001good evening it is 6 30 and this is a tax levy hearing ahead of our regular board meeting um and uh i'll call an order at 6 30 pm on december 20th we have roll call please here keith here hendricks here schultz here nick murray here hennessy here on the phone here i'll stand for the pleasure i pledge allegiance to the flag of the united states of america and to the republic for which it stands one nation under god indivisible with liberty and justice for all okay so [Music] the agenda you've had a chance to see that there's a motion to approve the agenda for the budget here some of the lamb second second hurry all in favor of approving the agenda say all right oppose any public comment for the budget here yeah all
002right heather here yes i have no additional news um what we've discussed before if you go out and i put the actual site out there for you guys but um they have not changed their estimate since july again they will say 50 million times you know that it could change due to appeals but this is the best information that we have every year at levy time so they're saying that we have a 5.26 increase um now what we do is we that is what i base um the as needed funds off of just to make sure that we do not have an uh increase in the tax rate um based off of that 5.26 percent but then as for the restricted funds i do balloon those and that's we would have had to have this
003here no matter what because the 5.26 is 4.26 over five percent anything over five percent you have to have a hearing um but uh i ballooned it to this time i ballooned it to seven percent it doesn't matter what i'm alluding to i can balloon it to 100 we're only going to get what we get based off of our eav so it's just one of those things we just don't want to lose money based off of our current rate so um does anybody have any questions or anything just trying to keep it stable angle yeah thank you for keeping the texture level like that's not going to rough around and that's what we need yes that's what we you know that's what we attempt to do every time you know using what we have so
004okay any questions forever is there anything else to present no i mean there's any questions you think you might have later on how to be a great man i mean we're still you know the lowest besides you know kelowna which i found out to be honest that telono has corporate sponsors because this year their their rate went so low i got a little confused what are they doing and how are they actually paying for things but they have corporate sponsors there so it's really not a comparable situation um so you know we are the second lowest with toluna but we're really the lowest off of actual property taxes but we're only the second lowest rate right we actually if you look at median um a homeowner we have the highest rate in the county yeah
005not the highest rate the highest amount what it is is um just like you look at your tax bill and you have your actual market value on your house that is something that obviously we cannot control you know that is that's whatever the assessor says you know your house is worth which you know coming from a town that the eav continues to go down and your house becomes less less worth it it makes it a little you know not too great when you go to sell your house um but in muhammad because we have the schools that we do um i can say that coming from the outside and from wearing my shirt and people ask me how do i get there they i've literally had people ask me how do i get to my
006kids to muhammad you have to move there but so um because um because people are continuing to want to move here and the house prices have gone up then yes that amount will go up our actual rate is the only thing that we can control so our percentage of that of what we you know taxed has is the lowest so really we cannot control what the house values are in this tank right i mean so i'm not saying we're controlling it i'm not saying in point of fact if you look at the median we have the highest amount paid in the country well that's because we have the most construction yeah so i mean you know i mean if you look at a three hundred thousand dollar or four hundred thousand dollar house compared to
007a 300 or 400 dollar house in champaign they're really pretty comparable it's not the how the house is worth more just because we moved it to muhammad the deal is we just got more goals because we went back into our summer business continuing to grow which is a good thing our percentage of those is much higher here is comparable which is the market value of all the housing is comparable to the eav in danville the average house in danville is sixty thousand dollars the average house here is three hundred thousand dollars so you know so yeah but i think the point is that you can't say that muhammad just because we have the lowest percentage rate does not mean people don't pay a lot of taxes you know we often well i know i just
008feel like people say that right they say what are you talking about so i'm just saying it's there's a difference between the rate and what you pay that can't be right it can't be right it's just that we have higher i mean our median assessed value is 20 000 higher than even the next place in the county right yes and so we have we people here will be paying more than in the other towns but our rate is still the second lowest yes and um and that's the only thing that we as a school district or as a village can control is the rate you know on a regular basis we can't contribute the house values of course and to luna also just came off their reference that's oh i believe that's what i was
009told so all right anything else over here on the tax crunch hearing none i don't deserve a motion to return this answer so we'll keep second shots um all of you for dismissing say aye all right opposed you've got a minute your square or chocolate good evening this is the regular meeting of the behalf of seymour board of education and we'll call this meeting order 7 p.m on monday december 20th this time i'd like to remind everyone in the room if you're a guest please sign in for everyone to silence your cell phones i'd like to remind our visitors in order to facilitate an effective meeting we have those that wish to make comments to the board to read the visitor guidelines that are found out on the table and complete the public participation form
010and get those to go on over the foreign is allowed only to the public participation portions of the meeting other than those times board meetings are not interactive with those that are in attendance john will you have a roll call please slam here henry schultz here nick murray she's here here nicole here what stands for i pledge allegiance to the flag of the united states of america and to the republic for which it stands one nation under god indivisible with liberty and justice for all right thank you board members you've had a chance discussion on the agenda were we going to add a discussion only item or something ken asked for um he wanted something for land planning well that came in late and i thought about adding that in january that was worth yeah
011so that the whole point of that was to get kind of a deal from the board and whether or not we should gather bids and not actually make a decision so uh i'm a land fighter that is um so i contacted and just talked to the other board members to get a kind of sense about whether or not i should invest the time and justin and i were going to do that together anyway the consensus or or it looks like most of the people on the board would like to see bids in january so we're going to get moving on that and uh but there's nothing that the board needs to decide yet it's just the two of us are working on it we'll bring something to the board in january to actually do something
012um anything else on the agenda do we want to um maybe put some things in the consent agenda because [Applause] what about the six semester graduates or the iga that's fine i think i don't think we can move the iga [Music] for graduates to the consent agenda if that's so whoever made the motion to prove the agenda would you like to [Music] i won't handle that all right carries so we're now approving um the regular agenda with the change of heading for the percentage um all in favor of the agenda structured as just presented say hi and oppose that carries so now we're sent against agenda includes minutes of previous meeting bills to pay treasures for personnel changes surplus items budget transfers one new junior high activity account closed minutes and out of state and
013overnight trips and now six semester graduates does anyone wish to move anything out of the consent agenda for individual discussion nothing none is there a motion to approve the consensus that has modified so is there a second um i will be voting on the consent agenda but had number four stayed out i would have voted yes i just want to clarify that [Music] no nick murray yes liam yes he yes michael yes donations doctor hall uh we we had an incredible amount this month um really appreciate the generosity of our community um first one is a cash donation from ryan berg to mom's cash for mom's pantry for five hundred dollars an anonymous donation for the boys cross country team of two thousand dollars high school business cross country team another anonymous donation of two
014thousand dollars to the high school girls cross country team um a one thousand dollar donation from grace church to our social work fund modern woodland of america and twenty five hundred dollar donation um in cash for the rfa and a 700 donation uh to mom's pantry from nick and christmas for a total of 8700 this month so just really appreciate all the support for um all those different causes and it really helps our students and families in the need as well so thank you to all those folks thank you thank you can i move to approve the donations as president very good hennessy yes yes tennessee yes henry's yes yes um communication from pto msea yes i have an update tonight i would like you to save the date for this spring's cash bash it
015will be held on april 8th at carmen's in champaign entertainment will be felix and fingers and dinner will be provided by yoders ticket sales will begin in february for that so stay tuned to our facebook page and website for more details uh also teacher grant recipients will be notified tomorrow we are funding over nine thousand dollars in your grants this year and lastly our annual campaign continues and thank you to everyone who has already donated we cannot support our schools and educators without the generosity of our donors thank you um go on visitors thank you all right looks like we have five tonight so we will go ahead and allow our usual up to five minutes per speaker four or five minutes that is fine um like to remind everyone that it involves if you
016want to talk about a specific student or something staff member that would not be appropriate um we want us to do our best to say positive and not uh not disparage um real animal friendly so there we go um dawn will run five minutes i will do my best to remind or to let you know if you're running tight on time uh sometimes that works better than others first is martha mills martha good evening my name is martha mills my pronouns are they them or she her i am the president of the board of uniting pride of champaign county i am here as a reminder that we have yet to have a response from the principle of muhammad seymour high school regarding the bullying harassment and abuse that was leveled against lgbtqia plus students in
017september at that time all the students requested was a statement specifically condemning the bullying of lgbtqia plus kids in the school granting such a small request would go incredibly far in making those students feel seen and respected and yet is seemingly too much for the school district to manage since these incidents took place we have tried multiple times to set up a meeting with the school admin and have received no response we have offered free training to the school that would aid in faculty staff and students understanding the queer experience and again i've heard nothing these trainings have been shown to be effective within other local schools and cost nothing refusing them seems to serve no purpose other than keeping the lgbtqia plus students on the fringe of the school society what does it hurt
018to provide information that can help people become more inclusive some members of our school board were able to briefly meet with the high school gsa in november students wrote down things that they would like uniting pride to help them accomplish overwhelmingly they wanted more information in the school about weird topics because quote most people just don't understand they want people to learn about the challenges that homeless queer youth face they want teachers to respect their pronouns and they want different sexualities acknowledged acknowledged in sex education these are requests that are coming directly from students in your district and they are being ignored because they don't fit into the archaic status quo we've said it before and we will continue saying we're not going away our mission is to create a champagne county where all who
019identify as sexual and or gender minorities can live full healthy and vibrant lives i would hope that you would want to say for your students thank you for your time next we have courtney courtney good evening and thanks for your time tonight my name is courtney cuthbertson my pronouns are they them theirs i'm also a board member for uniting pride of champaign county and i visited your meeting last month as you know uniting pride aims to support the well-being of all lesbian gay bisexual transgender and queer people in champaign county including addressing issues at the community level to make more supportive and affirming environments so what is a supportive and affirming environment it's one where all people including those who are lgbtq plus feel welcomed and celebrated for who they are and the unique contributions
020that they make where people take interest in their lives in their well-being and where they can express themselves not only without fear but with expectations of positive engagement with other people just as anyone else would expect and where that freedom to express themselves is protected when people talk about environments for lgbtq plus people there are three types of climates that usually come up one of those is hostile when we think about hostile environments these are ones where people are targeted and harassed for who they are the worst experiences that you can imagine discrimination slurs and violence in hostile environments lgbtq plus people are made to feel afraid for who they are and fear the worst might happen these fears pervade everyday life imagine whether you're wondering whether you're safe walking your dog in your own
021neighborhood or even going to get your mail or get groceries for a long time tolerant climates were considered the alternative to hostile ones because in tolerant environments lgbtq plus people are allowed to exist and are not attacked for who they are don't ask don't tell policies are an example of tolerance if you're not familiar with those that policy of don't ask don't tell it was adopted by the military in 1994 and was initially lauded by some as a sign the military was welcoming to lesbian gay and bisexual service members because it was okay that they served as long as they didn't talk about it but why is isn't tolerance part of uniting pride's goals why isn't tolerance good enough imagine what tolerance would look like during a typical day for you when someone asks how
022your family is doing you cannot talk about your significant other when someone asks how your weekend was you can't tell them about the frantic holiday shopping you did to ensure a good present for your significant other and on your desk your phone you can't have a picture of your partner if you happen to accidentally mention your partner you might hear well that's nice but i wish you would stop flaunting your sexuality in my face or you might hear why do you have to talk about your sexuality all the time it would feel like you're leaving part of yourself part of your experience behind that people didn't understand you tolerant environments communicate that at best it's okay someone is there but not to expect anything else it's only been in the past few years that support
023and affirmation have been seen as the opposite of hostile in lgbtq climate research and policy again supporting and supportive and affirming environments are ones where people feel free to express themselves and be warmly received to feel they're being treated similarly to others in that setting it matters that schools create a supportive and affirming environments youth and adolescence especially is a period of significant exploration and discovery of one's own identity because it is the unfortunate truth for some lgbtq plus youth that family members might be hostile it makes schools all the more important to ensure young people have a trusted adult in their life who they can confide in and to get support schools might be the only place where a young person has support and where a young lgbtq plus person feels like they can
024get the support of an adult this is not going around parents and families as schools often provide resources for students whose families cannot provide them thank you the consequences of being in an unsupported or hostile environment are dire i shared some statistics with you at the last meeting but in case you forgot in 2019 lesbian gay and bisexual students in illinois reported twice the amount of bullying that their straight counterparts experienced on school properties and nearly 40 percent of lgbtq plus students in illinois high schools were considering suicide in 2019. you have a role in making schools supportive and affirming environments we have heard from students and parents that the schools are not what environment do you envision and do you hope for for students in muhammad seymour schools supportive and affirming environments are built
025through active intentional ongoing practices what are you doing to make the schools affirming and supportive what can uniting pride do to help we want to work with you we keep showing up to these meetings as a demonstration of this and we respectfully ask that you engage with us so that we can work with you thank you thank you eric henderson hello eric henderson this will be my fourth school board meeting in my second time speaking um public presentations which is most of the people sitting on this side of it need to be taken seriously enough to be considered properly and maybe need to be added to the agenda that you are our school board members and superintendents set prior to each meeting so that means like if the key at the top it keeps coming
026up it should sit over there on that white sheet at some point in time okay so i am following items that leave my request for inclusion to meet the agenda cameras and classrooms purpose for this is for parents to observe their children on demand at any time for the reasons evaluating their child's behavior and that are the other children this will help parents prepare their children to comport themselves properly to make corrections when appropriate so equally important this allows parents to evaluate teachers comportment as well as to monitor adherence to curriculum okay another concern of mine is recent news reports indicate there may be yet another bond referendum for building more new facilities that yet even greater cost to taxpayers you considering the middletown demolition the fire sale debacle sangamon school considerable study and restraints
027should be exercised to achieve better stewardship of school assets as well as defining wants versus needs and my final point that i'm very adamant about is time to make the curricula and includes the textbooks and all reading lists available to the public i believe that copies of all textbooks should be available at the muhammad public library as well as all titles for approved readiness this makes the education process transparent thank you [Applause] mark thompson dr hall um as i mentioned in the hall earlier i'm sorry to see you go you've done so much for this school district and so many people through the years it's really a phenomenal thing at the end of the day i'm sorry to see is based on stress i i wish and i pray that you understand the peace beyond
028all understanding that god gives if you really rely on that i think you'll get through just fine i also hope you have the courage that's available through that book because we're at a time pivotal time in our nation that we need people within the education system to stand up rise up against all the things that are happening within the spheres of schools today i didn't plan to talk about sodom and gomorrah and i'm not gonna i think just mentioning it should be enough for you all to understand oh my pronouns mister by the way if that's all right i pledge allegiance to the flag of the united states of america and to the republic it's not a democracy it's a republic i don't care how many socialists want to change this framework of our nation
029socialism communism islam are antithetical to the united states of america it's a non-sequitur that cannot exist in this country what okay so anyway having said that a pledge of allegiance we don't see allegiance in the schools everything that's coming through the curriculum is tearing down the republic it's part of the socialist program that's what's happening today we talk about pledge allegiance to the flag in the united states of america and to the republic for which it stands one nation under god god singular one god built on jesus christ indivisible what diversity diversity everything we see is division critical race theory division oh it's it's divisible and it's happening they're dividing us at every point and so much of it finds its foundation through education because we're dumbing down our students they don't know anybody they
030don't know the constitution the bill of rights the declaration of independence they're clueless today man on the street investigations or interviews appalling what's going on in this country because of education at all levels you know a school is full of administrators and educators who are educated they have knowledge right and we all do we understand knowledge understanding and wisdom we see all the knowledge in the world even a lot of it is fake uh or historically speaking but there's no understanding you know the term useful idiot is somebody who digs their own grave do you know what happens to teachers and educators when the world goes to the totalitarian communist realm they kill you that's what they do they get rid of educators poor pop killed everybody who wore glasses because they thought they were
031smart that's where you're heading and when i say you i know better than that it's not you in particular but it's what's happening within the framework of public education in the united states of america this is representative of the problem so when i speak i'm not going to ask anyone here individually but i'm saying the big picture something has to be done and it should be done within your ranks we need a strike and who's better at striking than teachers when you get right down to it i don't think anybody's any better at striking than teachers i just i just am frustrated because it's clear as day what's going on the information's coming out everywhere about dummy down students critical race theory dividing students a sexual agenda that for children that is horrendous you have
032to do something about it and what better place than here right now if you people are red white and blue americans and you've understood everything you pledge allegiance to you're not doing it's not happening it's a lie mark you're done just a few seconds why is there no commentary at the end of the videos from this board meeting there needs to be commentary allowed the idea that people can want 1500 people watch this board meeting and there's no place to comment about what they saw and that would be a start for maybe starting a revolt because what's happening is revolting [Applause] by parking good evening folks i want to address the subject of the uh referendum that's coming up below that and uh i know we're we're heading that direction we need to do it
033and we knew our facilities improved we need additional classroom space but i'm concerned what may happen if the referendum doesn't go through and i think that i would like to encourage the board to think about hiring a professional land planner to look at the other possibilities within the district for a plan b for some of the facilities and drawn their scope and and hire somebody that uh that can probably do that and not confine them just the property that school had with the school loans right now and so i'm encouraging uh uh to do that and to uh have a plan b for the for the future that's all i gotta say thanks thank you okay board members you've got a chance to look at the building reports and uh got comments on building reports
034for this information to share it's that time we'll start with sonny um the only thing i just want to say is that i hope everyone has a relaxing break well-deserved break it's been a long semester and hope everybody takes time to see family and relax all right we'll go back and forth so we'll go over to dr school i was just going to say something similar to sonny just uh take this time over christmas break to spend time with your family and loved ones and uh thank you to all the staff administrators teachers from the top to the bottom for everything they've done this semester to get us to the finish line of this first semester thank you we'll go back to the meeting um i'll be brief i just want to say i hope
035everyone has a safe and healthy holiday season and bye over here i don't have anything tonight i just want to say thank you to max and colleen and jeremy for doing the legwork on the superintendent's search bid process i'm looking forward to working on that i'm just happy to see board members working together on things i'm very happy about that and i hope everyone has a very happy break and i'll just add that i know for our staff out there whether you're a custodian or administrator or teacher or some kind of aid or specialist in some area i know this has been a very challenging year and i know that right now you are very excited that birth is coming up and uh i'll echo the wishes have a great break our students do too
036and it's time to refresh and recalibrate and spend some time away from your daily routine a lot of folks will get to see some family and that's great if you're able to do that but just just take some time just relax a little bit and we've got another semester coming and good goodness they have a little downtime so thank you everybody for what you've done so far this year um financial update heather um happy report all the revenue and expenses are in line with our current budget um and that's really all i have once you guys have any questions okay uh christine norfolk i don't see you here tonight you've seen that report she's downtown so we've got her report we thank her for that dr rommel is here you have anything to add to
037your report i do our psat data is in um and i'd like to report that like our work with unfinished learning has really taken off if you look at 2019 the average score was a 921 and in 2021 so remember last year we didn't take it we're up to 9 10. so while we were at the 73rd percentile two years ago we're at the 71st percentile right now for average so um just shout out to our teachers and the efforts that they're putting in this year um that early releasing has been dedicated to really identifying what it is kids need to know and creating a plan of attack for helping make sure that they're ready for the warning that's coming up one of them just finished our first units in writing um k-8 and so
038we're in the process of scoring those and i sat through three of those team collaboration meetings so far and i'm just amazed at the growth that our kids are showing and writing so again just wanted to um the writing that they're doing in the units of study are very intensive um and they're spending a lot of time talking about each lesson what it's going to look like in the classroom how they're going to measure success with that lesson identifying what kids are getting what they're not getting and planning for reteaching and i'm just super proud of the work that they've been doing thank you any questions for dr rome can i just ask about the pre-algebra yeah so are we gonna take the students that are usually in pre-algebra put them in outro a and
039b yeah so that's a great question so we talked about this this has been an ongoing discussion i would say for since i got here probably before um when you look at our data um when i ran it uh when the discussions began multiple years ago we were at about four percent of kids in free reduced lunch and then ap calc track for lack of a better term and um over fifty percent of our kids after introduced lunch in the pre-algebra so there's definitely a discrepancy there um we also know from the research that kids will rise to what we ask of them so they will be placed in pre-algebra are from free algebra and algebra 1a um in preparation for that um we've started some work that we've mentioned in some class reports at
040the junior high with the interventionists and some support that kids are getting at the lower levels for a long time they received intervention k-5 and then there really wasn't much at the junior high for that so now they're getting targeted math intervention to junior high with some skills that they're missing um and then we're in discussions at the high school as well about some ways that we can help support these kids as they um kind of like we do right now for double block algebra to keep kids instead of going to algebra 1a1b they're able to go into algebra one in a double block to get some extra support um so we're talking about what those supports for those students that would traditionally go into pre-algebra that are going to be going into alpha 1a
041um thank you before i have jama revolution come up to the podium and talk a little bit about bulldog blueprint provide an update um just wanted to share some enrollment figures we continue to have new students um arrive here pretty much daily and enroll in our schools and so that's the most updated enrollment information as of last week and i also just want to thank our families our staff our students for a great first semester it's been awesome having everybody back in school full-time and um i can't believe it was like um just a week ago we were listening to jerry brooks back on august 16th and three months later we're finishing my first semester so thanks to everybody and um merry christmas happy holidays and look forward to seeing everybody in 2022. and um
042i would like to introduce jay mcgregor lucian she's going to say a few words about bulldog blueprint she's one of our three co-chairs she's familiar tonight so i just wanted to provide the board and then also the community that's watching this watching um a brief update it will be very brief um we've had great feedback from all avenues of our session so we've done in person virtual digital we have uh meetings lots of conversations that's not just limited to what we've done um at the live sessions um and it is very clear to all of us that our community has strong feelings of support towards our districts of that um is probably the biggest takeaway i can take from this um and it's really good to have some positives because a lot of times over
043here is the negative so um that's been really heartwarming to me um there is an overwhelming consensus that we need a new middle school um and that the district must prepare for growing enrollment she just talked about it it's not stopping um and adding elementary and high school capacity um and those are just really almost non-negotiables that we have to address capacity i think anybody who steps foot in our district can um would agree that you have to have capacity um there may not be a perfect scenario but um that's what the data is taught the feedback is telling us that the new middle school is the way that we should go um and that it's a dire need so there's really not a lot of time to him and hall about the perfect plan
044we're also finding clear consensus points about the first phase of the master plan and what that should look like um in the next stage um so we are going to roll out a survey to the community um at the beginning of the new year um that's going to help us refine this goat and best position our district for success we're going to send them out to the whole community and many different avenues so we're hoping that'll reach i'm a very large arctic audience and we'll get a lot of feedback so until we get that feedback so i i encourage everybody to take this survey have your family members take the survey um and community members but until we get that survey results we're going to postpone our community engagement session number six so we've had
045five sessions so far um and we're kind of um tbd on the sixth one and see what the survey uncovers for us because it's a different avenue that we haven't explored yet um hopefully we'll meet uh reach a greater audience there um and maybe it'll give us a direction that we need to go with that sixth session um and maybe we won't have a succession maybe everything will be clear to us um in february we will come back to the board and present our recommendations and hopefully they'll be action later that month so in order to make sure that the board understands and is comfortable with the information the co-chairs jen and i would offer to meet with any board members two on two um to further explain anything to um uh i don't know
046just answer any questions just to make sure that you are prepared for um discussions in february so max if you want to coordinate that i know riz and i wear schedules are very very flexible and jen is available like she tries to be available so um but we look forward to meeting with you all answering any questions so that um we're ready to roll in february and for community members you can find all of the information on bulldog blueprint.com to see all the progress that we've made thank you any questions goodbye it was gonna be in january like january 20 something i think it was really the 13th oh sorry but january thank you i deleted it off my talent thank you yeah are you gonna bring the survey to the board before you give
047it out it seems like that's a really big thing to do and it would be important that the questions on the survey would be questions that would help the board make their decision um i think that we have more representation on our community and they get to see it um so i don't know if it's going to go to the full board i i'm not that hasn't been the plan it's been run by the facility on the team and i think that's why we have our perspective that's why we have representation on the board on our committee um we just got the first draft today any other questions so if you're not going to show it to us if um is the survey gonna offer different options for the community or will you have made
048the decision already before you set up the survey it's gonna help us inform our decision of what to present to you ultimately the decision is yours we bring you what we recommend and what we've heard from the community it's just to refine we're pretty we've narrowed it down now we're refining and seeing what traction they have i know one of the questions and i don't think that i'm sharing anything that i can't um it's just how comfortable are you with the tax reform of this amount of a rough amount that might be close to what you would approve or what would pay for i guess what i would say is i would like to see how the community feels about different ways to address the situation which could be short-term or could be a little
049bit more long-term focus so addressing what's happening now and then what we might do down the road so you know are we going to build a junior high or are we going to build an elementary school and then 10 years down the road build a high school or you know different options our community engagement sessions have led us to this point um so there was a lot of opportunity to give feedback all along the way um we've refined it to it's most likely going to be a middle school so we're not asking for a lot of feedback besides um digging a little bit deeper about what you would like to see and what you're comfortable sitting again i haven't read the whole survey so um but i i don't know that we're asking for more
050feedback about what building to build and frankly i mean we're addressing capacity that's what we've heard we're addressing capacity and then i think if we have if we take do a new referendum that gives us lots of flexibility going forward to plan for 20 30 years down the road so and we know we have to address capacity um that's what we're investing now i agree we def desperately need to address capacity i'm just wondering if we have various scenarios to address but we found those in the engagement sessions well but when davian was here he was we asked or i asked him to include a scenario that included in elementary school and it never came to the community engagements and some people told me that they brought it up as a community engagement as well
051so it's hard for me to know how the community feels if the community isn't given an opportunity to express themselves environments have to go back to saying that we're given an opportunity um and we're trying to engage them in different ways still but we can't refine the scenarios to this point um from the information that we were giving the majority of the information yes there were voices about i want a pool i want this i want that we've had lots of people say they want something but we can't have a minority drive the process so the survey that's going to go out can you kind of restate what is the goal of the survey survey to further refine the process to further refine what we're bringing to the board to engage sentiment i guess a
052little bit again i haven't even read this survey i just got it today so can i just say it's really distracting in the audience speaking thank you well we can't speak to you so yeah oh you don't need to be rude as someone else's room first okay well it's not a public woman we're trying to conduct a business meeting and if you'd like to have an individual conversation you can go you're welcome to go outside and do that but in the room we do need it when you get inquired so we appreciate that i mean i i'm just going to say this i've said this before i think one of the problems that we could be falling into is that for us to assume that people feel like they have the opportunity to give input
053might be a mistake i've heard lots and lots of feedback that has indicated that people do not feel like they were heard they do not feel like there was adequate representation for the ideas that they had they do feel like they were steered towards a middle school or a junior high from the very beginning so if the goal is to ask people to participate by giving us tax dollars the surest way to not have that happen is to not listen to them and give them the ability to give feedback so if a survey is constructed in a way where it also feels to the community like it's leading and tunneling them towards a single predetermined outcome rather than actually soliciting feedback i don't believe we're going to get to our final goal of getting people
054to buy in this is often what happens with surveys it's important that you structure the survey in a certain way so that it is a survey that actually gathers feedback and not just feedback that reinforces what you want to hear sure i hear exactly what you're saying um but i want to say that we've moved past that unfortunately and we we've given up plenty of opportunity we're here to present you in february a plan i don't know how we go backwards from well where we're at when we've offered a whole year of engagement sessions and multiple forms and um community engagement meetings email us i've met publicly with bunches of groups um i've sent my email out to people i've taken phone calls i want to be very clear here i do not believe that
055this is for lack of trying and i do not think that this is leadership of this particular event because this feels like people take it very defensively as if somehow um this is a personal attack i hate it as a personal attack actually i just take it as the opportunity was given and you have to have your big boy well i think that's one way you can look at it the problem is though that we're going to turn around and ask people for tax dollars and so i still am concerned that the feedback that i am hearing is that people do not actually feel like they were given an opportunity to actually give input the problem that we have in projects like this is that we may feel like we gave them adequate time to
056have input our opinion is really irrelevant here if we are hearing from people that they still do not feel like they were adequately able to give input they are not going to vote and give us their tax dollars i think there's plenty of feedback that we've heard that people do not feel like they have had the opportunity to have feedback if we're going to the lengths to have a survey go out i think we should make sure that that survey has open-ended and real questions and availability to actually gather feedback from people not just feedback on a predetermined scenario and that's all that i wanted to say well i will pass that along um i want to say that my passion comes from being in the schools all the time and knowing that it's a
057dire need and we need to make decisions and we need to move forward so that's something that you need to kind of just kind of help with the survey i'm sorry is uh our consultants out of yeah yeah they're no strangers they've done this before um but i i want to say personally i don't think take anything personally um but i have a passion for giving their kids more space um and so i don't want to waste time um and that's where i'm at i'm sorry people don't feel like they were engaged in it i'm not taking that personally but we need to move forward any other questions thank you i appreciate that update merry christmas and you should open the commentary then the people could respond to what they just witnessed here merry christmas
058we are to agenda item number one um 2021 tax loads um again this was presented um right quite a little while ago then it was put on this plate for 30 days and now we had a hearing earlier today so i would just uh recommend approval of the current tax levy that has been presented before you trying doing our best to keep our tax rate the same student recognized approval and excuse me i'm sorry the super net recommends the approval and adaption of the resolution concerning affecting the tax lobby for 2021 is your motion to do that is your second thank you there's a further discussion on eleven headaches opportunity earlier in case anything has come up hearing that let's have a look on both please yes nick murray yes dennison yes hendrix yeah schultz
059yes glam yes mcconnell yes research requests from u of i college of education dr wrong um dr gonzalez from the college of education um reached out to the school and is interested in doing a study i kind of outlined the study there what referred to as a lesson study it's research based um specifically working with geometry teachers i reached out to mr ryan at high school and both he and mrs murphy were interested in participating in this study and so i'm happy to answer any questions i sent information out last week which would have provided me an opportunity to gather more information if more information was needed but this is a great opportunity to receive some pretty specific professional development and lesson planning so i make a motion that we approve dr gonzalez's research with
060mr dave ryan and this is gina morgan thank you that motion is there a second second mcmurray got a motion a second is there further discussion and questions for dr roman sounds like we have the opportunity to act out if they don't yeah it would be active consent from both parents and from students so um what does this do to their timing of their um you know they have certain stuff they're supposed to teach in their class and then they're going to add this in as an experiment what how is that gonna i wouldn't say it's an experiment but it looks like it's going to align with what they're doing in class that's why we're specifically only doing it with the geometry teachers other questions yes yes hendrix yes schultz yes mcmurray yes hennessy yes
061macomb yes okay item three super kind of surge um jeremy and i or colleen and i are in one case colleen and jeremy i've interviewed several of the firms we have sent you all those notes and you have seen the proposals from those firms um i have a lot of history with isp and i have a lot of respect for tom leahy who is her director and who will be doing the search but we use isp i understand they have some board members that feel differently um there were several there was a firm or two besides isp and uh i believe it was you and jeremy who did the interview for iasb and then who interviewed els education leadership solution jeremy and max so based on the materials that you guys shared and then based
062on the the video which i thought was really helpful actually listening to effingham school board kind and go through that process those are the two groups that kind of search ones that kind of stand out to me so i'd be curious um to hear from those of you who interviewed them what what stands out what positive stands out to you about isb and els and what drawback do you see about isbn lfes obviously if you didn't interview with them but um i want to say is a positive i think of the firms that we interviewed um isb has certainly had a lot of downstate experience els of the other funds seemed um they're newer but at least the folks that are involved that will be involved in the search here have a lot of downstate
063experience right and background and have done downstage searches uh some of the other firms you ask them what's your experience in downstate or central illinois and you hear amble places different points of differentiation between els as they do if there's a desire or a need for some consulting and some personal development with a new superintendent some mentoring type stuff uh they do uh throw that into their package and they do it at no additional charges does that but that's an additional other firms some firms don't know most of the other terms of few offer charge for that um i think those are some things that stuck out to me um well i talked to els and ibsb um els is one that really stood out to me uh one is their cost is very reasonable
064um and they also did recently did a search in effingham that school board seemed to be really pleased with um and their process was was interesting in that it it seemed to um really be centered around excuse me centered around the board and what our desires were for our next superintendent and they developed their survey questions based on what our desires would be as a board so they would look to us first and then they would develop their surveys for the community and faculty and staff from that and then they would use those surveys to build um some data for that ideal candidate and to help guide that search the data doesn't necessarily pick the candidate but it does help with that as well and i felt like he really had an appreciation for our
065school district and the expectations that our community has here in muhammad and so i'm really comfortable with uh els isb i thought they are good too they've been around a long time um i think that's also a downside is that there's not a fresh perspective like the els group that is tending to bring right now so my personal choice would be els but do you see any drawbacks with them um i mean they're new yeah i think potentially potentially that's a positive and a negative is that they're they're fairly new at this um but have very experienced people doing it so almost all these firms use either retired superintendents or some of them bring in specific superintendents that they use as additional consultants and and the els group that mentioned who they would have on
066the els seems to um be more customized to what we need and i don't mean customized like doing different things but like they seem to be more intending to be responsive before they even start right that they want to hear what we want and then build from there as opposed to like a set agenda here's what we are expecting you to need right this is what we have and this is what we and wanting to get our feedback um i of course love that they believe that the process should be data driven um to use data instead of just gut feelings or this person likes this person or you know like that um the iasb also obviously has done this in and so that's a positive for them one of the things i noticed because
067i was on three or four of the interviews is that most of the other firms had either they directly said this like the isb actually said it in a video i watched online i took the webinar and they offered about searches um the the impression i got from the other firms was this is what happens you sign on with us we take over for you and in the end you vote through who you pick but we sort of tell you what to do and now maybe that's not what they're going to do but that's the impression i got from all the conversations whereas this is the most important decision that we make as a board argue you know um and so the board should have the input into the decision we say it all the
068time and if we don't mean it then we shouldn't say we have one employee we work with this so for me it seems like espls is going to be the firm that would tailor best to us and allow us to actually find someone that is the best actual fit for us here in the drawbacks um that they're not as experienced that they you know and so i i don't know 100 about the breadth of their reach right like if you don't have that many contacts or that where the isb obviously has a pre-made base um but i also do believe that muhammad is such a great place that it's not like someone's going to have to go beg people to come want to work here right that that every firm we talked to said at
069some point but you're muhammad and you're you know we expect that you'll have candidates there wasn't a well if we could get someone to agree to come you know and so that's why that while i have a concern about that is not something that i really am worried about and certainly the advantages of a process that relies on what the board actually wants instead of what someone thinks the board should want is what makes me want to say you know that i move that we ask them to write of a proposal for the board to review um before our google i o i'll throw this no i guess what i'm saying is whatever it is that we would sign to make an agreement so we have the thing you can sign today and that's the
070entirety of the agreement um okay well then i would if we have that i would move that we um um just that when we talked to eos they they expressed the desire to be flexible with us um and i think if you listen to their own hand video that kind of came through i know from personal experience working with isp they will be flexible some of these other firms he didn't even send stack he says here's our here's our program i think i had a better feeling too about school and come back to exactly the exact time but not not the feeling and there was one firm that didn't seem to listen much but a lot of these firms are probably listening tonight i won't call them on my name but um yeah but yeah
071i mean one firm even said if you don't do our plan the way we do it then we drop schools because we know that our plan is the best and this is the way to be successful and i just thought i believe that you have a great plan and you probably are successful but especially in this current climate being responsive to the district and the individuality of the district is super important i have two more questions one the candidates who apply through els they are just regular applicants like they don't have to pay to be part of their applicant system they don't have to do anything fancy like that right okay did they say did they i'm sorry i said i don't think so okay did they say anything about as far as a time
072frame i know for iasb they had given us kind of like a four month-ish window yeah we talked a lot we talked to everybody about time frame yeah particularly els was one of our first calls and we talked about it and typically when the firms asked what the time frame was we we answered well we you know we need to get gold right because super guns are out there making moves right and we want to get started sooner or later and most of them agreed that they could start in january if we wanted to start in january which i would recommend and uh most of them thought that you know around spring break time would be reasonable to kylie i know we've got a full document from them that has pricing might not have a
073contract assignment might be right i can't recall i mean it's just that would we i would be interested in not signing specific things away without actually looking at them first right as far as options and things to do or just any like the fine print i'm a fine printer so is that going to surprise you um and so that's all i'm saying we i just would like to see that before we officially vote to sign some and you you did see i think in my recommendation if whoever we hire tonight and right now the eos is the name on the table if they're available january is the 10th that we had a potential study session logged in i mean it would be good to get up here and start a conversation yeah so i was
074just going to touch on something colleen mentioned is about mohammed being a destination school for a lot of people um after doing my homework and stuff and talking to different people in the know i i'm very confident that we're going to have a great candid pool and i don't think we can go on with iasb or els and i'm kind of excited about bls being a new up-and-coming company because they're going to be able to prove themselves and i like that they're going to interact and tailor to our needs so just do that out there so uh i was leaning towards the ls but i wanted to just listen to the discussion before i made a decision so you made it easy for me and i should just say that was almost entirely based on
075the interview notes so again thank you guys for putting those together because that really gave me a clear picture of what firm's personalities were what their desire to work with us was what the process might look like so yeah yeah thanks for doing that you guys that was helpful i'm just going to request that before we actually sign the contract i'd like to see it i feel like a lot of times we see the contract after signing so i think that the team did a good job but i would like to see the contract before we sign on the dotted line to see the specifics um all right well i think we can vote to terribly approve them um execute the contract in january 10th or whatever no yeah don can you pull that final
076real quick yeah i think with them there was all the details of that i don't i don't think there was a contract it was um it was just a proposal yeah we could tentatively accept their proposal but uh yeah final approval would be january 10th study session accept their approval and ask them to come and begin the process and right by the way bring it back to us you get the contract in a week and you say oh my goodness all right yeah or whatever tomorrow but we'll get that what i'm saying is we don't have to wait until january to say oh we didn't like line seven you know we did let them know or figure that out [Music] letter to process overviews and pricing for the developments okay okay so um the motion
077is that we that we work on moving forward with them that we'll have them here um we'll get a contract you all to review before the attempt if you see anything on the contract that you have an issue with let me know right away so i can address it with them and that way we can either iron out or have an answer before they're here yes all right six semester graduates will get done iga with muhammad public library district dr hall i will approve the resolutions okay second machine sorry discussion or questions for dr hall had a chance to look at it just a quick thank you dr hall and thank you for the library yeah john howard um just been great to work with and um we've been working on this for a little
078while but just appreciate being able to work together with them so it's a great opportunity for all of our kids in the district not to slow down or derail anything is there anything you feel compelled to highlight no just it's a great collaborative effort you know thank you any other questions hennessey yes schultz yes he yes lamb yes henricks yes murray yes macomb yes all right um i have six you guys asked a couple times in the past for us to consider um board level diversity committee we have voted that down in the past she asked last month that we bring it back this month so i'll turn it over so i move that board form an inclusion and diversity committee would this be a board member only committee or do you expect to include
079additional people oh certainly not i think this is a committee led by the board that has board members on it but for the purposes of speaking with the community and having it be an informative way to gather inputs uh that might uh inform our decisions uh as we move forward can i clarify please i think i misunderstood ken's question are you saying that it would be a board committee made up of two board members or are you saying it will be a committee made up of two board members as well as other community members who want to join what would be a board committee so two board members would lead it but i anticipate that the committee would involve i would say to have open two-way dialogue with respect to diversity and inclusion issues in
080the district i mean i'm making it because we keep having incidents pop up where clearly in my opinion we have an issue and we have a need for some focus on it i don't feel like we have um a way to do that right now i feel like it's an important issue that uh would be best served with board level focus and attention which is why i keep bringing the committee building level um don't we have building level committees now i believe i understand that but i believe we have had several requests by our community uh and surrounding communities even including student population and staff population for the board to be involved and i think it's worth the board's time and effort to do so dr hall for the building level committees who sits on
081those do you know is it just staff yes okay and then at the high school we have hold on voices which is oh right thank you and to be clear for everyone because we haven't had committees operating in a while the the committees are not there to make decisions on behalf of the board these are there to engage on a topic and then bring ideas to the board i kind of like the idea because i think that rather than having the seven of us tackle some of these really difficult issues let some of the discussion with the community with students who with whoever happened in a committee meeting and then bring it to the board i like the idea other questions comments look at donuts hendricks no tennessee yes schultz yes nick murray no land
082no he yes nicole no okay this time we're going to close session um we're going to talk about appointment employment conversations with specialists like individuals specific volunteers of the public body are legal including your customer and complaint lodge against employers individuals who serve the different chiropractor and product security procedures and building safety and security and the use of personal including the safety of students staff for public and public property three litigation when an action against our behalf the public body is compiled or depending on the court uh or administrator tribunal or the public body finds the actions probable or imminent in which case the basis for the findings will be recorded and to talk about student issues which i believe is item nine students just playing cases is there a motion to go into closed
083session for those reasons is there a second second discussion yes yes we'll take about a five to ten minute break to clear the room some coordinators take care of his personal business