Mahomet-Seymour Board of Education 8-17-20

001okay we've got the live feed up and i appreciate jared working on that and uh at this time i'd like to call the order the regular media the behind the scenes board of education and the 702 pm on monday august 17th at this time i'd like to remind folks in person if you'd like to speak uh to fill out the visitor guidelines if you want to make comments and get those to dawn over in the corner i'd also like to remind everyone to please sign into your guest and silence your cell phones we've got four board members in the room on webex we do have three board members and that would be mr keith dr solz and miss hennessy so um i was asked to make that clear i think there was some confusion last

002meeting and who was on whatnot so we do have three board members that are participating via webex tonight um world complex giles here keith cheers for the united states of america and to the republic for which it stands one nation under god indivisible with liberty and justice for all all right this time board members you've had a chance to see the agenda for tonight's meeting there's a motion to prove the agenda is there a second second is there any discussion on the agenda hearing none can we have a vote please on the agenda larson yes henry yes yes tennessee yes yes look home yes and are there any more public participation forms that need to go to dawn if we do okay he's working on that out in the hallway okay uh before we begin

003tonight i've got a message for everybody the current board has been together now for what is proven to be a difficult 15 months working relationships among our board members and board relations with key district staff members have proven to be very difficult as a group we met with a consultant from the illinois association of school boards back on august 5th and again on october 7th 2019. attempts to wisconsin established working agreements for the board failed to vote those attempts as have subsequent attempts to negotiate some type of simple board working dreams early on in this process i sense the public expected a level of patience and understanding as we move forward with this new board i was hopeful we'd eventually come together and begin to operate more smoothly as a group but that has not

004happened from my standpoint meetings have become increasingly more difficult and i know that several board members in high school and school administrators have shared another concerns with myself and dr hall beyond those concerns the operating issues with our board have become increasingly more apparent to the public there have been numerous and increasing comments from community members referencing unproductive meetings lack of respect among board members lack of respect for district employees and poor board behavior and conduct to be clear the public concerns i'm referencing are not about the fact that we disagree the concerns are about how we disagree how we treat each other lack of respect for our superintendent district employees and along with the poor example we set for our staff students and community there's a ground swell of concern building in our community

005and a growing call that our behavior as a board must change so tonight i'm exercising my authority as president of the board board members will provide a copy of operating guidelines for board meetings in your board packet for tonight these guidelines have been vetted by the iasp and by our attorney jeff funk and represent what i intend to enforce beginning tonight and moving forward i truly feel that following the guidelines are in the best interest of not just the board and administration but most importantly the community and the service students that we serve the guidelines are number one after the agenda is published and distributed to the public only discussion items can be added to the agenda action items need to be on the public agenda included in the board packet so board members have

006time to consider them and the public knows what is going to be voted on attempts to add action items during the meeting will be ruled out of order by the chair and i'll add that is in compliance with opening exactly number two the board can always modify your proposals or motions however if board members wish to present a completely alternative proposal for a new proposal those need to be submitted to the board president superintendent no later than seven days prior to the board meeting which would be the monday before monday meeting this gives staff time to affect the proposal and allows them to go out in the board packet so board members can review the proposal and prepare it also allows the public to know what's going to be voted out number three the board

007president superintendent will place time guidelines on the agenda for each item we'll do our best to follow the time guidelines the chair reserves the discretion to allow more time for an item if it's determined the more time four normally we'll do our best in meetings by 10 pm at 9 15 the chair will look at the remaining business and recommend adjusting time guidelines or tabling items if necessary number five their important discussions board members will signal the chair when they wish to speak by raising their hand and wait to speak until they are acknowledged board members will not interrupt other board members excluding asking questions each board member can speak out twice to share an opinion on a business item and as in others for a maximum of two minutes at a time time limits

008may be lifted by the chair during study sessions and special meetings depending on the situation number six and board members suspend discussion and press towards the vote by calling the question if the question is called and that call receives a second there will be a vote to end discussion if the vote in discussion passes and that would be a modified roberts on a 4-3 vote the board then proceeds to vote on that item if the call the question fails to pass the discussion will continue on that item number seven our respect for our staff members and for board members time if board members have multiple questions or specific technical questions regarding the business item they should reach out to the superintendent prior to the meeting all board members will be copied on the response all

009board members have that information number eight their board meetings board members should set a tone that treats each other district staff guests and all presenters with respect number nine while we welcome public input out of respect for meeting timeless we return to previous foreign policy which allows for public comments near the beginning of the meeting we'll discontinue our experiment of allowing comments during discussion of an action item or at the end of the meeting out of respect for everyone we will enforce the five-minute timeline time limit per person those that have longer or more complex messages are ensuring email encouraged to email them to the entire board so your thoughts can be considered those emails will be included in board minutes posted on the district website so everyone has opportunity to view these thoughts and

010opinions and number 10 board members should only abstain which would be an extension of past or voting present only when they have a personal conflict of interest with an item beat voters if there is no personal conflict of interest all board members should cast that yes or no will come in life and that is out of privacy finally as we bring staff and students back into our building in order to facilitate more effective meetings and discussions i invite all board members to return to attend our meetings live and in person we will continue their distance from one another in the room we continue to live a room capacity we'll wear masks i believe our community wants to see us working together in the boardroom and i would ask each of you to please join us

011that's what i've got for this is there a motion to approve the consent agenda as it is presented so who is there a second second is there a discussion on the consent agenda i think anybody wants to remove for further discussion this is ken i'd like to remove personnel changes okay pull out personnel changes is there anything else i would like to note that it's a point of order um the policies violate policy 2 240 of our board policy question okay what which policies press policies 103 and 104 the adoption of them this evening would violate policy 2 240 of our adopted board policies those are present updates correct yeah okay discussion time no design consent agenda i'm just looking to understand we'll meet you okay because then we'll pull them out and discuss some

012stuff that's fine okay so we'll pull the press policies out here's the left and then the gender we have minutes bills treasures report and approval to put the fy 21 budget on display we roll cobo please yes larson yes macomb yes okay we pulled up the personnel changes is there further well first of all is our motion to approve the personnel changes we're so moved is there a second second all right discussion on the personnel changes as we asked those we pulled out yeah so my question is um regarding uh on our meeting on the third we approved as a board to add team leaders for the year and we set the limit at 12 000 for that and it looks like there's been several added um beyond that 12 000. i just want to

013understand what happened there yeah the cost was approximately twelve thousand but i'd like to pull up their list for the packet but if you wanna speak to that dr rummel so originally we were having we had uh talked about grade level chairs and we have one for each grade level and then um we went back because we did not have after talking with christine we did not have special lab slash the intervention is represented in each building so we added one of those one staff representative at mpe and lincoln trail to represent those teachers and um encore teachers i don't recall on court teachers were in that first group as well but they started very they have a very different schedule very different teaching responsibilities so that leadership team okay any other questions on the

014personnel i'm just not sure in terms of process do we need to amend the motion from the meeting and was it too extra it would have been um i don't remember we included unslate we put it on four teachers when we did the original one if it did then it would be two and if we did not it would be four and two for building okay that was my only question any questions on personnel i have a question do we add a fifth grade teacher no i see two fifth grade teachers on the and then back in the summer when you were approving positions you approved a uh 10th fifth grade teacher so we did have another instruction so we had not hired that section that you approved back in the summer until this past

015week when numbers got high i was under the impression this summer that it was decided not to do fifth grade and um lindsay said she would be keeping numbers and letting us know i didn't get the question we also have a verbal agreement with the staff of good shape that you keep classes to a certain size right we've got guidelines and place the trigger adding staff on this one all right any other questions on personnel what would the class signs have been if we only had nine sections um we had only nine sections then our rainbow classes would be at about 34 to 35 and our in person classes would be at 27 i have no objection to adding a fifth grade position i actually argued earlier that we should add a fifth grade position

016i'm just asking about the information being provided to the board it's my apologies for not remembering to do that i don't know okay we have roll up on first announcements hendrix yes hennessy yes schultz yes larson yes yes yes [Music] yes all right we pulled out press 103 and 104 because the conflict with board mousey and we have one slice on one of the tops like this i just believe it's a violation of the policy i i have no other issue with it besides that i just it's a press policy right policy committee last meeting gave dr hall at the initiative of megan hennessey the authority to not have committee meetings because we were adopting policies so i um i'm as a committee member i'm surprised that my committee like we didn't discuss it i

017don't i'm looking for the policy because i can't pull it up on the ipad are waiting to use suggestion we make a change i'm not suggesting anything i was just making a point of order all right well i'm not sure what to do with that is we're in the discussion on the press policies oh how is it evaluation you can hear that i don't know the policy says policy or policy revisions will not be adopted at the board meeting at which they are first introduced we didn't ask them to be introduced he said specifically that if they were things that came from press policy if you were adopting it so it's not it's not okay i'm i see what you're saying so there's not a conflict in the policies what the conflict is we're approving

018them today and when they were presented we approximately three weeks ago that these would be on consent agenda right thank you for clarifying that is there anything else on the press policies oh i'm sorry is there a motion to approve the press policies so moved is there a second second okay i've asked if there's more discussion but i think we've already had that so don't go ahead with the vote no yes yes no no i'm sorry no thank you henry yes nicole yes okay number seven donations doctor home uh donation from junior harbor to middletown prairie for clear masks and gear savers with a value of 200 a donation from julie dipmars to middletown prairie a thermometer value of 60. um joe university hill a donation of ten hopper balls to middletown carrying a value

019of 115 uh lisa powell donation of cash to lincoln trail for the give me five backpack program the donation of 2500 from the buchanan channel to the high school volleyball program a donation of five hundred dollars to the ffa program from the h robert perry farm and a donation of five hundred dollars to mom's pantry at the high school from thomas and jamie dewitt for a total of three thousand nine hundred and fifty dollars so thank you everybody for your generosity their motion to approve the donations so zero second second discussion on donations very much appreciated we have a hope larson yes hennessey yes hendrix yes schultz yes giles yes yes all right it's communication time is everyone here tonight for the pto how about the msca glory foundation i have nothing to report okay

020visitors thank you looks like we have five speaking in person and uh we'll just go in order i'd like to remind everybody that there is a five minute limit i'll give a one minute warning um when you've got a minute left you go that far first up is lashandra global sandra [Music] so she could see the family yeah um there is a five-minute limit and i will give you a warning if you get down to one minute left okay okay welcome thank you thank you my name i am is community member i lived in muhammad my children attend now mcconaughey high school mohamed sibling high school i had two freshmen they're twins i wrote down what i have to say so excuse the reading and the last school war meeting i attended we were encouraged

021to love our neighbors as ourselves oh and this is my husband jordan hello we were encouraged to love our neighbors as ourselves we recorded the declaration of independence and multi's troops to be self-evident that all men are created equal the perfect mix of churches state right i spoke from a personal experience that my children had as it is my responsibility to take their experiences personally here's what i found to be true and evident some of you would rather think of me as an angry black woman than see the passion i have for equity in a place i call home it is more comfortable for you to think of this movement as a special interest group of non-believers who have no right to tell you what to do citizens of elected board members of muhammad behind

022the school board dr paul if you are curious about what a committee on racial justice looks like join the committee co-chair engage in the conversation without name call if you want to know ask my children and their friends had to hear their teachers read a racial slur out loud in class my children felt as if when it was read people looked at them some looked at them with empathy more with sympathy and this and so with no emotion at all i personally think substitute for racial slurs like the use of the term the n word it's just as hurtful potato potato i have a preference when it comes to the n-word let's try to be nice and kind to one another neighborly welcoming to one another noble proud because this is what we need let's

023start with what is necessary a committee to help us to nurture because this is new to a lot of us then maybe we can engage in conversations and be encouraging i know the last two start with e but i'm headed down the road here toward empathy and i know there's no end in that word but that's a great place to start as we address the inequities and injustices which both begin with i it is my responsibility as a citizen a parent a resident and the stakeholder to ensure that i am doing everything in my power to create a safe and equitable environment for my children and i'm asking for your help by being there when i can't my confidence cannot be placed in what people teach in their homes i would like your help and

024support of the committee that addresses racial inequity in our schools a lot of emphasis was placed on what it will end we can end the committee after you give it a chance and when the board determines it is no longer needed baby is danny deeps danny hey guys um so this first thing i'm going to do is wanted to voice um some experiences that her kids had but she knows the repercussions of that in the school district so i'm going to make up for her i'm writing today about the importance of an anti-racism anti-racist resolution at the mohamed senior schools my teenagers are both students at the high school they ask that i make my comments anonymously since some of what i have to say involves fellow students they don't want to make it worse

025than it already is to quote my daughter i would like to highlight two instances that happened to my daughter and one that she witnessed the first instance involves a female student telling my daughter she could not be in a friend group logo before school dance because she was too dark maybe the girl meant it was my daughter's skin tone would make everyone else the picture look pale and harrison but this girl didn't tell the girl who was 5 10 and wearing pills that she was too tall for the picture my daughter was not ashamed of her skin tone but she was angered by not being included in the auto because of it the second instance happened when a group of my daughter's classmates were going to play a college basketball game a male student on

026the opposite team told my daughter he didn't want to play against her because you're kind or too good at basketball again my daughter was angry at being classified by her skin tone the final incident happened to another female student who was the mexican-american on the day after the 2016 presidential election a group of boys began stacking their books and binders around this girl while she was at her desk when asked what they were doing they responded they were building a wall around her since president trump was elected what does that have to do with the anti-racism education the argument has been made that this type of education is more suited to a family home rather than a classroom the main instigator in all these examples come from a two-parent stable household i know all the

027parents they practice their christian faith faith as do their children who made these comments i am sure this type of talk is not permitted in their homes but our children don't always act the same way at home at school anti-racism education at school is more appropriate more than appropriate it ensures all students are hearing the same message and reinforces the message children are hopefully being taught at home whether that comes from a christian perspective or not our children and families need for you to vote yes on the anti-racism resolution that has already been proposed or to form a board-level committee to start the work both of my children have had students comment to them about their skin tone in a negative way both of my children are white i have to ask myself if my

028children are being othered by the color of their skin how are their classmates who are black and brown feeling and then this is what i would like to see tonight like others tonight i would like to talk about some of the statements today two weeks ago it was said i refused to surrender my responsibilities to special interests or partisan political groups the petition was created and signed by 650 alumni who have been through the character accounts program and graduated waiting for board members others who others who have come as parents are taxpayers of the school district it was said i was elected to speak for the majority of the people on july 3 prior to a board meeting where an upcoming plan for school is being discussed one board member sent a text message that

029reads if you want in-person instructions instructions please email or make a comment to the board by monday text or email 10 more is that how we get a majority this not only happens at the school board level but also at the village level too on tonight's agenda there are new rules for this board i received an email over a week ago from a parent encouraging other parents to come on august to an august 10th meeting with lindsay max and lori to discuss modifying robert's rules the email said that this constituent had reached out to lindsay about making an immediate change because there seems to be an agenda being pushed by particular board members the email says dr paul is very open to my suggestions and respected to my concerns she agreed with everything i said

030and i was and was encouraged to hear that the community to hear that i believe the community of mohammed mohamed also wants to see a positive change in their meetings two board members were present to discuss and make rules about the way a meeting should be run it seems like they may have had a committee meeting of course you wouldn't want a special interest group dictating what happens at our public meetings i hope that the board will look for more details of that committee keeping in line with past practices finally i'm still waiting to see the remote learning plan mandated by issy it is supposed to be on the district website your time i'm sorry thank you next is christmas microphones i just want to make sure that all anybody participating virtually is able to

031actually hear me the mics are all out okay sorry they can hear you i'm sure i'm sorry you can't hear me i can hear you thank you chris yeah okay so i'm sure you're almost happy to see me as i am to see you a few days ago i decided that i am willingly offering myself up as a sacrificial lamb and will say the things that a significant number of teachers staff parents and students want to say but are afraid to or can't my parents didn't raise me to be a quitter to be quiet to allow people to use me as a doormat nor to sit back and allow people to be ganged up on and not act upon what i witnessed so for those of you that have made a point to put to

032play street ball let's start the game i've been patient i've been empathetic and compassionate about the school district's fight for reopening school this fall since march 12th the last day of instructs in school instruction for the 2019-2020 school year do not confuse my patience empathy compassion and total support for this district's teachers staff parents and students with those of you on this board that are blatantly and openly undermining the democratic process and willfully doing everything for perceived power to silence the voices of megan collins colleen and ken which by proxy silenced my voice and the voices of the people that elected that who were the board members i'm referring to max laurie jeremy merle lindsay allen thank you into that bunch as well i've either attended or watched every single board meeting that's been held

033since moving here 12 years ago and i am disgusted with the behavior of the board members i just mentioned as well as others for stakeholders that haven't been paying attention here are some examples for you max as the board president you can't manage to go an entire meeting without agreeing to lindsay for guidance on anything you call out talk over cut off yell at and completely disregard calmly negan and ken because they ask questions do you not want them answered you're not a leader which is evident because every single board meeting is chaos and you let it happen laurie every chance you get you say but i'm a social worker that has worked in so many schools with so many types of kids i'm patient and willing to listen but your actions and your words

034they're the exact opposite you also call out talk over cut off yell at and completely disregard finally because they ask questions do you speak to your social worker students like that do you teach your social work and field interns to speak like that as well did you talk to my disabled child like that when you were a social worker here i bet many people don't know that you call a text email or private message through social media the people that have said things not in favor of you and if i don't have social media if i am speaking i don't have social media that's a lie you can take back ten seconds thank you i'm surprised you haven't done it to me either you said that you've given up on trying to foster any sort

035of relationship with the board members you oppose you may get a point to talk about how wonderful our facilities appear is that what you're most concerned with appearances jeremy do you tell your patients that god will heal them if they just love themselves as they love their neighbor not every person in the muhammad seymour communities is a believer and there's a reason why there's a separation of church at stake leave religion out of the discussions and stick to the facts you also call out talk over cut off yell at competitively disregard county negan and ken because they ask questions is the reason you visibly check out during board meetings because you're so tired of fighting against them pearl you also call out talk over cut off yell at and completely disregard again colleen megan and

036ken because they ask questions i primarily see you sitting back in your chair with your arms folded most of the time are you listening to what's going on around you or are you sleeping with your eyes open until the voices in the room get so loud that you wake up and then join in on the witch hunt lindsay you didn't properly respond to my lawyer request as evidenced by my complaint too and self-discipline response to the attorney general's office so how am i supposed to have confidence that you're going to lead this district in the right direction i don't care how many special boards you've been appointed to by your future your performance and treatment of people here and behind closed doors is louder than any border committee you've been appointed to or asked to

037sit on you hold secret meetings did any did you or any of the board members ever stop to think that that is likely the reason people won't meet with you in private you twist people's words around the future narrative you make yourself out to be the hero lindsay murray and max how many people know about the secret meeting you had with the group of parents that wanted to push five-day in person school week and formulate the board guidelines shown up tonight that board members are supposed to follow as a way to shut up me and colleen and ken if i heard any woman i'd be rich because that's been kept under wraps the bottom line is this you have every teacher staff here and a student begging you for answers free of the school you

038have people of color and their peers sitting here outside begging for answers all right your time with an extra 15 seconds thank you the bottom line is this if you're not counting negan and ken and you're hell-bent on working against them at every possible term and in every possible way resign get your ass together now you work for us not for your own special interests [Music] um good evening everybody two weeks ago i mentioned american 15 juniors judging people by the content of their character and not covering their skin another crucial goal of kings was to realize a colorblind society king's 50 year old vision is positive forward-looking and unifying historically americans responded perfectly to king's message race relations have improved enormously since i was a team in the 1960s today blacks for example are

039integral and accepted participants in virtually every aspect of american life black athletes entertainers scientists and ceos are highly visible and openly admired on kids of all colors the chancellor of our university its head football coach and even our nation's past president are white and nobody thinks anything about it it's normal the only thing we wonder about our football coach is why are we winning more i truly believe that most kids today don't think much about racial differences that are actually quite accepting if we let them be i feel like we could be on the threshold of the colorblind society came envisioned however i also think we are potentially snatching defeat from the jaws of victory while i move this to positive change as king desire i've also missed a parallel stream of the civil rights

040movement that is negative backwards looking divisive and too often political this frame divides individuals into little identity boxes it pits them against each other's oppressors and oppressed it demands discriminatory treatment based on race this strain assumes monolithic thought based upon group identity it is dismissive of diverse individual thought for example this string spawned the term inauthentic black for those blacks who don't think is their identity group is supposed to thank you this trait seeks to tear down one group as the price of lifting another through charges of privilege instead of making us colorblind it injects race into everything at its worst this train promotes destructive ideology like critical race theory this theory declares that america is irredeemably racist and the assistance of government justice and education are designed specifically to uphold white supremacy the charge

041of systemic racism is born of this ideology and demands that americans totally dismantle their systems this negative strain unfortunately is what i perceived in the june 6 alumni letter associated materials and in the proposed anti-racism resolution that's why i had to speak up further compounding my perception were comments in the newspaper that history as taught was flawed because it was written by white men this statement inherently supposes that all white male historians have a monolithic racially biased view of historical facts that makes them incapable of reporting history properly this insult sets the stage for teaching separate alternative histories starting with one told by black historians the subtext to this of course is that all black historians because of their race hold the same view of history once we venture down this road how can we

042resist demands to have an asian alternative a hispanic alternative a pacific islander alternative and so on into an endless and divisive racialized chaos where the kids don't know what to think or who to trust however they would certainly get the message that what you think and who you are is defined by the identity box into which you were born this very unking-like approach promotes the opposite of critical thinking corrodes our sense of community and refutes the notion of individual will the cornerstone of our republic if we share a king's positive forward-looking dream of a colorblind society then a better way forward is to adopt a colorblind approach we could consider for example developing a universal culture of respect that is all-inclusive this culture wouldn't name names divide kids into identity groups denigrate disfavored groups or

043bestow special considerations on favored groups it's simple but powerful tenets might include everyone deserves respect everyone deserves fair treatment each individual is valued we might consider linking such tenants to a positive and forward-looking message of unity and commonality we are all part of the model seymour bulldog family we need everyone to make our school great we need everyone to make our country great i understand these ideas fit neither today's conventional wisdom nor the frenzy of the times but they may actually offer a better way forward with a better chance of attaining king's dream of a colorblind society than with racializing the basically thank you very much again for serving on the board if you appreciate that thank you kelsey james good evening everyone i'm kelsey jacobs and i'm going to be a seniors here at

044bahamas high school and i just want to start off with something that i actually didn't write down as to address the comments that were just made um the perspective of seeing things as colorblind is just another way for us as white people to ignore these struggles that people of color go through and to ignore systemic racism it's just proven once again that it's because we benefit off of it and not because we have to experience the uglier side of it so back to what i wrote i'm going to be talking about a few examples that i witnessed in our school that proved that racism is an issue at mohamed senior high school and it's not something to be dealt with at home these actually happen in the same classroom with the same teacher and i

045believe this teacher is not a bigot but perhaps doesn't have the correct training to deal with sensitive issues like this um these occurred in the 2017-2018 school year when i was a freshman i was in class and there was only one girl of color a black girl who was sitting in class with us and we were sitting up there at the end of class and suddenly a white boy decides to make her his target and is repeating a racial slur to her face over and over again the surrounding students were sitting there trying to get him to stop but he thought it was funny he and his friends assumed that it was a little joke and they called her this slur over and over again until there were tears in her eyes it was very

046loud everyone in the room could hear and our teacher did nothing so if you would like to sit here and claim that this is something that should be taught at home when this is happening in our classrooms in our schools when people of color and students of color being affected then you're sitting in ignorance another thing that happened which is more of an example of xenophobia is that two boys once again in that class decided would be a fun idea to draw swastikas on the whiteboard let me repeat that for you mohamed seymour high school students were drawing a symbol of hate used in one of the most well-known genocides on muhammad seymour school of property and i was very upset by this because i have a jewish father and it's in my bloodline and

047i brought it to administration and i was told that they take these matters very seriously and that was the last time they got a talking to and that was about it so if you don't see that there's something wrong with that and you don't see that we need some form of diversity and ethics training for our kids then i will understand how to get this through to you because these are things that i have experienced in those halls in those classrooms and i'm not even a student of color i stand here and all my privilege and all my whiteness telling you that this is an issue and this is a problem and we need to vote to make sure that we have some form of training it's hurtful it's harmful and it's not the education

048that we promise these kids so whether this doesn't fit your agenda or whether you believe that this is a home remedy i just want to say that you cannot endorse whether we will be doing more protests or sit-ins or whatever more petitions that we're going to sign whatever it takes we're still going to keep fighting for this because too many students have been alienated at muhammad seymour high school at mohammed senior junior high at any month on the senior school and if you care about these kids you care about our districts then do something about it thank you long-term resident had a chance to struggle with the school board here so um my concern this evening was to uh we've had a chance to help this town folks years probably people will move in into

049the joint have a chance to have people have particular kids completely through schools and uh they've left them in retirement they have their experiences and they were glad they were here they had a chance to be in champaign or writing for other we've always had a chance to get people here they've always heard about coming on i'm starting to hear about people that and things that are a little more organized and concerned that way and so this is the first time since we arrived in real estate side of things i've actually had people not wanting to come on because of the disorganization of what appears in these school situations so i appreciate the school board's endeavors to make things go as smooth as possible having been there and realized there's always some disruptive situations and

050alternatives to certain things but uh would be encouraging has always been all the schools districts and areas together as bulldogs and as thank you yes okay ready now okay can you hear me yeah yeah okay excellent great thanks for letting me uh speak and um i'm going to talk a little i want to address the i wasn't expecting everybody to be talking about the anti-racism and that's uh probably much more important what i'm going to talk about but i'd like to talk a little bit about the proposal to drop the class rank and grading system and uh first of all i just appreciate all the effort all of you are putting into it and uh to the school board and especially uh superintendent hall and principal benedict as well and i know many agree on

051the changes to our grading system or need to be made but the question is really around timing and trying to slip it in less than 36 hours before the school year begins and it's just really about the right time to do that without adequate discussion and so i'd like to just make four quick points about that why i believe it's not the right time for that first is i don't believe this is an urgent thing that needs to be done immediately this is the changes are really not covet related as uh the proposal uh says we have a daughter that graduated in the class of 2018 and i have two two kids that are in high school right now those were discussions these are discussions that were going on clear back then as well she

052came back from college in uh last summer and she saw a couple of her teachers over at the high school and she went and talked to them and she came back uh after talking with them and and she said dad you'll never believe it i talked to the teachers and they're actually thinking about dropping class rank this was a year ago and so to say now that these uh that it's urgent that we do it 36 hours before the school year starts this year is just not accurate point two rising seniors and rising juniors were given a set of rules to play by many set goals and made critical scheduling decisions and for our seniors they're going into this senior year and 36 hours away from that start of the senior year you're thinking about

053moving the goal posts changing the rules pulling the rug from underneath them what message are you sending to those kids are we sending the message to them that play by the rules set your goals work hard and then life hard and we're going to change you're going to get kicked with the shin so prepare for life i hope that's not the message we're trying to send him three point three are we sure we're even fixing the right problem the proposal and and the accompanying editorial in the muhammad daily today gives anecdotal stories of anonymous kids that are being hurt by the status quo when we cherry pick stories that are used that are one-sided used to rush through a position it looks bad okay because what those stories are cherry picked i have different issues

054okay we had different issues with the grading system when our daughter went to college to the point where he applied to colleges out west three universities what we applied to looked at our report card and said this is strange how it is and our daughter was in the top 10 percent and the way our report cards and uh worked cost us a scholarship uh instead of a four-year scholarship she got a two-year scholarship cost us tens of thousands of dollars the university that she got into said no other university does it this way and i won't go into details for lack of time right now to the point where i came back and talked to the principal and we he said he'd be happy to to sign a document and so forth and and explain

055to us my point in saying that is that there are other issues as well that should be addressed when we fix this my problem isn't that we shouldn't fix things it's that we need to make sure we fix the right thing and i'm not convinced that rushing this through 36 hours before the school year starts is the way to do it so are you convinced that we're fixing the right things how many parents and students have you talked to to make sure that you're you're not uh that you're fixing the right problem because i know you haven't talked to us you haven't talked to our family haven't talked to our kids and several friends we talked to haven't been talked to as well finally the final it's um i know that says that everyone agrees

056to this okay one minute okay and i appreciate uh i appreciate that uh i look at i see that principal principal benedict has put together a review and he proposes that we start it in 2025 and i know that superintendent hall that her opinion is that you vote no on this so i would look at this and say the two people that probably know our kids the best have looked at this proposal and they don't agree that we rush this through and start and change this 36 hours before the school this before school starts so i ask you to consider those reasons tonight when you vote i'm not opposed to changing the system just respect the kids that have played by the rules and do it the right way at the right time and don't

057be swayed by cherry-picked anecdotal stories that are used to bolster the opinion of that proposal that's what i have and again thank you to all of you that put time in especially superintendent hall and the principal we really appreciate it so that's my time are you inside seconds yes hi uh i'm mike taylor an incoming senior at mshs and i'm speaking today to address the proposal by the board to eliminate class rank for the class of 2021 and beyond i was surprised to hear that the board is considering changing bills that the class of 2021 has been playing by for the past three years two days before the school year begins i am opposed to this change for several reasons many of my fellow seniors and i have set personal goals and made crucial tackling

058decisions over the past three years based on the set of rules that we were given at the end of the year there are awards based upon the rankings and the colleges we applied to also look at these rankings many of us have worked hard and it is a great pride it does not seem equitable or fair to take this away from us at last minute without any discussion with your parents i talked to several friends and none of them were aware of this change how many students and parents did you discuss this new portfolio the justification for the proposal is that the timing is based on the covet yet the majority of the arguments presented have nothing to do with the pandemic such a drastic change to be discussed and explored the pandemic should not

059be used to quickly force a change in two things before the school year is set to begin finally the two people that know us students best principal benedict and superintendent hall appear to disagree with this proposal principal benedict proposed a plan that starts with the class of 2025 and superintendent hall recommended that the board vote against this proposal i believe that this should be enough for you to vote against it please consider these reasons and vote against the proposal to eliminate class rank of importance of 2021 thank you thanks michael thank you mark dawn michelle matthews michelle matthews hi i am here can you hear me yes thank you um i want to start off by saying commenting on the school board from two weeks ago overt acts of racism are certainly hateful and would

060easily be considered evil however most racism presents more covertly than systemic racism and implicit bias primarily operate just below the surface completely undetectable in some situations and painfully obvious in others these are more subtle forms of racism that can more easily be ignored by those board members who solely want to focus on family values and ideals the majority of board members felt insulted by the words used in the anti-racism resolution implicit bias systemic racism power and privilege be offended but that doesn't mean that these words aren't applicable love your neighbor as yourself was the proposed solution addressed racism in the muhammad seymour school district this is woefully inadequate systems we have today were created by white people in power to benefit white people unless the white people in positions of power in this situation it's

061you the school board do something concrete to address the built-in inequities there can be no systemic changes mohamed seymour is one of the only communities in central illinois refusing to acknowledge and address issues like systemic racism it is a community that has recently seen its police department village administration and now school system all turning a privileged blind eye to the realities of an inequities cause by racist and discriminate by refusing to acknowledge the problems you are by fault fighting against social justice and equity this is intentional and the message is loud and clear with that being said i strongly believe that teaching accurate and complete us history addressing issues related to racism and bias and dispelling misbeliefs about stereotypes is the duty of the educational system for those who believe that love thy neighbor is

062enough and that racism should only be addressed in the home we have plenty examples of where both home and school co-teach required curriculum for example school subscribers education we don't rely solely on parents to teach roles up the road our schools provide both classroom and behind the wheel education in addition to what the parents are teaching their children at home what if the parents don't drive what if they have dozens of citations for unsafe driving is the home the only place we want our kids to in your drivers to learn how to drive schools teach health and sex education in both junior high and high school required courses talk to students about issues like physical and sexual development the health risks of alcohol tobacco and other drugs in addition to basic health information it won't

063rely solely on parents to keep sex education at home it is a joint effort by both institutions and each home and school contribute different content related to the education racism affects people everywhere in every possible institution why shouldn't it be addressed from every possible avenue including our schools in addition to our homes we may not want to talk about it because it's uncomfortable but we cannot say that our educators in public education system are not responsible for providing curriculum that addresses the historical and systemic racism thank you that is still present today maybe if more of us had been exposed to the sad historical realities that black people experienced the world would be a more empathetic place and there would not be so much hate you have the ability to different to make a difference

064you just need to find the desire to racism has now been declared a public health crisis at the local and state levels throughout the country primary schools secondary schools the institutions of higher education across the country are changing their curriculum to reflect our country's actual history when will our school board get on board and with that i'm done thank you doctor not that i know okay do we have any written comments with them i do have seven okay high school student and student athlete and have been an engineering professor at the university of illinois for over 20 years i have also been a member of the massachusetts institute of technology educational council and have been interviewing high school students applying to mit arguably the nation's most selective engineering admission program for over 30 years and

065currently the regional coordinator for the mit educational council for all of central illinois coordinating interviews for applicants to mit in this region i have observed applicants to this elite program for a long time when i read that mshs was considering eliminating class rank effective immediately for students currently at all ranks freshmen through seniors i had to speak up i believe this to be a bad decision for the following reasons first the current juniors and seniors it is manifestly unfair and unreasonable to change the rules of the game this late in their academic process rising seniors have selected all of their courses made decisions sacrifices and plans based on the current gpa and ranking system juniors have done so for more than three ports three-fourths of theirs what lesson do we teach our students when we

066ask them to set goals prepare for them work hard and then just before they have their hard-earned class ranks sent to the college of their choice we change their rules second for students planning to apply the most selective programs in the country including engineering at the university of illinois and mit this decision would remove one of the proudest academic accomplishments a student can report third the argument that this program does not harm is simply not true this year's top-ranked students from nshs could apply to the college of their choice and proudly report their rank in their application the proposed change would irrevocably harm them by taking away that option while i would favor making class rank reporting optional it is simply untrue to claim that this change would do no harm to students elite programs

067look for students who have challenged themselves taking the most rigorous courses their high school has to offer the current gpa and ranking system serves as a guide for students seeking to demonstrate this passion fourth superintendent hall has opposed this plan principal benedict has proposed an alternative gradual change to the elimination of class rank where entering freshmen would know and understand the expectations and opportunities for them to plan their high school educational experience the leaders of this school with extensive experience in high school education oppose this plan to immediately and retroactively change the grading system of our students a claim was made in the proposal that there are college programs for example at the university of illinois that do not admit students who have a class rank not in the top 10 percent as an administrator

068in the college of engineering this statement is simply untrue there are no such programs at the university of illinois all admissions at the u of i are holistic there is no one determining or gaining factors or admission into any university program there are certain honors in illinois that are bestowed bestowed on students deemed to be among the top 10 of admitted students but this has nothing to do with their high school class rank in summary changing the rules of the game this late in the process is simply unfair to our hard-working students the current system helps our students challenge themselves and demonstrate their academic passion along their pursuit of admission to a top college program the current proposal is not only unfair and based in part on this information about the university of illinois but

069it also has been sprung upon the community with almost no warning without the opportunity for community discussion and debate superintendent hall opposes this plan principal benedict has offered an alternative that could transition to such a program with more than 30 years of experience interviewing students for admission to elite university programs i believe this program would irrevocably harm the pride of our community our most accomplished graduating high school students respectfully andrew singer thanks this mr is from todd and jacqueline patrick dear muhammad school board we are we want to begin by thanking each of you for your service to the bahamas seymour schools and community we are writing regarding the august 3rd school board meeting during that meeting we were troubled to hear community members experiences with racism within the school system when concerned parents when

070concerned parents address the board and community with examples of what their children have experienced in muhammad seymour schools those concerns deserve to be truly listened to and addressed in as timely of a manner as possible the formation of an inclusion and social justice committee would allow parents of forum in which to bring issues of concern forward and explore ways to solve these issues within the district we urge its formation thank you todd and jacqueline patrick thanks this is from the muhammad seymour equity alliance members of the muhammad seymour school board and superintendent lindsay hall on behalf of the muhammad seymour equity alliance a group of muhammad citizens committed to improving diversity equity and inclusion within our community we would like to sincerely thank dr hall for sharing the steps that our district has taken towards

071creating a safe and inclusive community for all our children we appreciate the time and resources you have allowed for these actions to happen and realize the risk you took by taking these steps without the full support of your community and board in an effort to further these steps and to ensure a comprehensive and lasting approach to working towards an anti-racism climate mohammed schools we are requesting that the board stop the proposal for establishing a board level diversity committee made at the previous board meeting by school board member megan hennessey this committee should be regularly updated and given full access to the district's efforts toward furthering diversity equity and inclusion in our schools this committee should include all stakeholders and report progress on district efforts regularly to the school board and community we also feel that

072it is essential for the district to release a belief value statement around race equity and inclusion this is a key element to unifying our district's beliefs and efforts again we truly appreciate the steps the district has taken in the last six months towards establishing a framework for addressing inclusive practices in our school making real change in our community will take a village and we hope to partner with both the school board and district staff to fully integrate this change for our children we look forward to working toward this future with you and it signed jennifer trimble susan jackson d chapman maura williams rachel smith-golden lisa costa mani maggie kinnaman michelle matthews diana honkin mindy spencer emily croner sarah canary aaron canary thomas goodall anne olms corrine carlson mary dugan and lashanda hall thank you for

073sharing that from the alliance this is from a student aaron wrath aaron says i feel like in person students are getting a higher priority than online students because one they are able to immediately interact with teachers two they are able to establish relationships with teachers and other students and three i still have no idea about what my online learning details are whereas the in-person students have more details about their learning since i still have no details from my online learning am i expected to use multiple streaming softwares when are my teachers going to tell me what to prepare for during this school year school starts in less than 48 hours and i'm still left in the dark all of these points make me feel like i am not a priority to the school district and

074that my academic social and emotional learning are not as important as the students attending in person what am i supposed to do if i email a teacher about questions and they don't respond like some did in the spring i understand that i can email my teachers with questions or that i can schedule a virtual office hour appointment but that means i have to wait for answers which will affect my studying and turning my homework in on time to me this is not okay because i take my academics very seriously the last day of in-person instruction was march 12th the school district didn't come up with a plan to tell us july 20th when it should have started to make a play as well before then i want to have faith that the school year will

075be okay but right now i don't feel that way a free in public education is supposed to be equal for all students and i feel like online students are not being treated equally and that includes me because i'm an online learner learning sincerely aaron raff he's an eighth grader at promising more junior high thanks aaron this one is from corinne moberly she writes we are new to the district i have two daughters and mohammed to see more schools one in junior high and one in high school i wanted to share my support with the school board creating a committee to address diversity inclusion and equity issues in our school district i'm sure our school board administrators and teachers want our school district to be a welcoming place for all students and yet the experiences that

076students past and current have shared with this school board and that marches over the summer demonstrate that we simply aren't a welcoming community particularly for students of color a board hope the board committee focusing on equity and inclusion to begin to address these issues together with participation from teachers and community members the board community community could help more students feel comfortable and welcome which will in turn create a better learning environment for all our students this one is from rachel smith bolton dear members of the muhammad seymour school board i am sending in this comment because some members of the board have given the strong impression that they consider the current request for ensuring equity in education to be coming from only a small number of parents constituting a special interest group this belief couldn't

077be further from the truth i hesitated to speak out because we are a white family that has had good experiences overall with the district however inequity in education both at the level of how students of color are treated and at the level of our curriculum hurts all of our children my son started hearing the n word frequently used in the halls of the junior high in sixth grade the board can claim this prevalence of racial slurs comes from parents not teaching proper behavior at home but when such fear no consequences in our schools it's clear that there is a systemic problem perpetuated by the district we know that such a hostile environment negatively impacts students academic achievement my friends children have repeatedly heard the n-word used by several teachers in the classroom creating an uncomfortable

078classroom in which the grades of black students suffer these individual instances may be considered individual choices but when the administration backs the teacher's right to use racial racial slurs it becomes systemic racism one of my son's friends was riding the bus one day when the students on the bus erupted into a chant of clap if you're white and cheered and clapped celebrating being white while my son's friend had to sit there alone silently absorbing the message that he has left because he is not white is this example just 50 students not being taught proper behavior at home at what point do we acknowledge a systemic problem at what point does the district publicly say that such behavior will not be tolerated i attend church in champaign and so i have many friends who are parents

079in urbana-champaign and beyond they dread competitions against muhammad teams because of the racial slurs and racialized taunts that come from the spectators continuing to ignore or downplay these issues does not hide them from the broader community instead willfully maintaining this blind spot is leading to increasing contempt from those outside of our town these stories all deal with overt acts of racism but the small things the subtle biases also profoundly impact student learning and achievement many schools see higher rates of discipline for students of color despite similar rates of misbehavior compared to white students many schools play students of color into lower performing academic tracks despite equal aptitude i don't think we have enough students of color color and muhammad to look at the numbers and see if there are statistical differences in how they are

080treated that paucity of black and brown students alone should raise a red flag you've probably heard these stories before none of them are unique to my family i'm telling them again so that you realize the deep concern and request for action is not just coming from the few families in our district black and brown students but is shared by many of the white families in the district my family is adding its voice to the course asking the district to make a public statement that is committed to equity and inclusion of all students two take steps to ensure that our schools are welcoming inclusive and supportive for all students and three evaluate our curriculum to ensure that the history literature arts and sciences that our students learn are comprehensive thank you for listening rachel smith bolton

081parent of sixth and eighth grade students thank you rachel and this one is from martin mcfarland rights today the university of north carolina announced their council cancelling their hybrid model of teaching and going entirely online after just one week of in-person classes that resulted in 14 of tested students getting positive results for covid19 yesterday cu phd announced that 33 of the new champaign county cases that day were in children aged 10 or younger over the past few weeks major local school districts have recognized the apparent danger in sending students back to school champaign urbana decatur and chicago have all announced no in-person classes for fall to not only protect our children but also protect the teachers who have no choice but to be placed in an unsafe environment if in-person learning is required to take

082place i urge the school district to reconsider their current plan it's not too late please don't let mohamed senor be the school district that ignored all warnings and pressed ahead with in-person learning due to a mistake of belief it can't happen here students will get sick teachers will get sick and it can be avoided by accepting remote learning for the fall semester sincerely martin mcfarland paired with three children in the muhammad school district okay thank you for everyone in the public who make honors who is tonight we appreciate those okay follow the remarks under advisement um at this time it assigns communication from board members so let's start um with uh miss hennessy i'd just like to ask a question some of the speakers mentioned meeting or alluded to a meeting is there a meeting

083that took place that the outcome was the rules that you read earlier tonight there were there was not a meeting that directly there's been meetings with folks in the public we've had concerns the point the document tonight was in progress prior to and subsequent to that it was not a product of that of any one meeting who was in attendance of the meetings please any time anybody's ever emailed me or called me or texted me um i don't have social media so regardless of what i said earlier i don't have anything like that but what are you asking for and is there a reason maps that you came tonight with these uh new rules and basically when we left the um board agreements that you mentioned at the beginning we left that in your hands

084to come back with a list of all of the things that we agreed upon all of the board members but we've never had that list come back to us is there a reason that we didn't do what we agreed to on that list and we came with a different there was not much agreement and that's what got us to where we were well i guess what i'm going to say is i'm pretty disappointed that it's presented as if the board has a problem and it seems clear that there are meetings going on that don't reward all board members and then information comes out that a few people have decided will be how we run meetings if you would like to run meetings my suggestion is that we use robert's rules in their entirety not lists

085of rules that are one off so if we want to do something fair i suggest we adopt robert's rules as the guideline i thought we had that earlier we had our attorneys i believe tell us that we just use those guys as guidelines when we came across that we didn't like a little bit frustrated that it seems tonight i'm hearing that there are back door meetings going on and rules coming out of that and that a few board members feel like it's their place to um set the tone and set the guidelines clear in the rules of board members that were supposed to be equal and it sure doesn't feel like that's the way that this is being rolled out me and all the time it comes up in our meetings for the last 15

086months that i meet with people and it comes out you colleen and ken i'll say that as long as there's two people you can do that and most of my time it's people saying hey maury i would like to meet with you so that remember when you set a standard that it's it's fair to go a long ways i mean and you speak out and you say i want to know and that is why lori larson asked i want to know what people think because i have everybody come in and say this is what my people say well i want to know who the people are because if i wasn't there i don't know who they are you know and so constantly that comes from policies that get thrown at us about class rank and

087things with bathroom privileges you know so we have to be transparent in that sense so that's aggregating right this is not a discussion anything else can you hear me okay i can we can thanks um i want to start out by thanking all of our hard-working administrators staff and teachers as any parent in the district can tell you there's been a flurry of communication coming from dr hall principals teachers and more i know all our staff are going the extra mile to manage the uncertainty that every school district is facing i just want to say that i clearly see you and i'm truly grateful next i'd like to make it clear that i do not support cutting off constituents when they take the time and work up the courage to publicly speak to us finally

088i've heard a lot of public discussion about the efficiency and length of the board meetings while i do agree that there is room for improvement we should make sure that we look to ideas that do not stifle the participation of board members each member of the board needs to remember that in our oath of office which we publicly score to fulfill it states i shall encourage and respect the free expression of opinions of my fellow board members i decided to go and review the last two public meetings to see how we spend our time at our last regular board meeting on july 20th the meeting lasted five hours with two and a half of those hours being spent on the board discussing and deciding board business on august 3rd we had a study session and

089it lasted three and a half hours with an hour and 50 minutes spent on board business i personally don't have a problem with meetings this long we are the largest employer in our community with an annual budget of 40 million dollars that serves 3 000 students a five-hour board meeting once or twice a month seems pretty reasonable to me i'd like to ask those of you watching our meetings to consider something imagine on july 20th that the board met spent 15 minutes discussing a single reopening plan let's say it was a plan you did not like and then unanimously voted it through ford was doing that i'm guessing that she would be pretty upset that there wasn't more discussion and more options thank you that's my report lori uh jeremy i do want to thank

090our teachers and administrators and staff for all the work that they're putting in i mean it's just countless hours and so many details to take care of and i'm sure uh well it's appreciated there's gonna be some bumps in the road and um i hope everybody has some patience and some grace along the way to accept that it's not going to be done perfectly but we're going to do the best that we can merle i saw the echo the the sentiments for the staff and teachers and so forth as well but particularly tonight i want to thank everybody who came and talked and wrote letters and engages uh taking certainly on the heart there are times we could disagree on specifics but uh we cannot disagree and i do not want to on the the

091right to be in front of us and share these things so i thank all of you for doing that colleen i would also like to echo um thanks for our administrators and our teachers and all the staff that's working hard to get school ready for this upcoming year which is challenging to say the least um in addition i would um like to say that i also uh want to echo something megan said that i support the idea of us having control in our meetings by running the meetings through full robert's rules of order newly revised like our policy alludes to and so i would like if we could actually put that on an agenda so that we could discuss using robert's rules as our meeting guidelines thank you thanks tom i was just sad tonight

092that there might be time here we heard lots of public comments tonight on lots of topics we appreciate them um i do want to comment on the folks that spoke on equity inclusion and social justice and diversity um the last meeting it was recommended that we take kind of a top-down approach into a board-level committee and it was also asked that we signed off on a resolution that had been provided to us we chose not to do those things and i think there's a mistaken idea in some people's minds that means we're doing nothing or that we don't agree there's an issue we do want our schools to be welcoming inclusive we do want to get better at these issues there has been a plan in place for several months by dr normal and dr

093hall it is um born out of the current world situation or current world events that was in place before that and it was in place before then because we felt a need that we needed to get better in those areas involves consulting the university staff there is our experts in this field it involves working with our staff and instead of a top down board level approach it is working with our staff and our folks and working you get buy-in you get support and you get the training staff level they need i was talking about a committee and we didn't view the local local committee there will be a committee uh that's part of this plan and the u of i will help us through those steps but we do want to build something that's comprehensive

094and lasting so again um there may be a style and approach difference and i recognize that but please don't assume that there will not be a committee or we are doing nothing to address it that is not accurate all right so this time is when we would [Music] have the financial update next we've been going 90 minutes we're gonna take about a five minute comfort break and then we'll come back with a financial update in the supernatural report and then get into board business so five minute break okay okay we're back live on with the live stream and the sounds back up and board numbers are we still on webex colleen i'm i'm here thank you i'm sorry i'm here i was having a comfort break i'm back okay okay very good okay now it's

095time for financial report with heather well good evening um i just wanted to report i'm sure you guys saw the red flag before we showed that we were not on track with revenue i just wanted to explain why um first of all we got our we got our sales tax early in june instead of july so we need any sales tax for the month of july but we did just get it in our august and the other day we are currently four percent down here today for sales tax which is good when we propose a 20 percent of worst case scenario um the cprt which is the corporate replacement taxes they have been estimated by the state as being down by 17 which i've already updated the budget to reflect that as well um basically

096this month we will be getting a lot of the money that we have received in july in the past and we just got 2.4 million in property taxes this month um so that will in august and we got um and we got the we started getting our evidence-based funding this month they do not actually give out it they do not distribute out any money in july so you will see the revenue going up for the august so so the economy's late yeah yeah the county has kind of kind of you know we probably get the money in that we needed for our fiscal year-end but um they were just a little bit slower this year in august instead of july so and um but and as for expenses we were a little bit below what

097was projected for the year as a percentage of the year so uh this is ken can you hear me yes uh heather i just wanna i don't know if you're aware of this but there was a bit of a dust up last year about the budget and and it being um available to the public and what form it was i just want to say thank you for just putting into the board packet the full isb form the one that you're going to have to submit um that's that's a great solution uh to get it out there to the public i just want to say thank you for that you're welcome and as i said before i will continue to update it um we had it done earlier so it was kind of done uh one

098person by person and it will be a lot more accurate when i'm able to once this step is introduced into the system which i'm able to actually download the salaries as they are so i will continue to update and update the board as well with this progress thank you thank you thank you evan pat report dr hall thank you um i just wanted to echo the diversity and equity initiatives that are going on in the district and you say a few more words about that i've provided a brief update in my superintendent's report um but moving ahead i want to emphasize that this is this is a plan that was started three years ago and um you know it might not have started in place of um dealing directly with issues of racism and diversity

099but it's rooted in a model of addressing social emotional learning and we've been working on this um we're going into our fourth year with this and um it's it's not just about addressing racism but it's about addressing all different aspects of diversity in our schools um populations and schools are changing everywhere in muhammad and seymour is no exception to that rule and so without the foundation of social emotional health and cultural competencies and cultural awareness we're not going to be able to make much progress in addressing issues of diversity and racism and equity and um so i just wanted again to provide an update in my superintendent's report um we will be providing the first of staff trainings on september 14th and 21st and then the town hall meetings that we've been discussing have been

100scheduled for september 14th 23rd and 30th from 5 to 6 30 pm um those will be at different locations we would like those the plan right now is to have those um in person and probably try to hold them outside um it is through participation in those town hall meetings that we hope to form a district-wide community and partnering with folks at the university of illinois dr kevin tan and dr jim carter black um we're following their expertise and their values um this work is very important we want to do it right and we want to do it with the proper background knowledge and expertise so again out of the participation of those town hall meetings which are going to be open to anybody who wants to participate that um that we hope to build

101that by having different voices and different people represented who are at this group we've also created a diversity professional development website and resource for our teachers we plan to address different areas of the curriculum um not only this year but throughout the next couple of years we've already started a network in the past and this year is the language we're also working on a platform where community members and parents can receive updates on all of the work that is coming we are not only going to be addressing issues of racism but also other areas of diversity that we see in our schools and so this is a comprehensive approach and um so i again just echo the sentiment that um it's not accurate to say that nothing is being done there's been an amazing amount

102of work being done largely behind the scenes though and um as i've said before perhaps we needed to be more out there and fun things and more public about it but there's a lot of really great things that our school district does behind the scenes that um that are not always out there so we'll continue to provide updates um i've actually uh dr vaughn and i have taught and um with the board's blessing i would like to put a um update for her on the board agenda every month just as um heather and i also do and i think that's be helpful and relevant moving has not and not just for this issue but all curricular curriculum instruction issues as well so i also just will close by saying um thank you to all the

103speakers i do appreciate that it's very difficult to get up and speak and um there are some very eloquent uh things said tonight and just obvious appreciate the feedback and input the community gives to us thank you thank you questions for dr home can you guys hear me okay thanks uh dr hall did you participate in the meeting on monday at 4 15 with max and lori the meeting monday at 4 15. i don't have a meeting today today last monday oh yeah can you tell us how many people were in that meeting four um is there any reason why uh you didn't uh inform the rest of the board about that meeting and what was discussed the constituent contacted us and asked to meet with me and the board president the board vice president

104okay well after the meeting tonight or tomorrow sometime would you mind sending us an update and letting us know how that meeting went and please include who was at the meeting sure thank you very much anything else for dr home okay item of business number one iga with the village of mohammed for development and infrastructure on the east campus and the sale of the junior high um this is on tonight as a discussion item there's not going to be an action on this tonight uh doctor volleyball sure well um i also want to recognize the village president shawn wyden is with us village administrator patrick brown and um village uh planner and kelly pfeiffer is also here to provide input answer questions engage in the discussion this is only a discussion either there is no

105vote tonight the purpose is to bring this back bring these agreements to here for discussion because they have been referenced in some different discussions over the past year probably most recently as it relates to the extension of the tiff out here on the east end of town and so again tonight is the night to ask questions exchange information and discuss the the two governmental agreements that are in the board package um so very quickly um one of the intergovernmental agreements um actually replaces an older intergovernmental agreement this is the one entitled conway farm subdivision and related matters um the old intergovernmental agreement has roads placed in areas um that at one time were thought to be the best place and best conversations in development of this building has evolved and the existence of this building

106has evolved um it became apparent that that older intergovernmental agreement needed to be replaced um and so thus we have this new one that causes calls for a different placement of roads mainly to the east and south of middletown prairie and then the other intergovernmental agreement is covers the sale of 13 acres and junior high to the village of ohana as part of a long term facilities plan this has also been discussed in previous meetings this agreement allows for again the sale of 13 acres of the junior high to the village of muhammad it is very difficult to sell in a school building once it's offline if that is the direction that we are headed we are happy to have an interested buyer um downgrade to the future so with that um i will but

107um there has not been really any action uh specific since we talked about this maybe even a year ago at the joint meeting what has happened is a lot of filling in detail and a lot of work in place needs to be done to bring all this to tuition it does say sale with junior high frankly this provides us a buyer for the junior high if that's what we decided we're going to do we still have to decide and the village has some contingencies on there also but you know when we sold salmon that was that was probably well it was a problem as far as school buildings being sold in central illinois uh that is we did the best with average 750 000 than anybody has done in recent history as far as selling

108off on his school business and so the fact that we're able to have this uh pre-negotiated in place if we end up pulling the trigger on two year high uh and we're able to have a buyer lined up uh this ready willing i think is great for the community and it certainly provides the village with a great option to do some things that they would like to do so i'm glad we've got that in place and clearly how that unfolds over time we've got a lot to work on yet but at least we don't have to worry about what we would potentially do with the building um and i know uh sean do you want to feel anything that i've missed can you hear me okay yeah uh nothing really to add other than just

109first and foremost uh thank you for having us here tonight i think between myself patrick brown and kelly pfeiffer we should be able to answer any questions you may have um and if you don't or if i don't have the answer we certainly can find it for you and look into things i went back to our notes from our september joint meeting and i think it's important to recognize that the amount of work that has brought to this point tonight the cooperation between our two taxing bodies uh did not happen overnight and i would be remiss if i didn't take an opportunity at least thank those who came before us uh this cooperation is a great example that was a call to action back in 2010 and with that um i'll pass it off to

110kelly if you have anything to add ahead of the discussion again uh thank you for having us tonight can you hear me we can okay so i'll try to fill in some gaps i also want to add a little bit of background and perspective based on some of the social media springs um as well as phone calls to me um as i am the village planner so i'm speaking to you tonight as the village planner i want to advise you when you approach this decision is to think like landowners and developers on whether you enter into the proposed internet governmental agreement concerning the east muhammad campus and the junior high 13 acre park and i'm going to see if i can share my screen with you it's gonna work here okay yeah hold on let's

111see if we go here all right hold on if possible i'm trying to share my screen see what's going on all right if nothing else um yeah for whatever reason cisco doesn't like my computer so i'll just have you use your imagination so um this decision is to enable a roadway and utilities to be extended through your property um and those roadway utilities will be owned and maintained by the village of muhammad and you can use them uh the course the location for this future south mohammed road was chosen because it still makes your land appropriately flexible for your various uses of buildings including the new york junior high if you so choose to build one there and all of your uses which tend to be large parking lots as well as large buildings but

112it also puts a roadway and infrastructure at a location that increases the value of your land holdings if you didn't build anything in the future you would still want to have your land at a higher per acre value than your purchase and you would want as many buyers for it as possible if you needed to dispose of it this is what this idea does you should think like investors and endeavor to increase the value and development potential of your land if you do not use it while at the same time making sure you still can use it the decision isn't whether you build a junior high on the property you're currently obligated to construct two and a half million dollars in infrastructure so the remainder of east muhammad can develop but the roads and the

113utilities you would build under the current iga are not expected to increase the per acre value of your land nor open the lands to multiple types of buyers the new iga will do both if necessary by approving the iga and enabling south muhammad road to continue through your property your increase in the value of land that right now has very little value beyond agricultural use the south portion of your property is not served by utilities nor any infrastructure streets and utilities are assets to land owners and developers not obligations unless you put them in the wrong place so with the approval of the new iga you're relinquishing your own costly land obligations in the current iga to someone else the village to build at their own cost basically using tip dollars that you either benefit

114directly from or you'll reap the financial benefits if you choose to sell the land adjacent to it the construction of south mohammed road and the related utilities also enable you to build from south to north if you will so wish that flexibility could be extremely important to school districts you do not yet know what you want to fight on that land and when this agreement doesn't lock you into anything and enables you to develop even along the railroad tracks if you so choose first the second agreement is a very different agreement it is about 13 acres park and the junior high it is a sales agreement in this situation the village is offering itself as a guaranteed buyer for the new school building and land the school intends to pursue a referendum if to construct

115a new school the uncertainty around the value of sangamon many years ago was detrimental to both the village and the school so the village endeavored to determine the development potential the land the school may wish to sell should it vacate and build on the east campus we also evaluated the building for indoor recreation do not expect sangamon or the junior high to be repurposed as sangamon had 13 acres was appraised and the village evaluated the development potential it is limited for private land development despite being central in tab it's a high cost infill parcel primarily due to drainage and the existing infrastructure around it its highest and best use is in the park the village will pay the park district 225 000 for the park if the village doesn't buy the senior high even at

116no cost the school is relieved for maintenance costs during the time now to the junior high building the land frankly schools don't typically sell classroom buildings it says a lot about the strength of muhammad's economy and community that sangam in school was sold and repurposed into a high tax generating it's actually remarkable i don't think the public understands how lucky we are the junior high billions location is a very different story that is likely a demo for residential low density rebuild if not for a recreation center for the village low density residential isn't in demand and there's plenty of land less costly to develop residentially i think when it comes down to it this isn't a sales agreement per se it's a partnership that secures the decision for either a new junior high or a

117rec center will be made by voters with a referendum but if one fails or doesn't go for a referendum the other entities protect it and it also assures that a large building specialized highly specialized building doesn't succumb to vacancy if the school wants to dispose of it if you think like landowners your vote to approve both igas is fairly simple you're locking in a buyer for a fixed price if you need to vacate the junior high um with respect to the conway farms area in the middle town peruvian the new iga improves the value of land gives you flexibility in where on the large property you develop or use next and you're opening up land within two years for development in east muhammad that currently are not serviceable nor very taxable and that's it and

118i'm happy to answer any questions as well um on either okay board members if you want to uh share opinions um you know you can go twice for up to two minutes however i would anticipate that there would be questions so if you want to ask questions you may go ahead and do that also what is the expectation about signing these arguments when is that going to come up for discussion i think our intention at this point is to bring them back next month when did we set the price for the junior high that's contained in the iga i'm guessing at least a year ago when was that when was sangamon sold november of 2017. so it was shortly it was shortly after that as far as the discussions as far as price goes but

119i can't find record of a vote there was no vote that's just the discussions between the village and the school district the school district needs to vote to set a price for that so i think i think we need to have a joint meeting between the village board and the school board discussions for deaf so i would like to propose that that happens before we have any sort of discussion about signing these agreements we had a joint meeting does anyone else think we need another joint meeting we had two though right we had the one in september is this is my question we had one in september that was at the corn belt and then we had one in this room and when i can't recall another one what would we want to accomplish during

120our other joint meeting uh i'd like to have discussions about the fact that the appraisal for some of these things was in 2015 and muhammad has changed quite a bit since then so i don't know that our appraisals um are shouldn't be re-looked at i've never had the opportunity to discuss uh the selling price for this the board has never had the opportunity to discuss any of these things we have meeting last fall with just our born after the village meeting after the joint meetings we never had any vote about any of these specific topics because it's not been called for vote yet i believe price listed in the documents where did that price come from that price came out of discussions between the village and the school district after 2017. you said in the

121last meeting that we don't have projected cost figures yet to do the junior high and the purpose of tonight is just to kind of put a general framework and have some ideas that can come together but we have never had any further discussions from that and i am going to suggest that with something that this big an impact to the district we need to have those discussions i think those those dollar amounts or that statement you must refer to i could i could be wrong but the journal framework was around the village of mohammed and our desire to look at a recreation facility at the junior high site i understand why the village of muhammad wants this deal i don't think that this deal is beneficial to the school district and i think the board

122has to as kelly said put our developer's hat on and actually look at the details that are being presented in these intergovernmental agreements there how many meetings have we had this is the first time i've seen this an intergovernmental agreement have other board members seen this these documents prior to this packet no those things the meeting though that we had with the village at cornwall and the iga meeting that we had here and we studied the road and the benefits of it is that correct so those were two meetings where we talked about preliminary documents coming before right here now is that correct okay when we had that meeting back in september i remember very clearly being very grateful that we were beginning the conversation and we talked about that at the meeting that it

123was great for this to be a first step of a discussion between the board and the village and that's the last meeting that we've had about that in the junior high we had a subsequent board meeting where sean and patrick came to talk to us about the tif district but we haven't had any further discussion as a board or a joint board about moving forward with the sales of property and so i think it would be appropriate for us to have another meeting since we haven't had one since september 4. and this is a big deal um it involves a lot of money and a lot of decisions that need to be made and we had a very productive meeting last time and it seems that we should continue that because i'm not sure who

124is making the decisions on behalf of the board um and so i would like the board to participate in the discussions about the decisions made for the board so that's why it's on the agenda for discussion tonight can i just add this for a point of clarification the village of mohammed board of trustees has the same topic for discussion tomorrow night at our study session so this is the first time that you're bored and then our board are seeing the agreement just for clarification i guess i would just really appreciate our boards being together about that if we're going to make an agreement our board and your board i feel like our board and your board need to talk to each other well what do you want to discuss why don't you discuss it this

125is our this is our team correct it's on the agenda for discussion and we're discussing that we should be discussing i would suggest if we've got concerns let's put them on the table hey that's just the point of reference do you recall i vaguely recall what the appraisal was for staying amon and what ultimately sold forth saying what a praise i think for 1.3 million something like that 1.6 sold for 750. that's what i recall so it did not happen great to start with two oh oh you're right i'm thinking you're right it was 1.8 or 2.1 depending on which method that they used and whatever yeah it's exceedingly difficult to actually appraise the building that is of such specific usage and we saw that in the end yeah so i you know i don't

126disagree with doing an appraisal on something like the junior high either but i wouldn't i hold high hopes that any appraiser could actually bring something in that's valuable if there's not somebody close looking for another school in the end what's up someone's willing to pay that's my dad i think i have a fiduciary responsibility to the district to have that appraisal done not only for that but 13 acres as well that 225 that's referenced in the iga 50 acres in 2015 was actually appraised at 325 and so i think we need to do our due diligence to go through the exercise of understanding what these properties might be worth five years later i would suggest you've done a couple years of due diligence on this what if the appraisal comes back in less than what

127it was five years ago then at least we have realistic numbers and we know what we're working with so then that means you're okay with us for less that's i don't know how to answer that imaginary question well i'm just saying there's no guarantee that it's going to praise for what what we're selling it for right now and there's the phrases for less ability to decide that they don't want to pay for the amount you know the the 750 that they're offering right now real estate trends don't seem to trend that way but i think as as a board member with a fiduciary responsibility i don't feel like i can make this decision in a void without the necessary information but the building's getting older but we haven't actually heard a plan figure out a

128scenario that would allow us to not need the junior high there's one i can think of but it's never been proposed in public or in this board and i keep hearing about a plan that won't solve our problem and so i think that discussion needs to happen first too we also have to understand what it is that we're looking at in terms of a referendum because if we're going to go and ask the taxpayers for many we have to understand what decisions we're making about selling properties and right now i'm quite uncomfortable with 13 acres having the potential of just being given away for zero dollars kelly can you tell us when the um south mohammed road project is scheduled to begin sharon can you still hear me okay so one of the reasons for

129you considering um tonight this is that our next step is to petition the icc to get a hearing the north folk southern um will be going with us to get to get a hearing to consider the upgrade crossing for south mohammed road by the time that we get and we are at the hearing we need to have secured the right-of-way that would provide the ultimate connectivity so we are currently engaged with the property owners association for conway that is endeavoring to target end of september to sign its documents designating the right of way of the eastman we have documents out to vertical power partners which is the land to the west of your parcel they are dedicating right-of-way as well we should have that secured by the end of the month the last piece if

130you will is the right of way from the school um for the future location of south mohammed road and we would like that as well by the end of september so we can attempt to get a hearing um by before the end of the year and get out for spring bid lighting for construction what happens if i'm sorry go ahead max kelly what's the um timetable because ultimately we would like the road all the way through to gravy row correct what could fulfill yeah so to we are designing the entire roadway the to fulfill our application and our request from the icc for the crossing we have to connect the roadways within three years the only thing that's necessary to connect the roadways is actually south mohammed road and the section of churchill road at

131that time for the to fulfill our requirements for the icc's um authorization to proceed we don't actually have to construct all the way to prairie view so however we are designing for all of that but what you'll see in the petition and why we can do this now is we're trying to secure all of the lands from the harvest edge developers the church the conway poa vertical tower partners and then you and everyone else is lined up the iga again we're gonna we'd be moving the road um we need to secure that right-of-way and that's why you're seeing this iga about this particular iga and this one does have time pressures um pat brown is also on that may be able to answer more questions when it comes to the junior high and 13 acres

132but either way my point is that the road that we are asking for you guys to approve the iga it gives you back right-of-way that you would not be using you don't have to build those roads instead you're going to dedicate right-of-way for south mohammed road and churchill and you're not even going to have to build the road and that way we can get you access to the south part of your land by the end of next year but we can't go to the we can't petition to the icc to get the crossing until we have secured the right-of-way for south mohammed road churchill like it's been proposed kelly i thought you said that we just have to be able to proceed within three years which what is the condition to reach out to icc

133do we need to have all these agreements in place first or do we just have to have a reasonable timeline that three years we can get this all done no the timeline the three years is construction the timeline to commit to go to court and get the appropriate thing of the crossing there's six landowners necessary to do that since private developers are going to be dedicating land as well they need to know that the connection will be made vertical tower partners is a participant in that dedicating the right of way for no cost to the village um because it will be pursued um in the next big year so when you remember how we have a short order for the tip and we want to try to encourage development as quickly as we can so

134it gets that the new development on the tax rolls for the board and for other entities we now need to in order to get the agreement from the property owners association vertical tower partners the church and harvest edge which is at a critical time before it gets to its next phase we frankly need to act this year so we can start construction next year okay and i appreciate the timetable that ultimately we want to get through to currently growth so what how far away do you think that is if it would be going with uh just an amended the second bid package it would be the following year so we need the crossing first and we'll get all the way through the intersection with church hills um and south mohammed road and then we'll start

135the construction the following year uh to get to prairie view but we we won't construct church build a prairie view until we get a crossing is there a way kelly that you can provide us with maps that have the timetables broken out i'm having a hard time just in my head understanding where that line is and what the time frame is so i think it would be helpful if we could have maps that include and and thank you for sending the easements and the public water setbacks but i only got those at 11 30 so i still probably have questions about that that i haven't had a chance to review today but you could provide the board with a map that also included the phasing of this i think that would be helpful yes uh

136wednesday afternoon we um have a conference call with hanson engineers that is doing the design work and helping us coordinate and i will request um some additional exhibits to send to you along with some timelines i have to say largely our timelines are based on when we can get our two boards to agree to sign the intergovernmental agreement if we can't sign it or we do not think that we can sign it by november um then we would have to go back to the drawing board about how quickly we can actually do it it may defer it for a whole other year we don't like putting anyone up against the wall but we did feel like this was this was discussed with the extension of the tif and why we needed to you are seeing

137two intergovernmental agreements um speaking speaking for myself the only one that is of critical importance and frankly the next step in what our two boards did jointly decide on multiple occasions and likely within the tip was that the intergovernmental agreement for south mohammed road does need to be reviewed looked at and acted upon rather expeditiously it is not just in case you build a junior high and that maybe is the nexus between the two that could be confusing this road you are not obligated in the iga for that relay to south mohammed road to put any facilities anywhere on it you could even sell the land we haven't we haven't pinned you into anything we're just seeking the right-of-way dedication and for that we'll remove the obligations for the construction of secretariat country ridge drive

138and the south part of churchill road that's two and a half million dollars it doesn't really get too much um but we need that right of way as soon as possible i'm sorry i'm a little confused i thought in our questions about the tif that part of the agreement that we got from the village when we agreed to uh give the tif money over was that those obligations for those roads were being removed at that time is that not correct they are essentially but you're still under the first intergovernmental agreement right now that's why this is the natural next step to relieve you of those is that we need a new intergovernmental agreement to officially relieve you of those obligations yeah this is patrick this is patrick we had said that at that tif meeting

139that this what we're talking about tonight with this intergovernment agreement this is the next step that was discussed at that tif meeting are you suggesting if we don't sign this new intergovernmental agreement the village is going to hold us to those that well until you see well until you sign it you're obligated for those two and a half million dollars of roads i mean this is john cena email that said that part of our agreement for releasing that tiff money was that that obligation was removed no the obligation was removed once we do a new interview intergovernmental agreement and that's what we're that's what's here tonight for the discussion yeah we we essentially said that meeting tiff funds extension to funds or tif district and we wrap up the existing iga enter into a new

140one a new one what we're talking about tonight sean are the two agreements are they bound together like do we need to pass both of them or neither of them they're not bound together in my opinion now it seems as though as a board we have discussed more the road agreement than the 13 acres junior high agreement would you agree to that is that a question for us colleen or i think the board i mean i feel as though our board i feel like our board has discussed the road but we haven't really talked about the 13 acres in the junior high much as we've talked about the road seems to me like these need to be separated out completely and talked about separately i mean i agree we've talked about this road a lot

141more i agree with that colleen what what questions do you have about the junior high i mean my primary question about the junior high is what is the plan for the district to not need the junior high i mean i understand the whole plan the rec center and the everything as a person with a fiduciary responsibility to the district i'm trying to figure out what plan we have as a district that makes it reasonable that we would sell the junior high we have four buildings that are too small so and the junior high would be space so i'm all for us figuring out how to do it i'm just saying we have to have that discussion and figure it out because right now i've never heard of any discussion topic suggestion by any member of

142the board or any member of the administration that puts us in a position where we don't need that junior high now like i said a few minutes ago i can think of one but i've never heard it brought up in the board meeting the the junior high plan needs public involvement we've talked about this before that's why we talked about community engagement which i am not following strategic planning because we built community engagement we beat that together and there's a presidency as a group for us to move forward on that and and that's where that's at we can't make a final decision even with this even if we were to vote this in place tonight which we're not going to because we don't pull the trigger and assault the junior high until we've got a

143plan that we're all satisfied with to take it offline and that that involves a lot of work by the community but part of that too is also assuring the community we've got a plan to take the junior high offline and there's certainty as well as to what could happen 13 acres frankly the village uses more than we do we use it very low they use it a lot we own it they would like to develop that into a nicer rent area than it is they can't do that while we still own it all we're doing there is splitting ownership they will we will still have access to that um but they'll be able to develop and improve that properly um and it just makes sense um they don't use that property for them to be

144helped i do understand agreement sorry clan go ahead i do understand why the village wants the property what i'm concerned about is that this agreement says that we're going to just give them the property and then if we can't figure out how to make four buildings bigger then they keep it and we give it to them for nothing that doesn't seem that's not would be very much said agreement says included with the price of the junior high if they don't buy the junior high they end up paying 225 000 that is not what the agreement says that's not what it says the agreement says if they back out of the deal they have to pay 225. it says if we can need the junior high and we can't afford in terms of space to get

145rid of it then they keep 13 acres for free that's what the agreement says and in the interim it also says that we are required to pay maintenance until the point where we either decide to sell or not and we have to cover a milk carry a million dollars worth of liability insurance that's part of the return on that it appears it's putting the part before the horse to make a plan to sell the junior high before we've even discussed a plan like we talked oh i hear it talked about a lot in the community that we're going to sell the junior high or sorry we're going to build a new junior high but even if that plan was to come into fruition and we were to build a new junior high we still have

146space issues so even the plan that i've heard to build a new junior high doesn't relieve us of that problem and so i think as a board we need to start talking about other options in order to solve our space problems after our space problems are solved then we can talk about selling our buildings this seems to be the opposite way that we should be proceeding any other thoughts or comments but board members well we went the half hour we've logged into this we'll allow a few more minutes at this point i'm going to remind other business they have any other comments so i i this is ken i suggest we um we keep working on and considering the um the uh south mohammed road iga uh i suggest we table the the junior high

147one um probably until the end of the school year honestly just because we've got enough on our plate as it is and as i think everyone here has said it's not a pressing matter um that's my opinion we keep taking anything that has to do with the future of the district and taking it down the road and i understand there's probably some folks that would like to kick it down the road past the next election i mean let's just be honest here i'm going to be honest max it doesn't have anything to do with the election it has to do with the fact that we can't sell a building when we need the space lincoln trail is busting at the seams there are no places for any more clouds we look at the language of

148that because the 13 acres piece of that document is not in the best interest of the district right now we have to look at that language max i think you you said yourself tonight and i agree with you that the next step is to do the community engagement portion as we develop plans to replace the junior high or do some sort of construction project this strikes me as really out of out of the correct order to do this or i mean we're jumping to selling the property or jumping to making an agreement to sell the property um let's focus on trying to get the community engagement part then if if that's truly the next step as you suggest let's focus on that the village wants a little bit of certainty and a plan for the

149wreck program and if we just avoid this continually that they're going to go make other plans for the rent center and and we won't have that available as an option so i i understand and i really support the parks and rec department in in the village but there's it doesn't help them any for us to say yes we're going to sell it to you when we can't tell them when we're going to sell that to them [Music] separating two issues and the iga and then the junior high yeah right okay and they are they're suffering right now we're discussing them together max can i add a i guess a comment on some of the discussion about 13 acres yeah so so the the whole idea of 13 acres in the junior high being coupled together

150again we're going back from you know 2011 2012 discussions it's been a long time and we've been talking about a rec center for for the village and in our residence the idea of the prices really came about was to include it into the junior high costs right so the the intergovernment agreement is basically trying to say you know hey it's part of the deal and if you back out then you know it's we need to know this we're trying to have some kind of trigger to accomplish that i guess what i'm hearing tonight if there's if there's concerns with the price regardless of what happens the junior high the village of muhammad is certainly in involved in interest in 13 acres park um with that payment if it's it's 225 thousand dollars that's what we

151agreed upon at least in premise when we started the discussions again seven eight years ago and with the mark proceeding through the process and then previous administrations talking about you know dollar amounts um the point being i guess is the village is interested in that amount 225 000 we could talk about terms of payment and all that good stuff and if we end up buying the junior high fine say it's 750 000 minus 225. it's just a different way of doing the agreement but it's the same thing it's it's taking the 225 and giving credit to the purchase so i guess i want to make sure that everybody understands that from a rec department perspective certainly we want both properties to be in the vision plans and everything we're moving forward on but at a

152minimum let's let's not worry about the 225 is that how that's being paid i don't want that that you know the legal folks came up with the the word it the words there i want to make sure we understand that that price has always been included in the junior high price so if if that's the concern i want to be on the record that we are still interested in 13 acres and let's figure it out for the community because we cannot make improvements to 13 acres for a property we don't own that's and that's the biggest thing we've had examples of that in the past with the taylor fields is and that's a good example of what taylor fields look like for a long time before finally we own it and we can invest in

153it so that's kind of the perspective from the rec center but certainly from our community standpoint again we've been talking about this since 2011 we want some kind of certainty in the future to make plans towards this is kind of the the focus we've had for for a number of years now if if the school district for whatever reason wants it to keep this count in the road i mean i think it's unfair to all the taxing uh or the taxpayers of muhammad to continue to wait for at least the vision again the iga puts i guess exit clauses or or exit strategies for both taxing bodies not just the village so again i want us to work cooperatively i mean i think that's what everybody expects um and certainly i would agree with i

154think the consensus tonight so far is separating the two issues because there really are two separate things and if you want to have more discussion about junior high which i think is more on your side than ours um certainly we can entertain that or the commentary it's it's not i think that anyone is saying they don't want you to build a rec center and have a plan i think my perspective is this intergovernmental agreement makes it seem like you can count on the junior high but until we solve the space issue it can't come to fruition and so it seems as though it's actually worse for us to enter into an agreement with you that makes you not have another alternative and think about this is the plan and then we go six years down

155the road and we have three buildings where we have to use the tents they bought because there's no space in the building and then we say we can't possibly sell a building when we're we don't have a place for kids to go so i think addressing the discussion about solving four building space issues is actually a discussion to move towards your rec center not against it's not kicking the can down the road it's actually moving in a positive direction where we actually solve problems with the state of the property yes can we do that tonight can we uh why don't we try moving forward on the thing that we can move forward on now which is 13 acres um why don't we separate the sale in the junior high and just talk to the village

156about 13 acres and then when we're closer to being done see if available can schedule a meeting at another time where we can actually talk about this and what makes sense to separate out what the village needs from us along the timeline i think understanding what kelly's going to provide us in terms of the phasing is going to help us make decisions um so i think there's some components of information that we still need and i think it would make a lot of sense to uh schedule a meeting to discuss just the topic because it seems like we have enough to discuss to have a meeting all on its own a special meeting to discuss these three different entities and what that looks like we can certainly do that i would tend to disagree i

157don't think it's a lack of information a lack of details i think we've got a philosophical difference we talked about more in closed session tonight we talked about transfer property and closed session i suggest you add that tonight and we can do that anything else right now on the web apps i just want to say that we had several constituents email the board and they heard for more about scheduling a joint meeting to discuss these agreements and i have to agree because while we are elected to to make these decisions i think it's important that we give the opportunity to our constituents to be a part of those meetings and be a part of the discussion all right shawn and patrick and uh who kelly kelly yes i'm sorry kelly thank you for being here

158i think people disappear their faces are there and then there's just white blocks thank you for being here guys and uh we'll continue to discuss thanks kelly i'm going to follow up on on that information you said today thanks so much but i will have some follow-up questions so that's okay hey ken did you say that we've gotten a lot of email from people about this as a board because i don't have anything so did i come today or something i'm looking back i don't see anything i received emails yeah i thought it went to the whole board but maybe it did just go to me let me oh let me check and i will i haven't either i will i will add that though yes and i'm gonna say this tomorrow night as well

159but uh as far as communication with immediate uh people contiguous to the junior high the neighbors to your east have all discussed this internally or among themselves and i got an email tonight from one of their representatives and that you know they just look forward to some kind of cooperation between us because they much rather prefer to see a rec center than anything unknown and an unknown being unknown development so certainly the rec center to be a very similar land use as the current school is um i think that would be the settlement for most people who probably lived around who lives around the school now but uh again i can share that email with the board of education as well so you guys have your reference okay thank you sean thank you everybody lori

160those emails were on sunday evening uh it wasn't a lot of you it was just a few okay because like i don't have any i mean i try to keep up with them too so i know there's been a lot coming in but it did go to the board all right we'll carry some of that discussion in the closed session later on right now let's go to item two class ring thanks for coming mister i saw mr better make sure no um before we get to the meeting that a pricing closed session not discuss the selling of property in closed session i'm sorry about kelly okay hold on um can you hear me now yes can you hear me yeah yes we can hear you i'm just exact only permits you to discuss the setting

161of the price yep that's what you said sales price that's what i wrote down i think it allows for to discuss transfer property it actually doesn't you can't you can only discuss the setting of a price in the closed meeting in the closed session for the open meetings act all other discussions have to be held in open session we could at least talk about that yeah we'll talk about that then okay classroom hello mr benedict good evening uh excited to be here this evening um it was good to have our staff at this building today for the first time for a long time uh we went through some great training today that i think uh just hopefully put some people's minds at ease a little bit and uh but it just it was really good

162to see our staff back in the middle they can't go enough just you forget that feeling happy people around us that was good and excited to bring our students online and in person on wednesday as well um i'll just share this is not on the agenda but i'll share with you uh one one stat is um i checked in with amy short we still have about 80 families that we're waiting here from regards to registration but after right now we're at 1003 students at high school that includes our students that go out to our service schools as well so we're probably around 990 uh somewhere in that neighborhood of in-person learners first you told students at the high school right now still a few families that we've still got here fronts that may not have

163been fluctuated but certainly up a little bit probably from where we were last year we've never done over 1000 i don't believe so no no we that's not something you probably anticipated either so we'll see we'll see i'm assuming some of those families may have moved that number may go down um tonight i'd like to talk to you about two things um as in regards to academic recognition plan uh that we've been discussing for a while um and i'm going to touch upon that first and that's in regards to the class of 2025 and then i'm also going to come circle back and talk to um how this might impact uh current students at behind senior high school um when one of the things that we do every summer is we have a division head

164retreat where the leaders of the school we get together we go through a number of things in relation to the height of our building and last summer one of our topics was a discussion of classrooms and how it pertains to our students and so we started having a conversation about that with our leadership and as we grew into the school year our leadership team took it back to their divisions and had conversations with with their staff and and we had a lot of conversation in our building on what that would look like and we came to the conclusion that um that there are a lot of things going on in academics that would um cause us to consider about maybe re um redoing what we do as far as an academic recognition plan or specifically

165class frame and so um we we we have a plan in place and then the pandemic came and now here i am now presenting to you the claim so this plan would be for the class of 2025 that's our target class the eighth grade class currently we would eliminate the use of classroom in all successive classes after that and there's a lot of questions about how we would argue how we would recognize kids and what we propose is is that we did a percentage the top ten percent would be the highest honors um and that 11 through 30 would be honored with be honors chris provide us endowed in the background in the board practice that shows what that looks like over the last five years and the number of kids that were involved who

166would obviously i honestly recognize more kids than what we've currently been recognizing as far as just a traditional top ten we looked at several different schools as far as how to handle a valid foreign or salutatorian and the idea of commencement speech what we landed on was is that students where a lot of schools have with their commencement speeches is a student submit to speak and they submit to a panel of teachers and administrators and there's a criteria that speech teachers use what they use in speech classes a rudely and then they would present their speeches and it's voted upon by being with people on who would speak um mr lightbacker spent some time um when our when we have college recruiters come in to um obviously work visit with our kids you would visit

167with all the college recruiters and class rank is something that is really um it's starting to trend away in a lot of schools a lot of colleges and universities don't use it as a deciding factor there are some scholarships out there that impact classroom we can still track class ranks specifically in skyward to make that available to an individual student if they need that information they wouldn't necessarily they might know their number 10 in their class but they wouldn't know he's one two three four exciting so we could still provide that if it came down to scholarship um we also feel we also felt like that it was important that um scheduling is a big deal for our families and our kids and so that you know introducing this to eighth graders now is an

168adequate time to plan their schedules and taking classes that they want accordingly so those are our thoughts in regards to an academic um um excuse the academic recognition in regards to the freshmen i'd like to then just come back and just say that um with the pandemic everything is new and i would say within the last two weeks as our counselors have been begun scheduling kids and kids to start looking at their schedules one of the things that's been brought to life that i think we need to go back and examine as a building with our leadership team and our staff is i'll use this example if a student was a sophomore last year during the pandemic and say they were in ap biology they get a certain number of points towards a class rank

169well we didn't give those points because we suspended a gpa with the pandemic which i still think was the right thing to do however if that same class goes now this year say that sophomore class goes to a junior and another student takes ap biology now you have you know it's not an equal playing field that student gets credit for at biology where as a junior and then a sophomore didn't this is new um we this is just a problem that's kind of um or an obstacle that's come up here in the last couple weeks and i'll just be frank there's been a lot of time going on to get school open so it's not something that um we delve into a lot my thought would be to take this back to our leadership team

170much the same process and and talk through it with our leadership team and get feedback from uh our leadership team our staff student council principals advisory council which are to both student driven groups and see where we're at with these things i want to have this process done by november because i think november early december because i think when students come back after winter break they start scheduling their classes so we have to you know present to them once i don't think we should impact seniors with this i think their work is kind of done they're in the shoot so to speak uh to to finish so i i think but going back and examining and getting some input from our staff and our students on what this looks like for charlotte for our current

171freshman sophomore and juniors is where we have some conversation so um that's just to summarize uh go back about i think our freshman class of 2025 um we'd like to move forward with academic recognition finally and then further conversation about the freshman sophomore junior class currently at the high school okay so welcome so your recommendation is we institute this with wish class the 2025 class i think is kind of a separate issue max where i think we could put that in place and that was kind of the thought of our team even before the pandemic right we had done work on this um and now like i said as we as we i think we're going to find a lot of things from the pandemic we're going to have to be flexible and flu and

172adjust to i think this is something we need to go back and recognize with our freshman sophomores and juniors so we're going to pack the current eighth grade class right correct yes thank you okay questions for mr appreciate all the work you put in on this chat i know it's a crazy time and you've got a lot going on but um appreciate the thoughtfulness of this welcome uh any discussion on this i like the logic you've got you know delaying from the current states i actually support that thank you any other discussion okay i want you to stay in the room if you would please okay we're gonna go next to a related matter and that's policy 630 uh that ties into this dr saul's big max yeah all right are you going to look

173at the remaining audience i am we have one more action item and we're gonna move as quick as we can i don't see anything much this optional here i'm sorry merle asked me about the time i said the remaining items should be fairly quick i think so go ahead please okay i um have an interest in this topic as you know because i talked about it last time and now in this meeting i have been talking with chad um over the past several days and we have both come to the understanding of what chad just said a few minutes ago that there are issues that have been brought up that um we certainly would like to make sure this happens for sort of the way future classes but need to um also address some of

174the issues with the current student but not particularly the seniors this year as as they are the shoot um and so um as we have discussed this and want to take the opportunity to be able to discuss it further it is my recommendation that we postpone um and i i make a motion to postpone this policy discussion until um the november board meeting i'll second that promotion further discussion on this until until november um uh dr shuttle would you be interested in discussing this more at the high school with mr mataday in the meantime can i just clarify something sure doctor probably i didn't mean to ask i do have some questions though it was the question would i be willing to discuss it further yeah yes of course and we've begun discussing that yeah

175yes for sure i would be able and excited to discuss it further so i'm i'm confused about what we're tabling um because the what needs to be discussed further is my understanding correct me if i'm wrong i just want to get some clarification here what what needs further discussion is problem solving around the issue of the kids whose classroom has been impacted by club who are currently in the high school right okay so that that needs to be further flushed out and there needs to be discussions about what to do with that but that is that is completely separate from eliminating class rank starting with the class of 2025. so i um in tabling mr schultz's proposed policy her proposed policy is about eliminating the classroom right now correct actually my policy is just needs

176some direction for his team to be able to proceed ahead with the elimination of class rank for the class of 2025 i mean i know it seems really really early for kids who are like in two days gonna start in eighth grade but i don't know that what is the harm of postponing this until colleen and chad can have a chance to discuss this in its totality and come back in november i'm not sure why we can't just postpone these discussions till they can get together for personal planning and discussions i i'm they're two completely separate issues though and i think that child can move if the board proves or the chad can move ahead with the elimination of classrooms starting with the class of 2025. conversations can absolutely can and should continue to occur

177about the other issue related to the students whose gpa or classroom has been impacted right that's not the motion on the table but then chad and i have discussed this and um both agree that this whole issue needs more discussion and so we are going to talk about it and not make any decisions about it until november and come back and remember have a discussion with the board about it my my uh my conversations has been people one what i've shared i think we have two things going on tonight the original plan that our leadership team was put together for the class of 2025 is they're not necessarily impacted by they are impacted by coca but not my classroom currently at high school so that plan was already in place by our leadership team i

178i agree that that i think we need to take some of the concerns back for our freshman sophomores and juniors back to our leadership team and talk through some of those issues as we've seen some scheduling and stuff about that so um in my mind it's it's similar but it's but it's different so here's what i'm hearing i'm hearing for the class of 2025 we all kind of we're all kind of good with that and perceiving that what we're not sure about is these other classes and that's what i'm saying you want to do a little more work on what the impact might be and dr schultz is willing not to bring that to the discussions about tonight so we can kind of work through that is that a fair summary of what we're doing

179here to table it yes i believe that's correct are you there coming yeah i'm here okay we are is my understanding that the motion here is that we table my proposal until november that was the that was what's on the floor okay and the rationale is you and chad i'm going to talk about the impact on the classes before the 25 correct okay okay you've got a motion and a second table is there any more discussion on that yes shells yes clarkson yes tennessee yes yes um number four remembrance thank you thank you thank you thank you um the words defined and as because it looks different under our reopening plan for our teachers and um because we have um discussed and and um the reopening plans that the community would possibly have do have

180as a goal to go back full time in person on october 1st um the nsca asked and he agreed that this would expire on october so this covers the first part of the school year and we will continue with our meetings and discussions with the msca moving forward but this is a start of um an understanding that the work day looks different super governor cruz the member recommends the board approves the member memo of understanding as presented my master's getting in my way is there a motion to do that is there a second a discussion on the memorandum of understanding who i would just like to understand who on the board negotiated with this with the msea it's been dr roman myself heather smith derek house farmer meg jones and james heinel bringing it to

181you for your approval there hasn't been a board member in the room there have been other mousse brought forth to the board in the same year in the past definitely mousse or come as a result of the communication meetings between the administration other questions on this okay larson yes edwards yes giles yes hennessy yes next is revised policy 6240 dr hall um i'm just bringing this back with uh suggested changes um doubt highly i don't see any overnight trips in the near future so because if work would i mean either way i'm just suggesting that this is an item that wants to be tabled it could be but at the same time it's been brought back a couple times it has the requested changes in the policy and the procedures okay so it's been brought

182back a couple times we've got the changes questions or comments from board members um i support this policy um i have a concern about the practice of getting a reference in a board policy to an administrative procedure manual that has been withheld from the board and is not available to the public or staff so to fix that issue [Music] i would suggest we amend the policy by replacing the first instance of administrative procedure 620 with policy 620 exhibit 1 and the second instance of administrative procedure 620 with policy 620 exhibit two and then to label the two um the form and the guidelines afterwards policy one and policy two and that way we aren't referring to an administrative procedure manual in our policy but we'll just include it in the policy so nothing in the

183policy would change in any way just the wording to not make it circular i will move the chaperone polish 6 240 as presented with the um changes i just stated replace the first instance of administrative procedure 620 with policy 620 exhibit one and the second with policy 620 e2 and label those two um oh sure don i can type that up thank you okay so we got a motion was there a second i seconded it thank you discussion dr hall does that work okay it doesn't matter anybody else said anything bad we'll go home hennessy yes yes he yes giles yes hendrix yes larson yes with home yes after all this is an opportunity to address any questions or concerns about program 19 related issues or items i don't have anything as and looking forward

184to having our kiddos on wednesday for some of them some of our personal records their first day in person will be periscoped one of the questions that i have is um a lot of the school districts that have made recent decisions to go to remote won't be have made those decisions based upon um the idph cleaning requirements um it looks to me like we have students uh responsible for wiping down desks the idph has been very specific about it's not touching disinfectant wipes or disinfectants of any nature so i'm concerned about our ability to follow those regulations um under our current cleaning plan but um actually the students will not this is me that you can't see me um the students will not be dealing with any disinfectants they're toxic um we had a big

185training session with all of our custodians this past week and all of the wipes that that are being referred to the idph guidance that talks specifically about toxic chemicals and disinfectants everything that we are using is either food grade sanitizing um cleaning supplies but you use a cafeteria table so you can use your choice it's either food grade or it's non-toxic specifically stated on the msds that it's non-toxic and safe for use by children um the disinfectant will only be used by our custodians at the end of the day after all students are out of the building so we i guess i'm confused then about how we are considering the desks i guess specifically at the junior high in high school well i don't know i guess at the elementary school too how are we

186disinfecting those between students sitting in them this is steve during the day the teachers and the students will be cleaning the desks again without we're not using to be disinfected but strictly just cleaning the desks which according to um cvc and other experts that's half the value right there so after each use they will clean the surface and which will leave it in a goodness state so when our custodians can come and actually disinfect everything at night we don't have to disinfect immediately that as long as the surface is clean and dry it can be used with the students the other thing they're doing negan is that at the high school i spoke about high school teachers today at the junior high the high school and even at lincoln trail they're alternating desks so as

187classes come in they're having like for example the classroom is in today the kids there are 15 kids they'll sit at every other desk and that's next they'll wipe down those desks with the cleaner that that takes away we actually did a little video that kind of shows how the cleaner works and that we were assured by our vendor that that cleans adequately in between and then the next class that comes in is going to sit in the opposite desk so those desks are going to be alternated they'll be cleaned and then they're going to be left for a while before the next kids would come in so the kid they're alternating desks and a lot of the classrooms as well so the cleaning that um that we're going to be doing during the day

188is going to augment and wipe down you know the door handles things like that all that's going to augment the disinfecting practice that then takes care at the end of the day as far as the food grade sanitizing um for toys and bottles and things like that that sanitizes and again it's non-toxic and it's food grade for kids and then um and again in those classrooms even the custodians at the end of the night are going to come in they're sprayed and oxidized disinfected or um over all the classroom things so the neck dries overnight and it's ready to go for the next day and and and then we also along with that after every class we're asking the kids to use hand sanitizer for asking kids to wash their hands we're asking teachers to

189wash their hands so everything that they're doing we're encouraging them after they're doing anything to wash their hands which is the next the next thing too wearing masks washing their hands distancing as much as possible and then we're cleaning in between but we're not letting them use clorox wipes or anything that's toxic that's going to be continually abrasive on their hands and do we do we have enough wipes because i was doing some math the other day and it it seemed like just for the junior high in high school if they were going to do that for every deaf in between classes between now and october 1st we needed about 200 000 wipes just for those two buildings do we have that amount of wipes available so why is there a challenge the suppliers are

190starting to come in right now we have substantial supplies on order um with commitments from a couple different vendors so i can't guarantee two weeks from now over three weeks from now but i can guarantee that we're lining them up again first you know getting everything ready to start um there's been a few challenges with this materials but we pretty look at that result so i i'm confident that the supplies are going to be there there's new manufacturers that have popped up to meet the demand so it's been very beneficial to us gives us a couple different sources to come up with the wipes and you know working with the bucket program that we put in plan what's consistent with what most schools are doing okay and sorry just so all of those vendors are

191food grade wipes not disinfecting whites is that right yes yes what's the product called that those wipes are uh they're probably the bucket and the whites uh come in based by drying the material or use the chemical they're using is sc johnson it's a neutralized cleaner it's something that we currently use in the buildings right now um the the neutralized cleaner allows us to add solution right there we're using it to use to allows everybody to potential with your hands wipe the surfaces down to clean the surfaces and then um you know without any hazards to to the user the husky 824s the disinfectant that we'll use with the custodians and they'll come in and spray the surfaces and that has a kill time of 10 minutes so they can disinfect anything during the process

192again sc johnson is a product we currently use in the buildings right now and are these uh have they been shown to kill coronaviruses the johnson product that the staff and the students will be using isn't necessarily a kill but it is a white clean so they'll wipe the surface clean and eliminate the virus from the surface and dispose their eggs and they'll wash your hands and move on but the disinfectant that we are using yes it does kill the protovirus that's confirmed so will the students again we're using a harsher chemical or we're using a disinfectant with custodians and they'll spray that in the evening during the day we'll just clean the surfaces multiple times in preparation for disintegrating and this is a process that our suppliers have as indicated certainly supported by the

193uh cnc meets requirements for cleaning and disinfecting will the children be allowed to wash their hands after using these wipes yes they can wash their hands as often as they want we're encouraging them to wash their hands often during the day along with using hand sanitizer and the wipes actually the wipes are non-toxic so the wipes are something that they can take and wipe their hands off so um these are non-toxic and are safe for use by children and we have msds papers on all of those to show what the products are and what the concentrations and what's included in them so that they're they're not the same as a chemical like a clorox wipe is which we can't get right and we would avoid so the rules that idph put out recently just says

194that cleaning and disinfection products should not be used are you interpreting that guidance to be only products that are based on toxic chemicals it's it says the word toxic in there it talks in there about the disinfectant the disinfecting products and toxic chemicals should not be used by students it's talking about ventilation when it talks about toxic fumes it usually just says cleaning and disinfection products should not be used it's basically it's at this point just a selfie cleaner a neutralizer something would be of a of a household wine what the custodians will be using is a is a chemical and you know would have to be used by a professional uh it's of course it's new just it's diluted too for this appropriate use but that's not something that students or teaching staff would

195be involved with so if a student is in class and they come down with a fever and go down to the the office and are evaluated and so on um is the plan to take the other kids out of the class while the space is cleaned by the uh the maintenance staff yeah oh yeah if if there's a stereo is created where a you know a student is determined to be ill uh yes i would think we remove the students out of the way so custodial staff can come in and properly clean and disinfect the areas that the student was in what's what i can't answer what staff would do with the students that's somebody else's realm but ideally yes the area would be vacated so we can't come in and properly clean and disinfect

196and i put the emphasis on the word clean because it's a two-step process so we would come in and clean all the surfaces the floors and hard surfaces whatever the kids are involved with and then disinfect and depending upon the location the severity of the situation and and so we might disinfect twice once with the disinfectant that we're using at night for a 10 minute kill then we might also hit it with the total 360 depending upon the services and so forth can that's also going to depend i mean that's also going to depend on what the child is sent to the office for i mean by the kid that that is sent to the office just because and we have this a lot because the kid says my stomach hurts i feel good well

197it's math and they don't like math if they don't have a fever or if that kid goes home with a fever they have an ear infection that that's not that doesn't rise to the level of cleaning and removing all of the kids out of the classroom and part of that's going to depend on the circumstance so a lot of that's going to be on a case-by-case basis and depending on where the kid was what was happening in the classroom and that's one of the reasons that with the small classes it helps because we can identify that and we can identify the contact and how close they were because in a lot of cases now if a student turns a positive that's a whole different thing then we're going to look at who might have been

198exposed we're going to do deep printing in that classroom the custodians are going to come in and we have a whole different scenario that we're going to be mitigating on a case-by-case basis so it's it's difficult to say that every single time a student is sent to the office we're going to clear the classroom because that that's not going to be reasonable it's just for clarity and my description was based on a worst case scenario it was if if somebody was positive and we needed to go into a deep clean but we are still prepared to respond to as they normally do to especially the younger children if somebody gets sick or if there's a you know some sort of an incident you know with polycludes or whatever we will respond to it accordingly and

199then of course we'll be working with the uh you know uh you know would need and the rest of the administrative staff to see what we need to do okay so i also had questions about ppe um how many n95 masks does the district have on hand now and i can tell you right now n95s which are what are used in the hospitals and what are used by the health care providers and they can't get enough of them our supplier right now i can't get them the other thing is is that those there's a cost about 18 to 25 25 for the questionnaire 25 for the fitting because each of those masks have to be fitted and then you have to buy masks which we can't get and those masks are not meant to be

200multiple use masks like claw masks that you wash what we can get a few are kn95 masks which don't have to be fitted i also have shields for i have enough for every staff person if they want them so we can use the masks we can use shields um my health eops are going to be trained they all have a shield if a student comes down that's actively ill they'll have a knife mask they'll have a shield i have some shields that are being made that actually have a mask attached to the bottom so the cloth actually comes down chest level so so not only can do i have a plastic shield in front of their face but that i have cloth as well so we're taking a lot of steps to try to overcome

201the challenges of what are in the healthcare settings because we don't rise to the level of a hospital um where i have people that are that are like that a gallon and gloves and shields and hazmat suits and all that most of the time a lot of the kids that are gonna come in honestly when we're doing our screenings and stuff the kid that's gonna be the one that that probably affects the most people is gonna be the one that just walked by us the one that comes in with a fever probably a strep throat i mean that's just the way that's kind of going to work this year and we're going to have to be very diligent about taking care of that but a lot of times from all the kids that we've seen

202so far the parents that i've talked to the thing that that is the most prevalent right now seems to be the extreme fatigue the loss of taste and smell um with little little kids sometimes it's a gastro they have nausea and vomiting fever is not the first thing that we see so we're really going to have to be diligent with some of that because kid has a sore throat a headache and an upset stomach and there's six and it's struck season they may have struck so we're going to send them home we're going to recommend they see their doctor and then if they get an antibiotic they can come back up to 24 hours and and that's the best case scenario so um we have we have all of our screening tools that we're going

203to keep in place we we're providing equipment to our staff um to keep them safe and honestly the people that are doing all the wellness checks they're having a 30-second interaction as kids go by they're not on top of the kids all day every day so we're looking to provide more stringent um protections for our paraprofessionals who work with our special needs children for our health eops for those people that are going to have more one-on-one interaction with children who may be sick on any given day they can't distance from them to teach them um those those those teachers who are can teach in the front of a classroom um who can distance more easily their level of ppe does not need to be the same so we're trying to look at all those different

204scenarios to provide what people need so sure i understand and i know you're you're dealing with just just a completely crazy situation to try and manage the logistics and and the procedure and all that but my question is more about um are we following the rules that idpa forward because like colleen i heard i've reached out to other districts that have chosen to delay or switch to virtual for the start and they've said it's about the ppe not the the disinfection um because like you said you can't get the n95 mouse and that's what idph has uh said is required for uh the the maintenance staff and for anyone that is evaluating uh or assessing a student's um symptoms so and i don't even use an n95 mask in my office and i see 30

205patients today it's not required these are recommendations and then a statement that came out two days after this says none of this supersedes what was sent out for their for their transition opening that was sent out earlier in the summer these are recommendations based on questions that they've gotten statewide and and to dr hendricks point n95s are are reserved for intensive care units and those situations that you have a person that is actively very ill with program and even then a lot of those people can't get enough n95 so they're being made to reuse them that's been one of the complaints all through this thing that they can't get enough of what they need through emergency situations so we certainly we i feel like the person that's helping us with the shields and the things

206that we're taking steps to do i feel like that we're taking i think that we're taking good steps to comply and and our policies and our plans have been approved twice now by champaign public health and all those things are in there so every time these come through i read them the toxic fumes are not going to be an issue that's what this is addressing with the cleaners the ppe we're doing the very best we can and honestly the only time one of our staff needs to go notice that some kid's gonna keep on and and even then i mean that's gonna happen whatever because this is a respiratory virus we have to wear masks we have to wash our hands we have to distance and move forward and do the very best that we

207can i i think that i have 2200 shields sitting in my little stash that i'm rolling out to anybody who's uncomfortable gets a shield they don't even have to have a reason if they want to shield wear with their mask all they have to do is tell them and i'll give it to them so so my my hope is that that will help alleviate and i was in a meeting today just so you know just to help with 10 different district people okay not our district 10 different districts plural and nobody's gotten in at 95 we're just wearing masks so that's 10 districts and they're going back in person which districts have closed because of lack of n95 um i don't know well there's some districts in the chicago area okay the i just want

208to make sure we're all on the same page though that we are declining to follow the instructions of cu phd and idph now we're doing the best we can with the situation we have and i appreciate that but it doesn't change the fact that we're not following the directions or recommendations of these two expert organizations that's so true i think actually we are doing we are following the recommendations these are not mandates again i've talked at length with the public health as well and in this document it says right here using a face shield with other methods of protection they're not available or appropriate so i'm we're taking a step further and providing shields that actually have a mask attached to them to try to have extra protection so it's not just coming to their

209chin that the cloth part is can be cleaned it can be taken off the plastic part is going to keep anything from coming through and they can wear a mask with the shield and i do have a limited stock on the way of kn95s but even those are very cost prohibitive and so part of the challenge is not only supply but cost and and we are we literally are saying that everybody has to wear a mask so if all the kids are wearing a mask all the teachers are wearing a mask then that's not 100 guaranteed but that's way better because a lot of places they're not making more masks at all so it's no wonder that their staff are trying to get in 95 masks because nobody else is doing anything to be protected

210so with respect to masks i just want to make sure that i understand our policy is that under no circumstances will anyone in the building be allowed to remove their mask is that correct the idph says right here that people can remove it when they eat it says when they're outdoors or physical distancing when they're playing musical instrument outdoors this so the the article the the document that you're quoting from says that it can be removed at those times the only time established so these are the only times that masks can be removed the only other time is isb came out today which is only common sense that if you have a person who has an office all to themselves nobody else is in there they're sitting in their office with their door closed and

211nobody's in there there's no reason that they can't take their mask off but if they're the students they have to wear a mask or a shield or both okay so great so teaching if you're inside teaching masks 100 of the time okay yes and i have a several staff who have requested a shield so they're going to do both and and the reason that we've created these new shields with the mask attached is because we have a lot of we have a number of hearing impaired students that they they need to see the teachers face so these shields will allow them to have the mask that covers from their shoulders to their chest at the bottom of the shield but then the students that are hearing impaired will be able to see the teacher's face

212the whole time in addition um the paraprofessionals that work most closely with some of our special needs students are going to have those um shields with the extra protection as well and if they if they're still more comfortable they can still wear an additional mask and if it's a situation like with our health eops if we have children that are coming in they're ill not only do they have the shield but i do have as i said we've ordered today we have a few km95 masks that are the next step down from n95 but they don't have to be good and and as dr hendricks alluded to most of our healthcare facilities locally clinics are using mass i mean maybe they're using disposable i'm not sure what you use in your office but um a

213lot of people are using either cloth or the disposable masks and we have both of those i both do we have any do we know of any students who um are unable to wear masks for medical reasons and if we do what are what is our plan with those kids yep i too um and our plan is is we have several meetings on this even today our plan for those students is that those those students are special needs students so they have a letter from a physician saying that they are unable to wear a mask um in the one case the mom is fine we try to get the child to be able to wear a shield if that's the case then we'll try to um have her wear one of the shields that hasn't

214happened i think we need to be careful about identifying students in an open public meeting i appreciate the question yeah that makes sense can we talk about it as a policy i'd just like to understand what we're doing policy-wise yeah it's great approach yeah in in general i mean look what we're going to do is we provide this pass because i was going to say we provide the extra shield for a student and this would be for any student that for whatever reason they could it and then we also would um provide more distancing for that student so we're going to take extra measures and again it's going to be a case-by-case basis it depends on the student it depends on their circumstance and what they're able to tolerate and what their classroom is going

215to look like and if those kids are in with gen ed kids is that class and the parents gonna be made aware that they have a circumstance in the class where a child will be masked i i don't know that that's the case i think that we have to again i have to wait and see what the circumstance is for any particular title um that comes through and then i deal directly with the teacher and um we deal directly with the teacher and with with that particular parent to work out the best mitigation for the student i i'm sorry i mean the other students parents in those classes will they be notified that there's a student that will be masked in the classroom necessarily and yet it's going to be it's going to depend on

216the situation because because again as dr paul just pointed out we have to be very careful with privacy and policy and if i have one student in a building that's not wearing a mask i don't know that it's i don't know that that's good policy if the teacher is talking to parents and parents have concerns they certainly can email me but i'm not going to give information about another student to a parent it's kind of like some other situations where i have parents that fall and travel if you will on on about something that happens i'm not going to discuss another student's situation with anyone other than their parent um so i think we have to be very cautious about that i totally understand the photography issue i guess i'm nervous is that from a

217legal perspective our policies you have to be masked and parents are sending their kids with that understanding and if that's not the case i i worry that parents are going to have a set of expectations that we're not fulfilling the policy says they have to be masked unless they have a medical reason that they cannot and if we have a doctor's note so and if that's the case then we are taking extra steps to protect the rest of the students in the class along with any staff and the child that's effective okay any other combinations just the thank you to all of the work that's been done and put into the staff i didn't say anything earlier but i've been in the school i see what it's like i was in a meeting with 10

218different districts today and it's a lot of work and i'm appreciative of that and i just remember that we all need to be patient and show grace because it's ever changing and you don't have a perfect plan because there is no market plan so we're not behind what's the percentage of families that have decided to put their kids attend in person you know about 75 some very positive feedback on the plans that we put in place all right i just have one final question that i forgot like i've got about 36 people asked me this question so if i forget to ask it tonight i'm gonna be in trouble um i don't know if this is true or not but parents are calling me and asking me saying that they're it's that they've been told

219at the junior high and high school level kids that are uh e-learning from home will not have the ability to interact with the teachers or their class over the web because there aren't uh audio capabilities is that a true statement no so all the classes webcams have audio and so there can be an interaction between the students and the teachers anybody who's learning remotely yes yes okay yes we've got four things on the list one collected negotiated matters between the public bodies employees of their representatives or deliberations determining salaries missiles for one more classes of employees two litigation or an action against affecting our behalf a particular public body has been filed and is pending between the court or administrative tribunal or whether the public body finds an actions probable or imminent in which case

220the basis from the finance should be recorded to the minutes of the closed three the purchase or lease a real property including discussing whether a particular parcel should be acquired and four the setting of the price for the sale will lease the property used by the public is there a motion to go into closed session for those reasons sorry we're talking about the purchase of something that's what i said okay it looks to me like we have chris rath who is raising her hand how do you know that right here on my screen thanks megan we can't see that okay guys white with little letters yeah i just i have a list on the right hand side so thanks chris from our view we can't see that you're raising your hand okay chris i'm waiting

221to be unmuted one of the um that was just mentioned was there that there's about 25 of online learners um no secret that you know my youngest is one of them and i don't believe that the online learners um equates a level of untrust um i think it should be viewed as a level of parents who are taking into consideration the family circumstances um more specifically health issues um i'm happy to hear that there are roughly 75 percent of students who are be are able to go back into the schools um that's great but for the roughly 25 percent of online learners um i have an email from a teacher that specifically says my online learner will not be able to interact while live streaming all i can tell you is we're being told that's

222not the case and i would encourage you to reach out tomorrow to the principal on that i did reach out to the principal and i'm getting it i have a conflicting uh report from him so i i want so i'm i'm asking for clarification is our online learners going to be able to actually interact during a live stream of the class with your teacher when they have a question as it comes up or when discussion is taken place our online learner is going to be able to participate in class discussion as it's taking place because i'm getting two different answers one from a teacher saying no one from the um principal thing it depends on the tool being utilized by the teacher sure so if if the student is attending to remotely and they are

223attending a live stream of the of the teacher's lesson they will be able to interact directly with the teacher and the teacher only the rest of the students that are interested in person will not be on the same google beat as those remote learners the only person who will be attending physically in the room is the teacher and then those remote students so the interaction will be between the teacher and those are remote learners does that make sense for this route it does although i guess i'm so i i think this is where there there's been a communication breakdown um i am confused as to whether or not my son specifically and maybe i should say all virtual murderers are being placed with online only teachers and there are no students in the classroom or

224is it the case where the online learners are watching a live stream of a live in person classroom instruction that's that's confusing for me and i haven't it hasn't been really made clear and my son is asking me and his anxieties through the roof 8th grade junior high i don't know so so sister 12 those particular students uh will be engaged actively with students both in person and remote it's not just a all remote students um k-5 those students primarily so k5 the students are typically in all remote classes or off on the are all adverse approaches at the junior high in the high school because logistics the logistics the fact that they don't have a room that they're in all day even if they were there they moved from class to class those students

225participate online when the class is available so it's different depending on the age level of the child so when you say communicate though how will they be able to communicate with the teacher and will it only just be with that teacher so other remote students won't be able to so the audio will come through the classroom speaker but but the teacher will be the one responding primarily because the webcam that we utilize will be focused on the teacher it's not the microphone isn't pointed at the entire class okay so just just so i understand what has has been said so the technology or webcams that have been put into i'm speaking specifically like to the junior high classrooms because i have a junior high student um we'll be focused on the teacher not the classroom

226and that my student or any other online student in that junior high and 10th grade level will be able to interact with their teacher real time yes yes so the webcam will either be pointed at the teacher or we point it at uh the screen uh the whiteboard for example okay so so i guess i go back to my original question then because i'm hearing all of you tell me that my child and other online learners depending upon their age and the school they're in will be able to interact um in real time with their teacher but yet i have a teacher who i have communicated with that has said that will not be happening we will circle back and follow up tomorrow well i like to follow up with the teacher i we don't

227know why the teacher said that okay okay a couple other i have a couple things that i would like to be reflected in the record before you go into closed session it won't take very long um we do not have provisions for public comment now outside the public meeting actually on the agenda number 11 on the agenda that was um handed out at the meeting tonight under number 11 it says communication from visitors and that's what this is yes now there's no communication for visitors to have um comments as has been published on the agenda and that was handed out tonight i'm happy to file a complaint with pack thanks for answering my questions thank you we have a motion and are something to go into closed sessions discussion on yeah schultz yep larson you

228have styles yes macomb yes we'll take about a ten minute break and we'll come back in closed session uh the public fee will uh be closed down for the night we are not anticipating any business conclusion closed session those who have been listening tonight thank you for being here and have a wonderful week