001Call to order the Lake Forest School District 67 Board of Education meeting for August 19th, 2025. I will invite all members of the board, administration, and community to stand at attention facing the flag with their right hand over their heart to recite the pledge of allegiance to the flag of the United States of America. to the stands nation. >> We'll start with just a brief president's report. Um, this is the first board meeting of the school year. Of course, our responsibilities extend throughout the year, but as we begin the school year, um words I did for another great year. I know the teachers are excited for another great year. Students probably less excited, but I know the parents are excited to send their students back to school. Um, and I also want to reflect on
002the past year or two where we've really seen fantastic improvement um, across many facets in the district, particularly the academics have really done great. And I don't want to steal Matt and Rene's thunder. Um, and we're limited what we can say. I think we're embargoed on some things, but really scores have just been fantastic. And so that's attributable to the hard work of a number of people, foremost the teachers. Um, so I really want to give credit where credit is due for all of that hard work and success. still plenty of work to do. Um but really that the trend is in an incredibly positive direction. Um the other thing I wanted to comment just because it's a topic of some great interest amongst many people because it's been in the news lately is that
003um as many people heard there was recently some legislation passed in Springfield mandating um mental health screenings in grades 3 through 12. Um there's a great deal of concern around that. I've talked to a number of parents. I share the concern. Um, that is something that the district and the board will look closely at because that hits close to home. We want to be very, very careful, at least I do, in how much we allow schools to intrude upon mental health and mental health should remain the responsibility, the gatekeepers of the parents, not the schools. So, we'll be keeping a close eye on that. Um, fortunately that does not apply imminently and we have plenty of time to study and work with the community and communicate whatever we need to do to comply with that
004legislation. So with that, I will pass it along to Matt and Renee for the administration report. Thanks Mark. And a quick touch on that last topic that you brought up and thank you for doing so. Excuse me. Remember that the legislation does not go in effect till next school year. So we have a year to process and to look at um everything that is that will be coming around the mental health screener. And then if you remember both districts have worked diligently to make sure that there are opt out provisions wherever possible to make sure that control does still lie within the families. and we will make sure we do our due diligence to see what parameters are available uh to meet the individual family needs with regards to this new requirement. Tonight's uh tonight's
005presentation uh covers a host of topics. The first one I have to spend a little I get to spend a little time on which is the annual shared services report uh for our new uh members. This is a report that is given annually on what the benefits are and what the cost and would be if we were to ever separate. It's our commitment to the community to on an annual basis take a look at the um everything that goes into shared services and then communicate on why it is in the best interest of our districts. In fact, this was a huge conversation uh during my interview process about is this something that the district should continue to do in um in spite of the fact when I was hired, I think we were at year
00617. Uh we are now in year 21. Uh and upon concluding that initial analysis, it was an emphatic yes, we should stay shared services. And last year we celebrated year 20. And here is the annual report that has followed based on that decision. So the analysis looks at not um not how much we would say or how much we're saving because we have done it for so long. It now looks at how much it would cost us to separate uh into different districts. And I'm going to explain that to you. So the current shared service employee totals or FTE are 36.5 employees between both districts. And if we were to um I should also note that this number changes from month to month. So what you look at right now is a timestamp of July
0071st of 2025 acknowledging that there are some moving points, not wide shifting changes, but you should know that as we pull this data, it's from one specific day. Um, and the numbers could fluctuate slightly, but not significantly. Uh for example, um we started out fiscal year 25 with 38.5, but due to our shared services model, we were able to re-evaluate workloads and reduce to FTE. So the number is slightly lower than it was previously. It is our commitment to maximize efficiency. If we were to not be in a shared services agreement, uh we would have to separate in this way. we would need 23.5 FTE for 115 and 24.5 for 67. So this is um it's not as clear-cut as one for one because there is some economy of scale. Maybe we wouldn't need two
008assistant soups. Maybe the super the respective superintendent if you had two superintendents they would pull some of that workload. So, I want you to know that we just didn't double the number. Um, there is some things or responsibilities that would shift uh if we were to separate from districts. The bottom line is we would need an additional 11.5 um employees to separate and that translates to just under a million dollar of increased costs in 115 and 781,000 or 782,000 for 67. While that doesn't sound like a lot on an annual basis, when you extrapolate that into a five-year forecast, there is 8.8 million between both districts that is being infused into other initiatives. So because of our shared service agreement, we are able to offer a higher level of support and resources to our communities
009because of this longstanding agreement of shared services. There are no for our new members. There was a study that was done prior to my arrival. There are no comparables to uh shared services across the country when they did the analysis. There are other shared service districts but ne they were not able to find two districts of our um resource level or wealth that were engaged in this type of cost-saving measure. It makes us especially unique uh and sometimes from the outsiders they don't from the outside looking in they don't know why this is why that previous districts or previous boards uh entered in this type of agreement. I should go on that the shared service report is bigger than just FTE. Uh please remember that there is approximately $1 million in technology licensing and infrastructure
010and there are other uh economy of scales contracts that we are able to negotiate at a lower rate because of negotiating for two districts as opposed to one. And then lastly for 67, there is no sole administration space dedicated to admin in our current agreement. Remember 115 owns this building and the shared service lives here. If we were to separate, we would have to recapture likely some of Deer Path where the administration suite was once located or add an addition to another building or take some space in an elementary. I assure you we don't have any space anywhere. Um, so we would have to relocate maybe the cube or the haskins um and and take some of that space back. I'm going to take a pause here. We are also going to issue a um
011written report that gives a little bit more context to this slide deck. We embed this report annually in my superintendent report, but we are going to be producing a written uh memo or report that we will be releasing to the community in a future 411 uh that kind of makes sure that there is more thorough explanation for any community member. If a board member gets questions, they would be able to point to this written report in addition to the slide deck and this the tape of this presentation. Does anybody have any questions about the report? Okay. Um, any questions about this before we move forward? Okay. Uh, Renee, I'll kick it to you. >> Okay. Well, as we are gearing up for an exciting year, we've had some really wonderful work happening, collaborative work. This
012was an exciting new it's in our inaugural tri- district retreat. In the past we've met with districts 67 and 115, but this year was the first year that we included 65. So we were able to come together and spend two days together setting our intentions and our shared work for the year. Um one of the really fascinating I'd say um dives that we took into things was we looked at the deote business chemistry. I don't know if anyone's familiar with that, but we were able to really understand what was our workflow as leaders, how do we get things done, how do we understand our teammates and how they work so that we have a balanced team. Um we also took a dive into the six types of working genius and we were led through those
013particular attributes through um from Tom Burton. Uh these are very similar to the Gallup strength finders but in doing this it helps us ensure that we have the most effective working teams that are rowing towards the same direction. Um also not in the slides but just we just today welcomed about 14 new certified staff to the district. We're really excited about this group of teachers. We have some incredibly talented people. They just spent the last two days with us. A huge shout out to Amy Lombbertie who leads our mentor program and onboarded them with just incredible information to help support them. Also to Mary Beth Saucer and Sydney Campo who are our administrative assistants helping this get off the ground. >> Thanks Renee. In the workshop you heard about improvements that were happening to the
014DPM cafeteria. I couldn't be more excited about this. If you remember, um I I I distinctly remember um I the last interview that I had was uh in DPM for the superendency and I remember getting a tour and feeling a little underwhelmed in the cafeteria and it was one of my personal goals that um we were going to find a way to improve that space for our young people and thanks to the generous donation of the spirit last year we were able to um through their partnership equip the space with new furniture with a commitment to the spirit that if they purchased the furniture, we would come back this summer and then subsequently next and improve that space uh from a physical lens. And I think that our faculty and our students are going to
015be wowed as they walk in for the first day of school with not only uh some renovated ADA compliant restrooms that are beautiful, new graband-go areas and a flex a new flexible use space uh that will be um I think used throughout the whole day. And the idea is our vision is that space could be used all day for flexible learning opportunities, not just for the time in which lunches are being offered. Um we have a new um graphic on the wall which sounds simple but it is not. Um because the building is an older building and sometimes it looks a little drab and we're trying to make sure it is full of life because we know our middle schoolers are never dull. So we want to make sure our walls match that. And this
016uh vinyl wall graphic um is actually one of the things that I'm most excited about that and it was getting installed today. So I hope you like it as well. We celebrated Lake Forest Day. We're going back in time a little bit. Uh we have been marching in the parade for the last two to three years, third year. Um each year we campaigned to have students walk with us and um it was a beautiful Lake Forest day. I hope you were celebrating and you um went to the um all of the festivities that were associated with it. We also had our inaugural varsity field flicks is what we're calling it. And we had 200 people show up at the end of July to watch Wicked Part One. It is not a short video. Um, and
017that was a lesson learned. Um, when you, uh, show a video to the community, pick one that's just a tad under three hours was a lesson for me. Um, we're going to shoot for two hours or under. Um, not that it wasn't wonderful, it's just a long video. Um, and additionally, we have uh there's Jordan worked his magic with his team. It is a mono mono stereo for the the scoreboard. And Wicked, because of it being a musical, had seven, I think, seven plus channels of sound that somehow they had to work their magic to level it out to one. And it actually sounded pretty darn good. Um, so we learned that musicals are a little bit more complex and three-hour movies could be shorter. Um, so I am excited to announce that that was
018a success. Uh, and I was pleased with how many people showed up that we are going to offer the next showing on Saturday, October 25th, weather permitting, of Hotel Transennsylvania. My children are excited. Um, if you haven't seen it, come see us. I think the kids will love it. It's certainly apppropo of the season, the the Halloween season. Uh, we're also doing cool things where for homecoming, the students are having a for the 90th anniversary, which I think is the next slide. Our uh students at the high school are hosting a movie to kick off homecoming week of a movie from the '9s. Uh so we are trying to bring the community together and use that space for both 66 67 and 115. The 90th celebration is a big deal. Uh just under the hundth.
019I think it's it's going to be a pretty exciting time for us and we're kicking it off homecoming week as I said previously. I'd like to congratulate uh the Nolan Olsen who designed uh it was a communitywide campaign to pick the design for the 90th anniversary and one of our students won it. Uh we have the homecoming game on September 19th. We have a present from on the standing by Paul Bergman about Stanley Anderson who designed the building. On the 20th we have building tours on the 20th. We're having an all alumni community parking like party parking lot party. A little alliteration there for you. uh on Saturday at Gorton as well. It should be um full of fun and excitement and I'm hoping for cool um prefall days is what I'm hoping with no
020rain. I will kick it back over to Renee to talk a little bit about data. >> Well, you know, I have waited all year to talk about this. Um, when we think about our academic achievement all year, I'd been presenting to you on different benchmarks that we had, some of them being MAP scores where you're looking not necessarily at proficiency, but at percentiles. And we were feeling good about everything that we were doing, but you never know until you take that summitive assessment. And in the world of education, the AR is that summitive assessment for us. That's the one that we take in the spring, almost near the end of the school year. So, what you're looking at right here is the overall all subjects, math and ELA combined for our five different uh campuses.
021And we're looking at our ECRA reporting on growth. And what they do is they look at your local growth model, those particular cohorts of students, how they have performed historically, and then they combine them to give you what they call a growth model. This is what I'm going to call for you, a trailer, a little sneak peek into what we'll have in the fall assessment report. And then the big um report that you'll be seeing in November because these scores are embargoed. As we discussed, the state does not let us talk about them. We have the raw scores. We've uploaded them to ECRA and to the state. This is um ECRA telling us what our growth looked like. Now, you've seen the different colors. Um, red is essentially you're not achieving that expected growth. Yellow's
022just still not quite there. Green is expected growth and then blue is higher than expected growth. So, what I would like to share with you is that we have seen unprecedented growth this year. Unprecedented in the sense that it has never in this school district been at this level. Um, these are not proficiency scores, but these again are the growth scores. So what I would like to point out to you though if we look not only here two standard deviations oh sorry if you go back one Dr. for Montgomery. If you look up at the top where it says point uh positive.68 higher than expected growth, that's two standard deviations higher than what expected growth is. And so um this is again for both math and ELA. And I will have more on this for
023you next month. But what I wanted to show you and if you do go to the next slide, this is an exciting one. This is showing our underserved populations or the populations that are at maybe a little bit more risk. And so I don't know that we've ever seen all blue in each of those populations, whether there are multilingual learners, whether they um are from, you know, whether you're looking at it from the ethnicity lens, students with IEPs, but this is telling us that our work is working. So there are so many celebrations. If we look to the next slide, I believe Dr. Montgomery is going to talk about another huge celebration that just came in this weekend. Yeah, I was thrilled because I get a paper newspaper at my house um daily and I
024get a couple delivered on Sunday uh to open the Chicago Tribune which included the Chicago magazine which ranked the elementary schools and in Lake County Sheridan Elementary was number one and Everett was number five. So we had two on the top 10 list and um they even had a little drawing of Sheridan Elementary. So, the high school last year was number one in the high schools in the um area and I am over the moon excited. I have Jordan crunching some numbers. Here is how they calculated this uh to see just where Sheridan Elementary lands with all of the districts in the counties that are represented. But this speaks to um the incremental changes that we have worked on for the last four years and how we are continuing to see incredible successes albeit not
025I love how you said in your president's report like there's still work to be done. you're darn straight there is. And uh we are going to continue to strive for a state of continual improvement while celebrating when we come out on top because my expectation is and always will be that we should shoot for number one um in everything that we are doing. >> And Britney just shared that there are 168 elementary schools in Lake County, >> middle, >> 168. And we were Sheridan was one of one of one. Uh, and I want to give a huge shout out to Everett uh because them coming in at number five is something incredible as well and they should be uh nodded for that. And then while you don't see Cherokee on this, the data that you're
026that you saw last year and this year of the improvement that's happening in Cherokee tells me that it will be on the list in future years. Uh so we are not shying away from where we're growing. um singing praises where we can and celebrating and then also saying here's where we didn't hit the marker. Here's where we're continuing to progress. So, I would leave you with that. Oh, I'm not leaving you with that. I'm leaving you with Dr. Simmon talking about back to school dates. >> Yes, we are coming close to this. Next Monday, we have all of our staff coming together for our opening day. We're going to welcome our staff back on the 25th. On Wednesday, August 27th, that's our first day of school for students in grades 1 through eight. And then
027on Tuesday, September 2nd, if you are joining our earliest learners and you've got your first day of preschool, Wednesday, September 3rd and 4th, um, or excuse me, yes, September 3rd and 4th, we have our first day of kindergarten. We stagger those starts, so parents will be receiving exactly which day they'll be attending shortly. And then Friday the 5th is when we welcome all of our students, all of our kindergarteners full day. Um, some other key things to keep in mind, we've got the parent information night on September 4th for Cherokee, Everett, and Sheridan. And then DPM will have that back to school night on September 18th. And looking very far ahead, we've got winter break coming up in December. >> I'm not quite sure why we put that in there, but I am excited. Have
028something to look forward to. >> I wanted to also remind the board members that we cordially invited you to next week's convocation if you're available. Um, it is Monday morning at a time that I'm sure wasn't an update. >> Tomorrow's convocation. >> No, Monday's >> Oh, Monday's convocation. Yes. I'm thinking what convocation is start at 8 or 8:30. >> It's Monday. Um, if you would like to join us, Mark will be kicking us off at 8:00 and then Dr. Montgomery will join us at about 9 9:30 after he kicks off the high school. >> Yeah. So, both convocations are happening on the um on the 25th. So, I um start at one and then move to the second. So, I'm starting at the high school and then finishing largely because Dr. Fimmon has um festivities
029for the beginning that I'll unfortunately miss because I'll be at the high school. Good luck, Mr. Rubis. >> I've been promised there are no lays this year. >> There are not. Wait till you see. >> That concludes our our report and thank you so much for your kind attention. If you have any questions, Renee and I will be happy to answer them. Any questions from the board for Matt or Renee? All right. We now have an opportunity for public participation. This is the first opportunity which is limited to only items listed on this evening's agenda. Are there any members of the public who would like to address the board? Seeing none, we will move on to the liaison reports. Um Greg, anything to report on True North? We discussed it at length during workshop. Is
030there anything you'd like to add? >> I have nothing beyond what we discussed in workshop. >> I do not have any uh legislative updates. Um Monica, anything from AP? >> I don't have a report, but their kickoff will be September 11th uh at Croya. I think it's at 9:00. So, all are welcome to that. >> Great. Moving on to the action items. Um, first up is approval of the 2025 2026 tentative budget. May I have a motion to approve the 202526 tentative budget, please? >> So moved. May I have a second? >> Second. >> Any discussion before you just to remind the community the full budget will be presented on at the September meeting and there will be a presentation that goes through it. is to put it on display where any community members might
031have questions ahead of that final presentation in September. May I have a roll call vote, please? >> Mr. Adamo, >> yes. >> Miss Yan, >> yes. Mr. Burgerer, >> yes. >> Mr. Lavin, >> yes. >> Mr. Reis, >> yes. >> Motion carries. >> We'll move on to the consent agenda. May I have a motion to approve the consent agenda items listed in the agenda? So moved. >> A second. >> Second. >> Any discussion? >> There's one item I just wanted to uh correct. It's item number seven in the minutes. Um it indicates that um an absent member seconded the motion to adjurnn. Um it's not substantive but in the interest of accuracy uh I think it should be corrected. >> Thank you sir. We'll make sure it gets addressed. A question regarding item five which
032is the Liberte Educational Consulting Agreement. Can somebody give some background on what that agreement is and and the purpose? Is that something Phil might be to be able to address? >> Yam. Um these are some of the uh I guess you would say outside consultants that are helping support us with the um co-eing model. That's one of our DSS goals, our Department of Student Services goal that we're um looking to, again, you just saw a lot of blue in terms of closing that gap. They are taking us to another level so that we can continue to see that growth and the co-eing with Yam and the team. They're truly um just providing a lot of professional development for the general education classroom teams with the learning behavior specialists. are helping us stay within compliance with
033special education law as well as our best instructional practices. Kind of combining those two. So that's who Yamala and this group is. >> Do we expect that that's something where they they help us, we learn, and then we move forward without them, or is this going to be an annual thing where we're bringing them in every single year, year after year? >> Yeah, great question. Um, this is currently what we're anticipating as a this year's focus and then it's a little bit of a train the trainer model, if you will. We're training all of the necessary people this year. Eventually, this will probably go into our new staff orientation. Just everything that we were training our new staff on now, we were trained by someone before. So, it will it's a model that will grow
034internally. >> Any other questions on the consent agenda? >> I do have one on the same one. Um, my math is not good, but it seemed like it's 13 days of co-eing or coaching or consulting. And in my head, that's about a 4,000 per day fee that I've hired business coaches before. And especially when you hire them for 13 days, that's a very high daily fee. Did I calculate that wrong? Well, $14,000 a day when you're actually looking at bringing I'm sorry, $4,000 a day is probably what people will charge in the world of education. As sad as it is, it I don't know if it's just education. If you're saying that you can find business coaches that are less, this is probably not even Dr. Montgomery, please correct me if I'm wrong, that's not
035even at the higher end. >> We're seeing consultants running anywhere between8 and $10,000 a day. Well, I was, as much as it sound, I was pleased with the rate in which they were offering. >> A good question. >> Wish I had better news, but I shouldn't be excited about it, but I was happy with that rate. I'm in the wrong profession. Um, number seven, I think that's seven's interpretative. No, it's number two. Sorry, the interpre interpreter contract. Um, I think there was no pricing attached to the document. I assume it's good, but it refers to an exhibit A and pricing, but there's no pricing in the document. >> We can ask Dr. Sturbin to get that. >> We will add that to >> May have that. Any other discussion or questions on the consent agenda?
036>> All right, we have a roll call vote on the consent agenda, please. >> Miss Yan, >> yes. Mr. Burgerer, >> yes. >> Mr. Reis, >> yes. >> Mr. Lavin, >> yes. >> Mr. Adamo, >> yes. >> Motion carries. We have had a number of outstanding foyer requests, all of which have been completed at this point in time and are available on the board website. At this point in time, the board will have a second opportunity for public comment. Are there any members of the public who would like to address the board? Being none, just a couple final announcements. Um, actually I think Matt already covered all of these, Matt or Renee. And that is we have school starting next week on August 27th. No school on September 1st, which is Labor Day. And the
037next board of education meeting is September 23rd. May I have a motion to adjourn the Lake Forest School District 67 board meeting for August 19th, 2025? So move >> a second. Second. May I have a voice vote, please? All in favor say yes. >> Yes.