001Been a while since I did this. So, um, all right. Call to order the Prairie Hill Community Consolidated School District number 133 in Wnebago County. Our regular meeting March 19th, 2025, and it is 5:34 p.m. Roll call. There is a lot we here here. Right. If you don't stand for the flag algiance to the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. The highlighted yellow I don't think so. We do. Well, do you get it? You'll be signed up to speak. I just wanted to make sure. Is that accurate? We don't have any speakers. Okay. Good. All right. First up, the Friday of Prairie Hill, which is the literacy task force. It's coming. Okay. Well, D is the only one
002like that. Yeah. Are you okay if I just keep going and we'll go back to here? All right. Consent agenda. I'm looking for approval of the February regular meeting minutes. February committee meeting minutes. March bills totaling $273,19048. March payroll $235,623.70. March treasures report and the student activity fund. A motion to approve consent agenda. Yes. Yes. Yes. And yes. Yes. Great. Administrator reports. Anybody going first? Carter tell you. Yes, it's me. I guess it's you. Um, good to see all of you tonight. Uh, few items for us. Uh, the book fair was a success in February. Over both the conference, uh, nights total, we did over $9,000 in sales. Uh, just as a reminder, everybody's probably getting tired of the reminders, but the five essential survey needs to be completed really by Friday. So, if you
003haven't done that, please do so. Um, our staff is in the middle of AR preparations. Our testing will be the 3rd, 8th, 9th, 10th, and 14th. Uh Jack's Corner update. The foundation um found a contractor um a local family and we're hoping to have construction and um dedication May 17th is what we're shooting for. The weekend between Mother's Day and Memorial Day. So, we're hoping things work that way. Uh scheduling and safety committee. We uh we've been moving forward. Uh we had a good meeting last week with the scheduling committee to better incorporate the new positions that the board uh approved last month and how to best serve all the students. Um there's more to come. We've got some work left to do of course. I met with the safety committee as well and reviewed
004our drill procedures and we're developing plans for updating them for both our shelter in place tornado drill as well as evacuation. We'll be working through that for the remainder of the year. We did our uh last required drill. did a tornado drill last week and the students and staff did a great job. They took it very seriously. Uh we are doing a coin war fundraiser for Who Haven. If you saw that communication uh come by on Friday, they did come and do a whole school assembly as part of fourth grade service project. Um I have no idea how we're doing so far. Um I did hold a snake in front of the whole school, so I'm afraid of snakes. It worked out all right, I guess. Um, we have our friendship and world down Syndrome
005Day assembly on Friday. So, if you're in the building, please wear blue and or yellow. And thank you for posting the anticipated positions. I already have several really good candidates. Um, so I'm receiving applications for the next couple of weeks and my goal would be to fill those by April board meeting. No guarantees, but that's my goal. So, thank you all. That could happen. All right. Um, on the Willow front, we had a very successful round two of conferences. As you guys know, in the middle school, sometimes the spring conferences be a little scarce, but uh, we had a really full house actually both nights in the spring, which was amazing. Um, we also wrapped up try 2. So, we've officially hit the trimester three, which is exciting. Uh it's the time where everybody kind
006of looks forward to spring break, but then as soon as we get back from spring break, it flies by and we're all of a sudden into summer. Our eighth graders or some of the eighth graders went on their Washington DC trip over Kasmner class day weekend. Andrea was one of the lovely chaperons that got to go on that trip. Um quite a time. Yes, they had a great You can see so many things in such a short time. They pack a lot in, that's for sure. Um, we had a Shakespeare day here where there is a gentleman from a theater company who comes in and does a full school presentation and then the eighth graders specifically get to have him throughout the rest of the day because that's a unit they do um every eighth
007grade year. Seventh grade recently the science department just this week actually Tuesday yesterday they brought in the bury um which was really cool. Burpee brought in live animals. Uh I think they're actually probably reptiles if I think they're I'm titling them correctly. Um and so kids got to go through rotations in seventh grade and touch and feel and look and explore and kind of have some science come to life, which is always fun. Um we're currently working on uh making sure that we're prepped. Kim Andrews, while you're here, I can note this for you that we're all prepped and ready for AR and ISA testing. um any changes that come out. We know the state loves to make changes on us every single year. She does all the leg work and making sure that we
008all have the information that we need to be able to successfully administer the test. So, thank you to her. Um one big shout out that I would like to make sure that we're all aware of. Um something Mike Grimes started way back when is the Tony Barlo charity game. Um that is tomorrow evening. So, we raise funds and they all go to the funds go to Defy, which is a domestic abuse shelter. Um, the price to get in is just three canned goods. That's a fun event because all of our teachers get to play the volleyball, the varsity volleyball team, and all our teachers get to play the boys first basketball team. So, it's always good to see who wins and who will dominate. And I think usually we try to take that in the
009staff department. We try to put them down. So, um I'm assuming Mike will show up at some point, but Bailey Mitchell has taken the range of focus since he's retired. Um so, if you can even for a short bit of time come out, support that. It's usually a great event. Lots of community members and concessions are in full swing and everything that we earn that night goes to the Defy Shelter. So, we look forward to seeing everybody here. Yeah, all I got if there's a just a few um there's a resolution tonight to be approved for vision 2030 that we talked about at the committee of the whole. Um just a reminder, it's just a focus on uh future focused learning, shared accountability, predictable funding, uh and then collaboration united framework. Um and essentially it's
010not tying us to anything. It doesn't, you know, we don't have to do something because we signed the resolution. It's basically just uh gives advocacy groups the the ability to say, "Hey, these district signs on common sense education, common sense funding, and they're in support of it." So, uh that's on the agenda tonight to uh be approved. Uh quick update on the preschool playground. So, Jimmy, Craig, and I took a look at some possible areas the other day. Uh just so happened that preschool was out there during that time. So, we chatted with them, got some ideas. Uh he's Jimmy is looking into different coding things from the regional office of education as well as our insurance to make sure that there's nothing we need to be aware of. Um and then as we talked
011about I think a few months ago or several months ago now depending upon um essentially the idea would be to just kind of do in pieces so that way it's not such a big project right up front. Uh so the fencing will be the first thing and then we'll kind of take a look at what it looks like on the inside. Uh preschool teachers have some really great ideas about what it should look like. So, uh, looking forward to incorporating that, being carrying with the PSA to help with that funding as well. Uh, also on the agenda tonight is approval of the first student contract. Uh, that's a 5-year contract with our transportation system. Uh, boys volleyball is also on there. That'll be a spring sport. And then, uh, we'll look to get that approved
012tonight. And then basically, we'll look at, uh, how many coaches we need, uh, based on, um, interest from the students, numbers, that sort of thing, and how many coaches that we might need based upon that. So, uh, and then the final thing I wanted to talk about, and then I'm going to pass it to you, Kim Andrews, uh, is the curriculum evaluation tool. Thank you for showing up. You're here. I knew you were coming. Yeah. Um, the curriculum evaluation tool that we discussed as well. So, Kim and I had a good conversation about that. Of course, she's already started rocking on it and, uh, we'll see what that looks like. We'll get that to the board. you know, not super comprehensive obviously, but just something that we're taking a look at what we're doing, what
013we could be doing better. Started with math and then we'll look at reading and and if we need to jump into some other content areas or grade levels with that, we'll definitely do that. So, uh, we waited till you got here. You're fine. Um, but we are recognizing the literacy task force tonight for the pride of Prairie Hill. And, um, you know, I I guess it started what about a year ago now? Last March we started or I should say last January is when we presented the vision. Um, Illinois has become, I want to say, the 39th or 42nd, who's counting, uh, state to adopt some new literacy legislation that points to the fact that our literacy efforts should be tied to science and how kids learn how to read. um instead of some of
014the um other ways or other curriculums or other programs for teaching kids how to read that aren't necessarily backed by evidence. Um so we have done a really nice job with that. Um and there's a ton of movement that we've made um in both school buildings. Um, I would say that probably from an onlooker in an onlooker's perspective, you probably see this most obviously at Prairie Hill. Um, because we had frankly the most work to do there. We utilized a program that actually um was a pretty common program um but was not backed by Evans at all. So, we have done away with that. Since the materials still exist, we can use them, repurpose them for other reasons or other in other ways. Um, but they see you guys. We've spent about $8,000 on decotables.
015Um, and we have done a ton of trainings at Prairie Hill with the support of Mr. Carter as well. It's been really helpful um, in terms of teaching all of our staff about the importance of community awareness. Um, explicit phonics instruction um, where decodables how decodables come into play and that and I'm in there I'm in there I try and get in there once a week to kind of finish the job. Lorie Dixon has been helping out too. Um Amy Smith has been helping out as well. It's just a lot of processing of of new books. Um and we have a pretty sizable uh new section of the book room at Prairie Hill that is completely filled with 100% meaning that students have been explicitly taught how to read and spell um sound out every
016letter uh in combination of how it's presented in that book. So, it starts simple CBC, just a couple of words a page. Um, and then it gets up to some really complicated uh phonetic rules and things like that as well. Uh, but we've got a lot of trainings, a lot of um and and then here in this building, we've focused more on the upper strands of the reading rope and we're talking a lot about vocabulary. Um, your students, if you have middle school students, have been coming home with a word of the week, um, which has been kind of fun and that pretty well supported by our staff as well. They send me pictures once a week. Usually I get about one or two pictures a week of how a student has integrated those words
017into the vocabulary into some writing assignments. Um, and we're also shifting the attention now to background knowledge. Um, which is the idea that students can't get a whole lot of anywhere if they uh in terms of comprehension if they don't know anything about the world around them. Um, so developing that background knowledge is our current aim at the middle school. that will likely be our next theme at at Prairie Hill as well. We've been kind of looking forward to that. So, um I want to take a second to uh acknowledge and thank some of the people here today who are on that um committee with me. Um we've got Danielle Vanic and Melissa, Melissa Henchel and then Haley Gucha right um representing Willow Ruff Middle School here. And then at the other school we have
018or from the other school we have Amanda Bordem and Sarah Shavelin and Amy Sman Manner and Val Bowman and Amy Wright. I think that might be I think you did pretty good. I think it's right here. I think that's great. Had I known I would have asked for that. Great job. I wasn't but it's really nice to have um the support of the staff, the support of the administration, the support of the board of you guys in this. It has now been a small endeavor. Um and frankly Illinois was a little bit late to the game if you ask me but um we were primed and ready and as soon as that Illinois lit Illinois I call it Illinois literacy comprehensive literacy something like that. Yeah. um as soon as that was passed last spring
019um that we were ready to respond and we've made a long way in terms of kind of making some significant strides here in the district. Um I'm in the book room like I said a lot and it's really cool to come see to see the swiftness with which like the codables get checked out. I checked in like couldn't find a phonetic skill. I couldn't figure out for Apple where it went and I finally figured it out yesterday and I was put them away and then I had got called out and I came back like 10 minutes later and all the books I had put away were already gone and I'm like what happened to all my DGE books and um Mandy Shley was there and she's like oh it just took literally all of those
020as I got for um so it's cool to see that such a significant huge change in a short period. Thank you for your support. I will have you guys come up and get your certific names again just so you get your certificates and I know that most of you don't want to stick around too much longer. So Amy [Music] Sanders, Mr. Sizzik would like you all to be in a group picture after you have your certificate. I saw you so I was like maybe right call you by your last name Andrew All right. Ready? One more. Make sure Thank you. Thank you. Um before we move on for the literacy um committees truly, we have been getting updates from Kim and from Clint and we know that this is a lot of work. It's meaningful,
021but it's also incredibly impactful work. So, I think just from us to you guys, thank you so much for putting so much passion and work and just intellect into it. You're all so beyond capable of doing it and it's been really, really good to see it. So, we really All right. So, this is also the moment when I tell anybody who doesn't want to stay any longer that they can go home if they'd like to, but we're gonna keep going. All right. Um, subcommittee reports. Since there's a big enough group here, I will explain a little bit the change we made last month, which we also explained at the February board meeting. Um, but the board went from having individual committee meetings that used to meet once a month. we would come back to the
022board meetings, report kind of give a summary for anybody here and to each other and then go about our voting. Uh starting in February, we switch to the committee of the whole um process which we also call the cow. Um and essentially we are all meeting as one large um group to discuss all the business all the different subcategories which is building finance, education, transportation, policy. Um we discussed all that last week. We went all all over board business kind of in detail. Um and then we will summarize them probably a little shorter than we used to in the past. So um just kind of giving everyone a heads up on that. Um that the detailed information was given out last um week at a open meeting and those will continue to happen that way
023as far as at least we have planned so far. Um they will be two the second Wednesday of the month and then the board meeting will be the last Wednesday of the month if we continue as our current plan. Um, so with that being said, building and finance, you want to give a little summary of the few things we talked about? Yeah, we can. I mean, we haven't Should we just go with this a little bit? Yeah. Whatever you feel comfortable. I'll do the building and finance and the education the whole block. Um, we just reviewed the consent agenda bill. So, we didn't actually have much from a finance perspective, but I'll get the building in a moment. Uh we talked a little bit about the city of South intergovernmental agreement that we voted on
024um back in the fall. There were some real updates to that. Um we Clint has his superintendent evaluation. So we spent a little bit of time talking about our goal tracker and evaluation for sure everyone completing that um ahead of time that closed. Talked a little bit about um lunch balances um working on some notification fixes um and then just ways to address the larger debts. um Clint is working on that to get us some information by the end of the month. We had a quick discussion about uh the uh the board members that are off the board next month when we're building them. So Jason and I will find out next month how how long we're in this section, how long we're not that you'll stay the whole time. Um, we also discussed Clint
025Clint talked about it, but we discussed vision uh 2030. We all reviewed the document for that. Um, and talked about that. We talked we spent some time talking about preschool playgrounds. Um, the code for that. So, another uh building specific piece. Um, talked about boys volleyball, which is so exciting. Um, moving towards uh that sport for the Brook Middle School. Um, also talked about uh our trash delivery service and getting some bids out there to save some money. Um, spent some time talking about Jack's Corner. Really happy to hear that things are moving along and we are going to be um making some updates there very soon. And we did appoint Kim um as the board rep for the remainder of the project just to make sure that in real time this board has any
026questions or um any building specific components that need to be addressed or just uh analyzed or anything will be on top of that. um don't just speak a lot. Yeah. Um we talked about the uh wellness survey that we did last uh school year and so Lori um has been really proactive in making sure that we're tying up all ends on that. So thank you for that. So for any teacher who here who um is waiting on an except for some storage and exercise ball that is in motion. Um we are finishing up our strategic plan. and we had a a four or five year strategic plan. And so I created kind of a look back to go through all the items that we had committed to um to see what is done, what we
027want to move over to the next strategic plan. And then the incoming board um we discuss kind of what that will look like to come up with a new strategic plan the next four or five years which Clint will spearhead. Um and then in policy we just had working on the committee to hold the it's really it's actually been really nice um for us all to be together to discuss different components of the committees. It's the conversations have been really great and really deep. Um but from a policy perspective we're like fine tooth comb talking about policy. So that is a little bit of the interesting cadence that will have to be figured out moving forward. So Justin and I more just spent time kind of talking through how we can have a really efficient
028policy meeting while still staying really close to that work and not boring everybody else for 45 minutes. So um that is also TBD but everything about it that's what we ended on actually end which I got it nice nobody has anything else um committee related to bring up I will entertain a motion to approve that vision 2030 resolution that Clint talked about. I'll make a motion second. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Need a motion to approve the f first student contract. Um that is a 2025 through 2030 contract. Make a motion to approve the new bus contract. Yes. Yes. Walker. Yes. Yes. Yes. This super exciting committee to make a motion to entertain a motion to approve the boys volleyball and spring season sport starting in 2026. I'll make a motion for approve. A second. Yes.
029Yes. Yes. Yes. Request. We had two of them. We had Alium data. They wanted property insurance and then smarter wanted our purchasing phone last year. All right. At this time, um, we'll be looking to go into executive session to discuss appointment, employment, compensation, discipline, performance, or dismissal of specific employees. 52C1 and also negotiations 52C2. I get a motion to enter executive session. Motion. Second. Yes. Anderson. Yeah. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. At this time, we just stuff out for a little bit. It looks