Geneva CUSD 304 Board of Education Meeting 09-09-2024

001This is the regular meeting of the Geneva 304 school board for Monday, September 9th, 2024. Bonnie, will you call the role? >> Here. here. >> Here, >> Jackie >> here. >> I'd like to welcome all of you. We're always delighted to have people visit, whether to comment or to learn about things happening in the school district. And so, with that, we will start with the pledge. The flag is right back there. I pledge algiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands. One nation under God, indivisible with liberty and justice for all. >> And if you have a chance to sign the attendance sheet, if you'd like to, we would appreciate that. First item on the agenda is the approval of past minutes. Um a regular

002session for August 26th and the executive session August 26th. Bonnie, did you receive any corrections or additions? >> Are there any at this time? Motion to approve. >> So move. >> Second. >> Damn. Paulinski. >> Hi. >> I >> thank you. >> Recognition awards and presentations public hearings. The number one item is the dual credit defined and delivered. And this is a summary of dual credit program at Geneva High School. And I see we have at least one person here to comment on that. So it's very fortuitous. Yes. As Mrs. Sims gets connected. I just want to thank her for being here and all the guests who are here to talk to us about uh their experience with dual credit classes. Um you know this is something that has expanded a little bit over the

003last several years and that as you know as part of our strategic plan we're looking to investigate more deeply and see if there are areas that we can grow in this even more. So we thought it'd be important to share with everybody tonight kind of our baseline. Where are we at now? How did we get here? and then maybe starting to look uh towards the future. We have some awesome educators to share with us and some pretty cool students here too it looks like. So should be fun. Thanks Shet. >> Absolutely. Thank you so much for the opportunity to share. Um and I will be welcoming our special guests as we go through this. So um first of all I thought it would be um important to start with uh the benefits of dual credit

004courses for our high school students at Geneva High School. Uh so through um a partnership with the Illinois Community College Board, Wanzi Community College and College of DuPage um we are able to offer um college credit bearing courses to our students at Geneva High School. It's important to note that I mean this started probably 20 years ago this conversation and one of the things that was very important to our educators at Geneva High School was that they themselves were the ones that were um licensed to teach these courses to our high school students. So that's something that has continued to this day. Um and then also there was some legislation passed that helped us even further with this work because um our governor signed legislation that basically any instate um public college needed to accept

005dual credit courses and credits earned at the high school level. How those are accepted and to what you know colleges they're accepted that's up to those um universities to decide but they do have to accept those credits. So that would be important to share that. Um that does not however apply to outofstate colleges or private Illinois colleges. They may or may not. Uh the courses that we currently offer uh we currently offer these 10 courses. So advanced earth science, advanced GTV news, astronomy, early childhood education, horiculture, intro to teaching, modern mass communication, personal wellness, social issues and sports, and the teaching internship. I will share that all of the teachers that are teaching these courses are represented here tonight minus one who is on a a leave right now. The enrollment trends um when we

006started in 2021 we had two courses with 74 students enrolled. Um and then you'll see in 2022 we had three courses with 75 students. 2023 four courses with 94 students. Nine courses with 193 students in 2024. And this year for the first semester we have all 10 courses or we have 10 courses with 266 students enrolled. So we are um you know we are happy to see that number increasing um and as Andy said it will ties to some other work that we're doing in the district. Um this slide I did change from what I originally shared with you with the board because we had actual teachers listed. Um and our high school administration was just wanted to ensure that we didn't leave anyone out because they believe there were probably far more that were

007certified. Um so just to share we currently um based on the best recolle rec recollection we have 17% of our high school staff that are certificated to teach a dual credit course at the high school. Um how does one become eligible to teach? The main point of this is that um they have to have a qualified master degree of which at least 18 of those credit hours are in that content area. After that is achieved, um, then there are just some kind of prefuncter processes to go through to ensure that your license is updated with the regional office of education. I would share though that for many of our staff that have this, they have greater than those 18 hours because they've actually sought a masters solely in that content area. How this connects to

008the work we're doing as a district is one of our um goals in our strategic plan and our five-year plan is to analyze and plan around the dual credit offerings at Geneva High School. So, this work and what they're sharing tonight is also tied to our ongoing work as a district. So, you know, we'll work to develop our philosophy as a community, a learning community around dual credit. Um audit those current offerings, seek input from stakeholders, including students, what courses they would have interest in. um and then also work with our staff um to ensure that they're properly licensed. So I'll move on to the most important part tonight which is our which are our guests from the classroom. If they brought students with them, I will ask them to introduce their students. Um but

009they've been just asked to share with you why they're have elected to teach the course they do. So we'll start with uh Mr. Henig from our physical education department. Stand back. Got my notes. Uh, good evening. Thanks for having me. Um, my name is Scott Heneg. I'm the department chair of wellness at Geneva High School and I teach a class called social issues and sport. Um, it's a newer course. Uh, started about four years ago and it's um it's an elective in our wellness department, but I think it's important to note it is not replacing a activity course. So, it's like we offer personal wellness that Miss Meister is going to talk about some other electives. It's not replacing APF or Lifetime Fitness. It's strictly a classroom course. Um, why I elected to teach score

010uh this course is I love sports. Um, grew up playing sports. I had great role models growing up, coaches, parents, uh, my my friends all played sports and I just had a wonderful experience. But, uh, eventually you stop playing sports, right? grow up you use sports, travel sports. I was uh lucky enough to play in high school, then I stopped. So my my role in sport changed and I think a lot of our students, they're lucky to be involved in athletics here at Geneva High School, but then when they graduate, they stop playing competitively and what does sports look like after you stop playing competitively? And I think a lot of our students um are very involved in uh a field that they're interested in after they're done playing. So we've seen a lot of

011students interested in sports marketing administration, the management side. A lot of students are interested in going into coaching. Um from the from the high school side, we've seen a shortage in um officials. So we've we've tried to promote some, you know, kids to get a part-time job and officiate youth sports. Um, and that's that's been popular. And then just the landscape of sports has really changed. If you look at college athletics, what's going on with NIL and just the landscape of college athletics, we look at some um different topics in terms of just the history of sport, Title N, gender equity. Um, just some really important topics that I feel like our students need to know about and, you know, can serve them when they get into a role that I I just mentioned. Um,

012so this is a class that's offered second semester at Geneva High School. Um, it's only upper classmen. Um, the feedback I've received from students is been fantastic. Um, they really enjoy the conversation where we've been lucky enough to bring in some really awesome guest speakers, college professors, some graduates that are involved in some um, college roles when they get into college or post college. and uh we've we've done a variety of different uh speakers and they've spoke on a variety of different topics. So, it's a like I said, it's a pretty uh new course. You know, I've asked for feedback each semester and it's really been positive. So, I'm excited about it. Um each year our enrollment has gone up in the course. I think the first year we had 15 kids and I looked

013at my roster today, we have 26 kids signed up, which I think is a positive. So, really looking forward to it. um love to have you guys out if you want to come observe and uh yeah, it's going to be a great another great year of social issues and sports. So, thank you. >> Thank you. >> Speaking of sports, did anyone catch that niu game? >> Uh Mr. Shane Uh hello everyone. Thanks for having me. My name is Joe Shane. I teach earth and space science at the high school. Um and um I have always this is my 24th year teaching and um the second year I started teaching is when I uh began and I began teaching the astronomy class. Um and a few years later was able to create the natural disasters class.

014Um, I have a masters in geology and a masters in meteorology. Uh, so, um, great. These are great classes for me. I love what I teach. Um, I love who I teach with. Um, and I love working with the kids. So, um, it's we're set up for victory to begin with. But, um, as I've been going through, I've been adjuncting, um, at NIOU in geology and planetary science. I adjunct at Kishwalki College as well and picked up a class at Oakton over the summer. Um but uh I've always seen my classes at Geneva as at or even above in some cases the introductory level college classes that I teach. And so um I've always wanted it. This has been a great opportunity for me to be able to um actually give them credit where credit

015is due. I've always told them that after taking my classes, you're going to be able to uh you know crush astronomy and uh you know severe and unusual weather and those kinds of things. And now those are the classes that I'm dual credit with at Wanzi. So I'm grateful for the opportunity and um thank you for all your support. >> Thank you, >> Miss Enis. >> Hi, my name is Benny Enis and um thank you for having me. I teach the broadcasting classes um at Geneva. So, Advanced GTV News, if you haven't seen it yet, it's the daily show that we do. It's very hands-on. So, that was pretty obvious. My background was mostly broadcasting. I've been in television news for 25 years, and I also taught at Columbia College, at NIU, and at um

016College of DuPage. So, um the advanced TV class was classes that I taught at the college level. So having them come out and kind of take a look at what we do on a daily basis, it's very similar to what we would teach in a first year at a college. Anyway, so that was an obvious choice that the students who do daily programming should get college credit. The other one is a much funnier story actually. So modern mass communication um is in the communications department over at Cood. So, if you don't have a television background, which is through MPTV, which is motion picture and television, they usually don't approve you to do modern mass communication. And so, I was told that I couldn't teach that class until I saw the name of the person who

017told me that I couldn't teach it. Turns out he was the person that I actually taught his class at Cood when he was at. So, at that point, he said, "Okay, that's fine. We'll let you teach it at so I got approved for the intro to masscom class is what it's called at COOD at our at high school. It's called modern math and it's basically a look at communications all the various uh mediums that we use and the students kind of just go through it's basically project based more than anything else but we look at every um form of communication there is to and take a deep dive into it and how it affects communities and that's been a really fun class. It it's growing in numbers. Um it's only my second time teaching it,

018but advanced GTV it's been obviously um every I mean six years now. And so um that class is the one that Laya Do you want the students to speak now or? Okay. Yep. Coming up. So Ila's in my advanced GTV class and she is also the president of the GTV news GTV club. And uh tell us why you took the class. >> Um yeah, my name is Laya. Um, I'm a GHS junior and I anchor and produce for GTV and I'm also the president, so I have a lot of power in GTV. Um, um, but I love GTV. It really motivates me every day. I love coming in, getting to see the finished product of what we do um, every night, getting to see what my homework comes out to be. Um, and then I

019also love knowing that I kind of have made my mark on the school. I've every day people get to see what I do. some days they get to see my face and um you know anchoring the show. So knowing that I get dual credit from that and I could use these credits in college to maybe graduate early and use that to go to a production studio when I'm older or just to graduate and know that I did it is really really nice and I just I love GTV and I think it's a great class. >> Thank you [Music] >> Mr. Lisits. Mr. Anderson. >> Well, good. Thank you for having us and uh thank you for all your support. Uh my name is Jason Lisett. I've taught horiculture for over 20 years and I tagged

020along this guy because uh he kind of started the whole program at GHS and this year um he threw all all the classes at me and um is teaching uh something else. So um uh we're kind of the exception to the rule in horiculture. uh neither one of us have a mast's but we were accepted um pursued by COOD to teach the class and then um last year uh was the first year that um it was approved by COD in the community uh because of I think both of our um what's that? >> Yeah, there you go. Uh, so Tom has done landscaping for many years and I've done other construction projects and so I think they like the hands-on that both of us brought to the table. Uh, as well as all the the

021botney background on top of that. So we try to make the class as uh interactive as possible. Uh we get out into the community and uh work at Western Avenue Elementary School with the kids and then uh the corner of 31 and Third Street we call it the Duke and Le Garden. um the kids are in charge and responsible for taking care of that as well. So um besides the stuff that goes on in the um in the community uh inside the greenhouse, we do a plant sale every year and the kids have hands-on real life experience working with plants, putting on the plant sale and then getting that stuff out uh to a variety of uh venues as well. So uh it's a great class. I love plants. I love teaching it and I

022think it's just a great opportunity to have all the students take a class like that. Yeah, I would just uh I would say any uh anyone is welcome to come and check out the greenhouse and you know see how the class functions. Uh I'm not teaching it this year, but hopefully I'll be back teaching it again next year. Um and then I think the other emphasis is that we talk to students about all the opportunities that there are in um all layers of horiculture for you know career possibilities. you know, nothing wrong with pushing the lawnmower, but that's kind of what you think about, you know, you know, when you think about, you know, horiculture landscape is, you know, like the entry level positions and we we kind of focus on, you know, we talk

023about those, but we also talk about the business side a little bit and we get into all the advanced degrees that you can um, you know, go into things that like we talk about how if we took this class, we may not be, you know, we might have gone into horiculture, but >> um, so I mean, years ago So they didn't have horiculture, you know, when we were going through, but um we we kind of we try to use this as a springboard to really help students, you know, see what what opportunities are out there. So thanks, uh for all your support. >> Thank you. >> I'm glad you both chose teaching in Geneva. I'd also share that they invite um some of the second grade classrooms into the greenhouse and that's why it's a

024great day to hear them talk about how they ate, you know, lettuce growing from the wall. more than that, but they just think it's fun to cut the lettuce from the hydroponic growing and do that. >> October 16th. >> Is it October 16th? Okay, put it on my calendar. >> Um, our last guest actually was the first person at Geneva High School to bring a dual credit course um to Geneva High School. So, um, Mrs. Mester, if you'd like to come up and you have students with you as well that when you're finished could come up and join you. >> Hi, I'm Lisa Meister. Um, I've been teaching uh sophomore health here since 2002. And in 2006, I proposed a a new class that wasn't dual credit at the time, but it was an elective

025for juniors and seniors called advanced health. And uh many other districts around the area were already doing an advanced health class. And it was one of those things that we talked about the importance of continuing on the life skills that health offers for teens beyond the sophomore level. um because certainly as they're getting ready to go into college, you know, or go a life beyond high school, we need to have a a more mature conversation about decision- making and and some of those big things uh that they're going to be facing in life. Um so I was already teaching the advanced health course for a couple of years uh when Mr. Rogers, our principal, uh sent out an email to all the faculty saying that as a district we have a new goal that we

026wanted to start taking a look at the possibility of doing some dual credit classes. And so he sent out a survey to all of our faculty asking who has a master's degree in their subject area. And I I responded and said,"I have a a master's degree in health education." And um so we started talking and we actually had a meeting with um some of the administrators from Wanzi Community College. Uh they talked to us about like what they were looking for as far as the requirements for dual credit. Um that we needed to, you know, follow their their general curriculum skeleton, their book. uh changed the name of our class to personal wellness which aligned with their transcripts. Um but it was a really nice conversation in talking about the fact that students had the

027opportunity to earn some college credit while still having the kinds of relationships that they have with their high school teacher and still having a little bit of not necessarily handholding but that closer relationship that you have on your high school campus. um while they're still while they're already trying to face the challenge of a college level curriculum. And so that allowed them to um be proud and earning some credits. Uh the nice thing is that their grade also transfers to their transcript at college. So if they get an A in personal wellness, they're starting college with a 4.0. Um it's also nice like I I talk at back to school night with the my parents um like of my sophomore classes that come in and just kind of promoting personal wellness and telling them like

028hey it's a $36 tuition you know for a course fee um to get three credit hours uh out of the way. So financially that helps a lot of families in Geneva as well. Um, we do a lot of continuation of some of our topics that we talked about in sophomore health, but we also get into some things on like health care issues and health insurance and, you know, a lot of stuff that the students didn't know a whole lot about. Um, like what is the difference between medical insurance and life insurance and what is a deductible and what is a co-pay and a lot of adults are probably, you know, racking their brain for that. Um, but then we also do a nice unit on health related careers in case the kids are interested in

029in going into the health field. And um, so I reached out to my past students from last year and Declan and Ashley agreed to come join me today. Uh, they were in my spring class last semester. >> Hi, I'm Ashley and >> u, my name is Declan. We're both seniors at um Geneva High School and we're just kind of here to talk about um personal wellness. >> Um so I took personal wellness. Um I've also taken um early childhood education and intro to teaching. So I'm very interested in pursuing education um after high school. So one of the big things for me for why I took so many dual credit um classes was because it's really important for me and my family to cut down the cost of college education as much as possible. And

030I'm hoping that with all those credit hours that I've obtained from the dual credit classes that I've taken at Geneva, I'm able to graduate college earlier and that would also cut down the costes costs. And um also I really appreciate how Miss Meister teaches the class. It gives me a feel of what college is like. It's a more rigorous class, so it's kind of on the same line as an AP class, but it's less expensive than an AP class. So I really appreciate that. Um overall that class was something I look forward to every single day. Um Mrs. Meister as a teacher and the whole class. Um it was seven of us at the time of that class and we had built a relationship outside of the classroom as well. So those people in that

031class still friends with them to this day. Um it was great learning about health related careers and kind of more mature topics than we talked about in sophomore health. Um I want to go into medicine. So, this was an amazing introduction to kind of that whole field and learning about the things that I'd be doing further along in life. >> Thank you so much. >> Thank you guys. >> Thank you to all of our guests. Thank you to the students who are able to join us tonight. I would also share Miss Mister Meister has also been like the um head of the organization for health and health teachers in Illinois. she was too humble to say that. So I appreciate not only what was shared with our, you know, staff that are teaching college level

032courses in their spare time, but also that leading the organizations that they serve. So any questions for anyone or myself or our guests? >> I don't have a question, but a statement. I strongly support dual credit courses. Lisa campaigned with me a little bit two years ago and that subject came up more often than any other subject. I have a sister who used dual credit courses to her advantage and she is a practicing physician at this point just to make add to Declan's point >> and I have a daughter who also did that and she both my son and daughter are currently teaching college level courses. >> Yes. >> Well done. >> One question um where we stand as a community, as a as our school versus some of our neighbors in this area. Are

033we a leader? Are we a follower? Um would we would does our 10 classes u is is that let's say the average that you might find at another high school or are other schools offering a much wider variety of classes? >> Uh it's both. We have a lower enrollment in the courses that we offer than um some of the schools around us. And we also offer fewer courses currently in Geneva than around us. And it really depends on the on the school district. So for example, um West Aurora, if students take advantage of it, they can actually graduate with an associates degree. There's there are that many courses that are offered. Um and speaking to their assistant superintendent, however, the percentage that actually graduate with a full associates degree is very small, but they have

034those many offerings um in their school district. What would be the average of a of a high school and the number of classes that they might offer? >> 1520. >> Okay. So, double what we what we are currently offering. >> Okay. >> So, at this point though, we're not turning students away. No, it's not like >> we don't have enough room for students. Is that >> students are not being turned away? >> I have a question in regard to promotion of the dual credit classes. How do we go about doing that? So when students meet with their counselors um you know there obviously those courses are shared um as options um there believe me Mr. Rogers could probably add to some of this, but as even as um Lisa shared, she shares it a back

035to school night with parents. So definitely the teachers that teach them promote it, the counselors when they meet with them. Um I believe probably at your back eighth grade parent night and nth grade new parent night, it's discussed. Um I think probably what we could do a better job of messaging is the benefit of dual credit. We tend to have more of our families enroll in AP courses than dual credit. Um, so that's probably an area that, you know, we could, >> if I, if I could add to that, I do think one of the things we're trying to think about with this as part of our strategic plan goal is, um, you know, what is we've got to figure out what is our philosophy as a district going to be around this? Um, and

036right now I think we have some, as you see, some real cool courses that some cool kids take. Um, but probably most of the kids who have selected most of these courses, it's like Scott said at the beginning, there's a personal interest in this part particular area or this particular topic and we need to have some conversations around. Is that the direction we want to go? And we want to have a lot of cool unique like pathway, you know, career pathway courses in dual credit or do we want to take more of a philosophy of we want to have some standard courses that like everybody could take. >> Um >> so it is a give or take. If we are going to offer those, there are other courses we won't be offering, right? >> We

037can't offer the full, you know. So those are some of the hard conversations we're going to have to have here over the next year as you know at this table and I the high school team and you know with the community to try to figure out that part as we're looking to expand because the other thing as you noted with all these awesome educators here >> they have to have special lensure in many cases to be able to teach these courses and so we're going to have to figure out who's got that and how we support teachers to get that if we you know have that interest and all that kind of stuff. >> Yeah. Part of Oh, sorry. Were you gonna go? >> Go ahead. Go ahead. >> Oh, part of my question, which

038I don't think you can answer right now, is like what does it look like for average students who do take dual credit like long term compared to kids who maybe take AP courses? Because obviously we can hear there's a clear benefit and I think that that might apply if you have a specialty you're interested in or a certain area. But does that mean like we should be pushing kids more towards dual credit versus AP or AP is the way to go? just like what does that look like long term once kids get to college? It what what plays out for them? >> Yeah, I guess that's my question. What is the difference between an AP course? Because you can get you can get credits on some of your core courses for for certain universities versus

039a dual credit course. So AP, yes, if you get the requisite score, they may accept that as one of the courses, but it doesn't erase the credit. They may just accept it, but they might find another course for you to take. Where dual credit, you actually are earning college credits that are on a transcript. >> So a dual credit class, you know, these you walk out with three credits, you've got three college credits in an AP. >> An AP course, you just go from math one to math two perhaps, >> depending on what your field of study is, >> or you don't take math. >> Yes. and how you do on the test. >> Yeah, of course. You have to you have to do it well on the test. But so the next question I

040have is >> do we are we planning to offer any >> any uh dual credits and these seem to be more um u and are we going to offer any any dual credits in your your core courses? Let's say math, science, and you know basic starting college classes. These seem to be more the electives that you might take in college >> uh rather than the core courses that you have to take, >> right? >> Um >> are we going to head are we going to talk about that or that'll be that whole is that the direction we're going to go, you know, are we do we need to have that philosophy, too? Can we mix and match kind of both of these things? >> Um but yeah, I do think that's the question. For example,

041there are some schools where >> most of the kids who take English senior year, it's actually a dual credit class, right? There's some places that do that, some that don't. So, we've got to talk about is that the right thing for us or is that not the right thing for us. >> Um, >> you have to talk in the mic. Stand up and talk in the microphone. Benny, >> we had a professional development day um at Cood last year and they did talk about dual credits on their end too. So, just keeping that in mind that there's also some push back on the college level as to how many dual credit courses they want to approve on their end as well. So, um that was a Exactly. So on the college level, there's Yeah, just

042keeping that in mind, especially at COOD, they're they're not exactly there there's some push back on their end about how many teachers and and the qualifications and what it requires to allow there to be much more classes offered that they're going to accept. >> There there's candidly some politics in that, right? because >> it's a financial issue and they're offering their courses and >> they want to enroll in their courses and have their teacher and you understand all that, right? So, that's some of the stuff you have to look at and work through. >> Dr. Hooks, did you have a question? >> Anything else? >> Oh, >> it may be esoteric, but I was fascinated with the astronomy um >> uh angle uh because I and what's your name? Sorry. >> Joe Shane. Uh, so

043Mr. Shane, I'm sure he knows the sun governs all of weather. And so at Northern they have Northern Illinois is they have a I don't know his name. He's been on PBS several times. They've interviewed him. He's uh one of the experts in the field in climate and meteorology. So would students have course like yours? Would that be something that they could use in a department like that at Northern where they could study? Right. Right. >> Yes. >> You got to talk at the microphone. Sorry. >> We want you to be on TV, Joe. >> You got hair for TV for sure. >> Right, buddy. the so the classes I teach at Northern um like I said the way the way then and and I'm teaching a couple currently um the the way that they

044operate is very similar to what I teach at Geneva. So um even more so I can get into more detail. I find that um being able to be in a high school classroom versus a college classroom I can do a little more. Right? So, um, not only would they be prepared and would that that class transfer over, but they would be ready for the next class for sure. >> So, yeah, >> that's fascinating. Yeah. >> Can I just add thank you all for being here tonight? I think this is part of our strategic plan and it's very insightful to hear from students and teachers what this is looking like as we think about what's what are the next steps, what direction do we want to go, how do we make this most beneficial for majority

045or as many of our students who want to participate. So, thank you. It was lovely to hear from all of you. >> Anything else? Well, I'll just say that I see this as an opportunity. It's an opportunity for the board to support our professional staff and grow the colleges. Those courses provide not just money saving for students, but money savings for your parents. That's not an insignificant thing. It's an opportunity for the staff to grow and improve its credentials. And and that is a good thing for all of us. And for you students, it's obviously a wonderful opportunity to learn in depth things that are important in the world. So, thank you all. >> Thank you everyone. >> Thank you. >> We love having you, but we're sure you have dual credit homework and planning.

046>> So, >> thank you guys very much. >> Thank you, >> Gilbert Centi. meteorologist or something. >> Thank you. I'm just going to speak about you. >> I'm going to speak about you a little bit before you get going. >> A few universities that had an onstaff meeting. >> Yeah. >> Don't be. That's wonderful. >> The best ever. >> Don't be I I don't often >> I don't often do this, but >> Oh, okay. All right. We're live. It's qu It's not quite quiet enough yet, but okay. The second item is annual grants update. George Pzes. >> Yeah. Well, uh, Dr. PZ is getting set up. I just want to, uh, thank him. Um, this is his second year in the role as director, um, in the department of learning and teaching, and this is

047his first year where the grants say his name. Um, so I want to thank him. >> So, any problems, call George. >> Yeah. >> So, no, he's done a wonderful job. I just want to acknowledge that um and you know compliment his work and efforts. >> Shauna, you are too kind. I still direct all my questions to Shauna and likely see that tonight. >> Uh thank you everyone. Yeah, so I'll provide a brief update of the grants that fall under the learning and teaching department. Certainly the district has other grants that do not fall another uh uh in our department. Um but I will specifically talk to uh the grants that we oversee. Uh and so we have I would say six grants uh five of which are um will continue and one that we

048will be retiring. So these are the grants that we kind of uh oversee uh in the learning and teaching department. So I'll just kind of go through each of these and if you have any questions please feel free to uh ask at the end here. If you remember, if you recall, uh this one we are suns setting here. We'll be done with it. Uh and I am very happy. I think we are all happy. Uh hopefully we do not have to hear about you know uh er funds. Um but these were uh dollars if you recall to um help and reopen our schools during the co pandemic. Uh so in we received about $2.6 million. Uh right now we have about 13,000 left which is all but spent. I think in the next week that

049will be gone. Um we've added some new sections. We're uh updating uh and providing literacy resources to our uh schools and so we will be very happy to kind of move away from this. Sad to see the money. It was great uh great dollars that we did lots of great things to. Um but uh we're happy to see this one um kind of go and and put into uh good use the resources that we've received uh from them. Um the other our other uh pretty big uh grant here is our ESA ESA of 65 grant. Um, I will tell you this grant uh historically has been um you can see here uh last year we received about 411,000. This year we received about 260,000. So significantly less uh dollars in uh this grant uh for

050this year. This is kind of two sub three subrants. Title one, title two and title four. Title one uh is for um designed to to assist eligible students um achieve profic proficiency on uh academic achievement st standards by providing supplemental supportive services here. So this is really targets uh uh three of our schools high school, Geneva Middle School North and Harrison Street School. Uh these are schools that qualify um as we call targeted assistance um really students that have uh low income. And we really use these uh funds to uh support um our students in a variety of ways. Everything from salaries to reading tutors. Our middle schools have math and writing uh labs that we support uh with tutoring. Uh we utilize uh these funds also to provide resources to each of these uh

051schools to help support the students that they serve. Um also a part of this uh helps with uh homeless uh transportation. There's a small bit of that. So that's title one. Title two is earmarked more for uh the professional development of uh personnel and the retention and recruitment of staff. Um and you'll also notice that in each of these there's also a non-public um component that we share with our uh two private schools which is St. Peters and Mio Monasuri. Uh so each of these uh grants we do share uh a portion of of these dollars with them. It's not much. It's about I would say no more than $5,000 in total. Um title two we look at the development of personnel. So when we look at PD, this is mostly where our professional development

052money comes from. Uh title four uh works with uh what the state says is well-rounded, safe, and healthy and uh uh technology. So we utilize a lot of these funds to have our mutual grounds and law presentations at all of our schools. um any software subscriptions. This is kind of where we pulled that uh that money from and any other supplemental resources that we need. So that's our ESA of 65 uh grant that we that we have. Another grant that we work with is our career and technology education grant. We have uh roughly around 55,000 allotted to us in that grant and that supports our um career and technology education courses not only at the high school to provide uh you know resources and supplies to make these courses run but we also uh provide

053uh money to our elementary and our middle school programs um to provide any resources, library books, any type of assemblies or speakers that come out to talk about uh career in technology. Uh and we also another part of this is the Perkins grant. Uh this it's not much. I think of that 55 is maybe 20,000. Uh and that uh goes to cover uh cover a partial salary of the uh career counseling position that we have at Geneva High School. Another grant that we have is the language instruction educational program uh grant and this really serves to support our English language learners. And we use these funds for professional development specifically related to English language uh learners and any software subscriptions that would benefit those learners in in the classroom. Another one also um which is

054this is not really a grant. It's just a funding that's provided to us from the state evidence-based funding for ELLL. Uh we have about 19,000 uh in this grant for us and 60% of that uh is utilized for um uh staffing and curriculum needs. Uh but we've also uh used this uh to uh help with uh translation services, professional development um and to you know hold our um bilingual parent advisory committee meetings where you know we invite uh student uh students and families uh to these meetings to learn about the uh services that we have here and we provide snacks for them and we really try to you know bring out speakers and uh other community resources to, you know, uh share with them the resources that are available not just within our uh school

055system but within our larger community as well. And the last one here, we get a uh small library grant from uh the Secretary of State's office, which gives us about $600 per school. Uh and you know, our librarians don't forget about this one. They email us email us every year asking, "Hey, we get $600." Uh, and a lot of cool books out there. >> Yeah, they they they go and fill our libraries uh every year with, you know, what what they what they need. >> Uh, so that is a quick rundown of all of our uh grants here. This is kind of all of them in in one uh snapshot here. And we do, I feel, a pretty good job in spending these down and uh tracking people down and reminding them they have money.

056And if we let them know they have money, they do a good job of spending it. um and doing some pretty cool things for students overall. >> Thank you. Any questions? >> Go ahead. >> Um regarding the ESSER funds. >> Yes. >> Uh I have heard and read that some school districts are had spent the money in a different way and perhaps now that the funding is going away, they're going to have to scale back some of the things that they had been offering. Is that the case with us or did we kind of plan ahead and if we paid for staff support to do something or not? >> Yeah, I don't I I think we were um very thoughtful in how we would spend uh those ESER funds in that when they ran out,

057we wouldn't notice a a a loss of any type of service that our students would receive. Uh a lot of our resources went to, you know, curriculum resources for students. Um, so I I think generally speaking, I would say no to that question. I don't think we're going to see any uh loss or things that you know we'll lose as a result of not having these funds anymore. >> Thank you. >> Right. Yeah, correct. And as Mrs. Sims stated, any uh additional staff that we had uh used that money for that was to support us during that time of CO. So those uh obviously, you know, we're back in session now and um we don't need that extra staff support. >> Thanks. It's good news. >> It is good news. Any other questions? >> Thank

058you for your good stewardship. >> All right. >> Thank you guys. >> Next is what is rapidly becoming one of my favorite parts of the evening is the public comments. And I think Kelly Bou is >> I've never said my parts are your favorite. Uh, if you if you had approached the mic, Kelly Borie, >> you're up. Good evening, everybody. There's quite a few more people here than last time, so I'm glad a few folks cleared out here. But, um, my name is Kelly Borgie. I am born and raised in Geneva. Uh went through the Geneva school system. So did my husband. And now we're raising our three kids here. And I'm here to talk about something that you've heard before, but I feel really passionate and I'd like to share a few more things

059on it. So I have read the cell phone and electronic device policies for our district, and I'm here to reiterate that I do not think they're enough. There are so many nuances identified in each policy that it could be hard to determine what's acceptable and when. It reminds me of a meaningful expression, standing on a whale and fishing for minnows. Sometimes it's better to do one big thing rather than many small things. And sometimes the big thing is unnoticed but right underfoot. I believe that mobile devices and social media are the whale for our students loud and clear. We need to create a distraction-free learning environment for our kiddos to thrive. The learning environment includes classrooms, hallways, lunch, and any other period of time between the first and the last bells of the school day.

060Now, as I was reading those policies, I highlighted each of the concepts I believe to be the minnows here. And aside from the administrative burden on teachers and staff, there has to be a reason they're called out specifically, such as inappropriate photos in the locker rooms, cheating on schoolwork, or cyber bullying. Let's stop this from happening in the school environment by banning smart devices during the entire school day. Now, I'd also argue that the zero tolerance of smart devices throughout the day would free up teachers time for versus patrolling what is considered authorized use in each classroom. Sure, it may take some extra time as the new policies are rolled out, but after that, I do believe it would have a more positive impact on a teacher's workload than a negative one. Um, from my

061experience, some believe that the existing policy is being followed in each of the classrooms and that the examples of the opposing parents that we're sharing are the exception. Even if I bought into that logic, there is room for improvement to allow our kids the space to be kids. to remove the distraction of phones and allow them to socialize face tof face with their peers. Allow them to take a breath between classes without checking their phone, to laugh and seek out new friendships at lunch, and be the type of kiddos that we were growing up in this school district when our faces weren't tilted down at our phones. There is hard data to support how detrimental this is to our youth to have access to smart devices during the school day. I'm asking you to please

062assemble a diverse group of stakeholders to update this policy for the well-being of our students. If we know better, we have to do better. Before I wrap out wrap up, I wanted to share a document. Colleen's going to help pass it up or um there's a group of passionate parents like myself and I know you've heard from a couple of us. So, we wanted to summarize a mission statement and be crystal clear on what we're hoping for for our future. She'll she's passing it out and I'll get started. Our mission is to advocate for the health and well-being of all district 304 students by promoting a ban on the use of smart devices and educational settings. We believe that a technology-free environment fosters better focus, enhances social interaction, and supports the overall development of our

063children. Together, we strive to create a safe and nurturing learning at learning atmosphere that prioritizes the needs of our students. So, there are three key proposed policy changes that we've been discussing. The first is no access to smart devices from the first bell to the last bell for all grades in our district, preK 3 through 12. This includes passing periods, lunch, and recess. Two, smart devices would include smartphones, watches, AirPods, and any other communication device that is not issued by District 304. and three to have clear actionable consequences for students who break these rules. Um, I'll email this to you guys because there are hyperlinks to each of the policies and the page where they can be found along with a link to the anxious generation by Jonathan height. It provides a lot of data

064and a lot of resources for educators and administration. Thank you very much. >> Thank you. You have just made your five minutes by the way. >> Nice work. So Stephanie Amore I can't plug in here. Can I? >> Uh, no. >> That's okay. Yeah, >> I printed out a picture. >> All right. Okay. So, this is my third time here. I feel like we're fast friends. Everybody on the board again, my name is Stephanie Amore. Um, I have two kids in Williamsburg Elementary School and I am here like Kelly to talk to you about cell phones in school and so this is my third attempt at having the conversation and recently I'll share with the board because you're not privy to this. Andy and I actually had a conversation last Wednesday. Um, I'm here to

065thank Andy for the conversation. I don't think that would have happened with our last superintendent. I shared that with you as well. Um, and I also just appreciate having the dialogue. it's much more impactful than this system of a board meeting. >> Um, having said that, I still think there's a lot of room for change with Geneva. I fully support everything that Kelly said and um, I think District 304 can can do better. As Stephanie Bolino mentioned in her last comments at the board meeting, District 304 has information regarding cell phone policies in section two or 6220. And I'm here to tell you tonight that there is a lot of room for improvement. I share with you this image. I have it on my computer, so I'm just going to show you. And I'll if

066you can't see it, it is a little kid in the 70s holding a cigarette while his mom and I just found this so to today's date. Zipper in the coat hold my cigarette. And I saw it online and I read the comments underneath and it said, "Hang on, we act based on what information we have at the time. We can reverse phonebased childhood now as we have the new information if we act together." Um, I'll also share just a personal experience that I ran into after our last board meeting. Um, just two weeks ago after the board meeting, I ran into a teacher who will remain anonymous. Um she stated that she had uh fully supported the phone preschools and just that day she had a kid have a smartwatch that was distracting in the

067classroom. Um her experiences she didn't know what action to take. So the policies in 6220 aren't doing what they're meant to do. Um also Jackie uh two board meetings ago you mentioned that kids have burner phones in the caddy. I would say that our policies that's not working. I challenge the board of education and the superintendent honestly to survey the teachers anonymously. I think that's how you get fair feedback. I think Miss Larry you mentioned you'd love to hear from student and teachers. >> That's doable by the board of education. By Andy, I don't know whose responsibility that would be. You guys have a much broader audience than I do working with teachers. So, I think if you survey teachers an anonymously, you'll get actual results and feedback without singling a parent or a student

068out or a teacher out. Um, like I said, 6222 isn't working, and there's still a lot of work to be done. Um, I I share this I might have shared this with you, Andy, in my line of work, we coin feedback as a gift. Not people always on the receiving end of feedback think it's a gift, but I truly believe that it is a gift. And so District 304 can do a lot better job of communicating. Words buried inside a handbook are not as impactful as reaching out to the community, educating them on policies, and really taking a look at them. I will share um I'm a Williamsburg. This is not to call our principal out any of the teachers. They do a lovely job with what they can. I have had zero point zero

069communication on cell phones, smartwatches, devices come out of Williamsburg Elementary School. So, I definitely do just encourage the board to continue the conversation, continue um learning, researching, looking at the facts, and I encourage the communication on the topic to just continue as I'm sure it's doing um to because it keeps gaining traction the more weeks that go on every school year. Thanks for your time. I appreciate it. >> Thank you. >> And I still have my cough if anyone cared. >> You're in >> Jesse Young. >> Thanks, Stephanie. >> Good evening. My name is Jesse Young. I am a parent of two current high schoolers and a recent graduate. I am not here to talk about cell phone policy. Um, I am here to talk about dual credit. I come at it from three perspectives.

070I graduated a really long time ago, but I was able to graduate with 12 college credits. So, I had a whole semester done. And even though I went to college when it's cheaper than it is today, to graduate a full semester earlier saved my family a lot of money. I grew up in Wisconsin. We started our family in Minnesota where dual credit and post-secary option is like free lunch. It is available to all students. It is wide ranging and many kids in our home district in Minnesota graduated with an associates when they graduated from high school. That is a phenomenal opportunity. When we moved here, I was saddened um to see what limit there are. I now have another hat. I work at Wubanzi Community College. I'm the coordinator of testing services at the Sugar

071Grove and Plano campuses and I see 90% of the dual credit students who have to place into the college level class. This is not taking a high school credit, a high school class, and hoping that they're going to give you college credit. You have to prove as a high school student that you can take the class and then after they do that, they take the class. And there's a lot of advantages. Um certainly when I took calculus for dual credit, I had a whole year. So I had 40 weeks of calculus instead of 16. And I still did all the work, but boy, second semester calculus in college was much more manageable when I had had 40 weeks to learn it the the the basics. Um, I had the same for Spanish and English. Um,

072so as I look at a senior who's not going to get the opportunity to take any of these dual credit classes, um, because he Geneva very much has an, uh, an AP track for kids who do well academically. Um, and I have a freshman who is in that line as well. And so, as much as I love astronomy, he's not going to take astronomy. He's going to take honors biology. He's going to take AP chemistry. And those are classes that they can get dual credit in. To um superintendent's point, you do have to pick a philosophy, but you don't only have to have one. And to um Paul's point, we are quite behind. I um test hundreds of students at Planefield, Asiggo, Betavia, and Planefields has many, many AP courses and many, many dual credit

073courses. Um I brought the uh Wanzi Community College catalog. It's really boring read, but on page 90, it has what they call the I AI major courses. I AI stands for the Illinois Articulation Initiative. >> That is every college course that has an articulated high school equivalent. >> And Wabanzi offers 5, 10, 15, 20, 25, 30, 35 over 50. So it's great that we have 10, but we are missing three of the most important. We're missing statistics that all kids who are going to get, and I should say young adults that are going to get an associates or a non-science-based degree need statistics. We're missing calculus, which all students who are going to get a 4-year science-based degree need. And we are missing English 101, which every student, regardless of getting an associates or a

074bachelor's at any college in the United States, needs. The biggest thing is an AP course might get my kid college credit. Maybe doesn't get them a grade and cost me over $250 by the time I pay for the course fee and I pay for the test. A dual credit course cost me $36. That's $12 a credit. And most of the textbooks you don't have to pay for at Wanzi because we have open um resource oeer >> open educational resources. Most of our classes have online resources you don't even have to buy a book for. So as I look at my graduating senior he could he is going to graduate with the B seal of biteracy which is great. that's going to get him credits, but he's not going to get 101 and 102, which he

075could have had done by now, and he's not going to have calculus. And I just think if you summarize or sum up the credits you can get with the seal of biiteracy, 101, 102, and a math course, you have a full semester. And I am looking at putting three kids through college. Many of you are looking at that as well or more. And that is instate 35 $40,000 a year and out of state even more. So if you can save me one semester by investing in some of those basic core classes that you need regardless of an associates or a bachelor's, you are doing a great service to families in Geneva. So I would just really encourage you to think about that. And I've spent a lot of time with Dan McDonald. He is the

076director of high school partnerships at Wubanzi. Write that name down. He is willing. He wanted to come tonight, but his son had a soccer game. Um he's willing to meet with teachers, with uh administration to go over requirements, what that looks like, how districts do multiple um philosophies of the cool classes and the basics. Um and just uh what a great opportunity it is. and I'm so thankful as I wrote to the superintendent a year ago. Um, thank you so much for putting this on your radar. I um really appreciate it and maybe by the time my freshman's a senior there'll be some. Thank you. >> Thank you so much. >> Thank you very much, Miss Young. Um, I think you can tell where I stand and I will look forward to your assistance when

077we get working on these courses. That completes the public comments unless there's someone who feels they have something to say that they don't they haven't submitted a form. >> Yeah, I I could use a little help with that, too. >> Thank you. >> Legislative updates are next, Jackie. >> Yes. I've been looking to see if anything has been passed. Is this working? Okay, good. If anything has uh been passed that was on the governor's desk, maybe he didn't sign it, but it does automatically get passed. And there is one bill of note, House Bill 5057. This was the bill that would hopefully help with the teacher shortage that allowed uh teachers or potential teachers to um pass just certain sections of the content area test. So, they did not have to pass the entire test

078every single time they took it. So if they only missed one content area, now they're able to just take that content area separately to pass. So that was one item that did um make it now as a public act. Uh the veto session, I look to see when that is and it is November 12th through 14th and 19th through 21st. That are the days where the sessions they are back in session and sometimes there's business done, sometimes there isn't. Generally there are nothing uh nothing new was uh submitted at that time but you never know what will happen. So at this point I don't know that there's much else to update until we get to the veto session in November. >> Thank you very much. >> Superintendent report. >> Thanks. So I have a few

079things to cover tonight uh potentially a little bit longer than um usual but I I think some topics that are uh important for us to to dig into a little bit here. First um later in the agenda there is um the full report from Dr. Kofran and our demographic study. Um it's many many pages um and a lot of data to sift through and so I thought it would be important to kind of try to pull some of the key facts and and kind of major takeaways out of this uh to to share with everybody. So, you know, his analysis included, you know, as I shared with you previously, geocoding all of our enrollment data by actual parcel across the whole district, right? Um, he did an analysis of district attendance and in all the

080planning areas that go into our district. He reviewed five years of birth rate data and he built a cohort projection model and cohort survival rates to make some to make some pretty impressive projections. So I want to share the projections uh for the district and then by each level with you here um and then share uh three charts that are kind of buried deep in the middle of the report but that I think will be helpful for us as we start to plan and move forward. So you know the overall district projections here we talked a little bit about this at a previous meeting. remember that uh you know he runs like a Monte Carlo model to get the high and the low, but then we get the mid and he uses his more sophisticated

081calculations with the cohort survival rate, the five-year birth data and all that um you know more advanced analysis to get the snapshot number and ideally it's nice to see the snapshot number look close to the mid. So, as you can see districtwide here, you see here's where we were in 1718 about uh you know what, sorry, about 5,700 kids. Here's where we are now. And if you look somewhere between the mid and the snapshot number, um his analysis would say that say 10 years from now, we'd be looking about or a little bit higher than we are right now. Um and that generally follows the same pattern obviously at each level, right? So at elementary you're looking at the same thing. 1718 we're about 2400 uh elementary students came down a little bit and you

082see a pretty a pretty decent plateau there is what would be expected based on his you know the cohort survival rates and that five-year birth rate data. um middle school obviously because you know it's a it's a lagging indicator right because those kids have to come in at kindergarten and then go through. So you see that number it's we're likely to see more of a decline over the next several years with our middle school numbers and then see that plateau happen, right? Because our current elementary class sizes are smaller than our middle and high school class sizes. We've talked about this before. So, you're going to see a little more decline over the next several years and then we'd see that plateauing um with a potential small increase. And then high school, uh we'll you'll

083still see it here again. Here's where we were just about 2,000 kids in 1718. We've come down to around this, you know, 1700ish number. And then you're going to see you'd see us go up and then down and then theoretically back up. That up uh is from again his analysis both of where our current middle school classes is and some potential moveins based on his observation of the data. So those are um that's like the general big idea. But then the next place we're going to go into that I thought would be really important and this was the big aha for for me from his uh his findings. So uh there's three charts in here. I think they're I'll tell you the page number in a minute, but I'll I'll show them to you in

084the presentation here. Um one of the things that's really going to help us take I think the next step in our analysis is looking at these three numbers. the first the number of residences per attendance area in the district. Right? So we can actually look at how many actual total homes that someone could live in are within each attendance area. Now remember we have just one high school. So there's only one attendance area for the high school. And at the middle schools we have our balanced enrollment model. So um we can basically take all the kids and divide them evenly. It's really the elementary attendance areas we're looking at. But then, and this is important and I think something that uh we don't always think about, especially some conversations I've had with some folks recently.

085So, first we want to look at those number of residences by attendance area. And then we want to look at what's the percentage of housing occupied by students in each one of those attendance areas. Okay? Um because one of the assumptions might be, well, you know, there's a thousand houses in this district and every one of the in this boundary and every one of those houses is going to send five kids. That means we're going to have 5,000 kids. That's not generally how it works. And he uses, you know, his he analyzes all the data to then look at what's the percentage of housing over time that we see occupied by students. And then the third number is in each of these houses, how many students does each of those houses generally send to the

086district? And it's a combination of these three numbers that we're going to have to look at here over the next several years um to to start making decisions. So the first chart, it's table 11 in the document. Um and you can already see some discrepancies in there, right? So you could if you take out check out this bottom number, this is how many total residences in each elementary school attendance area, right? So you see Williamsburg has a total of 3,200 potential homes a child in our district could live in. Right? Western has 1,800, Mil Creek, 1500, Hartland, 1600, Harrison 2700, and Fabian 888. Okay. So, right there you start to see some of the things that we're we're trying to take a look at, right? Um, but then remember it's the next step. So, first

087we know how many residences there are. And then we want to see what is the percentage of residences in each of those areas that typically historically would send kids to us. And that's another interesting number to take a look at. So, if you look at the next one, this is table 13. Um you see that generally speaking overall only somewhere between 20 and 25% of the residences within our district um have school age children in them uh at any given time. Right? So and that makes sense honestly probably if you think about your block, right? So you think about your block and there's, you know, some older families, some younger families, some families that don't have kids. And so you're looking at about, you know, that somewhere between 20 and 25%. Now, in our district,

088most of the majority of the homes would be considered either residential, just plain residential or single family homes. So that number is about 26%. Um, but then you can we can also look at that broken out by our current attendance areas and you actually see, you know, all of our elementary school attendance areas somewhere between 18 to like 25% of the the residences in each of those areas typically send kids to uh our school district. Then you take a look at the next chart which is how what's the average number of students that each of those residences that has kids sends. And this gets a little interesting too, right? Because you look at Williamsburg, which had the most number of households in our district, but it has a slightly lower percentage and it also has

089a lower number of kids per house. Right? So the average house that has kids in the Williamsburg area sends about 1.8 kids to our school. Whereas over here, if you look at Mil Creek, the average home that sends kids to school in Mil Creek sends 3.4 kids to school. Um so you you can start to see, I think, if you look at all these numbers and analyze all these numbers and try to put them together how um you know, this can help us start to plan for the future. And that's really what we want to try to do. Um, and this data is helpful is going to be helpful as we think about one of the next things I'm going to talk about, which is the the proposed development out west. So hopefully that was

090helpful and some context. Those were the big ahas to me as I tried to kind of synthesize that big document. Um his kind of key takeaways for us were to say first um you know we've talked about this before aging in place and gentrification of downtown have increased the district's median age. We're not surprised by that. We've been talking about that, right? So um the district's median age is higher. Less kids theoretically come into the district. We know enrollments have declined. We know that we have imbalanced attendance areas at the elementary level. Um overall based on birth rate data and historic projections we would expect our enrollment to decline slightly over the next few years um and then start to increase again a little bit beginning 3132. Bless you. Then this last part is the

091big piece, right? All of this data is based on everything that we knew up until this summer and did not include the develop the proposed development out west. Right. Um so that has important implications and that's what I want to talk about next. So are there any questions or comments about the demographic study portion? >> You're good. >> Okay. Okay. Okay. So, when we get to the uh proposed Charles Farm development, we talked about this last time. I thought I'd share a little bit more information with you, especially in light of the demographic uh study results that we just reviewed. Um again, this is a proposed PY development in the northwest corner of our district. Um they have submitted a concept plan. PY submitted their concept plan to the city of St. Charles with an

092annexation proposal. Um and then this is the based on the current proposal the exact number of homes that they would send that would be within the boundaries of Geneva 304. So there would be 546 single family homes uh that would send kids to Geneva uh and 198 town homes that would theoretically send kids to Geneva >> Potentially >> right remember again you got to think about that percentage right? So town homes. >> So would we assume that it would be around the 20% that is the average of the district or that's not safe to say? >> Yeah, I think what we would do that's why I wanted to share this previous data. That's why I think this data is so important. I think we would one of the things we would do is we would

093try to take a look at that area and use some of the data that we already have and be able to apply it. Right? So we would do that same thing. What would we expect out in that region to be the typical number of um homes that would send kids and then about how many kids would we expect that to be? Right. >> So >> go ahead Larry. It would be it would be very interesting to see what the age of the unit has to do with the probability of sending students. New homes clearly are more likely to have new parents. Correct. And more kids. >> Correct. >> Well, and also >> you might want to look at compare it more with what you have. >> Correct. Because those are your new subdivisions that have

094gone in. They have in all cases a much higher >> correct number of students per >> and also number of the percentages. >> Exactly. >> Those those would be the ones you really want because things such as the western you know those are those are more old residential neighborhoods where you don't have a lot of new houses and they're because the gentrification those costs are higher. >> And in this single family number that's not including the Dell web section. Correct. >> Correct. Yeah. This number is all nondell web. >> So we'd have to factor in that probably not completely but probably less 55 and older would be in the nondell web since there is a Dell web section available and that might not that's not going to be 100%. But so it might up those

095numbers a little bit. >> It could it could I mean that's that's why I wanted to share those three charts with you before we looked at this. Right. >> Um >> quick question. Go ahead Jackie. Um, in the report, does he define what is residential and what is single family? Because he has those broken out. >> They're broken out. I asked him about that. So, part of that has to do with the reporting body that reports that data. >> So, in um, >> you know, to him residential might be interchangeable with single family. >> Um, because if you take a look at some of those charts, you'll see like it reports Mil Creek as just residential and not single family. But obviously those are all residential single family homes, right? >> Um you will note

096I think originally we anticipated there were apartments as part of this. There are those have been removed from the project proposal. So no apartments. >> Um so again you've seen these. I don't need to go into great detail but you know the the purple dotted line is uh the Dell web portion. Uh the red line is the boundary between Geneva and St. Charles School District. So anything above that would be St. Charles School District and anything below that red line would be Geneva School District. Um all of this would be Dell Webb and then all of this is different residential communities. That's what would contribute the 546 single family homes and 100 whatever town houses, right? Um, and then remember the phases are important to this, right? Because this is a like 15-year project that

097wouldn't come to fruition till 2039. Um, and you know, it would basically it would basically move southwest is I think the best way to say it, right? Like they would start up here and move this way. Um, in terms of working through those phases. So, the concept plan was presented to the St. Charles Plan Commission last week. It was an informational meeting. No votes were taken. There was a lot of public comment. Um, and a lot of insights were shared by folks. Um, we we've tried to gather some more information and ask for some more information from the developer. I want to, you know, put a star or a caveat on of the on this. Obviously, there are a gajillion, that's a technical term, a gajillion variables, right, that go into all of this. And

098so um these are um this is based on some analysis that I think is pretty well grounded but also a million things can change right um but so based on that here's what we do think we think projections of around 500 to 700 students could come to the school district uh over the course of the complete project. Right? that would be at full buildout which would be 2039. Dr. Kofran has taken a quick look at this. He would tend to agree with those numbers um as well. So somewhere around there and I think important to note that um that's K12, right? So remember we looked back at those charts. It wouldn't be well now all of a sudden we're trying to find fit 700 kids in the high school, right? Theoretically they would be divided.

099um you know probably you know elementary, middle and and high schools how that would work right so um the and I guess I would also add quickly we believe that based on that number the numbers you've seen with our enrollment decline um even with some of the ways that we've kind of changed things we think that number could be accommodated um in the district as it currently exists exists. Um we'd have to adjust some things and we'll talk about that, but we think that that that number of students could be accommodated if that was actually the correct number. Um the the preliminary financials look net positive for the district, especially considering um you know how large that Dell web is, right? Ultimately, you'd be looking at hundreds of millions of dollars worth of new real

100estate that would come onto the tax rules and you'd see um you know millions of extra dollars each year coming in in tax revenue. Um and obviously we would need to spend more to support those students, but if you do some of the basic math, it looks like it would be net positive. In other words, we would get more revenue and tax revenue from the entire development than we would theoretically be spending as a per pupil expenditure for the students, if that makes sense. Again, this is all with my asterisk of there's a lot we don't know. Um, I think this goes without saying, especially with some of the things we've already been talking about, but elementary boundaries would need to be adjusted to make all of this work. Um the entire subdivision as it

101exists right now if it was approved would fall in the current boundaries for Mil Creek Elementary School that that can't happen. Right. So you'd have to do some adjusting there. Um and I do think it's fair to say and for us at this table to think about um additional facility needs could be a consideration long term. I don't think you would need a you wouldn't need a new school, but could there be some additions that are needed? You know, I mean, we're using our spaces a lot differently than we used to. Um, so could there be some things like that that are needed down the road? Uh, it's possible and I think we have to acknowledge that. Yeah, more buses. I mean, there's a lot of there's a lot of additional things we would need

102um to to make all of this work. So, that's where we're at uh for now on this. My understanding is that the St. Charles Plan Commission has extended their opportunity both um for folks to make public comment um and uh to to provide feedback to them until sometime in October. It was supposed to supposed to have been done earlier. They've extended this out a little bit I think based on some of the feedback that they've gotten. Um but uh you know this is still rolling. I would share with you all and with the community and this will be on the um in the board book as well. These are two here's QR codes for two two separate web pages that I think have a lot of information about this. The staff report um for the

103the staff of St. Charles. It's very detailed and thorough. Um, and if people are interested, they could look at that or just go to the web page that has a lot of information um, about the project as well. So before I move on, are there questions or comments about this subject? I think the only thing I'll add is the the plan commission staff report that is standard that municipalities put together this report that gives the details and the facts of what the project is and and what's doing and it's not just for this type of project and be a zoning change. So I encourage people to read that. It talks about I just pulled it up um that proposals started for this land back in 2001. So this is nothing new, but it does talk

104about what the neighboring communities have in their comprehensive plans, which is what their vision is for this land and what they had looked for there. So I it has a lot of details in there. It can be a little bit technical, but I think overall if you spend a little time reading through it, you you'll get a lot of good information. And then that project information page just has links to some of the other uh documents that they had available in the agenda packet at that September 4th meeting if you didn't make it there. Andy, just one question about the 500 to 700 student projection. Does that factor in since um we have an older community right now who's residing in place that they might move to that Dell web area and open up housing

105for families in our area? Like is that part of the projection or >> Yeah, it's a good question. I don't um I don't think it does. And you know, I've had that conversation with some folks before. Um you I actually had that conversation with our counterparts in uh St. Charles School District who are also reviewing some of this, right? Um, and there is that possibility, right, that theoretically if they build that thing and it's the Dell web component, um, maybe there's folks who live in Geneva proper who would move that way and then that opens up some houses, uh, here that could become residences that students live. >> Something we'll have to look, >> but it's kind of logical because you you get older closer to retirement, you downsize. I mean, >> we're already talking

106about that. I I will say if you look at um you know you if you go to one of both of these pages you can see some of the proposed homes. >> It's not won't be downsizing. >> I mean holy moly some of these houses are >> monsters. Is that right? >> There's some some very nice large homes. >> We some web for sure. >> Check that out. >> So you should check it out. You should check it out. Makes me wish I took statistics. >> Yeah. >> Okay. Good for now. >> Okay. One more. Don't leave. >> Want to want to talk with you guys before you go. Um, you know, I did want to give another update on the cell phone practices and and kind of where we're at and um what we've

107been up to here. Uh, and I would agree with everything, not with I would agree with what Stephanie said about a conversation is better. This this type of venue does not lend itself to that where it's just folks make comments to us and I appreciated having that conversation with Stephanie and I've had conversations with several folks um and I'm certainly willing to continue. So, um, I do think those conversations are are helpful in that regard. Um, and so one of the things that I will say I candidly uh heard um and appreciated as some of the feedback and some of the conversations I had was um I think I could have done a better job of communicating what we are trying to do and what we tried to do as the school year started this

108year. Um and and I think that that's uh um that's something I want to talk about. So, you know, I heard this evening, you know, the point about minimizing distractions in the classroom and to learning. And I think that's our district's philosophy as well. That's what we are trying to do with this, right? We want to minimize those distractions um in the classroom and to learning. And so, you know, I I want to make sure people know when we say our practices are the same that they have been last year, that is technically true, but we also have made an intentional effort to like redouble our efforts on this thing. Our administrators and uh our entire administrative team talked this summer about this um topic uh in some of our summer training and leadership sessions.

109Um, and so we had the formal conversation as that team to say we've got to kind of double down on this and really make sure we're holding everybody accountable for our expectations, which again are at elementary and middle school. If you have a phone, it's often in your locker during the school day. and at the high school um stored in the caddies and I know at the high school they've done redoubled their efforts on that as well both with you know the staff and then uh trying to communicate with students about that. I do think we would also um agree and acknowledge there is a component of this that is about our expectations and accountability. I think when I've been talking with some of our teachers recently about this, it's been about we're trying to

110be intentional about saying while while we're learning, we don't have those uh devices, we don't have those tools, and we're trying to help kids build routines and habits. That's part of what those that pocket chart is for, right, at the high school. So, it goes in there. Um, you know, I'll be candid and say I I don't think we can discipline our way out of this challenge. I think um we want to kind of build those habits in kids that while we're learning, you're not using this thing. Um, and I do know that uh our teachers are trying real hard to do that as well. Um, that being said too, I I do want to be honest about we're constantly reflecting about this and saying what's working, what's not, how can we improve? We've done

111that. That's why we've had the conversations this summer. Um that kind of gave us a more directed approach this year than um you know last year our practices were the same but there we were maybe not as consistent. Are we perfectly consistent now? No. But I think we're on a continuum trying to move that direction um and trying to be more consistent. We're going to continue to reflect on that. And then last thing, I do think we're going to have opportunities for ongoing community engagement. As you know, Sandy Meniscoco has helped us um you know, secure some speakers. Can we have people in to talk about this subject? I've had some good conversations with folks about some of the skills and strategies, some of the educa, some of the ways we could educate folks about

112this subject. Um and I think we want to try to do some of that over the course of the year as well. So, uh, we are trying, um, and we're going to keep reflecting on the subject. So, thanks for staying. That's all I have. What I know. >> Well, thank you for that excellent report covering information I think we all need to know and research. Item seven is board dialogue topics. There is nothing under that item. Item eight, work study topics and future action consideration. Those are mostly reviews and updates, but is there anything to add or are there any questions on this item? >> No, they should be pretty self-explanatory. Mostly reviewed, no big changes. You could always reference our last policy meeting if you have any, but um you can also ask us

113obviously we'll help out, but nothing big no big changes this time around. >> Anything else? Okay, that's the first reason. Item nine, information. That's just a few little items. Uh, board meeting, presentation schedule, foyer requests, and board correspondence, demographic and enrollment projections. We've pretty much beaten that to death, I think, for today. Um, and this is for information only discussions, not required, but if anybody has any >> within demographic study, is that available for anybody to see? Yes. >> Absolutely. >> So, anybody can go online and absolutely. Yep. Yep. Anything else? Okay. The consent agenda, formerly a long item, now much abbreviated. I thank you for that. Item one, personnel report, resignations, retirements, leave request, changes in assignment, FTE, new hires, and support staff resignations. Disposition. Item two, disposition of executive session minutes for January

11424th through June of 24. Item three, technology asset disposal. Item four, proposed construction management services and item five, procare client services agreement. Any questions or discussion on that? Otherwise, I'll take a motion for approval. >> So moved. >> Second. I >> I uh Next item, board member comments and reports. Let's start it. >> Great. Well, um last week I got to attend or over the past couple of weeks attend a couple of curriculum nights, back to school nights. one was at the high school where um it was great to get to meet a lot of different teachers, kind of walk in the shoes of my student. Um but also I think it was a great example for the cell phone policy. All the teachers talked about it. Um they showed us the caddies. They talked

115about how their students help hold each other accountable and say, "Hey, you forgot to put your cell phone in the caddy." Some teachers take attendance by the caddy. And it was just really a really open conversation or a really great conversation around how the teachers are utilizing it in what felt like a different way this year and my student as a sophomore. So last year I did hear some chatter about that at curriculum night 2, but it was clearly different as in a new focus. Like one teacher said, "I love this new way we're focusing on it. This is what we're doing." And really the students are all on board with it too. So, it just kind of felt like we were working together in this one way, which was really nice to hear and

116a great opportunity to not only get to attend curriculum night and get to see the teachers, get to hear about what's going on. In addition to what we heard tonight, it was just really exciting to hear about all the great things in the schools, but also how some of what we're talking about at that these meetings and maybe some concerns of some parents, how that might look when we get to the high school level. I also got to talk to um several different stakeholders about the cell phone issue because some just casually, not even like knowing that I was on the board, we started discussing it because they're like, I'm hearing buzz about this. I'm really worried about it because for their family, a stricter policy would be detrimental for them. And the reason for

117that is their business, not mine. But it just really made me understand that like there's many different perspectives on the cell phones and we're trying to create distractionfree learning environments and I think we're working really hard on that this year and changing up some of the things that we had done in years past. But I know me personally, I want to be respectful because I know my own personal needs, my family needs with devices and I know everyone's is a little bit different. But in addition, I got to attend a theater boosters meeting last week. Um they're underway with all their productions for the years for the year. There were four announcements. You could always check it out on Instagram, but the musical will be Susicle in case anybody's interested. >> But the first production

118will be October 4th and 5th and that's the freshman sophomore play. So that is the great American college tour. I'm not familiar with that one, but should be interesting. Um, also there was a music boosters meeting during our last meeting and although I did not attend, I will share because I may be chairing this committee. There are mums on sale as a fundraiser right now. So feel free to go to musicboosters.com and buy some mums before the end of the week. >> Is that a competition with the horiculture people? Are you are you going to throw down with >> See, we all stay in our own lanes, right? Um, and then lastly, I was able to attend the football game. got to hear the band, see the dancers, the cheerleaders, and of course, watch some

119football. But it was really exciting. This week, our eighth graders performed with the band. So, just nice to see how our programs kind of come together and we're trying to get those kids involved early into some of our high school programs. That's it. >> Thank you, Stephanie. >> Yeah. Um attended the U baby elementary uh PTO meeting last week. Um, this was uh somewhat transformative, I should say, for myself personally because my wife and I moved to Mil Creek in 2002 amidst all the dust and dirt and roads that hadn't hadn't been completed. And so, um, for those who know that that was a barn era for the schools there, um, as I said to the, uh, board, um, the PTO board that my wife and I are academics, we we're non-traditional graduate students. So,

120by the time we got out of school, we were looking at each other like, well, maybe not, you know. So, uh, we I admitted that, you know, we we're childless, but we don't have any cats. So, just want to make sure that's very clear. Uh, but we've been committed as a couple. Um my wife's retired in child development and theory at Northern and uh I've worked with children uh the last 40 years um especially starting with my elementary degree degree. So it was just so exciting to to to hear so many things that are going on in this u in that school. Uh as I said to my wife I said uh she was lamenting about the barn still you know but I said no but it's worth it. I mean look at all the

121things they doing here. So, uh, I was really, um, enthused and, uh, just thinking about some of the things that I miss not knowing what's going on in that that school. And I'm just really excited to know that we have such a jewel, I'll put it in our neighborhood, so to speak. >> So, just live two houses down from the bus stop. I've been watching all this over the years, but I'm just really uh, great to see what I can do this year, be more involved in this. >> So, thank you, Jackie. Yes, I also attended the Fabian PTO meeting last week. It was good to be back in the school. My two daughters went there, so hearing about some of the new things that they do and some of the things that they had

122done when we were students there. So, it was fun to be there. Also was able to attend both of the football games that have been at home this year. I really enjoyed the eighth grade band night last week. Uh it was fun to see them out there. I'm sure it was a thrill for them to go out on the field and actually march with the with the band and play their Smoke on the water song. >> But yeah, the the cheerleaders, the dance team. >> I know that was a color. >> It was a theme of color or color in the name of the >> Yeah, it was a it was a fun night and looking forward to >> Deep Purple the group. >> Yeah. >> Yes. So, that was fun. We have a technology

123task force meeting coming up later this month. Believe it or not, homecoming is coming soon. So that's another exciting week. Uh so yeah, looking forward to that. >> Thank you. Um I uh went to the football game, enjoyed it thoroughly. Got a cold, but that's okay. >> Um the football game >> it was chill. It was a little chilly. >> I don't know. I can't explain it. Maybe I was yelling too much. In any case, uh, lots of good things as you can hear about and I won't beat anyone to death, but but this is a dynamic district and we are working and going places to make education as positive and wonderful for the kids of the district and all of us in the open. >> I have nothing new. I was traveling so I

124missed my booster. So, sorry about that. >> I don't have too much. Um like Jackie will be attending the technology task force meeting later this month. I have a couple PTO meetings on the calendar to attend. I'm looking forward to um I really enjoyed the dual credit presentation tonight. I myself I'm a college professor. So hearing about those opportunities for our students to continue or to get the that excitement this early on and then bridge that into their uh their schedules and the lowering the cost of tuition and um the mention of you start your college career with a 4.0 potentially like that's really exciting. >> Um and I would be uh intrigued to learn more about that conversation. happy to contribute or participate in those conversations because I think that's such a cool opportunity.

125I grew up in rural Wisconsin. I had none of those opportunities. So, if we can grow that and continue, I think that's really amazing. Um, and yeah, I echo what everybody said. I think there's a lot of great things happening and school year's off to a great start. >> So, yeah. Um, um, going last in this is the best because you kind of echo everyone what everyone else says. So, what >> she said. Yeah. Right. Right. So, I don't have anything much more to add in terms of what everyone said. Uh was able to get to back to school night as well. And I think in the in the ones that I attended, it was it was um apparent that the focus on cell phone was and the smart devices was very apparent and I

126was thankful for that. I think the other thing I um in addition to that that that this was a good reminder for at least for me and hopefully for the rest of the school board and I was telling Andy this that this is a a good reminder of our role as a school board of remaining on the balcony setting policy and then um having smart people like Andy and and the district administration to to enforce however they feel um is appropriate um on the dance floor, right? So that just that reminder of kind of staying on the balcony and then if there's issues that do come up in terms of hey, you know what, this policy might not be the best for what we need in our buildings, then that comes up to us and

127we can re-evaluate. So I think that was just a good reminder for me at least um of of being on the balcony versus on the dance floor. Okay, so um football game, awesome. Uh, I think the thing that came to my mind as I was watching the game, uh, the games and, uh, the dancing and the, um, cheerleading and all the other things, the band is excited about the tradition of excellence again coming because I think we we're going to have a lot of that again this year. And, uh, so looking forward to having a lot of those students come to our board meeting to uh, be recognized for being excellent again. And that goes for all the all the fall activities. Um, thank for the dual credit information that that was eye opening for

128me just because um just always been the AP track is kind of always been the way that that I've always thought about um obtaining um college credit you could say or or advancement in terms of trying to graduate college early. Um and so the dual credit um information was awesome. So um looking forward to hearing more information how we can incorporate that track as well. Um sorry. Um and I think the other thing that isn't just is more personal personal than anything else is that is the um even though that so so for my daughter the amount of credits where she can graduate early but in in conversations that she's having as a freshman with her academic advisor in the university. It's interesting because while you would that the university would not want that because

129they they're losing a semester or a year or whatever it might be with the the credits. They're actually promoting different avenues of of utilization to get keep the students in for four years, right? So, they're saying, "Hey, Mindsay, why don't you look at a a double double major, right? So, you have all these awesome credit and so you can maybe get another or um spend a semester abroad and learn more about culture, take a little less credits and spend a seme So things like that that they're doing. So it's not that the university is losing money because they're graduating early. It's more about, you know, giving more opportunity to the students. So I thought that was really awesome. So anyway, it ties in really nicely to the dual credit and the AP and all that

130stuff. So anyway, that's it. >> Well, thank you, Dan. Two last items. On behalf of the entire board, I got a thank you note from some parents who probably this is really more for Andy, but we helped resolve an issue of theirs and Brenda Shy who is not here anymore apparently. Thank you to her for running the article about the meritorious management award that entire board received and thanks to Jackie for her part in preparing that application. We're all very pleased with that. There are no notices or announcements. The last item number 13. Would anybody care to act on that? Motion to adjurnn. >> Second. >> Call. We're done. >> All those in favor? >> Oppos? Same sign. >> Okay. All right. Thank you all for your attendance. sink. Yes.