School Board Meeting 6/13/22

001good evening everybody good evening [Laughter] all right welcome to the june 13th board of education regular meeting can we have a roll call please here here thank you all right the first item on the agenda is written communication dr davis do we have any we have no written communication at this time thank you thank you all right the next item is item for information and the first item is a student recognition for girls soccer ihsa 4th place boys and girls track and field so i'm going to introduce chris lovatino our athletic director i'll just say that we have had quite a banner year with our spring sports uh this year and so fortunately we have some coaches and athletes here that we're going to really be able to uh celebrate i know you probably had

002some celebrations already but we're gonna celebrate a little bit with you as well so uh mr levatino great thank you dr witherspoon and thank you to the board for having us here tonight um as we all know the past few years have been extremely difficult for all of us and especially for the uh the spring sport athletes here at eths they lost their entire 2020 season and they had last year's season condensed that's why it's my pleasure to be able to celebrate our spring season state trophy winners and state champions with you tonight and tonight we are celebrating the champions from this year and last year so we've got kind of a large group so i'm going to be brief and ask our coaches to be as brief as they can as well with their

003introductions i think that will be hard for some of them but we're we're going to try so our first honoree is girls soccer who won four championships this season and brought home the second state trophy in the history of their sport at eths and to share a little bit more on their accomplishments and introduce the players that were able to be here tonight is our head coach stacy salgado coach salgado all right i have uh coach colleagues he's going to join me up here as well because he's been a crucial part of our team first we want to thank you for having us um i was a former ephs alum it's great to be back i haven't been in one of these meetings a long time so it's good but we are here because we

004are here to honor our soccer team they have accomplished big things this season like chris mentioned all the championships that we have we were a record of 21 4-1 a csl in the conference 5-0 record which got us the championship title for us 89 goals so we've got some goal scorers here only 19 against so if you know anything about soccer that's a lot ranked number one in the sectional beat out teams such as nutria loyola libertyville to take us down state unfortunately you know the end of the season was not as we had hoped but it was an amazing season and all um and cannot be more proud of this group of girls so excited to have a lot of them with us not all of them unfortunately it is summer and this is

005their first week off of soccer we just ended not even a week ago so they finally took a little break so a lot of them are actually out of town but we're very happy to have a couple with us um so i'm gonna actually introduce them for you so we've got jocelyn lee so if you guys actually wanna stand up and get in a line as she calls her name and then we're going to have you slide around [Applause] we got braylon [Applause] let's get them all introduced chris let's get them all into this first and then we'll have them go around so that we don't miss their names lilly [Applause] arielle kite jordan kadiri tate lucas molly riley anna bergman and then lastly with us is nala dominguez [Applause] okay and as mr levitino

006was now saying you're not quite done uh we're going to invite all of you to come around the horseshoe here so we can give you some fist bumps or elbow bumps or or handshakes and when you get to the board president we we have a pin here commemorating you being honored by the board of education great thank you very much [Applause] yes [Music] [Applause] [Music] me we are we and i am thrilled you get one too thank you [Music] let's give it up for our girls soccer program one more time [Applause] so our our track and field teams have always been the backbone of eths athletic department winning a combined state championships between the boys and the girls programs and the past two seasons these two programs combine to win five state championships for individuals

007and relay teams to tell you about our boy's success i'd like to introduce you to head coach don michelin [Applause] khalid board of education superintendents administration i've been a part of this wonderful institution since 1980 coaching uh boys track and field had uh seven state champion relay teams and five individual state champions but i've never ever been associated with two powerful young men who were not only state champions but along the way were undefeated give it up to khalil didn't get a chance to stand on the podium at stake that that's a special honor and if you could have seen matt class he he represented the orange and blue whale when he got up there uh he just was showered with it he just he just loved it um so this is important for khalil

008to to be honored by evanston and and the board of education right now cleo is a finished his freshman year at iowa khalil correct me you were the number one freshman high hurdler in the big ten is that correct the other thing about the high hurdles for men they raised him three more inches so in high school he was a 39 inch hurdler now he's a 42 inch hurdler and so many high school state champions don't make the adjustment so they either change events or they leave the sport so khalil has put himself in a good shape he's the number three under 20 hurdler in the nation is that correct wow in the world excuse me so evanston high school does something right because for him to be uh that successful at the next level

009um they each got there in a different path um came from from different backgrounds the diversity of of evanston is is standing behind me and uh uh the two things i remember most about them and i'm gonna cut it short because my boss is pulling at my coattail um every day they came to practice and uh they had this work ethic to to be great um it was uh a plus for the team and a minus for the team because the team some of the team members view them as superstars that they'll never reach and so that that's kind of sad others viewed it as an opportunity to possibly get to that level um the other thing that was outstanding about them uh was their positive attitude no matter what happened at the state meet

010uh we had these beautiful white uniforms i know coach we had these beautiful white uniforms on and uh that was our first time wearing them and uh matt class was down to his last jump at 6'4 and you know those competitors that he had beaten throughout the year were hoping he'd miss it's his last jump i remember i went to the back i couldn't witness it i said we'll never put those uniforms on again he goes up goes over the bar at 6-4 by a large amount goes on to win the state championship so it's little small things yeah that that that get it done um khalil going into last year being undefeated uh they were at him too and his block slipped and 110 highs nobody cares about that but he he was able

011to collect himself and go on and win the same thing in the intermediates he came off the curve in fifth place they weren't even mention his name his parents and the family was down at the finish line all in orange and blue and he just powered past everybody and won so so they both had their challenges and and from those challenges they they grew into success so mata be at auburn next year uh jumping and he's also a pilot and uh khalil will be with the under 20 worlds and going to summer school and training at iowa so thank you [Applause] thank you congratulations wow coach you gotta be proud congratulations again to boys track and field as miss rodino just pointed out it may be that new blue track simulates the the exact color

012of the blue track down at eastern illinois university so our kids are comfortable down there the anchor to our spring sports state celebration relay tonight is the head coach of our girls track and field program who has brought home enough hardware to take up an entire hallway literally at eths fenney gunter [Applause] good evening first of all i'd like to congratulate the girls soccer team as outstanding job young ladies on the 50th year the 50th anniversary of title ix is quite an honor for you to open that up with a state trophy state trophies are very hard to attain in any sport this is the girls out of all our sports our 28th girls state trophy so congratulations to you young ladies you don't start it you got to keep it up uh last year

013was a abbreviated year due to the covet situation we had a group of young ladies and coaches who really hung in there and it's different type of dynamic as far as the track season with no indoor season but the young ladies really did an outstanding job those young ladies we had represent were state champions in the 4 by 200 meter relay team i believe jasmine wright's here ricky jackie where's dawson all right would you four ladies starting up please come up here this group of young ladies brought home our 24th state relay championship team last year they did an outstanding job they were under some very adverse conditions they stayed motivated the entire year under some extreme circumstances as we all know we're very proud of these young ladies they started a little getting us

014ready for this upcoming season we had uh three juniors and one sophomore on that group last year and we were able to get them all back this year also so we want to congratulate these young ladies for bringing us home that 24th state relay championship then we flip-flopped a year later and we won the 4 by 400 meter relay which is the mile relay where each girl runs 400 meters on that relay team we have three of the young ladies who are standing up here and then our fourth edition is miss oops i'm sorry we have runner-ups from last year standing up here but this year we have two young ladies who were added to the mix and that's miss destiny clark and miss abrielle artley along with jacqueline and ricky and they represented our

0154x400 meter relay team they were the number seven high school ranked relay team in the united states this indoor season and they are number 17 with california and a couple other states they were but they were number 17 in the outdoor season um they also set a new school record and that's saying a whole lot because we don't get too excited about things that we kind of accomplished because we've had been blessed with a lot of good young ladies and uh but they set themselves apart and that's what we try to get the girls to think about doing doing something that is very rare and this group has been able to attain that they did it as a really good group very supportive of one another and we're very proud of them and last but

016not least i'd like to just say quickly on this traumatic this great day with title ix our former pe head of the department ms margaret bourne from back in the day did a very good job by selecting our first coach miss karen huff and without miss karen huff getting us off to that tremendous start laying the foundation for us we wouldn't be the program that we are to this day thank you very much thank thank you and you didn't take enough credit for yourself thank you okay oh my gosh yes congratulations big congratulations to our girls track and field program one more time and uh and we have one more recognition that we'd like to make here with uh the board approval was not on the original agenda won't take too long thank you very

017much we'd like to recognize the the ray aiden friend of athletics award winner for this school year we started this award after the passing of ray aidan who was our equipment manager and did all things for the eths athletic department after he passed away in 2014 and it's presented annually to the individual that is best served eth student athletes coaches and the athletic department with loyalty selflessness humility effort joy and wild kid pride in a non-coaching role and this individual has done it all for us from building the best athletic facilities in the state of illinois in some sports to helping support us try to get more and more opportunities for our freshmen to participate to restoring a ton of coaching stipends that we lost during a freezing frozen period before we both started and

018more importantly just being up in the crowd cheering our kids on with a smile on his face and wildcat pride in his heart and our winner for this year is dr eric witherspoon [Applause] [Music] fist bumps give that give that man a pin finally congratulations [Applause] wow second of all to all of you you have made this meeting you have made this evening uh for all that you've accomplished and for coming this evening with all of your enthusiasm and all of your talent and and all of your accomplishments you make us very very proud thank you for coming tonight and yes you're allowed and may leave now great to see you so athletes coaches and parents we're going to do some quick photos in the main lobby and then we'll have you guys on your

019way so they can get to their business and yes eric i thought you were going to say it but tonight is a great day to be a wild kid [Laughter] i'm going to do this award yeah that stride [Laughter] [Music] well first of all i see our next two uh presenters and our last two people left in the audience but lonnie and lauren i'm sure that uh you couldn't have picked a better board meeting uh to attend uh than all that excitement i'm gonna jump right into the to the next item uh because uh we have received uh the association of school business officials international certificate of excellence in financial reporting now the board is probably going to yawn because this is the 14th consecutive year that eths has won uh won this recognition but

020it's not one of those things that they didn't just print them on paper towel and hand them out in fact in the state of illinois out of the over 800 school districts only about 60 have received this award and eths is one of them so i want to ask mary rodina to come up and accept this because we we have something to present uh and and mary uh to you but also to your entire team and to everybody in this district that has to make uh the finances of this district work because a lot of people have their hands on on that budget that you prepare and and i just want to say to you this is a big deal to be recognized by asbo international and to get an award for excellence in financial

021reporting is no small deal chief financial officer mary rodino thank you and congratulations [Applause] [Music] you guys are something else and if you want me to just jump in next uh i mentioned lonnie lonnie stone it's just here our our amazing and wonderful uh fan programming uh that uh i just i'm just not sure that there's anything to compare to it anywhere in the country lonnie to be honest and and by the way and all the publishers and authors know that too uh but uh she's going to be here to report on our family action network fan and uh as always we are we're always thrilled to have you come because we it reminds us of what you've brought to the quality of life thank you in our community thank you very much i'm going

022to see if i can manage i told marcus to come sit next to me but i think he's going to hide from me right now i'm just going to go like let's see what happens if i go like that that's the wrong way that's the right there you go okay good luck look at that mastery in just seconds um district 202 board thank you so much for inviting me to come for yet another report to you um i will be as brief as i can we have a little bit of material to cover and i have to start with a couple thank yous and i'm very interested about getting i'm going to do a fist bump because i want a pin anyway let's proceed so there's the fan logo all right of course we must

023start here of course which is um dr eric witherspoon i want to say to you with a very full fan heart on behalf of the board the staff and the many volunteers the many people have attended programs both both here and elsewhere we are so grateful that you had such insight i was looking at my notes i hit my first meeting with you on october 21st of 2013 was the first time i met with you side by side talking to you about how could evanston township high school how could some of those i believe you said you were took your pen and you pointed at the fan flyer you said how do we get some of these people on the stage here at eths and i just want to say that you have been the

024most gracious host the most welcoming the most anything that we ever needed i'm so grateful to you for having helped us launch in evanston so successfully you're such an inspirational and inspired leader and i know that the community is going to miss you we're grateful that you're going to be sticking around and i know um getting involved in other boards as well and other activities so i hope to now see you in the in the auditorium a little bit more often i hope you don't have too many conflicts with the board meetings um so i look forward to being able to welcome you as a guest it's been just a true pleasure to work with you thank you so much for everything you see a couple just a handful of the shots of you and

025your wife in some instances at some of the events so there's many more i could have put up there but there you are so thank you so much i appreciate that i guess i have to move my own slide okay here we go and of course then is i want to also acknowledge of course dr marcus campbell um who is um assuming the position as you all know of the superintendency beginning in july 1. he has a special role in fan land as you well know he's he's been on the board i also looked at that marcus i met you in august of 2013 just a few months before i met eric so it's been that goes on almost nine months or nine years excuse me that we've known each other mark has joined the

026board i should call him dr kemp dr campbell joined the board uh probably within i don't have the exact date uh maybe a year and a half two years after our our connection and uh to say that he's had such a huge impact on fan programming for those of you who've been around you know he's done uh that would have taken too many slides all the times that marcus has interviewed people for us has helped has coordinated and such an excellent thought partner and i could not be more joyful that district 202 has appointed him as their next superintendent so bright days ahead so thank you so much dr campbell okay in brief all right 20 21 22 highlights uh fan this year this season we call it season it's the academic year 50 virtual

027events eths sponsored 33 of them since the pandemic started 107 virtual events since the pandemic started which is and that doesn't include the after hours events which start right at the conclusion the main event this year eths received 570 free books from fan uh 300 copies of andrew eiden and john lewis's run right there in the center uh 100 copies of music is history by quest love 50 copies of unprotected by billy porter 100 copies of the 1619 project by edited by nicole hannah jones and 20 copies of i never thought of it that way by monica guzman so we are thrilled to be able to offer these books back to your community we do those as private book distributions when we are doing a book giveaway for some of these authors so we're thrilled

028to see the dissemination through the eths community okay just a very few highlights don't worry i'm not going through all 50 programs so a couple a couple of the quick highlights of andrew aiden as you see there was syed jones say jones what uh what what a pairing what an amazing man sarah stein greenberg from stanford uh from their institute of design the d school and liz gerber who you probably all know from northwestern uh deborah turkheimer and megan tui megan tui of course eths alum uh doing a program about um about credible why we doubt accusers and protect abusers and then below that of course quest love with anipha durkeeb um that's hanif's third appearance with fan interviewing quest love forest he was of course on the eths stage as you probably recall dawn

029turner and heidi stevens heidi stevens who joined the fan board this year as well don turner a beautiful program on her book three girls from brownsville and below that billy porter and jamal jordan what what an event that i don't even know what to say about that event that was something that was one for the books it was just i mean it was just stunning another time more details another time uh and then carol anderson coming back for fan for the second time with then nicole hannah jones for the 16-19 project beautiful pairing between the two of them as well and then rainsford stouffer and luisa strzok we feed she is a senior at new chair high school rainstorm sofa is in her 20s and they're looking at um how to rainsford's book was about

030how um young adults can make it through a world make it through when a world accepts them to be exceptional all the time really great inspirational program as well on the left dan pink and adam grant to two major names in the universe that was dan's second visit adam's third visit to fan on dan's book the power of regret and then john list and stephen levitt both from the university of chicago stephen levitt of course from freakonomics fame john list by the way partner of dana suskind who you probably know from the 30 million words project so that was a really beautiful program well about john's book and then last monica guzman ah she's so great and eric liu both of them from the from the seattle area and monica's book i never thought of

031it that way how to have fearlessly curious conversations and dangerously divided times she was brilliant it was a great great program and really boy what a pearl of a program thomas fisher and natalie moore uh about his book the emergency a year of healing and heartbreak in a chicago er he's an emergency physician at the university of chicago medical center that what what just beautiful beautiful poignant program loved every nanosecond uh oh sorry i almost was done that now i really am almost done uh and then luma mufla and jose antonio vargas luma as you probably know is the daughter-in-law of david fertransky eths's david fretransky he brought the program to me luma's book learning america one woman's fight for educational justice for refugee children um she is uh she's that was a beautiful and

032jose what a what a spark and then last susie wise and morgan vienne designed for belonging susie like sarah stein greenberg earlier also from the d school at stanford love her whole topic about belonging and how to build inclusion and collaboration so those are just a couple highlights now coming soon you probably recognize you know that room don't you know that room and that room was that was the setup for when tanasi coates was here his second time for the water dancer interviewed by hanif abdurakib so that's and they're all holding up copies of the water dancer that was a great event is that true yes that is that true one more time is it candy candy with you because the big flowers okay well i remember those flowers i was kind of this enormous

033floral thing okay i apologize sorry dr campbell you would remember better than me i apologize so ibram candy and your very own doctor actually just empty chairs but dr marcus campbell okay so this coming year is fan's 40th anniversary year um i've i've mentioned that the fan board a couple times and they kind of just blink and look at me blankly i suppose i i know what that means we'll pretend it's not happening i guess i'll be celebrating in my mind uh we are going to be doing forecasting then in personal and in-person and personal in-person and virtual events both we will be live streaming when feasible not every auditorium let's just say is as truly fabulous as your auditorium especially with all the recent renovations in there not all of our hosts auditoriums are

034as equipped to do live streaming so we'll see what happens we will be doing a strong focus on zoom events from thanksgiving through spring break uh kind of saving all that winter wear and tear and blizzards and icy and polar vortices and all the rest saving that and really looking at the zoom events during then we have multiple new partners for next year the wilmette public library lake forest high school district 115 barrington high school district 220 and interestingly the santa clara university school of law whatever and now uh because i know that's what you really want to hear from me it's nice to look at what already happened but i know you're curious about what's coming so some of these things are solid i don't put dates on any of these right now some

035things were probably about 80 percent there some things we just haven't asked in so don't come find me a year from now it's like what happened to so-and-so they didn't show up we'll see what happens all right we're going to start with gaber mate and his book oh gosh this guy is so incredible he's a specialist on addiction trauma childhood development and he looks primarily at the relationship between stress and illness he has four best sellers this is his new book coming out i'm not going to read all the titles i assume can all read for yourself so i'll skip that part to save time javier zamora 32 year old award-winning salvadoran poet this new book is a memoir about his nine-week odyssey solo as a nine-year-old across guatemala mexico and eventually through the sonoran

036desert traveled unaccompanied by boat bus and foot after a coyote abandoned his group in oaxaca xavier managed to make to arizona of the aid of other migrants at age nine so this book is about his journey he is brilliant this is going to be one of the biggest books of the fall we are thrilled to be hosting him steven thrasher northwestern university professor at madill the first journalism professorship in the world created to focus on lgbtq plus research he's also a faculty member at northwestern's institute for sexual and gender minority health and well-being this is his first book very excited to be hosting him the return of temple grandin uh some of you have been around for a while know that we last hosted her in 2014 at we had to move it to welsh

037ryan arena it's the stands as the largest program fan ever did 4 000 people showed up at that event which was completely whack-a-doodle a professor of animal science at colorado state university and an outspoken advocate for the autism community so she is returning with that book very interested in this which is frank keel he's a professor of psychology at yale he's also a member of the cognition development lab he's looking at you can't quite read that sub had their childhood and the lifelong love of science he's really looking at why is it the kids are so curious and adults are so incurious what happens to you that you just stop asking why and how this could be fabulous here we go for those of you who know your basketball uh chris ball point guard for

038the phoenix suns nba rookie of the year all-star game mvp two olympic gold medals president nba players association from 2013 to 2021 fun fact vegan since 2019. the book is about his grandfather who is mugged and subsequently died of a heart attack from the assault at age 61. this book is about the huge impact that his grandfather had on shaping his life could not be more thrilled and of course i bet you can guess where we're going to put this program get that overflow ready medi hassan this just came through this is gonna be so fab uh many his son many of you know him from msnbc and his uh his show mehdi hassan show he's an award-winning british american journalist anchor and author uh you can see the subtitle um this will be great

039for speech debate teams this will be interest for anybody interested in public speaking this is not political i i haven't read the book but it's not being sold as it's about he's a debate champ he does oxford debates he does all kinds of things so it's it's a i'm hoping a neutral topic neutralish as neutrals these things can be love this program perry cern and danny bassett identical twin scholars both in this book is about curiosity as a practice of connection they define three kinds of curious people the busy body the hunter and the dancer they'll explain that later perry uh who is at the top perry is assistant professor of philosophy at american university danny at the bottom is a professor at the university of pennsylvania with appointments in the departments of get ready

040bioengineering electrical and systems engineering physics and astronomy neurology and psychiatry and in the year that he won his macarthur grant it was the macarthur fellowship was the youngest ever in the history of macarthur back in 2014 both are only 42 years old and this is just to be a wow program fascinated love this this just came in as well moya mcteer uh she's a science communicator her bachelor's in harvard in astrophysics and folklore mythology the first black women to earn a phd in astronomy from columbia university as she puts it humanity runs on stories in my work i use science to make stories feel rich and stories to make science accessible so that's what she's going to talk about hhs alum and alum uh pronunced not sure i could go a couple different ways if

041it's pronounced in the german way it'd be lemka but i'm not quite sure eths class of 85 i think you guys uh honored her maybe in 2018 for alumnae alumni award maybe maybe earlier she's professor medical director of addiction medicine at stanford university school of medicine this book is about how to moderate compulsive over consumption in a dopamine overloaded world who doesn't need that oh this book this guy joseph earl thomas this is he got his mfa from notre dame he's currently a phd student at penn it's a coming-of-age memoir about the difficulty of growing up in a hazardous home in the glory of finding salvation in geek culture he's this book has got the buzz buzz buzz buzz it's gonna be stunning can't wait i love everything about him love this book tried to

042get it when she came out in hardbound so we're trying to swing it on the paperback tour liana wen emergency physician professor of health policy management at gw's milken institute school of public health she's also at the brookings institute she also writes for the washington post cnn blah blah blah i shouldn't say that that's disrespectful lots of things she does she attended college at 13 her family emigrated from china they were homeless for quite some time she went to college at age 13 became a rhodes scholar turned to public health as a way to make a difference love this book this topic i had hoped to host her last year and was unable so we're going to get her on the rebound young pueblo diego a formal name diego perez ecuadorian writer and poet he

043goes by the pen name young pueblo which means young people he is a they call him the poet meditator uh he began the panasa vipassana excuse me meditation practice a number of years ago to heal from drug and alcohol addiction um he's published poems on instagram since 2013 has almost 2 million followers on instagram as he puts it i think of myself as an explorer i'm on this journey just like everyone else what i hope to create is reflective material that can help people build their own self-awareness going to be a great program so him the lighter it's about just coming to terms with who the heck you are offloading some of all of that and then i'll finish with wait for it there she is there is no cover yet for the book so

044that is not the book cover as you can see covered to be revealed i don't know what the cover is and but tiffany haddish stand-up comedian actress host and producer her breakup film as many of you know in 2017 was girls trip her first book was a memoir called the last black unicorn this is a new essay collection she's also the founder of she ready foundation to support foster kids in need interesting as i was putting together all of these bios for this presentation how many of our authors were homeless for periods of time living in cars for periods of time a lot of a lot of childhood trauma in a lot of the people that we're featuring so i find that just a point of note more to come that's probably most of that

045is going to be just for fall there's going to be other stuff as well you know we'll see what happens with in-person programs we're going to try to get a bunch of them in or some of them in any way not every author wants to be in person some absolutely don't want to be in person some can't wait so it'll be a mishmash mix match something something happy to take any questions or comments so lonnie yes sir is just for fall an attempted understatement you're amazing no i really those really are well amazing uh there's probably some winter in there a little bit of winter i don't even know the spring i don't have the spring grids yet so mostly a little bit that i try to say in my introduction what you've done to

046enhance the quality of life and the intellectual engagement in this entire area is simply uh unmatched you're an amazing person well it's an amazing organization that will live long after i'm gone as well so i'm i want it to be i don't that's not a foreshadowing i have no plans to step down yet but um you know i that's my really my my third third is i need to uh build the infrastructure fan in such a way that when i do step away it's gonna boom i want some i want some whippersnapper 30 year old to come in here some booth a kellogg mba to come in and just blow the whole thing up that's what i'm waiting for so if you know one let me know uh something else anybody else anything else so

047i just want to say once again lonnie um sort of echoing what eric just said you have really changed this community and and i just am blown away and you know when i leave town and go to some of these workshops so stuff that i do across the country and just kind of give a list of the people i've seen folks are really amazed and then the next thing they want to say to me or they do is wow that must really cost a lot i'm running how did you get the tickets and i'm like well it's kind of free you know kind of free yeah so it actually doesn't surprise me that um do you say santa clara law school school law school of law um it doesn't surprise me that they want to

048connect with fans because you know there's been a lot of um [Music] of trauma connected to um the last couple of years the pandemic but one of the things that did happen is we learned how to how to do all this work virtually absolutely and so we were able now to go well beyond our community so i think it's been pretty powerful for this community and watching it grow beyond the community but it was still the chicago metropolitan area but now we've gone much further i mean even in the chicago metropolitan area i mean we this year we welcome the university of chicago lab school parents association join fan and you know or even just the chicago schools more generally i think that uh there's no way that really i mean let's be honest lake

049forest high school or barrington high school it's just too much of a drive for most of their parents to come to in-person programs we had about 30 percent of our audience came from outside of illinois last year and from all you know dozens and dozens of countries so it's it's robust and it's just it's we'll see what happens i mean i love a nice in-person event not everyone you all know that about me um but there's been some pretty ineffable um joys of virtual programming i have to say i don't mind them right so right thank you i appreciate the support we appreciate the support of district 202 for fan programming very much appreciate it thank you well thank you great thank you other questions board members i was just just because i don't want

050us to get too excited about the virtual world because what i do love when i've been to our events is how we cultivate a space for our kids and you will often privilege their you know participation and their seating and it's just so rich and i think that that can't really happen online yeah so thank you we also look forward to um i can't wait to see about which of our authors can also come during the day maybe and talk to some of the students as we had in the past and see if we can rub that up a little bit as well you know it's just it's just really a mixed bag there's just some sometimes it's just it's i don't need to tell you it's a change landscape and so it's just sometimes

051authors don't want to leave sometimes they're caring for an older parent sometimes they have little kids at home and they're just as happy to stay online but others are just they can't wait they're chomping at the bit so it's just going to be a little bit all over but thank you i appreciate that comment good other comments good perfect romani thank you thank you so much thanks for the invitation to come thank you thank you and come get your pen oh i was i was joking around the circle no it's okay seriously i want to come on lolly no no that was mostly a joke maybe at my retirement my retirement i'll grab good thank you [Laughter] thank you lonnie you got your phone get me into like [Laughter] you don't know you just don't

052know all the board meetings you get a front row seat thank you all right our next item on the agenda is a report on the social consciousness programming and lauren hamilton is getting queued up there and dr campbell is moving i think to the table but looking forward to this report on our social consciousness programming good evening board lauren hamilton serves dual roles here at eths she is the equity analyst and she's also my assistant and i just like to start by saying first thank you to lonnie because a lot of the programs that fam does is also part dovetails very nicely with our social consciousness series and what you'll see tonight is i'm so proud of this report as as we were putting this together as lauren was putting this together i said this

053is why we're so tired right now at the end of the year because it is really the signature work uh of our of our school what we're sharing with you tonight is not happening at this scale at any other school in america and uh we're happy to to be doing it here and uh looking for more opportunity and ways to grow the work so i'm gonna turn this over to lauren and we'll start from there good evening everyone it is so nice to be back here again after two years to report on the amount of work and love that has been led by our educators our community partners and our student leaders to pull off our first in-person social consciousness series events in the last two years so we'll get started i'll cover the summits

054first and then dr campbell will talk about some additional adaptive work that's come out of the principal's office so first we'll go over and just quickly review what the purpose of the social consciousness series is at district 202 and the framing for this year's work i'll share some highlights on all of the summits and an additional event that we've added to the programming i'll cover some of the reflections that the organizers have had and goal setting that we've done for 2223 dr campbell will review some of the additional adaptive work and partnering that's come out of the office and then we'll take any additional questions and comments you might have all right okay so the social consciousness series in short is work that our entire community is invested in to improve a sense of belonging

055at eths amongst our students who have marginalized identities specifically students who have racial and ethnic marginalized identities and so i do want to say firstly that this work would not exist without the labor of love that our black and brown educators have been leading for decades at eths and without the support of our administrators and our board and so over the last several years this series has grown to include community events we've had events for parents but most importantly our students are at the center of what we do here we are about the work of beloved community building relationships and providing opportunities for students to connect with each other as they explore their identity build healthy identities and have conversations about the implications of some of these identities that we hold in these social constructs

056that we know have very real implications for how we move throughout society so that's the general purpose of the social consciousness series i would say some of the most exciting parts of the series for me as an organizer is working with students to pull off our summits and so this year dr campbell welcomed us back to the building with a vision of leaning into care wellness and healing we know that the pandemic that we're still moving through has had some pretty severe implications in a lot of communities of color predominantly it's been really difficult on our young people it's been difficult on our educators we've been moving through racial reckoning uprisings and so this year was just about trying to be as authentic as possible in getting back to being human and he gave an

057amazing institute day address with all the staff back in the auditorium in august and what he spoke about was rooted in dr nadine burke harris's work from the deep as well where she talks about the ways that we can mitigate the neurological implications of major stressors what she calls toxic stress and trauma on young people and so of those six i wanted to highlight focus on mental health healthy relationships and mindfulness which i believe have been at the foundation of the work that eths has done since 2020. okay and as i was updating this uh slide deck for this evening i just i love using this photo this young man just graduated actually this year this is where we left off at in 2020 we were able to do our black student summit and we

058had our lgbtq plus student summit and then we went remote thinking we'd be back here in two weeks and a year and a half later we're just getting back so i took this quote from pattia braithwight who is an author and organizer and she says hear about joy joy isn't a distraction it's nourishment it's part of where some of us find the energy to continue thriving and i feel that that really just spoke to the vision that the organizers and dr campbell really wanted us to run with keep it simple but keep it profound let's bring folks together let's give our students space to connect with each other and just simply experience joy so that's where we went all right i'm going to try to keep it as short and sweet as possible it's difficult

059so we can get to the wonderful highlight video that william jenkins put together for us so for black summit this year black joy was the theme we had some really popular t-shirts that were designed someone said it looks like black good morning america i think that might have been you so one of our newer staff members the district aaron stevenson he's an artist a musician he has his own consultants group he does a lot in addition to serving as our specialist in the student success center or the hub and so we tapped him to keynote the event this year and he had a wonderful message about what it means to cultivate joy even though happiness can come and go we had a wild water main issue on february 9 so usually this is a two-day

060event the water maid break had us canceled february 9th so all of the organizers and myself we had all the students attend on february 10 stayed up planning to make it happen and so i just want to express so much gratitude for the team of folks who were up until 10 pm trying to make this happen for the students the next day with our workshops we had i was counting over 15 workshops because we had so many students we wanted to make sure that they had a lot to choose from but all of those workshops centered creativity wellness and community so some of the highlights we had a way speed making a workshop where students were with one of our coaches who is skilled in the art of way speed making and understands what it

061means to create that we had one of our community partners from chop chop mobile salon come and do a natural hair care workshop which has been something that the students have been wanting for years that we were able to pull off this year dr keith robinson and some of our other educators who are in greek fraternities and sororities some of our historically black ones came through and they represented as many of the divine nine that we could get in the door they also talked about hbcus and then in addition to our workshops we offer affinity groups which are just additional spaces for students to gather around other identities that they hold in addition to their black identity so we had an lgbtq plus student workshop we have a workshop for young women we have a

062workshop for the boys we got athletes together this year we had a workshop for immigrant and first generation black students and then one more for biracial students as well and those are always spaces that the young people look forward to and then i also wanted to just highlight some of the partnerships we were able to bring together this year so we had sex ed chicago come in and do an inclusive sex ed program again chop chop mobile salon who were exploring pulling off a monthly program throughout the school year the illinois student assistance commission or isac came through to do a post-secondary planning our black student union that's been gotten off the ground again after some years led a workshop northwestern university of course and then hbcus and our fraternities and sororities all right these

063are some photos i grabbed so a component of the planning which is really wonderful so over 25 student planners this year is because the summit takes place in february they're able to collaborate with our black history month committee so this is a poster from the spirit week that they planned and they were very thoughtful about what summit days were going to be what theme in the middle here we have photo represented by the folks who came through for the divine nine program it's a little grainy but i couldn't not put it on here we even have some alum who came back to support students talk about their experience on college campuses and what it meant to be part of these organizations and then some folks down from down the street at northwestern also and then

064because this year we had a half day event and we wanted to kind of be conscious of how many students we were gathering at once in february we waited until it got nicer to have a throwback end of the year bash just out on the tennis courts we invited dj cash era her name is casara heining who in 2021 was voted as chicago's best hip-hop dj so she came we brought some food out and just gave the students the chance to kick it and enjoy each other before they left for the summer all right so our lgbtq plus student summit was in early march with a theme of take pride take joy take action they were this event was planned in partnership with our gsa our gender sexuality alliance that has a very robust student

065leadership team and some highlights from the event our keynote was precious brady davis who is a black trans woman she is an author a speaker and after she spoke one of our seniors who just graduated mordecai evans and one of our newer staff members also from the hub had the chance to sit down and interview precious and students were able to submit questions and precious took the time to answer those questions on stage at that moment and then also let a workshop with students thereafter we also had an alum come back jay rice i wasn't sure when jay graduated do you know so jay rice actually i've met out in the community jay is a curator of events in space for black and brown queer folks specifically black and brown trans folks in the community

066jay is a dj and he also works for brave space alliance which is a very influential and important organization based out of chicago that is run and supports black trans folks so jay came back hosted a workshop called black loud and queer about what it means to live the inner intersections of queerness and blackness and then a good friend of mine as well who also went to northwestern javi aya who now produces a performance art and drag show did the performance at the end of the event i put some of the workshops there for you to check out some of the wonderful things that came out of this event aside from the drag show and jay coming back and having a precious brady davis is the emphasis on what it means to be queer and

067also a person of color and that's something that the organizers for lgbtq summit have been doing a lot of work around is making sure that we're centering multiple perspectives and talking about the intersections of race and queerness these are some snapshots so we have precious in her book i have always been me a photo of jay and then javi aya at a event they were hosting great meena middle eastern north african and asian student summit mina joy so this year mina was organized by two student groups so we had the asian heritage alliance or aha and then the south asian middle eastern student group or same club and dr raul sharma keynoted he is a friend of the summit he's part of the evanston community he's a psychologist and also founder of funkadesi which is

068a music group that brings a brings together a diverse range of music funk reggae different indian forms of music that have cultural significance and it's a massive band they've been to meena's summit before and this year he took it a step further for us he spoke to his work around inclusive joy and what that looks like as our keynote funkadesi again performed and then even did a workshop with the students this year all right these are some photos so we have students who are adorning themselves with henna during a workshop in the middle we have a photo of the organizers led by diana baliton in community service and then on the right here we have students who were personalizing tote bags led by one of our new educators and lastly we have the latinx student

069summit which ended the summit series on april 27th and their theme was animo amor alegria ponte las pilas cat lazzo who is a producer a host and the host of a podcast called the cat call came and keynoted she spoke to what it means for her to be a latina and also she talked about anti-blackness within the latinx community and what they need to do to build solidarity intercommunally and so over 30 panelists and presenters came to eths that day to pull off six workshops for our students a lot of those workshops were hands-on which is something that the students have expressed that they've wanted so there was one on cuisine there was a dance workshop as well and then at the end of the day there was a dance that was just so beautiful

070to see it took place in beardsley gym we had ice cream vendors all these snacks and a dj and it was wonderful because latinx summit has not happened since 2019 they didn't get to have their event along with mina summit and so it had been a long time since they've been able to be in community together for this day i was also looking at some of their registration information and over 17 countries were represented in the backgrounds of the students who attended including puerto rico and 15 student organizers were involved in the organizing for that day some photos so we have all the staff who are living their best lives at that dance cat lazzo and then a really amazing presentation that's the word i'm looking for by some of our senior girls who were

071talking about the tradition of having a quinceanera and what that meant for them as they emerged into young womanhood all right this year we added a new event to the social consciousness series abilities awareness week so one of the things that we did as an office this year was to establish two new affinity groups for staff so we established our lgbtq affinity group and an abilities affinity group and so staff students from our day school as well as some of the resident artists who are represented over the rainbow in evanston came together to plan the very first ability abilities awareness week in march and one of the things that they did was they put a pop-up in one of our multi-purpose rooms in exhibit the students from day school and other programs at eths put

072together a number of really amazing displays that focused on those three topics so disability history role models in the abilities community in race and ability since this was the first year the staff members who were supporting this programming and taking the lead really did the due diligence of making sure they were talking to students surveying and really thinking about what it means to do this work and do it with student voice at the center something else that our organizers did to go the extra mile was to develop a google site of resources for teachers to be able to use just to kind of raise the awareness of what it means to have students with different abilities in class we establish the partnership with over the rainbow in evanston and in the future the students are

073hoping to have a day-long event that focuses on other hidden disabilities such as adhd autism and some of the learning disabilities in our community some photos so some team students performed i believe this was in the morning in the main lobby on the last day of abilities awareness week in the middle is work from the residents at over the rainbow there was a gallery that they provided artwork for and then one of the exhibits the boards from the exhibit in our multi-purpose room that classrooms were able to tour and then it was just open for anybody to drop by and i could not not mention because i just thought it was really profound the how far our educators went to make sure that the community was supported and had the ability to do a lot

074of learning that week and always and so this is just a snapshot of the website that they put together all right yes we've arrived um so as dr campbell gets to the video some of the things we're reflecting on for next year is increasing student attendance for all of the events it's been a really rough couple of years and so some of the numbers were a little lower than we've seen in the past but we're going to use our resources use the technology at our disposal and do some classroom and club and activity push-ins to really make sure students know what the series is about we're going to develop some opportunities for cross-cultural and inter-communal relationship building a number of students came to me and some other staff organizers this year wanting to have like

075a culture night or a affairs we're going to think about doing that for next year having more targeted outreach to support student engagement especially some of our students who are disengaged in school right now and who have had a really hard time and then just leaning into creating more spaces for staff joy and relationship building [Music] yes i am your principal dr marcus campbell and it is such a pleasure to finally be able to have an in-person black student summit after two whole years it's been two years the reality is happiness is based on happenings and if my happenings don't happen the way that i hope that they happen then i don't have any happiness but joy is different than happiness joy isn't based on what i see joy is not based on what's happening

076around me if i've got joy on the inside it doesn't matter what's happening on the outside and every day i recognize that we must be strong we must be allies and we must work together every day to empower you for who you are you know i think it's really important for public schools to gather community uh whether that's based on sexuality race ethnicity um because you need spaces to actually create a safer community outside of you know larger society and i wish that i had events like this because representation matters just for queer folks and queer folks of color to be able to see other queer and trans individuals thriving in an intentional way gives them a different type of hope for the future the lgbtq community is another kind of diversity you know when

077it comes to diversity we should be talking about ability faith gender sexual orientation those communities will are our communities that you will interact with for a lifetime and they only enrich us if we know that that there's xenophobia racism sexism heterosexism and all of these systems of you know uh imbalance in power it's important for us to insist by disrupting by speaking to by by again claiming space affirming space so to me that's the insistence and you if you do it with a counterbalance of compassion humility and accountability for me it's an unstoppable package i think it's important to get together as a community because we're underrepresented everywhere else and we should take opportunities where we can meet each other siege people who are like us and in our community if it wasn't for this

078we'd all kind of be like cooped up in a box we wouldn't really know like that there's other people that like really like share same similar experiences you know even though we're like not from the same culture that this is happening during a school day you know most students this happens after school right or on a saturday right or like during the summer as like a summer program so i think that your high school is actually leading the way uh for for other schools to follow i hope that you find the beauty in your culture in your background in your upbringing and please remember that there is power in numbers don't go through life by yourself build community thank you all right i'm gonna turn it okay all right so now we are going to

079transition to talking about yes i am can you go to the next slide for me i'm nervous thank you okay all right so um in addition to the whole social consciousness series there was also a lot of other work that um we were supporting as an office um and i'm gonna turn it over sure you're doing such a great job laura thank you uh so we've um have also been working with our staff leadership team on various aspects of how the work really shows up in our day to day operations for example last year this time we had one of our history teachers janae mcalpin who talked about the role and presence of whiteness and leadership culture here at eths and how do we de-center whiteness in our operational culture as leaders corey wallace someone

080else who we have been partnering with with our building leaders teachers and staff had led monthly meetings with regard to race and other intersection intersecting identities with our leadership team as well as reflecting on our leadership culture christine saxman worked with our district anti-racist working group along with corey they cory did both of those groups and uh who's that that's devon i'll have my glasses on that's devon alexander who worked directly with our delt our district equity leadership team and these are other um professional development opportunities that available for all staff to engage in more deeper personal work that's you know supported by the summits and everything else so we've these are just a few more items that we engaged in as a school all year to really process our identities process the world process

081the pandemic process the racial reckoning happening in the country and i led talk backs we did work on institute day it was a new year to establish a district anti-racist working group we call it the dog dawg and that work will continue and we'll continue to engage and expand the work moving forward programs and partnerships uh we've partnered with a group with black brown and breathing is that on here black brown and breathing um because what we wanted to model for our students of color is that you know mindfulness is something that that students of color and staff of color can also engage in we partnered with rebel human with jenny harrington and robohuman and these were teachings of mindfulness that staff and students had the ability to access through pe through after school activities

082we offered these programs for our our racial affinities parent caucuses and so we tried to as much as possible give our students and staff and our parents access to some of the mindfulness work that we were doing as a school and uh yeah the council so a few a few maybe a year ago i talked to the board about giving making sure that any student of color black or black boys or boys of color who wanted a mentor an opportunity to have a mentor well the pandemic slowed us down but we still have that infrastructure built to where we are going to be able to partner with 10 plus organizations to get any student particularly boys of color mentors and so we had to take a little bit of of a step back this school

083year as we built that infrastructure but we are well positioned uh for the next school year to begin to build the kind of partnerships both locally and in the chicagoland area for mentoring for some of our our our our students and um the other organizations up there i've mentioned on the previous slide so that's a lot of work that is lauren and i have been doing all year long as you know that the our summit work and some of the work uh that we have engaged students in with regard to the the summits and other identities started with our black male summit and this has just proliferated and expanded we are creating community creating opportunity and when lauren says educators what she means is it's not just teachers this is support staff this is safety

084this is everybody anyone in our school or in our district that holds an identity that they like to share and that they like to cultivate and build relationships with students they are able to do so and it is it is a part of our healing as we move forward through some some difficult times and that's our presentation and we're happy to take any questions and we spent a lot of time here because as i said it's hard to condense it but it is our signature work it really is i agree it is it is our signature work and i really enjoyed every minute of it so thank you and thank you for that video um and it's also exciting to see the professional development what you're doing with the staff how you're keeping folks fresh

085and engaged in this work which is sometimes challenging in a place like eth because this has been going on and you know some people just assume that it's it's good it's done and so we don't have to keep working at it but we absolutely do have to keep working at it and you know we sometimes get reminders of the work that we've done or neglected or what we've missed and uh so there's still yet work ahead so um so that's good um so i'll first turn it over to the boards if anyone has any questions or something you'd like to say or elaborate on i'll quickly just add you know when i started serving on this board seven years ago i think it's been a long time the presentation uh was about the blackmail summit

086right and so to sit here and to see how inclusive it has become to make sure that all our students feel a sense of belonging it's amazing you know the growth that we've experienced here and the intentionality you said before us i think i was here during the second year but you said this will be inclusive of all our students and this is where we start you know and so it has definitely become that so i i thank you for that um and and the the opportunity for other students to cross over and engage um which i've seen happen as well you know to be allies and to come and to participate and to learn so just proud to see how we keep growing other comments just quickly i just it's awesome and you took

087just the right amount of time but we could have done more because it was really awesome um and i i a couple of things first just great work and all echoing everything monique said but um i do want to give a shout out to you lauren because i've you've done these presentations and i think there's an understatement of what is behind the scenes to get all this to happen and i know that you're doing a lot of this work as much as dr campbell's wonderful he's got 10 000 other things he's doing it's probably so to you but you're doing this and you've done a really great job and and i in previous times i've really appreciated how you've cultivated i've heard you and seen you with students here cultivating them to be leaders and

088to to sort of be in the front so i just want to give you a big shout out um because this doesn't happen just at the snap of a finger this is a lot of work and and working with young people who you know are sometimes in all different places and you know have lots of great ideas that can't be realized in a half-day thing so you really have to help them to get what they need but yet in a you know and get it done so i just wanted to say thank you to all of the work behind it but especially to you thank you for saying that because it is absolutely there it there would be no scale of what we're doing if it weren't for lauren and her commitment to student voice

089and the planning and the organizing so yes and she attends all of the dog meetings all of the dealt meetings i don't go to those all of that all of the blt meetings all of the planning meetings that i can't attend she does it all and so we're very fortunate yes thank you amazing [Laughter] i'm just gonna say two things and one or three one i'm jealous um i think the work uh you just shared was amazing and um i just love that my kids get to benefit from it um and then you know i was just like do i should i call and then so here's just two ideas two things to think about um one is i don't know what platform you're using for or the kids are using for the um you

090mentioned an abilities website or that kind of thing and um if it's a google site which is one of the easiest ones to make they're not ada compliant maybe it's something else but just to keep that in mind um so and i've i've run into that a lot um because it's so easy to do but then it's not accessible um and then the other thing i was just i've been thinking a lot about is the difference between allyship and being a co-conspirator and just really thinking about how we can bring that into the space um as we design and think about you know next year even and how to help kids understand those differences so but thank you so much thank you for that i wrote the note down about the google site and accessibility

091there so in 2020 when we went remote less than a week later we were going to have our first deconstructing whiteness workshop it was all planned a group of five to six educators who have been really present in the work of understanding whiteness and how it functions in white supremacy culture we're ready to make this go with soar students as well and then we went home so i'm going to revisit that and see if that's something that we can put back on the table for 22 23 but that's definitely a space where we want to invest in for the series thank you actually i love that because um i often think about the students who are not in the auditorium and this and the impact of um seeing their classmates or not seeing their classmates

092uh for a day that is that's powerful for all students so i feel like the work that you're doing is really important for the group that you are discussing for the day you're focusing on but it's also just as important for those other students and so yes the deconstructing whiteness is is really exciting to do but i mean really thinking about like every time there's a session every time there's a session i don't know what of course i don't of course i shouldn't but i don't know what what other adults are saying to the to the other kids you know why or where are the kids today and what are they doing and notice who's missing or you know just kind of make sure that that's highlighted make sure that that that's lifted up because

093that's really important yeah that's definitely something that we talked about as organizers a staff organizing group this year was making sure that our teachers and our staff know what the series is outside of just like naming that it's happening naming why it's important because some of those conversations can be difficult to have with students and so we want to make sure they're supported so i'm hoping this year we can build that into a little bit of pd using our tuesday tidbits and our videos that we have building out some more faqs and just making sure the adults are equipped to have these conversations about the importance of the series for the community and i would add that uh that the deconstructing whiteness is the heaviest lift yeah for lots of reasons and so uh but

094we're ready for it and uh we are committed to it um because you're right that is that work is just as important as the other work that we're doing thank you for adding that dr campbell it is the heaviest lift yes thank you but that's kind of what we do around here right we find the heaviest the hardest the most challenging and then we go for it all right well it's been a pleasure thank you thank you so much make sure you come around the horseshoe [Laughter] are you all right [Laughter] [Music] all right well thank you so we're back on our agenda so um the next item on the agenda is very important it is the last this is the last meeting that dr witherspoon will be serving as our superintendent so i can't

095believe we're here but we are um so board members have all prepared just a little something maybe to say um i feel like i've had my opportunity to speak to you so i'm gonna allow my colleagues to talk and we'll start um with monique and then we'll just go around thank you so i've acted selfishly if i could start because i i really wanted to be here tonight and you you know i don't know what i was thinking seven years ago of running for school board and serving as um ceo for mcgall ymca because they're both major deals but this is the first time i've had a conflict the first time and and i wanted to be here for this right i did not want you to leave without hearing my words um so i

096don't know if you know that when emanuel my son decided to come to eths this was not our first choice and he had many options to go other places and he experienced them and they threw everything at him right and he went to one school in particular and he left that school he came home and he said ah mom you know the program is good but there's not a community everyone leaves the building and they go to chicago or they go to different places but there's no community he said i'm not sure i love the coach but i'm not sure and then one of his best friends was tragically killed in our community and he was devastated he hasn't had never experienced a situation like that dj coleman um he we attended the funeral for

097dj um and you stood up to speak i did not know you you stood up to speak at the funeral and i tease you all the time because i said you sounded like like a baptist preacher um and i looked up i really was not paying you any mind because you know because our kids were devastated our community was devastated and you got up and you spoke and you spoke with such intentionality and heart you didn't know i mean you barely knew these kids they were freshmen coming in and you knew how this affected our entire community and the students and from that moment he told me he said see this is why i chose to come to eths and i got chills i mean i my son had never experienced anything like that um

098and i couldn't console him and it was the coaches it was your words that made him feel a part of this community and so when i ran i said publicly that i wanted every child in this community to have an experience like my son where he was known where he was on the radar um where people expected great things from him and told me when it didn't happen right i wanted that for every student and i was committed to running because of that because i am not a public person i don't like you knowing my business i don't like being out front i like being in the back scene but when that happened i had no choice and you made that work for my son you made it work for me and you made it

099work for so many other black boys that look like him um yes we have so much work to do but my goodness where we've come from is far worse than than where we are i can't even begin to tell you the horrific stories i heard prior to you being here about how our students were treated and dismissed and so if it were not for him i would not be here um and if it were not for you he would not feel like this is his school so i thank you because of that and and i know he's just one story but he's mine to share and you made that possible so we can stop there i know so if i if i i know right godly um so my colleagues i i am going to

100have to leave i feel so bad for not because this is so important you know what i have to do but i i wanted to say that because tonight is so it's 470 men that i take care of and i have to go and represent them too but i'm going to miss you and i love you dearly thank you it is amazing that that you have not had a conflict like this in all these years because i i'm like this yeah there's no way of watching this eric's last meeting and um the tornado worked it out yeah yeah right worked it out because they're still talking so can i just get that can i okay thank you so much thank you i'm shaking eric okay thank you so much [Music] be safe all right mine's

101not as good so don't worry plus i'm reading on the phone and hopefully my battery won't die [Laughter] so i can't claim credit for hiring you because i joined the board two years after you got here but we've served together for a long time um the longest of anybody here other than some administrators so i had plenty of experiences to reflect back on as i considered what to say this evening but i will not be reviewing the entire chronology because you know i love a short meeting um i'm not sure eric would want me to lead with this um but some of you well actually i think most of you realize this that eric was not the unanimous choice of the board hiring him when he came in on a vote of four 4-3 but

102those who voted no on eric later became some of eric's biggest supporters which i know because i served with them it's a notable achievement to arrive that way persist through multiple contract renewals and depart 16 years later as the beloved wildcat super fan we know you to be the most notable achievement of your time at eths is also the one most often remarked upon not just by those in our community but also by educators around the country it bears repeating because it was a big deal at the time even though today it seems like everyone is doing it recognizing the racial inequities baked into the track system of classes at eths you and others saw an opportunity changes to the freshman year allowing all our incoming freshmen reading at grade level to enjoy the same

103chance to earn honors credit in their humanities classes this change helped expand access to ap courses changes to biology and other courses followed but in no case did the changes provoke the intense feelings that came with the first steps the path to this change was rocky i remember it well with missteps along the way and we've not realized all the results we want but the vision has always been clear from the beginning and you've led the way even as some of the people involved have changed from board members to administrators racial equity work has been central to your tenure at eths but equity for everyone in our eths community is still a work in progress as we know i will leave it to eric and others to enumerate all of your various other achievements but

104i do want to remark on some more intangible qualities as eric has reminded us at various points over the years he began as an english teacher so he's always brought the sensibility of a teacher to his work he put students first but teachers are close second he became one of eths's most visible superintendents both in the community and in the school building in the theater and on its athletic fields or at least on the sidelines of the athletic fields not actually on them he appreciated the importance of the school in the wider context of the community and even the world and how we must all work towards the same ends on behalf of our students not all superintendents do this and your visible president presence helped pave the way for an improved culture of belonging

105in community from the beginning you face tough challenges and difficult questions from the board many of which i'm sure annoyed you but all of which made you a better superintendent and the school a better place i have always appreciated your ready smile and your evangelical enthusiasm i am glad we still have you in our community to contribute in other ways and i hope you find time for relaxation thanks for your service eric best wishes and i've been having a long time together and you were there for that first vote when we detract i definitely was eric i'm going to speak personally because i want to talk about recognition and resonance and what i've learned from you so i want to say just a few words about what it has meant to me to work alongside

106you and within your orbit over these past three years as a member of the 202 board the first time i became aware of you as a role model and an ally for racial justice in our community was in about 2009 or 2010. it was the beginning of my own personal racial identity journey when i was just learning in the words of robin d'angelo what it means to be white and when i say just learning i mean barely a clue in retrospect i think this time marked the beginning of a racial identity journey for a lot of white folks in evanston because you dear superintendent had already started making an impact through the changes you were implementing to the curriculum here at eths it was an impact that one didn't have to be directly involved with

107at the high school to feel we felt the reverberations of what you were doing here across town in our neighborhoods schools and faith communities even at northwestern where i work we talked around the water cooler because back then at northwestern wasn't really discussed much elsewhere hey did you hear what they're doing at the high school they're detracting the curriculum they're talking about structural racism and white privilege the faculty and staff over there are doing workshops and trainings the students are leading the way the superintendent is making racial equity a priority making racial equity a priority now that was something that was making waves and i realized in all my 40 years to that point i had very little understanding of what that phrase really meant about race or racial equity or why this work was

108generating such an impact and perhaps most of all why people in evanston were feeling all kinds of ways about it as i said as a white woman myself i was pretty clueless not resistant necessarily just clueless but i also had a daughter in third grade in district 65 and i could see how race was showing up in her daily life and i could see how in actuality race had shown up in my experiences too all my life in ways that i never acknowledged or understood i realized i better start educating myself so that's when my journey began that's when i started reading books and sharing articles and participating in the community conversations at the yw and beyond diversity trainings of the city of evanston and district 65 and i remember how in one of those

109early trainings our own board president ms savage williams described you as an example of a white man in a position of power using your privilege to advance the work of racial equity in district 202 and really putting yourself on the line for that over the past 16 years you've been an advocate for disrupting the status quo and our number one ally in ensuring that change continues because as we all know it's a process and a constant struggle but we keep working and we stay focused as peter sangee writes in the fifth discipline the core leadership strategy is simple be a model i remember all those years ago when i was just starting my journey i looked around our community for guidance and examples of what racial equity work looks like in practice especially among white

110people i could see it popping up in places here and there but at eths it was really taking hold led by a white man who spoke from his heart with genuine care and love for all of our students every single one and i realized i could see myself in you not you specifically i mean you're a guy and you're probably a bit older than me judging by your hair we really don't look that way we really don't look that much alike but i did recognize you in the example for how a white person could and should lead on issues of racial justice the way you embrace the diversity of our community and use your position of privilege and leadership to create a culture of belonging and safety for all i recognized you in you a

111model for what i could do as a white person with privilege in our community and your example has inspired and motivated me ever since as the saying goes be the change you want to see in the world you can't force commitment but what you can do you nudge a little here you inspire a little there and you provide a role model your primary influence is the environment you create so eric thank you for everything you've done for our wildcat community for the city of evanston and for me personally thank you for your wisdom and your inspiration and your courage over these past 16 years it takes a lot of courage to do what you did thank you for being an ally and a role model and a leader in the best sense of the word

112and all the very best to you in your retirement thank you stephanie thank you very much hello i know it's kind of i should roast you just to bring a little levity right [Laughter] i won't though i feel cheated because um as much as i love you know the chance um and really knew uh that this was going to happen in some ways sooner than later it feels too soon and i feel like i've tried um to take in kind of you have this way about you um i think that some of it has to do with your height and you've got this classy kind of you know vibe but there's something really powerful also even more so about the way that you are able to speak to a group of kids and really see

113them and and it feels so beautiful when you just laugh with them and you love them and they feel it and and so i've really been thinking about that a lot and i admire it but i'm also really my kids benefit from that and they feel so proud to be here and they somehow in such a huge school feel that sense of community that monique spoke of that i really believe is part of your personality the way that you bring the school together um and so i i watch and i kind of um in i'm in awe of that and if i were to be a school leader in that way in the title that official title i would think about the ways in which you exist in this space and that you're in the

114hallways and they all know who you are not every superintendent regardless of if they're in a building or not get that same recognition and so i want to thank you for that um it's really quite remarkable and the other thing that i keep thinking about um is that as i mentioned just a moment ago um your [Music] i think mode of operation is very much as a co-conspirator i believe the ways in which you have brought equity um in and real you know not just removing of barriers but how do we then create a more just school system has shown that kind of proximity that you believe that you know i keep thinking about and all the names i was going to look up my notes but um that idea of do you put yourself

115in the kind of in the line of fire i you know how do you essentially touch the pole you know i'm thinking about the woman who climbed the flagpole in south carolina took down the confederate flag you're you're there on the inside um or you know thinking about rosa parks and the clifford durs you know and just how that is so important and critical and so i really want to thank you for that as well there's no back seat in what you're doing so those are just a few things and most of all as you i think the retirement's gonna go like this i'm sure you're gonna you know do other things as i guess you're gonna work for fan and you know um but i just want you to know that there's so much

116for us to continue learning from you and with you and so just just know that you know many of us are here to continue that and so in any way possible you know i will welcome your retirement but also fight it a little bit and hopefully get more of that so thank you it's really nice thank you yeah eric we're here tonight to honor your 16-year tenure as superintendent of evanston township high school during your time here you have earned respect and love from the community your staff and your students you took the time to really see and know your students spending time in the hallways greeting them and in the lunchrooms eric you laid the groundwork for providing opportunities to all students and your work will affect generations eths is a completely different school

117today than it was 16 years ago and all for the better you should be very proud of what you've accomplished in your career i'm not exactly sure what led you to doing equity work in schools but i am so glad that you brought your big ideas to eths we are so lucky that you chose us back in 2018 when i was a community member with an interest in serving on the eths board you took the time and you sat down with me a stranger to answer all of my questions about the equity work that has been done and continues to be done at eths i was in awe of how much progress had been made and in racial equity work at eths and i felt deeply that i wanted to help ensure that the work

118was sustainable and would continue forward so it was you and your work that brought me to eths despite the fact that my kids were still very young and we weren't here yet some people may not be aware but the equity work did not come easily and especially the detracting of freshman year and had to be fought for every step of the way you stuck your neck out and you risked the backlash because you knew that this is what your students deserved and that this important work had to be done in the eths community you used your white privilege to advocate for and implement new educational opportunities for students of color and for that i am grateful the results of your work are clear and if you don't believe me just look at the data it

119shows huge positive outcomes for our students of color under your tenure i see you as a mentor and a role model and i appreciate being able to partake in your insights and wisdom for all of these years i admire your candid and vulnerable way of speaking on important con topics and your devotion to this school shines through every word i've enjoyed working with you since 2019 and you will be so missed from eths but your impact will be felt for years to come thank you for making each day a great day to be wildcat and enjoy your well-deserved retirement thank you liz that was very nice so i get to go last um you know as educators it's often the case that you don't get to see the impact once in a while a student

120will come back and say oh you know you meant so much to me you really helped me but that doesn't always happen and yet we know that there is an impact and in your case that impact is so enormous you've touched the lives of thousands of young people and that's just here not to mention the 25 years before you came here and worked with all those other students so um you have made a tremendous personal impact but because you sought the change um the significant change in advancing equity here from a pretty early part of your your time at eths and then you stayed for 16 years hint marcus 16 years let's not forget that um you were able to not only see those initial efforts grow and deepen but you got to see some

121of the things that were came beyond what you started with and and to lead that um and that is a huge um a huge part of your legacy really it's it's really i'm glad that you were able to see the fruits of your labor um in somewhat real time over the course of 16 years but what you really did and what i'm really happiest about is you created a foundation um that really established um the advancement of equity not just in the time you're here but forevermore and i i'm very i'm a very pessimistic and optimistic person at the same time but i actually do believe as hard as this work is and how slow it is and how much that drives us all insane that the work that we are doing here that you

122started the leadership that you put in place and the foundation that you started is really the work that will get us to the no predictability of achievement by race and to closing gaps and really being a place where it's just students who know they belong who know they have agency and a voice and they know how to use it and they get a great education that they take with them and so i really feel like your legacy has multiple uh this foundation this legacy really has a lot in it that going forward i mean first you have this amazing team of administrators some of them here and teachers and staff who are really ready to hit the ground running to move eths forward because they're already running on the track that you helped build um

123they there's just an amazing amount of [Music] courage that went into the development of programs and changes of policies that really went up against hundreds of years of systemic racism and the age-old belief in education well we've always done it this way and you really said no we're not going to do that and perhaps the biggest and farthest reaching part of the foundation that you've established here is our students eths students take with them such a deeper understanding i think of themselves and the world and how to make it better they take that into their jobs and to college and their families and their communities and their voices their knowledge and their experiences all gained here really help them to call out inequity and move for change at every level and on a personal note

124i've seen that with my own children but i've also seen that with other children at in 2020 you know a group of mostly young women who had just graduated were in about 19 years old started evanston fight for black lives and did a tremendous job there was another group of students a little bit older than them at that same summer mostly white students who tried to who stood on central street every saturday to engage white people in the conversation about racism and what their role is so those are just a couple of examples of millions of examples i'm sure um and on a personal note it's just been such a privilege to get to know you and to work with you and to um just your energy your enthusiasm your love of decaf coffee um

125you know we we uh we share a lot in common um but i feel so grateful to have your you as an example and that leadership um and what you've done again especially for my own children and for all the children that have crossed through this building in the last um 16 years and uh when the night that we were going you were announced your um your retirement i texted i did a family text and i said this is it guys dr witherspoon's retiring and within a second my son who is now 26 years old class of 2014 texted me back he says mom make sure whoever the new guy is or person i'm sure he was more appropriate whoever the new person is gets to know the kids and talks to the kids every

126day like dr witherspoon did because he really knew us and he really cared about us and that was the most important part of his job and he was right and luckily we did hire a person who's going to be right there but i do want to just thank you for the incredible legacy for this incredible foundation um that you've gotten that you have established for us and we've done a lot with you um but keep watching because i think we're gonna continue to build on what you started so thank you for everything thank you that was so nice well i just am um blown away by all the words of all of you so thank you for sharing uh such heartfelt words i hope you feel it as well do i get to say something

127[Laughter] one second okay i have something here um from um larry sufferden um the cook county board commissioner and um and there's a really beautiful resolution um how nice that he wants to present to you and i you know i'm not going to read it all because you could see it's a lot of words but it is absolutely beautiful whereas dr eric witherspoon superintendent of evanston township high school 202 since july 20 2006 will retire at the end of the school year he calls you a lifelong educator that you have he makes reference he just he just summarizes all the work you've done that you've served as superintendent for over 30 years 30 years can you imagine that 30 years that your work around equity and anti-racism are the hallmarks and foundation of your superintendency

128and we've all seen and heard just so many examples of how that impacts students and really our entire community and you keep getting these because people see this as impacting our community i love the the conversation around the water cooler at northwestern i'm like whoa that's powerful you know your push for equity and education um and i i this is important to highlight as well that the increase during your tenure of a.c.t scores um has just been higher than ever that we've consistently been recognized by u.s news and world reports and the washington post as the top two to three percent of the high schools in the nation and um i think that the work that you've done around equity is really important but it's really also important for people to see that the work

129around equity is also the work of making a school truly excellent and you have just demonstrated that and now i think it is people are getting it it takes so much time but people are getting it and even through the global pandemic and he makes reference to this um that that you continue to work and and just hold to your values um so i'm going to present this to you wow um this is hugely important oh wow that's very nice yes it is and i've got one more thing before you speak um from the board this is to you this is your pen it's a little bit bigger than a pen [Laughter] oh my gosh oh wow should i open it yeah yes well the poundage is definitely worth something oh my gosh well i

130see the word crystal already wow is this no okay [Laughter] i want to get it right oh my goodness it's gorgeous [Music] wow yes well don't worry that'll be on one of the most prominent parts of our house i guarantee you that thank you oh my gosh it's all etched in everything you'll all have look at this thank you you're welcome oh okay now you get to speak and and unlike a typical superintendent my remarks are going to be very brief to each of you a heartfelt thank you and i mean that sincerely um i didn't expect such touching words and from every one of you um you know when you're in this kind of job it's not an easy journey and i know marcus is very aware of you know that's going to be

131the case as he moves forward but to have people take the time to speak so kindly and to recognize that it has had an impact means the world to me you know something i realized as this was going on is you really don't get a dress rehearsal for retiring you do it one time i guess i have a hunch i'm not going to completely stop but but but you know to have a complete career retirement is uh is a once-in-a-lifetime thing and i want to say to all of you and to those board members who came before you who were the ones who were so supportive and kind i could not have done with this without you and i know that no superintendent can and i know that it took courage of you and of

132some previous board members to really make that possible and it's been the blessing of my life and i thank you [Applause] thank you everybody [Applause] all right so we're just going to take just a quick break i know that that um the hour is late so we're not going to take a lot of time i know that um we've got this person over here who's dying to give this budget report yeah that that darn financial stuff you know so we'll get to that um but let's let's take like maybe 10 minutes get a piece of cake and then we can um okay oh good idea cake and cake while we're here yeah very very good eat cake while we go all right welcome back everybody the next item on the agenda is comments from the

133public dr bavis do we have any comments from the public we have no comments from the public this evening thank you all right the next item on the agenda are foyers listed you've listed a few yes we have uh one from hernandez two from meadows and one from lansbury and uh the responses are in your packet thank you all right next item is board committee reports are there any board committee reports to um share tonight no all right all right so we are at the superintendent's report well it is short uh primarily because we are uh in the midst of uh summer break uh but um a couple of things wrapping up regarding the end of the school year that are really uh i think uh worthy of mentioning we did have an annual scholarship

134night it was held virtually um and and if anybody wants to go back and and and find that link they can look at it um so timothy russell um and uh jacqueline o'carreri were received the senior uh honors for uh from the women of evanston youth award and the oliver beatty cunningham memorial prize they were honored by all their peers who chose them as the top two seniors of of their class uh which was a lovely honor and uh and and really well deserved from both of these young people also we have sophie lammers and george weiler who were named national merit scholarship winners and uh and and and and and to make it all the way through that to the top fraction of a percent of of uh the um though those who are

135in the uh you know competing in the program it's really an honor so congratulations to them uh we had a eths team compete in something called cubesat this this uh is a a fairly new uh challenge where uh teams are to design build test miniature cube satellite prototypes um and that's why it's called cubesat it really has a national recognition and um in this inaugural challenge uh one of our teams was one of the six teams uh to be honored in the final presentations so it again this is like a big national deal and uh not surprised at all knowing how our students achieve and finally i just want to point out that summer school did start on june 2nd so we've been underway now for a little bit of time since last week and

136uh if anybody has questions about summer school or office hours uh all of that's posted on the website but the summer school will take place until july 31st and uh and we will serve well over a thousand students uh in in our summer school in the the two sessions so um very exciting and uh that concludes my brief report thank you thank you dr witherspoon all right so now we are at um the finance committee report um and mary rodino is all set to lead us i was so eager i forgot there were other things on the agenda before like those last few things sorry about that um i was thinking it was just me and then end of show um okay so i'm gonna keep this short i'm gonna jump right in this is

137my final annual budget presentation to you all i will still be here in september um hopefully sitting next to someone and i'll just be the assistant at that point but um considering everything we've been through financially in the last couple years i think that we have a good tentative budget to present to you to start the year and then we'll have some more defined answers in september when we come back with the final budget but i'll get to that in a minute so i'm going to jump right in with a financial overview no real different news from the state we expect that our state funding will be pretty level or flat we have still keep a couple items in the background property tax freezes and pension funding shifts but we've not really heard much about

138those in a long time our primary funding source from the state is evidence-based funding we're expecting that to be flat and it's just under 3 million dollars the corporate property replacement tax actually turned out to be unexpectedly higher this year than um well unexpectedly so higher than we expected we're not quite sure what that's going to look like next year apparently there have been some different formula calculations that are going into this revenue but that also funnels through the state as well and so we have increased the the budget for this revenue uh quite a bit in fiscal 23 but the final allocations have not yet been given out so again we are we're always thinking about a potential property tax freeze or pension cost shift and and possibly the future of the evidence-based funding

139for right now we're um we're flat and that's the best case scenario for our evidence-based funding so as far as economic concerns i'm sure you all know this but in cook county our levy is a mix of two years and the previous cpi which determines part of our levy was 1.4 that was announced in january of 2021 and then with everything that happened these last months uh the 2022 consumer price index will be is five percent so that's what our future levy will also be based on um of course if there's a property tax freeze in the future that could cancel out those increases but we we've not heard of anything on the immediate horizon but one thing i think i mentioned a while back that we do know is that property tax due dates

140in cook county are going to be really late this year and i would say that makes me a little nervous but it's one of the reasons that we really always talk about conservative fund balances so that we can get through those difficult situations and i read today that taxes could be due possibly up to six months late and that's really where i think our district will hit our discomfort level there are short-term borrowing options and we'll be fine but we just don't really like to have to go to that length if we don't have to so just to get to some numbers quickly the tentative budget for 2023 is about a 3.5 percent increase overall from last year's budget and it's just over 99 million in total that includes everything bond and interest imrf and

141capital and then we talk about the operating funds which is really the funds that we use to operate the school on a daily basis that budget is just over 88 million and it's a 3.2 percent increase over last year's budget and this just does include in the operating funds a small amount of the federal relief funds for some of those a couple of positions that we spoke to you about may and the rest of the federal money is really allocated for those capital projects that we also discussed and so the increases are mostly due to personnel costs so um we try to always have conservative revenue estimates i think this budget does that as well evidence-based funding we always plan for that to be flat unless we hear something else and our categorical state aid

142is not huge these days because some of those things were rolled into evidence-based funding and that's mostly flat but it's also mostly reimbursement so for spending on for example special ed room and board it would be a reimbursement for eligible costs under that grant and then in this budget the federal aid did decline but that was really because last year reflected some of the um esser funding so again i already mentioned property taxes are a blend of two years and payments will be late and corporate property personal property replacement tax has been higher than we saw the previous year so we have no plan to increase student fees and 22-23 school year you might remember a month or so ago we requested a parking fee increase from 300 to 400 for next school year but

143we'll be making some allowances for student for students who are eligible for free or reduced lunch i believe that was a 50 reduction for that for a student who's eligible for that and we had no summer school fee increases for this summer and many of our students are subsidized in their summer school classes and you might remember the last couple years we actually had many uh no fee summer school classes so just real quick no surprise on our revenues 83 percent come from property taxes and then you can see very small percentages for all the other types of revenue that i just talked about and expenses again no surprise the large number of salaries the next highest green pie slice is fringe benefits so the two of those things together about 76 of our overall

144budget so salaries overall are increasing about 3.76 due to some of the employment contracts that we know about and some that we're anticipating and then expected salary increases for non-union employees but i think that's a pretty reasonable increase overall we had a few retirements but we had a few additions so a lot of things are kind of balancing other things out and of course with us still having some contracts that are currently being negotiated now we'll know more about what these numbers will look like in september so that's why we come back with a final budget at that point because we have a little more information about some expenses just a quick rundown nothing out of the ordinary here fringe benefits are increasing by about three percent supplies and materials um tentatively we're budgeting that

145those actually will be pretty similar to last year and even decreasing slightly purchase services we actually were able to plan for a decrease of almost five percent again we'll come back with some refined numbers in september as we are starting to see how things are costing out at that point uh capital outlay but this is just talking about capital outlay in the education and operations fund that's decreasing by 38 percent because last year we did have some federal funding for a project in that in that fund and then tuition is increasing by about 35 percent this is mostly for special ed days like a special ed day programs and special ed room and board and that has increased but that dipped for a little bit during covid when we didn't have as many placements so

146again we should have some better numbers as the school year starts up next year and we can refine that if we need to i don't expect it to go up anymore and a lot of those costs are actually reimbursed through state funding so just quickly the education fund is just almost a four percent increase over last year i think that's pretty reasonable considering um what we're experiencing in some costs right now operations and maintenance fund is actually a decrease from last year but we had some of that federal aid budgeted there so it's about a seven percent decrease from last year but pretty much on par with the same types of expenditure of spending that we see in that fund generally so just a reminder we typically talk about values-based budgeting and we try to

147maintain reduced levels for contractual services supplies and materials and any types of personal attrition if a position didn't need to be replaced we always look at instruction as a top priority so anytime we are looking at reductions we try to keep those out of the classroom and also try to maintain the student-teacher ratio and avoid layoffs so kind of the same things that we talk about every year we'll continue to monitor the state's condition financial condition look at installing capital projects that can reduce like some operating and energy costs improve our sources of energy continuous and wellness strategies and reorganization if needed if any funding is in jeopardy if down the road the enrollment declines and the state starts to reduce our evidence-based funding then we would also or or if a property tax freeze

148or pension shift comes in we'd have to really kind of re-examine some things and see where we could make some reductions that's really what we call our plan b though and just to hear where we go from here and the last week of july or first week of august we'll publish our budget hearing notice for the september 12th budget hearing we'll have some updates on property tax new property a state update and all the things that i mentioned in the previous slides we'll give you a balanced budget request and property tax and final adjustments and it'll also include additional sections that are not in the tentative budget this is really a document intended to get us started and then we add additional analysis in the final budget that's it no surprises probably less surprises than

149i expected we were able to pay for increases that we felt like we'll have out of the property tax increases that we'll have we don't have a lot of other substantial sources of revenue here really so we have to kind of live on what the property taxes will allow us to uh receive so that's it thank you thank you mary any any questions comments pat not a question but i know we'll get an official opportunity to thank you uh in the fall but just because you just gave us your last budget um again we always tease you the late hour the long documents but mary what no school district in the country they would just do anything to have you as their cfo you are amazing you've done such a great job i mean through

150covid all those scenarios you sent us from the world is ending to we make extra money off you know it was just you just always stay level-headed and do this work that allows all the other work to happen and i just think we always need to remember that connecting the dots that we couldn't do all the fabulous things we talked about tonight with eric if you hadn't been here to pay make sure we had the money to pay for it so we just can't thank you enough thank you that's why i teased the track coaches about the new blue track i don't know if you guys remember but we were sort of in the middle of that when covet hit like it was already planned and bit out and we're like what do we do

151so um capitals tough it's tough here with the with the laws in illinois and the limitations it's not easy and unfortunately you know we're going to have to fix a lot of bricks and mortar and that's not going to be fun but i think that the board has been so supportive and so conservative when it comes to just being smart about the money that i think we've been able to ride out some of these crazy time and i remember that spreadsheet you're talking about in kovid worst case and medium case and i i mean things have um have been okay okay and and this is one area that i'm kind of happy can be boring um you know because it's probably a good thing and i'm not always this calm in my office but i'm

152usually calm about the budget and things like that because i know in the long run those things will work out it's more like the little short things that pop up every day that are that make me crazy i want to go into it but but thank you and i know you said every school you said you had a question but then you said every school district in the country didn't have a question okay i'm like i'm not looking for a second career so that was not an advertisement but well if you were believe me there would be lots and lots of people say i'll be bored in a few years but we'll see so well you deserve to be bored then i i do you want to be born a little bit i know that

153um i remember that meeting when you gave us the the worst scenario or the possible all the possibilities and i was holding on to every word you said because i have such trust in you and your work and your predictions and you just came straight with us i enjoyed say this i know i kind of had a little extra time this weekend because the weather was so bad i didn't do the yard work i wanted to do so i went through the budget and i really did enjoy going through the 162 pages because i felt like yes i felt like i could it helps me really understand what's happening at eths that's what i liked about it i like it when everything is right there together all the departments the the goals and and and

154how department leaders are thinking and connecting to the district vision and then how we make decisions on what we spend our money on i just thought i just think that gives such a complete picture and it's helpful it's really helpful i know it must be a bear putting that together i can only imagine how you get all those people to cooperate with you meet the deadlines do it in this format you know whatever you need to do it must really be and this year it was while we were negotiating multiple contracts three at once one waiting and i'm also managing construction this year because our construction person retired and i said i'll do it so this has been i'm thankful that i'm that i kind of have the routine down because once i was able

155to balance the numbers the routine part i could kind of do without thinking so much but it it's a comprehensive document on purpose to be transparent and i do feel like it is sure yeah yeah it's a labor of love hate ugly just keep it quick um just one maybe thought and this has probably been thought of already but parking you know we're talking about revenue and um i would love to see our students who receive any financial aid have full parking covered not just 50 percent because if i did the math it still seemed to be around 200 just a thought other comments questions thank you mary thank you thank you okay let's move along with our agenda item we are under items for action the first item for action is the approval of

156the tentative 20 22 23 budget can i have a motion please second roll call please yes thank you the next item is approval of discipline improvement plan and that's in your packet so second roll call please yes thank you the next item is the consent agenda which consists of approval of agreement to furnish food service to community consolidated school district school evanson skokie district 65 approval of carpet replacement contract approval of minutes for may 9 2022 regular meeting and closed session approval of bills treasurer's report from april 2022 and personnel report which consists of approval of negotiated agreement for the custodial maintenance staff summer second roll call please yes okay thank you um the next item is old and new business does anybody have old or new business that you'd like to bring up if

157not can i have a motion for adjournment a movie adjourn all in favor meeting is adjourned thank you so much you