what we did kind of add and it's also in

123the uh in the update is uh given some of the research that we've you know been uh looking over and some webinars that we've attended um is now the added in the diversity equity and inclusion the the sense of belonging and that's and and that's really has been the focus and that's how you retain people because you can bring people in but if they don't feel like they belong here they're not going to stay yeah yeah i think that was the one that that part stood out to me the most i think is just like kind of putting somewhat of a definition of what these things mean um just so that there's no personal interpretation that's different than what we're trying to actually achieve here so um i do a lot of work with the

124d e and i part the b is that's the first time i've seen that i'm like i really like that i'm going to take that and i'm going to use that in other things that i work on so i will share a new webinar yeah like if you don't feel like you should be here you're going to leave it doesn't matter what else you do if people don't you know incorporate you or you don't feel like part of that community then you're going to go somewhere else so i really like that addition or at least in addition from my perspective of how i've engaged in the whole diversity equity and inclusion process in other capacities thank you this is a very kind of a subtle tangent but it reminds me of being a younger girl

125and we were told yes you can be an engineer you can do all these things and i had friends that would go into engineering but they were never asked a question in class or they might be ignored for a project and so that sense of well-being whether it's someone that looks like you or has experiences like you i think it's so important to make them feel that ownership so i do i agree with wesley tremendously that's you you can invite them in but if they don't feel welcome i think i totally agree with wesley that's so important thank you very much i think elementary math curriculum and also the calendar angela maybe we have calendar calendar so we'll start with the calendar um we have a calendar team that meets yearly it's comprised of teachers

126secretaries parents and we serve as an advisory committee for the board because ultimately the board approves the school calendar for the school years so during this calendar this year's calendar meeting we had a discussion that started to talk about the possibility of an earlier start date given that riverside brookfield high school starts the week of august 15th what would be the possibility like look talking and discussing about what would be the possibility of starting that same week to closer align our calendars to the high school so as we discussed that and did some research we also saw that uh district 96 has not started that early in the past we looked at the past seven years of calendars uh we have not started that early we've usually started somewhere in that third week of school

127somewhere around the 21st 22nd 23rd so i bring to you from the team two calendars one that has considers a start date of wednesday august 17th for students we'd have teacher institute days on the monday and tuesday proceeding and then school would end on tuesday may 30th one of the benefits of starting early are is looking at that end of the year earlier time well one of the benefits starting early is aligning closer to the high school calendar it also has students ending before june where we've noticed as educators that students sometimes struggle as we get into that june month with being able to continue to focus um a byproduct or a an advantage of starting earlier but was not really part of the considerations that then any summer construction we have would be able

128to start as soon as june 1 where if we look at the second calendar option that's brought forward to you any summer work would end up starting after that end date and the end date would be around june 6. so the second calendar looks at a start day of wednesday august 24th with the institute days being the monday august 22nd and tuesday august 23rd and our final day of school if we started on the 24th would be as i said june 6 tuesday june 6. so i bring these two calendars to you the school board to hear from you your thoughts your feedback on the two options so that i can bring it back to the committee or the team to uh have finished that finalize that discussion and then bring you the team's uh

129recommendation for a school calendar and before we start that discussion you provide your feedback the other thing that's not on this calendar yet but was a conversation that the team has had is potentially looking at adding a half day professional learning day so i have to have attendance for students in the morning and then in the afternoon having a block of time for professional learning what we are doing with that is seeing if we have more time three hours rather than 75 minutes after school if we have more time built into the day for professional learning if we are able to what we're able to accomplish with that we feel that with that block of time we'd be able to accomplish a bit more than we are in a 75-minute professional learning session after school

130and so we'd be able to look at tackling some of the big things we've got coming up you heard from pam shaw about the sel committee working together they're working on big topics of social emotional learning as well as why am i blanking social emotional learning and culturally responsive practices and then soon we'll be bringing on student engagement opportunities as well um you know in a few minutes i'll talk about a potential new math curricular resource that's another big thing that we're looking at and so we're looking at how can we continue to optimize potential professional learning time given the big nuggets we have coming up angela can i ask a question what's the frequency of the half day is it how many half days are we talking is just the one for this year

131we were just looking at implementing one to see how it works thank you i just wanted to make sure i understood it okay so yeah putting in one gathering data that survey data i talked about from our 75 minute sessions we would gather data also from that half day session so that we could see if our teachers were seeing a difference in that professional learning rather in addition to the 75 minutes that we have so i think you just answered my question in addition to not in replacement of so yeah it just really allows us to try a different model um it's one that the state board of ed calendar allows for what they call school improvement half days um so i think is angela's saying and i think said well we're we'd like to

132try that as an additional professional development opportunity for our staff i think you've mentioned this before martha the state only allows five full days if i'm remembering correctly but four institute days and five half days i believe right angela in the public school calendar full days if your school day is longer than five hours there's a there's a formula that goes into being able to use the half days we're using all of the full day institute days already that's already in the calendar and so this would be another half a day on top of that in addition to the whatever it is six or whatever uh 75-minute pd so just trying to get to get like i think you just said three hours like three hours of additional uh professional development essentially correct sorry if

133you already said this sorry wes um where is the placement of this half day in the school year are we talking early or in the middle or at the end of the year so we were looking at that and working on that towards the end of the year um and the reason behind that is we have institute days in august then we have 75-minute professional learning sessions as well as the 60-minute building sessions in september we have another institute day in october and then we have the 75-minute 60 minute in november december is a shorter month january we come back it's also a shorter it's a little bit shorter depending on how the winter breaks work february we have an institute day march we have spring break so that would leave if we're going to

134put that half day it would leave looking at april or may but leaning probably towards may because april is state testing so if doing it in may topics that we would look at would be looking at professional learning that may need to happen for the upcoming year so if we get to the end of the year and we're going to implement say a new sel curricular resource or a new sel philosophy we would use that half day for the district learning for that philosophy to plan for august if we were looking at alignment of curricular resources we take our data from the year's benchmarking terms to see where we're at with teaching the standards to see where students are ending in the spring benchmarking time so we could talk about what needs are going to

135happen at the beginning of the year in the fall and we would plan for that vertically meaning our first grade team would meet with our second grade team second grade would meet with third grade so structuring that so that you're able to meet with the grade that's sending students to you in the upcoming year we might also look at any professional learning that might happen for curricular resources that we currently use having looked at the year seeing how the curricular resources continue to work for us and looking at making any adjustments that are needed so that when placing a professional learning session towards the end of the year you're looking at utilizing it for the professional learning that would be occurring for the upcoming year in terms of the i'm sorry go ahead and i

136was just gonna say in terms of the half day it would be great if if if we do move in that direction that we would be able to perhaps work with the parks and rec department much like we did right now for the snow days to provide some coverage for the remainder of the school day i know many families who rely on school day out programs on these institute days because they are not often days that um the you know traditional workforce is off although i do recognize they're usually flanked um by some given holidays but perhaps if we do go that route it would be good um in terms of the overall calendar i find it really difficult to wrap my head around ending in may i also come from a completely different like

137post labor day start i know i don't know how our educators feel but i know many educators and families tend to take personal time and vacation time in some of the later warmer summer months also for families that rely on summer camps around here the summer camps are staffed primarily by college students and so a lot of summer camps there's often a gap the riverside one tends to align with district 96 calendar but not every family enrolls their children in the riverside camp there are other nearby camps in the suburbs that parents rely on in the summer and many of them do not start until sometime in mid-june they tend to follow d95 but again more than aligning with a district they're waiting for college students to come home from college which they are not

138usually home in early in late may so those are some of the challenges i think with the starting earlier i recognize i mean we just went through the hollywood project i recognized the ability to start construction earlier but i don't know if that outweighs um some of the other negatives i see with starting early i don't know how other board members feel but i just i had thoughts on it so i was going to ask the same thing stephanie i appreciate you bringing that up no i was thinking that two would swim we we had swim issues last summer because all the college students went away and there was no and they had to spread out the kids because of the covet and so there was no one to teach and so they had to

139stop the classes i thank you for asking that yeah no i mean i i i understand that i'm concerned but i guess that also on the on the flip side though too at the later months i do know the camps also things wrap up earlier because kids are going back to school uh the college students are going back to school i i personally think it'd be more advantageous i mean we have a lot of families that do have uh kids that will be going that are in hell with high school and junior high even some grade school uh i do know that has been a an issue for many parents like that the uh the start times don't always necessarily line up um the only thing that i had the only concern i have uh

140about this uh calendar is that it ends on the day after labor day and that's the last day of school or i'm sorry memorial day that's the last day of school i'm just wondering uh is there a way to just basically eliminate that because i i'm for some reason i would just have a my instinct would be that with the tenants would be very low that day and that was something that uh dr ryan joy and i had looked at and talked about as well we would if that's the if that was the calendar that we settled on we would need to look at probably adjusting the start like moving the start day today we can't add an extra day so that we're here the tuesday wednesday and just reduce a day so that like

141just take that away and end on friday because we have to have a minimum number of student attendance days so that tuesday puts us right at that minimum of 176 student attendance days yeah angela and i there's benefits and advantages in both in terms of the summer camps is there any option and i realize this is asking your committee to do more work but look at just ending on june 2nd so that that week after memorial day is actually a full full week or is that just a bridge too far that goes to adding days um to the calendar which then becomes a contractual issue because of the way the contract is worded for um days in the school calendar but i don't know uh martha do you have anything you'd like to sorry anything

142you'd like to add to that well i guess i think you could yeah you could you could start on the 22nd right you just move just shift to the days in the calendar i think is what you're going at joel yes that is exactly what i'm going through and then we're out of sync with with rb but right which then by three days but we've always been out of sync with rb so for the last seven years at least yes yes well as someone who has i have kids in rb and d 96 from that convenience factor that i could see benefits but honestly i've always thought rb starts too early and ends too soon i it just especially for this area uh i mean may is still chilly that's nice i'm also one like

143dan i don't i hope i'm not cutting you up or anything dan but i i also have one in each district and i've always thought arby's starts too early and yeah it's called i i would i rather take a trip in august probably but not quite as cold as it is today but it is uh really hasn't affected my family i'm only one family obviously there are probably people that have a lot of varying opinions but sure so so can i just ask angela can i just ask a question i mean what what is what what is the um the committee's recommendation i mean what is their uh preference uh for this and i guess what would their and why why would they go with one calendar or the other that is a wonderful question

144the team doesn't have a preference they much like this discussions the benefits and challenges to both calendars which is why as talking as a team talking with martha we thought that it would be good to bring it to you since it is an advisory team we thought it would be good to bring it to the board to see if there was a strong feeling one way or other from the board your conversations sound very similar to the conversations the team had um and that again there are many benefits and many challenges to both calendars do we know was there a stated rationale for why we haven't synced with rb in the past so um i can probably show just what i what i think i understand to be history and sort of start with this

145idea that um going to this earlier start date matching with rb is a significant shift i believe for the you know pre-k 8 community and not one that we would want to just do automatically or do lightly i think it's fair to say that in some ways bringing a committee together bringing a team together to talk about this is is good we want this this shared input kind of we were surprised that there were some teachers that thought that maybe this seemed like a better way to run the academic calendar so the history my understanding from how elementaries and high schools really got sort of separated was this idea that high schools tried to move toward getting final exams in before winter break for kids that that came out as a strong recommendation on dealing

146with stress levels with students that that they went home for a winter break and had to study for finals the whole time so high school started to start earlier to get a full semester in before a traditional winter break and that sort of put elementaries in positions often to say and i'm speaking of communities around here and we actually gathered up calendars for our whiskey districts and and all that to try to get some of this comparative understanding is that elementary districts felt that was too early for elementary and for families and represented such a shift that elementary's kind of stuck with this third fourth week in august high schools kind of went to this second third week in august and i think there are many high school elementary districts that now have this disparity

147so it's a really interesting question it is a shift um you know one thing we've talked is it you know do we want to ask the community you know is it a survey question um again when we we know when we ask we have to sort of be ready to um you know be responsive to that kind of feedback not that we have to then go forward with that it's it's always tricky to do a survey and that people who feel strongly respond and sometimes those that are indifferent don't respond but um that might be another option i think even understanding from our staff we know some staff have thought that this would be a good idea i don't know if we think the majority right angela that's correct um that is that's absolutely correct

148i actually did receive an email from a teacher today who is expressing opinions about an earlier start and just the unexpectedness of that as well so i don't know if it's the majority that does think that it should be early yeah that's what i was going to ask because wouldn't that affect you know possibly if there's a you know teacher or staff member who has children in another district who you know then if we become the outlier does that cause issues for them you know um the other piece of information um you know we looked at the feeder districts as well to see when they were starting or proposing starting for the 22-23 year and um mark's proposing august 30th due to construction and um brookfield lagrange is proposing uh the week the same week

149of the 24th but i can't remember what the exact date was off the top of my head i would love to know what the community would think about this because i feel like it's kind of a big shift just to be like oh let's try it i mean i i i don't have an opinion i don't um i don't it doesn't affect my life personally but i i don't know if i can make this decision because i feel like there's so many other factors like camps and programming and you know i just feel like there's a lot of a lot of puzzle pieces that you i'm i'm worried if we make this move too quickly that a lot of those situations then become you know troublesome for families and to your point about moving too

150quickly um if we go the route of hearing from the community hearing from the staff members which i think is a great route to take um i would suggest then that we go with the later start date for this upcoming school year and take the time next year then to look into the possibility of an earlier start time for the 23-24 school year yeah i was going to say there are probably people oh sorry yeah there are probably people that have already planned their august this year we've already applied you know the brochures come in january or february and i'm sure there are people that have paid for programs and they may be wondering wait what do i do now um so i i kind of like that idea angela about the exploration and taking

151time to ask yeah and during the exploration can we can we talk to the other feeder districts about it as well because i feel like it would be great if if people you know if we decide to move in that direction you know it would be great to move together or not move together um i just feel like if we don't all shift in one way it just kind of create you know it's our commit you know all districts are part of the community and um you know feeding into the high school so it all kind of i don't know it just seems feels like there's a lot of connected parts that i really do feel like this would take some time to explore i and i don't don't mean to spend too much time

152too much more time on this but i i'm i'm i'm no i don't know that i've heard any benefits of this shift other than we would be in sync with the high school was i missing something or is that essentially that's the benefit is that we'd be in sync with the high school um that is one of the benefits the other ones being that uh the the what we notice in classrooms is that students start to check out in june so having them finish before june helps prevent that as well as if there were construction projects happening that following summer it would present the opportunity you did mention that i guess i i it did go through my mind i must admit when you mentioned kids starting to check out in june i do wonder

153would they be checking out in late may yeah all the same is it more of a short time is problem or is it a calendar problem yeah i think it's just at the end of the year problem frankly i think it's the approach of the last day of school yeah i don't think it's the date on the calendar i don't think so and you know with i taught black schedule 2 for the high schools and we never had an issue we never started the middle of august because we were able to get i think i feel like it has to the structure of the high schools too and their own schedule being traditional that they have to do a certain amount of material in a slower different way even so i think that block schedule

154districts might have different start dates you know versus the 45-minute districts and those kinds of things but i i kind of been with dan like what let's i'm not sure i've heard anything that convincing but i'm willing to learn but you know well and i i again i didn't want to bring too much discussion on it we are at 907. um can i just ask one okay i don't have to start work tomorrow until 9 15 but i don't know that i want to keep talking until then so um i will just i will go and to the team and we'll look at our normal start date for the 22-23 school year we'll put in the uh half day uh professional learning date so you can see where that would fall on the calendar and

155then have that for you for the board meeting in two weeks i'd support that angela yeah i think just because i would i would like to know if we're gonna make a shift like this i agree with linda but i don't think we can do that and come to a conclusion in a timely fashion to sherry's point like i've already gotten people asking when when's our calendar coming out and people are trying to plan trips and stuff for late summer and and honestly personally i was i was about to book a trip for that first week of winter break that i assumed would have been the 19th but now it's the last week of december and the first week of january so that one kind of surprised me too and i was just kind of

156curious about the last week in march being spring break so not to belabor it too much more tonight i think we'd have more dialogue but i was sort of expecting if we moved up a week winter break and spring break would have followed but those dates are are still the same so i'm kind of curious about how that would work out from like mental cognitive capability like does the spacing and all that kind of stuff but maybe we're already at 909 i don't know i can give you a really quick answer to winter and spring break we do like we do match up to rb for our winter and spring break best practice has been that we go off of their established calendar for the two breaks so they established that and we followed it

157that's really important yeah yeah i would i would agree yeah and there is a tradition of holding that last week in march as spring break it's very regional um i think it also links to our state testing model etc so i think that would stay even if there was some shuffling of beginning and end date okay i was trying to go back and look and i could have swore we used to do the third week um but i couldn't find anything that that did that so i might be just not remembering correctly or i don't you might be right because my birthday is march 23rd and we were on vacation on we were on spring break on my birthday one year so that's my birthday stephanie that's funny so i think i don't know wesley

158but i don't know that we should go by you know my stephanie we're going to change the calendar so that you can know but no i don't care let's put all board member birth dates on the school calendar so that we can be properly celebrated well mine is the week of thanksgiving so i already got that covered oh that's interesting yeah i'm just not sure we should be surprising people after this year you know we're we're barely getting back to stability and i think let's take our time and do it right yeah so then it sounds like we're all in agreement on the next episode of calendar if you'd like i'll move on to the math curricular review sure yeah okay yes thanks so we uh are on we have a five year cycle to

159review our curricular resources which doesn't necessarily mean we adopt new resources but it's more about exploring to make sure our current resources are meeting our needs so currently math and focus was adopted in august 2016 and it has been five years and we've been reviewing whether or not it's been meeting our needs through our work the past three years with the metro chicago mathematics initiative the mcmi coaching we've seen that it doesn't fully meet our needs not that it can't meet our needs with adjustments and these are adjustments we're making with our assessments but that it hasn't fully met our needs so we did take this year we are taking this year to review other mathematics programs to see if there might be a program that would better meet our needs and require less adjustment

160of assessment work to align to the standards so a math team of teachers have gathered together have come together it is a team that is representative of every elementary grade level k through five has a special education representation and uh math or inventionist and advanced learning represented as well we're reviewing um four math programs the current edition of math and focus because our edition is actually from 2012 and they have a 2020 edition the 2012 edition is slowly becoming obsolete and we're losing our access to certain resources with it so we're reviewing the 2020 edition of math and focus i ready mathematics illustrative mathematics and bridges mathematics and those programs were picked um as because their programs are being used in districts that the mcmi coaches work with as well as in some of the

161districts in our whiskey consortium we're looking to narrow those four choices down to two and then we'll have vendors come in to share about their products to help us dig deeper into the products the resources the um enrichment the supports all of that so that we can fully see what the products have to offer from there we would look at potentially piloting curricular resources if we were looking at something other than math and focus and that pilot would occur hopefully in march or april should all of that work on that timeline having vendors come in determining whether or not we need to pilot piloting in march and april then if we were interested in a program outside of math and focus i would come to the board the team would come to the board with

162a recommendation at our may cow meeting and i just wanted to make sure you were updated on that before we got too far down the pipeline with that curricular review any questions i i'm wondering now you're saying that current math and focus does not meet our needs i mean could you just quickly elaborate where we needed to go or what was what we were looking for in the next program yes so what we're seeing um when math and focus was adopted in 2016 district 96 was first coming into working with the common core state standards as well and so the programmers reviewed and it appeared to align to the standards the common core state standards what we have found in learning more about common core state standards and working with math and focus over the

163six years is that it's actually not aligned we have for instance our fourth grade curriculum teaches more fifth grade standards than fourth grade standards and so we have students who are not developmentally ready and haven't had some of the foundational learning to be successful in those fourth grade standards and so then they score low on assessments and teachers say my kids need help my kids need intervention my kids can't do this but they don't really need intervention they're not really tier two kids because it's not grade level standards it's not they're not being instructed at an appropriate level and fourth grade is where we see it the most but we see it at other grade levels also so what we've been working on for the past two years um is actually rewriting many of the

164assessments for math and focus so that they are aligned to grade level standards but also they assess what we're teaching because the other thing we found is that there were questions on the assessments that may not have really been taught through the lessons in that unit and so there was a lot of supplement going on also to make sure kids were ready for the assessment that was in the math and focus book so part of our looking at math and focus 2020 edition is to see if they have better align their resources they say they have but what we know about any curricular resources is um they're sales people they're going to say what they want youtube what they know you want to hear so we're actually digging into it and looking to ensure that

165any resource we look at or potentially explore would have what we call the habits of mind stand our mathematical practices that we want students to engage in but that they're also aligned to grade level standards so we look at chapters across the different units for instance multiplication is really important in third grade we're looking at multiplication units in all four areas all four resources to see how they align their multiplication unit at third grade to the standards for third graders i guess i i appreciate what you're saying i think that it's a little disheartening it seems like we switched math curriculum every five years because it's our time to review and then i guess the disheartening thing is that when we heard about this program you know five years ago they said oh yes it's

166aligned um how do we know i mean besides what you're saying about the in-depth look that we were told that the teachers did a chapter-wide look the last time so how will we know that it's really different i guess um that it's really going to be meeting the standards because you're right vendors will say whatever they need to say that it's aligned um i guess that's what's disheartening because buying a new curriculum is expensive and it takes time for this more importantly it takes time for the staff to adjust and the families to adjust so i think i i'm a bit cautious um just having switched recently that i want to make sure that we're doing this correctly because we heard the similar talk last time so i guess i'm a little disheartened i obviously

167want them to have what they need but it is a little troubling to hear so absolutely i think that our knowledge and the teachers knowledge with standards are a little bit deeper um and so we're able to look with a different lens than maybe the team prior had explored with math and focus i will say that one of the things i'm also looking at is uh when dr brownlow had adopted math and focus worked with her team to adopt math and focus one of the things she shared in her presentation was other districts who were utilizing math and focus also so i have been working to explore with those districts are they even still using math and focus and we have found that there are a number of those districts that are no longer using

168math and focus as well so i'm not sure why or where a breakdown with math and focus and i would like to say i promise you it won't happen again but i can't make that promise um what i can promise is that we are truly digging into it deeper we did even just readjust our meeting schedule so that we can provide ourselves more time to ensure we're digging deeper um so that we are we are addressing that concern um i will say like carnegie math i know you said that it feels like you adopt a curriculum every five years carnegie math i've talked with the junior high teachers they love carnegie math it's meeting our needs so you know when we review carnegie math we're not reviewing it to adopt a new math resource so

169it is possible it just did not happen with math and focus well and i mean carnegie also is used at rb so the longitudinal you know relevance of that is going to be useful in that they use it 9 10 11 you know so for that one i also understand why there's a verticality necessity to that it's just yeah i'm i just i'll i'm here to listen i'm excited to hear we have to say but it is a little troubling slightly different question angela is if if you were able to evaluate and make decisions by may is that enough time for the staff to to learn the new program without a significant lift for the new year we would end up and this is where professional learning has to work together with all the different

170initiatives we have going on if um we were to adopt a new curricular resource for the 20 to 23 school year we would look at summer work summer curricular work that could happen we would look at august institute days for the initial professional learning and then we would do follow-up professional learning definitely at the october institute day possibly utilizing 75-minute learning sessions as well the thing with professional learning with new curricular resources is you don't want to actually pour it all into them right up front because they really don't know what they don't know until they start getting into the textbook so you give when doing professional learning within your curricular resource you'd start out with the basics and start out with the foundational pieces of the curriculum and then you're doing those regular check-ins

171um with professional learning and then adding more as you're continuing to go so that you're not piling on too much and they don't know how to use the different pieces when it comes time to use them so i if i can paraphrase some of what i'm hearing is you want a certain amount of learning while doing because correct enables better implementation correct yes the other option we um are looking at too is that if we if we get to may we find we want a different curricular resource there's a possibility of piloting that resource for a full year to pilot the whole resource instead of just two units of a resource so that's another option that we can look at too again given looking at the different initiatives we have and the limited amount of

172professional learning time that may need to be a route we take also so there are a couple of things we're looking at as we continue to continue through this process okay and seriously consider the piloting because i know we did that with not with math but i believe the english the literature curriculum a few years back as well and asked the teachers how that went okay thank you options i think that's it for me if there are no other questions just just to say we call it out you did make a note in there that regardless of what program is recommended or decided we got to make a change because what we're using right now is not supported so a change is inevitable but i i i'll just i agree with sherry it is a

173little troubling to hear that the alignment wasn't there but it's kind of irrelevant because we're gonna have to make a decision on something different whether it's math and focus or something else we do need to make a change yes that is correct okay anything else from the education committee tonight all right fantastic angela thank you thanks to everyone on the committee a lot going on on education this uh today this meeting all right uh next up is the personnel committee right so dan as you pointed out earlier i am watching the timing as well as 9 22 people are going to start getting exhausted this is not a light topic but i will uh so i don't i don't want to blow through it i'm going to maybe gloss over some of the kindergarten stuff

174since it was somewhat tackled but we can talk about it if you want i'll just i'll kind of recap it from the memo here so with the the discussion around full day kindergarten if we were to vote in favor of moving forward with that that would add the four additional full-time kindergarten teachers that we would need in order to staff full-day sections to what we need three additional specials teachers art music and pe which was already evaluated earlier and uh potentially some midday supports for one supervision and like other just other support needs in the district um i'll just kind of pause there is there any more discussion anybody wants to have around that specific to pre-k all right not pre-k kindergarten well they can earn okay um so then i'm going to move into

175we've got coaching mental health and social behavioral support nursing services and spanish language instruction uh is kind of the core things here so martha attached some memos kind of highlighting what these are i'll just kind of summarize them martha if you want to add anything in more detail uh feel free and then i can just kind of open it for questions so i'll just sort of hit these at a high level to start the conversation and we can go from there so the coaching one here is uh really just to add an additional support additional person that would be a dedicated coach like um miss hickey is currently and is well regarded and well uh supported in what she's doing and and much appreciated in the additional supports that the teachers have uh she's currently

176supporting the entire district so adding one more person definitely makes sense to me just from a personal perspective having somebody that can kind of dedicate their time to learning all of this stuff and supporting people and do that as their full-time job and be focused on it is extremely beneficial um so i i'm in personally in full support of that one that that's pretty much what it is there and the mental health and social behavioral support adding a school psychologist so as you guys can imagine um we even had some confidential stuff that's popped up this year that we've talked about which is a little bit as martha noted and we're kind of seeing that angela's brought it up martha has brought it up to us that we're just we're seeing things in the schools

177that are [Music] heightened compared to previous years and just looking with my wife being in mental health uh i i hear about this a lot at all age groups from young to old of just the different mental health supports that are needed out there and the struggles that people are going through and all the just issues that the pandemic has brought on in a variety of capacities the nursing services is to not add a staff but really just like accommodate uh one of our nurses going back to get her bachelor's to be an rn so there's a suggestion there in using some temporary services just to help with that workload to allow her to get her bachelor's and then that would provide having an r an official rn at every single school that we have

178and spanish language instruction slash el services we just have a growing population here so this kind of falls into that equity bucket in my opinion we just don't have the support services needed to facilitate el students and native english speakers that are trying to learn spanish at the same time so this is just a increase um a half time person essentially is what it would be added to the district to facilitate the current spanish language sections so that our staff member that does the english learners can do that more full time and then we can continue with what we already have with spanish language so this company the core ones and then the last one associated director for student services and special education would be related to a conversation we've had a couple meetings ago

179about bringing somebody on to work in tandem with pam as she goes through her last year with the district and get somebody uh almost like a job shadow type thing so they could really get a good feel of the job and we can have a nice smooth transition for all of the many different things that pam does for us with special education and everything else that that kind of goes within her job description so hopefully you guys all had a chance to read the memos that go into a little bit more detail than that uh but that's kind of the high level version of it and i'll just kind of pause there martha would you like to add anything before opening it and or if not any questions from any other board members on um

180any of the suggested staff uh increases for the next school year 2020 what a 22-23 no wesley i think you did a great job with the overview and a lot of details been added um from pam from angela from april may the the principals in particular directors where there's been a need identified in in those identified areas so so is the school psychologist that's that's a net edition correct that's an addition right so do we not have a school psychologist presently or you have three this would be moving it four so in this so how how is the load distributed differently i guess pam do you want to do you want to talk about that if pam is i know she's still there as a icon sure hi um presently we have one psychologist at

181hauser and we have two psychologists who handle the elementary buildings um one covers ames and hollywood and one covers um i'm sorry one covers aims of life one cover central and hollywood um the increase in the mental health issues that we've had this year have really put them in a position where they are having to spend incredible amounts of time hands-on with students um which is part of their role and they definitely like to be part of that role but at the same time they it makes it difficult for them to evaluate students to get them the supports that they may need some of these students who they are working with are students new to us with special concerns students who have not experienced these concerns before so uh that has really been taxing on

182them we've had to contract out a bit of help this year but again it is still extremely taxing and i think to have them directly involved with the students and then seeing that through to the evaluation process is important it also has limited the time that they've been able to work on our mtss process with the interventionists and the grade level teams with their data review meetings they're not involved as they should be and we do have a a very sufficient number i think at this time of social workers but at this time it's the psychologist position that i feel is in need of increase we we did have a bit more a few years ago and of course that was before the pandemic and we thought we could we could cut back a little

183bit there but given our situation now that it's not something that is working for us at this time and and for the students any other questions about that i would just add this is not uh that there is a national issue with this like mental health specialists of whatever nature are at capacity like we do not have enough people that understand this right now for everything that people are going through um i think i mentioned earlier like my wife is in this industry and like her business is exploding with people that need resources and children included and just not enough capacity to take all the people that want the services and i i think just from kind of knowing the local staff that we have and the engagement that we have within the district like

184the social workers and psychologists we have i mean they are overloaded with people that need some of this assistance at varying degrees and i i believe the social workers and the psychologists also are the ones that kind of monitor and evaluate and uh facilitate our like ieps and 504s and in addition with other people too so there's there's already that that was there and now we've got this added on top of it so um it it really is from from my understanding and talking to a couple of those that are in our district like there's just been a real explosion in observations of additional services needed here so i think this one is a a much needed ad to staff to to support our students personally i'm going to completely echo what wesley said i

185mean this is this is something that we i mean it's a national thing that's going on and covet has not uh helped at all and we have the resources right now to help the kids and to like provide this additional service to allow us to hire another staff member to free up time for other staff members so they can spend their adequate amount of time with each student that they need to this is i i don't see why we should even be i mean this is a necessity that i think is not really optional yeah i'm in agreement on that i mean all every one of us no matter what your age has been it's been through some kind of trauma that's what i'm reading and you know if it also helps those psychologists do

186the evaluations that they need to do and keep in mind if if full-day kindergarten happens you'll have a larger student base that may or may not need supports and they also have to be evaluated besides their their brief kindergarten evaluation and who knows what kind of time will be spread for that as well so i agree with both of you and of course these are not votes or anything like that tonight so we you know we can have more debate on that but it is one of those where um martha i'm trying to think we did talk about timelines like we we do need to make a decision relatively soon just so that we can get a job posting up and then start getting candidates in and do interviews over the summer and stuff like

187that but i don't recall exactly when when if when do you need our uh either go no go decision on these if if we decide to do it so you can get your postings up like what was the timeline for that yeah so i you know at the february 16th board meeting we're scheduled to take a vote on full day kindergarten or not so that's going to address that four right right yeah and teachers and three specialist teachers um i would like for there to be a sort of a special personnel report at the february 16th meeting then where the board could not approve people for these positions but approve these positions so that we could go ahead and do these postings the board has through consensus approved the idea of the associate director because

188we have a we have posted that and we are moving forward with an interview process already there so um that's already in the works i'll just make one other comment i doesn't select more rationales needed around the school psychologist but they are i'm truly a multi-talented you know group the individuals that we have in the district are wonderful but psychologists they do as you've all pointed out they do evaluations and help with eligibility and identification for children with um who might need an iep they're very well versed in looking at student learning data that's kind of in their typical role and then what they are also very good at the social behavioral interventions crafting behavior intervention plans for students understanding the function of why children are struggling behaviorally and that is really what's kind of

189tipped the balance for them this year is that they are really very much hands-on on-call doing a lot of work with teams and with children individually to to do some of that problem-solving i'm sorry to cut you off martha that's awful um and also i just i know we're gonna get into this a little bit in the next uh topic but also regarding the finance committee this has been something we've already evaluated uh looking at hiring all these additional had this additional head count in the budgets and the long-range projections and i can just say in in short it is definitely something that we can absorb as a district based on our our current operating expenses so we'll get more into that in a little bit also um like jim was pointing out um had

190shared with me and pam is aware too that we do have some additional money now coming to us um through the american rescue plan that's related to individuals with disabilities education about sixty thousand dollars it's probably going to be one year money but again that could certainly offset in the in the short term and additional psychologists right jim am i right on the numbers there roughly right right we can get an exact number for you that's close and right jim will represent all that in the projections which i think is next right but happy to answer any more questions about the personnel it's um it's a significant shift to be thinking about these added positions yeah and exactly so i don't want to gloss over it in uh 18 minutes or whatever it's been i

191can't remember we started but because it is it is a lot of added personnel but it aligns with a lot of other things we're doing so if you guys have questions about it between now and the next meeting feel free to reach out to myself and martha um pose any questions that you have but um well i i think we saw the costs of the the positions associated with full day kindergarten i'm sure we'll see the costs attached to these or approximate costs uh when we're looking to vote that would be something of interest to me actually they're all in the financial projections i think jim has a specific appendix um to the projections that deals with the personnel increases specifically yeah all right yes i bet i meant dave and i met with martha

192and jim to kind of collaborate on both personal and finance together so all that has been baked into what we're about to talk about here in just a minute so those are called out dan like if you okay um in there specifically all right thank you all right then without further ado we will go to the finance committee thanks dan so i know we've talked about a lot of uh uh items uh this today and it's i don't like wesley said i really don't want to gloss over the financial perspective um of this but we have uh talked looked at the um the financial uh cost for both kit full day kindergarten um and this added head count and so what uh jeremy i've talked to jim and i asked jim to run some scenarios

193and essentially he put together three scenarios that uh he's going to go over in a little bit more detail one scenario is uh essentially we do full day kindergarten uh we do hire all these new this new heads count uh we do all the construction for um the hauser auditorium blyth uh central house or campus and then the third one is that we don't do anything i asked excuse me i asked him to look at the long range projections on how that's going to affect uh our surplus um our mexican our reserves and so he'll go through it but i guess the the long and the short the short answer is that we are still going to be maintaining essentially that 40 percent reserve that's in policy uh into uh i believe it's 20 31

194correct uh jim right but we are gonna if we did everything we are at still at that 40 percent essentially uh it's actually 38.6 percent uh in 2031 of uh with that reserve so with that i know jim has a presentation and as martha said uh and jim said the numbers are all baked into here and so there are the costs associated with this so with that though i'm going to turn over to jim for the presentation all right my screen here we go as dave said that 38.6 10 years from now sounds really precise for a 10-year estimate that and i did put that in writing and i think well that's it you're nailed out but and i may still make fairly conservative estimates so by the time we get there it may not

195be that plus we can adjust our budget if we have to so i'll just hit some of the highlights of the detailed report that said no workbook i just wanted to show you where what we thought at this time last year um that we expected last year the one that the auditors just talked to you about to end with 18.7 million in reserves in the fund balance and the green box in the middle you can see the 18.7 and when we projected 10 years out we expected to end at 14.2 so i just want to start with that and then show you how it's changed as we made different assumptions in the book another year so there's a lot of numbers on here but the first column there the operating surplus gives you an idea

196how much every year goes into fund balance and a lot of times we're taking it out and putting into capital which is the transfers out but just on operating we in 10 years put 36.5 million and during those same years we got a lot of projects done by and took 45 and a half million out put into capital projects or that but the debt was really to pay for capital projects so it's all larger projects or additions or i think upgrading the hvac at one time uh here's a graph of those um the 10 years of of quoting operating surplus syndicate and putting it into fund balance if the average over the last 10 years has been 3.7 million a year the minimum was 2 million and oh can you see that um so the

197least amount we did was 2 million in those 10 years the physicians before the kindergarten and the psychologist and all those positions that wesley just talked about um are less than 900 000 a year it up and down a little bit based on supplies so if this kind of trend continues regardless of what i project which is really conservative we could expect to put a surplus in a fund balance of a million dollars a year i would think maybe more so if when we close out last year that was 4.7 million being added that number jumps up to 21.8 now we had assumed that we'd be adding a little bit to fund mallet so that number goes up 3.1 million not the full 4.7 there's so an improvement to the last projections and then every

198red number all the way out to the right goes up by that 3.1 million it just shifts the whole thing up and so then fy30 would would end at 17.4 without doing any new assumptions let's see what so one question why did we add 3.1 million to the operating fund balance we were really really conservative on property taxes last year we thought that there could be difficulty in people paying their taxes um the property taxes so we expected we really knocked it down to almost what it was in 2008 when there was a great recession and um [Music] it didn't happen so the taxes still got paid even if they're a little bit late so when i checked in the beginning of february it's 97 almost 98 percent already and um there's still time there'll

199still be more trickling in that are late so that's a big difference when you just you assume well that's just going to be the way it is for 10 years too it's been that way for 10 years it should be that way for 10 years so now we're adding basically 4 to each year going out um but talk talking just about um the one we booked one that's history now that was 800 000 of the 3.1 million and then there were quite a few expenditures it came in favorable and a lot of us due to the unusual year there were a couple of positions in the budget that didn't get filled as well as a lot of the stipends didn't get paid out um and some other overtime and salaries that didn't get paid which

200also has the benefit the benefit of the benefits um being favorable so if you're under spending in salaries your benefit cost lowers also in addition to salaries and benefits we understand maintenance repair 700 000 if you remember we put 1.1 million in every year and when there's a lot of construction going on we're not looking at spending doing these other intense projects at the same time um [Music] we our special ed spending went down and uh just general supplies for everybody were were favorable so now that f21 fy 21 is audited and closed i'll look forward to the next 10 years so adjusting some of the assumptions and the biggest thing is that the pandemic didn't affect tax collections like we were afraid it might um so putting in a more realistic collection percentage added

201two two and a half million to those ten years going out in august illinois passed a law that increases the tax levy we do by the amount of refunds that were paid out the previous year and the first number they gave us is 250 000 so i assumed that for every year but it looks similar to the refunds we've done they go up and down but um that's you know almost two and a half million dollars over those ten years also it weren't in last year's projections um the cpi the inflation rate came in at seven percent and that's the number that it's used for doing our next tax levy but we're in a tax camp district so that we'll be using five percent of it it's the uh you take over five percent without

202the voters being involved but so we if we uh go for the maximum like we usually do that'd be five percent and then that bomb that extra probably three and a half percent that i added to um next year that makes them higher every year from that on so that was uh a difference of eight and a half billion dollars so the 13 million dollars would really take that red line up high and then we added to these projections new expenditures and that's full day kindergarten and extra teachers um because we're still on track to make white park a two-section school and psychologists and other new expenditures and then the transfers is you saw from that one uh table that the other way that you bring the fund balance down was to transfer it to

203non-operating to do capital projects so we moved um more than i knew about last february 3 million to the projects that we approved for this past summer that just finished a couple months ago and i put in a number five and a half million which is the latest kind of estimate of doing the central house or campus yes can i can i just ask one quick question about that transfer for the central hauser campus before you move on um i was wondering that wasn't that i was trying to figure out was that on the lower end of the estimates for that projected expenditure or is that in the middle like i feel like it was in the low end but i understand you have to pick a number it's not it's not like we know

204but um it's just curious so originally i think when we talked to lakota it was four to eight million four to ten million something like that i think they're narrowing in on it more so so it's at the lower end but i think there's a higher confidence in the number and if we were to approve what five and a half million based on the design and what we think we need to have done if it if they calculate seven billion then we would have to you know present that and decide at the time when i could adjust those graphs you know accordingly right no i understand it's it's difficult to choose i just i just keep remembering like a big range and it's hard to know what what we're going to do but thank you

205so this is what i call scenario a this is with everything in there from kind of the highest cost perspective again you probably remember the blue line represents the 40 percent of expenditures so that we want to keep our fund balance above that this with the higher expenditures in it so that blue line's moved up a little bit since the last time we looked at it um and also the five and a half million dollar um transfer so that's where you see this big drop from 20.9 to 15.8 we're moving five and a half million over capital projects uh and since there's one more year that's in history which is left of this line it's kind of district 96 history it's written in stone now so to go out 10 years i added fy31 just

206by following the trends that we already built into the nine years in between um i i still think this is a fairly conservative i i think the property taxes are there's that that change has been dramatic i mean there's no reason it would go the other way i would expect by the time we get there that we would be doing better than this line as we go out so that's a scenario a which includes everything we've been talking about and scenario b watch how the red line changes it jumps up because we're not moving five and a half million over the capital project so it basically cancels that five and a half million transfer and the project which then fy 30 of course that all these numbers go up by five and a half million

207that's a real simple one right but again can i just interject here jim i do want to stress though this this is assuming we don't do the capital the like the capital projects but it does still allow for the additional head count right i forgot to ask too does this take into account i know we don't know the future of our staff compensation visit take into account an assumption of percentages increased because they're one of our biggest expenditures i'm assuming you did but i mean it's hard to know and i don't want to you know negotiate in public well i i just on all expenses except um like let's just say on all expenses i use three percent and i just take every account number and three percent then i go back and say well

208should this one be more or less most of them i use three percent and then like uh health insurance we've been using six percent but it keeps coming back and it i think that the average was maybe two percent i have to find i put it's in that deep no that that helps a lot thank you i use four percent which you know less conservative but it's still a lot higher than the average to spend but to some degree sherry that is kind of locked in because like you'll have people exit and come in and stuff like that but the way we have the contract set up is that aggregate number that jim says is going to be relatively stable because we just our attrition rates are so low and it's really not going to

209impact that aggregate number two substantially uh yeah i wasn't speaking about number per se is more of uh increase in compensation percentages um right but that's locked in like when we did the negotiation we locked that in for four years right i know but since we're going to you know 31 i just figured you know what what are we assuming in 2031 yeah yeah i got you okay uh no i'm mostly thinking about beyond the current contract yeah yeah yeah yeah and no one no one really knows and i'm not i don't expect him to know i'm just wondering what the assumption number was and he he really explained that very well thank you yeah catch him the point sherry i think i'd use wesley's statement and that is at least for the next four

210years we're pretty solid on those staff expenses yeah we it's a known at least we have a contract right um i think your number is good it's more the volatility that concerns me i mean it swings anywhere from what two percent to positive six depending on the year so it's my assumption but the reality is it's overly volatile in a way that seems kind of absurd yeah the uh i found that the average um for health insurance for ppo it's gone up over five years one point seven six percent a year and uh hmo's actually gone down point eight four percent so i i think using four percent for ten years out is really conservative so the next scenario i i took all those personnel out you know 800 000 a year or so and

211of course that that brings the every year goes up by about 800 000 so um just so we can compare to last year that would put fy30 at 28.1 million and um i put a percentage on the last number on fy31 so that get us to a 72 percent fund balance and that's without doing the capital or adding the new expenditures that we reviewed any other questions on the numbers you know jim they're these are reasonable thank you um i i would say that they're they're reasonable out to five years and then after that it gets pretty crystal ball-ish just because of we don't know well we can adjust as we go if oh i'm and i'm i'm not i'm not criticizing your numbers i'm saying that we look good for out next little while

212and then we should be very careful about trusting our assumptions because we just don't know but but t to that point though joel i mean i i agree sort of beyond five years it's it's very much a crystal ball um but i mean we do this every year and so we keep it we keep moving forward and we keep adjusting uh as necessary but i guess the the one thing i just want to stress and take away for i hope that the board takes away from this is that we are in a good position we can embark on these projects um we can hire this additional staff um we could do full day kindergarten if that's something we we decide to do um so i do think that financially it should just what we're looking

213at right now should more be a footnote because we need to start we need i know we focus on the kids but um this is really a footnote because we are in a very good uh financial position uh definitely for like next 10 years and granted five to uh five year five to ten years is still a crystal ball but we are in a very good position and we currently have zero debt too yes right exactly so there there's some of these capital improvement projects and who knows what else will pop up like that is always a lever we could theoretically pull whether we choose to or not whether the terms are favorable or not it's a different question but it's it you know we have zero debt which is kind of unusual so it's

214always uh not kind of it is it is unusual yeah you're right yeah that is unusual so given the age of our buildings though i think it should be noted a lot of these capital projects in the future and as wes just mentioned who knows what they may be uh it's it's they're always going to be there with these older buildings yep yeah jim i wonder if i could ask you about slide four sure that's where we have the the dip in the middle there i'm wondering do we know why what was so different it seemed like we we were kind of consistent around four and a half thereabouts actually you're not on the same slide i'm looking at it's i'm looking at the fy 12 to 21 operating surplus at that table of numbers

215yes let me i'll tell you when you get there there you go one one back one back there you go the blue and the yellow there we go should have said it that way um so so we're we were at earlier it around fiscal 2012 1314 where roughly four and a half million surplus then it took a dive and then shot back up these last two years and i guess do we do we have a grasp on why it was diving and it sounds like the that the last two years pandemic expenses have been drastically different than what were anticipated and or we received additional funds to cover some things that that's my impression of of the last two years maybe that's not accurate but i i i wouldn't rely on the 4.7 going forward

216except such a usual year in the same year before um i i'll have to do a bit of research i don't know off the top of my head don't know why things were were kind of headed downward and then the last couple years we've shot up so this 2.4 what i when i did i said i did three percent kind of a simple answer i took three percent cubed on this on these expenses so kind of ignoring these years i wanted to see if i took last year three percent versus this one at call it nine percent and and i took the higher um they were actually pretty close um and then i went up there from there on the expenses um and in the new uh revenue that i put in on property taxes

217covers it of course um i'll have to see like so is is 2 million the number we should expect when when the final numbers come in each year or i see what you're saying is is it gonna keep going down um i don't i don't see that because i did go use every account number i don't i'll have to see what happened from the 4.3 down to the 2.1 i guess that's what troubles me somewhat is the last two years seem to be somewhat unusual or outliers right and the previous trend was was down to maybe a little bit flat there uh just a few years ago and i'm wondering if does that trend start to revert for some reason or not yeah i'll have to see if you know some of this was before

218i got here but they may have spent more out of maintenance and expense on projects instead of moving into capital and doing it that way i i try to move the ones that are unusual that aren't an every year thing um yeah dan i think it's a good question but if jim if you flip to this slide right before this i i guess as i was looking through this i i thought that was related to those non-operating transfers um but that might not be a good assumption because yeah it's it's really the first column that is graphed the surplus so on the on this uh oh yeah so that that probably is not a good assumption then okay i don't think i read that correctly okay it's it's a fact that it goes into the

219fund balance so i'll uh i'll get some more detail on what happened between i guess fy15 and fy17 and 18. okay i appreciate that and if we could go to the slide major changes to fy 22 to 23 uh fy30 assumptions under the new expenditures yeah that one there yeah so enlisting costs of full day kindergarten at 3.5 million am i am i reading that correctly that's for eight years though that's for eight years okay 22 to 30. yeah yeah okay all right now i'm understanding that better i i it all clicked into place as soon as you said that thanks joe you're welcome no i had the same question then i realized uh how it had been calculated out okay i'll work on getting this more comfortable with the change in those previous years

220any other questions on this so just for maybe for clarification and i just want to make sure i'm remembering some of our like personal finance questions correctly slide uh i think is like your middle like the no central hauser campus one um yep that one this is kind of that we do fold today kindergarten we add personnel we don't do the major like eight million dollars in projects projection right well three of that we already did but the five and a half million and yeah right okay so just well or the um that would be okay so that's still oh yeah you're right okay the blyth auditorium stuff is not including these projections that right okay so this would be all the personnel stuff including full day kindergarten but not doing the major capital improvements

221that's what this would look like so i think i just wanted to call that out because the capital improvements we're still working through like what that design is even going to look like and what kind of cost that's actually going to be so as we continue to evaluate that as a facility's improvement if we did all the personnel stuff and the staff oriented you know needs of the district this is this this is the version of um no other major capital improvement projects right we have a lot of stuff going on here so i just wanted to call that out yeah yeah complicated okay well thanks thanks jim all right uh before we move to the facilities committee uh let me note the the clock here we are at 1007. um [Music] i i had

222a conversation with with well separate conversations with martha and stephanie prior to the meeting cnc in our agenda was was was action-packed here tonight um i i think it might be possible for us to move the uh press policy discussion until uh march yeah i'm struggling a little bit i'm tired i i don't mean i'm trying not to be struck but it's definitely you know we've we've all worked a full day and it's getting kind of late so come on i really wanted to talk about those policies can we um i you know as much as i'd like to see the disco ball come down for every you know that's the policy committee uh that's the symbol is the disco ball um well they're not um due till like march 30th i believe is the

223day so we have yeah even the february 16th and or the march cow um yeah i might propose that we just sort of shift everything right we could get it on to the february 16th board and march cow we could even make make march cow a special meeting to take action on approving policies if we needed to so i think we could for sure shift our timeline on all the policies um with the goal of having them approved by the end of march as you said stephanie uh joel i would love if we could touch on these mousse i don't think they're particularly complicated and that they're all summer maintenance projects but we would ideally want those approved at the february board meeting and i would hate to ask for approval without some opportunity to

224do a quick or maybe yeah no i was i was personally dan either gonna ask for a break so that i can avoid this dog barking at me or your plan is much better in front of in this board packet there are four mous from dla they involve the ames roof and masonry repairs life in hollywood a little bit of roof and masonry there as well then the water line at central and then finally the central and hauser roof some minor roof work and then mostly um the building envelopes i.e the walls the masonry walls all of these look dla's prices look reasonable and we can come back if you've got questions so one thing i i had thought about with the ames roof um i remember there was a neighbor who uh had asked

225us about putting up some kind of screen or something to the uh to the one air conditioning unit he did and we we broached that topic briefly with ramesh and right now we're not pursuing that simply because it would require additional structural work on that roof which is that's again we're opening up an older building so i don't know that that's really the smartest thing to do at this point um like you can't just put a screen around it like you need structural supports for that you need to mount to the roof and then you're going to get into structural loading primarily wood or sorry primarily wind loading which gets rather interesting because they have to start considering the the worst possible event yeah um i didn't think about that we have a meeting sorry

226this is going to be a problem in a minute here um we have a meeting at the beginning of march so we'll broach that topic with dla dan and at least get a better opinion from we can ask dla structural engineer to do some back of the envelope calculations or assessments as to what really is the implication of a screen yeah would that affect the integrity of the roof are you attaching it directly to the right that's why it becomes a structural issue you can't right i said it i know if it's if it's just aesthetic i i don't know it is just aesthetic it's not necessary for the functioning of the roof i at this point i'm not in favor of it because it adds yet another element that but we we will martha

227fiori with that we'll ask dla to have their their people yeah give us an opinion on it great and so that this roof is end of life then i assume that that's yes we we knew that um with the way all these roofs are they're in basically big sections and so the portion of the ames roof is original or it's on the original building and not the the addition obviously and then we had we had talked about the cost of this before why ames was a little bit more and that's because there's also a parapet or a raised portion around the roof that needs some work as well so it's not just a simple flat roof like on your house how old is that roof i would have to go back and look at the

228the condition assessment report i don't know offhand more than 20 years or i i believe so but i'll i'll jim and i'll check the records and find out forgive me if this is a dumb question i'm i'm tired but um the central water line is that something that's in the front of the school or something that would be addressed in the event that there was a house or central expansion or is it i think i remember ramesh saying it's fairly you know if not urgent but important so i don't want to necessarily tie it to an expansion but can you give me a two-minute summary you're a mutual i keep bumping things i apologize thank you wesley don't worry about it um i'm holding her with one hand and then we're struggling here um the

229existing water it's a good question sherry the existing water line comes off woodside and goes between the church building and central so it's in that alley um yeah in between okay yes and it is definitely at its end of life it had a break earlier this year right and the breakage was one that indicates it's a launch it's along the line of the pipe which is typical of something that's at the end of its life yeah i thought that's what he had said i just couldn't remember where it was no thank you and so the new the new main would be put through the parking lot and that's essentially a trench out to aikenside but that's minimal the real extra cost for not doing it with uh future improvement is the asphalt the rest of

230the construction would have to be done no matter what right okay thank you i feel like we if i remember correctly i think we touched on that last meeting remember because now that you say that i think i remember saying so we're gonna have to dig up the parking lot and then repave it and then dig it up again and then i think you're right yeah because like i think what did i think you said like the break was sort of the the catalyst of like we can't delay it anymore because the the timeline of our central housing improvement isn't going to be in line with what we're going to be required to do to fix that or something is that right no that's what i was thinking yeah we we had discussed it and

231at this point the the breaks indicate that there is a lot more risk than we should be taking on yeah and with with regards to to wasted improvements what you're wasting is essentially a three or four foot wide patch of asphalt that you're putting back that will be dug up in the future you're not digging up yes correct okay thank you okay other questions i know joel i was just gonna say i know that um we would vote on the senate february 16th is there any sense of objections to these again these are pretty much more straightforward than a lot of or you know these are not major capital improvements this is maintenance work they're also not i mean they're they're real money but they're not huge money in terms of some of the other

232work we've had them do well and i'd rather not pay for something when something goes very very wrong if we didn't replace it in time because that always cost triple what you paid now so yeah yeah i personally did not have any objections from what i read or or any substantial questions that would probably sway my mind so as of right now i don't have any core objections to any of these i don't either not on my part thank you all right thank you joel uh and so is everyone okay if if we table the uh press uh police policy discussion for this evening yes yes all right my opponent maybe i might suggest i think we always go in the same committee order maybe we put policy committee at the top of the list

233for next week we'll be nice and fresh for stephanie and then yeah exactly yeah you won't save the you won't save the best for last that's fine we'll save the best and i know we do have i just also want to thank angela will be helping out with one of the policies in particular the 660 curricular update so she has a maybe presentation isn't the right word but uh we'll be able to elaborate on that specific one which i know is pretty hefty i think having her do it early is probably nicer to her rather than have her wait around to talk about it yes so yes i'm fine i'm dan you and i spoke and yeah i'm in total agreement so all right thanks stephanie definitely appreciate it all right uh so then that

234would bring us back to public uh comment uh has there been any additional public comments uh yes sir has i forwarded that to you you did okay let me see uh okay so i have one from erica zumas let me check or is that something else because i i don't know that that's public comment can we check to see um that would be julie strylo julie streimer i don't know that i have that yet let me see that was forwarded to my i i don't think i have that yet okay did that where did that go let me see dan could we just ask kathy to read it okay sure absolutely okay um they apologized if it didn't get read because it came after the seven uh seven o'clock hour uh hello we are parents

235of two children under five in the hollywood area of brookfield we realize this comment may not be read as we are sending it after 7 p.m thank you for the work put into all day kindergarten research we are two working parents who fully support the move to full day for our children and this community we are social workers and value the role of public education in shaping our young people including the social emotional needs that full day kindergarten can meet for five and six-year-olds best julia strilo and erie bernstein all right thank you kathy you are welcome and that is all that i have okay great all right and then i will read out future meeting dates uh february 16th 2022 regular business meeting 7 p.m in the multi-purpose room of ames barring another snow

236day the board will enter into closed session at 6 15 pm if necessary and return to open session at 7 pm march 2nd 2022 is committee of the whole 7 pm in the multi-purpose room of ames march 16th is a regular business meeting 7 p.m in the multi-purpose room of ames board will enter into close session at 6 15 pm if necessary and return to open session at 7. and if there is nothing else this meeting is adjourned [Music]