001Mr burrett 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 triy to pay a visit to Mr burrett and Mr Kelly but they're uh they're out at a meeting right now they 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 they 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 d214 for sponsoring this I'm very grateful to have Mr Z as my Ault teacher he's he's always
002Cooperative 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 what they have accomplished this learning opportunity it really is is amazing uh what I I'm really excited for is is the memories that we've made for these students 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 e good morning this is a special meeting of the Township High School district 214 Board of Education on Friday May 24th 8 a.m. please call the rooll dling here fito here heinan pres Palmer here Ral here walker kzer uh President
003we have a quum thank you could everyone please stand for the Pledge of Allegiance I pledge ALG to the flag of the United United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands one nation under God indivisible with liberty and justice for all thank you I don't believe anyone signed up for public comment so we have one action item this morning can I have a motion and a second for approval of the Education Association contract agement some moved second I have a motion and a second Kate you want to start us off sure uh on be on behalf of Dr in the negotiations committee uh present to you a summary of a uh agreement so I think it's a contract that helps uh settle some some uh uh Financial uh asks uh of
004the association uh and I also believe it's a contract that supports the growth of our students uh in a very everchanging world so very proud of what's in front of you today and really appreciate the collaborative process that we had with the association happy to answer any questions thank you um Mr dling would you like to start any questions you know the interesting thing about the contract was and from my perspective was uh what was done with the benefits um benefits uh situation uh has and I've been on a benefit committee for a long time I can remember I was talking to Nicole before I remember when uh I first got on we were at a situation where we had uh benefits uh well under $10 million and in the time that uh I've been
005on the committee we're we're now well over $20 million and certainly the costs are going to keep Rising was done very well so I congratulate the bargainers on that I think this will moving forward will give us uh something better than just an annual uh ratchet of of trying to ratchet things up it'll give us some ability to look forward and see what's going on so thank you very much thank you Mr dling M Miss Palmer do you have anything at this time no I just wanted to say I was very happy with the contract um that you know our our teachers are our staff are the heart of the district and so of course we want to make sure that this is a great place to work and that we're competitive and we're attracting
006the best talent but at the same time walk that fine balance between being good stewards of our um constit constituents and our taxpayers money and so um I know that this took a lot of time and effort and I really appreciate that walking of that line Thank you Mr Hinman anything okay Miss R sure um first of all I would like to thank the EA for coming to the table working together with us um as Miss Palmer said um we can't do what we do without you you are and other members of our staff are what makes our district great and our students and families are very fortunate to have you being a parent myself I I can just go on and on what I see the hours that you put on in beyond the
007classroom hours um few things that I I was topics that came up in the contract that I thought were of Interest was how you look both on on our side side as well as the EA side for the benefit and the betterment and the growth of students and looking at what we're currently doing continuing to evaluate you know um block schedule is an item that comes up in in there uh another one is looking at um then and Dr Ro I'll refer to you if you want to go into any more detail looking at the parent teacher conferences and and and what are we doing with that how are we communicating with our students and and again looking at the betterment and the students and and you bring that to the table so thank you
008for continuing to do the best that you can do and and make our students outstanding Representatives that we send out of this District so thank you thank you Mr R Mr Freo yeah I want to Echo a little bit what Andrea just said um I've been part of four contract negotiations in the other districts that I was part of before district 214 and as I've always said that uh when it comes to negotiations there are no winners and there are no losers because if there were then they wouldn't have a partnership and it's clear that in the negotiations that we had with the teachers it was definitely a a strong partnership a lot of what is uh presented to us today clearly shows that we were looking to make changes that were for the betterment
009of not just our teachers and us but also our students and our parents as well so I do have a couple questions that I wanted to ask um I'm going to start with Tim um 3.6 the salary increase I just wanted to get a little bit of an idea if this kind of Falls in line what we forecast out for the long term certainly thank you for the question Mr fito yes when we met with the board prior to bargaining and we had conversation broad conversations about where the authority lied and and where we were going to make our investments and and parameters that the in terms of the board's expectations uh we shared longrange Financial plans with you and uh we were very mindful as a team to stay within those and uh certainly
010this uh from Financial standpoint fits within that fiveyear window that we shared with the board um back in the uh winter okay great thank you okay my next question is uh 3.62 the stiens um I'm going to just direct this one at Kate if you can uh please elaborate on um the need for this because I know it did come up in a prior board meeting as well yeah I think um there were two aspects of the stiens that really needed to be addressed the first was just the equity piece in um we were in a in a fiveyear agreement and the last agreement stiens weren't touched too much and so a lot has changed in terms of what we offer and what our students interests and needs are and so some of that was
011kind of patchworked together uh in terms of a club might start at one building and there's a stien available for it and then it starts at another building and there wasn't a stien available so part of our um of the work was to make sure that that we was Equity among what we offered and how we compensated people who who were a part of that and the second really had to do with really trying to retain coaches inh house as much as we can and um and and we all know that after a certain amount of years with uh the responsibilities of coaching and sponsoring just increasing uh over time that it's hard to sustain coaches especially when when many people get to the point in their lives where they're caring for their parents or
012caring for children It's just tough and so um by increasing the steps it was a way to to Hope y incentivize some coaches to stay on um uh respect their expertise in in in what they coaching are sponsoring um and just retain The best scenario for our kids okay yeah I want to add to that um I was recently at one of the schools for the PTC meeting and the the principal at the time shared with the the many parents that were present that um one of the concerns he had was that they they lacked certain sponsorship for clubs and it was really hampering um the activities that could be um offered to students and so he felt um without getting in particulars because I don't think Mo most of the audience would have known
013what exactly he was saying but he mentioned that he thought that this particular uh term in the contract would help with making sure that we had not only you know Athletics but also from a club perspective we would have sponsorships so that way you would have activities for for all of our students rather than oops we don't have anybody for that so we're going to have to drop it um the second thing with the statements that I want to ask you about is the the teachers earning the El and the special education if you can elaborate on that as well yeah so I think with those certifications um there's a a functional piece of that and then there's a professional development piece of that the functional piece is that I mean the board saw a
014presentation in April about our El Learners and uh with the population increasing the need to offer more classes um and so from a functional perspective we needed to find a way to help incentivize teachers to get that certification and the second piece is just the skills that are gained from earning a special education endorsement or an El endorsement um and and those skills that are gained translate into every classroom and so we really needed to address some of those specific certifications in different ways and and really for some teachers who are veteran teachers who may have have moved on the pace there really wasn't an incentive to go out and get that eel endorsement except what many teachers do out of the goodness of their own hearts and so this was a way to try
015and broaden a skill set and allow us to meet the needs of the kids okay all right thanks Tim and Kate for addressing all my questions and concerns thank you Dr Ro all right I I'll appreciate the the points that you made wanted to expound very quickly on a point that uh Miss craft made about the stiens is is is Not only was it it is it a way to incentivize but we talk a lot about and our team this year we've been talking about systems and how we can create a system that creates not only an equitable environment but a similar experience across our schools in certain areas and you know her point was true that you know that the the teams really identified some areas where students in one building were having an
016experience because of a stien schedule that supported adults and these clubs whereas at another school it was either on a voluntary basis or just wasn't happening and so we want to it allowed us to create an enhan take another step forward to ensuring that our environment is really Equitable for our student experience but also for our staff that are wanting to support students uh and their time so uh to Mr ral's point I just wanted to to highlight you know we we embarked on this block schedule conversation back in maybe late September early October um and had a really great conversation Mr dling sat on that committee uh as a representative of the board had really good discussions about about the block and the value of the block and remind everyone we had over 90%
017um uh in favor of the block from staff to students to parents included so keeping the block was a priority for us because everyone was enjoying it as much as they were in terms of the balance it provided and the depth but what we needed to address was we were falling short of a of a state mandate that that renewed a couple of years ago in terms of 300 minutes of seat time so we had to address that so the reason we couldn't communicate anything prior to now is it need to go through the process with the EA to votee and the board to vote communication will be going to families on Tuesday outlining the details um but the school start time will adjust slightly in order for us to hit that 300 minutes it'll
018be an 820 start and a 310 dismissal staff time or staff the staff day was unchanged but it was a collaborative process and one that um I think sets us up to move forward uh in the fall we will be engaging in a secondary scheduling Institute with a a group of 16 uh people um to really not only look at now that we meet the the mandated seat time requirements we can really look at what occurs during the day and are there are there levers that we can pull once we establish shared priorities and values of what we want our schedule to help us accomplish with our students so that we can uh ensure that what occurs between 820 and 310 hopefully on a block and we expect that it would remain on a block
019for at least the next two years it will but we're going to evaluate how can we pull the levers to make sure that our schedule really supports what we're driving it for our students so our goal is to remain on the Block because everyone likes it so much but we need to go through the values and priorities process before we can say we're on a block forever and you know things change and evolve we need to remain flexible the other comment that that Miss rock made was parent teacher conferences and I you know in this in the a negotiating process you know topics come up that we have you you just do things because you've always done them sometimes and you know an EA brought up raised the question about you know our parent teacher
020conferences in their current form still serving our best need of communicating and creating a partnership with our families you know we began really looking at that and identified the fact that 20 had 20% participation rate across all of our schools in the evening in October um and that we don't have to operate that way so our conversations really led us to um how can we increase the communication and really make it on demand when you need to connect with the teacher or a parent wants to connect with a teacher wants to connect with a parent that's really where the real work happens um parent teacher conferences are almost ceremonial uh and and that it's not we want it to serve a purpose so we you know some of the agreements that uh that we made
021are you know student starts to struggle D or and f that contact is being made from the teacher to to home and anytime a parent wants to connect VI a phone or a zoom our teachers are happy to do that and vice versa our teachers will reach out for those conversations so I just want to you know that and and as we dug into that we learned we're certainly not the only District having this conversation several of our other schools in our area high school districts especially have already abandoned the ceremonial parent teacher conferences so just to put that out there uh in the fall you'll see when the schedule is released there won't be a specific parent teacher conference night um but those conversations our intent is those conversations will actually increase because of
022the expectation uh of of teacher to parent contact when a student dips to to a certain level so I I again I I commend the team really appreciate all the work and effort on both sides that went into it I'm really happy with the process when M craft came and said I think we have a contract that's win-win uh you can't you can't beat that I think everybody um our district is better for what the negotiating team has put together thank you thank you um having sat on the negotiating team I really um what was in education let's just say that um it's actually the in my lifetime of being a board member both on another board and this board this is the four fourth contract I've negotiated about the First with the Education Association
023and um it was really a learning experience I I really appreciated being on um on the team um because I learned things the inner workings um you know because as a board member our our our job is to macrom manage the district and not micromanaged district and I'm sure you appreciate it Nicole but uh learning the inner workings of uh the the struggle sometimes that the Education Association has um it was really uh very eye opening and I really appreciate the Frank conversations I want to thank the team of Kate Cara Brad Paul and Tim and on the uh EA side Nicole Pete Tim Gabriella Laura and Bre and and um we had about 11 meetings yeah I don't know how many hours but was really good discussions um I I really uh appreciate uh
024all the Frank conversations we had and we learned a little bit about each other dur during the process so uh I really um appreciate everything that your team did and the admin team did to prepare and to get us to where we at today so the motion is to approve the 2024 2029 collective bargaining agreement between the Board of Education and the district 214 Education Association subject to final review and approval of legal counsel Nicole would you like to say something okay uh thank you board for having me as always I appreciate coming uh I definitely want to thank the negotiations teams on both sides it was definitely a collective effort I do definitely want to also stress that we're going to continue to maintain continue to talk continue to evaluate our needs going forward
025the EA is very committed to our students we're very committed to what we need to do to better this schools to better our school community and to better our Global Community as large so as we talked and learned a little bit about each other in the inner workings of not only schools but our boards we definitely want to continue to push those collaborative conversations one of the things that I thought was extremely important was that we want to look at the special needs of our students who have particularly more challenging roads to head for them so 504 collaboration moving forward is going to be huge we have wording in a contract that is Monumental and we want to continue to evaluate to see what needs will continue to grow around those particular students as well
026as our growing e population as Kate has talked about we've seen hundreds from when I started in the district to now thousands and as I often quoted our needs are going to continue to rise even if our populations continue to drop so we need to keep that in mind as we move forward um I think we're good but I want us to continue to remain good so if you ever need to reach out to me on behalf half of the entire team feel free but thank you so much for this process and I look forward to keeping this contract at the highest maintained level as possible so thank you all thank you um there's been a motion in a second and I've read the U the item so can I have a roll call please
027just dling yes fito yes heinan I Palmer I Ral I and kitzer yes motion carries 60 thank you and uh are we signing yeah okay yes [Applause] I know I gotta go thanks for being here Nicole okay that was the only action item so I need a motion to adjourn so moved second motion and a second please call the world Paul May hi W hi dling yes fito yes Hinman Hi and citer hi thank you everybody thanks for coming this morning the meeting is adjourned [Music] [Applause] [Music] for [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music]