001Hello, Lockport Township High School District 205 parents and guardians. My name is Dr. Bob McBride, superintendent of Lockport Township High School District 205. This is your board meeting brief for the regular April board meeting we had in the porter room on Monday, April 27th. First, I want to start with an apology. Uh, I'm holding a paper agenda. Yes, I know. Very oldfashioned. Uh, but if you tried to access our board agenda for April 27th on April 27th, you had no luck. And neither did we. Uh, we used an online platform called Board Docs. And unfortunately, for the entire day of Monday, Monday, April 27th, that platform nationwide was out. So, we had to resort to just good old-fashioned paper and we apologize if you did not have access to our board agenda. However, that system
002is back up and again, everything that I'm going to reference is back online if you go onto our public website under board of education. We actually didn't start our board meeting in the porter room. We started in the east campus cafeteria and we've entered that season where we have so many students to acknowledge. We had a huge group of students and Porters are out there accomplishing amazing things at a national and a state level. We acknowledge our girls wrestling team for again placing and earning a trophy in state. We acknowledge maybe the greatest athlete of my 40-year public education career, Claudia Heeny, who for three years in a row has been a state champion in girls wrestling. We recognized students who excelled in IDA at the state level which is a drafting design architecture engineering
003technical competition. We acknowledged a student who earned a national award in a contest for PSA videos. Out of almost 250 plus entries, she was number one. And then finally, we acknowledged 125 Illinois State scholars. That is on top of all the things that have been going around uh here in April with visitors from Japan through our exchange with the Yamate Gun School, prom, our colleagues earning those who excel awards. Just amazing things. And then finally, I had the pleasure of going to New York City and seeing off the record be one of the final nine schools in the nation to perform on Broadway for a chance to be a national champion. When you just sit back and you think about it for a minute that Porters are achieving at a national and state level, you
004should be very proud of your high school district and your students. So, one of the things I hope you do is if your children are doing things that make you proud, hey, do what we do, be sure to tell them because it makes a huge difference. Couple of issues that we handle that I want to be sure uh to share with you in this brief. The first is we opened a public hearing, which is really just an opportunity for the public to come before the board and discuss a very particular issue. And in this case, we are beginning the process of following our 10-year facilities master plan decision-making guide. This summer, we will complete all of our work at Central Campus. What kind of work is that? Well, it's very essential work. It's called life
005safety work. You might ask, what is life safety work? Well, life safety work are things that keep the humans sheltered, cooled, heated, safe. For example, we have to finish our full roofing project at Central. We have to make sure the entire brick exterior is solid. It's completely intact. Any repairs that need to be made to that, any tuck pointing are done. And that building needs a new electrical system. All of that is health and life safety work. One of the great strategies that we're allowed here in the state of Illinois is we can sell bonds, issue bonds that are called health and life safety bonds that allow us to use a financing product that the cost to you. It lowers your tax cost. It stretches the repairs out over time, a much longer period of
006time. Again, giving taxpayers somewhat of a break and allows us to really address repairs and renovations. we just absolutely have to make. In a few weeks, we are hoping to issue $16 million in bonds that we will use to finish off all of that work at Central. We're choosing a financing strategy now because we get such a good rate and the ability to stretch the cost with health and life safety bonds. So, financing now like you might do on your home if you have a second mortgage or a home equity loan. Why? Because we know later we have projects that are not health and life safety projects, classroom renovations, additions like the CCC and improving our Lockport Academy. We'll need cash reserves for that. So on the horizon, we are planning to use cash reserves
007to pay for some of the things we cannot finance through health health and life safety bonds. So the board could have had quite a conversation and discussion about that strategy and that direction. There were two other very very important issues I'd like to draw your attention to. Our principles did a very thorough presentation on a transition to a district-wide 8 period day. You might say, "Great, my child gets to get take an additional class next year. Super simple. Pump the brakes." It might not be as simple as you think. There are many changes coming to the life of our district. You're going to begin to hear more and more through our public relations messaging to you about what those changes might mean and what they might mean for your family and maybe some of the
008things you might want to prepare next year and be thinking about. The time to do that is now. We don't want to shock you in August with changes of start times and changes of lunch times and your child is taking more classes than she or he has ever taken. So please, my request of you is as those messages come out to you, could you please read them with some attention to start thinking about what it means for your family? The very first thing you'll have access to is the presentation that our principles gave to our staff and gave to our board members. The second issue is we've added a new IHSA sport. Next fall we'll be competing in girls flag football. You might say, "How is that news that we're just adding a new sport?"
009We tell you it's news because this is a board of education administration and staff that are constantly pursuing new options and opportunities for our students. And we think that is the heart of what we do as educators, always keeping in mind what our students need. If you take a look at this agenda, you'll see that so many of the items on it are in preparation for next year, hiring new staff, acquiring new uh curricular resources. All of it is something that we keep transparent for you. That's always accessible on our website. It's at your fingertips. And if you can't find it, we'll always help you find it any way that you can. We're committed to getting you the information that you need to know what's going on in your high school district. Finally, I would
010be remiss not to celebrate our seniors. in this hallway. We will be filming on Friday, May 1st an amazing thing we've come to do every year, asking our students to wear the t-shirts and sweatshirts and swag of the places are going to next so that we can share that with the entire community. It's a very very exciting time when May comes. Today is still April and it's National Poetry Month and I have a poem from William Butler Yates for all of our seniors. It's called The Lover Pleads with Friends, for old friends. Though you are in your shining days, voices among the crowd busy with your praise. Be not unkind and proud, but think about your old friends the most. Times bitter flood will rise, your beauty perish, and be lost in all eyes, but
011these eyes. We remember who you are, seniors, and we're going to celebrate you quite a bit in the month of May. Hey, thanks so much for listening to this board meeting brief. And as always, go Porters.