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 and this is your board meeting brief for the Board of Education meeting that we had right here in the porter room on Monday March 17th happy St Patrick's Day we actually did not start the board meeting here in the port room we did what we have to do so often with students who are constantly excelling we met in the East Campus cafeteria really to celebrate students who have performed at the highest level before I name those students one thing I always like to point out to you as as parents Guardians community members is that our board agendas are always available to you online they're easy a couple of clicks and
002you can see everything that our board members see you can see all of our finances every month you can see bids for construction that we're approving you can see a recent bond issue that we approved at that board meeting on March 17th it's all at your finger tips and we do that so that you can partner with us in openness and transparency you can see what board members see even if you're not live streaming the board meeting or attending yourself we know know that you appreciate that so let's talk about some of the students that we congratulated and again it's amazing at our high school district to have students who achieve at the highest level uh first we had Olivia MATC she was a third place finisher at the ihsa bowling uh women's bowling tournament
003this year incredible if you've ever been to ihsa bowling super intense then we had to congratulate Justin wlaw Justin WLA for the third year in a row freshman sophomore and now his junior year he has been a state finisher finishing as a runner-up second place in his weight class in ihsa wrestling and then finally we acknowledge Claudia Heeney she is a two-time now state champion in ihsa girls wrestling we also had an opportunity to congratulate two of our musical groups we brought forward a number of vocal singers who all were state All State uh choir members at the Illinois music association's annual conference in Peoria it was great to congratulate them and see them perform most recently uh this week on uh March 20th they have their concert we also had an opportunity to congratulate
004our band members who are also All State at the Illinois music association's annual conference in Poria these were groups of students who achieved the highest level of musicianship in in the state of Illinois and speaking of which we had an amazing amazing night this past Saturday March 15th we had two vocal groups Vocal Point and off the Record who went up to Milwaukee and competed in the Great Lakes Regional this is the entire Upper Midwest a competition between Acappella groups and Lockport Township swept the entire event Vocal Point were Champions they automatically move on to New York City to compete nationally on April 25th off the Record finished second and they have an opportunity to enter that same national competition as a wild card all of the other individual awards for beatboxing choreography lead vocal
005were won by Lockport Township High School students and I mention this to you because one thing I always share with our board and I'd like to share with you is there are many many many ways that you can measure the success of our students you can look at standardized test scores grade point average their scores on tests but I would submit to you that one of the best ways to measure the success of our students is performance when there is the pressure of being on stage or a wrestling match when you're at the end of a bowling lane do you step up do you have Grace Under Pressure where our Porters do it all the time and you should be very proud of them there's really 4,000 of them that do it every day by
006coming to a place called school and just doing what they do being great kids your children terms of the Board of agenda there are two things that I want to highlight on a very long agenda because Actually March 17th in our March meeting every year is the most consequential board meeting of the year it's the most important decision that our board makes and we made two the first is our annual Staffing plan and this is a staffing plan for what we call our licensed staff and you might say licensed staff who who are those people licensed staff are classroom teachers Deans guidance counselors social workers psychologists certified School nurse uh speech pathologist these are the people that work the most directly with your children and in Illinois they have to own or have a professional
007educator license we go through a long process starting in November where students begin to sign up for classes it extends all the way into February and then we took all of those signups 27,000 individual signups we turn those into class sections we use those class sections to determine how many teachers we need to function and fulfill those requirements next year we are adding two positions and those two positions will be added because Illinois State Board of Education did an audit of the services we provide for English language Learners and found that to be in compliance we need to add two more positions and so we need to do that so we're only adding those two positions to our licensed staff but every year the Board of Education directs me to control the costs of hiring
008and the way that we do that is when we have more expensive employees who either retire or resign we replace them with talented individuals for sure but cost less over the past 6 years we've actually saved the district almost $400,000 in hiring costs with our plan to replace human beings and hire we put first and foremost your children their requests and what they want in order to take class and so when our board members approved our Staffing plan they approved the largest portion of our personnel and the most costly portion of our Personnel every single year it is a decision that takes many many days many hours to be accurate and precise and now we're going to move on to hire that staff that will fulfill that Staffing plan and to begin a schedule to
009schedule your children for next year into classes the second very important decision we made is our board voted to approve 15 million in life safety bonds to begin the process a two summer process of replacing the entire roof we'll do half of it this summer at central campus to improve to restore to maintain the entire exterior envelope the masonry there tuck pointing and new windows and to begin the process of replacing the electrical system at Central this is part of our essential maintenance plan for central campus last year you might recall we had a referendum it did not pass afterwards we did extensive surveying of the community almost 700 of you wrote to the Board of Education you gave us a very clear action plan and top of that list was maintaining our facilities right
010after that was doing it in a financially responsible way the $15 million in bonds that will fund this two summer project will add no additional tax burden to anyone in our community because we'll be keeping that debt low we will be paying it through cash reserves this Bond will last 20 years it'll only last 20 years unless we repay it earlier and we've done that frequently because the board has directed me and other superintendants to keep debt low in the district so we will not extend that burden to you and also Our obligation with this 20-year Bond at Central is to maintain it as a educational facility as long as we're still paying the loan but whatever programming we do there is really up to us we currently have a facilities Master planning Council that's
011taking a look at the 20-year future of all of our facilities what do you want what does the community need what do future Porters need in terms of topnotch community and school facilities to make that start we need to have a building that can house almost 900 freshmen and our board has taken a step working on it for a year to do just that with approved in the sale of these bonds we also approved a number of different bid packages to begin working towards that project in the summer and we were very happy that those bid packages all came in lower than we initially expected some some really hard work by D Architects and Bergland construction important decisions being made but that's really what school board members do and I want to personally thank our
012current school board members for their very very hard work digging into to the finances of our district both with Staffing and both with these Life Safety bonds that will create a two summer construction project they've directed me to one add no additional tax burden on to you two to always balance our budget three to control our spending presently for the past 10 years we've only increased our budget 1% each year and finally no heavy debt no deficit spending a very conservative approach to facilities to finances to hiring and I appreciate that they've put the hard work and the time into making sure that that's exactly what we as an Administration are doing on your behalf thank you so much for listening for this board meeting brief for Monday March 17th and to all of you
013have a wonderful wonderful spring break with your students