001okay we're going to call the meeting to order at 631 please Williams esposa Shader yeah Landers r I to the flag of the United States of America and to the republ for it stands one nation God indivisible with liy and justice for all motion for approval the meeting agenda Williams yes Trader yes C Yesa yes yes lers yes you have any public comment this evening okay moving right along can we have a motion for consent agenda please motion to approve the consent agenda 5.1 disposition minutes for January 5.2 pay of bills 5.3 District Treasures report 5.4 interested activity fund report yes C yes Trader yes espa yes Williams yes 6.14 requests no request we'll move on to our administ hello hello um so a couple months ago I came in and um presented on how
002our year was starting here at Lincoln and how my first year was kind of going at Lincoln and today I wanted to share with you some pictures of um all the different things that we've been doing and how great our students have been excelling this year so um I first wanted to highlight some ways that we're celebrating Student Success here at Lincoln the first way is our reach award which is real effort um achievement and citizenship honor and so we have a pizza lunch for our students every single month they're nominated by their teachers and then they're recognized at this lunch um we have also started fist bump Friday every single Friday here at Lincoln so as part of our paw Pride the golden tickets um that students earn each day for positive behavior on
003Fridays teachers pull a golden ticket and the students come down to receive a small prize in a fist bump and then all day throughout the hallways students are fist bumping each other teachers are giving you know kids fist bumps and it's just kind of a positive end to our week every single week here at Lincoln um Mrs Estrada has a student um and he didn't know what a fist bump was and he was calling it the day that you give us punches and I was like oh no no it's the day we do fist bumps and so we learned the word fist bump and now he calls them fist punches just to be funny because I had to teach him the difference um some other things today we had our John orth award breakfast that
004honored the students in the exiting grade at your school so our two recipients here at Lincoln were Jackson olendorf and Jory bound they received their plaque today they were nominated by their teachers and voted on by the staff here at Lincoln uh we are working on some incentives to get students excited about learning here at Lincoln um one of them that we did was pie the principal we tied that to our fastbridge math and reading testing that we do three times a year and students who showed growth in either math or reading earned a ticket into the drawing to win a chance to pie me in the face so at each of the three lunches a second grader was chosen a third grader was chosen and then a fourth grader was chosen and I was
005sticky and smelling whipped cream for a week after that but the kids were excited um and we had amazing growth um in uh it was third grade we had like 89% on the reading that all kids grew at least one point which was phenomenal I mean we'd love to see it more than one point you know we'll work towards that in the future that you know hopefully they earn more tickets for the amount of growth they have but we really want to work on just making learning fun um something that Mr Strauss started here last year that the kids love that we're carrying over to this year is the principal for the day students come in for an hour and they get to do the job with me they love like writing odrs for their
006siblings and um this was Mr Kent so he's got a lot of family members in the district so he called and did an evaluation on his mom but um he earned this as one of our paw Pride prizes he got drawn as the principal for the day and um he also called his Uncle Dustin Kent and told him about some of the repairs he felt needed done in the building so he took this job very seriously uh Paul pride is our positive behavior incentive that we have here students have three paws on their desk um the goal is for them to keep those throughout the day when they lose them they are just a reminder um of you know what our appropriate behaviors are here but when they keep their uh Paws throughout the day
007they earn a golden ticket we use those golden tickets for fist bump Friday but we also earn um prizes like our assemblies um kids get drawn for things like our beautiful sleds that are over there there they get chosen to play games and then we count up their tickets and they're working towards a 5,000 trimester goal and then we have a big end of trimester party um so last trimester we got the big inflatable movie screen and the kids watched Harold on the Purple Crayon and had popcorn because each grade level earned their 5,000 golden tickets um this year Blackstone and Lincoln brought back grandparents day it had not been around since Co it kind of ended with Co um it was actually a really great success we were worried about parking and having that
008many people in our building um but it was fantastic we had a backdrop set up for grandparents and then invited them to do a scavenger hunt around our building to find different things with their grandparent and then end in our gym with cookies and juice someu Community involvement that Lincoln has done this year um our fourth grade does candy cane sales around Christmas every single year and then they take that money and donate it to a local cause this year they raised $1,149 83 cents I don't know how because the candy canes are 25 cents a piece I don't ask questions um but they donated that to the Mota Area Senior Services um and they brought out the van and showed the kids you know how that Transportation helps people in our community our third
009grade did a canned food drive this year and then each class walked out their donations in a wagon to the um food pantry and they got to learn about how Their donation was helping our community and see how the food pantry was run um so Mrs kefir as we know this is her last year she is retiring and she said the one thing she really wanted to do in her last year was bring back her Musical she said she used to do a musical and she said you know the past couple years fourth grade had been part of the spring program instead and so this year she hosted um Pirates the musical and if you got a chance to see it it was absolutely adorable and so well put together um Mary is a magic
010maker I said you watch him in the gym practicing you're like oh how is this all going to come together and it does because those kids are amazing and Mary's amazing um and it was a great Pres presentation we had it at Mota High School um we're grateful that they allowed us to host that there and it all went fantastic um a little picture of our Christmas here at Lincoln um Santa and Mrs Claus came out and visited each of our classrooms and brought gloves for every single student in our building um and they had little puns and jokes that they were asking the kids as they were going around um but it was a really great thing our kids are still wearing the gloves that Santa brought brought them so I think that's something
011will'll continue next year um and then our intervention and Special Education team hosted a pizza lunch for our students they wanted to have something available because we do have some students who do not celebrate Christmas um and they usually have to like exclude themselves for those activities but they wanted something that our whole school could be part of so um they ordered the pizza with some of our pride money and then they hosted a big Pizza Cafe in our kitchen one or in our cafeteria one day and served the kids and dressed up and it was a great fun experience going into Christmas break um some things that we've been out and about doing this year um we went to the Veterans Day ceremony in Veterans Park um which was very very nice we will
012probably do a better job of preparing our students for the salute next year because the guns going off was alarming to some of them but um we will know to kind of prepare that but they really enjoyed it and learned a lot um our third graders took a trip to the Mota Library where they learned about the services that our library offers the Mota Library also offered our fourth grade class who won the banner contest at the Christmas program the opportunity to make their own story that is going to go into the walk around book in front of the library so Mrs Novak's class is currently working on that and then in the spring that's going to be put into place and then our fourth graders read the movie wild robot and it kind of
013just happened to align with the time when that movie was coming out so they had a chance to go they had a picnic and then went to Princeton movie theater to see the movie Wild robot connection with the novel they were reading um something we started this year that's just been fun and um kind of a reading incentive is the m reader so every single month one of our teachers records themselves with an emoji mask on their face um they choose a children's book that they think um is one of their favorites or has a good message and then we post that video onto YouTube for our families to watch our teachers also show it in their classrooms and then students get a chance to listen to the stories with their families and guess who
014they think the teacher is we use some of the money we make from the book fair to order books for our kids and then we choose one winner from each grade level to get a book if they guessed who the mass reader is correctly so this is m this is Danielle Bitner reading llama llama red pajama and finally just some of the other fun that we've had this year we had our guns and hoses kickball tournament um which it's our fourth grade students versus the fire and police department they come out with their lights and trucks and if you haven't had a chance to watch it it is a really really great Community involvement um this year we've actually had the police out several times during recess they'll be driving around and stop and just
015play play kickball with the kids um and it's kind of nice you know being here central in town and just having that presence and our kids building that Community with our officers is really great um we've had a couple opportunities this year to cheer on our High School cheer on the Trojans so this was when they were going to State we also had a bowler who went to State just recently and our fourth graders lying the sidewalk um he said he didn't want a big whole Community celebration he made that very clear but he'd be okay with the younger ones going out for him so our fourth graders went out and celebrated him and then a picture of all of our old ladies and men on our hundredth day of school um dressed up celebrating
016100 days of learning which is a lot of fun um you know this year it has been a learning year learning my staff learning my students um but I'm just I'm very grateful that we do have a lot of fun in our learning here um and it's a joyful environment and experience so um if you guys ever have any questions about what's going on in Lincoln feel free to stop in and talk thank you yeah um just to build a little bit on on um princi Al alluded to our fast bridge scores um and been having an incentive for that so we'll go we'll continue to go through this this um throughout the year um but you know stop me if you've heard this we've got our winner fast bridge scores in and literally our
017fast Bridge math scores are the highest that 289 has ever had for winter benchmarking scores across all grade levels um and so um our our reading scores are the highest as Co across win benchmarking and so again everything's trending in the right direction which is super positive wanted to take a minute and um go over uh I printed off the thing that I sent you I know that um we' like to have kind of a a a check in on our on our finances and so this is just a real quick um look at at where we are um budgeted Revenue um you know we're projected to be about $900,000 over what we originally budgeted um our expenditures we're uh projecting to be right at what we budgeted for um our budgeted Surplus this year
018was a little under a million um looks like it's going to be closer to 1.8 million this year and then down the bottom is that that m289 in index where we throw all of the funds together and so that kind of gives us a nice stap shot over time you know trying to trying to stay targeted between that kind of 7 and 11 million INE fund balances that we been had that we've had um just a continuation of that of that kind of long-term financial plan that we tried to put together so do you have any questions on any of that to let me know really appreciate it okay consideration the board committee and reports we do have one for committee that will be beginning which is our health insurance committee thats lead to discuss
019the um estimated cost for continuing insurance benefits for the following year it's a collaborative Comm committee including members of the Union Administration and a board member um I've di the last couple years need to continue doing it else wants to join we have two people interest I mean I don't mind I don't mind joining but like I feel like you have already a good understanding of the conversations we've had here of like where that is yeah so I think we talked about Thursday next Thursday at 3 a virtual meeting okay so that works for you okay would like to have as many people person as possible okay you could be a person oh okay he just knows there's no way right for sure somebody's a little bits either way kind of what the preliminary stuff
020looks like and some options was the forget the word we talking about um where many of us can be part of something there you go that's the word probably still not attractive enough not up there um you know and that's but that's one of the that's one of the conversations that would that's might have just have this conversation now is that yeah um so yeah so um I I'd sent something out our numbers look better this year last year was really bad um our renewal increase was in the neighborhood of 25% um Debbie and I sat down with with Wendy at Gallagher um a week or two ago and our numbers are trending a lot better you know if things continue you know optim think that our renewal would be in the neighborhood of 10%
021you know maybe as low as N9 maybe as high as 14 or 15 so some months to put in before we we get get to that point but still 10% on $25 million that's a big number that's a quar of a million dollar increase right um now we don't pay all of that but we pay the vast majority of it we pay you know 80 plus% of that um and so the health insurance committee uh we get together and review the data but then also have some some really good conversations about you know what do we want to do to try to um either increase options mitigate costs um kind of broaden what we're doing one of the things that we want to do is we want to kind of every year um continue to
022add to a foundation of Wellness with with our staff and so um we've been having internal talk we haven't we have I think we've kind of finalized the date we haven't advertised anything but I think at the end of April um we're going to hop on to a program that the high school has had a lot of success with where um basically it's a it's an onsite blood panel it's free of cost and so um hopefully we'll have a a lot of participation with that and that's really good information that that everybody can get you know on their own quick and easy um so we're going to continue to build on things like that you know that's it's all part of the conversation where' you come okay so moving on to 7.1 working cash bonds
023so um we've been talking about this for about half a year now um and so um we're finally finally to the point where we can um get this done Kevin is here all familiar with him and so he's going to give a little update on where he is exactly okay so thank you Brad where we're at with it is uh the bonds are sold we held the bond sale today it went well as expected uh we had some local participation one of your local banks about 20% of the deal actually went local um which is it is cool it is nice when a local institution um State Bank of mota uh is that ring the bell so first state okay yeah I always I always get my first States and my State Banks all over
024the state um they uh stepped up and purchased approximately 20% uh of the bond issue and so it's always nice when we can say that a good chunk of it went and went or stayed stayed local so you may remember we started talking about this process back in late November early December and uh as Brad and I put our heads together we were given um some specific parameters to stay within that took your bond and interest tax rate from 41 cents up a nickel to 46 cents and we wanted to add two years to your profile to your your existing debt footprint so what you're what I'm passing out now is a summary of the bond issue bottom right hand corner summarizes it 3.78% is where we're at with um fond proceeds for construction projects
025of 3,665 th000 when we were standing in front of you in late November early December we were looking around 3.6% at that time with about 3,680 th000 the difference between what we were at where we were at then and where we were at now is just simple Market fluctuation we've seen rates come up a little bit in the marketplace and what that's done is that's eaten into about $20,000 worth of construction proceeds it is what it is it's where the market's at when you're in the when you're in at that time and this is where we're at today just so you uh for a point of comparison the deal we did in the summer of 2023 was over 4% so it was a little over four so compared relatively speaking to where we were at
026then to now rates are coming down some so that's good news so if you look at the far right hand side what you're going to see there is you're going to see that estimated tax rate again we're basing that off of an annual EAB growth of 55% which we believe is obtainable extends your existing footprint out 2 years as you'll look at this page there's a lot of numbers here but the existing levies so the column right in the middle that says existing levies those your prior bonds right and then to the right of that now we have the new plus the old which runs it out those extra couple of years and so that's a footprint and the parameters that we wanted to operate within for this bond issue getting 3.78% generating a little
027over 3.6 million in bond proceeds for construction use um closing on the bond issue is scheduled for March 11th so March 11th is when we would look to close on that to do anything it's all done electronically and remotely but that's when we would wire the bond proceeds to the district to be deposited into the working cash fund so between now and then just some procedural steps will take place between our back office and the administration in coordinating those efforts getting proper wire instructions and so forth for the deposit of those funds now to make it official we have to pass a resolution right we've got to have a resolution pass that calls for the extension and collection of these levies that we've got zeroed in here or that we've got um structured in the
028deal here and so the resolution then uh will make that final so I'm going to pass this out so this is the same resolution that I had forwarded to you but the draft didn't have some of the blanks filled in because the actual sale hadn't happen correct so so you filled in the blanks uh I did not fill in the blanks Chapman and Cutler did your District bond attorney filled in the blanks and they provided the resolution um yeah it's you know it's um just as a kind of a quick aside it's really kind of a an amazing process um you know Chapman and Cutler is basically the the foremost attorney group that handles Bond issues in Illinois probably kind of in the mid west I don't think they just work in Illinois no they
029work in correct they they've got they're really big in California they're big in um Utah of all places Illinois and then also uh of all places uh South Carolina so they are in the midwest but they are the foremost in Illinois and so and so you do a ton of work with these with these Finance La years um we even go through the process of we have to prepare statements for and have um a lengthy phone interview with the people of booies in order to get a bond rating so and so we're a rated um A1 A1 like the steak sauce A1 and don't sure change yourself because A1 is better than a so I want to make sure you uh you guys need to not to interrupt on that but uh you should B
030yourself on the back because that helps drive that rate down A1 is a very very respectable rating for uh a school district and so what that does is that tells the investing Universe when they see the report by Moody that says this District they're assigning an unbiased credit score if you will to the mandota school district with an A1 rating that tells the investors that all right these guys know what they're doing legit and you know they're not going to default on their payment and so you should pat yourself on the back because they don't throw those A1 ratings around uh to just anybody so that's a testament to the Le leadership and the administration on doing the right thing so I do want to take a moment and congratulate you on that because that
031is a big deal we should be proud of that anyway yeah and so just to kind of reassure you this is I know that what you see is just oh here's a resolution in in front of you but the countless hours and countless um attorneys yeah um go into the creation of these documents to be able to to matriculate it through because when you think about it in the larger picture you know a bond you know is subject to you know the SEC and all the you know Regulatory Agencies and if things aren't done exactly right then Bond Brokers they can not only get in trouble they can have huge SEC fines as a matter of fact the the bond broker that we used a decade or so ago no longer exists because of sec
032and so and so a lot of a lot of time and care and goes into making sure that all of the te are across and eyes correct and and all that all that to say we we we stand up here and make the process sound oh it's very simple and there's not a whole lot that goes on but make no mistake about it it is there's a lot that goes on behind the scenes we try to keep it you know 10,000 foot level rather than drill down to all the boring IRS language that I'm sure you have no interest in understanding or reading or wanting to know about but um we're PR to answer those questions and deal with it if necessary in the resolution I do want to point out flip to page 16
033for me if you would please I just want you to see that on page 16 those are the levies these are the levies that will be on file that we're adding to the mix and I want to draw that I'm drawing your attention to that only so you can compare to the summary page of the of the onepage handout that I gave you just so you know that what I'm telling you on the onepage handout matches what's in the resolution so you're going to see that 21933 23 know 233 500 all the way down down to 18091 125 so I just want you to know that we're adding to that the levies that we talked about and then with regards to the 3 m 665,000 that number in here is going to be on page
034I had it earlier and I lost it that number in here is going to be on page 14 so if you go back to page 14 under the sale of bonds it says you're delivering the bonds to us and we're giving you basically 3,667 th000 difference in that just a little bit of rounding that um we have built in there so 3,667 th000 is what we're basically buying the bonds from us so those numbers line up uh and so what happens is assuming that um we're happy with where things are at they are in line with what we've been talking about since we started talking about this process uh then we would just need a motion for the resolution second and then a roll call and then that'll officially lock everything in and I believe
035there's in anticipation of that a little signing party that'll need to take place for a couple of officers for just a few minutes post meeting now in this or somewhere does it say like you talked about like First State Bank like purchasing a percentage do we have like that like those lists of no purchasers or do no it's just it's just me contacting my back office saying hey who bought it and uh sometimes did just Mom and Pop Smith sometime some somewhere sometimes it's a local institution generally speaking when it's local institution we'll name who it is but outside of that we typically don't disclose who the who the purchasers are good question though yeah good question while we have you here can you just quick give the like short version of when we would
036consider because I know we keep issuing in like the twoyear cycle but understanding a little bit about like restructuring and by capacity a little bit Yeah so from a restructuring standpoint when I hear the word restructure or when we use the term restructure when we're dealing with Bond issues we're usually talking about doing that for one of two reasons one would be to refinance some old debt that's the books take it take out old debt at a higher rate replace it with new debt at a lower rate sometimes we restructure for that purpose a second reason we restructure would be for tax rate management purposes and sometimes it's both sometimes you're able to refy and you know manage your overall tax rate what I mean by manag your tax rate is is if you wanted
037to do new money but you did not want that tax rate to go up sometimes you have to reshuffle the deck that's currently in place in order to make room for the New Deal to keep your tax rate at a certain or stable level so from a restructure for interest savings so refi to save money none of the because the bond issues that the district has are so short term they don't have the ability to have that option so they're what we call non-callable or in layman's terms non prepay generally speaking when bonds are issued this isn't just in Illinois it's usually across the country but generally speaking when investors invest money into purchasing a bond they want to know that they're going to be guaranteed that payment stream for at least a certain period
038of time the generally accepted practice or rule of thumb behind that is about 10 years so it is not at all uncommon to see deals that are on the books between 1 and 10 years to have no prepayment provision or the ability to restructure for economic gain anything beyond that so longterm you know 12 15 20e deals which you would do if you were doing a sizable building project or expansion or something that you would really needed to amortise out that length of time then you would that option built into that where you would have the ability to exercise an option to refinance or um or uh for economic game so from your standpoint the restructure for that purpose isn't going to be in existence we don't have that built into here could you do
039it yes but instead of paying 378 you might be paying four and a half or 5% because an investor is going to say there's a chance I'm going to get dumped in my lap this money I need a little premium on top of that or a little more um uh you know sugar in the coffeee so to speak um now restructuring for tax rate management purposes don't see the need to do that because your profiles so short um from a debt limit standpoint I don't have those specific figures in front of me but I know you're working cash capacity is well over you know three and a half million it's probably four or5 million or so if I remember right so you're well under that your debt capacity uh I can calculate that real quick
040you gave it to us last yeah 6.9% of your eav it's healthy oh it's more than healthy yeah and again that help helps that helps translate to that A1 credit rating they look at your debt profile how fast are you paying your debt off you were um kind of in rare error what I mean by that is is you have you have annual levies of1 A5 million dollar or so on the books you can do a lot with that and keep your debt profile very short whereas other issuers they may not have that and so they have to stretch it out 12 or 15 years to accomplish what you're trying to accomplish and what you're able to accomplish in such a short period time and so obviously you want to do your best to try
041to keep your tax rate at a nice stable level it also helps when we every couple of years capture or capitalize on that EAB growth right by Design we're trying to Target systematically every couple of years what that EAB growth is which allows us then over a short time frame like you have your debt on the books build to manage that tax rate better as opposed to locking it in for 10 years and then doing nothing you see that eav in year one before 46 cents and then by the time you get to year 10 it's down to 30 cents because your eabs continue to go up but you should all be able to sleep very well at night knowing that you have a very short debt profile you're not even really scratching the surface
042of what your legal borrowing capacity is and you still have maximum flexibility so if you needed to come back you know in a couple of years you have more than enough um capacity to be able to do that even even after this the amount um that we could just in working cash which is just one fund um we still have two or three million in that liit in the course every year that as we go through we'll pay that down a million and when you look at our total capacity our total capacity in the neighborhood of $20 million right and this and really our total debt R after after we approve this which will be at our at our highest debt then we'll start to pay down again but it 5 million out of that
043to 20 20 million the aage 6.9% of your I forgot the e columns right there 6.9% of your eav is basically $20 million so again you're very very um well under that debt umbrella and even then the other thing we look at is how fast are you paying it off and you're paying it off at a very rapid rate of debt acceleration which also helps as well sure any okay thank you so much you're welcome thank you so we will make the motion do you want us to use the resolution on this larger packet or the one that was in like is this 3 505 the number tonight yes please use that one all right be the resolution top of the I move to approve the resolution and then I read this to providing for
044the issue of 3,55 th000 General obligation School bonds series 2025 of community Consolidated School District number 289 Lal Lee and Bureau counties Illinois for the purp of inreasing the working cash fund of said School District providing for the levy of a direct annual tax to pay the principal and interest on said bonds and authorizing the sale of said bonds to Bernard Securities in second Williams yes esposa yes Trader yes C yes Landers yes uh yes all right we do not need to do 72 we need to move to item 7.3 can you give us a quick explanation of this annual yeah for sure this is this just an annual document that um is generated by um the program that tracks all of our evaluations um every year we'll require by law to um produce a
045riff seniority list which basically has all of our teachers um grouped by their evaluation scores in combination with their seniority basically how long they' been and so um the reason that it's it's mandatory and on the books is in the case that you would have to do a reduction in force Rift it's the list that you would have to go off of in order of who who would get Rift first so all right we have motion make motion to approve the ri presented yes randers yes pass yes Trader yes Spinosa yes Williams yes um as a reminder the next board meeting is at North Brook March 20th second all in favor all right thank you all thanks everybody thanks thanks