Mahomet-Seymour Board of Education Meeting 4-19-22

001time this is the regular business meeting the mohamed senior board of education i'll call it to order at exactly 6 59 pm on tuesday april 19th this time i'd like to invite everyone who's a guest please sign in everyone in the room to silence your cell phones and remind everyone facilitating affecting me and you wish to make public contact support please read through the visitor guidelines they're found outside the room completely participation forum get those to dawn over the corner um public participation is allowed only through the participation course for the meeting and meetings other than that time are not interactive with those in attendance uh roll call please land here keith here henry here here nick murray here hennessey here macomb here we did the roll call right at 7. so that worked out

002well stand for the to fight 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 thank you um dr hall is with us tonight virtually along with shelly anderson [Music] [Applause] um is there a motion to approve the agenda so is there a second hey is there a discussion regarding the agenda close and we'll get to that here just a little bit board members you have had a chance to look at the consent agenda the senate agenda tonight includes minutes of previous meetings report personnel changes food service survey 1922 our 2022 2023 ies membership dues and ihsa membership renewal fields student entry and exit surveys lunch fee increases final school calendar for next school year director of student support services

003contract fifth grade tech increase hls which is health five safety repair amendments a new activity account for the high school and one circle item of surplus nature to be exposed is there a motion to approve the consent agenda as well does anyone wish to remove anything because of gender for individual discussion yeah yeah can you pull out personal changes and lunch meetings please personal changes and lunch decreases anything else is a motion to approve the assault agenda as presumably okay all in favor of the amended consent agenda when you roll both yes all right let's come back and pick up personnel changes um is there a motion to approve the personnel changes in the personal report yeah i unless i'm misunderstanding it i think that is going to commit to our another year of health

004of eops and i'd like the board to discuss options between or among having healthy ops potentially hiring an additional school nurse or what other other whatever whatever else is a an option that dr hall might suggest for us dr paul any comments on that has committed us to that um this is the option that i'm suggesting i i'm happy to give more background information i mean i wasn't really prepared to have this discussion so an offer some history on the health eops and we've moved we've moved ahead with doing interviews for the school nurse position since anita bachmann is retiring [Music] how have the applications has there been a number of applications for the student first position [Music] um i'm going to defer to mrs northrup on that she oversaw the interviews so yeah we

005interviewed five or six people i believe we had we had five interviews set up um we actually introduced four candidates had already accepted another position so um this is a great candidate for aspiring doctors um really that's about what i like to say about it right now right so is there um i mean i guess not knowing what salary that is to add to another physician like another nursing physician trying to cover our various buildings um that's that's the only thing is do the elps do enough to uh carry out the duties of a you know a nurse might be able to do otherwise if we had two nurses that would cover our buildings instead of just one nurse with these i think this this model of having a healthy op in each building with

006with one nurse that is overseeing them has will continue to work well we have some of our health eops who have been trained i'm not sure how many of the of the four a couple of them are going to be new to do vision and hearing testing that's a very time consuming activity that that only mrs bachmann has done so moving ahead there will be someone else who can assist with that um so it's my recommendation to have a healthy op in each building if the board wants to hire another nurse in addition to having one nurse i would say i mean you certainly could explore that option but a a healthy op in each building is is becoming essential and you know we did add them due to the pandemic but just visit providing

007a historical perspective here um we had a an eop retire here at middletown prairie elementary school a couple years ago this was prior to the pandemic and we specifically redesigned the position to be filled with someone who would be a health eop and nita prior to the pandemic nida and i had discussed just looking at the workload that she has the number of students who have more medical issues the number of students with 504 plans with medical issues the number of diabetic students that having a healthy op in every building was going to be a model that we were working toward then the pandemic hit and we needed them obviously for covert related purposes all those other purposes still are there and again having a healthy op in every building in a district our size

008i think is really critical to the function of the building they can also provide backup to the other eops in the office with attendance issues and and things like that so my recommendation moving ahead to continue to have a healthy op in in every building i don't want to speak for any of the administrators but i would say that would say with confidence that that's a position that has been tremendously helpful if the if the district is interested in exploring a second nurse in addition to um for health eops i think we would need to just need to look and see if that fits into our budget but i think that that person's uh schedule would would also fill up pretty quickly i'm sorry i didn't know this was coming either otherwise i would give

009them questions beforehand can you talk a little bit about or maybe this isn't the time to do it maybe we need to put it on a different agenda but can you talk a little bit about um the difference between what a health eop is uh like what their job would entail versus a school nurse they are are they they're not licensed right no no they often have had the ones we've been fortunate enough to hire they've been outstanding they usually have some type of of health background we had we had one who had was an emt you know they come with a variety of of some type of health related backgrounds but we do not currently have any of them who are a nurse so there are certain duties that that only a nurse can

010fulfill and only a school nurse can fulfill um again i um probably not the one to speak in detail about that but there are certain decisions in iep meetings that need to be made with the nurse present medical protocol meetings writing diabetic care plans training training our diabetic care aides those types of things fall into the category of school nurse and prior to having the health eops in the office all of that kind of fell to the office personnel like the people who are answering the phones dealing with some of that did but some but not not all i mean you know again there are certain and very specific duties that that fall only to a school so if nurse could give an example by law we're required to have delegated care aides for our

011students with diabetes in the district um having two nurses in the district i'm not saying that would be fantastic but they can't be in every in all four buildings during the critical time for our kids who are diabetic to help monitor what needs to happen during lunch time and snack time and those kinds of things so our health eops are are our trained diabetic health care aides in the district we do sort of train a few other people as backups including at this point um meetup and nita is always on call so if something is falling outside of the protocol that the doctor has delivered to the family to us to provide and has provided that information and the diabetic um nurses will often provide some training to our staff if it falls outside that

012protocol that's written they're calling meetup anita's giving making those decisions that need to be made by a nurse and when media doesn't know we're calling the doctor or the nurse's office that doesn't happen very often um because usually your district nurses is well equipped to be able to make those decisions so the diabetic urge with them i'm sorry these um you know healthy ops are the implementers and they're sort of the on-the-ground boobs folks um and then nida is always the go-to person to call um so we had to again two district nurses would be wonderful but they're not going to be able to help cover all the buildings at those critical time periods that's just one example of something they do okay well i think it would be worth considering um look at a

013second nurse to help cover i mean it sounds like the anita is involved in iep meetings and there's other things going on throughout the day to have a second nurse i don't have any issue with having four health personnel one in each building that it seems to me that it might be worthwhile you know having an extra nurse that's able to handle anything that comes up that means we have four buildings there somewhat i mean not totally spread out but you still have to get from one building another one so are you thinking of so my intent tonight was to just ask if we could have a future agenda item to look at options i wasn't necessarily going to have to make a decision to write um [Music] okay anything else personal related personal report

014okay you had a motion a second to approve the personnel changes hendrix yes hennessey no yes okay then we have we also pulled out lunch fee and creates is there a motion to approve sure this is probably prohibited right back there so can you explain how the the increase came about and where are we at in terms of committing to that increase um we're not anywhere into committing to that increase that's why it's if it's approved tonight then it would be um then we would do it it's all it's a very minimum increase from five cents to about 25 cents you know per item and not all the items are on there these were actually suggested um by our food service company um they do like basically a comparability um study to see where we

015should be at or what not for busbees so this actually is normal for them to have to do especially when they have cpi of six percent increases um and that they have to prove that i afforded that that to you guys to give today they actually have to prove you know where they're getting their cpi they just can't say yeah we have 10 cpi but as you know everything's gone up so obviously the food prices have gone up too but um so what happens if we don't approve this um that is something i need i guess you know then i guess we can't complain if we're losing money on food service well so that's my question do we eat that that change of cost or just harbor yes no we need the change in cost

016okay so our so arbor can there's applause in the contract with six percent or more cpi adjustment they can adjust prices and they're going to do that and this is their recommendation to us and every year that uscbi increase and there's also an increase for as you know minimum wage so obviously they have to follow the law as well so every time that every year now that the minimum wage is changing we get a fixed increase for that as well what's the status of the you know this year we've had federal government covering costs for launches what's the status of that for next year it is not going to be announced for next year and is this just for all card items or is this for a launch um i provided a list but um

017it looks like um breakfast uh lunch and then some of the a la carte actually are not changed and then beverages snacks are not changed at all um [Music] the site of tater tots and hash browns aren't too strong it's just the nutritious stuff yeah so it's basically just the the full meals and if they if uh if a child uh decides to take a second meal then it's an increase of five cents from what they're paying before too so it just doesn't seem right to up the price of milk but not the price of soda it seems like i'd rather do that the opposite right not wanting to defend soda but it is substantially already priced above now but yeah that's that is an interesting observation i'll give you that okay any other questions

018or comments on lunches okay we've got a motion recycle roll call vote on the lunch or the lunch fee pricing increase no henriks yes yes all right um i believe that gets the consent agenda right yeah um just a quick point i believe we go to that down or you're not interested in lunch and increase plan for next year he wants him come back with a um the fifth grade was um going to start taking um their chromebooks home for the tech team just like the high school fantastic that perhaps on the first house okay okay at this point um mrs northrup and dr roman let's do some new research for us our new staff mine is a teacher thank you i'd like to introduce to you um amy warwick she's going to be our

019new math instructional coach so that was a new position that we had for next school year um amy's lived in many different states growing up including colorado connecticut and pennsylvania she began her college career by earning a ba in elementary education with several middle school endorsements this aided her in with her work at blue ridge where she worked for 15 years as a junior high science teacher and elementary teacher and a junior high math teacher during her time teaching she earned a master's in secondary mathematics education and she has spent the last five years at isu completing where she is currently completing her dissertation for a phd in mathematics education amy currently lives in hayworth with her husband two sons and many plant babies she enjoys running and has participated in the saint jude's run

020from bloomington to peoria for several years um both of her children are active in track and cross country so edenie spends much of her time watching them run so we are very excited to have her she is super excited to start this new chapter in her life as an instructional coach for mathematics within our school district um this has been a career goal for her and a passion obviously going through with her phd so join me in welcoming amy [Applause] get my glasses out before i give away my secret here okay excited to announce two new staff tonight so heather if you'll come up first this is heather lyons and heather's being recommended for the junior high compass teacher um al smith who's retiring at the end of this year so super excited to have

021heather with us um heather grew up in madison illinois she graduated from illinois state in 2012 with her bachelor's degree in geography education after spending time as a long-term substitute bless you and a paraprofessional heather attended lewis university to earn her lbs fund endorsement she received her master's in curriculum and instruction in 2021 from olivet university she spent the last eight years teaching special education in kankakee she is married to muhammad seymour alum devin lyons and she married him in 2016. they welcomed their sons ellis and zeke in 2017 and 2020 while they currently live in kankakee heather and her family are looking forward to moving to the area she's thrilled to be joining the compass staff and meeting the students and staff in mohammed's tomorrow [Applause] and this is jen iceberg jen is joining

022us as a new uh speech and language therapist at lincoln trail this year so jen grew up in elmhurst illinois she graduated from the university of illinois in 2009 with her bachelor's degree in speech and hearing science she then worked as an assistant teacher at the carl auditory oral school in urbana where she discovered her love for teaching deaf and hard of hearing students she moved to saint louis missouri in 2011 and attended washington university in st louis where she earned a master's degree in deaf education upon becoming certified as a deaf educator she returned to where she earned where she returned to the university of illinois sorry where she earned her master's degree in deaf education language speech language will probably hold this up closer now i'm still working on i'm still working on

023these glasses here um yes so she's finishing up this semester with her speech and language master's degree at the university of illinois thank you john currently lives in urbana with her husband of two years john and her step children even fenn and their dog butch she enjoys spending time with family and friends watching movies reading seeing live music and theater doing arts and crafts and staying active by walking and running with the dog jen is looking forward to joining the mohamed seymour school district and getting to know the students and staff next year welcome jenny [Applause] okay we've got a few more presentations and then we'll we'll wrap the presentation part of me but these are some exciting things did mr hensley come here i thought maybe i saw him i was losing all right

024i will do my best mr hensley limitation um we've got four four groups we're gonna recognize that the first is the ihsa all state academic team iowa seymour was fortunate to have two senior student athletes recognized by the ihsa as members of the 2122 ihsa allstate academic team and i'm just remaining here here in pr like the cmcc awesome golf and track and field and joan the singer from cross country track all right they must be studying their busy study uh those two of their families represent mohammed seymour high school at the allstate academic team banquet on april 11th it's a great honor we want to congratulate those students and those families and thank them for that and thank them for representing themselves next wrestling we have any wrestlers here tonight there you go all

025right ready guys in this year's dual team finals bahamas seymour finished third place and had this third place in the state of illinois folks opening with a 49-25 win over brother rice before falling around semi-final around the gear field the bulldogs rebounded with a win over antioch in the third place match which we won 35 to 34. it wasn't even close a victory in the third pelley smashed bulldogs all equip also eclipse the 30 win platoon plateau a school record for wins in a single season congratulations to coach rob woodman team on a tremendous season guys if you're wrestling please stand [Laughter] [Applause] so it's been a while it's been a while so we finally got one back at his outstanding congratulations all right next up the mohammed seymour high school winter guard and the

026coach carrie moreno is there any winter garden folks here yes okay good congratulations to the mojave high school winter color guard the guard won the 2022 idta class double a state championship for flag performance this is a great group of kids who have now won the state title three years in a row the gargoyle's second place in the lyrical flight performance congratulations what you stand for [Applause] and he has some awards for our music great you're going to do that now i'm on the following speaking side we're going to do that right now or i'm sorry no no worries we're all good um actually my name's i'm with curtis curtis is our representative for the music shop but he also happens to be a parent here in honduras seymour schools and we're here to talk

027a little bit about the best communities for music education so my name is jonathan breen and i'm the president of the music shop we're a local musical product retail store and a long time vendor and partner of the mohamed seymour school music programs i'd like to thank dr hall and the member of the members of the board for allowing us the opportunity to speak to you this evening curtis and katie are here with me and we've come tonight to congratulate the music teachers and the board of education for the recent achievement that you have had as you may be aware every year the namm foundation celebrates the best communities for music education in the united states founded in 2006 as a supporting organization of namm the national association of music merchants of which the music

028shop is a member the namm foundation represents the generosity and philanthropy of the music products industry now in its 23rd year this year's best communities for music education program has recognized 738 school districts across 44 states for the outstanding efforts by their teachers administrators parents students and community leaders in support of music education as part of a well-rounded education for all children for 2022 the muhammad seymour unit schools were one of 22 districts in the state of illinois to be awarded this distinction and one of only four districts found down state this year's awards program was designed to celebrate schools and districts adapting innovating and persevering in the face of change as i'm certain each music educator here tonight can attest trying to coordinate the teaching of a subject that is by its very nature

029one of gathering and sharing at a time when we were being told to distance and shelter offer difficulties that defy description trying to conduct rehearsals when you have to be concerned about air recycle rates and wearing special masks and custom covers for the instruments in order to reduce the level of phonites in the room or attempting to have six-year-olds learn about music without being able to share instruments or sing not to mention the super spreader events that was choir class would have known that singing was a super spreader event i think we can all agree that while education during the pandemic was in general a huge challenge your music educators face some unique obstacles that require the type of creativity only found in musicians to overcome it makes your recognition this year in the midst

030of these peculiar difficulties that much sweeter it is my belief that the best communities award designation solidified what we at the music shop and those of you within the district and the community have always known that the muhammad seek that muhammad seymour is an outstanding district for music education and well deserving of national recognition the music shop is long staff has a long-established relationship with the music programs with employees both past and present having been both residents and alumni of the district we're incredibly honored to be able to serve to serve your community and its award-winning music programs our staff has the privilege of serving over 400 schools throughout central illinois on a weekly basis and the muhammad seymour program is one of the strongest music programs with whom we work dr hall the pride

031that you and the board must feel for your students and teachers is certainly well deserved so as a nam member and proud local partner of the muhammad seymour school district it is my privilege and our privilege and honor on behalf of nam and the staff of the music shop to present to the board of education and dr hall this certificate certifying that the mohamed seymour schools and the surrounding communities associated with the district are one of the nation's best communities for music education we have prepared similar certificates for each of the music educators in the district those of you who are here tonight we'll present those to you for those that aren't here tonight we'll be distributing those to the individual buildings um and and these will be available so that they may proudly showcase

032their prestigious prestigious accomplishments our congratulations to all of the educators and their fine work here at mohamed salah so if we could have the music educators who are here tonight stand [Applause] why don't we have them come up and let's do a photo of that it's perfect it's very nice would you like this yeah thank you thank you awesome [Applause] thank you congratulations thank you to the music channel and for that award working um with us and your partnership over the years i appreciate that thank you and thanks to our staff like you said we know for a long time correct all right at this time if you were an honoree tonight or a new hire announcement and you would like to vacate brother participate in the wrestling meeting you are welcome to do that

033now i know you want to stay really in your hearts but there's a time to sneak out this would be it thank you shhh all right next item is donations uh dr hall thank you and congratulations to everybody those are really nice presentations and great to have all those recognitions tonight for donations we have a donation of five hundred dollars to mom's pantry from the grace church community assistance fund a donation of five hundred dollars from paul and sandra you to the drama department and a five thousand dollar anonymous donation uh to the high school baseball team so a total of six thousand dollars thank you so much from generosity in our community is there a motion to prove that our nation's as presented is there a second second is there a discussion on the

034donations again very generously i want to appreciate it thank you thank you yeah um we need royal public yes nick murray yes hennessey yes henriks yes schultz yes land yes macomb yes all right this point is communication time anyone from the pto here msca was there a foundation update i don't have them prepared and i wasn't at the batch but it sounds like it was a great success the other night and people that attended great reviews from a lot of people there so we thank you for attending and supporting the foundation heard good reviews that night i think you know anything on that night financials was very premature but they felt i thought that they felt they did really well so we'll see where the numbers come in but the foundation does a lot of

035things support our district to support our teachers to support us academically not only with financial support behind graduates but just get different levels of individual support from those folks and showing up things and being a part of this we much appreciate the foundation and all their efforts um visitors okay so this is time for visitors to share we will limit you to five minutes i'll give you a warning as if you approached the end of your time as i can give you a warning i'd like to remind everyone that you know board members are not interacted so we're not typically will not respond and again we want to be respectful of everyone that's here and we don't want to take personal shots that anybody who uh students or an employee in the district or a

036community member uh really anyone in any way so we thank you for that dawn we're on the clock and let me know if we start to approach the five minute mark um and we'll start with martha mills good evening my name is martha mills my pronouns are they them or she her i'm the president of the board of uniting pride and i'm here once again to ask for your commitment to protect lgbtqia students in your schools i noticed that yet again discussion of adding a diversity equity and inclusion committee is not on your agenda even though you've had a board member requesting that for months if i showed that level of dismissal and disrespect to one of my fellow board members i doubt i would still be in my position i am asking that this

037board allow uniting pride to give free trainings to the faculty and staff of this school district that help them understand communicate with and advocate for their lgbtqia plus students i'm asking that you allow uniting pride to provide age appropriate trainings to middle and high school students so that they may be able to better understand one another we've been offering to provide these services for months and i'm asking that you let us help how can we accomplish something together that makes your school safer for all of the students we will gladly present these trainings to you first if that's what it takes meet with us talk with us i would also like to remind you that all these meetings are reported people can see you you i don't fool myself into thinking this isn't a conservative

038town but you have members of the lgbtqia plus community living here and you as leaders are on the record not standing up for them the students i'm up here to support can hear you and see you not doing anything to protect them from the ignorance and the bullies here do you know what it does to a person's psyche it is incredibly damaging not only does it lead people to engage in more self-harm suicidal ideation and attempted suicides it emboldens others to act out on their own feelings of hate do you want to send the message that that is okay these kids aren't going to stay in a place where they're bullied and abused these bright talented vibrant humans are going to leave your community and go somewhere else where they will be accepted and admired

039for who they are and it will be muhammad's loss a study done by the ucla school of law williams institute in 2020 found that nine and a half percent of children aged 13 to 17 identified as lgbtq that means that of the 17 children this board has collectively the chances of at least one of them being on the lgbtq spectrum is pretty high that also means that of the around 3 000 students in this district roughly 290 are negatively affected by the choice that you are making there's a saying that goes be careful of who you hate because it might be someone you love that's a pretty big risk you're all taking because here's the thing queer kids aren't turned queer by being around queer people they're born queer often to heterosexual parents so when

040you allow bullies in your schools and in your board meetings to go unchecked it's probable that you're allowing people to inflict harm on your own children to the students in this district who are queer questioning or straight it gets better there are places where you can go after you graduate that are open and welcoming we're just a few miles up the road and we're ready and willing to help you we see you we accept you we love you and we celebrate you um good evening my name is felina hadin i'm also a member of the board of uniting pride and i use she day pronouns members of the muhammad seymour board of education silence is violence in september of last year lgbtq plus students experienced a horrific incident of anti-lgbtq bullying from other students the

041queer youth affected by this event asked for accountability they were met with silence muhammad's own school district policies prohibit bullying on the base of actual or perceived race color national origin sex sexual orientation gender identity gender related identity or expression yet when a clear incident of bullying on the basis of identity and orientation took place muhammad schools remained silent students parents community members have called for accountability and asked for concrete protections for our vulnerable youth uniting pride and other concerned organizations and individuals have reached out attended board meetings and provided support to those affected by these events as well as continued lack of inclusive curriculum and preventative policies and practices we continue to be met with silence we will not be silenced nor will we tolerate silence because silence is violence we continue to ask

042the muhammad seymour school board to implement inclusive curriculum in accordance with illinois state law we continue to ask the board to add to their agenda of discussion of the diversity equity and inclusion committee we continue to offer trainings for students teachers faculty and staff on how to provide a safe inclusive learning environment for all students especially our vulnerable populations we will continue to ask and offer and show up because silence is violence and silence will not make this issue go away queer youth exist whether you acknowledge it or not queer youth experience anti-lgbtq bullying at an alarming rate whether you acknowledge it or not and queer youth are dying by suicide every 45 seconds in the u.s silence will not end the injustice that lb lgbtq plus youth face every day but engaging in conversations

043and concrete preventative action might please commit to ending the pattern of silence and instead to advocating for real change in muhammad thank you i'm lance leonard please my name is lance leonard i attended this school from mid-1980s to 1995. when we first moved here i moved to the link our candidate states trailer park and then we moved into town around fifth grade i had the unique experience of having two mothers and two homophobic brothers it's not easy when you come from a not very rich family in a town of fairly affluent people and then have to deal on top of that with the bias of people making fun of you because your parents are lesbian and assuming you're gay too and then trying to figure out your own sexual identity while being afraid to even

044admit to your own brothers who you are and then you can't even have a safe place while you're at school the one safe escape that i should have because i don't have it at home my older brother would pin me down so that my little brother could beat me up i didn't feel safe to come out until last year and i'm not even gay i'm bisexual see i'm not here to change your mind because i can't do that i'm here to support the kids because i know what it was like to be them i was them and we can't change who we are trust me i spent years trying to by the time i graduated high school i didn't get teased much i found out years later half my classmates were afraid of me not

045because i did anything i never got into fights but because i quit responding and i withdrew and they were afraid i was going to explode and sometimes we do explode it's not good it's not something any of us ever want to see and let me tell you another fact my lesbian mothers both years he ran for office voted for trump see these are the things that you really have to think about because not all of us are liberal democratic people many of us are conservative and we can't speak to our own families at home and if our own families are showing us hatred and then we can't go to school and feel safe and feel some kind of acceptance and love we may be the next one that explodes and even worse we may be

046the next one that does not wake up and you really want to be the person that led another child to die you know i don't need to haul five minutes because that's really all you need to think about i want to save lives it doesn't have to be mine no kid deserves to die because they're not accepted uh doug higgins please thank you for allowing me to chat with me in a representative democracy voters elect representatives who make decisions on their behalf members of the board you were selected by the voters to manage the muhammad school mohamed seymour school district in turn you selected a chief executive superintendent who manages the day-to-day operations of the district with many of the larger decisions such as hiring staff pending approval of the board the only two times

047the voters are directly involved in managing the schools is when we vote for board members and when we are asked to approve funding for bond issues it will increase our taxes having carefully listened to the meeting last month i heard mr hyde recommend a very specific language for the ballot on june the 28th the reason for this specific language is to allow for maximum flexibility in the use of the funds should the voters approve note the efforts requesting the voters to approve the referendum is not unique to our school district this is a system in the state of illinois by which school boards acquire additional funding for major projects nevertheless if the voters approve the additional funding the architect will then design the project which could end up being quite different than what was presented

048to the voters during the planning process over the last year or so to some degree it seems like we will be voting on the unknown it's a bit like a prominent national politician noted some years ago we must vote on it to see what is in the legislation last month one of the public speakers noted that the bulldog blueprint was a plan that should be followed since it was undertaken by the community to assist the board in determining district needs i submit to you that i and many of in our neighborhood were not aware of the bulldog blueprint meetings or that plans to increase capacities of schools was even being contemplated just yesterday i learned of another neighborhood family with children in the schools who was not aware of the proposed referendum even though families

049with students in school and staff of the district received emails with plans something seems awry with the system additionally there is no system in place to communicate via email with residents of the district who do not have students in school or who are not employees of the district i have spoken to some leaders in the community who believe that bulldog blueprint represented only a small portion of the people in the district i would like to thank superintendent hall and principal mills for their time and a tour of the present junior high it was very gracious my impressions of the building are that it needs quite a bit of refreshing and remodeling but it is still a very solid building do we really want to dispose of usable buildings i realize there would still be space

050constructions but some members of this board and members of the community have plans to resolve the space issues for considerably less than 97.9 million dollars i commend each of you superintendent hall and other leaders in the schools for each of you as board members superintendent hall and other leaders in the schools for persevering a challenging and difficult process resolving space issues in a growing school district you have my complete respect the view of this thought of these thoughts the diet has been cast and the voters will have the final decision in their hands on june 28th i'm just trying to give you some feedback from what i hear in the community about this issue thank you my mayor kenner is walking a little hard today because a couple days i have my knee replaced um

051jesus sodapop comments i thought that stuff was only for game nights and stuff we should get that poison out of the school immediately it's recreational it's not good for you the other little destiny epidemic in this country for goodness sakes i digress um many of us who've attended these meetings with our our concerns have not had them addressed i mean i look at this agenda and i'm not seeing you know my friends and champagnes if she dealt with them i might take a different exception opinion to uh what they are offering but i do need i need i would i look at this agenda these means it's not happening and i'm not here for my health i'm a stakeholder i'm a property holder and and i want to be respected and as much as anyone

052else does um you know a couple of the sundry items i've listed where is the curriculum and the materials posted online now how hard that can that be to get that accomplished and how hard can it be to get two copies of each textbook in the library one on you know that doesn't leave and one that can be checked out what what is the resistance sunshine you know you need rain to wash things away sunshine kills germs sunshine opens and clears and disinfects and the lack of sunshine is a little bit upsetting to me to say the least um we're back to this building stuff i made a hundred million dollars so i don't know whether you've been going to the grocery store buying any gas or or having a meal out you know with

053a coke maybe um it's up you know some of us are in our end of our early years and we just you know we've kind of earned our dollars that you know based on certain uh costs of living if you will and uh we're a little bit when everybody gets pulling on this pocket you know with my wallet in it we're not really you know i think three of you voted against uh putting this for a referendum i think i it or it's slightly annoying that it would not be it would be in the primary election because that's an election that unfortunately and you get the government you deserve a lot of people don't participate in primary elections and i would rather see it in this fall but that's neither here or there you know

054i think once someone the last speaker spoke of touring uh junior highest probably a good you know look at some of these buildings but i mean this got built the paint's not even dry they tore or sold at a basement bargain bonanza the sanguine school which is a real it's in the heart of the community where i live and there it sits and have no use for the hvac is no good all those businesses that are set up in there it's terrible their customers are miserable plumbing's you know raining on them everywhere not that was a real mistake to sell that at three quarters of a million dollars it insults my intelligence and most encountered people i would think as well um i'm going to actively come out against any more referendum except especially in

055these particular times um you know because sort of in a back and forth about uh with some of this with regard to the lgb et cetera community and what their position so i think the last speaker kind of had they pulled my heart strange to say the least um i don't think identifying as anything is really helpful i think you need to go to school you need to you know get those high math scores and and read to the highest level you possibly can you know you need to learn history you need to learn rhetoric you need to you'll lose so your other skills music you get you know what the physical and he needs to be you know a much more prioritized but i just don't think we should be identifying people and we

056shouldn't be promoting any agenda of any kind other getting our kids educated that's all i got thanks a lot well good evening i hope you all celebrated the resurrection last weekend most people don't stop and think but historically that is the greatest event of all time period no doubt about it someone who was dead came to life again and then proceeded to give us this thing called the bible and in that bible is all the wisdom of the ages but 25 of it is actually prophecy and it actually talks about the days we are living in right now that's why i warned you about the role you play when it comes to the children god does not look down on people who mess with children very well in fact today is april 19th that was

057the bcad thing you know christ died they changed the calendar for those who want to say he didn't live or want to change the narrative and the narrative is what is being changed at every juncture in this world today by woke people by progressive by socialists by communists by those who cannot believe in a god because they can't have their order the new world order cannot have a god the new world order is base its foundation is education that's words foundation is corrupting the minds of our youth we've seen it and this is nothing new i'm sure because if you pay any attention or read any you know what i'm talking about it's horrible what's happening to the youths their minds it's poison that's being put in them look at florida's math books i think

058they had 150 or so books presented to them not 40 were didn't have whoop things in it there's a all out attack on our children and it has to be stopped and the school system the public school system that adopts common core critical race theory in this new sex education has got to be stopped it has to stop well you know what we just go down the same path we are and it comes to a cataclysm again and we're headed to that whether you know it or not again they're trying to change it to the common era now and the b4 common era getting rid of the bc 80 tells you a lot doesn't it uh i have a lot to say that i've said in the past that i will say in the future

059when it comes to education and communist takeover of it and you're in a position where you will control a lot and i hope that this board this superintendent takes on the communists within i want to i would so love to see the white hats throughout this country come forward and say enough is enough they know what's happening is real it's extremely detrimental and it has to be stopped and who better to stop it than those within those who are perpetuating the lies the curriculum is stupid horrible terrible and it needs to be stopped it needs to be called out and the idea of having two books at that library is the least you could do so the parents could talk about it speaking of that commentary i know you traditionally don't say anything maybe a

060head not did you discuss the opening commentary to the videos you know what it feels like to be a citizen and look at you guys and and ask you a question you can't go like this you can't go like this you can't respond i've done any county board meetings it's it's horrible you cannot respond or you don't respond i think it's more accurate you need to look into the commentary and you need to open it to the citizens to the parents your twitter censorship of the president censorship of everything in this one category and you're censoring all the parents from being able to talk and actually get together and say enough is enough which needs to be done i'm a big fan of history i'm a big fan of the bible and when it comes

061to these folks want to be included into this school system i suggest you take the bible's history and probably start at the chapter that talks about simon gomorrah all all right find some board members [Music] um well last meeting i did ask for two agenda items to be added to this agenda neither of which are here so i will again ask that we add discussion for a diversity inclusion committee so that this body can discuss giving a place for kids who are telling us they're still being hurt to come and have a voice and have access to adults who might be willing and able to help them and then i did also ask that we have an agenda item for the discussion of what we do about the uh commentary on the feed and that

062was not added either and i will renew the requests that we have back so that we can discuss whether or not we think it's appropriate to open that scene and make a decision on that i'm calling um in response to mrs hennessy maybe an idea would be to have our administrators come and talk a little bit about the diversity and equity and inclusion committees that we already have learned in the schools um maybe even talking about bulldog voices and what we already have in place at high school to kind of give all of us some background and some more information on what we're already doing that may that may be helpful um i do want to thank quite a few of the teachers and our staff um i've had the very unique experience over the

063last six weeks to do a long-term sub-position and it really reminds me about the the amount of time it takes to take care of other people's children and you walk in the door and your own kids aren't forgotten and you have 25 or 130 kids in front of you that you're going to need to take care of that day and start with our bus drivers all the way through our attendance secretaries all the way down our custodians the faces that our kids see every day are making a difference and i just i want to say thank you i want to say thank you for taking care of the kids in our schools no report for me i'll just share a couple things i guess during my time it was mentioned earlier that we as a

064group and all this is part of this board i guess that's particular on the right that's not standing up for students i'd just like to point out that maybe what i'm guilty of is not doing exactly what's being asked to be by a group we have a pretty good math music program you heard about that earlier tonight and i think i've been pretty supportive of our abandoned music program i think if you ask the folks that unmanned music i've done or we have a board has done everything they would want [Music] and those teams but has baseball got everything they've ever asked for no uh it was pretty much implied that i hate a specific segment of students i would go on the record right now i'm here because i love our community i love

065the folks that are a part of our community to make that up everybody including the people that disagree with me i would like to see me burn this day i preach each and one of our staff members whether i believe with them their politics or i believe with all their life beliefs we've got great people in our district i don't see i i love them all the time that's why i do this i won't speak with the entire board but i bet you hold the room right now that's why the folks from this table keep this i love our kids i love our community i love what we're doing and that's all of our kids and if i didn't quite frankly there's nothing that would make this worthwhile for entire very often i will speak

066for everybody in the world that should be asking us well stay okay um next up set of property tax payments um our expenditures are right in mind we have we are right at 75 of the year and our expenses are right at 75 as well so everything looks like it is going as planned and hopefully you will start getting the money from the county um on time and reports for heaven on finances um good in building record building reports we're in our attack that i don't know if we had any questions christine your report please sure pretty much it is what it is unless you have questions the one thing i did want to acknowledge it is national occupational therapy month so we have three great staff in our occupational therapy um cooperative there and

067that's led by our occupational therapist elisa lam and then our two certified occupational therapy assistants ginger hitchins and sandy barely so they do a fantastic job for us seeing will be retiring at the end of this year so we're looking for some new staff to join us for that but they do a fantastic job i had a short report this month i don't have anything to add any questions uh i saw the textbook over here can you say a little bit about how these are selected yeah do you want me to do that underneath business everybody yeah yeah let's do that thank you no problem anything else for dr wrong dr all good evening um the only thing i wanted to highlight in my superintendent's report i won't review all of it but we are

068having two open houses at mohamed seymour junior high in the month of may for our voters to learn more about the referendum that's going to be on the ballot this is purely informational in nature just for people to come and learn and get the facts about the ballot question ask ask questions our architect will be there i will be there and there will be an opportunity to tour the building if people would like to do that and so the first open house is saturday may 14th from nine to noon and then we're going to do an evening one on may 17th from 5 to 8 pm and again just uh informational we'll have all kinds of of information there finances enrollment forecasts um some of the impacts uh educationally if the referendum were not to

069pass the impacts if it were to pass those types of things again we just want our voters to make the most informed choices when they go to the polls on june 28th and when they vote early so thank you questions for dr hall okay we're on new business item one new textbooks back to rommel all right so um i'll start by answering questions so this um uh month we um are doing or this year we're doing vertical alignment for the cte career technical education and one of their requests was to look at updating textbooks their current books depending on the course or from somewhere in the 90s almost all or from the 90s time period you can see that most of the books that are listed on here minus the business are from gw publishers

070they are like the cte publishers so you're not really going um you're not gonna be able to go to mcgraw-hill or pearson or something they don't specialize in in these textbooks um gw is the company that does um and so they have a they'll have like multiple options let's say from like the culinary classes and so the teachers looked through those and matched the textbook to the one that most matched the curriculum um that they're currently teaching with some updates to whenever however their standards have changed so that's kind of the cte part of it for the health you look we have the same thing our current junior high and high school health textbooks are also um from the 90s and so we were looking for textbooks that had some updated state mandates in those

071particularly relating to the vaping opioid use um those types of things you'll find nothing in there related to the sex ed that you hear about those the new sex ed standards are actually covered in a separate uh supplemental um paperback that we have not gotten a quote on for this so this is this is just updated um data information in the health books with some of those updated mandates but otherwise um this is martin and this is uh buzzkey and i have gone through those like lesson by lesson and aligns what we currently have so happy to answer any questions um i believe yeah say i think i put prices in there for um everything to the best that i had to date um contacted the muhammad library made arrangements so supposed to be going

072over there tomorrow and we'll be there until the next quarter questions for dr roman so the intent for our health teachers will be for any topics related to sexual health reproduction that will be in a separate text no so a great question so their curriculum won't change much from what they've currently done because they're using supplemental materials right now to cover the mandates like vaping and those sorts of things that have been added since they'll continue to cover the health curriculum as they have been covering it with no changes what does that mean so what text do they use for that they use currently they use the 1990-something version of this textbook and so this is the updated version i think one's a so this is some sex that is just numbers so thank you

073so it does have like the reproductive system in it and it has like the basic part doesn't have gender identities and it doesn't have um it teaches abstinence as required it does cover um uh it does cover sexually transmitted diseases is required i mean all of the things that have traditionally been covered in health class are still covered um it's just the newer parts are not included in there um the more um we've talked if we want to do a more comprehensive sex education my suggestion would be that that would be a blast class after school that parents could sign up for if they were interested in that for their children then they'd have an option that came down from the from the state as part of the new sex ed curriculum which we about

074did not participate in cardboard policy yeah that material is in a supplemental paperback that we have not purchased and we didn't have a quote on yep i'm trying to ask the question oh i think they're starting businesses yeah so this is just the like literally just the updated version of what we've currently been teaching with you know more updated statistics and graphics and information and then like opioids vaping some of those type of things that weren't i mean we didn't have baking in the 90s but now we're required to teach it and so it's in there so will our curriculum have materials that cover safer sex practices and birth control um i will it will be exactly what it is right now so i do believe lisa martin touches on that she's not here that

075would be a better question for her but i know lisa sends home an email every friday to let parents know like what's going to be covered next week so that they can reach out to her if they have questions or concerns about what's being covered but um yeah so just we do talk about birth control but it's not yeah but that's at the high school level and yep and parents are notified parents can also opt their children out of that unit it's not uh and so that's why notification goes home if that's a part of the health instruction that parents do not wish for their kids to be in class for then that's absolutely fine and and can choose to not have their kids in class at that time other questions or discussion okay all

076right they'll be at the library yes jeremy chromebook purchase so uh just like every year that we uh kind of do a purchase in the spring this will be for the upcoming school year for our sixth graders and incoming sixth graders incoming uh freshmen uh we tell tally total how many students we have coming in we came up with roughly 520 units that are needed to be purchased uh we don't have that many students currently but with uh students moving in uh we kind of gave a little bit of a buffer um you'll notice that there is some cost increases from years prior um like everything else costs go up i apologize for that there's nothing much more i can do about it um but i'm requesting that the board approve uh purchase of 520

077chromebooks at 359 each for a total of 189 280 um again for our incoming freshmen and our incoming sixth graders now you'll note that you guys did purchase chromebooks that were reimbursed earlier this year those chromebooks were only to replace our agent fleet that are used in grades three through five and then also in second grade this is completely separate from that this is our normal group this is our normal every single year that we do i make a motion that we yeah you can make the most impression any questions that we approve purchases to chromebooks for uh 189 thousand two hundred dollars for a second second discussion questions so my question is we heard earlier that we're going to give chromebooks to fifth graders yes too so are we gonna do a chromebook in

078fifth grade and then no are we gonna do like right so uh after consultation with uh mrs hunter at lincoln trail uh the intent will be to do a new device from chromebook for students in third grade and then they'll keep that in fourth and fifth however they will not be taking them home in third and fourth grade they will start that process in fifth grade so we will be moving devices in lincoln trail from it used to be where it was a classroom set it was assigned to the teacher we are now going to move to a model where we're assigned it to the student and the student moves it with them throughout their grade levels again beginning in fifth grade they will start taking that home now i told you that you guys

079purchased chromebooks for three through five that were again reimbursed by the federal government those chromebooks will start that process this year so this year we don't have to do anything with that because we have all new devices for that entire building so that covers that entire building for the next for this year come next year we'll have to come back and say okay third grade now we have to purchase not just for for sixth and ninth grade we'll also have to do a purchase for third six and nine does that make sense does that clarify your answer because we needed the device and the following correct just like it does in the high school the only difference in high school and junior high the only difference is again it does not go home in three

080and fourth grade does that make sense fifth grade goes home it at an appropriate time let me clarify that right we're not on day one sending chromebooks all right there's a whole lot of teaching that has to occur before that happens right it is a learning process so for those fifth grade parents upcoming fifth grade parents let me be abundantly clear we are not sending chromebooks home on day one that will be determined by the classroom teacher okay thank you for chasing down on the federal fund it made a huge difference right and heather did we see that payment because it was just issued not yet okay so we did a clarification that federal government did release that money uh we should be seeing that any day okay so right now the federal government at

081least from this perspective like if they say they're releasing it they release it with like three days so it's getting him to that point yeah getting to that point is disaster but once they say it's committed you're usually golden so i understand federal money for this like immediate right but prior to this how did we get the chromebooks for the third fourth and fifth grade we were recycling down so we're no longer going to recycle down we're still going to recycle down um but some but it'll be supplemental what we found is that we actually the recycle down process doesn't work as well simply because we have a lot more seniors purchasing than what was anticipated number one number two after four years of use they're pretty beat up right but we find that we're

082having to backfill with devices that are not always in the best condition right we want to give every kid that equal opportunity of not having a device that is damaged in certain way shape or form if we don't have to so the the backfill process will still occur definitely at middletown uh particularly grades one and two um but three through five it'll will start the cycle of where we're um doing the same as what we're doing with junior high in high school um i am in the process of talking with a couple companies for buybacks so after uh we're done with the chromebook at the end of its life cycle they'll pay us to take it back it's not much but i'm in the process of starting that conversation again we've we've always backfilled but

083if i can supplement some of those costs you know we'll make that work as best we possibly can and what kind of devices does middletown get so kindergarten gets tablets uh only kindergarten and then first and second grade just gets a standard chromebook like everybody else but it stays in the class but it stays in the classroom so the only change that we're making is is again fifth grade it's starting to go home k through three or k through four i'm sorry it stays in the classroom the entire time unless there's some sort of uh need for it to go home whether you know the hold on for extended period of time or something like that any other questions sure can i just clarify we will be like if we have um anticipation of a

084potential elearning day or a place of snow day then the devices will go home for all students on wednesdays yeah and we do have enough devices for everybody to for that to occur so other questions for jared and motion a second to purchase the chromebooks is recommended there is no other questions yes yes henricks yes schultz yes murray yes hennessy yes macomb yes i forgot one more thing this coming out of the next fiscal year's budget it does not get paid out of this year's just for clarifying okay clarify thank you for managing your budget all right um if not hitler your name is unless you fail to manage your budget speaking of heather yes matt rooney killing my budget um when we received the original quotes for the mat room um it obviously was

085um just a thousand foot view when they went in to actually look at what it was going to cost to put in the proper ventilation um with the hvac and everything like that it came in a lot higher than any of us thought therefore we are actually requesting that to reject all bids tonight or the bat room which is something that we we are allowed to do they came in the lowest was through 13 highest was 398 and that's without the alternate so that is the first thing i'd like to do so the recommendation is to reject all of this emotion to do that so second second key discussion questions so the original bit was two hundred thousand and the or the original estimate of the whole and then the lowest bit is three hundred

086thirteen thousand and that is like right now does the mat room not have heat um it it has heat it has it has to do with the outside ventilation help me here steve obviously i'm not but it has to do with like big units in the corners it's actually when the mechanical engineers and the architects got involved basically um they found that needed to be done um so initially the idea was to add essentially air conditioning spaces you know using a unit vent and a little mini split um as we started to engineer it the scope stayed the same as far as the size all that the key difference was power ventilation into those rooms um from the bids and rubber tiers well um about 120 000 of that bid was just an hvac unit

087that would do the conditioning so that room is heated right now but it's one big room um being classrooms they have to be ventilated separately supply return those types of things so it was a bit more scope than we hoped we'd have to do but we really there was only so little we could do any code so that was really where the scope changed i think the rest of the scope was kind of what we were expecting you know metal stud walls drywall ht ceilings led lights all that uh he was really the hvac because the major criteria so just came out and beyond one more so going back in time to when we were at middletown i know that for one year they wanted they went to full-time kindergarten at the old middle town

088and of course when you can't use one classroom for two sets of students you need more classrooms and so they had a room that used to be a gym kind of what kind of left the mat room right to kind of be a gym and then and they because they're in education that never about this plan it was then the board of education group when they made a real gym or whatever but um sorry that's okay so they're gonna share the building in town they knew it was not a long term so they just put dividers up they didn't even go to the ceiling right they were just dividers in the room so the air and the heat could still move around and everything like that it seems as though if if the long-term vision

089that the board is pushing forward and you're pushing forward and everyone is pushing forward is that the junior high is not going to be utilized as junior high seems as though it would be a good idea just to put a temporary thing up there so that we could not waste it not waste not spend all this money when we don't really need to right i can speak to that um i was not involved when real time was done i don't know if that was fit out i don't know if it was just performed in-house i have no i wasn't working through this so i don't i can't speak to that one i can't speak to is that the map room is changing from an exercise space to multiple classrooms and small group rooms under today's

090building codes there are requirements for ventilation and i had an architect have a license that i have to abide by those i have engineers that have to buy by those and the state of illinois is building permit to do this would require us to meet current codes i can tell you 100 i had multiple conversations with my engineers to make this the most dumbed down hvac we could stopped me the code um especially when you add in we're coming out of a pandemic where we've been talking about ventilation for two years um did not seem like a very prudent solution to ignore that even though it is temporary um in this particular middle town solution but we worked i mean i talked to steve talked to mr mills i mean drawing will stop the ceilings

091i never do that in classrooms you're doing that here um you know exposed duct tape and corners no flooring you know exposed conduit on walls these are all things we were doing to limit the impact cost the hvac was the one that just it was only so far we can whittle it down to meet code another factor to it all is that literally the week before we got the bid the manufacturer of the unit which was having the best lead times added six weeks so add on the fact that it's more costly right now lead time if we would have ordered it tomorrow for 19 weeks which puts us like the economics so it's yeah that's kind of where those those are well and certainly we're having inflation and construction i mean that's happening so

092this is or 57 higher than we expected it to be i don't think we can fully state i do agree just completion on some of these systems the system we designed in this is completely different than what was initially being explored uh through the initial quotes so it's not apple samples and that means the rest of the quote i would say was probably inflated a little bit because it was probably thrown out most step 200 you know mine it saves that um so there was some inflation on that but it was really a matter of a different scope so i had a lot of the same questions you did colleen um and and i called lindsay and just kind of because the idea of portables just i cannot stand the idea of portables um i'm

093willing to that's what we need to do that's what we need to do but um you know my same questions can we put up partitions can we make it like you know cubicles like what can we do um and then i had a really stupid question this is clearly why i'm an educator and i'm an engineer so um is because the lead time is the issue like yes it's gonna cost more money but it's also a timing thing the lead time is the issue can we can we put up walls and not put the h back in and then start school and then can it be like installing a ceiling fan right so one of the things that i don't recommend this space the other way it's conditioned is the uh radiators that are essentially

094in space there's really no air like moving around okay um so that makes it really hard to just kind of divide it you know if you're just like dividing this room you just like oh that vent is serving this side now necessary that's this room's not really like that um the timing we were seeing initially we were getting quotes like 12 weeks when we were designing of the unit and from midday okay what we were pretending was that everything was gonna get done and that lasted four weeks they're gonna get that unit they're gonna set it outside plug it all in and we're ready to go okay the issue with kind of hoping and and waiting on it is that we won't be able to get occupancy from are we okay that was gonna be

095my question um again that's kind of keyboard so can you use it for one class now or you can actually get approval from rme to use it yeah they can use it for one room because we're not modifying it anyway so it's just like if you change this to a classroom you're just moving into it so i guess i think what i think what you're talking about is something kind of like you did with abl over the lunchroom with those portable dividers that was you're talking about i'm talking about anything we can do to get two classrooms in their portable dividers so i mean would that be considered modifying the room to have a like like you know talk about the portable providers that are over there yeah but i don't i don't think that

096that's creating a classroom i think there's very friends of purpose no that would not that's a piece of furniture you don't go and put up a yeah a bunch of clothing racks with a curtain across them and divide the room that's not changing it's gonna be really uncomfortable and it's not gonna work as a very good classroom but that that's the i mean this is gonna do that tomorrow so is i mean is that what you were i mean i'm just trying to think about ways that we can not spend money on these things and educate kids with what we have until we go and then i think from this discussion i would like the board to address sooner rather than later our plans for the future because i think a lot of things are

097going to go up in price i think a lot of things are going to go up in time right this is not the only thing just this month that urbana park district was told a year ago your health and wellness center will cost 11.3 million dollars they raised 11.3 million dollars bid it out and it came in at 20 million and so now they can't have a health and wellness center even though they raised 11.3 million dollars i don't know what happened to the village today but our agenda they were going to not build tennis courts because it was too expensive right so they're we're intending to vote not to build the tennis courts because it's too expensive things are going up and up in price and if you know if we see a 56

098increase in the plans that we've had for 15 months then 57 million dollars is going to turn into 90 million and so i feel as though i would like to encourage our board to start immediately thinking like the junior high needed to be bigger ten years ago so let's start now saying what do we need to do the teachers are all in the building right now it's not a way for summer i mean you know the first step will be to survey them what they need to build a building figure out what they're doing the other buildings ask the teachers here what do you need here right we said in the bulldog blueprint we'll build 10 classrooms if you talk to the teachers they're upset the kids are eating lunch in the hallways because there's

099nothing from a lunch room right maybe we have to figure that out lincoln trail is also bursting at the seams the high school into the performing arts center and some other things so if we would start right like right now even before the referendum is decided one way or another we would be on the path to doing this so that we could pull the trigger when we can or i think we should discuss what we'll do with and without so that we can start moving so we don't sit around and wait another year and then have things go up another 50 in the next year and i mean this just brings this to my attention this map room thing because i mean let's just get going if we have to solve problems we have to

100solve problems so what is the map route gonna be used for if we were to go with one of these bits potentially one classroom so why was it getting split into two it was actually getting split into five but i can't put two teachers in there with some kind of divider because the ceiling is like 16 foot tall it'll be it echoes it'll be really loud um so it'll be one classroom that we can kind of take a classroom it won't be ideal um well i'm sorry i think so my question was if we so we're just playing into five spaces correct was that going to be used for five classes two special education spaces one small office for some paraprofessionals and then two bigger classrooms and there's no space for those classrooms anywhere if

101we don't do this even for the short term because if we look at this project the idea is timing to push it off a month for a hundred thousand dollars and get the age back that's more expensive versus the affordables which are significantly more than that if we can for the first month of school find a way to accommodate these classrooms then that is a better use of our fun just know that that's the best guess right now because in the construction industry most things are like it's put they tell you that and i don't want to speak for it here but they give you that and then it may be christmas it may be i understand that i guess i'm asking is there any there's no other place to put these well they would

102be traveling we have used that there are no closets there are no small spaces that can be used we have used every single square inch can i ask a clarifying question about what you just said it sounded like you said that you thought the portables were going to be significantly more than what it would be to renovate the network well before two hundred thousand dollars in on the map room the extra expense was a thousand was the hundred thousand dollars the portables are what three something no they're sixty thousand fifty dollars not 140 plus right taking them down plus so you're going to spend the equivalent amount of money on portables as you would getting the hvac in the building in a better configuration without the addition of that that hvac was only 100 only

103the hvacs the overall bid for that renault was 313. no but we were already going to spend the 200 dollars we said that that was an important budget okay so we have already budgeted and decided that that was that important to us so now we're seeing the difference between portables which is certainly less than ideal versus getting what we really wanted to design sounds like 120 000 or is it the time and so my question was is there a way to buy some time to appropriately give us a better use of space that is not the less than ideal portable solution so that was my question if there's no other place to put people then that's a different problem than it was a time issue and so i've heard both of those tonight i'm just

104trying to understand is it the time issue or not so that that's that was the reason for the question so what are like i'm kind of worried about the other three spaces i mean the reason i kept saying two is because the portable is just gonna have two perhaps rooms right and that's true um that's what they're currently doing so we'll have to figure that out it answers your question the difference between the mat room and the low bid and the portable will be 164 8788 so my question is sorry if i have not been clear my question is is the reason that we're scrapping this tonight because of the timing of not being able to get ready for the school year because there's no other place to do this or is it that we

105because if it is we can buy some time for the best solution the best use of our dollars i would be in favor of doing that and so that was the question is there no other way to put kids in a place to get this done in order to wait for the best solution and is that the reason that word sorry it was the initial conversation was it would cost me this project would cost more than three years of failures that was the initial conversation again just as we explored that further he then also identified that the average objective in the letter was the added risk not only is it costly so the cost wasn't a factor on top of that then there's also the factor of risk and we don't even get it done

106to where mr mills can actually use it at the beginning of the year i just heard both so i was trying to understand which ones and then it was also then it's pile onto that only doesn't cost more than we wanted got it it's also a lot of risk of if they on decides it's 25 weeks now and there's no risk to the time frame on the portables extending out at this point is that i can't speak to that um three different suppliers they can have units here two of them are offering a used inventory that's now available so they can pretty well guarantee in july we can have a unit here and set up ready to go we would have a little bit of cycle or pencil electrical and this kind of stuff to

107be about do you know the size like what what number of students it would like is it comfortable to like what does that mean there's a 24 by 72 or 74 is a comparable size that's well two classrooms that would accommodate 25 or 30 individuals depending on seeking and so forth and this really you're thinking about math so the teachers that would have been in two bigger classrooms within our new ag teacher um and then mrs burke who teaches math and science this year um probably doing math next year but like we couldn't like split out like that back gym with shower curtains few babies probably yet age so so part of the problem too is just remember this isn't like doing this was just like an idea that using space it's still not a

108deal when you get it done you still don't have good flooring i don't think the acoustics are going to be great but it was trying to like bare bones to get classrooms where we could get them yeah does that does that answer your question it does but i mean i guess the same i don't think portables have i mean if you've been affordable you understand that the acoustics are crap and you know so i mean i was just trying to understand if there was a better solution that we thought was more optimal what was the reason we were letting it go so i don't want to be the debt horse either that was i understand now you know i just heard a couple of things i was really wondering what was the push on the

109decision thank you and you say removal is an unknown cost but like is it going to be 10 000 or 100 000 i mean like what's a removal ballpark i think one of the one of the providers you know a 20 000 but we don't know what the cost would be at this time so that's why it's unknown but this twenty thousand dollars a fall mark a reasonable bar park that we could kind of i mean that's right probably something to budget on because who knows what's gonna look like in three years or four years down so it's it's good and when was the estimate i i thought it was fall of 24 for our new junior high view that was correct so two years that seems to me to be two years but we're

110saying we're going to rent these for three years is there any reason we're going to rent them for three years if we aren't hoping that no [Laughter] and there's still options in the event that the representative doesn't go through and we're delaying farther they're all still only work with us for extended years too so and are we able to get out if we would need a year early or is there anything for that there's a need exactly so i guess there's an output i'm sorry there is so so first action is rejecting this from that room that's been emotionally excited for more discussion on that piece um yes uh we actually received bids from three vendors on time we had to get the board packet out so we gave them a deadline uh we ended

111up getting one later but it's more than all three of the ones that we already had so i guess it's irrelevant anyways um the low bed and the one that we are recommending is vesta it is a used portable i'm sorry okay any further discussion on that part don't have a roll call voter injecting those pins yes henry yes bland yes yes schultz yes the best they used for 64 622 of course that will be um in addition to all the site work that we that i had put on the action item as well sidewalk miscellaneous fees electrical fire alarm and fence and we try to be very conservative with our estimates okay is there a motion to least affordable and use a setup these approximate costs really nasty portables see i'm gonna be honest

112like have you seen this have you smelled it i'm not i'm you know we've seen that exactly not knowing which vendor you know yeah still looking so glad we're going to do so we would encourage you to make sure that they're not okay the comments were we didn't mind the extra aesthetics the interior would be nice and the price would be good but i'm i would i will do road trip i wish i was on that it won't stop i mean supplies who can spray them down on a regular basis okay and just i know this is this is probably the dashboard question but there is absolutely no other way to do this other than these portables there's no space left in the junior high okay there's there's no there's nothing left you know and

113also that the decision has been time sensitive there's a big demand for these units uh private schools are buying them up rapidly so we would need to jump on it rather quickly we won't have so if we pass it tonight is that what you need to move forward yes mr melser you really need an office well it could be a special ed classroom there we go which movement the lincoln trail has the blue wagon junior high you have the football yes schultz yes keith yes liam yes hendricks yes mcmurray yes yes my wife is telling me we want 20 minutes go ahead colleen but i did want to offer one clarification before we break but go ahead dr schultz i just wanted to say could we really start talking about this like i know what

114may 2nd we have a study session could we start discussing what we're going to do because i just i don't want to end up in this position where we go past when we could be doing this preliminary work that needs to be done i agree did you have another fight for the second video we need to do the annual board organization tonight no but i'm i guess i'm not clear on what the proposal is i'll talk to colleen okay i i just wanted to offer as a comment was made that we are out of space in the cafeteria at middletown prairie and the kids are sitting on the floor eating lunch and that's not accurate because the kids are sitting on the floor eating lunch it's not because of a lack of space in the

115cafeteria at middletown prairie how about hall maybe maybe i just heard that yeah i didn't say the floor i've heard that the the cold lunch kids eat out here in the [Music] and kids are now all back together in the cafeteria yeah and some conversation i had with mr martin about i don't even know why all the kids were back in the cafeteria now so i'm sharing that all right let's get five minutes next is item five uh doctor hall reduction uh annual reduction in force this is the annual resolution brought to the board in april to do a reduction of enforce of our coaches and sponsors who are not our full-time employees this allows us to accurately track on who's occupying those positions who's returning and not returning and then also it opens up

116these positions to full-time employees that we might be hiring um you know that might wish to coach and then we have someone who's an employee who's in those positions so this is either the third or fourth year that we've done this and it greatly helps us internally cracking on um all of these positions there's quite a few super hat recommends we approve the resolution reference decision to this can you see does this continue certain actual activities in sign languages and cycles is there a motion to do that so is there a second second further discussion okay yes yes mccomb yes number six of staff additions for next school year dr hall uh we can't hear you you can't hear it it's hard there we go due to our growing enrollment um our two hot spots

117that we see before next year are fourth grade and eighth grade so i'm recommending a teacher be added in those areas we're at that time of year where we're not we don't know the exact amount of our tier money that we're going to receive due to the timing of the budget process at the state level these are recommendations that are coming forth out of um months of conversation with our leadership team and conversations our principals have had as well we're looking at current enrollment enrollment projections and the needs of each building and how best to prioritize those needs and at this time this is what what i'm recommending and doesn't mean that there couldn't be more added in in the future but we have a lot of decisions to make with negotiating and that type

118of thing and so um fourth grade and eighth grade are our highest needs at this point when did you oh jim um yeah is there a motion to approve the recommendation i move that we hire one fte fourth grade one fte eighth grade and an additional interventionist at mpe for the next two years okay so we've got an ultimate recommendation on the floor is there a second to that i'll second it kind of see okay so let's talk about that doctor all did you hear that yes i did someone was going first why did you do this on the table for two years so go ahead and then we can come back to class for future pieces what were the three positions the fourth grade the eighth grade one fte fourth grade one ft east

119and an interventionist and mpe for two years so is that coming from mr martin or is that just so well and so the teachers at mpe wrote us a letter we all know that told us that that was discussed in their grade level meetings so not all the teachers but the classroom teachers um in talking to the teachers they said that they have talked to mr martin and talked to nicole and lindsay in their meetings at the beginning of the year and expressed their need um we hear all the time about the unfinished learning and all the problems and the teachers have come to us and said that what they really need to be able to teach these kids is another interventionist we have extra money that we have because of the pandemic and we're

120also in the position where in two years one of our interventionists has committed to retiring so if we were to hire an interventionist now for the next two years the person wouldn't have to become unemployed they could continue on and fill the spot of the person that's retiring and so in this time where we're told over and over that we're experiencing unfinished learning and the teachers are saying this is their real need um we have a way to be able to fill this position and not have to quote unquote permanently fill in right we don't because doing a full position you have to think not about how we're going to pay for it this year and next year and next year but into perpetuity and so because this is the need that that this building

121has expressed to us and because we can do this for not as much money um seems like a priority of teaching kindergarten first and second graders how to read and do math is pretty high on at least my list and so um that's why i added it into the mix so i just need to add some clarification to this because the way you're referring to this letter that we all received um is coming across that it came from all of the teachers at middletown and i have heard from teachers at middletown that do not um first of all didn't know anything about this letter until somebody said something about a board meeting and second of all do not want necessarily their names to be associated with this letter so i don't want to put a

122blanket statement out there that this is coming from everybody um i think my question would be lindsay have you heard from any of the administrators at middletown about the need for intervention another interventionist we've heard from some teachers about the importance of that is there a reason that maybe that wasn't brought forward in addition to the fourth and eighth grade positions yeah so um what's being brought forth tonight in my recommendation is what the administrative team has discussed as a whole on looking at the needs of all buildings um you know the discussion about adding an interventionist is complex and it really deserves more time than probably what can be given here tonight because unfinished learning is not just about hiring interventionists it's also in some cases about strengthening tier one instruction uh interventionists don't

123teach interventionists provide support and intervention it's two very different things um so there's just far more to the conversation than i really think um weak and i guess appropriately and and really look at the time it deserves i mean i had no idea this was going to be brought up so it's a surprise and i would like more time to to uh probably have more discussion about it it's it's there's it's not just an easy answer of hire an interventionist and then um i mean i i can identify other needs in other buildings as well so these are the top priorities that came forth that bubbled up that we've discussed at length as an administrative team every building has more needs we're working within um you know what what the numbers that we have right

124now we could make a case yes that we have some s or money there's a budget for that if we added an interventionist there would probably be some things that we would need to move around and we haven't even discussed that so my recommendation is to stick with what's on the agenda for this evening and if more discussion is warranted i'm happy to have that discussion with any board members who would want to have it and with whomever else um wants to be involved in that i'd like you to add it to the discussion with the full board the next study session since we have some room in the study session i think this is a topic that we probably need to talk about um and so i'd like to make that request i'm sorry

125if we are going to change around the budget before we can just hire someone and assume that that's what's going to cover it it does have to be the amendment has to be approved by the illinois board of education i just want to make sure because i i can't just spend the esther money i've just been what they've actually improved so it's not saying that they wouldn't but it's just i have to get it up i think we need to be careful here i think the standard to get staff added to your building is you get together and send a letter to the board there's three other buildings that miss the vote here that you get a chance to buy whatever requests they have and they may have requested their mind are as legitimate as

126as this position was in these teachers minds at mde and one thing we paid staff to do is to sit through all that for some prior tax forms um another thing is they didn't somewhat excellent board members because i'm a board member never got elected um so i think this is kind of a dangerous precedent um i'm certainly not opposed to listening to requests but to all of a sudden tonight amend things and throw this in i think it's not you're doing this it doesn't deserve this long term and i i will be voting no on what's been put on the table in hopes that we can pass what was originally on the table if we want to look at that more later in another session that's fine but just to put i think i'd

127like to hear more from mr martin as to the background okay you know the thought process of you know if teachers have spoken with with mr martin is there a rationale behind you know like has this one brought forward kind of a thought process so can i just add to real quick i appreciate you recognizing the need for unfinished learning but i also like to be clear that the model that the state put out that we have been following in terms of how the best address unfinished learning at no time was interventionists or additional staff mentioned as the best means for supporting feds and addressing nothing that it's just not a sustainable and it's not it's not an appropriate model for addressing unfinished learning they don't have enough time because they're tier two students that

128used to be held they don't have the time for it so they're expressing they're drowning and they need help and that they could do more for their students the tier one and the two tier and the tier three students and so i'm just acknowledging this unique situation where you don't have to just say we're always going to do this and who's that five years ago we had more interventionists for k1 and 2 than we do right now right we've actually gone down in interventionists so like here's a way for us to just temporarily boost to help these teachers that are saying that they really need the help again who's that who's the teachers they're saying so the teachers have told me that each of the three grade level meetings they had a discussion about it

129that some of the teachers now might not want to be associated with it because people are very upset about the way it was done but that at the grade level meetings all three grade levels participated in writing the letter and uh we're all supporting a letter i'm not sure how many people know that okay i mean i think part of the problem is we spend so much time talking about how the problem was brought to us that we don't actually talk about solving the problem there is a need it's a need that has been identified time and time again if there are needs in other buildings and i think in this boardroom it deserves some time to be spent for the board to understand since we are charged with setting the vision and the priorities

130of the district we make all sorts of decisions um and we spend money we spent a lot of money tonight but there's no priority leading what it is that we're doing so i want to have a discussion in this boardroom that says if we are talking about space versus kids actually being educated we have to have some sort of discussion that tells us what's more important we have a fixed uh resource and almost unlimited need but we don't ever have that higher level of discussion it has been asked numerous times to be added to an agenda it never seems to make it there so i think a really great way to address this would be to get it on an agenda so that we can have a discussion if their administrators want to come and

131tell us what their buildings need then we can have that discussion but we far too often i feel like in this boardroom talk about how the message was delivered but when the message is we have kids or staff or community members who are in pain and have a need for us to fill we are wasting effort and time to talk about how that message was delivered and we should be focusing on actually addressing that issue not how the message came to us so adding it to an agenda would give us a space to have those conversations i could just add the person who wrote the original uh response their mention plan in the district clear back in 2005. and that's been you know developed and revised and reviewed with teams of people over the years

132i think maybe the last time it was done this 2020. um for me it's not the message but i think if we're going to talk about this in a board meeting one thing that we all have to understand is what's the purpose what was the intent of response to intervention and the intent of that is to serve those students are not responding to the general curriculum and you start with that by looking at how what percentage of your kids are meeting the expectations of general education you need to be about 85 and that includes your students with ieps and 504 so when we're making decisions about that the research will tell you you do not move to an intervention if you don't have a foundational effective instructional base in the tier one in the general

133classroom study that is a criticism not directed at anyone in fact it's not a criticism although i should be able to hear it that way what that says is we have to provide more supports for kids in the general classroom not continue to remove kids from the general classroom instruction rti is in addition to it's not in place of and there are parameters that have to be in place in order for it to be educationally sound for it to be research-based we take data on that weekly on kids for some kids it's daily so we're gonna talk about that you know i think that's fine i think if we're going to make decisions get better about who we're going to serve in our ti and then what staff are going to do that and how

134many staff you need to do that there has to be a true understanding what the initial intent of that was and continues i agree that that was very good i agree with that too i'm just saying clearly we have some needs they're coming in from all directions i think it is worthy of discussion in this space and so that's what i'm trying to say is i don't know the answer and i think to prescribe an answer without fully understanding what the issues are leads you down a path to maybe not addressing what you're supposed to be addressing but to never actually have that discussion is the reason that those types of decisions get made i don't disagree with you i think in order to have the discussion everybody's gotta have a better foundational understanding of

135the impact i guess and to use the word prescribe is a great word because really our our program in our plan is based on medical law so you know everybody comes in with these general symptoms of the flu and and 85 percent of people are going to respond to whatever we prescribe to the maxes for flu 15 or not we got to do something different when they don't respond to that initial what we give everybody and so um you know i'm happy to come back with more information about that and to bring you know come with the team however that looks or whatever that is but before we have a discussion about what we need i think we have to understand why it is or what it is what's the reason behind perhaps that need

136or not can we go back to sonny's original question about was this need originally brought up with the administration and leadership team we we started back discussing back in the fall so i mean these know that the discussion for the next school year starts in the fall um i would have to go back and and look at our notes probably an interventionist was on the list but so was probably about 20 other things and it it funnels down and gets narrowed down to what are the highest priorities based on a lot of a lot of context and i really appreciate what christine said about just maybe spending some time um addressing you know what what the purpose of response to intervention is and and how it works because i i think that's just part of

137the context of discussion that would help inform the decisions potentially that are going to be made on staffing to answer your question ken interventionist did not make the final cut this this is these are what the highest priorities are here and that's what the recommendation is is it safe to assume that if the building leaders would have recommended a third position odds or high would not have been this it would not have been an interventionist i can tell you the net the next thing the next highest priority on the list is a and his assistant principal for muhammad seymour junior high that would be the next the next thing will cart my original question was going to be do you know offhand what the fourth grade class size would be then in adding this fourth

138grade section for next year it would get it down to i believe 24 25. the way this section with nine sections we are hovering right at 28 and that's that's our top okay so but i i say that i don't have it in front of me i'm giving you my educated input slash gas thank you so it sounds to me like the board wants to be a part of this type of decision in a deeper way well i disagree with that i'm going to say i've heard a lot of this discussion have been quiet but we need to have board level discussions you'll need to let the ground floor discussions happen and finally eliminate four levels of decisions i don't want any part where they're teasing out all these little details those need to come

139to us and then we make decisions i i don't have any desire to be part of a 10 hour discussion about response to intervention i mean we can they can figure that out and then come with it come to it we make a decision i mean this whole discussion is inefficient let me suggest a level before they come to us with information recommendations then we make decisions on it now if we ask for more context we can get more context but you can do that outside of a board meeting i mean i i just don't get it i understand i would like to see the priority list that was developed and then have discussion about finances of why the cutoff was made at two positions i that was me i will take full responsibility for

140that because we did add positions throughout the year um basically this was on based off of pbf funding alone that's what we were looking at we took into account everything savings from retirement statements you know people you know everything into account we had spent a large portion of what we would have for next year already just because we were trying to keep up with the enrollment so two positions is what um it was to be able to stay flat and not spend over the amount that we are given we're two positions for a couple reasons what heather just said we had several positions last year some of those were by design we did that we also picked up um some some professionals to work with special ed kids that went out of the budget but

141we got the kids and we had to have the position so those got added we added i think a teacher so late in the plan last year when class sizes came in higher the other reason that it's being tamed down a little bit right now to your point what would be next in line to add is to be honest we're going to contract negotiations and we never ramped up staffing big time before contract negotiations because we need to see where that's going to fall out now what i you know would in an ideal world would be nice to give like no salary increases and just add people well on one hand and maybe it wouldn't but if you're those people getting those salary pieces that's not good and that's not the way we want quite

142frankly but you know the more money we spend on the contract you know the less money we have for new people so there's like we've gotta weigh that and we need to be fair with existing employees certainly we need to have an eye towards the future certainly but we need we need we have never went crazy on negotiation years adding positions up front now we get through negotiations and we think everyone's happy and we've got a deal that everyone thinks it's a fair deal and we we can afford to add more people then we'll take that chart that they've got and we'll go you know they'll make more recommendations but to spend you know if at home you've got to go refinance your mortgage you've got to buy a car and you've got to do

143something else well you kind of take an order right see how that money shakes up here we we've got contracting and and we need we owe it to our current employees when we go up to the taxpayers to get that before we go you know beyond what we really think we need that i guess um on the other hand we don't want to take fourth grade class counts the third either so okay there you go there's that but that's that's kind of why we're in the position where we did we we added several positions last year several of them were by design and then several of them were you know we've got the special needs kid and we need we need the person and know what those people most of the people aren't going away

144and we'll probably have more of those kinds of folks this year than we think we might because you know people vote with their feet and that they want to come out here because i think we do a good job with those kids and and so then we need more professionals to help with them so you know it's always we always stay a little more conservative up front and then see what we need to have later and i think when we're going into a contract here that just makes that one work that's my fault that helps i guess what i'm getting at is i would like to see options at the board level but options not just a yes no not just here's the total plan you're either for it or against it um and and

145to me that's what this is we're given we suggest two positions you're answered yes or no what i would like to see is a priority list and a discussion about budgeting so that we can weigh in to decide if we want to take a greater risk with our our finances or less service do we want to how do we weigh those values between the next need and the priority list versus the risk of maybe we're going to get more edf money maybe there are lesser funds available uh that to me is at the board level this this feels like a rubber stand are there any other new positions we're advertising for besides fourth and eighth grade for next year new positions there are there are a couple that are in the esser budget one of

146which was um the math instructional coach that was brought forth this evening i don't i don't have that right in front of them are there any new ones that have been posted brought forth the two positions and you voted and we built them and so now we're great i'm asking if there's any other positions that we haven't heard about before we don't we don't post in we don't post a new position until we bring it to you too okay okay so right now we've got a motion on the floor to add to the two recommended positions are we going to have any board level discussion because what i'm trying to avoid is that i keep hearing in the general population we need this we need the business we need this and somehow the communications teachers

147or whoever's saying it is the board's not going to prove that the board has said no so if i'm going to be labeled saying no i want to have actually said no rather than just being a scapegoat for the no so if these are administrative level decisions that's great but that word needs to get out that administrators have made priorities and they bring it to the board and the board doesn't have any additional say so we either we do or we don't but this process of suggesting that the board is making these decisions when people don't get what they want so that the fingers point at us when that's not actually how this works i would like that to stop so if we're not going to have any more discussion about it that's fine to

148jeremy's point i don't care i mean this is another agenda oh i did ask if we were added to an agenda so are we going to add it to the agenda because that helps me decide how i'm going to vote right now you know i'm going to tell you you kind of lost me as to what the request is at this point so all right so this is on the motion to add three positions for next year schultz yes no nick murray no keith yes hennessy yes henriks no mccomb no yeah i can't emotionally go back to the original i moved the original motion to adding the hennessey yes henrik's yes shoals yes lamb yes macomb yes item seven mr keith um so we set out uh it feels like a long time ago um

149to try and find a firm that will help us with uh uh both the short-term the long-term land development planning process um i sent the board a while ago kind of an outline of what sort of questions that the firm would be studying for us um justin and i got together we identified seven firms uh that we could safely say would do this kind of work um four of them have passed on the project and we did a a about a half hour to an hour long interview with uh three of them i sent those three firm the notes from those three interviews uh to the board and uh i hope you guys had time to look at them um i guess so at this point i would say if there are any questions about

150how the interviews went um i would really like us to uh possibly select a firm tonight if we can and um two out of three firms i'm sure i'm assuming the third firm feels the same way they just didn't say it explicitly but two of them said the next step would be then to meet with either a board committee or the board as whole to identify a specific scope of work so that they can develop an official quote for us um but i i'm hopeful that from the uh interview um outlines you guys can can choose which firm you'd like to move forward so any questions which one do you recommend um i personally liked uh mackie i think it's consultants backing consultants um really all three firms had great information they're very knowledgeable people

151were very nice to work with and i think they all really understood what we were trying to get at um the the one from mackie i feel like gave us the the most uh attention we met with the president of the company and he uh it seemed like their company is the kind of the best balance between um if i had to say if i had to identify the three companies that say one's a local company one's kind of a regional company and one's a national company mackie was a regional company um they're more on the smaller end and they have done this kind of work in the past um i just i felt like the fit was was the best for them i'll be honest and i didn't know we were deciding on firm

152tonight i i don't feel prepared to do that i did sure so i think one of the ideas that we had as a group and and maybe the board feels differently about this was we really wanted to engage a firm that will bring a fresh set of eyes uh be kind of an outsider and and kind of look everything fresh for us um and then give us their opinion on uh questions of where to build next and where to develop language um so uh we spoke with a local company from champaign farnsworth they they were very nice to me with very knowledgeable um i feel like they had strengths but they seemed to have a lot of engagement with the village of muhammad already um and so i don't ever ban right that's the question

153for me i would like someone who's going to be coming fresh to the table and for the other two firms they one of the questions we added that sunny and asked about um was do you have any connections to any companies or land owners muhammad and the other two firms said no they didn't so i don't think they know they don't know us yet justin over here um when it comes down to the three companies we talked to i i'm kind of tossed in the middle between farnsworth and the regional company and the local company i see benefits from each like with farms they know a lot about this community already which is the positive and it also could be a negative in a way um with mackie like he said they're bringing fresh um

154which is definitely positive um and a negative two i mean like burns with noses so i don't think we could go wrong with either one honestly so what are we trying to accomplish the ultimate goal that we had talked about was trying to come up with an assessment on where the best place to place a new building um for an immediate project uh so 24 months was the the term that we had just footballed and then a longer term project something in 10 years and um the outline that we gave them was an elementary junior high in high school so if you have to choose we if we decide we want to do one of these in 10 years where is the best place to build it in our community as as they stand now

155so that we can get a jump on um purchasing land uh getting it ready for construction i know that's been a common concern about the current project is um we have to have the infrastructure ready to go for um if the referendum passes where we're going to build and so that was kind of the idea is to look forward on that and moving forward tonight is moving forward towards a firm proposal right i just want to also know what to what justin said i agree with them i think mackie or farnsworth i think neither of them would be a mistake i think they will be a good option i just move towards my key so since it's a fresh set of eyes and i'll have that my vision with the land planner is for the

156long term more through the short term um with all three companies that we talk to one of the big things that they offer is that you want to have your new building in the area of town that's growing the most so that just reinforces my thoughts that we're moving the right direction with building on it because the movement the growth in the town was in this area so my goals with this would be to look for the long-term 10-year plan just to get a start on getting some things thought out for that not really um i think juan said uh 2000 per site um was a an estimate um one set around 25 000 000 something like that yeah it was kind of hard for me to put numbers on it because they like we

157need to kind of get our heads together let's go so how do you go right now so if we want to move forward with this we need to get a scope lined up yeah and then we can maybe then we can get bids from two companies yeah we can do it that way they they all expressed interest to work with us on the scope um so is that possible so i i guess i'm my only concern i'm kind of with justin that my only concern is i think we definitely need to be thinking long term and i think we definitely need to be thinking about the next step um we're already in this process right now of you know dealing with your high blueprint you've got land i i don't want to scare voters into

158thinking we're going in for this referendum right now oh and we're going to come back and ask for more money to buy more land because we're hiring the land planner maybe um but i do think it's important that we're doing this so i guess i'm i'm kind of i'm kind of stuck on please remember you cannot ask for business for professional services they have to do it it's kind of like an architect or you know they actually have to do it you have to do an rfp they come and present to you and then you pick the top person and you negotiate with them afterwards just to give you that heads up you can't just ask present with them then we can we pick and then we negotiate with that person who's who presents this

159all three firms i can describe it for you like the typical process there's rqs which is a request for qualifications and that's what statement does that's the law um it's advertised you know whatever um a group committee it doesn't have to be a whole board you just you get to do it you look at submittals and determine if you want to interview or if you just want to pick your favor at that point you identify which is your prefer vendor if you will and then you enter into negotiations with you with that firm if you cannot come to agreement it feels too costly you then say no thanks you move to the next group that's it's different than like bidding out of construction or fitting out a service that's a commodity because it's not in

160state of illinois it's explicitly against essentially people lowballing each other when it's really should be a qualification base so depending on what you've done this point it might be that you just need to call your preferred vendor and start to negotiate with them just i wouldn't request a bid from two that would be where you're going yeah okay what are you asking us for tonight with them i have no problem i would like to hear from a couple thank you okay so um which what you might do that you just regret right now is that maybe you do have two or three percent yeah and then i would say you're probably more clear as well and then it can afford the decision of who but that's i would agree with it we have that presentation

161in july to avoid confusion because it's confusing to me and i think that we're looking at a you know 20 30 year plan of what's just a little bit you know what's going on so okay i'm content with that okay but you communicate to the the couple that you know we feel like other candidates that reach out local and say hey we're looking to come and present to us yeah um okay and then the only other thing that i would ask them is i'll just resend it to the board please have a look at the outline again and make sure that that's kind of what you want them to present to us you know how they would address that those concerns i'll send that document again sounds good all right anything else on that it's

162time to close sessions necessary tonight for number one to collect the negotiators from the public audience employees with representatives liberations concerning scholarships from one of the classes of employees and number two item 10 on the list matters relating to a second yes all right we'll take 10 minutes or five minutes