001Hello, this is PJ Caposi, superintendent of schools for Oregon 220. Last month, we started a new process in which I shared my report, which I normally share just with the board of education at the board meeting um via video. It received um welcome praise from our community and our staff. Uh so, not only we're going to continue that, we're going to extend that and I'll preview the entire meeting um for those that cannot be in attendance. So, in order to do so, I will toggle between this, which is the slide deck I use to support the board meeting, um the actual agenda, and then some attachments so that people can see as much as possible. The intent is in less than 10 minutes to give the community and staff um a full understanding of what's
002going to be taking place at the meeting so they can decide whether to attend or not um or just be up to date on what's happening uh within the school system. So, with that said, I'm at this point going to move into our actual agenda. So you can see our meeting starts at 6:15. Um open session uh is is going to open at 6:30. So if you've never attended a meeting, uh we call the meeting to order and approve the agenda and then almost always immediately move into close session. Uh we take care of whatever business we have in closed and then we start the open session meeting um at the time designated. You will see um here that we have some uh work to do before we go into close session which is an
003anomaly this month. Um, but as a result of Dr. Molly Baker, who had multiple years of really high quality service to the board of education, uh, resigning in the middle of her term, um, the board was able to interview and select a new board member. Um, at last month's board meeting, they named Jesse Graph as the newest member of the OCUSD board, and she will be sworn in before we go into close session. she needs to be sworn in so she's a fully um vested board member before she can be kind of exposed to some of the content that we'll talk about in executive session. Uh executive session this month has two core items. One um is fairly simple. It's the first part of my evaluation process. The board evaluates me each year. um what
004the board will be considering and discussing in close session at this point will be uh the evaluation marks that my subordinates, my direct reports and the union provided uh in terms of a 360 evaluation um and then next month they will be um finalizing the evaluation process. Additionally, um we have been going through a collective bargaining process with our teachers union, the Oregon Education Association. Um and we have reached tenative agreement, which means that nothing is solidified at this point, but we have we have come to agreement on the core concepts and now that we are getting additional feedback um from the district side, from our attorneys, from the union side, from the state level association. Um and we'll share the detail with the rest of the board who is not part of the bargaining
005process. The bargaining process only consists of two board members. So this will be us debriefing with them. Once we enter into open session, we go into the consent agenda. The consent agenda are items that need approval but are not expected to have uh discourse around them. And so I'll preview some of the um interesting items for you in in the consent agenda before we get down into my report. uh of interest in here is our annual Chromebook u lease agreement. So if any of you have had students go through particularly seniors last year, you would know that by the end of their time in school, their Chromebooks at that point were six years old. Um and this year our seniors have 5-year-old Chromebooks. The intent with our leasing program that we um now have a
006a system built out for is that no student will have older than a four-year-old Chromebook with the exception of um Chromebooks on on carts that we have at some of the younger grades or potentially some rental Chromebooks. But no one's main Chromebook should be older than four years um as a result of getting uh situated and continuing on at the lease program. So we we will be approving that contract. We will also be approving the lease of six buses. These are not six additional buses. We currently have six buses on lease. Those leases are coming up and now we are just starting the lease of of those buses. If you followed along with board work earlier this year, uh what we're going to do in terms of purchase and acquisition of buses has been a
007hot topic for for months and months and months. What we have decided to do at this point is essentially hold steady. The buses we own, we're going to continue to ride to get as much out of them as possible. Um, and those that we leased, we're just going to continue to lease as as we move forward. As a word of awareness to the community, um, we have the oldest fleet of buses in the county. Um, and bus purchase acquisition is going to be something we have to continue to consider um, in the years that are coming up. And lastly, uh, time clock purchases. We do not have time clocks. And so, as a professional organization, we believe that we should have time clocks. Um, and while it costs a bit of money upfront as an
008investment, we believe that it could actually in the long run end up being a cost savings. So, we worked through this this process collaboratively with our bargaining unit um to not only set out the parameters but to to do the entire shopping process. Um, so we are very confident in what we are uh acquiring with our time clock purchase. We are recognizing two staff members for going above and beyond. Belladal and Britney Gronhagen. Um Britney does an incredible job at the promotion and organization of Down syndrome awareness day and Bella had this really great opportunity that was really largely bestowed upon us by Rep. Tony McCumby. Our students at the elementary school last year had an opportunity to come in during the summer, work on Christmas ornaments, and then have our student designs and ornaments
009be hung on the Illinois tree as part of the national Christmas tree presentation in Washington DC. Uh you'll see next I go over the fiscal year to date. So the fiscal year to date is how we're tracking compared to our budget. Uh, and for the most part, we're dead on with what we wanted to do with our budget this year. But there's a handful of things that are driving a bit of overages. Um, which I'll explain to the board when we when we meet. Um, just a preview of some of those things are when we have students that move into our district from outside that are requiring outplacement for special education. They need a level of service we cannot provide here. Um, we have had several of those um, students move in this year. um
010that costs money for us to then there's no way for us to budget for those moveins. Likewise, we have had students who we have deemed the best way that we could provide them service is to provide them additional support and whether that might mean an aid or more restrictive placement. Sometimes that can cost money as well. Another area which we it's impossible to really budget for but occurs is when people that work for us have life-changing events. Um they might go from not having insurance to then claiming insurance. And so we've had a roughly about $100,000 in additional expenditures this year by people that did not have insurance at the beginning of the year that claimed insurance later. Um and lastly, we finalized the OESPA uh collective burning agreement in December of this year. So
011in January, uh people received raises that we did not budget um for because we did not know the amount of the raise when we approved the budget in July. Um this in the last two years, if any of you have been keeping up, we have moved to as many video reports as possible. So you can click the link on the agenda that is sent to you to see the athletic and activities report. Um for my report, um the couple of uh things that I just want to go over. We can skip kind of A, B, and C as they're they're just kind of formulaic and we have them on every agenda. Um but we have uh taken action as a board of education to leave our insurance cooperative and to become a fully insured single
012entity um for insurance. And so what that means is that our initial renewal projection in inside the cooperative was a 25% increase which means to our staff and to our district which means our taxpayers it would have been a $750,000 increase. um through months of shopping and negotiation um we have been able to get that number down to just about equal there. We might be a percentage point or two on the renewal or might be a percentage point or two in terms of a negative renewal. So um the the work that the district has put in over the last several weeks and months um has quite literally saved nearly 750 to $800,000 yearover-year in terms of in uh insurance cost. Um we have also launched uh our app last year but now we are able
013to allow people to opt in uh to athletic updates which means if you opt into it uh on your app when the athletic director or someone in administration gets a final score we can push out. So last night um I'm recording this on Wednesday. Last night our our girls soccer team won 7 to2 we could push that out and you get a push notification on your phone. So if you're very interested in sports, it's a really cool way, very easy way to stay connected. Uh panorama is what we use for our culture data, uh which is allows us to assess where our staff and how our staff feel about how we're doing as administration and how how our team is coming together. Uh this link will allow you uh to go ahead and and transparently
014check out every piece of that data so that you as a community member can know just as much as as I do as superintendent in terms of our culture. And uh two thank yous that I wanted to give in my report. Uh, the Etnire Foundation year-over-year um gives approximately 30 to $40,000 in in grants to teachers who need everything from um supplies to new tables uh to things to support our agriculture and industrial arts classrooms. You name it, um they supply it. So, we wanted to say thank you to them as they have just recently named um their award winners again. And um this coming Friday, so depending on when you watch this, Friday uh the 17th, we will be recognizing our retirees at our retirement dinner. We're losing over 275 years of experience with
015retirees this year. So I just want to take a second to thank them. In terms of old business and new business, old business, um we have worked with OCE throughout the course of the year to try to find cost reduction mechanisms. Um, as a result of of that work, we are receiving um, for every classroom we host, essentially one student tuition free attending those classes. Um, so what that means for us is nearly $180,000 in savings. So, uh, between that and insurance work, um, and not sticking with the status quo, it's nearly a million dollars of savings of which we'll discuss at this board meeting alone. Uh, in new business, there are three uh, action items and two first reads. The three action items are pretty straightforward. Um, we went through a complete bid process
016where we went out for RFP. Um, tried to contact as many auditing firms as possible, receive sealed bids, open them, uh, and then with the board with one member of board of education and uh, we interviewed auditing firms and so we will have a recommendation for a new auditing firm. Um, which the recommendation I'll be putting to the board is to to move to Sikitch as our auditing form. Um, one of the complaints that we have heard uh in my two years here, particularly with our senior exit interviews and talking to staff, is the the viability and the value of Hawk Huddle. Um, so we have a a new idea of moving Hawk Huddle to the end of the day and helping it to incentivize the behaviors we want to. So, we'll be talking about
017making that switch. Um, and lastly, we currently partner with Oregon Park District, who is probably our absolute best community partner. They've been wonderful to us in in any number of ways. Um but right now the the partnership that we have with junior high across country um is is one that is a bit cumbersome for them and they they approached us and asked us if we would want to take over that entire program. And so for us to take over the program it'll be a net cost of about $1,000 for us to take it over um take that off of Oregon part District's plate and then have some more authority and control over it. So that'll be a recommendation I make. Um you see press here which is uh a subscription service that we subscribe to
018that takes all of the laws that get created in the state of Illinois. Many lawyers from different firms work together and help create policy over that. Um for policy we take two reads to pass that. So um all the recommendations that I have are available via the link. All of the policies impacted are detailed for you. And student handbooks are approved each year. The first read of the handbooks are in this month, which means that next month under old business, um items D and E will then be populated as part of old business where the board takes official action on it. If you've made it this far, I sincerely thank you. Um and I thank you for your interest in our district. Hopefully, this was informative. Uh and we'll talk to you next month.