001today we're at a robot Rumble where we have probably about 50 robots I believe it's about 14 15 different high schools here all competing and there was about 300 kids here as well and uh kids design robots for a few months then they come out here to battle them together I think there's four major four or five major robots so there's a Pneumatic flipper then there's a horizontal and vertical spinner which is just a piece of metal that spins really fast or there's a pusher or there's a drum fast metal or you flip people oh my favorite part is the competition day here it doesn't matter if you spend like $11,000 on your robot or 3,000 anything can go wrong like right now we just lost our batteries came off and we lost the whole
002round because of that but you know we get that we're going to put it better and we're going to win the next one so even though the competition is only 2 days there's probably about four or 5 months of a building process that goes into it and we manufacture everything ourselves so we cut all the metal all the polycarb whatever else do all the electronics it's pretty labor intensive but at the end you learn a lot and it's really [Applause] fun so when I began I didn't know how to use any power tools I didn't know how to use any of the machines there but now I know a lot more than from what I knew in the beginning I think even if you think it might not be for you give it a shot
003just go in for a couple meetings and see if you like it or not spatula driveing foot long into the corner My Hope Is that long with robotics from what I learn and what I can use for future applications that can help me get into a good school and get a good education I think my favorite part is really the beginning of robots and just seeing all the kids excitement and you're just so jacked to be here and U you know seeing all their hard work come to for rition test one 2 3 ice cream I've had fantastic teachers throughout my entire education career which kind of just persuaded me to become a teacher like the support throughout all the schools I've been at um has been fantastic and just led me to where I
004am now especially with being a culinary teacher I always loved to bake and cook and it took you know my passions and then me also wanting to work with kids and combined it into two and just been fantastic someone did the chocolate Tri measured um you can add a little bit more if you would like growing up I went to prospect um coming back here has been fantastic I feel all the support from everyone in the building students and staff overall um it's just been great it's been a great experience especially being so young 10 seconds turn it off Andra it down yeah cuz you don't want to over mix it being a culinary teacher is so fun um the kids are so Lively it's a very unique experience obviously cuz the kids are always
005up and moving the kids cook every day I think it's a nice break too for for them um because obviously they're not sitting down for the full 80 minutes they're up doing things they're learning life skills so I switched my major during my college Years I switched from elementary Ed to secondary Ed um dual credit allowed me to do that I did multiple dual credit classes in high school throughout a whole range of different things they helped a ton they saved me a bunch of time and money if I didn't have those dual credit classes I would still be in college right now rather than teaching because I would have been in college an extra year but the Dual credit classes saved me and in the long run they helped me so much and helped
006me jump start my career oh yeah I encourage all students to take any of these dual credit classes or internships because they helped me so much and helped me fulfill my career dreams and I hope that it will do the same for all the students that's good [Music] and away we go this school year in our Advanced Diagnostics and our vocational class we're going to be building this uh electric car from the switch EV and students are really excited about this and it's going to be a great learning opportunity for them you want it under this oh I think over putting this car together was so cool because it's just a great learning experience and you're able to be a Hands-On building a car from scratch basically just a frame and now you're seeing more
007electric cars on the road today and so it's a good good skill to know good skill to have you can fix your own cars don't have to pay so much Mike K did all the wiring with Isaac and a couple other students did help as well and uh they knocked it out of the park they really did I I'm I'm pull away I really am with uh what they had accomplished U my part I did most of the electrical work just like putting all the components together hooking all the wires up you know Cable Management make it all look nice my dad taught me a little bit uh it's most of it just kind of like from experience just watching uh videos online about Electronics you know making my own projects through this project helping
008me become a better engineer because I'll understand the systems and you get to see all the flaws in this like they put powder coat on the holes and then you had to tap them out so it's helping me in like in an engineering like design process whereas it's more testing and prototyping to get the right result doesn't just come the first time takes time and effort and I would say I have a better understanding of components to go into an entire mechanical [Music] System since I like Electronics as much I made something for the the holiday season this year I made a it's like a controller it's like 24 outputs so just you can plug in 24 separate channels like sets of light into them and they can they chase around they Flash in different
009ways all right so I actually I I won an award this year from the city of elro Village quite the accomplishment to have one award from it it's entirety of elro Village which is even more impressive out of like 30,000 something people I I won the award and away we go so now that the car is built uh our next step is going to be working in the textbook working on lab activities and getting the students to uh actually do some Hands-On learning with this vehicle our first visit is going to be to Mr B here gentleman who made this happen hey Jeff how you doing good are you in your office no oh okay no uh I'm I'm in the electric car right outside your office here in the window well we tried to
010pay a visit to Mr burrett and Mr Kelly but they're uh they're out at a meeting right now it actually rides really nice it really does acceleration is good the handling is good uh it's going to be interesting when the students get to drive it the be their first vehicle they have driven without power steering let's see how really good the suspension is all right Mr Z is great great teacher great guy and thank you to d24 for sponsoring this I'm very grateful to have Mr Z as my Ault teacher he's he's always Cooperative even when I'm not not the best student he's always he's always Cooperative I'm I'm just thankful for all that he does for us and being just being an awesome teacher in general I am super proud of the kids and
011what they have accomplished this learning opportunity it really is is amazing uh what I I'm really excited for is is the memories that uh We've made for these students uh they're going to never forget this project the rest of their life Welcome to the student services area of our school that's going to be under construction for the next four to 5 months so this whole area will be redone and gutted kind of from the inside out I'm Katie Katie's a sophomore here at elgrove is in our media pathway and we'll be shadowing and helping us documenting this process so this mail room this is an original space where we used to have The copier as well as where teachers got their mail every day we have now redistributed mail and this will no longer be
012here in the future be our health services area that will have two um offices for our nurses as well as four beds a large waiting area exam room and to ensure that all of our students are served and supported when they're not feeling well so moving on we're going to be going into um currently what's our security attendance uh dhw area also known as Deans so this is where your student would check in if they were either late or leaving for the day to check attendance this is also where the Deans are um if you've had any inter um interactions with student Behavior this is where they would go this area will be very similar to what it feels like now the Deans will still be here but um this will be different as it
013is going to be part of uh the the health services area and going to be a kitchen at for staff here's a relic from the past this big large Vault that I think all the schools have this is no longer going to be here it's currently kind of a large storage area but we're going to be taking this Vault out moving on we have some other offices that we're going to be pack passing by these will be uh become the registar the master scheduler and then uh the associate principal of student services so if you need to register or uh get a transcript this is the area that you will be coming to on this side this is going to be currently this is the College and Career Center this is going to be reimagined
014into a much different type look and feel it's going to Anchor this area and it's going to be an all glass room that's really going to be able to serve our students in many different ways whether it's visiting a college investigating a career or even having a large group meeting that'll be like where we're standing right now from here on out this is where all of our counselors and support staff work this will look and feel very different the offices will be moved to this side of the space and this wall will be all glass with entrances into the courtyard it feels very dark and closed in so we want to ensure that um it doesn't feel that way anymore and we can have lots of bright light and a really soothing and therapeutic environment
015for students and staff all of our counselors will be organized in a different way now it's organized in the Pod style so they're going to have they're grouped by two counselors and two related service for each of the grade levels so we'll have a freshman pod that's going to be grouped together sophomore juniors seniors so their offices will be all together and so that's what this whole area will be will be those different groups of pods along with a small meeting room for those offices to use and then we're finally entering the end of the end of the hallway and going into the former Health Services office this will now be offices for the Freshman pod this will look and feel totally different we're also excited to improve this entrance to our school so this
016will I hope match the foyer of uh door one and have a little more grandiose uh feel and and welcome it'll showcase our students and our staff and the things that we value here at El grve High School kick by Robbie Gold and noan to the upright and it's like as a kicker it's like it's awesome to think about him as a coach and now that it's really happening I'm really excited kick down the middle and good 49ers win it feels good seeing someone that played in the NFL and is now going to be our coach just made me feel inspired kick on the way down the middle and gold is good at the buzzer Robbie Gold here your new head football coach at rolling medals high school I'm super excited cuz I got a
017chance to meet the staff and the kids and and to school Community leaders I'm looking forward just to be able to get in the building and start working with the coaches and and the players and and the school Community some of the Mustangs guys get this place rocking everybody at at Roy Meadows it's just a lot of uh kind of Star Struck this but I think people have kind of settled into it a little bit and um I think everyone's just really excited and really hopeful what for what the team is going to be able to do next year oh my days is unbelievable kind of like a dream come true I didn't really believe that this was going to happen you know I thought it was like just rumors and we like get like
018some other coach but no this is really a really cool experience I think this is a perfect opportunity for for me uh to give back in the way the coaches did for me to get to where I was able to have a lot of fun playing sports and to me I can't see myself in a way where I can't be able to do that here for these kids and then if you turn on the film for these kids uh one thing you're going to notice is they have a lot of grit they have a lot of physicality they love and have a passion for football and when you see that that should get you excited about a program like William meow the reason why I'm here is cuz you know ever since I was little
019I started doing construction you know that's what I want to do as my future the career path I want to take probably end up going to Roofing trade school what I really like about uh construction is seeing the finished product uh it looks looks very nice and it's all worth it once you know you see it all come together through the apprenticeship program uh we actually offered some work over the early summer um on this house we had a handful of apprentices join us and work on the laundry room and the uh front porch Oscar was one of those apprentices who joined us and the work ethic he showed and the skill he's shown in last year in pack and that uh that summer opportunity really made us want to bring him on the site
020kind of to help run Crews you know especially as the walls go up so it's great to be able to you know Empower him to be in charge of other students and he's been a great help to us here on the site to keep things moving along so today uh I was tackling the bathroom um Mr J told me that uh we need to get it done ASAP so we're getting it done ASAP as uh as you could see my apprenti at fors view it was uh education for Thursday April 11th 2024 can the secretary please call the wall dling here fito here heinan here Palmer here Ral Walker here and ker present we have a quorum thank you could everyone please stand for the Pledge of Allegiance I pledge alce to the flag of
021the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands Nation God indivisible with liy and justice for all I was waiting for Mark to turn thank you can I have a motion for approval of the agenda as presented so moved second there's been a motion in a second please call the RO fito yes Walker yes dling yes heinan I Palmer I and kitzer I motion carries 60 thank you can I have approval of the minutes for March 14th and March 21st both open and Clos can I have a motion in a second please so moved second been a motion in a second please call a roll hmer I hinan hi dling yes fito yes Walker yes and quiter I motion carry 60 okay if you just give me a second here next
022on the agenda is public comments and we do have one person that has signed up the Board of Education the district value comments from the community at our meetings as well as emails we appreciate everyone appearing before the board and treat all with courtesy and respect the Board of Education asks each person to please limit all of their comments to 3 minutes however if several people want to address the board on similar topics the board president May limit the time to 2 minutes per person the public comments agenda item will be the only time that the Board of Education will hear public comments during meetings although comments may be made on almost any matter related to the operation of schools comments will not be allowed identifying individual students or staff members as this is the
023Board of Education business meeting the board practices not to respond to public comments or questions at this time because this is not an open-ended Forum however we do listen carefully if requested a written response will be provided please ensure that Miss Keats has your full name and address on the signup sheet to be fair and consistent to all addressing the board the same protocols and procedures must be in place on the podium is a green light that indicate your time has started yellow light indicates 30 seconds remaining and red light indicates 3 minutes have expired so when I call your name please come forward to the microphone and clearly state your name for the minutes I have one person that signed up Elizabeth Bower please come forward thank you thank you you may begin hi
024everyone um Elizabeth Bower a grab bag of topics for tonight uh first of all wanted to read you the description of of your summer school class on Latina studies this course is open to everyone learn about Latina contributions to US History while also learning and practicing taking care of the South mind body and soul we will also jump into pop culture discussing topics like Bad Bunny Tick Tock and Latina podcasting students will also have a choice about the topics we will finish with students will leave feeling empowered in their identity regardless of whether or not they identify as Latina I think that's great I just want to applaud that I don't know how it'll play out but it sounds like it's intended to be inclusive and I really appreciate it second my youngest son is
025gearing up for college applications in the fall so I'm also reading up as a mom as you all know the state of Illinois and its infinite wisdom has legislated that public colleges in Illinois must accept a exam scores of a three or higher but at least at the University of Illinois many of those threes count for little more than a few elective credits which might help in programs with a lot of elective credits but don't really meet actual degree requirements sometimes even fours don't count for much and you need a five to get credit for an actual class in European history economics psychology and world history maybe a few others I missed for American history which seems to be one of the most popular AP classes the University of Illinois doesn't Grant class specific credit
026regardless of score however as I understand it at one of the district schools the econ teacher has found a way to ensure students get true credit for the class and that's to teach it as both an AP an AP and a dual credit class so I'd like to ask you to expand use of dual credit opportunities to a wider range of classes which are now just AP classes to ensure students get the benefits that they've earned third it has been in the news that the state of Illinois is switching from the SAT and college board exams back to the ACT which might be a fine decision in terms of cost Effectiveness and who knows whether the new or old exams are better but it'll ruin the ability of parents or the Community to know whether
027the local schools of the district is getting better or worse from year to year you all like to think of yourselves As Leaders so I'd like to challenge you to show some leadership and come up with ways to measure and communicate to the community student achievement which aren't dependent on the state and the state legislation oh sorry about that um and which do a better job of measuring student learning finally I know there are folks in the community who are engaging in a new push to get students to relent and agree to support low tax valuations for the former Arlington Park property so as to ensure the Bears relocate here rather than staying in Chicago and this is absurd the only reason why the Bears are now talking up a new stadium in the city
028is they think they can get some tax subsidies and because the lighthouse has now raised the or the white socks have now raised this tax subsidy conversation um but please stay the course this is a billion dollar game with big players this is not for this district 214 to start throwing money into it thank you that will roll right into our next subject uh Dr Ro please all right it certainly will thank you Mrs Balor for teeing that up for me um so it's been about a year since um since we heard well about a year for a lot of things actually about a year ago was my approval meeting I uh been celebrating super excited to be a part of district 214 but at at that same meeting we heard from from erist delanis
029and and John Dunn of Ken and and franic on our efforts and and and the board was was in the in the midst of of bringing these two groups on to ensure that the school district's interest had a seat at the table so uh it's been a year since you've done so um Aris is with us tonight as our tax attorney Who provided guidance through the process of our discussions surrounding the tax conversations Matt glavin of Coen serves as one of the lobbyists the district has hired in support of potential pilot legislation in Springfield uh throughout the past year um I and the other two School District uh leaders have remained in regular contact with both Eris and Matt and wanted the board to provide you with a more formal update as to what's going
030on um as a lot of conversation has been in the media and a lot of that is not necessarily accurate so we want to provide you with a very accurate uh summary of what our efforts have been and and and the conversations with the village as well as the Chicago Bears I welcome Eris and and Matt to the podium and they have a brief presentation that they will share and then we'll be happy to answer any questions and and discuss the topic uh good evening members of the board members of the administration my name is erist Alanis from the franic law firm this is Matt glavin from Ken o Conor uh thanks for having us here for an update legal and legislative update on the Arlington Park Redevelopment uh we have four topics we wanted
031talk about tonight uh that would be uh an up a status update on the uh property tax assessment a discussion of the memorandum of understanding I'll cover those two and then Matt's going to cover the legislative proposals and the political landscape so I want to orient everyone just so we all know what we're talking about here so here's a an overview of the Arlington Park site showing the the major tax Parcels I've highlighted four of them there's actually a fifth a tiny little parcel the biggest parcel is the one in blue that's located within the boundaries of district 214 directly to the north is the second largest one that's in the boundaries of District 211 and district 15 uh the green parcel that's also District uh 15 and 211 and then the yellow rectangle is
032district 214 and 15 there is a fifth parcel directly above the green rectangle which I didn't flag it's like a little sliver and it wouldn't even be noticeable if it were there but there are five tax Parcels in total and this is a 326 acre parcel uh within the village of of Arlington Heights so uh next slide please uh there's been a lot of numbers talked about and so I wanted to just give you sort of the Salient figures so you know obviously one number that is a fact is the purchase price for the Bears they acquired the property for $197 million and February of last year it's when the closing was it's our understanding that the property was under contract from September of 2021 there are several appraisals out there uh the school district
033commission two appraisals one as of January 1st 2022 at 150 million a second as of January 1st 23 at 160 million the Bears have provided two appraisals both with a 1123 data value 60 million and 71.7 uh the two adjudicated values for the property so the board of reviews final assessment market value for 22 was 95 million that that was via settlement with Church Hill Downs the prior owner of the property and then the second one is the one that recently came out for 2023 at at plus or minus 125 million that's with the Chicago Bears football club and that was not via a settlement that was decided by the board of review after a a board of review hearing and so uh those are the various value indications uh I do want to talk
034about sort of the message Ing we were getting from day one and and I'm going to Define day one as April 18th of 2023 uh that's when we had a meeting over at Kimble Hill School uh it's one of the district 15 schools uh kenart was there Scott's predecessor and with law the interims um Lorie Hines Lisa small Pat MGI was there and uh Matt and John Dunn myself Scott metf representatives from the village representatives from the Bears including George masy Kevin War their CFO their then general counsel Etc so uh it was it was a very positive meeting it was really more of a meet and greet but the messaging from that day forward has always been the Bears were looking for long-term property tax certainty that was their objective and they said they
035did not want to pay more than $5 million a year in property taxes so that is sort of the premise for a lot of the discussions that we have had uh since then next slide so really the the the dialogue began on on May 4th uh the school districts received a letter from Kevin Warren uh districts responded on May 12th uh that letter from Mr Warren was offering a market value of $ 52.5 million for the property in terms of assessment as of 1123 and 1124 uh and then there there are some gaps in this chronology I'm not giving you every single conversation every teams meeting every get together uh but in July we did get our appr completed and and turn that over to the Cook County Assessor and to the Bears attorneys uh
036during these months we were meeting with uh the Village of Arlington Heights about a memorandum of understanding which I'll talk about a little bit more in detail but those were productive meetings The Village has been a a good partner I think to the school districts in engaging in that process to develop theou uh we received the Bears appraisals on uh December 22nd and then really the the in Earnest a lot of the discussion regarding what the assessment could be for 23 and and hopefully subsequent years began in January so uh we the school districts made a five-year offer to the Bears would be for 23 through 27 uh that would have set the market value at 140 million and provided an average tax bill to the Bears of $5.2 million so that was rejected uh
0373 days later uh we offer $135 million for that same 5-year period that would have met them where they said they wanted to be which was an average tax bill of $5 million higher in 23 because the level of assessment was higher significantly lower in 24 25 26 and 27 uh next slide be mind if I interrupt you and just asked the question why was why can you explain why the level of assessment is higher in 2023 is that really seems to be a sticking point where misinformation has been absolutely so uh Cook County out of the 102 counties in Illinois only Cook County classifies property based on the type of property it is if you own a home in Lake County DuPage down in Carbondale everything is assessed at 33 and A3 of fair
038cash value and that's what the Illinois constitution says is property shall be assessed at 33 and A3 of fair cash value however it says in a county with a population of greater than 200,000 people you can have a classification ordinance so in 1973 Cook County created a classification ordinance to classify with residential property which is class two at a lower level of assessment vacant land at a lower level commercial industrial and apartments at higher levels so as that ordinance has been in place it's evolved over the years but since 2009 vacant land is assessed at 10% improved land so uh a commercial building a warehouse a data center that's a 25% so for years and years and years the Arlington Park site has been assessed as commercial land at the 25% level of assessment what
039the Bears did last year in order to reduce it down to a vacant land assessment is beginning in May or June they they commenced a demolition of all the improvements my understanding is they finish that up by the end of the year and there's an expectation that probably for 24 the the assessor is going to revisit his 25% commercial level of assessment and change it to the 10% vacant land level of assessment we don't know that that's happening but no one would be surprised if that actually happened and that's been one of the sticking points of the conversation is is obviously at a 25% assessment 2023 is going to have to be a higher tax payment because 25 and 10 it's just a simple math and I think it it it's needs to be known
040it's not the school district never opposed whatever level of uh of assessment was given to the property the the county assessor is the loan person that may place that um that that label on on the property and they said under n circum terms there will be 25% end of story so even if we wanted to say it should be 10 it's not our call and I think that's that's just an important point I think that that we need to understand is is we can't really achieve a sub 500 or sub5 million tax bill at 25% without the total valuation of the property going very very low and we'll go into detail as to why that would be bad for a school district and why that's why we've had to to stick on this and why
041it's been become an issue because the overall valuation is of extreme importance to us yeah and Dr R that leads to a real good point not only do the school districts not set the level of assessment the school districts nor any other taxing body don't set the assessment the Cook County Assessor sets the assess ment so for 2022 he set the value at around 195 million he did the same thing for 2023 he set it at about 195 million the board of review in 22 reduced it via the settlement we reached with Church Hill Downs we were unable to reach a settlement in 23 the board of review did what it does which is it held a hearing its analysts evaluated all the evidence and they landed on 125 million at the 25% level of
042assessment because the board of review cannot change the of assessment either they live with the level of assessment that the assessor places on the property so that thank you for that that backstory uh so we decided to do an in-person meeting uh we actually met in that room right over there on Friday uh January 26th uh the three superintendents uh folks from the Bears uh myself uh Scott metf and really tried to talk about you know how do we get this thing done because the board of review hearing was on Tuesday the 30th so literally 4 days later and so uh they came to us with an offer uh market value of 84 million and so that would be about an assessment of about 21 million that's at the 25% level and then increase the
043market value to 125 in 24 but at the 10% level that get you an average tax bill of about 4.8 million districts said you know that's beyond the the low end of authority that we had and looked at Alternatives so 110 and 140 average tax bill of 5.95 115 and 135 average tax bill of 6.1 million and so you might be asking like why 135 why 140 so the value that is set for these years is going to have precedential value for when the pilot base is frozen and the Tiff base is frozen so these numbers are not sort of abstract numbers that can be uh something other than what might set a path for the future and we'll we'll talk about it a little bit later but the the valuation on this property is
044really all you're going to see for the duration of a tiff for the duration of the pilot you know once it's frozen your tax base is really your sources of revenue rather are the property tax that's where you're getting probably a little bit of ebf probably a demim amount of federal money but it's almost all the local property tax as that property develops on the pilot side the benefit really would be for the Bears because they aren't paying taxes above this low level all the value that's created are taxes they don't pay on the Tiff side it's the village that'll benefit as the increment grows there's additional money that flood floods into that Tiff fund and can be used for Tiff eligible expenses so I think it's important to to state that we've been very
045clear from the beginning with with the Chicago Bears and the village that we're not opposed to a tiff in the area because we Rec recogniz all of the infrastructure that the village must build in order for this to happen from roads to the Sewer to uh just the the updates on um on the the just infrastructure all over and then in addition the pilot that's necessary for the stadium like we recognize we're not going to see the windfall of money that that that people seem to think we're going to see for 40 years period and and so we don't get sales tax sales tax does not come to school districts it's only property Tech so the base valuation is so important because for the next 40 years that's that's the source of any income we
046get for whatever expansion we may have to have um the visuals are all that we have of what the vs Bears have given us which is the conceptual picture they gave at the meeting uh at hery uh before this this meeting last April and and that was estimated it by just by the the naked eye of 300 to 400 students potentially well all of these students are going to Rolling Meadows so 3 to 400 students at Rolling Meadows puts Rolling Meadows Beyond capacity which means an expansion well do we have land at Rolling Meadows to expand we do not um and as Dr Hines you know noted last night in their board meeting they've Rec currently going through a uh an expansion with a referendum they had passed and it's about $1.5 million for every
047classroom so 3 to 400 high school students is not a single classroom like an elementary school we're talking in multiple classrooms and and access of students that are in need in our in our Pathways so CTE equipment it just it's mind-blowing what this could cost she estimated 50 to 75 million for new elementary school high schools are 100 plus million for for new new high schools so uh it's they're real dollars and it's it's a real concern in addition to um an $800 million of capital Improvement needs that we already know we have for our other schools and it's not me saying that that you know crying poor by any means we're a well-resourced district but these are real dollars that a flat tax for 40 years that's a very very minimal amount of money
048just won't support So theou Becomes of of even more importance and and the base valuation in Springfield matters a great deal to us we you know we're not going to receive a windfall of money for 40 years and we're okay with that but we do have to educate our children that's the point of of the angle that we've played this entire time it's about our students and ensuring that our that the backs of the Arlington Heights residents are not footing additional bills when the Bears are getting a sweetheart tax deal and another Point kind of building on that as you'll recall about a year ago Dr art was here as the interim and he had firsthand experience on what happened to District 300 with that Sears Eda and that turned out and Linda knows that
049turned out very negatively for District 300 they really did not approach it in in a way that was protective of the district and it was uh not generating the property tax revenue even close that it should have been ultimately it's failed obviously you know the fencing is up out there to to demo the whole thing but it was really a disaster for District 300 and Ken art made the point that you need to look carefully at this and to the student generation that Dr Ro mentioned that's not us looking at the drawings that's a land planner hired by the school districts looking at student generation based on the mix of units one two three bedrooms multi-story row houses Etc so these are real numbers based on the only visuals we have which is the the
050the imagery that came out from that hery meeting so so let's go uh forward a little further uh the the Bears asked for the weekend to review the alternative offers the school districts had uh next slide please we did get a call uh Scott and I got a call Monday morning the 29th uh bear said hey we're rejecting the school district offer and they made no counter offer uh the next day the 30th was the board of review hearing several weeks later the board issues its initial decision of no change meaning they didn't change the assessment at all they left it where it was at that 195 million market value uh we got a call then on the afternoon of the 16th uh boards I'm sorry the Bears rather simply re offered some proposals that
051the school districts had previously looked at and had rejected uh few days later uh March February 22nd board of review issued its final decision that was the final decision Palatine Township closed that day all assessments were complete and then 5 days later uh at a village board meeting the The Village uh rolled out its settlement proposal for the property uh which you know obviously that's kind of five days too late once uh the Palatine Township had been closed by the board of review so so now what we have learned is the Bears have filed an appeal at the Illinois property tax appeal board uh if you look at what the current assessment is and you look at what they're requesting current assessment is around 31 million that gets you divided by 0.25 to roughly 125
052million their requested assessment is 6 million the Delta there is about 25 million so overall among the five Parcels the refund would be about $7.2 million uh next slide please on a more granular level you can see the five Parcels like I said earlier all five are in district 15 uh three of the five are in District 211 the big one that had been outlined in blue is in district 214 uh that's the one with the refund potential of a little over 4.8 million in the aggregate the refund exposure is a little over 7.2 um based on you know we don't have a final Equalization factor for 23 we don't have a final tax rate but if you use the prior year Equalization prior year tax rate Bears will pay about $8.9 million this year
053on that property they are saying they should only pay about 1.7 million based on the complaint that they filed with the property tax appeal board so so sis could you would you mind explaining what what that means by uh refund yeah and where is that who who's refunding the Bears should they win this PAB yeah so I mean as they have requested it the refund comes from the local taxing bodies and who funds you your taxpayers so the refunds really coming from homeowners small business owners every other property taxpayer within the boundaries of 21415 and 211 is going to pay this refund so just based on what their claim is district 15 would pay a refund of around 2.7 million District 214's refund would be about 1.23 five 211 it's smaller it's about 566 The
054Village's refund would be about 725,000 so this is what they are claiming they are claiming they are entitled now to $7.2 million back and that they should only be paying about 1.7 million on this property so those are the facts ah yeah okay wow next Millie yeah I'm sorry could you go through those refund numbers that add up to 7.2 again and tell us what our exposure as a district is on that yeah so if you want to just go line by line like that first parcel that's the one I didn't put on the map because it's tiny if they got what they wanted the refund on that parcel would be $1,397 okay and then the next one is also in districts 15 and 211 that's a bigger property refund on that one would be
0551.75 million the next one uh this is the yellow rectangular part it's in district 214 boundary at the Bear's requested assessment the refund would be 321,000 and then the large sort of oddly shaped blue bordered property the refund the Bears would receive would be about 4.8 million and then that that greenish property on the far west side about 329 so if you add all those up you get to 7,244 544 and out of the 214 refunded amount ounts how much of that comes from the school district itself according to my math of that 7.2 million the district would be on the hook for re refunding 1. 235 million and that's because those dollars went a variety of places they've already been paid oh they they've already been paid and we would have to reimburse yeah
056so the remedy really at property at the PAB or had they chosen to go to circuit court and they chose to go to PAB but once the board of review completes the assessment process the assessment is certified and then the next step is the clerk calculates the tax rates the bills go out and then the remedy for the taxpayer in this case the bearers would be a return of if there was either a settlement or somehow they were to win at PAB at a hearing they they would get this refunded to them via the Cook County Treasurer so I think the hearing lies one of the the intricacies of this that that isn't discussed so you know The Village's proposal came five days after the board of review made this decision and while we would
057love nothing more than to settle this if we settle this it's going to result no matter what we do in any form of a settlement lower than what the board of review said a refund to the Bears at this point and that's where it becomes really really challenging um is that if we were if we were to do that we have to make the decision that we're going to say we're going to give some back the village is going to give it back the park district is going to be impacting the library board is going to be impacted so um it it you know it it's complicated and it's not us standing in the Bear's Way by any means it's um we negotiated in good faith and and worked with the village toward this this
058mou concept because as I said before the school districts need to be made whole for the students that we educate so we can continue to do so at a really high level and and a lot of that is accomplished in theou to the villagers credit they've done a really great job in in taking care of and working with us for our interests to make the school districts whole um if it if it generates students and agreeing to Zone this property in a way that it wouldn't be all single family homes so that we can receive a similar number of students as what we receive from Downtown Arlington I Which is less than 40 students so that's a positive in terms of the financial side for the Bears and the village and whoever develops it and
059then Us in terms of what we can manage um but I think the real challenge here is how it impacts our the taxpayers that that no one's looking out for that we have to keep in mind in terms of holding everyone honest to who's going to really foot the bill for this yeah and and I'll say just what's been very frustrating through this whole process is that you know this is a a multi-billion dollar organization looking to build a multi-billion dollar stadium and looking frankly for hundreds of millions if not billions of dollar in public subsidy and it's come down to a lawsuit by the bear seeking $7.2 million from the local taxing bodies it's unfortunate and I I don't think it's a productive move on their part if they're going to go to Springfield
060or city hall and seek these indulgences to have this hanging out there in my opinion I I think they ought to withdraw this thing so okay do you have more uh I do uh actually that's the last slide I can move on to theou unless there questions about any of the property tax issues go ahead continue let's ours yeah okay so anyways at a high level theou addresses what Dr roow talked about which is the student generation uh estimated at between 350 and 400 uh IT addresses at least as formulated potential impacts of the pilot because the Pilot's going to freeze the assessment what does that look like in terms of the payment the payment in Li of taxes that's what pilot stands for uh we anticipate there's going to be multiple Tiff districts here
061so uh will they be able to provide payments to make up for the students theou would make the districts whole at 100% of your per pupil so that's good news uh and then the need for building additions Andor a new school if necessary uh and then the one thing that we really haven't been able to land in theou is the long-term property assessment issue that's the open issue and it has been for months so um that's all I've got in my materials uh unless you want to yes Frank yeah I do have a question about the mou and since that's where you're at okay so um we have the one longterm property assessment that's the one sticking point in the mou correct currently yes okay and um just for the people that are in the
062audience or might be watching tonight even if we came to an agreement with the bearers on this last issue that does not guarantee that the Bears are going to build a stadium in Arlington Heights is that correct that is correct I think that's the one thing that's missing is that a large part of our stakeholders think that once we get theou agreed to then the Bears are on onton Heights but the fact is that even if we do come to an agreement on this last issue that doesn't guarantee the Bears are coming onl tonights that is accurate okay thank you uh I'll turn it over to to Matt I've got a question oh sorry Bill um I do understand what the uh pilot program is payment a l of taxes maybe it would be helpful
063uh to just explain what it is and who gets the dollars who gets the benefit of the pilot program in other words where do the dollars go and and how does it how does it work uh is Arlington Heights involved what happens yeah so a pilot is a type of Economic Development incentive in this instance it would if you imagine that picture we it would freeze basically the upper triangle and the west side of the property add a certain assessed value for the duration of the pilot anywhere between 25 in 40 years that would be the total amount of eav that would be available to all the taxing bodies for property tax purposes so essentially Frozen and for clarity purposes the pilot is only the stadium yeah so that that that triangle that would only
064incorporate the stadium so that would be 211 in district 15 and who and who sets that value well under theou we would have a voice in setting it but again this is not a final document and these values will be precedential and whatever that that value ends up being so it has nothing to do with the Cook County tax assessor other than the fact they may look at some of his data uh the assessor should not be part of that uh discussion yeah so that it's probably set by the legislature or or whatever you know it the way say for example so Senator Gillespie's Bill had the village in the bear setting the Frozen assessment on the pilot the school districts were totally boxed out uh representative Moy and his amended Bill uh which Matt
065can talk about did provide for some input by the local public bodies on setting the pilot value obviously these are both just bills and neither of them is going anywhere at this point so so the way the pilot Works ultimately you freeze the base yes and then any value created above the base is never taxed so for example let's say the value just to keep the math easy is set at $100 million and let's say $900 million of additional value is added the 900 million is never taxed under the property tax system so that's really the incentive to the beneficiary of a pilot they pay on a lower amount they don't pay on the higher amount okay thank you like Tiff y thank you Aris um good evening my name is Matt glavin I'm a
066partner at Coen oconor um thank you for for having me tonight my uh presentation will be a little shorter than eris's but happy to uh to uh answer any questions um we were hired about a year and a half ago by district 214 211 and and district 15 with pretty clear message which was make sure that if the Bears come to Arlington Heights the students are made whole right we we wanted to make sure that whether it was through a pilot through Tiff through any other economic incentive that the students in this community were not going to be put at risk last year we saw three bills in Springfield filed um during session there was Senator Gillespie's original pilot bill um a few months later representative Marty moand from displayin filed his version of of
067a pilot legislation and then later that session Senator Gillespie filed a tiff Reform Bill those bills have not seen any movement this year um there's a lot of discussion in the halls of the capital um as you're very well aware the Bears have been aggressive um once the Bears started getting going the white socks said that they wanted to come down and and get their piece and the Cubs said they wanted some money for security measures uh the Chicago fires looking for for money so once once the bear started um seeking public financing a lot of other uh entities started questioning whether there was money available for them in in April we had a lot of changes Kevin Warren started with the Bears we had our first meeting with with the Bears um in the
068district we had a new Chicago mayor uh win election in April and it became clear that the Bears were refocusing on Chicago um from my perspective that had nothing to do with property taxes the locating a stadium in Chicago where the Bears have proposed it comes with some significant hurdles uh I'm sure you all remember the Lucas Museum uh negotiations that occurred whatever that was five five six years ago um we have a public trust doctrine that all buildings along the lakefront must be uh open and available to the public the current Soldier Field is considered a public space that is that is how it can exist where it is and it was a a protracted fight when the Bears redeveloped that stadium in the in the early 2000s the Lucas Museum was uh it
069appeared to be on on its way to a finding that it was not going to be public use and and they decided to to locate that museum elsewhere um this doesn't mean that the Bears couldn't find a way to build on the lakefront where they' where they've proposed just directly south of the stadium but it's complicated the the other important hurdle they have to clear is the public financing portion they they Bears have expressed that they would spend about 2 million dollars of their own money or or private money but they're seeking at least a billion dollars in public funds um at this point there's not been a lot of appetite for that just this week Senate President Don Harmon told the Illinois Chamber of Commerce um that there I can't remember his exact phrase
070so don't quote me but something to the effect of there's not a lot of appetite to publicly fund stadiums the overall budget in the state this year and the forecast for next year is that belts will need to be tightened we had um a surplus of of um maybe surplus of the wrong way but there was a lot of federal money coming in during the covid time and that money is starting to run out belts will be tightened in Social Services and health care so the thought that the general assembly is going to make tough decisions um across the state and then provide public funds for uh a stadium to as AIS pointed out you know a franchise that's clearly worth billions of dollars I'm not saying it's impossible right deals happen at the last
071minute in Springfield but but it is a a large hurdle to clear in addition a large percentage of the Illinois General Assembly U resides in Chicago so as the Bears are negotiating between staying in the city and moving to arlingon Heights those factors um arise as well the Bears still have significant time on their lease so questions of how is the city going to deal with the I think it's 600 million left on on their bonds um those are all issues at play that make putting together a deal complicated for the Bears certainly not impossible but but very complicated the the white socks when they got um funding for their deal it was through the hotel tax their bonds expire in about eight years in the early 2000 or early 2030s so they're kind of
072fighting over those funds right who who's going to get those the Bears would like to see the revenue from the hotel tax go to fund their Stadium the white socks would like to see that revenue for a new stadium of their own on a parcel of land called the 78 in the city the Senate President has strongly encouraged the Bears and the white socks to work together um I don't I don't know if that's happened we certainly haven't seen it happen there's been a lot of talk around the capital of the Bears introducing a legislative proposal there's been nothing in writing we haven't seen anything we haven't heard anything more than than just rumors our team has been working with all of the stakeholders we worked closely with the Bear's lobbyist we work closely with
073the lobbyist at the Village of Arlington Heights that's recently hired um we have previous relationships with them and have worked on other projects so we're trying to keep the lines of communication open uh to make sure that if if back channels are what what need to happen to to make a deal come together that brings the Bears here but protects students you know that we're we're part of those conversations I will say that even with um Senator Gillespie's original bill as soon as we got brought on and started having conversations with her she gave us uh her commitment that the student that students would be protected that the school districts would have seat at the table um and we have we have seen um that in communication since then we are up against some deadlines
074in Springfield uh to tomorrow is the deadline to move bills out of the Senate next Friday is the deadline to move house bills out of the house and session ends on May 31st um that deadline of May 31st is the only real one that matters uh with with leaders approval other deadlines can be extended if the governor the speaker and Senate President reached and reached a deal late in May it would still be possible for them to to move it through at the last minute but we have commitments from from all three of those leaders to be part of the conversations um I think that concludes my uh my comments but happy to answer any questions okay thank you um before I turn it over the rest of the board yeah did find this document
075from um online WTTW did an interview with uh friends of the park and um Alderman from bronzville can't remember his name where the Michael ree Hospital yeah is located so this document calls only public test St in the city of Chicago late fund protection ordinance passed in 73 largely prohibits new building construction east of dubo Lakeshore Drive so there's an isue right there right now of course the city council could always amend or pass a new ordinance but you're absolutely right there are a lot of hurdles for them locating on the lakeef front uh Mr Walker thanks Ela I have one question you know there's a lot of Engagement there's a lot of stories going around what are we doing to engage the community and our staff and everybody and how do we keep them
076informed with this well both haris and I provide regular updates to to the the school board to the superintendent we have weekly meetings um I think in the last few weeks there been multiple meetings a week to to keep Folks up to date work closely with Pat and his communication team on strategy of when we want to be talking when and then what that message needs to be and who we want to deliver it to we have we haven't taken the step of um Regular Communications with with staff or sharing updates with our community because it hasn't really been education focused that's certainly something that we could we could do we could entertain that just to to update them and tell get the truth out um but that's not not a step we've taken thus
077far I'm just worried about the white noise it's a lot of distraction for you know water coolers whatever everybody talks about it and if we're not telling the whole story or not enlightening everybody it becomes an issue then so how do we stay ahead of that I guess you have a good plan and then between you and Mr Magi will'll work it out I guess h we we are cognizant of not negotiating against ourselves right the the to the point that errors made and that I made a little earlier I do not believe that the hold up of getting the Bears to come to Allington Heights is $3 million spread over two years in property taxes there are a lot of other issues at play and we're cognizant of you know not extending too much
078to the Bears only for them to use that to go to the city of Chicago and and ask for more there it kind of feels as if that's the that's the point where we are that it that it's um if if we continue to to try and seek creative ways to convince them to come that's that's kind of out of the purview of what we should be doing as a school district if if if the Bears choose Arlington Heights we welcome them with open arms and we'll be a wonderful partners with them and would love to um be as creative as we can to help make that something palatable for them as long as our students and families are taken care of uh and we believe we did that when we were at the table
079we just couldn't get a deal done unfortunately but if they choose Arlington Heights we're here to welcome them with open arms and and look forward to a long healthy partnership thanks I have one other question you know never is a a pretty strong word so would this pilot never ever that property will produce income well it it would be for the duration of the pilot I I think I said between 25 and 40 years what it that's what the current stat uh bills both gesp and representative willans Bill provide for a pilot no less than I think 25 no more than 40 years so that would be it's a lifetime the time frame it's a long time yeah and I I'll have to go back and and look at the language again but I do
080believe there was like a seveny year rebalancing something yeah so that every you know said it wasn't whatever proper whatever the value was set on year one was the same as in year 40 there were check-in periods where that value could change with this joint joint review board that uh the schools would have a seat at the table got it thank you guys miss [Music] pmer I have a few questions so my first one is on um the $5 million tax bill right the Bears saying they wanted approximately 5 million that doesn't mean that 5 million comes directly to the school districts correct can you please explain what happens with that money and and what that looks like yeah so if somebody pays $5 million in property taxes that payment is made to the coook
081County Treasurer the treasurer then distributes the funds PR based on tax rates to all of the public bodies so as a general rule the schools have between say 50 and 60% of all property taxes so they would get that portion you've got libraries you got park districts you have the county you have the force Preserve you have the Water Reclamation District you have special service areas you have Tiff Tiff districts in Cook County tiffs absorb about 9% of all property taxes you have municipalities you have counties you have junior colleges it would be distributed to all of those entities so when there's EV valuation just looking at um evaluation and how it results in a tax it's not that it's a straightup percentage right it's it's we talked about the 25 and the 10 but
082there's other things that multiply in there correct could you put that in sort of layman's terms so we could all understand it yeah so Melly the the here's what goes into a property tax bill the Assessor's assessment the board of review making or not making an adjustment to that assessment the Illinois Department of Revenue calculates an equalization Factor every year for all2 counties in as a general rule the Cook County Factor has been 2.7 to 3.3 for the last Dozen Years the county clerk calculates the tax rates all of that information is delivered to the County Treasurer who prints the bills the US Postal Service delivers the bills and then people write checks or do a payments to pay it so there's a lot of input on how you get to a tax bill okay
083so I have a a question about the refund How likely is it and perhaps this is a question you can answer that will be asked to um return funds and is that something that for this particular one we should be escro or setting aside funds because we have exposure on them like let's not spend it we might have to give it back or is and is that something that we have exposure annually with other funds right I mean does that happen do we do an annual refund of a certain amount I guess that's a question for you Mr ke um but and I'm putting on the spot I apologize but I'm guess I'm worried about our exposure on a refund so the the number the Bears are asking for that $6 million figure that assumes
084that the PB would agree with their lower appraise value and the PAB would give them a 10% level of assessment treating it as vacant land so those are some big assumptions that that would actually happen the vast majority of appeals filed at the PB are settled for for much less than 100% of what the taxpayer's looking for the school district has a right to intervene in these appeals you will get official notice of this filing probably within 60 to 90 days the Cook County board of review provides the notice it is sent via email to Tim's office and uh and then you have the right within 60 days to intervene district 214 District 21115 have a historic practice of intervening in the larger cases and defending the tax base as an active participant in those
085cases we're actually notified every time a uh $100,000 or greater um filing is is made okay so it's it's it's a it's actually a pretty common practice that um the the appeals are filed with the property tax appeal board ptab and then uh Tim and his office will work work with that and we'll we'll intervene if if necessary um Tim if a property if we were to have to refund a property would all the other properties in the district pick up where that refund was it's a great question yes yes so normally I'd answer that for you but we've got the expert in the room and and this and again AIS and our team work together on these as they come in so as Dr row indicated yes these are coming in constantly and um
086you know over time we do accumulate quite a few uh but they do offset year over year and again I'm going to defer to the expert to explain that process your point your point is and I yeah right it's if if the Bears get a reduction the overall valuation of property within district 214 does not reduce right so everybody else would see just a slight increase to cover the difference in their tax in their taxan here's a way I think that I like to think about property taxes it's sort of a pie slicing exercise so if I am able to cut myself a smaller slice of the pie that means everybody else's slice has to be bigger that's right so to the extent the Bears get a small piece of the pie normally you want
087a big piece of the pie in property taxes you want the smallest piece that means everybody else's slice is bigger your slice is bigger the people who run industrial buildings they have to pay more Etc I have um at least one last question um so is there any talk in Springfield of perhaps the state instead of funding stadiums funding education such that our taxpayers wouldn't have to pay large amounts of property taxes and then could use that money elsewhere yes oh I think I I would tell you and Matt can probably back this up the state of Illinois actually does one of the best jobs in the country it at ensuring um education is funded but they still haven't met their constitution requirement of 51% right but the we the State of the State of
088Education especially in recent years has taken really good care of schools uh ebf is working um we don't realize all those dollars but the school districts that are in tier one and tier two are seeing uh increase funding and it's working for them as it should and I and I will say to to your question there are a lot of people asking that question not just about education but about new arrivals about Healthcare right there are a lot of um needs in the state so I think when we hear president Harmon say there's not a lot of appetite for Public Funding for a stadium it's because they'd rather use those that that money for other for other things this isn't just an Illinois thing look at what's happening around the country um defending def Super
089Bowl two time Super Bowl champion Kansas City Chiefs just lost a referendum in the state of Missouri for Public Funding for their um new stadium upgrades and I can tell you with someone from Missouri whose family are ravenous chief fans uh they love their football and if they're not going to support that financially I can't imagine Illinois uh is interested in doing that either with taxpayers paying more so the Bears can have a new home when they are the I believe fifth most profitable organization in the NFL 200 plus million in property annually I I think there's no question that there's a love of the game I mean I love football I just want to make sure that d214 and our students are are the focus of this board and our actions that's all we're
090here for and and I will say that we're when we're in Springfield we are never saying we don't want the Bears to come to Arlington Heights we are there to say we welcome the Bears how do we do it in a way that protects the students here thank you Mr fito yeah I'm not sure which one are you guys can to answer this but I'm going to piggyback off what Lenny said about the white noise so the the current property at at the racetrack um you we know what the prop proper is currently zoned as oh they changed that you know that's a great question I I don't I don't know the current zoning it's probably some sort of institutional zoning legal non-conforming use because it's been there forever but Frank I don't know the
091exact Zone okay so let's just say it is that um because I know there's people out there that think that if the Bears don't move there we're going to get uh 500 Amazon buildings and uh uh migrant centers and other you know such things so if they did want to build say Amazon warehouses on the property um what's the normal process well the village is in complete control of development so uh anyone who is interested in doing development would have to go before the village plan commission which is a body that evaluates plans gives feedback ultimately any approval of zoning would have to be by the village board I mean they they have complete control over I believe Eris that the village has updated the zoning and it's zoned for some a sports complex of
092some sort overlay District that's to be fair to the Village they've they've stated regularly that it will not be a a warehouse distribution or data center understood I I just wanted to clarify for anybody who's in the audience that if the Bears decide that they're not going to build a stadium there it's not like they could just decide whatever they want to build there or or sell it to somebody that wants to build whatever they want they have to go to the proper channels and the proper channels is the Village of Arlington Heights for resoning that's correct Frank yes all right thank you Mr dley anything I've already spoken thank you okay I have one oh good Mr Walker Eris I know you explained the pie but just for for me this is the way
093I look at and just tell me if I'm on track or not so 10 of us go out to dinner we're going to split the bill evenly but somebody the 10th person says wait I only have $20 so we all enjoy a nice meal whatever it is and nine people would pick up the existing tab less $20 that's really what's happening with the Bears and the $5 million tax capap correct that's a great way to describe it yes okay just have a lot of family and I know how to split bills so I just want to put it in my own head thank you Miss Palmer so no matter who uses that property or for what use our focus on in the district is how does that impact our students in d214 so this can
094be could be or would be a continued Conversation Over time just to make sure that our students and our schools and are protected in that and I think that's where our interest in uh in the in theou really really comes into play if we can sign theou and and right now we're in alignment with the village on what um what that relationship would look like and I think that's that's important and and that conversation hasn't been here we've said a couple of times that Village has been a really good partner in cooperating with us on this um and I think that we're still we remain in alignment that our students are what matter most to us you know we want to be sure that our students receive the worldclass education that they're the families that
095have chosen to live here expect of us and we're committed to ensuring that that happens okay thank you thank you all very much thanks folks have a good night yep thank you sorry audience that took so long but um it was needed I think the community needed to hear our conversation moving on board reports does any any board member would like to report uh Mr dling yes I would first I'd like to thank Mrs Palmer for uh uh and congratulate her for her 16 years with Navigant law and for inviting me to their anniversary party thank you very much the other night um also uh Tuesday there was a college fair here at uh Forest View and um there were about 1300 students that came and I as I was standing at the entrance watching
096them come in there was at least one uh parent with each student so overall there were probably 2500 plus uh uh people that were here at the fair with 200 colleges and universities uh set up it's it's an annual event and it's very well attended uh and you you can see the eagerness for those that are are going to college and their parents certainly looking at it and this year they held a college loan seminar an hour before the uh 6:00 opening of the fair uh in the theater it was packed to the walls standing room only and they did a very good job explaining the process for college loans the other thing I attended the Midwest robotic Regional U at UIC on March 29th and 30th um an exciting event 50 teams some from
097uh most of them from the us some from overseas um wildstang the U robotics team from the district team 11 finished second and team uh 112 finished fourth it's it's uh always just uh just a super event and of course uh Arts unlimited this year was great Awards to students from each of the schools uh performances by the students from each of the schools and amazingly Wheeling High School started a mariachi band this year I can't believe it um the uh band director Marilyn Barrera decided early in the year that she was going to have a a Marchi band and there's Coral people in it there's Orchestra people or whatever they they did it in a Hospitality in this room before the session they were fantastic they were really amazing so it was a good
098day thank you Mr F do you have an update for us yeah I do um I went to the science Symposium at Wheeling high school and I did see the mariachi band by the way some of them were out in the hallway performing for all the different teams that were there um you guys did a great job Brad it was really phenomenal I was very impressed by our students both wheeling and elgrove that had uh projects there but overall just the the majority of the projects were just nothing short of incredible all these kids no matter what school they were from um I was at the Adam admin staff recognition uh this week with Mr Hinman um I just want to congratulate somebody sitting at our table who won an award and that would be
099the lady over there in the red hair L keys and last but not least um I am going to be representing the board at the April 23rd startup showcase at Prospect High School um junior changement is near and dear to my heart spent 16 years doing it and I'm looking forward to all the entrepreneurs and what they have to offer on that day thank you thank you Miss pmer just a couple things um and you know I don't know if I'm stealing your thunder Miss kitzer but we were able to attend the um PTO organizations that came together to talk um this happens a couple times a year telling us the things that are going on at the different schools and I have to say that this last meeting was great to see sort of
100their interactions they communicating with each other telling each other how they're supporting students and miss kitzer here came up with a great idea of coming up with a Google doc where they can share information and further kind of give ideas of how to do things and what's going on at the different schools to help each other out so that was terrific um earlier before this meeting we went to um we attended the Pres student student advisory Council I'm stumbling we students from the different schools as recommended by principls or other staff staff members come together to kind of give us an idea of what's going on in the building from their level and really um participated in had some great discussion during that um so those students are always open honest um telling us things
101they like things they think we could do better things that are going well things that are opportunities to improve in the district it's really good feedback um this morning I started out with Kish award um so I've had a full d214 day um and that was very interesting and to see some of the applicants for the kaish awards and the the things that are going on in the Arts in the district are just fabulous um and last but not least at my firm we had a student intern um this spring and she was um a delight absolutely excellent addition to the team wants to be a lawyer and so um we gave her a view sat with her at each position in The Firm talking about how the firm is run how do you sort
102of make the donuts and um what goes involv in being a lawyer um and in the practice and she was a really good addition to our firm we all miss her so she could uh be a permanent but I guess we have about seven years before before that could happen anyhow that's about it thank thank you Mr Walker I just have a quick one but it's uh an important one you know the we talked about it last board meeting the inaugural specialized game with the students at Specialized school I got to tell you you know I walked in and you know we've we've watched games at hery before of special Olympic teams when they played barington and it's just it's an amazing camaraderie type atmosphere for the students but um Val put me in with
103all the Educators that were right behind the bench and I just wanted to off to the side and watch and pay attention and all the students came by they said hello and then I think Glinda was there too I mean and it's such a moving experience and all the teachers are telling me it's not going to be like what you saw at hery I said why not these guys are out to win today they've been talking trash to each other all season and they're out to win so I said okay you know I'm watching they're out to win each other's Hearts I will tell you they stop you know the guy that were very proficient at it stopped gave the balls to less fortunate people and just stopped the complete game and let them score
104and everything so even in the most competitive streak that they've ever seen it's still Humanity at its best so if you ever have a chance to do that I would tell you it's the best hour in the year that you will ever see that's all I have right now thank you great ending okay so we're going to move on to Mr M Mr no Mark said he didn't have anything um we're going moving on to discussion items 8.1.1 Mr Keeley good evening thank you very much so uh the first item we have we've got a few items here from our procurement Department uh in terms of rfps and bids and uh as has been typical we're going to use this evening as an opportunity to discuss it answer questions Etc and then at the the
105second meeting of the month we're going to bring it back for approval uh the first one is the pool supply bid um this is a bid for a three-year term it's on the heels of a three-year bid or a three-year contract that is expiring um we have a a summary here as you can see uh a significant increase in cost and uh the last contract was a three-year uh contract it was uh agreed to or approved by the board in April of 2019 um so uh there was a pandemic in the middle of that and apparently that impacted um the chlorine price and and honestly in preparing for this meeting I'm ashamed to say I learned uh more about the chlorine price index I didn't know it existed um so anyway it's about doubled since
106the time we it's it's yeah it's it's it's it's going to go in my yes it's in my toolbox now so um but at any rate it's it's about doubled in that time frame so uh the numbers you see there there is there are significant increases over the last contract um but again we're going to take advantage of locking in through three years worth of pricing quite a few vendors were reached out uh we reached out to including one that has a Cooperative uh Nationwide purchasing contract however they were unable to meet the specifications for the bid so um with that I will uh entertain any questions um I do want to in uh thank uh anetta and her team as well for their work on this the proc procurement Department were the ones that
107get to bring it to the stage but they are doing all the work day today to get us the information didn't have to do pool supplies in Addison did you no pools in Addison didn't think so okay um board members okay thank you very much uh District uniform bid please great thank you so again another three-year contract uh on the heels of a former three-year contract uh it was sent out to uh multiple vendors uh we sent it to 10 vendors including one National purchasing Cooperative there's a bit of a theme here you know with Mr Uli and all the construction and some of the um equipment and whatnot we're buying off National Cooperative contracts we're looking to do the same in our world so as we do these as an individual 214 bid we're
108also checking the market to see if there's a more efficient way to do it um so again we checked a uh a nationwide Co-op uh they were unable to meet our uh specifications um the uh the lowest uh apparent uh responsive bidder is Michael's uniforms ironic Al they have been our vendor for at least the last nine years that's when uh electronic data tails off in in our department but uh they were the lowest bidder the last two times and uh thankfully this time uh when we look at the pricing that's been offered it's it's on par with the current Year's pricing so um obviously not driven by the clarine index I would be happy to answer any questions board members okay great benefit platform RFP great thank you very much so uh Kelly and
109our insurance department along with our insurance committee which includes uh Mr dling uh have been working uh for a few months now um on a benefit Administration platform procurement uh and so this is the platform that we well the solution we're looking for is a platform for our employees to do open enrollment to access their HSA and FSA benefits um the partner will also handle our ACA reporting as well as cobr Administration um that is currently done through American Fidelity we've had that for two years now and uh we found that the uh functionality of their platform um does not necessarily meet our needs and our employees needs so uh certainly the goal uh at all times is to make sure that our employees know as much as they can about their insurance um that
110it's readily available and that um you know in addition to self-servicing um options that the new platform will provide U Miss Janice and her Department um also provide uh assistance to folks uh so anyway this was uh we had five vendors that responded to the RFP and we had three that were invited to um participate in a multi-round uh interview process if you will it was a three- round process um the finalists were uh B Swift imperion and uh uh business solver um and they have a product called benefit solver uh we intend to bring a recommendation to the board at the next meeting uh for business solver uh they are the most advantageous when uh run through our rubric it is uh certainly a qualitative RFP um but the pricing came in uh quite
111tight between all three of those vendors and it would be a three-year agreement and it would include the implementation I'd be happy to answer any questions Mr dling do you have anything to add pardon do you have anything to add you were on this committee U you know the the the process for interviewing pardon me the process for interviewing each of these companies was extensive we're we're talking three-hour interviews we're talking a whole range of uh employees that are there with the various uh levels of uh service that they have in the various departments these this was not just a read read the reports uh and see what it looks like and then listen to uh to some uh sales pitch this was these were really in-depth I want to give Mike Vargas and Kelly
112Janice and uh Jennifer toas tomomasa uh who's there uh uh in the group that really put this together well and and I I totally agree that uh uh looking at all the interviews that we did the business solers certainly got uh what we're looking for uh I mean just the inter interface with the where the employees can interface themselves with the system which will not only be good for them to get knowledge but will also help be help the people that are administering within the district become more efficient at what they're doing so it it was really really good it was good right one quick thing I will add um in in reflecting and speaking with the team uh business solver definitely had the most K12 school experience they have tons of uh references in
113the state of Illinois in fact the team did an extensive reference check but I joked and I said just ask me I'll give you a reference um in Addison my former District we were one of 120 districts in the cop in the Consortium and we utilized their product and uh in spite of the fact that uh we were one of 120 and they had a lot of clients we we were never wanting for more attention um they were pretty well dialed in so I'm I'm excited um that uh we're going to be working to to finalize the contract to bring back to you well I believe that um they certainly Flo to the top I mean there was no doubt about it they were they were really had their uh had their act together they
114knew we're talking about they didn't come in and say uh you know what do you want and then tryy to react to that they they knew and had already they knew what we wanted and they had it all set out for us so you can't address my question and that was um were there any districts that are as large like ours or somewhat comparable to us um that used the business of or any other yeah if I if I think about the EBC the educational benefits Cooperative I think decer school district is the largest one in in that group and I think they're like 12 or 13,000 students uh so probably similar number of employees but you know if you look across that entire Cooperative you're talking 30 plus thousand lives uh that are insured
115there so um they certainly have the chops and uh they understand how Illinois School District's work okay thank you anyone else thank you and thank you for your work on this Mr dling um as well as Mr key so we're down to operations uh Mr Uli ihsa thank you this is a a typical board agenda item this time of year uh where we seek a membership renewal for the Illinois High School Association and essentially we need to certify that our school districts will will abide by the ihsa Constitution and bylaws um so we are seeking board approval on the renewal of the memberships for Buffalo Grove Elk Grove John hery Prospect Rolling Meadows and Wheeling High Schools and uh to be clear there is no cost associated with this membership thank you for pointing that
116out yeah during I think it was um one of the covid years yes there was a membership they dropped the membership fees and and have not brought them back as yeah it wasn't there was none and then there was and now there isn't anymore yeah they were a tiered model and then they've since dropped that okay good any questions okay Prospect pool repair thank you um so we are seeking approval um to replace the pool Basin plaster at Prospect High School the The quick summary here of of the plaster work at Prospect High School is um we have a debonding issue that we've been dealing with for a little over a year now we've tried multiple patches in repairs um when we have to conduct that work we need to drain the pool after the
117second time that we've conducted that work each time we have to refill the pool that's a rough cost of $113,000 um our team decided to have a full scale assessment done so we had a diver actually going to the pool and conduct a sonar scan and found that over 50% of that plaster and was failing um which indicated that we need a full scale replacement um so we are we are seeking approval to um conduct that work this summer um which is a full scale pool Basin plaster replacement and and to add the rough the rough life expectancy of of pool plaster is about 7 to 12 years so we are in year eight of that pool okay that was that was my question how old is the pool eight years old um how does
118this impact us so we we've had to we're going to do the work over the summer and uh we've worked with our buildings to um accommodate our Prospect programming Community ad programming in the other three pools this summer okay so it's been worked out yes uh questions board members I do go ahead okay um I don't want to take too much out on you because I know you're kind of new at your position but um Prospect is our our newest pool yes and um being the fact that I have a a family of swimmers uh in my household um that are part of not only the high school program but they're also proud part of the community at Aquatics and um the number of times that Prospectors had problems with their pool seems to be
119endless yeah and and Buffalo Grove and wheeling and Oak grve um nothing against their pools Prospect to me is the Crown Jewel and they seem to have very little problems and I don't think I haven't been on the board very long but I don't recall being down for a summer or any point in time for Basin plaster replacement so I just want to ask you know and it doesn't have to be tonight but why are we not seeing this at the other pools and why is this just seem to be happening at Prospect because from my standpoint we are really putting our community ed programs that are real disadvantage they're growing um they serve a great purpose to the stakeholders in our community but now we're trying to figure out how we can C you
120know get the swim lessons the summer swim program it's all creating chaos and not only that but you have young adults that are part of our high schools that are employed by these programs and now all a sudden they might not have jobs for the summer because we don't have a pool at Prospect so I'm I'm just going to say no no answer responded but we really need to get this figured out because it just seems to be never ending sorry Chris wholeheartedly agree I think this is why we're taking this approach um is is to to go with the comprehensive fix and hopes that we won't have to deal with this foreseeable future other board members Mr Walker yes I have couple questions so if it's failing a prospect what are we learning from
121there that we can apply to other places so that we don't run into this again cuz it's it's costly for this yes uh so so the the high level uh my high level understanding is that essentially you have the concrete pool you have a bonding agent plaster and then the tile itself the the critical component with the bonding is the first six months that allows it to cure uh effectively so we've also contracted uh with an independent company to monitor the water levels to ensure that we're exactly where we need to be to allow that to fully Bond and then hopefully last a lot longer than 8 years so is there a warranty that's involved in this and then what do we do to protect that warranty this project comes with a 5-year warranty and
122the the existing pool what's the warranty on that and the plaster was a 2-year warranty on the existing plaster and then I know we all like experts but there's experts that come out and measure the depth of the pool and tell us we're okay yes yes have to learn about chlorine levels too because this is fascinating I got to learn how to get that not the depth the the content like pH chemicals yes yes I I get it but if I said depth I apologize M Palmer well I mean this is going of sound like I'm joking but I'm not actually we have a chlorine increased cost we have a pool that has issues with bonding agents do these things happen if we and I don't even know what the astronomical cost would be but
123if we went to a saline based pool is this I mean okay it's a whole new Direction I'm just throwing it out there I'll I'll retract the question for now but you know it seems like you know we we should be thinking outside the box on some things like this that's fair anyone else thank you um Dr Lopez you're up with the teaching and learning yeah yes thank you so much members of the board Dr roow so we wanted to share with you today the recommendations we' made to the district executive Council regarding the integration of our esl1 students into our comprehensive high schools so in April of 23 you might recall that we had a state audit of our English learner program that was the first time actually that we had been Audi audited
124since 2015 and from the time from that audit in 2015 to today we've increased uh by 1,700 students uh the number of el identified students in our district during that how often are are they supposed to do the audit the audits are are typically closer to three to five years and they just you know we were at the bottom of the list yes um not that we need to wait to be audited to check our program but uh the reality was that even in just since the pandemic our numbers had doubled so it just accelerated significantly from a program of around 400 students to 22 2300 students um however during that growth our programs didn't change significantly okay and so uh um it was certainly time for us to relook at that uh and because
125of the audit and then our corrective action plan to the State Board of Education uh we included uh our our uh recommendation that we're going to expand all of our required program components and services to all of our school sites so this is sort of part of that plan or one piece of of many components so our newcomer Academy and its new facility we had designed it to serve about 120 students we used to typically have start the year with around 20 students and end at 60 to 80 currently I think we're at 220 okay so because of our current enrollment and certainly because of the state audit we realize we need to facilitate a transition of our esl1 students the newc newcomer Academy the international newcomer Academy serves both students that have minimal to
126no English uh uh AC language acquisition and esl1 so those are two different groups of students so what we're talking about is those students that have some minimal language acquisition and are testing into esl1 um and so the district executive Council created a working group to develop recommendations and the plans for the transition uh we're going to have four staff members with us here this evening who I'm going to ask to come sit in the front row uh so you guys are ready to present uh who's going to provide an overview of these plans uh our director I I did want to mention that our director for English language program Veronica got uh who led the work really wanted to be here but she certainly has a solid team uh that I'll be introducing momentarily
127here so well does this happen every time we got it all right so just real briefly so the purpose of the plan is is certainly recognize that we've had a steady increase in the population of newcomer students um recognizing that home home schools have uh access to special ed services as well as broader levels of opportunities for students uh and finally that uh the in integration of language and content learning uh along with the in-class support certainly can be provided within our Comprehensive High Schools so this working group had nine meetings uh There are 16 active participants and over 20 hours of work and collaboration among each of those members there are four excuse me there are four areas of focus each of our presenters tonight we'll talk about each one of these areas briefly
128uh a high level overview uh around curricular needs academic coursework staffing needs and professional development all right thank you this is a list of all of the individuals uh that were involved in it so we we cover all sorts of variety needs and all sorts of Staff members from across the district so to begin with uh tonight we've got Lisa borney who is our e coordin Ator from Elk grve high school she's going to begin uh the presentation I think you guys might have to move the slides along for me uh on uh the work of the El task force and she's beginning there with uh our first guiding principes go ahead good evening it's a pleasure to be here today so I'm going to address the curricular needs of the esl1 integration plan so
129we started with our guiding principle to direct us in our work and our guiding principle is we believe that students should have access to seal support and Court content curriculum with the necessary scaffolded strategies our goal is to engage every English Learner in high quality seal and core content curriculum instruction and assessment designated to meet individual needs and Foster academic growth within this goal we have four objectives so our first objective is to adopt comprehensive curriculum enabling rapid acquisition of the academic speaking listening reading and writing skills needed for High School College and Career part of our plan is we're currently in the process of AD adopting ayt curriculum and that will incorporate as well personalized teacher training and support our second objective is to integrate tier one social and emotional learning into Core Curriculum
130our plan is to have a subcommittee which will be El teachers El um social workers and coun celor that will guide theal priorities and create a bank of resources that will include lessons and curricular materials the third objective is to scaffold existing science math and social science Curriculum by integrating academic language development into lessons um the tlfs and yel coordinators they would hold summer workshops for teachers to work on using suggested strategies in the content area classes and the fourth objective is to create diagnostic placement tests in math to ensure newcomer students are placed in proper courses and give an appropriate credit for completed cours workk So the plan here would be to have a subcommittee that will create placement exams for each grade level Math course are there any questions I can answer about
131our curricular needs related to the ESL integration I think maybe we'll wait for questions till the end we have four very brief presentations and then a few St up here we can answer questions thank you and so Becky Kenny our English division head from weing high school is going to focus on our our academic coursework good evening the academic coursework section kind of covers what the day-to-day for a esl1 student would look like at the comprehensive school so you can read the guiding principle what we really believe is the students are having a really supportive and wonderful experience at newcomer and we really tried in this group to think about how can we take the great things that are happening there but then marry them with some of the great things that are happening at
132our comprehensive schools that are more challenging for students to access at the newcomer Center things like electives clubs activities Sports Fine Arts we've talked so much about those things tonight and then also access to peers so there are access to peers here but at the comprehensive school it's just a little bit different and it will be a more robust experience for them so those were the two main things that we were thinking about in this guiding principle if you look at the goal the main goal was to create learning opportunities that Foster English Learners language development and academic progress in a supportive learning experience alongside their peers and with those objectives again I know you have all of this in front of you so I don't need to read it all to you but kind
133of the four main things we were talking about that first objective talks about core The Core curriculum and we know that our esl1 students will need a lot of support to access that but doing that at the home school would allow for some more differentiated opportunities for students who are ready for different opportunities so for example math Lisa just talked a little bit about math um at the comprehensive school there are many math courses that students could engage in with proper supports and so bringing that program to the comprehensive H schools will allow for more differenti Creed opportunities for our students the second thing is the career and Fine Arts courses in an elective sense and our thought around that is we know our esl1 students need a lot of language support we would be
134able to offer some survey type classes so that they could have a full view of the different career and Fine Arts opportunities that we have at the schools next we have um a need to plan for enrollment increases as Dr lope has already stated we know that there has been a huge population boom in this area and so one of the things that we talked about was the need to plan for enrollment increases even over the course of a school year um working at Wheeling we have ESL students coming you know monthly weekly sometimes to register in our schools and we need to be ready for that with Staffing and programs as well and then the last thing is because we know that our L1 students and and many of our ESL students need some
135extra support we need to really think about some more teaming opportunities for our teachers so that they can wrap around those students and provide not just curricular and academic supports butal supports as well and so those are the four objectives within the academic coursework the last slide in the section is just kind of a sample schedule and again this would be um the responsibility of the different administrative teams to kind of work out what that would look like but we just kind of wanted to put something down on paper um as kind of the nuts of bolts of what that would look like for our students thank you thank you so much Becky all right and Jeff wle principal from Buffalo Grove High School is going to focus on staffing needs he led that group
136good evening it's an honor and privilege to be here um tonight and the team has been just amazing to work with over uh the last several weeks so my component uh is around staffing needs and I think as we um look about at at the kind of celebrate diversity that's coming to all of our schools through students that are coming and um and just as a math guy have to give you a little bit of numbers um so one I want to share that's that's kind of I think really exciting um just to understand the magnitude if you take a snapshot of the students that are currently at 214 schools about 12,000 students in total um 45% of those students between five and 600 of those students have or currently are El students so we
137talk um as we talked about our e and and teaching what we say at all of our schools is we are all e teachers but in the Staffing component we need some of those teachers to be specifically endorsed in so they can teach our shelter classes that's what we're going to talk about really tonight more is that that specific endorsement um so the goal that we have we go to the next slide there um just to ensure the appropriate Staffing um that we need the endorsements uh the number of staff that we need and staff includes uh certified staff ESP staff and then some leadership uh staff as well and so the four objectives uh that we have underneath this goal the first objective um talks about hiring we've been doing this for a while
138uh we have been hiring with specific needs um and a focus on uh hiring that uh candidates that already have El or are in the process of getting El at the very least they know that they need to get El endorsement very quickly um we've also and really through Kate's office um and Tim's as well been very good at financially incentivizing reimbursements for current staff to get their e endorsement the second objective is just the number of staff that we need in uh just in general um to teach EO classes uh a component you might not know about is that in the state code a sheltered EO class is an EO Class A Class of just EO students and those classes max out at 90% of the capacity uh of a class with non-sheltered e
139so that means their class sizes are a little bit smaller with the El we can um get through all the needs of students and so with that came a little bit uh additional Staffing we've worked indor formula already and we're really set in that area um and that would continue to grow a little bit with our el1 um students coming to the Comprehensive High School uh the third objective um talks about the ESP positions again uh Pro estate code U when you have a certain number of students with a very specific language uh in our in our district that's Spanish Russian uh polish Ukrainian some billions have only one some billions have up to three of those we need to have language supports in that home language that's where our ESP support really comes in
140again that's built into the formula working with Kate and working with Tim and the team uh and then the final one as we look at some of our buildings and go ahead and go to the next slide um we currently have some really good leadership support in every building uh we have about a 08 e coordinator uh you see a teacher that's pulled out that's an expert in e um what we've kind of found as we reviewed this is that we can really tiar that support um and so as we look ahead um we really kind of broke up into three groups we have two schools that will have a smaller number of V students they don't need quite the same amount of support um two Stu uh two schools really medals in Buffalo Grove
141I have a little higher amount we're going to add a little bit of support there it's kind of a net zero gain um and then The Proposal that we're going to bring to deck um for two you know a year and a half from now fall of of 25 fiscal year 26 um when you get to the point of 500 and more students we're talking 25 30 almost 35% of your school Bill inl we really needed some dedicated leadership and so we're looking for um at potentially at that point um a small increase in FTE districtwide about 1.2 um when you look at all the things that need to happen for an EO student and and now a magnitude of 5 to 600 students professional development um standards alignment evaluation screening testing connecting with families
142budget oversight PLC leadership State compliance curriculum design um we just need a little bit the schools need a little bit more support than they currently have with the growing numbers so thank you very much and now pleas Katy West hey Jeff real quick because you shared with me earlier when you started as principal how many e students did you have so this is my 10th year at Buffalo Grove it's been great uh we had 48 students when I started and we were at 432 uh this year yeah thank you yeah incredible growth all right and our last presenter is going to be Katie Weston she's the World Language division head from Prospect High School uh Katie's focus on professional development hi thanks so much for having us tonight you can move the microphone down there
143so you I'm shorter than Jeff sorry um so everybody is so um this last Focus area um centers on professional development and really how do we build capacity for all stakeholders that will either be direct points of contact with students or supporting our ES L one students as we integrate them into the comprehensive schools and how do we do it in a way that is really intentional it's thoughtful and it allows us to build inclusive communities that are welcome um welcoming and also allow students to show up as their authentic selves when they're in our home buildings and so our guiding principle for this um if you want to go to the next slide is we wanted to ensure that all stakeholders have the knowledge skills and abilities to meet the diverse needs of the
144whole student throughout their entire High School experience and so while we're looking at integrating the SL1 students um in the following year we also are really kind of taking a longer Vision on how can we think about their entire High School experience and what um structures and systems do we need to put in place to ensure that they really do have access to um all of the things that we've talked about in some of the previous slides and so the first objective focuses on um building capacity for administrators um to support this programming the second objective focuses on um building capacity for staff and then the third looks at our bilingual pair professional specifically so to look at objective 4.1 it's how can we strengthen administrators knowledge of English learner Programs El performance data instructional
145best practice and teacher evaluation criteria so some of the pieces that are related to this um have to deal with um State compliance for example as well as looking at our TBE and TPI programming so ensuring that not only are we compliant but are we also able to have the capacity to support teachers and staff in implementing instructional strategies in the classroom as well as other programmatic needs objective 4.2 focuses on Katie can you explain what TB sorry I apologize so T TBE stands for transitional bilingual programming and then TPI stands for transitional programming or transitional uh uh transitional programming for instruction so I apolog olog for using the acronyms um so the second objective focuses on providing opportunities for El Educators um and this also touches on the academic coursework piece and the curricular
146needs I I think someone spoke to this directly as well that you know there is I think it might have been Jeff there is an incentive right now for staff to obtain the El endorsement But ultimately all of the El students there are shared responsibility how can we ensure that our classrooms are inclusive communities and that our schools are in inclusive and welcoming as well and so we really want to make sure that all of our um staff regardless of whether they have the El endorsement or not would have access to this professional development in a way that they can build instructional strategies and best practices and then the last objective focuses um specifically on developing the knowledge base of our pair professionals on things like culturally responsive teaching practices to support our El students
147this could include things specifically like focusing on um reading writing speaking and listening strategies for things like language acquisition as well as content and skills that they might um develop in other classes as well you go to the next slide so I mentioned before that we were looking at um different stakeholders so the previous slide was kind of a top level look at um you know administrators staff as well as ESP um you can see here that we've also um kind of partitioned it out a little bit more specifically so on the left you have f areas in the middle you have different stakeholders or audiences that we've identified as well as a recommended amount of like quantity of programming per year that we believe is a need not a want in order to um
148integrate our esl1 students with Fidelity into this into the comprehensive schools um so one of the audiences would be the API and the division heads you can see that the focus area for this PD um is on compliance for example as well as um El educator observations as and um evaluation processes the next stakeholder group is the apss and the student services staff and so how can we ensure that there's proper course placement for example so as they're building out um schedules for students how can we make sure that um students are not only appr appropriately placed but also if they're going to be duly identified students for our special ed services as well um how can we make sure that they're identified appropriately um special ed division heads and staff how can we ensure
149that students who are duy identified um are not only um given those accommodations but how do they actually have access to them as well um all staff building out effective instructional practices and strategies with a specific focus on immigrant and Refugee students as well as fostering language Rich classrooms and Trauma sensitive spaces and recognizing that um many of our El students might come into our schools um having experiences that some of us can't even imagine right and how can we make sure that they're supported in that and then last um building capacity for our teacher leaders in the building specifically tlfs as well as our El coordinators um things like train the trainer program so they can help partner with administrators um to develop the scope and sequence of what the PD looks like in
150the different buildings thank you so much Katie and and you can see here Veronica sort of has laid out a five phase process that takes us all the way through August 2025 for implementation when we began this working group the question from deck that they asked and that uh Dr Ro asked us was okay you know how quickly can this happen what's the process going to take and the group through their uh through the work that and I was part of this group but through through all of our meetings and discussions we quickly determined that it was not feasible to implement this sooner than than fall of uh 2025 that it would take us this full year of planning professional development and all the things You' you've you've seen summarized here in order to to
151do that effectively and successfully and meet the needs of the students so we're going to sort of struggle a little bit uh one more year at the international newcomer Academy with space although Val is confident that we're finding spaces to to make sure that works uh and then for the fall of 25 fully transitioned students that are esl1 uh at the Comprehensive High School uh and you can see there we're in we're in phase three uh and then uh as we move forward during uh all of next year and and all of the work that you've heard summarized so at that point I would open the floor to any questions for any members of the teams or myself thank you uh board members go ahead okay I have questions for the three ladies sorry Jeff
152you're not included um I'll start with the last one uh Katie you said that um talk about State compliance is that a self- evaluation and I only say that because if we haven't had State audit in since 2015 I'm guessing that yeah I I so can you you she mentioned that we have to be compant stay compliant and since we haven't had an audit in 9 years so because we've had an audit they're actually going to be back uh this fall to revisit us uh and to assess the plans that we submitted uh we submitted a full plan of action of of the steps we're going to take they will be back to review to see where we're at uh the significant change we've made for this fall is that we do have El now
153at all six comprehensive schools which we didn't have in the past uh we don't have uh which will happen meaning including Prospect high school and hery high school so that really was a significant step this next step is going to be adding asl1 okay thanks thank you Katie sorry all right uh Becky um you in your slide you said um you use the term sheltered and integrated what does that mean yes a sheltered course is a course that is only for El students so we can only put a student that has an e designation in that course and integ course is just a general education class that El students can be scheduled into um in terms of compliance based on their test score it tells us how many sheltered courses they have to do for
154us to be compliant so an esl1 student is going to need at least three sheltered courses but we would probably want to shelter all of the core unless they have pretty strong math skills coming in um and then in some of the other areas we can integrate like in a in a physcal education class students esl1 students should be able to pretty successfully integrate okay so when you say sheltered is that similar to what we heard um maybe a month or two ago when we went to Wheeling and they talked about the reach program so reach isn't an e program I I know it's be it would be similar in that um it's a it's a classroom with only El students taught by an El certified teacher right so the teacher rotation you know were
155they is it the same no cuz I so I teach a sheltered uh World lit class and so my students come to me for World lit some of them I'm their only E Class they see all day because they have a A literacy score on their access test of 3.5 or higher some of them see multiple eal teachers a day so they also might go to El world history or El geometry it just kind of depends on their skill level their Readiness level so they're not cohorted throughout their day they just go to different classes um for different supports and that was one of the things you know Jeff was when Jeff was talking about the need for leadership um you know I I can speak to Wheeling I'm sure Lisa can speak to the
156experience at El Gro scheduling over 500 students um in sheltered and integrated classes to meet compliance and their needs um is a very heavy lift that our a teams um uh take every year and you know we're we're constantly tweaking that process to be more successful but um that's something that we have our eyes on so that students get the right level of support with the right level of challenge okay and then I got the last one for Lisa and you mentioned that the that that you guys do a diagnostic placement test but it was only for math why not the other subjects especially like English I mean I would think that some students are probably farther along in their use of the language than others is that true so currently right now what happens
157is when a new student comes into our district the El coordinator will assess them using the weed as screener so the windows screener is going to give us their English level placement and then they also take the access test once a year in February March and we get those scores in May so that would give us their English level that English level will tell us how many classes that the student will take for compliance right they're either going to have one class minimum of one class if they're receiving low services and at least three for high however that test does not tell us where they're at in their math placement so sometimes we're looking at transcripts and transcripts can have look very very different from different countries and so trying to place them in classes
158sometimes needs to be corrected after they've already joined and teachers see what their math skills are so by having a test at the beginning that we give them it might be able to better identify the best math class for them and not have to go back and tweak that after they've started a class and changed their schedule does that answer the question yeah you guys are all great great presentation thank you thanks Les thank you board members anything uh maybe it'll be for you Jee I don't want to leave you out so as the numbers guy um we know that some of the senator schools are challenged with ESL and then we get we get students that are a little behind right so of the demographics that we have how many are coming into our
159School's First Time versus coming through a center School we have those numbers um I can give you General I think I understand your question so currently at least at Buffalo Grove and I think it's similar at other schools um about half of the students that are El um were born in the states and have gone through the elementary school system but are still El in high school um and a little bit less than half have come to the states at some point during the Elementary career and have continued on or have come now during High School got it I can tell you L that that number has changed recently in the past when we've looked at that two-thirds of students and this is National Data that that's been valid here as well where two-thirds of
160our students were born in the United States and are in E and are that are with us in high school uh I think that number may have changed in the last couple years because of the huge influx uh but traditionally it's been up to 66 to 70% of students yeah and my follow-up question would be I I know I don't want to speak for the other schools but I know that you and Dr Hubbert have really put a push on um the center districts for Wheeling is that happening across our districts with all the center stools yeah I mean we're we meet regularly myself and so does Dr RO with all of our cender school districts in fact we're engaging in some specific curricular projects now with the CER districts for uh next year and
161this is the we are all experiencing the the same challenges of the increase in in the population and trying to reassess how we're delivering instruction to help move kids along to help them acquire the language academically I think what what what won't be a quick fix but will be a long-term goal is all the center districts in the most recent meeting that Dr Lopez and I had with them express the same desire of of that strong connectivity and to do our best to ensure um just a more uh synergistic handoff yeah that are there's some program alignment improvements that can be made and we recognize that and um you know we our meeting was about math but we talked about eel as uh as one of the Avenues we really have to pay close attention
162to and I we share with the group and share with deck our you know our our path to Improvement in district 214 is through e hands down without a doubt and I I I just would and if there are other questions please I'd welcome them I just want to commend the group U Dr Lopez and Veronica Scott and the team you'll did a phenomenal job with this this is um you know I asked for we look at you know Pro programmatically tell the story of the why and build us a plan that people you know new staff uh can come and engage with what you've produced and see our why see where we've come from and understand where we're going very clearly it makes uh Improvement very very easy to follow so I greatly appreciate
163the work you hit it out of the park and set a gold standard for uh other programs to follow because this will be our our example moving forward thank you Mr dling than I love technology um one of the thing I think I think the thing that bothers me the most is the Staffing um you know we've had ESR programs for ever since I've been on the board obviously it's significantly higher than it was before but when I look here at the at the needs and and what obviously it's going to keep growing it's not going to get any less you know I see the the need for uh overall FTE on El endorsements uh bilingual endorsements uh overall endorsements I got to believe that just about every state in Illinois that's or every school
164district in Illinois that's similar to where we are are looking probably for the same thing MH I'm looking at what that elevated level is of of students we're getting in I'm looking at 1.2 FTE uh is as the addition for for this time frame um that seems pretty small to me quite frankly uh uh I think that uh and and I'm I'm certainly interested in how we're going to re-educate our staff to get them uh endorsements uh that concerns me and it also concerns me to how we're going to find these people would have to have ESL uh endorsements that we hire uh and do we have enough people in this plan to do what we want to do here I I'll start and Jeff you can finish so we've partnered with the Illinois Resource
165Center uh where we have an A negotiated rate Dr Gabriela Seth Jackson's in the audience uh she leads that out of professional learning uh and I don't know what our recent do you know the number off top how many staff we've gotten through the program now we have currently have about 73 teachers going through the program I think after this summer so so we have a fairly affordable negotiated rate with the alary resource center to to get our teachers this ESL endorsement and we've had 73 teachers uh that have started the program it takes it's a it's a sequence of about six courses I believe so it takes a good year year and a half to finish how many do we need I I understand the numbers you got but how many do we need
166in the district remember we do have a a strong core of teachers that already are El I think it depends on the building right so uh I can tell you generally and I would ask Scott actually to to chime in from his lines but if I was principal of a school like Wheeling High School still and 500 students were e I'd want every single teacher in my building to have an e endorsement makes sense because you need to have flexibility for placement um whereas if you have a school that still has 100 200 students you don't need as many I understand how about depends on the building how about ESP support staff are directly correlated it there is a Formula that uh imp part it's if you have a bilingual teacher in the classroom or
167if you don't if you have one then you don't necessarily from a compliance perspective need the es if you have a a a teacher that does isn't a bilingual teacher and you have you need somebody who's speaking Ukrainian then you need a a bilingual ESP there so it really is dependent on who are the students in those schools I don't know scottt if Miss CRA looked like she was about to chime in on the ESP set I assume well I just on the on the bringing in new staff so my HR colleagues and I have started some organized conversation with the universities about what our needs are and that we just we really can't continue to bring in any candidates who don't have this certification uh and so every time I have the opportunity to
168speak uh at a university or to a class uh with my colleagues we we talk about the the necessity of candidates coming out of college to have this in order to to come into our high schools that get that gives me a great deal of confidence uh that that we're doing that and and that gives me confidence and the Staffing end the thing yes by all means and I'm sure there's going to be competition for those people all over Gabriel I if it's okay with Li and okay with Dr Ro I want to contact you about the program that program and and how we're getting those endorsements I want understand it because that I mean this is not this is only going to grow and there's so many things going on right now and uh
169in the district as far as programs plans strategic plans and whatever else we're going to have I mean this is this is a a real uh test is vitally important and I think what what this process uh has accomplished for us is it's AC accomplished a tangible threshold for when we act in and add Staffing that is is easy for us to follow and know when we need to act absolutely and I think that's the big win here I think I think the go I think the goals are are certainly well thought out I I applaud the committee for doing this but again you know the the proof isn't in the pudding and and and it's not us I mean we're we're putting down the pudding we're at least we're putting it in the bowl
170um from from a from a the area of getting people here getting the ones we have educated that's that's the key without you know that's the key to what we got yeah an important Point here Mr dling is the the number in those top two columns that it was a an actual subtraction of a point2 ft and then an addition to point2 is because we already have a significant number of Staff with those endorsements and so that's a that's a huge win that's a celebration because there are many districts that do not that's a good analysis to do that I think it's it puts us in a position to serve our students at a really high level and this this plan is only going to allow us to strengthen that believe me I'm not complaining
171about the program I think it's great I think what they did is fantastic I just want to make sure that we've got processes going to make sure we get the right staff and that we're hiring and to get those here educated with the uh endorsements thank you so um Kate we just had a um Fair a hiring Fair um and you saw a lot of people how many would you say had or didn't have eel endorsements that you interviewed well it's hard to say at the hiring Fair because I did more of the coordinating and the principles did more of the recruiting there but I I'll tell you that ISU is my favorite place to recruit I went down there on Halloween this year and I was I was pretty disappointed uh at the number
172of candidates who are coming to us it's at ISU but candidates come from all the schools at the number or the percentage that had that endorsement and so that's kind of started this energy um for a number of years as Jeff mentioned I think the principles have pretty been pretty dedicated to making sure people come in and either have it or know it's an expectation really quickly I can to give a concrete number so I've been able to hire English teachers for the past two years and every time I've posted a position I've had somewhere between 80 and 100 applicants and many and it always says ESL required because I work at wheeling and I'm only going to hire an ESL endorse English teacher at this point um so around 80 to 100 applicants and
173I have to go through everyone to see if they have the El certification cuz many people apply for the jobs who don't and usually it's about 17 to 20 of them get a phone interview because they actually have an ESL endorsement so that's a a that statistic held through for two years yeah you know as you say this is a issue around the state you know I sit on that um the association board is director of North cook and my counterpart from Flanigan said they're having a difficult time you know that's really rural um and so it yeah we're we're all looking for the same personnel and it's going to be it's going to be very interesting Miss Palmer well it strikes me we're looking to go to our sender districts and tell them what
174we want in preparation from them pushing up we should also perhaps be going to our colleges and universities that are training our teachers and saying this is what we need from you right I mean it's Soup To Nuts and I realize we're just our district but you know getting that message out I don't know if how we're doing that and what we're doing about that but if you tell them you know we we we need it perhaps they'll push it more okay thank you very nice presentation really appreciate it everyone sorry it's a long evening but really appreciate it thank you that's right thank you yeah you okay so now we come to now we come to action items so uh 9.1.1 approval of the contract for delivered strategic planning partner uh Dr Ro anything
175to say nothing to add board members very excited to be moving forward with this yeah this is um something the board talked about during the superintendent interviews last year that we really wanted this strategic plan and uh here we are coming to fruition so I I know we're all looking forward to this um hearing no comments please call a roll or a motion so moved second there's a motion a second please call fito yes Palmer I dling yes Hinman yes Walker yes crer I motion carry 60 thank you next for an it is approval coun pable can I have a motion in a second so moved second Motion in a second any discussion please call a roll Palmer I Walker yes dling yes fito yes Hinman yes and great sir I motion carry 60 uh
176next is uh approval of a financial report for 2024 motion and a second please so moved second any discussion please call the fito yes Palmer I dusing yes Hinman yes Walker yes kzer I motion carry 60 thank you next I need a motion to go into close session for the purpose of discussing the appointment employment compensation discipline performance or dismissal of specific employees specific individuals who serve as independent contractors in an educational setting or legal councel for the public Body Matters relating to individual students and Collective bar negotiating matters between the public body and its employees or their representative Motion in a second please so moved second discussion there will be um action after close session and how long do you think Dr roow half hour tops okay I hope tops hopefully half hour um
177call the RO please Palmer IO yeah yes dling yes Hinman yes Walker yes and CER hi thank you good evening [Music] oh [Music] [Applause] [Music] oh [Music] oh [Applause] [Music] oh [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] oh [Music] oh [Music] oh [Music] oh [Music] oh [Music] [Applause] [Music] oh [Music] [Applause] [Music] h [Music] [Applause] w [Music] [Applause] [Music] oh [Music] [Applause] [Music] oh [Music] [Applause] [Music] oh [Music] [Applause] [Music] you guys want to are we ready I'm sorry got wait for them there I'm waiting for the thumbs up over there oh yeah okay we are back in the open session so we have two items to uh approve can I have have a motion for 11.1.1 I move that we approve the Personnel transaction reports of Fe April 11th second motion and second discussion call the
178RO hito yes Hinman I dling yes Palmer I Walker yes and kitzer I motion carries 60 thank you 11.1.2 Motion in a second please I move for the approval of the modified job descriptions for dean of students and activities and operations supervisor second been a motion in a second a discussion please call a roll Palmer I Walker yes dling yes burito yes heinan Hi and citer hi motion carry 60 thank you uh motion to adjourn first and second please mov second can this be an all in favor absolutely yes and everyone said all those poos say no motion carried good evening everyone thank you [Music]