December 2, 2025 School Board Meeting

001I now call this meeting of the committee of the whole to order at 5:30 p.m. Uh, can you please call the role? >> Miss Pearson, >> present. >> Miss Chavez, Miss McCall, >> present. >> Miss Bennett, >> here. >> Mr. Carpenter, >> here. >> Miss Haley >> here. >> Miss Stanford >> here. >> With six present, one absent, we have a quorum. >> Thank you. We will now take a moment of silence followed by the pledge of allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands. One nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. >> As we start each meeting, it's important to remember that the mission of Rockford Public Schools is to collaboratively engage all students in an equitable first class education for

002a changing world. Um, before we go any further, welcome everyone to Macintosh Elementary School. Um, and thank you to Macintosh for hosting us. We really appreciate it and um it's a beautiful school and thank you all for being here tonight. Um this is the third committee of the whole meeting at that's gone to a school and we'll continue to meet at various locations throughout the school year. We'd also like to thank Kim Person and Aaron Hill for working behind the scenes to produce the broadcast. And we would also like to welcome Superintendent Student Advisory Council member Elinka Mahai from Jefferson High School. And we're now on to the regular portion of the meeting. Um, first item is 2A meeting minutes from November 4th, 2025. Are there any changes, corrections, or additions to the meeting minutes?

003If There are no uh changes or additions or corrections. The minutes will be accepted as submitted. Thank you. And we will turn it over to Miss Stanford for the stakeholders committee. >> Good evening. It's time now for the stakeholders committee portion of the meeting. Let's start by showing our 12-month agenda. Our feature presentation will be an update from the athletics and fine arts department. We want to remind board members of the opportunities available to interact with our students, families, and community each month. Please make sure you check the board calendar on rps205.com on a regular basis for the most up-to-date information. Now, let's look at all the good things are that are happening in our district. Earlier this year, the Steam Academy at Haskell celebrated the grand opening of its new Cal Rip Ripken Senior

004Foundation STEM Center. It gives students hands-on opportunities in robotics, coding, and engineering with high quality tools, lessons, and challenges. We'd like to extend a hearty congratulations to our middle school soccer league champions in the Rock River Athletic Conference. Risa won at the varsity level and Eisenhower won at the JV level. Way to soar owls and eagles. Congratulations to Roosevelt Community Education Center. The school placed first in Ander Anderson Japanese Gardens 2025 Path of Pumpkins competition. Students let their create creativity glow by showcasing these carved pumpkins just in time for Halloween. It was a big night for both GHS girls volleyball and the JHS boys varsity football. The Lady Vikings won their first Nick 10 conference since 1996. The Jay-Hawks returned to the playoffs for the first time since 1993. A shout out to Jefferson High

005School Spanish class students for making the Nicholas Conservatory Building beautiful for Dia Delos Muertos. They put together the ofinda, hung butterflies, created posters, and planted hundreds of merry goals for everyone to enjoy. Kenny Middle School 8th grade ELA students practice their journalism skills with help from WNIGJ and the storytelling trailer. The mobile living room gave students a space to share meaningful stories as they prepared to launch their own school podcast. RPS 205 hosted its inaugural college fair at the quad for all juniors and and for all juniors and undecided seniors. More than 20 colleges and universities were on hand to share opportunities available after high school. Students from all of the RPS high schools explored exciting paths for their future. According to schooldigger.com, Marshall is ranked the best middle school in Illinois. School digger calculates

006school rankings based on I A ELA, I AR math, and ISA science test scores released by ISBE. Last year, the school was ranked ninth. They have really focused on growth within ELA and helping all of their students move the needle from their own personal scores. This ranking is an indicator that the strategy was successful. Next, East High School's newcomer students presented their science projects on improving air quality in our community. Refugee students from around the world shared what they learned about air while practicing English and building confidence through one-on-one presentations. RPS 205 schools hosted Veterans Day in special ways. Brook Brookview celebrates their school community heroes and raised $800 for both the disabled American veterans and vets roles from their displayed 75 flags and penny wars. Conklin hosted Auburn's uh JOTC and drum line and

007recognized their veterans. Auburn seniors in the fabrication classes crafted pens and soldiers and presented them to local heroes. Thank you for your service. Ellis Elementary students will stay warm this winter thanks to 500 brand new coats from Operation Warm. The Colts were gifted through a $10,000 fundraiser led by third grade teacher Gerlyn Dye. Her sister Connie Mlan and their family and friends. Uh Rio Ria Jones works in the district as a peer educator. She support supports families by educating them on their child's development, encouraging parent child interaction, helping families understand how the family's environment impacts a child's growth and connecting families to resources. She recently wrote a book, Miss Jelly Visits, which beautifully reflects the work parent educators do in our district. The story is told from a child's perspective beginning in the womb and

008continuing through age three which is the age demographic parent educators serve along with their parents. The book is available in English, Spanish and Swahili and Arabic. She is working on a new father focus book which is expected soon. Next up is items of note with our community partners. RPS 205 is partnering with Marshmallows Hope to provide free mental health support for students and families. Services include therapy, parent education, suicide prevention assemblies, and more with free transportation available. The Rockford Promise Scholars, the Rockford Promise Scholarship application is now open through February 5th. High school students can apply for the chance to attend college tuition free. Don't miss the life-changing opportunity. Apply today at rockfordpromise.org. On our 205 vibe, Barbara 2-way language immersion has been named a top 50 KIPP school for 2024 25. Barber students earned

009an incredible 678 college credits through KIPP exams and accelerating their path to college success. And now for our legislative news. Illinois lawmakers return to session in mid January. Their focus will be on responding to federal cuts from the recent reconciliation bill HR1. According to some estimates, HR1 is expected to reduce federal funding for education in Illinois by over 313 million annually. RPS was working with our lobbyists to continue to advocate for district priorities. Now for some internal and external news. RPS 205 school board vice president Nicole Bennett visited Westview Elementary School. She was the mystery reader for Miss Shiro's first grade classroom. RPS 205's leadership summit brought together at admin transportation and operations staff around the theme of change. Guilford High School kicked off with three songs from Shrek. um presentations highlighted new security measures,

010smarter student placements, and mentorship programs. It's now time for our feature presentation. Please welcome RPS 205's director of athletics, Don Williamson, and director of fine arts, Melissa Wolf. Ladies, the floor is yours. Hello everyone. I'm Don Williamson, our athletic director. Thank you so much, Miss Stafford, for clicking through for me. So, we can go ahead and push through here. Uh just really quick wanted to go over what we do. Um those are the events that we host and then we can click forward how we actually support the building. So that's what our that's what the admin building is for is support to support the buildings. Um since we're at Macintosh, one of the things we do is support elementary sports. So these are our winners for since the last time I talked to y'all. So

011uh basketball's there. We have so you got Froberg and Brook View Boys and Girls and then we just had uh Barber who won soccer. Next one. And I wanted to talk a little bit about summer camp only because we uh evaluated our families this year and I think we all know how that goes. Like you ask people their opinions and it's not always the most positive thing in the world, but this one really was. Like we didn't cherrypick this uh information here. It was overwhelmingly positive. We were super excited about it. Um the parents really love what we're doing with summer camp. Our registrations were way up 315 more than we had the previous year. Um so just keep giving us your kids at summer camp and they'll have a great time. We go next

012one. Okay. So I wanted to talk about uh this GPA deep dive so we can go ahead and click through. So I gave our I think it's CIA, continuous improvement and accountability department uh some our registration numbers from last year. Uh so this is everyone who in high school who registered for a sport or an activity. Uh turned out to be about 3,000 students uh all demographics because it's every kid who registered for something. Um and at least 30% of our students about 3,000 participate. And I'm going to also say there's pictures on everyone. I'm not going to talk about these pictures, but please check it out because these are kids who did something really awesome over the course of the school year. Um 60% of our high school teams have a GPA an average

013GPA of 2.8 or higher. Um and one of the things is this is only IHSA activities and sports, right? So IHSA does chess, it does scholastic bowl, of course, all the sports that we think about, but there are some things at the high school level that are clubs that the IHSA does not support like Rotary Club or Key, things like that. So those clubs aren't involved in these stats. Okay, we can go to the next one. Um, so this was super exciting to me. So the kids who are involved in sports have an overall average GPA of 2.9. If you're not involved in a sport or activity, our kids have an overall average GPA of a 2.2. So now, I'm sure some of you will say, "Well, my kids in in RPS and they're they

014have a 4.0." It's not a particular kid. It's an average GPA. Um, so the impact of the sports here, I think, is pretty awesome. We can click to the next one. Every single team has an overall average GPA that's higher than the average GPA of a non-involved student. every single team. And I'm sure there's some teams that you might think that team probably doesn't. And I because I had that thought. There's probably some teams that don't have a a GPA that's higher, but the every single one, there's not a one that isn't higher than a non-involved student. The impact of sports is really impactful and tangible here. Okay, we go to the next one. It holds up by gender. So that's involved to non-involved. And this one is amazing to me, right? It's not surprising,

015but it's amazing. So, these are our kids. This isn't some general student. These are our kids from last year. The freshman, the average GPA for a non-involved student was a 1.7. If they're involved in the sport or on the team, it's a 2.8. Of course, I would say that's because they have a community. They have relationships. They have relationships with peers that they care about. they have a significant adult in their life who's making sure that they're going to class and doing the things that they're supposed to do. Um, like I said, tangible results here. We can go to the next one. Okay. And this is my extra credit because it's attendance. It's not GPA. 5% higher attendance rate also with our athletes or with our folks who are on a team. So, not just

016athletes on a team. Okay, next one. Okay. So the NFHS, which is our governing body for high school sports, says that most districts send spend about 1 to 3% of their district budgets on athletics. We spend just under 1%. So just money well percent well well spent on tangible results for behaviors, with attendance, with grades, and that's it. I got some pictures on there. Again, I just want y'all to look at them. I don't want to spend time talking about all of them. Uh, but these kids worked really hard. They worked hard with their teams. Please check them out and look at the good stuff that they were doing. Thank you. Just want to check and see if anyone had any questions about any of that information. >> All right. Thanks y'all. >> Could I

017just ask a question quick? Were the um Oh, >> yeah. We can't see lights, so probably just raise your hand. >> You can go ahead, Miss McCall. I'm sorry. A few slides back when um you were mentioning that the kids involved in the sports had a 5% >> higher attendance. Is there any way um if you can get us the stat of what the rate is? >> It's 4.9 >> 4.9%. >> So what is the Okay. What is the average weight rate? >> You're saying it's 5% higher. >> Oh, you're saying what are the two numbers? I can get those two numbers. Yeah. Okay. Yep. For for the other things that was the non involved versus the involved rest of the slide if I can get the base number please. Thank you. >> Yep. >>

018Um were the statistics the gradeoint average and maybe the attendance also were those all high school sports is that >> all high school sports and activities? Yeah. >> Okay. Thank you. >> Yep. >> Anyone else? We can't see lights so >> I think we're good. Thank you. Hi everyone. My name is Melissa Wolf and I'm the director of fine arts and Kappa programming for RPS 205. Next, um I am an RPS alumni. I graduated from Guilford High School and this is my 20th year in the district as an educator for RPS. Um and we added a new person to our team this year um this fall actually and her name is Emma Garner. She's an quite the asset to our department. Um, she's our fine arts coordinator and she's an RPS alumni. Uh, both part

019of the gifted and capup programs. So, what we do, it just says what we. Okay. So, what we do here with uh fine arts is uh Emma and I support K12 fine arts in 38 different schools. um both instrumental and vocal music um as well as dance, theater and visual arts which includes media arts. Um and we want to make sure that our classrooms are outfitted with the proper materials for um students to be successful and that our faculty can um access those materials to help those students shine. Um, next. So, what I wanted to do today is to highlight uh some of our big district efforts and some of our wins that we've had um in K12 fine arts from last spring through this fall and they just keep rolling in. So, bear with

020me. Um, we did have a a a new ensemble that we put together last year uh called the Contraband and it is a tuba symposium led by four of our uh music teachers and we have quite a bit of community member involvement as well as student involvement and uh they just did their inaugural year of the Tuba Symposium out at Rock Valley College in the summer. That's something we're planning on continuing. Also, um, another great win that we have at RPS is our partnership with the Phantom Regiment International Drum and Bugle Corps. Uh, not only are they providing services and equipment, uh, for enrichment of our students for music, they actually moved their hometown show from Boland High School to Guilford High School after being there for 50 years. And we had a great turnout

021um, this summer right before the 4th of July. um and they're respectful to our spaces and they are giving us everything that we need to be able to really enrich our students um in marching band. Moving on uh to the visual arts, we've had some great wins with our students. Both West and Auburn Kappa competed in the 4x5 competition in October and November in Chicago and several of our students placed um best in show as well as honorable mentions. Um, we also had two faculty members present at the Illinois Art Education Conference this year in Shamberg. Uh, and they were both from middle school. So, they were presenting workshops from a middle school faculty curriculum lens. Uh last uh rounding out for visual arts, we are continuing our partnership with the Rockford Art Museum and

022we are going to be doing the uh young artists show where our students have the opportunity to have their art showcased for the public for a month and you can see the different dates there. We have a high school um division that goes first and then we have our young artist K through eight edition that rounds out the spring. Uh lastly, if you've not gotten a chance to go over to Hillman uh and since May, just drive through the parking lot if you'd like to. Um we did an inaugural mural with our middle school students. It was a giant, uh district effort project. Um we had students from our six traditional middle schools as well as our three um special program middle schools come out with their teachers and do a two-day project with a

023local muralist. Um and that's something that we are going to be incorporating as an annual event. Um, and we're going to be doing it on a three-year rotation. So, if you can go on out and check out what um the students have created um at Hillman, it's a real treat. And we will be continuing that again at Fair View um in the spring, this coming spring. Um as far as theater is concerned uh we have a partnership with uh Northern Illinois University and we go every single year to Northern where they put on workshops both in technical theater as well as performance theater for our students and then treat our um upper level uh students to a performance uh that they have in their regular season. And lastly, um we have three successful fall mainstage

024productions that have happened um in RPS and Antiggony is being put on by Auburn this weekend. So if you have um some free time Thursday, Friday or Saturday, come out and see uh their interpretation of Sophocles's antiggony. So, my deep dive was a little bit different than the athletics deep dive because I went specifically with students who were enrolled in a fine arts course on the secondary level, uh, 6th through 12th grade. I didn't look at extracurricular. Uh, I used the CIA information that was given to me to go ahead and do some data analysis. And on average, 6th through 12th grade students who are enrolled in any fine arts class have a GPA that is 0.25 higher than a student who is not enrolled in a fine arts class. Now, if you go up

025on the scale, if a student is enrolled in two classes, it goes up to um they are 0.5 higher with their GPA. Uh but I didn't put that on there because it's normally juniors and seniors, and that's not a 612 opportunity. um juniors and seniors have more flexibility in their schedule to take more fine arts classes and electives. Um we have a ton of events that are coming up in the buildings in these next three weeks as the holidays roll around. Uh but our district events that are coming up that you uh could look forward to are listed there. We're taking students to the Illinois High School Theater Festival. We have an allstate actor this year which is awesome. We haven't had that happen since 2014. Um and then we've got our middle school solo

026ensemble coming up. our um music allstate festival. Those results are coming out this week too for all for our all state musicians. Um our partnerships with music and niu and then our all city art exhibition that we put on at 304 Main. Any questions? >> Anyone raise your hand? I can't see you. >> Great. >> Okay. >> Thank you for your time. >> I have a quick question. What is an all what's an all-state actor? How does that work? >> In the state of Illinois, all high schools have the opportunity to send students to an audition at a um centralized location for an allstate production. So, every single year there is an all-state production in January at either ISU or U of I and it switches every single year. Um and we have the opportunity

027to send our actors. We had a lot of students audition. I believe we had 30 students audition. You have to be a high school student. Um, and we had one student that made it, which is great. Um, and they also can interview to be a part of the technical theater aspect of that to build sets, do lighting design, costume design, that sort of a thing. >> Great. Thank you so much. >> Thank you for your time. Now we're going to board reflections. Do any board members have anything to share regarding any events you've attended or any interactions you've had in the community? Miss Pearson. >> Thank you, Miss Haley. Um, I had an opportunity to visit Auburn High School um to meet with Principal Raniker. Um, and it was uh was able to kill two

028birds with one stone. That was the same day Amir Danfor signed on with North Dakota State University. But in my conversation with the principal, um, we had really good conversation. He's uh really good at getting his footage there. He shared with me a program that one of his staff members brought to him called Lean on Me and it really helped improve attendance and they um have check-ins and they're really engaged and they have some incentives. So, it's really making a difference. It was really uh a conversation that I enjoyed having and to see his growth and um to realize that he have a team that that he can work with and he don't have to solve every problem. So that's really working out for him and I I certainly appreciate the growth that I see

029in him. Um needless to say the the gym was packed out for air's assigning. Um air has done very well. I want to give him a shout out for his academic success as well as his athletic ability. I also um have had conversations with um community members um some still present in the city and some that have relocated that is really um concerned about what's the next step is for RPS 205. And if I can reassure uh the community, we've definitely done our due diligence and listening to uh parents and community members and now we are tasked with the the difficult decision. So um I look forward to uh continue continuing working uh with uh our principles as they strive for academic success. And I certainly look forward I appreciate our um principal here at

030Macintosh for her efforts and her team and I look forward to the presentation on this evening. Thank you for hosting us. >> Thank you Miss Pearson. Anyone else? >> Okay, >> it's real quick. I just want to mention that a number of us went to the uh tri conference in Chicago last well the weekend before Thanksgiving and we uh attended a lot of sessions and learned a lot about um schoolboard governance and and district governance. Um and we will we need to report back. Those of us who went will need to report back and so I just put a note to myself that we'll do that at the next committee the whole meeting in January and I'll send out an email reminder to make sure that we're all ready to do that in January. Thanks.

031>> Thank you, Mr. Carpenter. If no one else, that concludes the stakeholders committee presentation. >> Thank you, Miss Haley. Uh, Miss Bennett will now lead the performance monitoring committee. >> Okay. Good evening. Um, we have two three correction uh presentations for tonight. Um first we have um presentation from Mile Square Health regarding the school ba schoolbased health center. Um Ronnie Sterm is somewhere I think. Oh hello. Um if you could please come up and uh introduce our guests. Thank you. Dr. Gallagher is going to be bringing you the clicker. >> Hi, I'm Ronnie Stern, the director of health services, and I'm here to introduce um two of the board members from UI, I'm sorry, from Miles Square, part of UIC and LP Johnson. Um Dr. Kareem Watson and Angela Ellison. >> Thank you. It's a

032pleasure for us to be here um with my colleague um Angela Ellison. I'm the I'm Dr. Kareem Watson. I'm the president and CEO of UI Health Mile Square Health Center. Um as some of you may or may not be aware, um UI Health Miles Square actually operates the former LP Johnson clinic. The LP Johnson clinic is now LP Johnson Mile Square, which makes it a federally qualified health center here in Rockford. So, we're one of the new federally qualified health centers. We actually opened during the pandemic 2020. So, a lot of the community engagement efforts that happened were were halted because of that. But, we are excited. We also have with us today our site medical director, Dr. Tammy Hammond. I'm a longtime Rockford resident as well. We won't be before you long. I know

033the the school board members that you all have seen our presentation about our desire to expand our clinical footprint for a school-based health center in in the Auburn High School to to go back into the space that was previously run by another community health center. Um, as our senior director of school-based health center, Miss Angela Ellison will tell you, we have over a 20-year history of running school-based health centers in the Chicagoland area. We actually operate four school-based health centers currently. um three of them are kept both dual community um access as well as um seeing the the school the school the children in the school and one of our most recent schoolbased health centers actually in Englewood STEM high school and that's that the reason that that's one of the schools that we really

034want to highlight today because that was what we called what CPS called a turnaround school and so they used actually the community clinical model to bring in a community health center to actually be a part of the turning around of that school to increase volume increase opportunities and soon We actually will be even increasing workforce development opportunities for students through applied health science program because in addition to us being a your traditional fally qualified health center, another one of our pillars is actually workforce development. We have our own dental assistant training program. Do >> you want to start the clip? >> Sure. Um we have our own dental assistant training program, our own community health worker training program, um and also a birthing assistant and doula program. So I'm I'm going to turn the presentation

035over to Miss Ellison to talk a little bit. to talk a little bit more about Miles Square. We only have about five, seven minutes, so we'll go just a little bit deeply into this, but you can go back to that just to give you an idea of the clinical footprint we have in the Chicagoland area. We currently operate 11 clinical sites. As I said before, four of those 11 clinics are school-based health centers. Last year, we had 176,000 plus visits with over 42,000 unique patient visits. Um we serve a traditional FQC population, majority um Medicaid patient population, underserved patient population, and also we do have a private mix of insurance. We've been in the Chicagoland area since 1967. We're about the one the third oldest fairly qualified health centers in the country. Next slide. And

036you see our mission here. Um next, um some of the services we provide, family medicine, women's care, um women's health, we also we we used to call it maternal child health. Now we call it women's health across the life course. Thinking about how do we support women from the cradle to all the way to seniors even thinking about menopause care. But more importantly for the schoolbased health center we think about the all the services we provide in terms of behavioral health um dental as well as support for uh uh prenatal care and and treatment of opioid use disorder and pregnant persons populations but also our pediatric uh specialties. We're really excited about the opportunity to bring pediatrics to the Rockford public school because we we partner with the department of family medicine at the UIC

037College of Medicine Rockford. So residents will also be able to rotate through there providing um some care and actually learning as well. Um see okay talked about our partnership with the college of medicine >> and the good thing about our dental we actually have met several times and worked closely with Dr. Cyrus Oats. So that's a good thing that we work with Dr. Cyrus Oats. We've met with him several times and we're even in partnership about doing some joint recruiting to ensure that the dental dentist that we provide. And so what I'll leave you in closing with as we go through the next slides is that our partnership with Englewood STEM was very unique in that the investment that CPS made in that school-based health center has really helped that helped us turn around that

038clinic and to be a very productive clinic. So now I have the challenge of talking for two minutes for something I was planning to talk for 10. So wa watch me work. Schoolb-based health centers have been around in Chicago since 1998 where the found where the person who reopened Mile Square back in the 90s said it was important to have school-based health centers in schools to address barriers to care in our more economically challenged communities. and her name was Cynthia Barnesborn and she opened that first health center in 1998 and so we've been in the school-based health center for a long time as Dr. um Watson has stated. So it is important we want to highlight the good work that we do. We are there to improve the physical and mental health. We have an

039integrated health model and that we have behavioral health services as well as regular clinical care in our health services. We provide the whole list of services for the whole family. We treat the whole family not just the children. Um, the only thing we don't do is prenatal care. That's when we refer to the main rock, the R main mile square. But other than that, we see the whole family, which is really good for our communities. We don't create barriers for our families. And this is just kind of a history of how many health centers we've opened. We provide the, as I said, the whole cadre of services that Dr. Watson highlighted. Our health centers are run basically by health practition healthcare practi advanced nurse practitioners, medical assistants, clerks, social workers, and community health workers. Um,

040in this new model that we're proposing for the Rockford Auburn Clinic, we will also have a resident model from the Rockford College Medical Center. Um, we have lots of successes that I could go on and on and highlight, but basically our community reflects the community of Rockford. Many of our our percentage of the people we serve are 90% bipok. That it means black, indigenous, people of color. We take uninsured. 88% of our people are uninsured or take public insurance. And we have funding that allows us to do that. We receive federal funding. We receive local state funding. We are state certified health centers. And we have to get HERSA, which is federally certified to open and operate. And we've been doing that, as I said, for 28 years. On average, since 19 since 2019, we've

041seen over 27,000 visits. On average, we see about 9,000 visits a year um in our medical services. As I said, all sides are certified. So, this is what we're proposing is an opportunity to open up this health center in um Auburn because we believe we are the best player on the block. Um and we've already toured that facility and we've looked at what needs to be done. What is important about I want to say we've this isn't as we've said we've done this a long time. When we opened the Englewood STEM high school, we had an investment from the Chicago public school system in order to open that site. they um they invested in our effort because they believed in what we could do and I believe we've done magnificent I know we've done magnificent

042work in opening that health center. We've we are used to opening health centers slowly when needed like if we were to come in and be invited to come into the Rockford Health Center we have a plan on how we would run run and open so that we can be open by 2026. So, we have worked out those details and we're still working out once you decide that we should be the player on the block. Thank you. Thank you so much. Great job, marathon. Uh, great job. Does anybody have any Oh, yes, Miss Stanford. >> So, you mentioned the investment that CPS made. um what's the investment that you're looking for from RPS? We are in a pretty tight budget season and so that is our a big concern. >> Yes, I'll let the CEO answer

043that. >> We did a uh I'm sorry, we did a perform meaning that we look to see how much it would cost the revenue as and we are in a interesting financial situation at the federal government as well. Usually the usual model what would happen is that we would actually go to the federal government and say we're looking to open up a new FQC in the schoolbased health center. We would apply for that grant. They would give us the operating fund cost. But it's a new model at and within the federal government even. And so looking at the number of patients that we would be allowed that we could see the revenue we would generate from the insurance that it'll run us about $600,000 to operate that for the first year. And we would need

044at least 50% of that to come from an investment from RPS Rock public school, excuse me. So at least three at least 300K. And that would get us at the minimum operation to be f to ramp up to get bead five days a week because I think one of the things that's important for you all is access that the students have access. >> That's considerably less than what we were told in the initial presentation. So um that sounds much better. >> Thank you. The initial presentation did have a consideration of dental in it and at that time we thought we would have to do a whole a capital buildout for dental and that capital buildout for dental almost doubled the price. >> Okay. >> That's why the price is different. >> Dr. Hammond, I want

045to make sure I'm not am I misspeaking? Yeah. Okay. Okay. >> I have a question. Did somebody else Oh, Miss Haley, go ahead. >> Yeah, just after the first year, what would be what would you cons what would be the operating cost >> with CPS? You want to talk about what we did with what would the operating cost be after >> after the first year? Yeah. >> The operating cost doesn't necessarily go down. It actually goes up, but we're able to generate revenue as well as we get federal fund. We'll be applying for federal funds and grants in order to continue the momentum. What we depend on significantly after the first year is the revenue and the seeing the patients. The population at Rockford Public School System will definitely meet the needs that we've have

046the formally that we usually use when we're opening up a schoolbased health center. My goal is typically to have at least 500 students in the school. I think you far surpassed that need. Okay. I have two quick questions um regarding and I looked through here and I maybe I missed it. um what's your like anticipated um number of individuals that you would hope to serve in a school year? So if it were to open I understand we'd have to scale up, right? So beginning of school year August 2026 through the end of the school year, what would be your like anticipated? >> And our perform what we put in there is that within the first year at least 2,000 visits. Okay. And the second year kind of doubles and by the third year including dental

047by that time about 6,000 visits. That's including behavioral health and medical. >> Okay, great. Thank you. And then my last question is um from our presentations before there was some talk about the applying for grants and like missing the window of opportunity to apply for those federal funds. Can you tell me when the window is and if we would have time to when when what school year would it fall into of receiving those? >> FY 2026 or 2027 because we're in 26 now. So am I speaking correctly? >> Yeah. So, if we're talking about the state funds, there's two pockets of funds we're talking about. There's state IEP gives us funding. The Illinois Department of Public Health, thank you, Kareem. I'm used to acronyms. The Illinois Department of Public Health gives us funding as we

048and it funds our current health centers. We would approach them again before this in the spring of next year in order to see if they're going to open it up again. It's it's not open every year. It's like every other year, so we'd have to approach them to see if they would expand. The federal government, the same thing. It's under the same restrictions. So, I can't even give you a deadline for whether they will or will not open for the federal government. >> Okay. Thank you. And then one last followup to that. When would you need our decision by if we were to move forward in order for you to start in the beginning of the school year next year? Today, yesterday >> um typically Angela's looking, she know CEOs usually depend on other people

049to answer these questions. One of the things we have to do is get approval for a what's called a scope expansion. That can take about 90 days for the scope expansion and you once you apply for that scope expan scope expansion and HERSA approves it the federal government approves it then you have to open within 120 days after you apply for that. So we need at least need about a six-month runway. Is that fair? >> Yeah. Yeah. >> Okay. I have a question. >> Yes. Uh Miss Goldmith. >> Okay. Um the prior uh occupancy of the Auburn site was a school-based health center. I understand that you're a federally qualified health center. What is that distinction with regard to student care versus adult care? And does the federally qualified uh application or process require that

050adults are also seen in that school-based health center? So my understanding is that the the previous occupant actually was also a federally qualified health center as well. So as federally qualified health centers as FQC's we many of us run school-based health centers and school the schoolbased health center model can usually and Angela speak to the can speak to this usually sees the full in order to really get the complement of services and to provide care for the community. One of the things we pride oursel on is our ability to see the entire family. um the the we've had situations where a grandparent a parent would drop off a child and that parent is going to say I have to stay home or not, you know, from work because they're sick. We said we can see

051you. We actually can take some walk-ins as well. So our ability to see adults is actually a a good thing when we don't like to limit ourselves just to the to the children. Is that fair? >> That's fair. And I will add it's not a requirement that we have to see adults just to be a federally qualified health center or to be a school-based f under a fally qualified health center. That is a plus um that we are able to do that and that is why we look for health centers where we have a community door so that families can come and we can see the whole family. Typically when we roll out a health center we start with the students because that is our priority. The students and their siblings roll up next and

052then the whole family depending on what the board and what the school district decides that we should roll out. We'll follow your lead. But that's typically how we roll it out because we want to take the students as I said are our priority. I have a question andor statement. So, first of all, thank you for the presentation. This was something that I was looking forward to. It's it's a little different when information is presented to you uh versus the actual organization presenting. So, that could have contributed to the delay. Nonetheless, I appreciate you being here on today. You indicated that um students would be seen primarily by senior nurse practitioners, correct? Mhm. >> And and I take it that there's medical physicians that oversee them. >> Yes. >> Um will they at any point ever

053visit the site? >> Yeah. You want to ask >> the the nurse practitioner model is the traditional model of fairly qualified health centers. Okay. >> That's the traditional model and that's one of the reason why you can keep costs lower. So actually at our Rockford at our LP Johnson site that model is actually more physicianbased and it's more physicianbased because of our partnership with the UIC college of medicine Rockford the residency clinic and so we plan to bring some of those physicians Dr. Dr. Hammond herself um has a resident wants to actually come and staff that clinic on some of the days and so yes to answer your question um physicians will be at that clinic likely our site medical director and we'll be bringing medical residents with them for some training as well but

054the APRN model that which is advanced practicing nurse model is your traditional model of most community health centers. >> Thank you. And do you foresee um any interference with the number of students you're able to see if you include uh family members as well? >> We prioritize the students first. We work and the other good thing we didn't mention we work very closely with the principal making sure that and I love the presentations early. We make sure that we try to reduce truency, reduce tardiness and reduce other things by partnering with that principal first and foremost to make sure that the students are our priority. We see the the added bonus of being able to see the entire family, but we we have traditionally never had to pri rep prioritize the you know devalue a

055student being seen over over an adult in the community. >> Okay. And my last question, do you foresee a possibility of uh are the hours set strictly during school hours? Do you foresee evenings or andor weekends? >> We have made adjustments. So some of our health centers we've done evening hours as well. We'll start later and we'll go later depending on what the needs of that community is. Some communities it's not safe actually for the families or anyone to we're yeah it's it becomes challenging in some of our communities but we follow the needs of the community. What's important too is Dr. Watson talked about our relationship with the schools. We also have a wonderful relationship with CPS. Um we meet regularly with CPS and we give them updates and they keep us surprised. So

056we have a good com a good conversation with the Chicago public school system as well. That's been that's led a lot to our success. >> Thank you very much. >> Other thing, the community door uh the community entrance is another thing that allows us to have those extended hours because we don't have to rely and it actually decrease the cost of the school because the rest of the school doesn't have to remain open when we have that community door. People can access that and then we work with the school system in terms of security >> and that was another factor security because some of the schools the whole alarm system is on one system so we can't activate it separately from the school. So that's also proved a challenge in some of our schools. That

057might be why we close earlier. And then we adjust for the summer hours as two according to what the needs are of the community and the school. We work closely with the principles as Dr. Watson said. >> Thank you. >> You're welcome. >> Okay. Uh Mr. Carpenter. >> Thanks. I was just wondering, would you be able to give us get us some information um like regarding contacts at Anglewood or or some um people that we could follow up with and uh >> Absolutely. >> Okay. Great. Thanks. >> Couple of our principles. Absolutely. Can they even let you contact the person at CPS? >> Thank you. >> We definitely can. >> As you can see, we're proud of our relation. We we overcommunicate with our CPS partners because we found that that is the part of

058the the reason why we've been so successful because there's no surprises to them. They know when our hours are changing. They they we keep them a breast of everything and then we're also responsive to the needs that they're having. >> Okay. Any additional thoughts, questions? No. Okay. Thank you so much for coming. We very uh much appreciate it. Um and someone will be in touch with you. I don't know who, but somebody. So, >> thank you. >> Okay. Next, we have um Principal Sberg who's going to give us um a report on Macintosh. Thank you. All right, good evening everybody. I am Erin Soulberg, principal at Macintosh. This is my fifth year here in the building, 10th year as an admin in the district. Um, started my career as an assistant principal at Auburn High

059School and then Nashold Early Childhood and now I'm here. So, opportunity to share our journey. So, this slide, I'm not going to read it to you. I just want to highlight some things. So, we'll get started. Our school serves many students that face really big challenges, including high mobility, homelessness, and the need for special services. Our students bring an incredible amount of strength and resilience. So, our job to provide strong emotional support uh for behavior, academics, seal is super important. Many of our students live in a neighborhood where safety and concerns um cause stress and our ability to create a stable learning environment is incredibly important. Our goal has been to make the school safe, supportive, and welcoming where students feel valued and have a chance to grow and do well. So, today we're going

060to share some things that we've done to meet that goal. So we are in year three of our cycle with the state. Um the previous two years we were um ranked as intensive in all subcategories. So um that's for proficiency and growth in IR across all sub subgroups. Um, this past year with our data that just came out, we have for the first time moved to targeted in our school's history. So, we have doubled our summitative score by 26 points. um we have grown by 14% in ELA um proficiency 10% in math and our growth overall it was both 16 points in literacy and numeracy um in proficiency that does include the new cut scores. So um that is something to keep in mind. But our children with disabilities subgroup is the is the group

061that is currently um still in intensive status. And so we are going to while maintain our focus on the things we've done to get from intensive to targeted, we will have a deeper focus on our children with disabilities. So what are we doing? So I'm going to talk about what we're doing and the success that they've had. Um and then we'll talk about challenges. So this is our fourth year of implementing Champs. So when you look around the lunchroom, you'll see lots of expectations. you'll see lots of things you can do. Um, and that's part of our CHAMPS training that we've done with our staff and our students. So, we're on year four. First year, we just did some researching and planning. The second year, we did a lot of training and talking about common

062language, how we all talk the same way. In our third year, we got to full implementation. And this year, we're in maintenance mode. So, we're visiting classrooms weekly by the month. We're looking at um just some district level like rubrics through our standard of practice, making sure that we're still in maintenance mode and that we don't need to make any changes anywhere. But right now, um we're about 87 to 90% um consistency with our implementation of Champs. Next, we implemented bags. So, I know you've heard a lot about bags, behavior, attendance, grades, and um SEAL. So, this is year two for bags. The first year we started with started with some student leaders, tiger tickets, weekly prizes, big end of the year prizes, positive referrals, positive phone calls home, and student of the month. This

063year we're still doing all those things, but we've started attendance challenges, um, pizza parties, and then teachers are responsible for communicating weekly with parents, whether it's in regard to behavior, attendance grades, or just their overall success with data points. So, every week, parents are getting an update of how their child is doing in class. As far as academic strategies go, we have really focused in two areas. One is flex grouping. So, we're ability grouping our students for what they're ready to learn based on the STAR data that we're pulling. Um, first year we did just grade level. We broke the kids up into what they were ready to learn within their grade level band with a resource teacher and a title teacher to kind of spread the wealth and make smaller class sizes so that

064we could really target what the kids were ready to learn. Um, this year we have expanded a little bit and we're doing multi-grade bands. So like second and third, fourth and fifth are together. And so we're still adding that two title teachers, a resource teacher um to make class sizes smaller and more targeted in what we're teaching. And those have had a huge success on our student growth and achievement. And the second activity that we did was focused on engagement. So our students went through each month a specific engagement strategy. Last year teachers were focused on it. They did um peer observations and provided feedback to their teachers about that engagement strategy and how engaged the students were during that activity. This year we've moved to a more prove it model where the students have

065to show what they know. And so instead of the I do we do it's more you do. And so the teachers will start doing some pure observations around the prove it model so that students are doing more work than the teachers. And then our last thing that we want to highlight is our park district partnership. So our frontier we are the first school to have a full-time community partner in our schools. Um this crew does literally everything. Um, they supervise before school. They help with our breakfast cart. They're doing sense of belonging groups. They're supervising lunch and recess. They help getting kids on the bus, making sure the buses leave in a timely manner with everybody doing what they're supposed to do. And literally, they do everything. And so, um, that partnership has allowed us

066to regain a lot of time after unstructured times like lunch and recess where things might go down and we need time to reset. This group makes sure that they are reset and getting back to uh, learning as quickly as possible. So, we have to shout them out. They've been huge in our success. So, thank you guys. We're missing three members, but we're so thankful that they could be here. All right, so those are some of the things that we're doing that we attributed to our success last year. Um, but we still have some challenges and recruiting teachers that are passionate about working in schools where students have immense needs outside of just learning um is hard. But also teacher burnout and making sure that our teachers are well so that they can take care of

067kids, they can take care of their teammates, be together and support is something that we're focused on. So, our standard of service with central office this year is actually in um tandem with our things that we're struggling with. So, we're working with Jason Pope on potentially being a practicum 2 hub site for Rockford University students that are learning about um classroom management, how to set up a classroom, how to be successful. So, that is in the works. We're excited about that. And then um we're also working with HR um and some other departments on what does it look like for retention and addressing teacher burnout so that we can maintain the level of support that our students need. And then lastly, we still struggle with attendance. So right now we're sitting at about 44% chronic

068absenteeism. These months are cold. Um students aren't walking and so we see that number growing. So, we are attempting outreach as much as possible, trying to find ways to support getting kids to school during these cold months. Um, but that continues to be a challenge for us. So, overall, our student success is driven by intentional commitment by our teachers, strong community partnerships like the park district, and then support from our central office. um these com combined efforts are making a real difference in our students and we want to keep letting students thrive and live up to their potential. Thank you. >> Thank you so much. Do we have any questions or thoughts from anyone? Miss Pearson? >> Yes. So, Miss Sberg, thank you so much for all of your hard work and those that work

069alongside of you. A special shout out to the park district. The park district have really marked territory in our city in terms of supporting our youth. Um, and I I don't there's so much data out there and where it relates to um the pro the uh pros of an active park district and their partnership. So, we certainly thank um the park district for uh stepping up and and bringing this assistance. I know sometime in the past that there were uh issues with um the kindergarteners >> and that have not gone to preschool. Can you talk a little bit about that and the percentage and had that percentage changed any? Yeah, right after COVID we were about 5050 of kids going to prek and kids not attending prek. In the last two years we've right about

07075 80% of students coming from an early childhood center. About 20% are coming with no experience. uh with our partnership with the park district, we have something called tiger time which we're really working on sense of belonging and Miss Shaunie is our kindergarten um park district member and she meets with the kids every every day and they have journals um where they're really working on just connecting being able to express how they feel. Um, and that's had a huge impact on then their just overall functionality within within the school and learning how to do to do life in a school. Awesome. Thank you. So, I also noticed uh the logistics have changed and so shout out to operations and security for uh working together making those things happen. It it looks different and I'm sure

071it's making a difference. So, um keep up the good work. Thank you. Miss McCall, >> thank you. Um, thank you again for uh a lovely presentation and congratulations on moving up um a step in the uh process. I also wanted to um you know shout out your team. You know, it's not a day that goes by I don't see Ashley posting something about we we're trying to get things done at Macintosh or her sister. Um, so just the the sense of the Macintosh pride of family that you guys have here, you know, as you mentioned with the park district, um, it's just phenomenal. So, I just wanted to give uh praises to you all for for doing that. I'm going to bring some shoes. I told Ashley I'm going to bring some shoes for the

072shoe drive and things, but um, all of the efforts that you guys are doing and working with our our scholars has not gone unnoticed. So, I just want to to publicly congratulate you guys again. Thank you. >> Thank you so much. Mr. Carpenter, >> I just kind of want to um build on that. Want to recognize all of your staff that's here, your co-workers that are here. Um this is great. I don't know. I just if people at home can see, but there's a couple dozen it looks like people here that um are attended the meeting tonight. And that's something that we really appreciate. And that's one of the reasons why we wanted to come do meetings at schools was to have staff members here at the meetings and hear about our schools. So, I

073really appreciate that. >> Anyone else on that side of the table? No. Okay. I just also want to ask Mr. Carpenter stole what I was going to say, but um we know you work very long days and so the fact you stay after work and come um just to be present and just show how proud you are. We really really appreciate it. Um my only question is um is there anything that you need? Is there anything that we can do to support you? You can think about it. Um, you don't have to tell us today, but I know you have lovely partnerships and those are lovely, but um, you know, in the coming days, weeks, if there's something that any of us can do, all of us collectively can do, um, we hope you'll let

074us know. >> Yeah, I think we've had the ability to be creative. Um, especially last year, thinking outside the box. Um, and so just looking at the system and how we support our students that maybe don't fit into the box. um what can we continue to do right with attendance or transportation? I think that door is always open for conversation. >> Great. Thank you so much. >> Thank you. >> Okay. And so for um the last presentation for um performance and monitoring tonight um we have uh quite a few uh RPS team members here um but we will let Miss Perry take the way. Thank you. >> All right. So forgive me. I have a little bit of a cold. Um but I will walk us through our academic return on investment. And um you

075actually heard a little bit about it in the U Macintosh presentation. If you remember back in July, you guys um selected as a board, you guys selected our bilingual AROI and our CHAMPS uh and safe and civil schools AROI. So now we are doing our um update on the design of that academic return on investment study for our CHAMPS and start on time. So just a reminder that this all came from our equity imperative that uh we want to see and research what works for whom under what conditions and that's for our equity imperative of interrupting the predictability by zip code and how it relates to our universal goals. Um so our champs uh study here is uh looking at all of our goals. In previous AOIS, we've talked about the math goals um and

076graduation rate and middle school on track, but this is really about all of our goals because we're talking about how this sets up the system and creates the conditions for our students to be able to be successful. So, a little bit about AROI, just a reminder that we have three different tiers of how we review our initiatives. And step one and two is done internally and you the board select our tier 3es our AOIS. So you selected those two um and we are just now starting. So we typically do a multi-year study. Um and so this is just the beginning of these AOIS. Just a reminder that we are looking for data and how the programs are going not in order to make judgment but in order to decide and listen um for what is

077working and what conditions they are working and why so that we can make database decisions. So a little bit about why safe and civil school partnership was up for a choice is we recognized that by having a safe and structured environment we are more likely to have better outcomes inside the classrooms and previously before CHAMPS we did not have a framework that existed for a tier one classroom management um universally across the district. This way um we could also support our teachers in historically um challenging schools as well as um Macintosh is one of our examples of our pilot schools that started with CHAMPS that we are showing initial really great data and we wanted to capitalize off of that and understand the why behind why it was working at those schools. My name is

078I'm Blake Hand. I'm executive director of schools uh for the southwest quadrant including uh Westview and Macintosh. So I'm going to give just a little bit of background on CHAPS. You probably heard about it, but just to kind of fill in some blanks. So um really it's just a classroom management framework is really all it is. And we just want to increase student engagement and decrease misbehavior and just have uh just a positive classroom climate. And the acronym itself uh stands for these things. And you'll see like behind you, I know uh Miss Aldrick was showing the different posters we have, but students need to know what's the conversation. Are they allowed to talk? What should the volume be? Things like that. How do you get help? What is the thing we're being asked to

079do? What's the activity? Uh how do I know what success is? Can they move around? Like what is the level of movement? Do you stay within a certain spot? Can you move all about? Uh what does engagement look like in the classroom in terms of participation? And then also, how do I know when I'm successful as a student? So, here's an example of a uh Champs poster you might see in a classroom, but again, they have them all around here in Macintosh when you leave the uh cafeteria and head into the classrooms. But again, it just gives you these specific examples of what the expectation is for students. So, there's a whole body of research that basically says that, you know, students need to be explicitly taught things in order to learn them. And behavior

080and expectations is no different. So it just builds off that research and for CHAMPS it's all about uh it's based in this whole thing called the stoic framework. So that's the CHAMPS acronym. So for every activity the classroom teacher or any staff member would go through those things about c conversation help movement all those things but it's it's more than that it's a whole framework. So there needs to be a structure for success in the classroom and in the school. Like I said, uh students and staff need to explicitly be taught the expectations. So, you need to show them what it looks like. You need to show them what it doesn't look like. U we as the adults need to observe the behavior. We need to be on top of that. We can't just say

081it and then just walk away and let it go. And we need to interact positively with students and really everybody that is in our school community. And then there's going to come a time when a student uh needs to be corrected and we need to be uh fluent in how we do that and not just kind of going off the cuff. We need to know how we do that the right way. So that's the whole framework for champs right there. And here's the core concept for it. So it's just really the idea that there needs to be strong healthy relationships in the school environment. So whether we like it or not, there's no neutral interactions in life. there's going to be it's it's pretty much a positive or a negative. So, the way that we

082look at with Champs and the way that uh the staff have been taught this is that it's a deposit or a withdrawal. And if you think about it in terms of money, positive interactions are like depositing $1 in someone's pocket. So, you want to build up those deposits over time. And that means you need to have a lot of positive interactions, but at some point there's going to be a withdrawal. So, people always remember negative interactions. And the reason may be is that you didn't have enough positive interactions on the front end before a negative interaction came about. So that's something important we and we hold that to heart. So we're finding all sorts of ways to build positive interactions with kids and with adults so that when that inevitability of withdrawal comes, you don't

083overdraw. And so that's really the basis of all this in terms of a a core concept. So, in terms of where we're at with Champs, Lewis, Lemon, Constance, Lane, and Macintosh started this journey uh three years ago, and they're in year four right now, as Principal Sberg said. We also had some middle schools that are in year two. So, that was Rhysa, Lincoln, and Kennedy. They're actually part of a stronger connections grant where they were able to get started. And uh this year we've had Riverdoll, Lyrop, Ellis, Froberg, West, Flynn, Marshall, really in Eisenhower, really the rest of the middle schools jumped on board and they're in first year implementation. We also have some other schools that are getting started uh this year in February that their initial training will be in institute day that'll

084be uh Rolling Green, Welsh, and Westview. So uh we have plans to move it forward and that's why we wanted to give you guys this information today. >> All right. So, um, from that last slide of the different groupings of schools, it really puts us up for an interesting study in that we'll be able to see in different groups of schools at different years of implementation. How are we seeing the results and what can we learn from each of those different situations? So, group one is our pilot group that Constance Lane, Lewis, Lemon, and Macintosh group. And these uh next few slides that you're going to see for each of the groups is showing data points that um the AOI team uh worked with. These are the things that we are saying that if this

085program is going well, these are the things that we should see data movement on that this these are our outputs that we're expecting to see a change in due to this uh program's success. So one of them is attendance. If CHAMPS is going well, if there is good classroom management, if there's good behavior management, we should see an improvement in attendance. So, you can see here from our first group one um that before the line is is the baseline before CHAMP started, you can see that all three of the schools saw a large jump in their attendance and across all of their different racial subgroups as well. um saw a big jump and not only are they outpacing the improvement in all RPS elementaryaries, you see that they saw that slight that big jump in

086the beginning and they are continuing to see that improvement every year. Um so that is an indication that this is having an impact on their attendance. Behavior behavior will you will see a slight uptick in um their data that first year. So the behavior that we're tracking here is level one and level two because if you remember CHAMPS is a tier one program and so we're talking about minor things inside the classroom that that's what CHAMPS is trying to target. Um so you'll see there's a slight uptick and um a lot of data we talk about that whatever gets measured you often will see an increase in that because people are paying more attention to that. So that's um typical um when we start to track those kind of things. So they saw a slight

087uptick and then you see that they are starting to see a decrease. So it is having an impact on their behavior incidents are declining. And then teacher retention rate. So although this is a um kind of a tertiary um data point is if we have better classroom management, if we are seeing better student attendance, if we are seeing a lower behavior um rate, then teachers are going to want to stay in the buildings and we will have a higher teacher retention rate. So you will see um the RPS average at elementary schools um is at 86 and the group of those three uh pilot schools is at 81. But look at the starting point in the 24 school year they were at 67. So it was a group improvement by 14%. So again um we're

088seeing a large improvement and change in uh this pilot group. our group two. And just a reminder before we get started on this data of what we just saw in that group one data um is that sometimes there's going to be a slight uptick in that first year and a one data point is not a trend. Um so these three middle schools last year was their first year of implementation. Um so not much of a change in attendance just yet in order for it to be considered a trend. you do see some um decline, you see some improvement. Um but we'll it's really going to be this year that makes the difference to see if it's working or not. And then tardies, you'll see an uptick again just like we saw at at the pilot

089schools that first year in behavior. There was a big uptick because part of the program is that they are really keeping track of this kind of behavior. And then behavior incidents actually stayed flat. So where we typically see an uptick, they saw just the same amount. And then for teacher retention, they also saw um some improvement since the the first year and it's remaining steady. So now we set our goals. Now that we have our baseline, we're trying to decide what will we decide if we continue to hyperfocus on implementation and study what's working and what's not working. what are we hoping to see over time so that we can say this is what we're hoping to get out of it. So, first is attendance. That group one, that pilot group, Macintosh, Lemon, and Lane,

090they are currently at an 86% attendance. We want them to get to a 90% attendance. Just a reminder, their baseline was 76% in that first year prior to uh CHAMPS. And group two, that middle school, we want them to go from 85 to 90%. For discipline, we're at a 1.2 rate of discipline per student. We want it go to go down to one. And then for group two, we would like to go from five incidents per student average to two. For the teacher environment, for group one, we want them to remain steady at 8 81% or increase. And the reason why is they've already seen a 14% increase over a very short amount of time. So that's a already a very large growth. Um, in group two, we would like to see a 4% increase

091to 85. >> All right. Good evening. Um, Sarah Brener, executive director of schools and special programs. And I'm going to talk a little bit about um the second element that we've partnered with safe and civil schools on, which is start on time in the high schools. Um, really a lot of our work with CHAMPS that Blake spoke about is at the classroom level. How are the teachers setting up those expectations at the classroom level? Start on time is really an initiative focused on um our common spaces such as our hallways, our cafeteria, those types of things. It also is really focused on how are we getting students into class once they're in our presence. So, not necessarily how are we having good attendance or attendance increase, but rather when they're in our schools, how do

092we make sure they're not wandering our halls or in our bathrooms or doing other behaviors that aren't productive? and how do we get them into the classrooms? Um, and so that's a structure that we started training on last year and that we're continuing to implement at all of our high schools. We've just done this with our high schools because tardies was a really significant issue we were trying to address. Many of our kids were here, their parents would get calls during the day then they knew they should be here. They were bust here as an example, but they weren't physically in the classrooms because of various reasons. So again, start on time is an initiative. It's it's a schoolwide initiative and so each building at all four of the high schools and even Roosevelt came

093as well had a task force and the task force really had to set up ways for how they were going to respond when students were tardy but what did they also set up as far as those supervision structures and really the ultimate goal is how do you have increased instructional time. It's very disruptive when kids keep coming in and the teacher's trying to teach and you keep having to stop or a friend has to explain to them what they need to be doing. And so really again we want them there on time and so um staff have different supervision mostly it's um their hallways but also some of our non-certified staff our parent liaison our security team our BIS's also support this work as well um in addition to the admin team and the classroom

094teachers and again as Blake mentioned earlier how do we have those positive interactions when they first come into our classrooms um before we're starting our instruction what are our consequences for those students that aren't getting to class on time and how do we have a system and a protocol for that in the building that may be outside of our discipline referrals as our first ways that we're intervening. I'm going to show I hope a little bit of this clip. This is um our actual partners that we're working with with safe and civil just so you can see a little bit of an example um of what it looks like in the schools and then we'll spend a little time showing some examples of um some works that we've already started within RPS. always set the

095climate of the school. In many ways, a secondary school's hallways are like the circulatory system of the human body. And if that's not efficient and healthy, none of your other systems are healthy. If student behavior is chaotic, it affects the first minutes of every class. On the other hand, if student behavior is calm and respectful and a disciplined attitude, it pervades the passing period, that professional attitude tends to carry over into the classroom. >> What can start on time do for your school? First of all, the frequency of tardiness can be reduced by up to 98%. Start on time can make the entire atmosphere of your school calmer, more respectful, and responsible, and even safer. Teachers never delay the start of class to deal with tardiness or other misbehaviors from the halls. Staff will increase

096the coordination and orchestration for dealing with misbehavior. Students who are tardy do not get the benefit of increased social time with peers and are not allowed the opportunity to disrupt classroom instruction by entering class late. >> You may be skeptical that these kinds of changes can actually create such a dramatic change in student behavior, but let me show you an example. in this midsized urban school. >> Okay, we're going to stop there. I'm going to show you a little bit of what it looks like. So, like I said, all of our teams were trained last year. They sent groups of staff depending on who's supporting their work. All of them were set forth with coming up with a reduction goal and what would be some common agreements that their task force set. And so, the

097task force then, like I said, comprised of either teachers, admin, parent leaison, BIS's, those types of roles. then went back to the broader school team to share the goal and then really this year um at teacher institute re-engaged knowing they had new staff and sharing the goals. The ultimate goal is when we get kids into class that really is a win on the instructional side for the teachers. We're increasing the amount of time they are with the teachers which obviously helps us as far as overall academic achievement. Also the schools were asked to set up um supervision structure. So, um, in Auburn, you can see on the floor how they have visuals like they showed in the video for students, so they know how and where to pass, um, what those areas were. All the

098schools targeted areas they knew maybe had flow pattern issues, as well as the map shows where people are stationed. At Auburn, as an example, all the admin, if you go stop by the building, they're on overhead carts standing in the hall the majority of the day because that's their supervision zone that they're assigned to. again to greet kids positively, get them to class, ask if they need something, those types of things. So again, each school is obviously different based on their building layout and and their team of support. And so they've set it up differently based on the needs. I'll turn it back to Christina to talk a little bit more about some of the data. All right. So, because group three, our high schools are just starting and they're really only a few months

099into start on time, we're looking at last year's data to determine our goal for what we want to see from CHAMs and start on time. So, um not much to report here is that we just have what their average was last year. 85% was the RPS uh 205 high school average attendance rate and so we will want to see an improvement in that. um our average number of tardies per student. And you'll see um a difference there in the schools just because of the way they handle and report tardies inside the building is different, but we want to see a a decline um based off of how they are are reporting currently in their system. And then same thing, behavior instances, we're looking for levels ones and level two. We want to see a decline

100in that. So right now the average is two per student at the high school level and the teacher retention rate right now at all four high schools um together is 85% and just a reminder the state average is 87% for teacher retention. So success for the high school group is that we want to see our attendance to improve by 5% to 90% and we want to see our discipline referrals to decrease to one per student instead of the two per student. system. We also want to see our teacher retention rate to increase to the state average of 87%. So the meat of this now that we have that baseline information is the work really happens in the next two years. Um now that we have the data, our design of our study is to listen

101to the people closest to the work. We have a support team that has um two non-certified staff members, three teachers, and two principles that have volunteered to be a part of the team in addition to the AOI team to do the study. We listen for that qualitative feedback and what is working and what is not working. Why did it work so well at the pilot schools? What went well? what didn't go well in order for you guys to successfully implement so that we can replicate those things across the other groups. We just launched a survey today um and this is not in the presentation because it was launched today and I just am very pleased by this because I do all the surveys. You guys get to hear all about my surveys all the time

102but I have never seen such a response rate. um in one hour I had 120 responses um that that people were just itching to give their feedback and it was so powerfully positive. There were definitely some areas for improvement but it was all very actionable that they still believe in the system um of champs and start on time but here are ways that we can make it better. So I see a lot of very positive work inside the survey and that quality qualitative feedback that support team is going to use in order to decide and make database decisions for next steps. um our principal PLC support with our schools team to continue to develop as well as looking at different elements that we can collect data on to look at what are the contextual variables

103of again of what is working for whom um under these different conditions. >> Uh this is a really busy slide but it just to let everyone know what's happening with all the training. um really since this past summer into August we had institute days where there's a lot of training these are hundreds and hundreds of teachers that are getting quality classroom management training uh October February coming up we have a lot of schools that are getting either firsttime or additional training and then summer 26 again a number of schools that are uh having additional training kind of finishing out like what we can we're trying to get three or four days of training with safe civil schools for all these schools but also just so you know the school is also set uh a lot

104of work time so they can get classroom management plans set up, their rooms actually set up and do lots of planning so when they set foot uh in their school first day of school, they're ready to go and they feel prepared. So that's really uh that's it. >> Oh, >> and I did it. >> Next steps. Um we will come back in March to give you an update on uh data and what growth um and improvement we have seen and what um different steps that the schools team was talking about that they have taken and what the results have been from there. Any questions Mr. Carpenter? >> Thanks. Um you mentioned that the high schools um treat tardies differently I think. Can you explain that and how how that would affect your um data? >>

105So um every high school tracks their tardies in a little bit different manner. So some of them use the code CT which stands for classroom tardy in their attendance. Some choose to um give them like detention slips like hall sweeps. So they they mark their tardies by marking kids with a hall sweep pass. And then some choose to use the referral system. So no matter which way we ran this data, one school was always the outlier and it was just flipped in different ways. Um, so we're just going to stay consistent with one way for when we're tracking the data. But either way, that way we're keeping the same consistency of of how we're tracking that tardis. So >> thank you. >> Miss Pearson. >> Yes. I just have a quick question. So, a student

106at the Kappa program at uh West was able to visit Auburn and um she witnessed the um the time the period of changing classes which was the determining factor to not uh go to the Kappa uh program at Auburn. Is there anything in the works um for the Kappa students um to kind of reflect how West do their change of periods? >> Can you say the very last part? I'm sorry I missed what you said. their change what >> the changing period I I guess west have a a unique method of changing or if it's a setup for um a particular area. >> So yeah, in the Kappa program at West, they are more self-contained because they're in a wing together for most of the day. So like their passing is more minimal which is

107different versus obviously at Auburn they are grouped together for some of the classes but not necessarily their whole day because they have to go to their math block and those types of things. So to your point that is the problem we're trying to solve and they realize that the halls weren't as safe and functional as they could be. So that's why we're trying to do this program as a way to reduce that and make it more safe where we can get kids to class on time. One of the other strategies that they've even done at Auburn is like an audible where they're playing music during passing period. Also is another way to signal to students you have this much amount of time to get to class before class is starting. So that is what we're

108trying to improve. >> Okay. Thank you. >> Yeah. >> And my um next question is regarding on time. So I believe Guilford have something uh that is able to their ID is attached there's information associated with their apparently uh with their ID. So say if they go to a game at Guilford, they're unable to get in if they've had two tardies. So, some of the schools are using tardies like and doing like loss of privileges if they have a certain amount of tardies where the kids aren't able to participate in certain events or certain activities because they've had frequent discipline issues or maybe a recent discipline suspension or otherwise. >> Okay. So, that is the piece that is confusing for parents. So how can we um somehow make that universal or principles collaborating in some

109way so that that is a a more it's more clear um so it's not so confusing. You know one kid was like we didn't we don't have that another kid does and it's it's a little it's a little confusing. Not that it's a bad idea at all. I think it teaches discipline and structure and all of that, but to be able to somehow make it universal will be helpful in sending a more unified message to families. >> We did talk on a similar concept at the beginning of the year with high school as far as off-campus and Jason was a part of that dialogue with our high school teams, but Dr. Gallagher, Dr. Sus, and I work with high school. So that's definitely a topic that if you're getting feedback on, we could talk about

110to see if we can get an alignment to make it more clear for parents. >> Yeah. Thank you. >> Any other questions? >> Yeah. Any other questions? >> No. Okay. Thank you so much. Very much appreciate you coming. >> Okay. So, um, performance and monitoring, we have four items tonight. Um, we have line items H, I, J, and K. Does anybody have any questions on any of those items or want additional information? I'm having some technical difficulties. I'll get back with you. >> Okay, no problem. If you if you do, let us know. Uh, no additional questions? Nope. Okay, that concludes our portion of the meeting. Thank you. >> Thank you, Miss Bennett. Um, we're now moving on to the planning and development committee and I believe Miss Pearson would be leading that today. >>

111Thank you, President Carpenter. Um, the FY27 budget discussion preview. Uh, I will now turn it over to Dr. Brown to preview um the uh FY27 budget. Mr. Brown. >> Okay. Thank you. So, couple of introductory slides here. You know, when we approved the FY26 budget, we told you that we would report back, you know, on our results uh moving throughout the year, too, because we did approve a deficit budget, you know, this past year. And so, we want to make sure we're keeping you updated on that. So, that's going to be one of the slides that you're going to see in here as well. But just really to to start off, I just want to reflect back on the audit report that was just approved last month. So everybody is is aware of where we

112ended FY25. So we did end FY25 with a significant deficit in the ED fund, about $14 million. A large part of that was from the health care costs, as you can see, about $10 million higher than what we budgeted. A lot of those costs are outside of our control. We're a self-insured health plan and so we're literally are the claims payer for the health insurance program. So when those costs spiral, you know, we just basically have to eat the cost of everything that's up and above. Uh we also had about a $4 million deficit from core operations, which is what, you know, we refer to as kind of a structural deficit. The impact of running a $14 million deficit last year was that our financial profile score went from a 3.9 out of a four-point

113scale down to a 3.55. So just in one year, you can see that we lost a significant number of points on the financial profile score due to the deficit. So we are 0.02 points away from actually falling into review category at the state level. So that's something that we want to be cognizant about. So how are we doing this year? So year to date, our actuals are showing really large deficits. Uh you saw these last month when we showed the September 30th, 2025 results. Uh you saw some really large deficits in the ED fund and the operation and maintenance fund. Those deficits right now are largely due to timing. So we're not overly overly concerned about those right now. The education fund is on track for that budgeted deficit of between three and a half

114and $4 million. Uh the on and the transportation which are two other two big operating funds on track to be you know break even. uh the IMRF and the the Medicare on track for a plan spend down of about a million dollars, but we're still seeing a significant amount of of increase over budgeted cost for our healthcare spend. So, we're about $5 million greater than what we thought we were going to be on health care spend based on the trends that we're seeing right now. That could be due to the fact that we have claims that are carrying over from last year before we had some plan design changes in in July. So, it's possible that that will reverse itself, but right now it looks like the education fund is on track for about an

115eight and a half to$9 million deficit for FY26. So, not not where we were hoping to go. uh our outlook for FY27 and you saw this when we were talking about the levy discussions. We're projecting about a 13.5 million dollar deficit. Again, all in the ED fund. We were able to balance the other funds. Uh this was done before uh we actually uh took action at the board meeting in November on the levy scenario. So, our projections assume taking option C, which is what the board uh agreed to move forward, you know, for the uh vote in December, and that will provide us with about $5.2 million in new funding to the district. So, that's very helpful on on trying to to keep the deficit from running away. Uh federal funding still remains uncertain. uh

116you know, who knows what's going to happen in January when the continuing resolution that they're under right now expires. You know, we really don't know about that. Competing federal bills out there that are very uncertain on federal funding. And then state funding has actually become unclear. And so I know a lot of the board members were in Chicago for the triple conference. I had a chance to attend a couple of sessions with legislators where they were talking about state funding and the outlook for state funding is is really not not great. Uh you know there was a lot of discussion about the underfunding of mandated categoricals which is our transportation and special education reimbursements and and a lot of discussion about whether they'll be able to fully fund the evidence-based funding for the upcoming year.

117So, you know, those are things that are uncertain for us right now. We are projecting that we'd get the same level of mandated categorical funding that we got this past year. And we also are projecting that we get about a $10 million increase in tier funding. So, those are things that are baked into the FY27 outlook. So, that being said, you know, next steps on where we're going to go with the FY27 budget are we're going to hopefully finalize that levy in December. Uh, this is going to let us know, you know, if we if we need to do any additional uh savings. So, we've already made a decision on that. So, I think we feel good about that. And then really these next few slides are going to walk you through as a board

118what you should expect from us as we move forward with the budget process. So in the January committee the whole meeting you know we are going to take a deeper dive into next steps for identifying cost savings. So um you know and we're going to talk about what steps that we might need to take as a district to actually execute on those cost savings. We're actually uh have a draft of the DMG prism work that we've been working on. You're actually going to see a presentation on that at the January board meeting from DMG themselves. And so they're actually going to have some recommendations on some things that we should consider doing to actually tighten up our spending. And then at that point, you know, really as a board, I'm going to ask you guys

119whether you think we need a special meeting to take even a deeper dive into some of those uh recommendations. So, February, uh, you know, we're going to be bringing to you guys based on the DMG work and the work that we're going to do over the next month or so, we're going to we're going to bring some some recommendations on cost savings that we think that that we're going to need to to put into place and and we're going to be seeking some some input from you guys on on what you think, too. And again, if we need that deeper dive on some kind of a recommended cost savings and then if there is any kind of action that that needs to take place, we're going to be looking for that probably at the February

120board meeting. So, just kind of a preview of the timeline that we're going to be on. And then March is when uh you know, we may have some kind of final recommendations. We we may actually have them before that uh at the March meeting. And then April is when you're going to kind of get into our typical cycle of how you see the budget typically coming to you. You'll see budget presentations from the district departments in in April. Then you're also going to see in May the the department budgets again and then we'll have the consolidated school budget at that time too. And then June we'll work on a draft of the overall budget, the entire district budget. July, we'll work on a tenative budget presentation that you'll see and then hopefully the July board

121tenative budget approval and then August finest final budget presentation and then the final budget approval in August. So that's kind of the cycle we're on. But we just wanted to give you a heads up on the kinds of things that you're going to expect to see this year because it is going to be a little bit different cycle than we've done in the past simply because we are going to be bringing forward some cost savings recommendations. So questions on the process over the next couple of months. Any questions? If not, Dr. Brown, don't go too far, >> okay? >> Please. And thank you. Um, attached to the agenda is the post insurance tax compliance report for your review. Are there any questions for Dr. Brown? Then Dr. Brown will present on the 2025 tax levy

122uh that the administration is asking the board to approve at the December 16th, 2025 board meeting. Yeah. Are there any questions on this? This was option C that we move forward from the November meeting which is to take CPI and also uh new property. Are there any questions on that? Dr. Brown, there's a there's a lot going on um just with within the board. So there may be additional questions. >> Sure. >> On the 16th, so bear with us. >> Yep. So the resolution for the 2025 a tax levy will be brought to the board for vote December 16th. Thank you Dr. Brown. I will now turn the floor over to Mr. Phillips. So on the agenda we have the school maintenance project grant application. This is a uh dollar fordoll state matching grant that

123awards up to $50,000. Uh we uh would like to apply for this grant and if awarded, we would use those funds to replace gymnasium dividing curtains at Eisenhower Middle School. We've been awarded this the last uh uh two years. Last year uh the board uh approved for us to move forward with doing an HVAC upgrade at Monasur's library and the year prior we did an accessible ramp and sidewalk at Byer uh early childhood. Um so we will be bringing this um forward to the December 16th meeting for a vote. >> Any questions for Mr. Phillips. >> Mr. Phillips, would you like to continue on with >> Yep. Sure. Thank you. Uh, the next on the agenda is the memorandum of understanding with the Rockford Park District for the Bloom Park playground project. Uh, around this

124time last year, the park district approached us uh, letting us know that they were going to be doing a replacement of the playground at Bloom Park. If you can kind of picture our Bloom Elementary School property, we um have uh the park district has adjacent property to the north of us and that uh playground is currently located in the north uh west section of the property. Um annually as a facilities and operation group, we budget for playground replacements andor uh upgrades and maintenance upkeep across the district. Uh so when they approached us uh we really were interested in this but our discussion led us to ask the park district if they would consider uh in this replacement moving the playground closer to uh our school location. Uh as part of the um attachments I do

125have a plan that the park district has provided us. So, basically, we uh theou that we're bringing forward in December is our intent to invest $125,000 into the project. That would include a 2 through5 playground structure, a 5 through12 structure, as well as a swing structure much closer to our um building, as well as we currently uh have a tennis court. They would be replacing that tennis court with a multi-court surface which would include four square, a couple pickle ball courts and a basketball court. Um so in December we're bringing theou forward in January. Uh if thisou is approved, I'd be bringing forward a resolution um as well as an intergovernmental agreement because we would need to transfer some property to uh the park district uh so they could build this playground uh closer. The

126reason why we need to transfer it to them is because the park district will actually maintain this and it will be under their uh insurance uh not ours. Any questions on that? >> I have one. >> So the cost to us is because we want to move the playground. >> So typically we are doing our own playgrounds in most of our locations. This just happens to be a site that the park has always had a So it's us wanting to invest uh with the park district in this in in the playground. That was just to ask of us if we could move that closer. Typically, a playground replacement runs around $250,000. >> So, the the amount that you mentioned um is just our portion of it, the part that that's correct. >> Okay. Thank you,

127Mrs. Bennett. Um okay, I have two questions. Um or well I guess one's a statement. Uh my family and I use this park so I love the idea that it's closer. Um the the huge gap in between. So that's very exciting. Uh my question though is so there's Bloom Concept Bloom options 111825. Can you explain what the differences are with like the um different images, the different options? Like is that just for reference and they're deciding or what? it it was for reference and it had some color selections which then the park district took to the school and allowed the principal and the school to make the color selections. It it's just also references on what a 2 through5 structure versus a 5 through 12 structure looks like. >> Okay, great. Thank you. >> Anyone

128else? If not, uh, the lost my spot. Oh, the memorandum of understanding with the Rockford Park District will be brought to the board for a vote on December 16th. Back to you, uh, Mr. Phillips, in regards to the, uh, intergovernment agreement with the city of Rockford for site logistic >> work at Lincoln Middle School. So, one of our facilities master plan projects um is site logistics work at um Lincoln Middle School. The city is actually going to be completing the north leg of the 11th Street improvement um project this coming summer. uh and what we were looking at doing really lended an opportunity for us to partner with the city for some economies of scale. So what this IG does is it would transfer some right-of-way property, Williams Parkway being the major portion of that

129to the school district as well as some property along uh Charles Street which will allow for a right turn lane. What we're trying to achieve here is to align our west entrance of Lincoln Middle School with the north leg of 11th Street while also creating a lefthand turn. So if you were driving east on Charles Street right now, you're not able to turn into the west parking lot at Lincoln Middle School legally. Yeah, correct. Or safely >> operative. So, this this change would create a lefthand turn lane if uh for drivers headed east. It would also create a righthand turn lane for drivers headed west along with a little elongated so we do have parents that tend to pull over uh there and we have a rise in the hill which creates a very unsafe

130condition. So, it'll provide a little bit of a pulloff there to drop students off also. Uh so this really is a great opportunity for us to partner with the city. The uh city will be bidding their north leg project out in December or excuse me January February. They would combine our work with that and then we would just utilize the city's contractor on the majority of the majority of the project. >> Are there any questions for Mr. Phillips? I and as part of the executive summary, I do have a draft of what that um work would potentially look like. >> Correct. >> Okay, Miss Bennett. >> So, if I remember right, there's a crosswalk at um 11th Street and Charles Street and then there's not another one for quite a few blocks down. Is there

131any conversation about um I don't think there's crossing a crossing guard at that specific chunk of time and I am very aware that children just run across the street as quick as they can to get to the other side. So is there any conversation of a crossing guard of some sort in between that large chunk of space or an additional crosswalk like the flashing school signs some other things because of also how fast traffic is in that particular space. So because of that rise, the city has not wanted to put another uh flashing lights there, but uh you know, we're always willing to work with the school. They're able to um hire crossing guards. Um so that that would really be a uh principal and a school decision, but always willing to partner with our

132schools to improve that. >> Thank you. Any other questions? Okay. The intergovernmental agreement with the city will be brought to the board for vote December 16th. The preview of consent items is a uh IFB 2615 uh fair view interior door replacement and b IFB 20 uh6 or 20 or 26 uh to 17 bleacher inspection. Are there any questions or concerns? If not, that completes our the report for the planning and development committee. >> Thank you, Miss Pearson. >> You're welcome. >> We are now at the governance committee. Um, first item is 8A, board policy 7.30. That would be revised by removing an outdated reference to board policy 6.15, school accountability. There's no longer any criteria in board policy 6.15, which could allow for any zone transfers. Are there any questions? If there are none, that

133will be uh voted on at the meeting this month. Um the next item is item 8B, which is board policy 7.150. that's updated in response to the new state law requiring districts to establish a policy regarding agency and law enforcement requests at schools. Um the law requires that to be done by July 1st, 2026. The administrative regulation is also revised in response to the new law requiring development of procedures with uh regard to requests from law enforcement agents attempting to enter a school or school facility. Does anyone have any questions on that? >> Miss Pennet, >> um could Attorney Gold Smith provide just a little bit more information about the revisions in addition to um the administrative regulation? That one's obviously much more in depth, but um there's quite a few changes there. If you

134could provide updates on those. Thank you. >> Yes. So in 1982, the US Supreme Court decided held that it's unconstitutional for states to deny free public education to children. Uh this school district has always acted in accord with that case law and that precedent. Um Illinois legislature has decided to codify more detailed requirements to support that US Supreme Court decision. In doing so, uh, the Rockford Board of Education has revised proposed revisions to its policy to explicitly detail that students are not to be denied uh, access equal access to free public education based on their perceived or actual citizenship or immigration status, nor are their parents. So, there's some explicit revisions here that uh state very plainly that students or parents are not to be denied access to programming and participation in the district's programs

135or activities. The administration administrative regulation is revised to capture um procedures that require or allow administration to reach out to the legal department. If law enforcement presents there with any type of or order, warrant or document, they are to call the legal department while simultaneously emailing the document to us for review. Um and also the statute requires the district to document every interaction with law enforcement. There is an exception in the definition for law enforcement for school resource officers. So doc uh interactions with them are not required to be documented but the administrative regulation now clarifies that when there's interaction with law enforcement uh schools are to document those. And there's a sample form there as well. Thank you very much. >> Thank you. Does anyone else have any other questions on 7.150? Did that

136I do have one question. Um did the law also was there part of it that uh requires dissemination to staff for the policy? I cannot recall if it explicitly says that, but it is always the district's practice when we revise board policies to push it out via principal headlines when there's implications such as action that needs to be taken by administrators and or teachers. So our process uh entails after the board approves this policy with any necessary or requested revisions um after the board approves we then disseminated to all their principles and ask that they push out to all staff not just the administrators themselves but teachers and everyone else are to know and understand uh how this contact is to take place. >> Thank you very much. >> I'm sorry I do have another

137question. >> Oh go ahead. Um so in the um exhibit uh for record of agency and law enforcement request you said every interaction has to be documented. So in the form it says a principal or assistant principal must review law enforcement requests to enter school or school facility. Um for law enforcement agent request to enter school school facility including judicial warrants non-judicial warrants subpoenas the school shall immediately contact legal department. So the next section down says authorization presented by the law enforcement agent make copies and attach and it has warrant warrant subpoena and exigent circumstances. Is that something that individuals would be trained on? That's something uh our legal department would determine and can you kind of explain the difference between those? >> Yes. So we partner with the schools team to do any necessary

138trainings. So, uh, we would be pushing out the form explaining its use and per present practice, right? When schools are presented, uh, orders or warrants from law enforcement officers, they're already emailing us and they're already calling us. This requires them to now document that interaction. So um yes there will be training that accompanies uh after this policy and admin break is approved. >> Does that answer the question? >> Yes it does. My only last part is if you could explain the difference between the three of them >> between the exigent circumstances. Okay. So exigent circumstances the officer may or may not present without a warrant. Exigent circumstances are determined by the law enforcement agency if there's a threat to a health safety or, you know, a significant imminent threat of danger, right? We as a

139school district can't always determine that. We don't know if law enforcement has chased some shooter down the street and now they're on district property. We have to defer to them. If they let us know that exent circumstances exist, we need to come into the building. If there is a different kind of document at issue and no exigent circumstances exist, that's when we at the legal department review the document to determine whether or not it is actually an an order or a subpoena or you know we kind of clarify for the school what the dis what the distinction is and what is allowable. and the administrators understand that unless and until we give them the approval to move forward, they should be holding still unless there's an exigent circumstance. >> Okay. Thank you. And I do

140have one just last question. >> So um on the last page there is a section about describe uh the request from the law enforcement agent request to access the school or district office for the following reasons. So, it has three different choices and then another obtain student or employment records to question a student or employee to take a student or employee into custody. So, um if it's a student concern or an employee concern, is there a policy or procedure of who gets contacted next? Um there's no separate policy or procedure. If law enforcement is requesting access to the school, the legal department would be informed just the same, right? because if they are um if there's a pressing need to uh detain staff or interview staff while they're at work, the district and legal department

141need to be aware of that just as if there's need to access a student. >> Okay. So, in that circumstance though, if a student record was to be obtained or a student to be obtained, parent guardian would be contacted immediately following. Correct. >> Correct. And law enforcement has their separate statutory obligation to obtain permission from parents prior to interacting with students. >> Okay? And then same thing for any employee for whatever the reason is. If they're a an employee protected by union, their union would be contacted. >> We don't contact their union. They have the right to contact their own union representative. >> Okay. Thank you. >> Thank you. Um, Miss Pearson, >> um, Attorney Gmith, can you uh clarify I I think you you touched on it in terms of um the training for

142each school to make sure that they're following the same that it's consistent and they're following the same process. >> Yes. So, our schools have been uh trained and refreshed on interactions with law enforcement this school year. Um to the degree such that local law enforcement agencies asked to meet with district representatives, including the superintendent because our schools were so consistently contacting the legal department and in administration with regard to these interactions that they began to, you know, question, why are your schools contacting the legal department every time I show up? and we reinforce for them that that has been our practice. We refreshed our schools and now that the form is required pursuant to the change in law, we will push out and give direction on the use of that form as well. So, we

143uh typically wait until board has actually voted and approved the form and approved the policy change before we push out any draft document. We like to make sure that they're finalized and accurate. >> Thank you. >> Okay. Are there any other questions on 7.150? >> All right. Thank you. Those will return for a vote at the um December 16th, 2025 board meeting. The government's consent items include uh items 9A meeting minutes 9B respand of understanding, 9 C memorandum of understanding um with rea for Montasaori and international balorate 9D the closed session minute release and 9E the freedom of information log. Are there any questions about the um governance consent items? Seeing none, we will move on to the next um item, which is the petitions and communications portion of our meeting. When we invite the

144public to make comments, um, slurs, profanity, and harassment will not be tolerated should any speaker use any unacceptable language. They may be directed to immediately surrender the remainder of their speaking time and may be restricted from public comment in the future. The board will not respond to the comments at this time and if it is appropriate, you will be contacted in a timely manner by staff. Each speaker will be allowed no more than five minutes to address the board. It is not appropriate to discuss matters that would otherwise be confidential in these open meetings. Uh there are two clocks present. One shows the total time for public comments and one shows the time for each speaker. Um we thank you for your cooperation. Our speaker tonight is Joy Jordan. Is Joy Jordan here? >> Good

145evening. My name is Joy Jordan. I am here representing the League of Women Voters and myself. Um I had two children graduate from East High School and I have four grandchildren at Guilford High School. So I have a little bit of an interest in uh the Rockford school system. I'm dovetailing a little bit the discussion that you just finished about um third-party access to school systems. Um, but I'm I'm really addressing uh the safe school for all uh which is uh House Bill 3247 that was enacted by the governor and the law restricts imiga immigration and customs enforcements ICE from entering schools for non-emergency situations by requiring schools to establish policies for such instances. The law also prohibits schools from denying undocumented students access to education, which you've already just talked a little bit about,

146and prevents officials from disclosing or threatening to disclose a student's or their family's immigration status. The policies, like you have just said, are to be in place and enacted by July 1st of 2026. And the reason I'm talking to you this evening specifically and you've also been had some discussions from other League of Women Voters uh active members uh over the last couple of months is that time is of the essence in this uh this project of you developing this comprehensive policy. Um we have seen havoc uh being created by our uh federal agents you know in our system of immigration and and people coming to our country and we need to have get our hands around how we all address this in the school system. Um, we need a strong policy to be put

147in place in advance to any uh military action at our school door. Um and um I was at uh East High School not very long ago and I've been at Guilford um for different events and I know that there's people sitting at those doors making sure that the people come in are appropriately coming into those schools with identification. And so I feel for that individual sitting at that door if they're not prepared for um you know six or seven ICE people coming to that door um and not knowing quite who to call what to do um because I'm sure they can be a little bit intimidating and we want to be sure that that a policy is in place if if the policy is being developed We have some discussion, some recommendations that we'd like

148to share with you about that. Um, first of all, not every school is just the the entirety of the school is not within the four walls of the building. There's activities outside the building. There's sports events and there's other activities. And so, the policy needs to include the whole entity of the school system. There needs to be signs about that this the school is an is an icefree zone so that it's very visible that um that this is what we're all about that that we're very serious about that um the the warrant that the ICE people should have when they come to the door should be a judicial warrant. And I personally don't know what a judicial warrant looks like. I've never seen one. I've never had one put in my hands. So, if I

149were the person at the door of one of these schools and somebody handed that to me, I wouldn't I would need to know if I was getting the right uh piece of paper and that I was needing to call the right person. Once the policy is finally developed and uh everyone has voted on it and it's in its final form and you're very happy with that that form employees obviously you've talked about need to be oriented. They need to be prepared. They need to understand what their roles and responsibilities are in order to protect their students as well as themselves and the whole school system. Parents need to know what that policy is so that they also can participate in decision making and responsibilities. >> Thank you. That's five minutes. Thank you. >> My time's

150up. >> Yes, it is. >> Oh dear. >> I just encourage you to please uh understand that it's expedient and that um we support your uh actions to protect our students. Thank you very much. Um before we adjourn, I just want to thank the team that puts the meetings together here at the schools. I know that Mr. Pearson, Miss Pearson, um Laura, Lenanisha, Amy, Kim, Aaron, I think, and there's probably other people I have missed, but um I really want to we really appreciate the effort you put into this. And with that, I would take a motion and a second to adjurnn. >> So move. >> Second. >> Thank you.