001[Music] Hello, 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 board of education meeting that we just had on Monday night on April 28th, not here in the K hallway, but in the porter room. You might wonder what the hoopla is behind me. I'm filming this on Thursday, May 1st. Across our nation, it's commitment day. It's when students commit to four-year colleges, two-year colleges, technical trades, the military, the CCC, and beyond. And we're just celebrating with all of our seniors, the commitments they've made to a life after Laport Township High School District 205. Really proud of all of them, proud of their accomplishments. Just a great month of May to celebrate the class
002of 2025. Our board of education meeting actually did not start in the porter room. It started where we so often have to start and that was in the east campus cafeteria. This is the season where we are acknowledging porters who have done amazing things. So we had an opportunity to acknowledge the Porter players for their very fine performance at state and then also 86 Porters who were Illinois State scholars recognized by the state of Illinois for their grades, their test scores, and their excellent academic performance among their peers in the state of Illinois graduating in the class of 2025. We then adjourned to the porter room where the board really got down to business. One thing that we alerted the board to that was really wasn't on the agenda, but has been on the past
003agenda is their work to do a $15 million bond sale to fund an essential maintenance plan of Central. You know, in the referendum a year ago, you said you were not supporting a full renovation of Central, but survey after survey has acknowledged that Central needs some care and attention. The board's developed an essential maintenance plan. In past board meetings, it approved a bond sale for $15 million. Two summers, one project, roof, walls, and electrical system in the building. That bond sale was executed on Monday, April 28th at 10:00 a.m. And we alerted the board to that sale, and Mezero Financial was the successful bidder on our bonds. We feel good about the interest rate we got and we feel good about moving forward with that two summer project at Central. Really the meat of our
004board meeting was in my superintendent report where it wasn't so much me presenting as it was some of my colleagues. First we had Matt Dusterhoff who is our director of technology here at Lockport Township High School and his team talking about our work to understand use artificial intelligence. This is an important technology. It has the power really to transform everything that we do in education. And Matt Dusterhoff, Megan Nelligan, and Kate Fehey briefed the board of education about 2 years worth of work and research that we're doing to develop tools really to harness artificial intelligence for our students. The next presentation was on something we call academic return on investment. Every single Wednesday, our teachers meet in teacher teams for two hours. This year we wanted to explore what is the return on that investment
005of time. Did you know that our teachers all of them aggregate spend about 19,000 hours a year in collaborative teams? We set out this year to do a research project to find out what is the return on investment of that time that money spent every Wednesday morning. What did we find? We found great success. We found that our teachers reported that they're highly collaborative in those team meetings. We found that really 85% of our students either grow in their grades, maintain their grades, but ultimately we took a look at about the 10 to 15% of students who sometimes regress in their grades. And we proposed to the board and we're proposing to our staff tweaks and changes in that collaborative structure so that we can be more effective and reach those 10 to 15% of
006learners who tend to regress in their grades. The final thing that I would draw your attention to is at the back of the agenda where we do our approvals and this is a period of time in April where we typically approve salaries that are not in our union or our collective bargaining group. One reason why we feel it's important to have those right on the board agenda, right on our website, is so that we're totally transparent about what administrators get paid, what directors get paid, what uh technical support people get paid who are not on the union contract, what our bus drivers get paid, what part-time employees get paid. We want you to be aware of that, to be knowledgeable about that, and have access to that both in a board agenda and on our
007website. Thank you so much for your attention to this board meeting brief for Monday, April 28th. I want to reach out and congratulate Vocal Point, one of our vocal uh ac capella ensembles who ended up fourth in the nation, and we'll celebrate them next month, as well as Gabby Costello, a senior student who was chosen as the top solo vocalist at that New York City Times Square Broadway competition. Speaking of May, we'll be back in May 19th and we will have a huge uh student recognition again because porters are doing great things. Monday, May 5th is a very special board meeting where we reorganize the board. Some board members will rotate off the board. Newly elected board members will join us and will begin a new journey as a new seven member board. Thank you
008so much for your attention and go Porters.