001Call please. Vice President Choke. Member Dorner here. Member Fay here. Member Qualche here. Member Leto here. Member Nelson here. President Bennett Kell here. All right. All right. Now, can we have the pledge of allegiance of the stands nationy and justice for all? All right. First on our agenda is a public hearing for a bond sale. Can I get a motion to enter the public hearing concerning the intent of the board of education to sell not to exceed $6 million working cash fund bonds for the purpose of increasing the district's working cash fund? So moved. Second. Member Dorner. Yes. Member Fay. Yes. Member Qualch. Yes. Member Leto. Yes. Member Nelson. Yes. President Bennett Kill. Yes. All right. Does the board have any further comments on the bond sale? Seeing none. Secretary, do you have any written
002testimony you need to read into the record? I do not. Okay. Does anyone from the audience have any written or oral comments on the bond sale? All right. Seeing none, all persons desiring to be heard have been given an opportunity to present oral and written testimony with respect to the proposed issu issuance of the bonds. Can I have a motion to adjourn the public hearing? So moved. Second. Member Fay. Yes. Member Qualch. Yes. Member Leto. Yes. Member Nelson. Yes. Member Dorner. Yes. President Bennett Kill. Yes. Okay. Next is our student member report or student board member report. [Music] So at Tuesday at around um 10:00 a.m. we were able to go into the administrator's building and we were able to look at the presentation that will be presented to you all after us. and we
003spent around an hour and 30 minutes giving our input on all of the data that was presented. Um, a few takeaways I had. First of all, I was surprised on the math map tests the percentage of people that reach their projective growth. Um, it didn't vary that much based on demographic, gender, or program. And second of all, um I think that adding additional co-curriculars to Lions Park could increase the attendance rate as students would be more compelled to show up to school because um Lincoln has a lot, Fairview has a lot, West doesn't have that many, which makes sense because it's for younger kids, but Fair Lions Park does not have that much compared to the others. So, and as you will see in the data and as Zoe mentioned, the discrepancy is huge between
004Lions Park and Fair View. It is very apparent. Um, we were also able to look at some social and emotional data as well and give our inputs as students. So, I found that um the data matched my experience as a student mostly. I felt very safe in the district and I feel the my saber scores and the um threat levels matched my experience. Anything else? Thank you. Oh yeah. And um this being our last meeting, I would personally like to say thank you to all of you for allowing me to gain valuable experiences and to really, you know, be more a part of this community. I feel like I've gained so much insight on how our school district worked and I will carry with me this experience throughout the rest of my life. So, thank
005you. Yeah. Thank you for the opportunity to have us share our student voice and thank you all for listening and finding meaning of it. And um I'm really grateful for this experience as it provided me with many skills that I can utilize later in life. Thanks YouTube. Does anybody have any questions for our student board members? Chris not a question but but a comment which is thank you both again for having the courage to to want to do this uh and committing the time and and effort to uh to being the first graduating group of student board members. So you guys whether you know it or not you have now blazed the trail that everyone who comes after you is going to follow. So you should be quite proud of that. So, thanks for your
006contributions and good luck at Prospect and come back and see us. Uh, just reiterating what Chris is saying, thank you guys. You are the first and hope definitely not the last and I'm hoping that just even with your experience that our next uh student board members have even more experience are even more involved with our board and the community and the district. And so, thank you so much for your service. We really appreciate it. I just want to say again, reiterate, thank you for coming and for taking the opportunity to be of service to our district. And I actually can give you some insight on one of the items that you brought up, the Lions Park extracurriculars. Um, most of the Lions Park extracurriculars are actually funded by the PTO. So those were not that's
007why there was the note on the um in the data itself that said the presentation that said this was school sponsored. It's still not as much still not as many as Fairview and it's still a great observation but I just wanted to let you know that was something that was going on. Um if anybody else doesn't have any comments. No. Thank you again. Can I just say a couple things? Um, you two have been amazing and I have had the joy of knowing you since you were both little kids at Westbrook and now you are big kids and you're going to be continuing to be amazing human beings as you've always been. Thank you to your parents and your families for your sacrifice and your support. And I have to say, um, I'm going to
008credit Alex as well because he was in the Mount Prospect, uh, Fourth of July parade, although with the Mount Prospect Band at the Prospect, uh, high school band, and Zoe with the District 57 school board float. First time ever, we completed the parade with enough candy. I think it has to do with these two. Yeah, I before you, we could never have done that. And so and for the first time I think in the history we completed with even enough to have our our children and any of the kids throwing candy got a little bit to celebrate at the end. We're very appreciative of that by the way. Yes. That was the least of your contributions but significant all the nonetheless. But um I know that you're going to continue to do amazing things at
009Prospect and you are going to keep pushing um I think your schools not only in high school and in college in your lives to keep making the world a better place because you're amazing people and you don't kind of sit back and wait for other people to do it. You put yourselves out there. You had the courage to step into something that was unknown. And I hope you realize how special you are to District 57 and how much we will always be here for you to cheer you on. And if you feel like setbacks or anything, sometimes that's a place to come back and hear a pep talk from us because sometimes it gets a little hard out there. But you have the tenacity and the right hearts and minds to be the difference in
010the world. So, just know we are so proud of you and we're going to invite you back every time to come back and walk with us in the parade and be part of any events because you will always be special to us. So, congratulations. Thank you. And yeah, you're welcome to say, but do we want to do a little picture? Okay. Is that that's how we celebrate around here? It's perfect. Okay. Congratulations. All right, we have come to the point in our meeting or agenda that we that Excuse me. That'll open up the floor for community comments. Um, the District 57 Board of Education welcomes community participation in an effort to both listen to our stakeholders and keep the meeting moving. I want to remind everyone of our public participation procedures and guidelines, which is
011available in board policy 22:30. Individ individuals wishing to address the board can do so during community comments portion of the agenda. Individuals should provide their name and limit their comments to 3 minutes. Please remember that this is not a dialogue between you and the board. The board is in listening mode during this time. Individuals wishing to contact the board of education are welcome to do so via the district 57 website under the board of education tab. Individuals should behave with respect and civility towards others and abide by board policy 830 visitors to and conduct on school property. Do we have any committee comments? Seeing none. All right, we'll move on to staff and superintendent reports. And first up is the spring 2025 academic and data presentation. All right, thank you. Um, so Dr. Vanderhar and
012Miss Terski will be presenting this data today. And I also want to give a shout out and I'm sure they at will as well to um Mark Fior who really collaborated and supported a lot of the data uh collection and visualization. So it was a great team effort and take it away. Excellent. Thank you so much. Um and like Dr. Gorge just shared we are grateful to Mark as well as our student board members who were helpful in giving their insight. So um sorry. All right. So in district 57, we focus on educating the whole child and providing outstanding student experiences that promote promote academic excellence, social emotional growth, and lifelong learning. In this presentation, along with the board memo that you have, we'll focus on our academics, which I will cover, and then I'll
013turn it over to Sarah Typerski to review our social, emotional, and behavioral data. Uh tonight's presentation will focus on student growth and achievement. We will also disagregate uh this data by subgroups. And when we talk about subgroups, that includes the different programs that we have like special education and multilingual services as well as um subgroups like ethnicity and gender. This information helps us to identify strengths and areas for growth. And during our presentation, I'll share some information regarding the professional learning that we are planning as a result and then we'll provide the board with an update uh later this fall with more specific goals. Okay, we'll start with academics and we wanted to provide a snapshot of our demographics. Um, our district is primarily white and then the next uh groups, the next largest groups
014are Hispanic with 14% and Asian uh students with 8% and our Hispanic population continues to grow. I believe we were at 11% last year. And then this is our data analysis uh structure. So three times per year we complete benchmarking to assess student progress. We use this information to inform our teaching and learning practices, allocate resources, and determine different interventions and supports. Our data is reviewed by our district leadership team, and then that data is then reviewed by building leadership teams across all of our buildings as well as district committees like our multilingual team, our special education team, as well as grade level teams. We review reports from NWA, MAP, and FastBridge. Um, and then again, I'm going to shout out Mark. He also created a district dashboard for us that allows us to view
015the data in multiple ways. So, we can just aggregate by school, grade level, ethnicity, gender, um, different programs. So, that's been really helpful, especially for our district leadership teams and building leadership teams. Tonight, I'll share information about achievement data and growth. uh achievement data provides us with a snapshot of how well students perform against a standard and then growth focuses on progress students make throughout the year. So during our fall presentation, I'll come back to the board. We'll share our achievement data and how our students are performing at that time on benchmarks as well as information from the Illinois report card. But during this time, um we focus on growth over the course of the year and how students perform from fall to spring. All right. Uh throughout the academic portion of our presentation, um
016you'll see two different graphs with different colors. The graphs on the left with blue represent achievement data and the graphs with green represent fall to spring growth. So you can see data over the last three years. And uh this is the first year we are implementing a new reading curriculum K through 8. Um so K through five is HMH into reading and then 6 through eight is SAVIS my perspectives. We anticipate having an implementation dip where we would see some potentially lower scores um this year in reading and I'll say in grades 1 through eight we didn't really see that dip. Um in fact our first grade shows show I'm sorry our first grade scores showed improvement from previous years. For kindergarten um we have seen a dip over the last three years. I want
017to remind you that the data includes both half-day and full day programs. However, we want to make sure that we are addressing this. Um so in response to this data as well as classroom data and data from our um new reading program, the kindergarten uh team as well as literacy support specialists and multilingual teachers will receive targeted professional learning um focus on the the new program as well as strengthening those foundational literacy instructional skills including phenemic awareness, letter sound correspondence, early decoding strategies, and more targeted small groupoup instruction. We want to make sure our kindergarten team has a strong understanding of the teaching and learning practices associated with the new curriculum. Teachers will also engage in collaborative planning, data analysis, and use of evidence-based instructional practices to support student growth. We'll also um this year
018we'll also be be engaging in planning and professional development focused on preparing for full day kindergarten with that team. And then to support our incoming first grade students, because there are those lower scores in kindergarten, um we do have some students who are enrolled in summerbridge as well as booster groups with our literacy support specialists at the start of this year. And then um our our first grade team will be reviewing fall data to identify any gaps that they see across the grade level to make sure that we are addressing that for all of our students. Uh now we are looking over at our MAP scores. So this is second through 8th grade again focused on reading. So our achievement percentiles for each grade continue to be well above the national average. Our spring achievement
019scores have stayed relatively similar to previous years. Some have gone up a little and some have gone down a little bit. Um we do see a lot of positive growth especially in sixth and seventh grade compared to previous years. And in terms of professional learning for reading, this past year we really focused on implementation uh and learning the new curriculum. And then this year we are going to focus on more targeted and differentiated small groupoup instruction at the elementary level. And then really working alongside our tech department um to really support that data analysis so we can have more datadriven decision-making in terms of teaching and learning practices. We also have had many teams over the summer doing summer curriculum work summer curriculum work to further support implementation. Okay. Uh this slide indicates the percentage
020of students who met or exceeded their projected fall to spring growth in reading by subgroup. We had almost 60% of students who met or exceeded their projected fall to spring growth scores in reading which is up from 57.8% 8% from last year. In most CA categories, we see some improvement in our Hispanic population, which has been a focus um for our district has really uh grown quite a bit. Uh we went from 48% last year to 55.56%. We do see slightly lower growth from our multilingual learners in the area of reading. We had 57.52% of our students who are low come low income meet or exceed their growth targets which is up from 46.9% from last year. In addition to focusing on the datadriven teaching and learning practices for professional learning this year. We will
021also focus on strategies across all of our schools that support multilingual learners and special education students. that includes visuals, scaffolding, collaborative learning, and language routines, which will ensure that all learners can access content in ways that align with their strengths. Our multilingual team will also engage in a more thorough analysis of data coupled with their access data to inform teaching and learning practices. We'll also have a special education steering committee this year that will focus on analyzing data and reviewing programming. We are also going to be reviewing our literacy support interventions this year. Okay, I'm going to jump on over to math. So again, this is looking at kindergarten and first grade and our math scores remain relatively consistent. Uh this year we will be undergoing a math curriculum review. At the kindergarten level, we
022wanted to ensure that our new math curriculum has a strong focus on number sense, counting strategies, and early operations using developmentally appropriate strategies like manipulatives, math talks, and visual models. As part of our full day kindergarten work that we'll be engaging in this year, we'll also focus on embedding math into daily routines to meet diverse student needs. And here are our math scores for 2 through 8th grade. Um, this data looks pretty similar to how it has in the past. We continue to demonstrate very strong achievement in math scores across 2 through 8th grade. And when we take a look at um that math grow map growth by different subgroup, uh we're seeing consistency with last year's data. Last spring we were 78.75% of students um who met or exceeded their growth percentiles and now
023we're at 78%. We're proud of this data. Um, we also see a an increase in the percentage of Hispanic students meeting their projected growth. Um, that's up by 5% this since last year. So, we don't see any um noticeable gaps between uh growth for ethnicities, program or gender which I believe Zoe had mentioned uh in reviewing that data. So, we are seeing that equitable growth across the board. Next, I'm going to jump to our district 214 data. We are grateful for our partnership with district 214 and district 214 sender schools. We'll continue with our shared institute day in January. Um, and all of our middle school math teachers this past year engaged in professional learning with district 214 and district 214 center schools. We're going going to continue to build off of that work this
024year and we're going to be focusing on algebra 1 outcomes and then all of our departments regularly meet to collaborate with district 214 and district 214 center schools. We're also grateful for our data sharing and collaboration which are ongoing and due to this collaboration uh we were able to better understand how our students are doing by the end of their 9th grade year and we look forward to continuing to grow uh this collaboration. As you all know district 214 recently um underwent strategic planning so there are some changes to some of the data collection. So last year I presented a dashboard uh career um a career readiness uh dashboard and they do not have that updated this year. So I will not show you that. Um but I will show you our uh 9th grade
025end of year outcomes for our Lincoln graduates. This slide also shows current eighth grade data. So you can see um on the left column are all of the different uh criteria or categories. Then you have grade 8. So these are our current eighth graders. And then um under grade nine you can see how district 57 compares to other districts who also feed into Prospect. Right. And then our goal is to take our eighth grade data and track that over the next four years to see how our students do at the end of high school. So we can see how our information helps, what correlations we have with that data. So by 9th grade, our students continue to demonstrate strong engagement. attendance was at 92.3% and 85% of our 9th graders participated in at least one
026co-curricular activity. We do see a dip in GPA in 9th grade. And we have about half of our students participating in honors or advanced placement for ELA, math, and social science. We have about 29% of our students placing in an honors science. Um, and that I would like to dig into a little bit more. um we don't have all of the information in terms of if families elected not to have their students take those classes if they were placed in it. Um so I want to do some more digging about that so we can look at those scores. All right. Uh this next slide uh focuses on research from the University of Chicago consortium on school research uh that emphasizes that middle school grade GPA and attendance are the strongest predictors of high school success.
027We did use district 214 success criteria of at least a 2.8 an a GPA and at least 90% attendance. And we currently have 84% of our eighth grade students who are on track. And we want to ensure a strong transition to high school. So we'll continue to disagregate this data at the district level as well as at Lincoln uh to identify students who may need additional support and reinforce schoolwide efforts to promote strong attendance in academic behaviors. So we always want to provide support as well as accelerate growth. Uh so we provide support to students needing it through our multi-tered systems of support that includes our math and literacy support. Uh we also have our our um benchmarking data and progress monitoring data informs our math and literacy supports. We expanded our rise or reading
028program uh last year to all schools and we also offer summerbridgeidge to students needing additional support in math and reading. And then there are a number of ways that we are looking to accelerate growth uh which really really begins with our district leadership team and building leadership teams analyzing disagregated data. Our building leadership teams develop school improvement plans and then data are used to inform teaching and learning practices within the classroom. We'll be refining our ELA curriculum this year by focusing on that datadriven instruction and small groupoup differentiated instruction. We'll also be piloting math curriculum this year. We're reviewing our um literacy interventions as well. And as I mentioned, our teachers have been hard at work during doing summer curriculum work and professional development uh over the last couple of months. And then throughout the
029presentation, I shared information regarding the professional learning our staff will be engaging in this upcoming school year. I'm going to turn it over to Sarah to review our social, emotional, and behavioral data. Thank you, Dr. Vanderhar. Good evening, everybody. Um so I'm going to walk us through our social emotional behavioral data. Um as Dr. Vanderhar was saying earlier, we have different systems in place to review the data. Um for instance, we have our district leadership team, our parent teacher behavior advisory committee and our district equity leadership team. Um each building also has their own leadership team. The grade levels and departments regularly meet to look at this data as well as our social emotional learning committees within the buildings. Our main focus always is to look at those universal supports and make sure we're intervening
030before there's a problem. So teaching those positive uh schoolwide expectations uh providing those secondstep lessons um at least weekly having circles with um our classes to develop some community amongst our peers. Um and also uh different events like the bee sashes which are so fun and so exciting. So if you haven't been when one is awarded at Westbrook you have to go. as well as fivestar data um at Lincoln which has been um just at the end of its first year and very well uh positively received. So let's talk a little bit about our data and how we're monitoring um students and determining when we have to intervene with students who um might be struggling in a certain area. Uh this was our first year with my sabers. Um my sabers is second through 8th
031grade. It's a survey that the student takes um themselves. Um with that data um we're not looking for a higher score necessarily. It really is about maintaining um and identifying students who are in need of support. So although our data looks good, it's nice to see it in the '9s that we're meeting the needs of most of our students, it's not necessarily about seeing the growth throughout the year. It's because different students might have different needs throughout the year. One student who might be struggling in the fall, hopefully we've intervened, supported them, and then another one pops up and we need to intervene with that student. So, it varies throughout the year. So, um don't think of it as a measure like uh Dr. Vanderhower was just talking about where we want to see improvement.
032The maintenance is a good sign. Um in addition to my sabers, we also um are using attendance data, which I'll talk a little bit more about later. um tardies, nurses visits, and log entries um which will include office discipline referrals as well as um when students need to seek support from our mental health teams. Um so looking at all these different data sources, it gives us a good idea which students need additional support since each of these measures indicates a different need. Um, so a student who's coming up as struggling with attendance may not come up on any other of the indicators, but that attendance is significant enough to impact their learning overall. So, we need to do something to support them. Um, our teams are reviewing this three times a year and um, they
033do a nice job of identifying those students in need. All right. The next thing I'm going to talk to you about tonight is um something that we're required to review um per board policy 7180 and this is the prevention of and response to bullying, intimidation and harassment. The board is required to look at frequency of victimization data, student, staff and family observation of safety at school, identification of areas of school where bullying occurs, the types of bullying utilized, bystander intervention or participation. All this information is also reviewed by the parent teacher behavior advisory committee and they make recommendations to changes to our bullying prevention practices. But to start, we'll go to the definition of bullying. Um, this is the definition that we teach students. So, this is through second step. You'll see that it's slightly
034different for our younger students for kindergarten through fifth grade versus 6th through 8th grade. Um, and this is more about the appropriateness of the language when we're teaching it. Um, but you'll see that um, we're looking at something that is unkind, unfair. there's a power imbalance and often repeated over time. Um, this very small print is the Illinois School Board of Education uh definition of bullying. Um, so it's quite extensive. This is the definition that our administrators are using though when they're investigating. So the definition that I showed you prior was what we teach students so that they feel empowered to report um so they can help support themselves or appear. Um but this is the actual information that we would say does this meet or do we have enough evidence to suggest that bullying
035has occurred here. Um the main difference for the ISB's definition is it could just be one significant event. It does not necessarily need to be a repetitive event. We really want to promote um student, staff, and family observations of safety. So, we have lots of different ways in which anyone can report a concern. Um we have regular communication with our staff on how to report bullying. Um it needs to be done immediately to an administrator so we can intervene and address it. Um parents are certainly very good about reporting to administrators or staff and which then would be directed to the administrator. We have information on our website. Um we send out information in our newsletters both at the district level and at the school level. And then we have different reporting systems. Um you're
036probably familiar with see something say something. So that's an internal document that we developed a few years ago. um it is regularly used um which is great um that our community not just our students are using the form um so I feel like that's very positive of their engagement um and then we're also a member of Safe to Help Illinois which is a great resource um for students or um anyone to seek help. Um it could be for you're worried about someone else or it could be something that you need help with personally. Um and we do regularly get calls for them in which we have to intervene with a student to make sure that they are safe. Uh here is our founded incidents of bullying. Um so on the left is the unfounded, on
037the right is the founded. Unfounded simply means there's not enough evidence to suggest that it meets the definition of bullying. Um not that harm didn't occur, but we can't necessarily say this was bullying. Um so with this information, the majority occurred at Lincoln um with seven and then three at Fairview and one at Lions Park. Um in your board memo there is a breakdown of the information for location, types of bullying and bystander intervention and participation. Um it's important to note um as I said that just because it's not an instance of bullying necessarily, we do still need to support the students involved. Um so that could be increased supervision. It could be related to developing safety plans, uh providing social work support for either the student who has been bullied or the student who
038is exhibiting bullying behavior. Um, and also we could also just have a class meeting and talk about with everybody and how we need to treat each other the way that we want to be treated. Um, talking about a class charter, making sure that I feel I feel respected when you kind of language. So, all of that good support that teachers are regularly doing with their students. Um, as a district, we've been more focused on some proactive communication. Um but a goal of ours is to have more frequent communic um teaching throughout the year of how students and staff can support um each other um well support students through uh bullying occurrences. Um so we're currently in investigating different um tools that we could potentially use uh in order to address some of these concerns. The
039next area is looking at um safety um suspensions is this first area here. Um through some uh board requests as well as through our district equity leadership team um there was a desire to look at the safety of our students here district 57. Um so this is really just the first information that we'll likely share about this. This will be an ongoing um information that we share through district equity leadership team. U potentially um district um leadership team could certainly be doing work around this too. So there's a few different areas where we would likely be addressing this and collecting some more information to determine um how our students are feeling about being here at school. Um, so suspensions is one of the sources of data we're looking at because when we suspend a student,
040we're um considering whether their presence at school would pose a continued threat or if their presence at school would disrup significantly disrupt learning. So those are the two main categories that we would have to think about before we would suspend a student. Um, so we had three out of school suspensions for this school year. Um, two of those were at Lincoln and one of them was at Lions Park. The next area, um, I thought it would be helpful to look at is our threat assessment protocol. Um, since that is specifically related to safety. Um, and this is just some background on what our protocol is. Um, we use the Virginia student threat assessment model. Um, it is a very, um, thorough model. It has been around for a while now and it was developed after
041um the Virginia Tech um shootings. So they spent a lot of time and very thoughtful in the development of this. Um when looking at this, it's really anytime a student um is exhibiting behavior either verbal or non-verbal that suggests there could be some threat. um staff would immediately and verbally inform the principal or assistant principal and then the threat assessment is conducted with an administrator and either a school psychologist, social worker, counselor or another administrator. Um so when providing these assessments um they are quite lengthy um because we're interviewing anyone who could possibly have information about the threat. So we're not making a decision in which um we're lacking information. Once we collect all the information, we're looking at categorizing the threat into three different levels. The first level is a low-level threat. So the
042threat is vague, um implausible. Um we often see this with some of our younger students in which they're drawing a picture and a sword and they're like, "Well, this is Johnny and there's a sword." And then you have to talk to him about why is Johnny in your picture with a sword? And often it's because, well, no, I like Johnny. I'm not I don't want to hurt him. He's okay. But we're investigating to make sure that is the outcome of the situation and that he is not really thinking of hurting Johnny. Um, so those are typical low-level threats. Um, but when as we move up the chain a little bit, we look at level two and that is a little more directed, usually specific to a person. Um, more recent examples is probably through social
043media. uh student is telling another student like you better not come to school tomorrow through social media. It's directed at another student, it could definitely be perceived as threatening. Um so we're intervening, right? We're collecting information. We're figuring out is this student actually going to do anything to hurt this other student? Um and I should say, um especially with level two and level three, the threat assessment protocol is different than discipline. So we go through the threat assessment protocol. We assign a level and then often there's still discipline associated with it. Um level three is a high level of threat. Um that's when we're engaging with Mount Prospect Police Department um who is over always super helpful and um always willing to talk through situations with us. Um so we're very grateful for their partnership.
044Um but then we have uh different responses to the levels once we've determined the level of how we should um intervene. Um the the administration does a great job with working through these processes. Um and they take the time they need to to make sure it's done well. Um here is our data for the district. Um looking at the outcome level for threat assessments. Um you'll see that the majority of their threat assessment levels are that level one and then we have level two and level three. Um although this may seem high um this is the first time we're sharing this information so it's hard to judge since this isn't um something that I have I'm sharing longitudinal data over. Um but I do think it shows that our community is very engaged that the
045reporting things regularly that we're taking things seriously. um it's not something that we take lightly when somebody believes that somebody might be uh capable of harming someone else. Um so very grateful for our community and our staff for regularly reporting these things and our administrators for taking everything so seriously. Okay. Um moving on to attendance. Um as um Zoe kind of indicated earlier with her comment um so we we have an attendance issue and she was speculating on ways to improvement which is one of the reasons she is wonderful. Um but our intended data here is looking at chronic absenteeism. Um so this is the number of stu these are students who have missed 10% or more school days um throughout the year and these uh absences are with or without a valid excuse. So
046I highlight that because it's helpful to understand um why a student might not be at school. So without a valid excuse is vacation typically um or that we did not get a report of why the student wasn't there that day. we weren't able to make contact with the parent. Um for with its illness, doctor's appointments, um those are the main thing, family emergencies. So things you would typically expect, reasons a student may be absent. This is our longitudinal data which shows um prepandemic levels. As you can see, we haven't um quite gotten much lower than we did last year. We had a nice drop after 2022, but we're still hovering at that 11%. Um, we consistently have higher uh rates at Westbrook and Lincoln. Um, which is somewhat surprising and not surprising at the same
047time. Um, our Lincoln students have more will to not do something perhaps and our Westbrook students are completely dependent on their parents to get them there. Um so we're planning on some more targeted interventions. Um Mr. Fior was uh very helpful in conducting a heat map and looking at some specific times of the year in which students are really struggling um in particular at Westbrook. And we'll continue to focus at Lincoln and especially with targeted interventions. But our hope is that by creating good habits when students are younger, we won't continue to see problems as they are older. Um, we found that January tends to be a challenging time for students to be in school. So, continuing to look at that and uh talk about different ways that we can be more proactive with students
048and families. Um, now we'll take a look at extracurricular and club participation. Um, again, Zoe was um sharing some of this information and this is just staff sponsored clubs. This does not include the PTO clubs, which we're so grateful to have more opportunities for. Um, but we continue to have problems um with the number of opportunities at Lions Park and uh Westbrook. Um, which obviously impacts our total participants because there's just fewer opportunities for students to participate in. Um, we are currently working with uh Mount Prospect Public Library to see if we can have them come in and do some uh different extracurriculars with our students, which um I'm sure they would love to do. They always do nice work. And also work with our uh staff on how we can make some of the
049lunch buddy groups, which are very popular at Lions Park, into more of a structured club type of activity. Um this slide shows the percentage of students who have participated in at least one club or sport and um students who participated in more than one. Um so again, it makes sense that when there's more opportunities, you're going to have more students participating. Um but this gives you a better picture since the first slide was straight a number of participants. All right. Um, so here are some of our goals for the end. A more detailed um, information is within your board memo. Um, we're continuing to uh, implement my sabers going into this school year. um for all of our second through eighth graders. Um we're grateful for the board's approval last year of our board certified
050behavior analyst um who will continue to utilize in order to support um behavioral interventions. And our parent teacher behavior advisory committee will be um reviewing our bullying data and making recommendations based on that. Um our district leadership team will analyze all of this data in some way. Um and we'll we'll refine our um communication for attendance. Um look at our club and extracurricular data and as well as our safety data including the student belonging survey um which Fairview Lions Park and Lincoln do. Uh Dr. Vanderhar mentioned our special education steering committee which I'm excited to have. Um for those of you who have been here for a while you might remember we had this a number of years ago. So, we're bringing it back to take a closer look at our programming um and really
051making sure that we're meeting the needs of our students who receive that support. And then I'll let Dr. Vanderhar finish. Sorry. No, that's okay. Um and then I I think I mentioned many of these throughout my part of the presentation, but during this school year, we will be refining our English language arts curricula and having more targeted professional learning focused specifically on small groupoup instruction and differentiation. We'll also be reviewing math uh K through eight. Uh and then we're also looking at our liter literacy interventions. Uh so we'll be doing some pilots this year and really identifying what supports. Um our team wants to have a more targeted approach so that our interventions are really ma matching our student needs. And then we will be planning for full day kindergarten will which will also focus
052on that reading component. And then we always um value that our partnership with district 214 and district 214 center schools and we're always looking for ways to continue that collaboration. With that uh if there are any questions, can I say one more thing? Sorry. I just want to say before we do questions how enjoyable it was to work with our student board members. Um it not often that people like to talk about data and they humored us so well. Um so they had great insights and it was a pleasure. So, um, thank you for the opportunity. Who would like to start? Eileen. Thank you both very much for uh all this data and the presentation. Really appreciate it. Um, a couple questions about maybe it's observation for the reading with kindergarten and then first grade.
053I mean, there's a huge difference between kindergarten, first grade. Is there I I'm just spitballing. Are there fewer kids potentially going to preschool versus Great question. I'm not sure on that. Um I do know when we looked at our fall data, our scores for reading were lower compared to previous years. Um so I'm not positive on that, but that's something to look into. Yeah, I mean that would kind of make sense. And I mean if that's the case where kindergarten becomes the new preschool again versus the way it was. Um, that's just my thought. Um, another thing with math, if when you're doing review for math and new curriculum, is there the possibility to still maintain or keep the current curriculum since it's doing so well? Great question. Um, so there's an updated version. So,
054when we're looking at K through five, that's one of the areas that we will be piloting. Um, we're excited about some of the other programs too where it seems to be more differentiated. So, we're hoping for some small groupoup instruction uh which we haven't done a ton of throughout the district. Um so, yes, I think um especially at the younger grade, we are looking for a program um that is focused more on number sense and building those strong foundational skills. That's an area of growth for us um that we've noted. Uh and so, yes, there is an updated version, but we do we are excited about the other programs we're piloting too. Okay, great. And then this is more an observation or comment um in regards to like the D214 and the science thing. I
055I have a incoming freshman and so does Karen and this is my fifth child going to like their elective nights and I have to say I've never had a time where they've discouraged people to not do honors or AP as much as I have in this last session. I was kind of shocked, tell you the truth, the dis the amount of discouragement that it was given. So that could be one possibility too. Yeah. And just to add on to that, that's um something that we've talked with the admin team over there just um being aware of mental health uh high schools really hard uh and so really working alongside students and families to figure out what's the best fit for them. Right. So yeah, that was just I wanted to give you that observation when
056I experienced that. But I thought it was was very different from previous years going through that. So thank you. Thank you guys. Pam, thank you. It was a great presentation. I have to study more so I understand more. I'm I'm coming at it from a librarian standpoint. Um, one of my goals in life seems to be partnerships and I am on the library foundation board. Um, and we uh uh fund uh youth programs. That's one of the things we fund. And we fund um the Chicago the Shakespeare uh project of Chicago, too. So, we're always looking for funding cool things. Um, so you might want to tell the youth services department to come back to the foundation and I will support I'm I'm sure the rest of our people on the foundation board would support
057um if if there is any need for funding or if they need to buy something that's um you know specific to coming to do a co-curricular program at Lions because then they can take it and they can develop it for other schools so it could be a pilot and we're always um looking to enrich you know what we offer to the community. So I appreciate that and I do want to shout out the Mount Prospect Public Library. They have been phenomenal, especially Steph Wolferman. I will send her an email and I'm like, "What ideas do you have?" And she'll send me back four or five already. So I appreciate that and um we look forward to seeing what we can do with them. Thank you, Kim. Um, I just wanted to double back to what
058Eileen had said about the honors and AP classes at 214. I wanted to clarify, I guess, what what it is we're actually looking at or measuring. Is it students that were placed as in they were eligible, qualified to take those classes, or is it students that actually enrolled in those classes? Great question and that was something I asked 214. It is initial placement in so that could be within the first month. So they may have moved around a little bit. Okay. Cuz I think that's what they refer to it. Okay. Um cuz it seems like you know towards the end of the year before you actually register for any classes you're aware of what you're qualified to take, what you're eligible to take. To me, that would mean placement, which would mean that the idea
059of what a student actually chooses to take wouldn't necessarily impact the numbers that you're looking at. Great question. That's something that I'm going to bring back to district 214 um to get clarification on. Sure. Thank you. Um and then I had a similar comment with regard to the math curriculum. It seems like things are going really well with what we have and um not to be cliche, but it seems like if it's not broke, right? Um, and so I was curious to know whether the goal of curriculum review in general is always to replace a curriculum. Certainly, I can understand they can be updated. Um, but if if the goal isn't necessarily we always want a new thing every 5 years, it's to me at least it's worth considering sticking with what we have. It
060seems to be working really well. Yes. Uh so that's something that our we had elementary math committee as well as a middle school math committee met in the spring and we identified some different um curricula. Uh all of the our math curriculum hasn't been fully reviewed in a number of years. Um but that is definitely something that the committee as a whole was like well this is working so what can we do? Um and some publishers have made great improvements and some have not made great improvements. So, we need to take a look at all of that. We're also talking with surrounding districts to see what's working for them as well. Wonderful. Um, I had just a couple other things again just trying to sort of better understand or clarify the data. So, in terms
061of absenteeism and especially thinking about Westbrook, are we including all of our Westbrook students in that figure? So, circle of friends or half kindergarten. Okay. Cuz from that perspective, I could certainly understand, especially if you have a kindergartener and an older child, right? The thought of, well, it's just a half day, right? So, how much are they really missing? And then that starts to add up down the line. Or the same for circle of friends, right? It's two and a half hours, right? And I can't swing bringing my child because of whatever it happens to be. Yes. Um, so I'd be curious then as we move into a full day model, whether that starts to impact those figures. Um, and then with regard to the clubs, I know the the focus of the data was
062about how many are staff sponsored. Do we know how many Lincoln I'm sorry, Lions Park clubs are PTO sponsored? Like how many total clubs there are? So, um, our numbers are not great with that data collection. So, that's something we're going to be working on this year to make sure that we have a better idea of how many students are actually participating in all of the offered PTO clubs. So we have a better idea of what is available to Lionsboro students. Yeah, it just strikes me that if you were looking at the total number of opportunities as opposed to just the ones that staff is willing to support, it might give a broader absolutely picture. Um, and then my thought too in terms of the sort of low number of clubs available to Westbrook students,
063again, I you know, it stands to reason to me that some of the challenge could be the half-day model, right? that am students might want to participate, but if the club's at the end of the day, Yes. how would you go about that? So, okay, those are just things I wanted to clarify. Thank you so much. Thank you, Ray. Do you have any questions? I do have one question. Thank you so much for the presentation. Um, the one question I was just curious about was which staff or what kinds of staff are included in the uh the threat assessment protocol? That was the only question I had. Um, when you say what staff are included in it, are you saying um who might be part of the interview process or who's actually doing the threat
064assessment? I guess both. Okay. Um so for the um including in understanding what occurred it is anybody who might have knowledge. Um so we're going to talk to teachers, instructional assistants, um coaches, whoever might have knowledge. It could be parents depending upon what information that they may provide. So we really try to be comprehensive with that. Um and then as far as um actually collecting the information, it's the principal or assistant principal and then either a mental health person. Um but when we're making determinations on outcomes, it is dependent upon um the needs of the student. So some students we already know have plans in place. So we're going to include um teachers um their their social worker because maybe the social worker that did the threat assessment wasn't the one that typically works with
065them. So we're able to make a good um outcome and determine appropriate consequences but also supports. And I guess just just a followup. So that group who's that you mentioned principal, assistant principal, all those are involved. Those are the ones who are sort of determining the level of correct. Right. Okay. Chris. Well, thank you both very much. Um I personally love data, so I mean happy to sit in your office and talk data with you whenever you want. Um, so the I mean going back to the kindergarten uh what seems like a pretty alarming drop uh over the last year. I you guys rattled I or I think Dr. Vonar you did rattled off some of the things we're doing to try to fix that. That would have I mean maybe this is a future
066thing to add. That would have been great to see in the presentation. Uh because to me that's really the important thing. we we have this clear gap here. What are we doing about it? Right. Um so that'd be a good thing to add when we do this again. Uh just just a note there. Um I I also worried and I I know it's in our strategic plan to do the math curriculum review. I I have to admit I'm a little worried about that just because of how well things are going, how thinly spread we are. You know, I I leave it up to to Dr. Gore and all of you to decide that that's a priority or not. But given all the things we have going on, I I I guess I would just maybe
067question whether that's what we want to be spending a lot of time on. But I understand the logic for doing it. And and hey, you can always get better, right? Even if you're doing well. Um the on the absenteeism, I I think some of the explanations that that you gave and and you know that others ask questions about were good. What do we attribute the really substantial increase since CO too? I mean, I could see when CO was still a very real thing, it kind of made sense, but we are, you know, knock on wood, well past that now, and yet it doesn't seem to get any better. Do do you have any theories as to why that still remains a problem? Um, I can say that it is a problem nationwide still. It is
068not specific to our district. Um the state um chronic absenteeism, it's about like 28% or something. It is super high. Um so it it continues to be a problem everywhere. Um anecdotally, a lot of more people taking vacations at time when it's convenient to their family. They want to spend time. They value the time that they're spending with their f family and doing some really cool things that our um a lot of our kids get to do. um which we appreciate that they can do some learning there. Um and I think some of it is also just a little bit of still that co mindset where like any type of illness is not okay to come to school, right? Um so just making sure that we're educating like we're going back to the the regular
069ones where you wouldn't come to school like you got a fever, you're vomiting, those are the reasons you don't come to school. Now um if you have a cough, you have a cough. if you're positive for something, that's certainly something that you need to work through and talk to your doctor about. But, um, I think people are being more cautious and also just taking more opportunities to spend family time. I would also add, and correct me, team, I think there's been a much more intensive focus on this topic and arguably our data is maybe more accurate than it ever has been. Not to say that our practices were ever lazy fair, but I think we certainly have much more intensity not just in district 57 but across the country because of this topic being such
070a you know all the research associated with this as being an indicator. So yes, it may falsely look like an intensification of this versus the reality it's probably always been a bit higher than the way we used to report it because I don't think we it just wasn't such a focus. Um as well um we uh reviewed our attendance procedures about 3 years ago too. So, we were getting all on the same page um to make sure we had similar practices across all of our buildings. Um which there were just some slight differences. So, we tightened up a lot of our data collection. Definitely. Yeah, that makes I I mean I was curious if CO is I mean is this a correlation or causation thing or is it just happen to be that this is
071happening now? Great question that and I I don't expect you to know the answer to that but it was odd to me that I would love to know that answer. So if you know researchers that are doing it, I'll let you know. I do think one thing we can do though as a team is um keep like disagregating and studying I know we are internally but the way we're reporting it to the board are excused versus unexcused cuz I think for our population as Sarah alluded to like a lot of our families are going to really amazing places as a family or they're traveling to see relatives internationally and and they're keeping up with their school work. They're prioritizing their their work. it isn't always such an indicator that they're regressing. Um, so I think
072teasing out our internal data despite the fact that the definition of chronic as absenteeism includes both might also be interesting for us to report because it's not perfect, but it kind of gives a little bit of insight into the types of absences. I know in my own household I've received the indication that we have hit the chronic absenteeism mark in the Gore family and I am disappointed but I'm like all for good reasons. I think it's dentist appointments or doctor's appointments and things like that or or sickness and you know I think this intensification of this metric has been a little bit jolting for us in the way that it's so um seriously studied and reported. But I don't think it always um tells the story in each community in the same way. So yeah,
073which makes sense on the uh the prospect data and thank you again for continuing to do this. Of course the this is what happens when you come to us with data. We we want more data, right? So yes. So and I I'm just curious the the initial placement metric honestly doesn't tell me a whole lot. Right. I mean, I I guess what that says is how are the are our students performance in grade 8 preparing them in theory to do well in honors and AP classes in grade nine. But I mean, I guess to me a better metric is how many are still in those classes at the end of the year, right? So they were placed there or they could have been placed there, but did they stay there? Right? Did they perform well
074while there? And again, I I I do hate to keep asking you guys for more stuff, but that would be pretty instructive to me is is how are they doing once they're in those classes? Thank you. Um, sorry, I meant to go in order of the presentation on my questions, and of course I'm not, so I'm making you skip all over the place. Um, can can you go to the slide on the saber my sabers data if possible? How long have we been collecting this again? the one year one year because so that my question was going to be how are we trending in this area and of course we we don't the trend um and I guess I I I have to be honest it it's alarming to me that 10 8 n% of
075our students are in that red box there right I mean to me that's that doesn't look good to me I don't know how that how we compare to other districts or if this is kind of what's expected or what's not, but it it seemed pretty alarming to me. Yeah. I mean, that's one in 10 of our kids that are the data is telling us are at risk for social emotional behavior problems, which seems really high. Um, so let me clarify. Um, the purple, the light purple above the line is low risk. Um, so they'll never say no risk. Um, and then there is that I don't know pinkish color and then there's like a more of a magenta color that's very small. So that pinkish color is actually um I don't know if you can
076see it. It's so tiny. Um, so the pinkish is some risk and the magenta is um like they're at risk. We need to intervene immediately. So the some risk students will have a an area that we're concerned about, but they're not widely concerned. So it could be their engagement in the classroom. That's why they're coming up. They have very low engagement. They're like, "I hate school. I don't want to pay attention in class." And they're like, "Oh, we need to go check on that kid and figure out why." Gotcha. Okay, that makes sense. Thank you. Yeah, I was reading that as it's very hard to see. 10% were very hard to see. Yes. Uh and then my last question on the um the threat assessments. So am I correct? I assume in interpreting this that
077that over the last year we had 38 incidents or 38 um I don't know what you call them reports or assessments. So I understand that you know they get grouped into these areas. I guess the question I have is what what happens next? I mean, is there a what what steps do we take after we've kind of Yes, we've grouped the assessment there, but are there what are we doing with these kids to make sure that we're providing them the supports they need and and obviously mitigating threats? Um, so we do track individual student information. Um, so we're able to see over time if like similar students are popping up multiple times. So that's very helpful in making sure we're addressing those students needs. Um, but when any um assessment occurs, we're developing a plan
078to move forward. Um, so especially if they're at a level two or three, we're having regular check-ins with that student. Maybe they're coming to the office first thing in the morning and we're doing a check-in before they're even able to go to class. Maybe they weren't receiving social work services, but now they are. Um, so we're building all these supports in place that they may not have had before. And if they do have supports in place, we're talking about how can we make this better? what is or is not working for this child. That's a great answer. Are are we looking at correlations between the students, these 38 students and the my saber data? I mean, are they because in theory that would be a predictive indication of something like this, right? Is there that
079correlation or or do we or not really? Um, so we look at log entry so that discipline data. So they often will be captured in that as well. um unless they were a level one in which we're not giving like a consequence. So they could have had a threat assessment and then a log entry in addition. So for that office discipline res referral. So they would be captured typically but not necessarily if it was a relatively um like minor threat. Okay. All right. Thank you. I actually do have one more question. I'm sorry. uh the disparity between the Fairview and Lions Park uh staff sponsored club. I I'm just curious how we ended up there. I mean, how did how did that happen to be where Fairview has so many more staff sponsored clubs than
080Lion's Park? Is there a reason for that or it just seems odd? Um I think it is part of the culture of Fairview. Um, so new staff come in and everybody else is doing a club. So you feel like I need to do a club too, right? Um, I So nothing against our like Lions Park staff by any means because they're regularly having the lunch bunches and other opportunities to get to know students. They're just not doing it in such a structured format. Um, they Fairview spent a long time developing that culture. Um, so even staff that started this past year in the fall, they were like, "Oh, I got to do a club." They felt like a need to do it because it is so ingrained. And I think um, and Kin and definitely
081I'm sure Ray could talk about and we have several Lions Park family as well. I think it is something that kudos to the PTO too for teaming with um, Principal Kelly and trying to kind of be creative in the in the that reality. I think because our structure is um it is a stipen that staff receive for doing it and as Sarah mentioned I mean it's curious because it's not for lack of investment or willingness to work during their lunch hours without being paid to spend time and build relationship with kids. So, it's something that I think we have to keep kind of understanding and trying to help see how we can keep increasing whether it's through parent PTO partnerships, whether it's through the public library, whether it's through some other means. Just the name
082of the game is really like making sure kids have connections and um connectivity within their schools because we know that that's the type of thing that makes them say, "I want to go to school. My favorite type of time of school is when I'm doing Lego club or when I'm doing, you know, any number of things that bring me happiness obviously and all the other great things that are happening during their formal school day. But it is really incredible the culture at Fairview that that is what is the case. Um, I think it really is probably more of an anomaly in the way that this many elementary staff members give that much more of their time to provide these opportunities than it is about any deficit in the other schools. I think it's pretty remarkable.
083So, well, I will give a shout out to to Fair View in that regard. I I I remember when my girls first started going there and they announced clubs and they're before school, many of them are, and I'm like, there's no way they're going to do that. And sure enough, they both have participated in them and they get up early and they go and they love it. And that's shocked me. So if they can get the girls to get up an hour early, they must be doing something. That's right. All right. Well, thank you both very much. Great presentation. Thank you. Thank you again. Oh, we'll go I'm going to have my comments and then we'll come back to you. Um, thank you, Pam. I I do have a couple of questions. Uh, thank you
084for the data. I also like a good data dump. Um my questions are mostly about what are our hoped for percentile grow percentile growth for reading and math growth and achievement over the score from year to year. Um like what is our target percentile growth for for each one of those? So, we want to take um our data and uh also compare with our school improvement plans uh and then we can bring that to the board um in August if that would be okay. That'd be great. Um my other question is surrounding our um our growth targets from pre- pandemic to today or to current stand because um one of the concerns is that we have either recouped or surpassed our um the learning loss from pre- pandemic and is that something you can speak
085to? Yes. Um we are close I would say um we were around the 60th percentile um of students meeting their growth targets prior to the pandemic and we're about 58 59. Um so we're close but not quite there yet. Is that for reading or math or both? Oh I'm sorry. Um let me just confirm that. Uh so that is for reading and then for math actually we have surpassed that. So my and I have it right in front of me. Um so prior to the pandemic we had about 60% of students meeting their growth targets. We were close to that. We were at 59.85% this year. Um and then for math we were around the 60th or 60% meeting their growth target 63rd. Um and now we are at 78% of students meeting their growth
086targets. Okay, great. Thank you. Hi, I just The data is wonderful. Thank you. I have um I have a a thought about the reviewing of the math program. I think it's a good idea to review the math uh curriculum and and to see if anything has changed and if anything has been added because we know that um every couple of years the expectation for what a student needs to know um goes up increases. And you, we want our eighth graders to be uh fluent in math so that when they go to Prospect, they're not um behind. Prospect, I'm sure, is doing the same reviewing and they may be um increasing what they're teaching at an at a younger age, at a at a younger grade level. And we want our students to be as prepared
087as possible for that. And I will give you the philosophy or the perspective of where I'm coming from. My son was on the math team at Prospect. Um, and one of the uh math debates um that he went to was for a topic that he had not been taught. of course not t it was a higher level math. It was beyond calculus and it was um not anything that he would have been taught in D57 but it also was not taught at Prospect and the competition um among the other students the ones who went to schools like Stevenson or um more intense schools had been taught that. And so, um, his, uh, coach, his his, uh, teacher coach had given him a heads up about what was coming, uh, a couple of months ahead. And
088Jose being the diligent um, overachiever that he was, went to um to the library, took out books on that topic um, and also then told me titles to interl loan for him. and he studied this on his own. Um he's also someone who had gone to um Harper and gone to Northeastern and taken physics and math classes while he was in second, third, and fourth year high school. So, um I think it's a good idea to know what they're going into to be prepared. Um, and I'm sure that Prospect is increasing at a younger age what they're what they're doing. So, you we want our kids to be to be prepared. And I will tell you that Jose won the debate or whatever the the competition. One last thing I just a kudos to you
089guys for bringing up um with the growth for our ethnicities to bring up the Hispanic. I mean that is huge because there was a definite dip last year. So great job on that and then the English language learners special ed bringing that. I mean you did a great job with that. So let's hope it keeps going. Thank you guys. I do have one more question I had forgotten that I had. Um the when we're talking about threat assessments, can you give me a little bit more of a definition of what is considered a threat? Like are we talking about physical safety? Are we talking about to myself, to others? Like yeah. Um so the information that I shared with you tonight was just threat to others. Um so that could be verbal or non-verbal. Um
090we also have um risk assessments that is a threat to themselves. So we have a certain protocol that we follow in case anyone has any suicidal ideiation in which we're making sure that we're keeping those students safe as well. That data is not um in the information that I shared with you tonight. Thank you. Unless anybody else have has any questions. Thank you very much. Thank you. All right. Moving on to our building brighter futures update. Excellent. So, um, exciting that we had our first bid uh, this past month. Just as a reminder, we talked about I know uh, last board meeting, but we went out for bid for some electrical work at Westbrook. We're um, putting in a new transformer that will replace the old transformer cuz the old transformer was inside what will
091now be uh, the courtyard. And so, uh, we had a pre-bid meeting, I think the day after the last board meeting, and then we had a bid opening, uh, we had five bids, um, and as you see later on in our agenda, we'll be looking to approve uh, the low bid from Prospect Electric uh, for 346,000. Just um, to give you an idea too, the we the estimate of this work was um, in a range. It's it's harder when it's such a small um specific uh thing to be done, but uh the range was between 3 and 500,000. So I think we were on the lower end of what that range was, which hopefully we continue in that way in future bids. Um so that's that's uh what's going on over at Westbrook and then
092continuing to work on just what the interiors are looking at. Um we are kind of in that uh process right now of a lot of the guts of the of both at Lincoln and Westbrook. So not as exciting to share when we talk about how gutters are going to uh have flow and um maybe the what ceiling tiles look like. We were talking about that yesterday. So uh but that the meetings and uh continue lots of meetings, lots of conversations, lots of decisions being made as we continue to just move forward in the process. Any questions? I I actually don't have a question, but a comment, and it's it's just for the action we're going to take later to approve the bid. Um, and I just want to explain what my vote's going to be.
093So, this industry is where I live professionally. Um, we actually manufacture some of the equipment. My company does that will be bought by whoever we select. Every one of the companies that bid are one of our customers. So, I will be uh abstaining when we vote tonight. I just want to explain why that is. So, thank you. And I forgot to say just that that work also, just so we know um will be done. Uh they're going to do the in interior work winter break and then the exterior work spring break. So it'll be all ready to go when we start construction. All right. Thank you so much, Jason. All right, going back to you. The we're going to move on to the 202425 budget review and the budget the 2526 budget preview. All right,
094let's talk budget. It feels like it was just yesterday that we were talking about the fiscal year 25 budget um preview. And so tonight we'll be looking at uh both a review of last year's budget and then a preview of uh our budget for next year. And uh before I jump in, I just want to thank first of all the business office, our business office who works so hard. You can imagine how much uh how many POSs and how many revenue dispersements come in throughout a year. And so they do an amazing job of getting the money into the right accounts and and really keeping track. And so I appreciate everything they do. Um as well as any of our budget administrators, which is really our our schools, as well as all of our departments
095at the admin building who do an amazing job of helping build the budget. We collaborate a lot. Um and then obviously watching it closely throughout the year and coming to me if there's any concerns or issues or questions or things that come up throughout the year as there always are. Um, and we we work together to make sure that we can work it out and um, you know, have a a successful year. So, I appreciate all the work. Um, I do it every time. I will never be able to work this thing. Mark, help me. Thank you. I appreciate it. Someday. All right. So um just a reminder about a budget process and um you know when we're creating a a budget for the year uh really it's about you know at that point in
096time we're obviously gathering information and information um changes or we get additional information throughout but you know it is something that we're going to develop at this point in time uh and really help give us a roadmap for the year of what it's going to look like. Um and so you know it's developed through feedback. It's it's developed through collaboration. Um there is um some assumptions that you know we need to make because we don't have exact numbers for everything, but we're you know looking to build that budget as as precise as um as exact as possible um and then stick to it throughout the year. Uh just a reminder about some vocabulary words we're going to talk about uh tonight. Uh unodudited, you'll probably hear me say it a lot uh in this presentation.
097Um, our auditors have already come out for a week in June and they'll be back in August. Um, but at this point, any of the numbers we talked about from last year are unodudited. Um, and we know they will change. I I they will not be the same because uh um as more money comes in. Sometimes we receive money in in July that really belongs in last year. Sometimes we spend money in July that really should have been spent last year just because we didn't have the invoices yet. So, um it's no fault of anybody, but money will move back um into the last year um later on. So, we're we'll work with our auditors on that revenue. Just a reminder, the revenue is that the money we receive, expenditure is the money we spent.
098And then our fiscal year uh July 1st to June 30th. So, um that is what we're talking about. All right, I'm going to try one more time. Did it work? Yes. Um and so um in our strategic plan we talk uh a lot um about what's important with uh the financial um and really looking at how to maintain that that balanced budget to really be fiscally responsible within our budget. And so, uh, we work closely to, um, to make sure that no stones unturned when looking at, um, revenue opportunities and revenue possibilities and then looking at our expenditures and how we're spending money and how to make sure that we're doing everything we can to help support all the work that was being talked about earlier in the presentation. Um, and so, uh, just a
099reminder that our budget, uh, is structured into funds. Um, and so you can see the funds there. Um and we as we go forward I'll I'll um point out but um we do um levy uh or ask for money you know through property taxes uh for all of the funds except for capital projects. So capital projects we don't levy for. We do uh transfer from operations and maintenance. We can we can transfer from other funds too but the last couple years we've only transferred all the money from operations and maintenance to help cover the cost of capital projects. working cash. Um we do levy for it. We don't spend any money out of that um out of that account. And so there is a time there will be a time uh down the road, especially
100with all the construction where we will be looking at moving probably uh money from working cash to one of the other funds to help fund some of the work that's being done. Um, so as we jump into our fiscal year 25 budget review, I just want to point out that one thing is during this last year, we did receive in December, um, we started receiving uh, referendum money. Um, and so we sold bonds at just under $15 million. Um, and that money is not included in any of of these charts. uh it wasn't budgeted for and so it didn't make sense I think to put it in. Um I will next month you know present a little bit more about not only last year and and the bonds but I'll talk about next year and
101what it's going to look like as well. But just so you know we uh received about 15 million um dollars in December and then since that time until June 30th we spent about 3 million. So, that's kind of where we're at and um and then I'll give you next month um a better chart of exactly what it's going to look like then moving forward. Um so, as we look at uh our review of last year's budget, um I'm excited. I I I'm not going to bury the lead. I'm going to start with it right front and center is that um in the bottom right you can see that that was our surplus for this year. Um we'll obviously talk about why that was. Um but uh about $1.17 million um is uh our surplus for
102this year. So that's money that then we will have moving forward. We know coming down the line not only you know the construction we're doing but also um in two years with full day kindergarten that'll increase our expenditure. So we want to make sure that we're doing everything we can to get ready for that. Um and uh also just a reminder that that's unodudited. So, um, that number will change, but that's where we're at right now. Um, you can see, uh, the different funds. Um, and so, for example, um, things that would jump out to me, um, you know, in capital projects, you see that, um, you know, there's a big negative number there, but again, we don't levy for that. So, we will transfer money from that and M fund where there's a positive
103number of, you know, about 2.5 million. We'll transfer some of that money um, over to cover capital projects. Um so funding, you know, the funds work in a way where we um when we get to that tax levy and we talk about how we're going to levy for money, uh that's where we can look at, okay, the education fund uh the education fund needs, you know, maybe more money next year. Let's levy more money in there. So that the bottom line stays the same, but how we levy throughout all the different funds um can change each year. Let's jump into a little more specific. So this is the revenue side. Um, and so, um, you can see, um, a couple different things that I just want to point out. Property taxes, um, our debt service
104definitely changed this year, um, as, um, and so that that was why that number, um, at property taxes was off a little bit this year as we, you know, anticipated um, it being a little bit higher than than is what we received. Um, but like I said, I'll present next month where you'll see because next year we're actually going to receive more than we'll need, just the way things work. County is a little different in how and how property taxes are paid. So, we'll talk about that. Um, everything else I I was I was pretty proud of on on our budget. Interest earnings is something that will jump out. You know, we received a lot more in interest. Um, I knew I was conservative last year. I didn't think I was that conservative last year.
105Um, but knowing um that um it's it's fluctuated a lot in the last couple years. Um I I was a bit concerned. You'll see later on when we talk about next year's budget that um you'll see that I've anticipated a higher budget for interest next year because we do think that it's going to stick around 4%. But um um but we'll see. So, you know, it's still still I'm always cautiously optimistic on some of these things. everything else uh pretty much where I thought the um other state revenue some of these numbers. So the other state revenue includes uh money we received back from like um the state for special education uh like reimbursements for like private tuition or transportation. Tough numbers to um to anticipate um and so we work closely on it but
106again it's it's that they can they can be high and they can be low and and and we don't want to budget for something and not and then not receive it. I would rather be the other way. Um, again, I don't want to be off by this much, but it's really tough to to figure those out. Uh, the federal revenue, um, that does include ESSER funds in there, um, and some grant money that way. So, um, we won't have ESR funds anymore moving forward. Um, ESSER was a multi-year grant, but it's done. Um, and so we won't receive that anymore, but that's where, um, some of that federal revenue came from. Um, so that's where the revenue came from. Uh at the bottom you can see then that we received about a million dollars more
107than we anticipated in revenue. I'm going to keep going forward. Um expenditures. Uh I I'm not loving that we went over budget by about $30,000. I am excited to share that that I think I was on that first slide, but it's about 910,000 of a percent above the budget. So I think we were pretty close. Um, and I definitely there are a couple places where we saw that we spent more than we anticipated and we'll be looking at it. Um, we know that we underspent in some places. We know that we went over budget um, in some places and so we'll try to make the the budget more accurate next year. But, you know, we're looking we've already been talking about uh, like pupil transportation for student services. That's one place where, you know, we
108need to do it. There there's there's no question about it, but how do we budget better for something like that? Um, and it's hard to anticipate, you know, some of these things. Um, we know that construction came in under budget. We know that staff benefits uh were over. And so again, it's it's we'll go back and look at did more people take insurance this year that didn't last year. Um, where did that come from? Did they just change? Maybe they were taking um, uh, less expensive insurance last year and decide to move to a more expensive one this year. So, those are things we'll look at. Um, but I I'm excited that, you know, all in all the the budget came out pretty much right on where we were um, anticipating. So, that was great.
109Um, and so that's the budget from last year. Um, and then let's talk about a preview for next year. So, um, as we look at next year, um, just a calendar of of really our timeline, our roadmap from for how we got here. So, uh, the budget process really starts in January when CFAC uh, comes and presents to the board. We're looking at financial projections. We're looking at what does the future hold and I think that hopefully helps the board as the board's making decisions about, you know, staffing plans and and what to approve and how to approve that. Um, our staffing makes up about 75% of our budget. So, it's it's probably the most important thing that we're looking at when talking about a budget. Once that's approved, that allows me to then start
110working on, all right, let's build that into the budget. Let's start having our meetings. So, I'll meet with um all of our budget administrators, get input on what's what's what's next year look like. Uh we we do um we don't look at a budget and say, "Okay, this is what we spent last year, so we'll spend the same this year or we didn't spend everything last year, so therefore we're going to cut it next year. That's not how we look at it. We'll actually just start from, you know, ground zero and say, what do we need for next year?" And that's where it starts and everybody kind of sharing with me where they're at. I then will work on the budget behind the scenes and then need to go back to people if either we're
111over budget or not working where we need to be. So, um you know this year that's that all comes in. In the meantime, we're also gathering as much information as we can. So, we're we're hearing about insurance increases. We're hearing about um different contracts that we have there maybe a year and what does it look like next year. Um so, we're getting all that information, putting that into the budget um in order to get to where we are today. Um and just moving forward. So today is just a preview of what the the budget will look like. Uh next month the board will be presented with the tenative budget um for approval. Um and then the following month uh we then do our budget hearing and then approve our final budget. Um and so it
112just it you know school budgets are a little different. We our budget started July 1st but gets approved in September. So um we're still we're working with a budget right now but we are fin you know finalizing and tweaking as much as we can up until September. Um, all right. And so let's talk about revenue. Uh, we know that the majority of our money comes from property taxes. Uh, so that's those local sources. Um, I would say the big change this year. Um, and we're we're watching closely though is uh what's going to happen with some of those federal grants. Um, uh, different school districts are are doing different things. I think we're kind of right in the middle. I I've um there's some school districts that I talked to today that are leaving all
113the grant money in right now and seeing kind of where it goes. Um I know of another district that took it all out of their budget for now and they'll see where it goes. We're we're a little in the middle. I think we're we're we're pretty confident we're going to receive idea money so we've left the idea money in there for you know the special education grant. Um but I have taken out all those all the title grants. So um all of that is not part of um the budget right now. We'd love to see that next year and and if we hear differently before August or September, we'll put it in. Um otherwise, we'll kind of go into the year not expecting it and then if we get it, that's great. Um but I'd
114rather error again on the side of caution. So that's where our revenue is. Um just a reminder though that none of this uh none of these numbers in any of these this slide or the future slides um is anything talking about any of the referendum uh bonds, any of that money. So that's we're trying to keep it separate on the board packet, the financial packet. We always keep it separate there too. It just I think it it confuses things if we start mixing it together. Um so this is the revenue kind of broken down um by the different functions. And so um you can see that uh interest is where um after a couple years now of being higher up, we're going to we're going to raise our expected interest revenue. Um we are still
115awaiting some final grant money. So that's where you see on the the bottom there the other federal revenue. Um, you know, last year we were uh we were looking at 342,000. We received 790,000. We've now dropped it down to 50,000. Uh, which I can tell you right now that's that school maintenance grant um is 50,000. But other than that, we're we're we're hesitant to include or I'm hesitant to include anything until we hear more uh from the federal government. Um so that's revenue. Um everything else is pretty much where it would be. um you know I I reached out to the village for example about tiff revenue this year just to get an estimate from them of what they think and that's where that number comes from. We do get student impact fees and so
116uh that is something that's not known at this time but we're working on it to to learn. Then when it comes to expenditures so the blue the red those are salaries and then benefits. So that's adds up to right around 75% which is where we are typically at. Um but then you know everything else you know purchase services we're paying somebody to work it's a a lot of um operations and maintenance right facilities keeping them running um or paying people to help lead professional development things like that. That's our purchase services. Um we are continuing for example next year our learning spaces committee that's been meeting. We've been working on furniture for classrooms and what the future looks like. So we have some more uh pilot classrooms this year. So uh that's included in the
117budget. So different things as we work through um again the budget administrator just give me give me the information we'll put it in and that's what builds the budget and uh and the expectations for this year. Uh this is a breakdown just looking at the different um objects um from uh expenditures and so we increase salaries based on the percentage. um you'll see that it doesn't increase a ton and um and that is um because we did have retirements and we know that you know when a teacher retires at a certain level and a new teacher comes in at a lower level that does help our budget. Um and so that's something we're looking at. I also wanted to point out that we have we've we have the past many years um earmarked $2 million
118towards capital outlay. Um it's in the budget again this year. However, as promised as part of our referendum, 1.5 million of that is earmarked towards the construction. So whether it's spent this year, we we will spend uh the the referendum bond money first because that um as you've heard from Bob Lewis before with arbitrage and making sure that we spend it at a certain time. So that money will be spent first just because of timing. Um so this that 1.5 million that's earmarked probably will not be spent this year in this budget. So when I come back to you in a year and and show you that, you know, the capital outlay line, you'll probably see 2 million budget and and hopefully we'll be seeing about 500,000 that's spent um but not more. That's expenditures.
119Um and so right now the budget has when you look at revenue and expenditures and subtract there's a surplus of about uh $40,000 I believe it was um that we're at. That number will definitely change um by next month as we continue to get more information both on the revenue and expenditure side. Um but you know obviously always the goal is to have a surplus um and not be in deficit. Let me make sure I talked about everything. And so before I get to questions, just next steps, um like I said, I'll be um continuing to refine the budget um on both sides, revenue and expenditures, um as well as putting together a better um not a presentation for you all on what the bonds look like for next year so that um you'll have
120an idea of everything at the August meeting. We'll approve the tenative budget at August and then the final budget at September. Questions about the budget? Kim, thank you as always for sharing that information in such a understandable way for those of us who are numbers challenged. Um, I wanted to ask in terms of the surplus, understanding that it's obviously a very small number compared to the overall budget. Does that number have any impact potentially on the levy for next year or for this coming year? the surplus from from fiscal year 25 or the the anticipated surplus in the budget for next year. I both or just surplus is it does the surplus impact the levy? No. Right. I I guess my thought was if we ended up with extra money that potentially we wouldn't need
121to ask for a proportionate amount. Sure. In the future. Yeah. I I would say that we um knowing that in two years uh with full day kindergarten we anticipate the hiring of many teachers uh staff and that goes to perpetuity. Right? So um so I would say that that I wouldn't look at it as extra money but I would look at it as money that we have that will be spent in a couple years. I also know that part of our promise as uh from the referendum was that we would put um some of our own fund balance towards it. Um so that's fund balance when that that million dollars which again unaudited and so once the auditor comes in it it'll probably be a little less uh but once that's audited that money becomes
122fund balance and then that's part of the money that will be going towards uh construction. Okay. Yeah. I I appreciate you correcting me right. Not extra. Perhaps unanticipated is the better word. Anticipated. Unanticipated. Um, and I get that was my other question too in terms of, you know, we we've consistently had this this $2 million total for capital expenses that, you know, has continued throughout the past several years budgets. Understanding that, you know, 2/3 of that 2 million is going to be for um expenses related to construction. Given that you've already said we don't anticipate spending that in this budget year is the expectation then for next year we would actually have what 3.5 budgeted. Um so we will we will build into the budget. So if you think about it like if 1.5 is
123set aside this year um and 1.5 let's say set aside next year we we said we'd do it for three years so that it would be 4.5 million. That four and a half million will be part of paying for the total construction cost which we anticipated about 97 million. 85 is from referendum. So what will happen is we have a draw schedule a schedule of when we're going to be paying for both uh the architects and the construction manager. Um that goes all the way through I think 2020 about December of 2027. You know the construction should be done in August but we'll continue paying for a little while. So when we hit probably around the summer of 27 is when we'll start needing to use that money. So yes, it so we won't we
124I put it in the budget because otherwise I think it would look like we'd have this big surplus and I think it's important for us to know that that's earmarked um for different ways. So I'll make sure to always have that asterisk and and and have that note on there. But I wouldn't budget more next year for it. I'll just know that okay, when we're putting away this money in our fund balance, knowing that in two years it's going to be spent. Okay. And I think that's the part that I was missing or didn't quite put together the fund balance component, right? It's not like this money is just floating around somewhere and then we're going to grab it and use it for this. It, you know, it's it's budgeted, it's accounted for and then
125to the extent it isn't spent on what it's delineated for. Sure. It's going to kind of go in a pocket and then we'll use it from the pocket for something else. So, correct. Okay. Yeah. goes in the bank account. Yes. Right, Chris. Well, thank you, Jason, as always. I I have to, you know, first of all, for as every year I've been on the board, and I know well before that, coming in with the balanced budget and a surplus. So, that's great. I mean, we do not uh I do not want to understate how important that is and how much we and the community appreciates that. So, so thank you. Um, I also have to give you credit for being willing to say that you were 0.009% high on expenditures. I mean, you could have
126just said zero, and I was right on budget, but you were honest about that. And so, so I I give you props for that. Um, to Kim's question, I I think I know the answer to this, but but in case I don't, and for anyone else who may be wondering, I totally understand why we would spend the referendum bond money first for the arbitrage region that that Bob explained so well. Mhm. When we get near the end though and we've got that money that we have earmarked from the capital uh budget we would spend that before so if we get to a point where we could say all right we've got 4.5 million now that we have earmarked from the capital budget we can we would spend that instead of selling an additional 4.5 million
127worth of referendum bonds. Right. We we couldn't sell an additional. So when we the referendum that was approved was approved for 85 million and that's a not to exceed number. So yeah, I didn't ask the question very well. Okay. If we end up coming in a little lower on budget than we thought, which you're going to do, right? That would be great. We would we would use that capital money that we've earmarked before we would sell an additional 4.5 million of referendum bonds. Right. I assume um so we we will the bonds will be sold before we would get to that point. Okay. So I hear your question but no I think I think then it would be I would love to be under budget. I I see I don't see that happening as much
128but wishful thinking. I love the wishful thinking. I think that's great. Um but yeah we we wouldn't be at a point we we could at that point make a decision. I mean, if the best things, right? If we're under budget by $5 million, at that point, we could decide what we want to do about that. And that might be then more of a conversation that Kim was having about Levy, right? Yeah, that'd be great. Um, and then I I had just a um I don't know if it's a question or a comment, but the the uh I guess the thing that concern me concerns me a little with your projected budget, I mean, there's a razor thin surplus there, right? I think substantially less than we projected last year. And and because we're earmarking 75%
129of our capital budget is really earmarked it, you know, I always think of capital budget is kind of discretionary, right? I mean, it's it's not salaries and benefits that are completely non-discretionary. It's not O andM that is really also not discretionary. Capital projects can be delayed if we have to, right? We don't want to, but they could be. Sure. We now are reducing that discretionary amount from 2 million to 500,000. And so because of that, I I guess I would and I hate to to do this, but I'd challenge you to see if we can try to make that projected surplus just a little higher in case we end up with, you know, a situation where property taxes come in lower. And it just seems like our margin for error is a little lower than
130it used to be and our projected surplus is also a little lower than it used to be. And that that's a I could see that being a perfect storm that would not work out well for us. Yeah. I I Yeah, I would say that we've had four years in a row of surplus. So So I think we're in a good in a good place. I would also say that right now the the expenditures I'm feeling good about. It's the revenue that I think we're at a low end and we're hoping like with some of these grants and things that that hopefully will change. So that and that would help with that razor thing surplus. So, but yes, absolutely. I'll look at it and see what I can do. Awesome. Thank you. Sure, Pam. Um I
131I have two things. The first thing is that the property taxes this year will not come in August 1st. We know that we haven't gotten the bills. Supposedly, I had called Elgroveve Township um assessor's office and they're saying that it would be at the very end of summer that we would get the bill. So, the very end of summer could we may not get the bill in August due in September. We may get the bill in the end of summer is September 21st. So, what if we got the bill in at the you know middle of September? you wouldn't get your money and it wouldn't start trickling in until um you know October. So that's for this year and it seems that periodically more recently we're seeing those slowdowns for the property tax money coming
132in. So, that's something um to to be aware of because you have to pay your staff and you have to pay some of your bills and and delaying some of the capital projects depends on what the capital what what the expense is. I mean, you can't not buy a boiler. You can't not buy certain things. um and you don't want to necessarily, you know, I don't know what the loan um possibilities are and you don't have a credit card. So, I've been living on a credit card and then paying it off at the end of the month. Um my my second question is, have we heard anything about tariffs affecting us? Has Nicholas said anything? No, you that's board member Alto's question. I think you stole it this this moment. I I chose not to
133ask. You just knew she was going to ask it. Um, no, we we have that conversation a lot. Um, and I would say that as of right now, we're feeling good about our estimates and where they're at. And this last bid even shows that. Um, I think I I can't remember when it was a couple months ago that um I had talked to another district that just went out to bid and they actually came that the their bids came in under what they budgeted. So, I think we're feeling fine. We're again cautiously optimistic. So I think but we do continue to have that conversation and that's why we're trying also to you know obviously go out to bit as as quickly as early as possible. Um and then to answer your just your first comment
134um I know it was a question but just um two years ago the property taxes were delayed. Um I think it wasn't known how much they were going to be delayed until later on and at that point most districts including ours you know we had a lot of money already invested. So it's not that we don't have the money to pay. that if it's invested then you don't have access to it and we were starting to look at what are those options this year knowing that uh the county has already said that this we've made sure that um our money that's invested will will have enough liquid money um even two years ago I think we didn't get taxes till December so um it was really late um we never were close to not having
135money in our bank account but whether or not it was liquid was always the question so this year we we we are definitely prepared for that. I think the two years ago they weren't very um I don't want to use the word honest, but they they they didn't know when the system would be fixed, right? And now there's an issue with the new computer system, but there's also an issue with the appeals because the business they did the business appeals first and the business appeals took um took a big chunk of money away. So our prop uh residential property taxes are going to be um less friendly. I mean Ray um just uh maybe some clarifying questions just so I understand um so looking at the chart for uh fiscal year 25 actuals expenditure to
136revenue. So under the capital projects I know it's unudedited um would I read that as we did $1.68 68 million worth of capital projects last fiscal year or is that not actual projects done and some of that is something else? No, that's how much we spent in capital projects um for the last uh fiscal year. That one I will say uh when that says unodudited um it should be like in all caps for unudited because what happens with uh the capital projects it's a little different because when the work like we will often pay for work after July 1st the work was done or lots of the work was done before July 1. So the auditors will come in and say no no no this shouldn't have been paid in this year this should be
137paid in a different year. So that that unau but yes we we from from July 1st till June 30th paid 1.68 million in uh capital projects. Got it. So and then I guess as a follow-up to that for the uh fiscal year 26 expenditure budget. So is is that I guess how I'm reading it as the um there's 2.3 million correct? That's sort of an estimate of which a portion of that a big portion of that will be earmarked for construction later date or is that two different things? Um I'm going to find where you sorry fiscal year 26 expenditure the capital outlay where it talks under the official fiscal year 26 budget column. Yeah. So uh so capital outlay can include more than just the $2 million for capital. So we have some other
138we have other accounts that get pulled into that as well. Um, so two of that 2.38 is of that 2,382,000, 2 million is our capital project budget. Of that 2 million, 1.5 will be earmarked for construction. 500,000 is what we'll be looking at to um do different projects. Perfect. And and just as a reminder for everyone that the the reason we we said that we would do that is because most of the things that we were looking to do on our facility plan were at Lincoln. And so knowing that we don't now have to do that at Lincoln is where that's how we're able to save that money. Super. That's the clarification I needed. Thank you. Sure. Any other questions? Thank you, Dr. Case. Thank you. All right, moving on to the fall 2025 back
139to school update. Okay, great. And shout out to um Dr. Casease for being such a stickler to make sure every penny is accounted for. and he guards this money like it's his own. So that's what you want and from someone that is overseeing that work. So great job. And he somehow manages to be very pleasant and nice about it which is quite remarkable. Um so just some kind of midsummer updates. Um I'm sure many of us have noticed the back to school commercials are starting and so those of us in this work are just excited. I know some of the kids see it and they get I don't want to see those commercials. And I delight in seeing those back to school commercials. Um so we've had a really um wonderful um hiring summer. Shout
140out to Karen Schwarzfeld um as well as all of our principles, administrators for working so hard to secure the very best um for any openings that we had. Um and we are continuing to do some kind of finalization of those openings. But as of July 11th, um the following personnel have been recommended for hire. Nine teachers, one social worker, two psychologists, one instructional coach, one board certified behavioral analyst, and one assistant principal who is actually in the audience tonight. And if it's any sign of her grit for being in those chairs until this position, I think she's going to be a keeper. Um we also or our support staff have had four instructional assistants, one kids corner supervisor, one kids corner assistant, and currently our vacancies are as follows. One first grade teacher, three instructional
141assistants, and one part-time kids corner assistant. So, you know, the nature of this is that could change. Um but we're really encouraged and um really proud of the wonderful highquality staff that we've been able to bring to our team. Um, speaking of that, I think maybe this is a good transition into telling a little bit about um our recommendation to the board for a new assistant principal. Um, Janet Rothwell is um here with us tonight Knight and Janet is um our recommendation to replace um the position that was vacated by Lena Devito who was with us for two years as assistant principal at Lincoln. we will wish her well as she returns to the district that we like to call she grew up in and and worked and you know prior to coming to district
14257 so she kind of returned home to district 59 which they're they're lucky to have her back but we're really excited about this opportunity to bring Janet to our team um Janet comes with a really unique background um she has a degree from University of Wisconsin in communication minor in dance decided that um her calling into education ation happened at the end of that um I think senior year at Wisconsin which I love those stories of when you know you know so she pursued it uh with fervor she went to a program um that specialized in dance education where she could get her degree she actually worked um in North Carolina pro providing that interestingly if the school districts could afford it they were required to provide uh dance as education to the students so
143I don't know if that currently is the case, but how progressive. So, um, in then coming back to Illinois, um, Janet served in, uh, multiple different positions, most recently at Stevenson High School, um, and decided she really wanted to expand her leadership opportunities, um, after a successful career in teaching and has worked as a dean at Streamwood High School in District 46 for the past two years. So um there were wonderfully qualified and impressive candidates that we were excited to see from a pool. Um and of that impressive group, Janet rose to the top just in her skill set, her background, her alignment and her values. And then also confirmed by her references about the work she she has conducted. I think most impressive maybe of all um being a working mom with three boys
144at home which is not as always the easiest trip commuting over 40 minutes every day. she was somehow the PTO president of her kids elementary school, which I still think I don't know how. Um, but that is so cool. And we are really excited about Janet um to be joining the team. She had the board approved her contract tonight and um we will wrap around our mentoring for Janet to make sure she has whatever information she needs to be successful. Principal Larson is excited to prepare um opportunities for um Janet to meet the Lincoln team should her contract be approved tonight, etc. But that's a little bit about her. And then um in terms of just the upcoming dates, um we're really excited to welcome back our staff in August. Officially, um our staff institute
145days are the 18th through the 20th of August. um with the first day of school for grades 1 through 8 being on August 21st and then kindergarten will start the 25th and preschool starts the 28th. Um we invite of course the board to be part of our welcome back um events, but I know we'll talk about that a little bit later in the board president's report. So um that's all we got so far, but busy working and we're excited. Any questions for Mary? Go ahead, Ray. Um, I just had one question about um sort of in terms of vacancies, how that compares to previous years at this time period because again, I know that recently or or probably for a period of years, it's been the concern about just having enough staff and how how
146these vacancy numbers are we optimistic that this is optimistic. We are optimistic. Thank you for that question. I mean I think um the the larger landscape of education we do regularly talk about just how it's kind of in some places even in the state it's like at crisis levels and their fill rates. We're very fortunate that we remain I think a desirable region um and we are competitive um but we have to really do our due diligence and and and certainly less kids are going into this field um in general. So, um, this is encouraging, espec es especially for positions like school psychologists, which are predictably really difficult to find, highly qualified um, people who are willing to take these positions cuz they can go anywhere. Um, so we were really excited about those positions
147and um really just I think all of these um recommendations that have come over the summer have come with a lot of um enthusiasm from not just the um administrators but also the um you know colleagues that will be working with them who have served on the hiring committees and I think just it's hopefully really reflective of what a deeply committed staff we have when we have candidates coming to see the types of people they'll be working with. Um, so I'm sure that that conveys, you know, the culture of the the team that they'll be hopefully joining. So, thanks to our district 57 staff who participate in that way. All right. Thank you, Dr. Core. Uh, moving on to our foyer reports. All right. We have four foyer reports between June 18th and July 17th,
1482025. responses have been sent and the detailed report is available in your board packet. Thank you very much. Thank you. Moving on to the consent agenda. Um Kim, you reviewed the bills. Yes, and all was as expected. Excellent. All right. So, can I get a motion to approve the items on the consent agenda as follows? regular business meeting minutes and closed meeting minutes for June 18th, 2025, personnel transactions, financial reports and accounts payable bills. Approve tuition reimbursement and approve fiscal year 25 donation reports. So moved. Second. Member Qualch. Yes. Member Leto. Yes. Member Nelson. Yes. Member Dorner. Yes. Member Fay. Yes. President Bennett Hill. Yes. Okay. Moving on to unfinished business. So in this, we need to approve the board of education to sell not to exceed $6 million working cash fund bonds for the
149purpose of increasing the district's working cash fund. So can I get a motion to approve that sale? So moved. Second. Member Leto. Yes. Member Nelson. Yes. Member Dorner. Yes. Member Fay. Yes. Member Qualic. President Bennett Hill. Yes. We have our second opportunity for community comments. Should anybody like to comment? Seeing none, we'll move on to new business. And first item on new business is approving the pre-bid for Westbrook. So can I get a motion to approve the pre-bid for Westbrook? So moved. Second. Member Nelson. Yes. Member Dorner. Yes. Member Fay. Yes. Member Qualche. Yes. Member Leto. Abstain. President Bennett Kill. Yes. Right. Thank you. Um, our second item of new business is the first read of the press plus update issue 119. Can I get a motion to approve that first read of the press
150plus update? Wait, do we have to approve a first read? No, it's just Okay. Sorry. We're just doing a first read. No, thank you. Just reading it. Just reading. Just reading it. Any questions? There you go. Is there any questions of the committee on the um first read of the update? Okay, moving on to communications. Um I have the board governance update in uh in Jenstead. Um it was a really really productive meeting. Um we decided to rename the process um from a um succession planning to process for electing board officers that was a little bit more aligned with what we are actually doing. Um we looked at what the how the elections went last year and some improvements to the elections coming up next year. One of them being um collecting interest on uh
151on the positions for about a month out and then asking the um candidates to answer a list of questions that will be written by the government committee and then um given to the board members to to review and then speeches during the meeting. Um we val set our next priority of the ones that have been listed um to ensure that all board members understanding the roles and responsibilities and we're going to work on that in part during our October governance meeting using the information um we're using in part some of the information from um our conversations in the October meeting as well. And finally, we're reading um doing a book study. We're reading a book called Great on Their Behalf. And if anybody would like to participate in that book study along with us, please
152let us know and um we can get you a copy. Okay. You guys are such go-getters. Yeah. All right. Can I have the NSSO report? Yes. Uh so we did not have a meeting in July as is our custom. Uh however, a couple things I want to mention. Uh the Kirk HVAC project, which of course is a very interesting one for all of us, uh is uh on schedule. Actually, last reported was one day ahead of schedule. Uh and now that ESY is over, that's accelerating. Uh fully expected to be complete with this phase by uh the time all the kiddos come back to school. So, so great job there. Uh, and then the other item, and I I was not here last month, so I don't know how much in depth you guys all
153got into this, but the uh the ask that I first brought up before last meeting was, and just to remind everyone about reviewing the NSSO articles of agreement, which we are in the process of doing. Um, I don't know if anyone has any feedback or input or questions they'd like to ask now. If not, that's okay. Uh I would just ask that if you do have any input to submit them to uh Mary and Kurin before August 2nd, preferably. Uh and the reason for that is on August 4th, our next NSSO governing board meeting, this will be a major topic of conversation or August 6th, not August 4th. Um or is it August 4th? It's it's somewhere in that range. first week of August. Uh that will be a topic where we as a governing
154board are going to review all of the input that has come in through our member district boards and and discuss that. Um that feedback can be either clarification if anything is unclear where there's something that gosh, I don't know what this clause means, we need to clarify it. It could be something that you think really shouldn't be there at all or it could be something that should be added. uh anything is is fair game. So uh if you could take a moment to read that document and if you have anything you'd like to me to bring to the governing board uh just share that with Mary and or Dr. Goran Kurin by uh somewhere before August 6th or 4th. Uh the plan with that by the way just to spin that forward is we're going
155to discuss that at the next governing board meeting. In our next meeting on August 21st, uh I will bring back the results of that discussion and share with you all. Uh and then on September 3rd, uh we've been planning a committee of the whole meeting which will involve the district superintendent, governing board members, uh potentially any other interested parties uh to really look at all the feedback that has come in for the articles of agreement and then really work to refine that to uh come to agreement or at least consensus preferably. uh where we would then revise the document and then the governing board would ratify it probably at the October meeting. So that's kind of the long-term plan with this and and again just to remind everybody why we're doing this. This this all
156came out of the strategic planning work from earlier this year uh in a general feeling that you know we need to do two things. One, we just need to look at the articles of agreement because it's been 10 years since they've been updated. Uh the articles actually say if you read it that they're supposed to be reviewed every other year and so we've gone on 10 years now. So well overdue and and again there's also an effort to make sure that we are doing whatever is necessary to close any communication gaps between NSSO and the member districts and strengthen those ties. Uh improve the level of and quality of and frequency of communication. uh and anything that can be written into the articles that would do that is uh certainly a good thing. So uh
157that is all I have. As I said, our next meeting is the first week of August and uh yeah, that's it. That's all I got unless there's questions. All good. Do we have any Have there been any PTO meetings over the summer? No, I didn't think so. Um, I have a couple of quick things for the board president's report. If I can get back to where I'm supposed to be. Okay, this is mostly this is reminders of events. On Thursday, August 7th, we're going to have our facilities walk through with the board. Start at 6 p.m. at Lions Park School and we'll hit Lions, Lincoln, Westbrook, and then Fairview. Um, Thursday, August 14th is the new staff lunchon at Fairview. It's from 12:00 to 1:00 p.m. and all board members who are available are encouraged
158to attend. Monday, August 18th is the all staff welcome back at Fairview. The breakfast will be available in the multi-purpose room at Fairview at 7:45 and our program will begin at 8:30. Again, all board members who are available are encouraged to attend. And at the beginning of August, Friday, August 1st from 8 to 11 is the Ed Red Legislator Breakfast at Wheeling School District 21. If you are interested in attending and have not yet registered, please let her know. And that's all I have for that. We don't have any topics for board discussion. Does anybody have any suggestions for future meetings that they would like to put forward? Okay, we have no need for close session. Can I get a motion to adjurnn? So moved. Second. Member Dorner. Yes. Member Fay. Yes. Member Qualch. Yes.
159Member Leto. Yes. Member Nelson. Yes, President