001can you join us in the pledge of allegiance of the united states of america and to the republic for which it stands one nation under god indivisible with [Music] absolutely trust here no here are here person [Music] wounds here shang weisberg here we are five tonight okay oh and here comes some more winners all right [Music] hello just stay here present good do we have any correspondence none that's reasonable no we don't have any questions it doesn't look like there are any visitors tonight so and we know um student reports so we're on to new business all right well thank you um thanks everybody for being here braving the cold and uh at the same time we've tried to keep this meeting um relatively short so there's no uh student activities report tonight nor is
002there a team presentation we just thought with um the copa numbers the way they are that we would just err on the side of caution so in addition as you know there's a relatively short amount of time between the december meeting and the january meeting so we do not have any items for curriculum instruction and assessment uh the personnel items are included in the human resources report so you can have a look at those there and that'll be part of the consent agenda and we do have a couple uh items in the business section so sean take it away uh the first thing is um steve uh brittany and i uh completed the audit um or the request for services um for auditing services uh the request for proposal i should say we sent out
003nine packets to uh various certified public accounting firms we received seven back um of the seven we did interview four of them we chose not to interview evoy cam schulte jacobs who is our current auditor because we already kind of know everything about them um the interviews went very well and we were able to narrow down to two firms and at the end uh after some discussion and analysis we are going to be recommending tonight to the board of education toward the contract for audit services to launder bach and almond at a cost not to exceed eighty six thousand seven hundred dollars for the life of the three year contract and just uh you know for comparison um this is more um than what we were paying um currently but is the uh almost the
004similar price as to what evoy cam schulte and jacobs um quoted us as we change to a modified accrual um basis hey can i please have a motion to so move second okay any questions i got a question sure what didn't you like about our existing guy um the we've been with them for so long we don't have a specific policy on rotation but their firm is really shrunk in size and we were looking for a change in our auditing partners in order to do that they don't have the manpower to change um who is overseeing our audit to get a fresh set of eyes so here's the answer you wanted a fresh set of eyes well the answer is that a good practice is to rotate your auditing team every five years um if
005you can do that within a firm because of the size of the firm you can rotate your partner but because of the size of evoy we they just we just can't do that okay can i make a couple of i'm sorry is moving to the accrual basis more complicated in terms of the auditing in the accounting is that does that change things a bit correct okay sorry you gotta raise your hands i'm raising my hand but no one's calling up no i just i wanted to make um a couple of quick comments um first of all uh i did sit through the interviews um with truan and brittany and i just want the board to know that sean and brittany really impressed me they put together really good thorough questions and they engaged each of
006the people that were interviewed um they i thought they asked good questions they really got a good understanding what the different forms were about and what they would offer us and i just want to give them a shout out because i you know if you didn't see the process you don't appreciate what they did for us and i think they went with the firm that they didn't originally think they were going to go with in response to the what they saw and then also they followed up on the references and spoke with people about the different firms and so they put a lot of effort into it i just want to give them a shout out having said that i just want to also point out that there were other differences with the firms that
007they really uh focus on for example there were more quality control and reviewed by other partners within within the firm the firm that we're picking is focuses on governmental services everyone in their firm does some kind of government work and the they've developed this area of expertise with school districts uh and have really been pleasing a lot of their clients um and impress this in the in the calls i just um i just thought the process went really well and they did a great job and um happy with how they handled it now that he said that you're not asking for our grades no [Laughter] nothing 100. okay so can you please pull any other questions can you please follow the board sure no i i are well i'll get back to her carson hi
008moon's eyes shane hi where's cross hi here now i think she mentioned my name you got a good seat actually i know she just struck me well forward how many i got a six to no vote it's all right just on amazon for right now okay okay but it carried okay um thank you uh at the novomer board meeting um if you recall the board approved the intent to sell 17 million dollars in limited tax bonds to fund the remainder of the east building edition phase 2 project the board then held a public hearing on december 13th to receive input from our community um tonight we are taking the next step which is to adopt a resolution authorizing the actual issuance of the sale so following any discussion it is recommended that the board of
009education approve the resolution providing for the issue of not to exceed 17 million dollars in general obligation limited tax school bonds series 2022 b for the purpose of increasing the working cash fund providing for the levy of a direct annual tax to pay the principal and interest in on said bonds and authorizing the proposed sale of said bonds to the purchaser thereof are you gonna so please have a motion second thank you any questions for sean okay can we uh please pull the board artwell i'm gorson hi moons i shane hi oysberg hi frost right thanks no i'm emotionally curious and i should point out if i should have said this before but um standard and poor's with our ratings call was very uh pleased with the answers that we gave to the call and
010did in fact assign us a triple a bond rating for that issuance very good um the next agenda item i have is uh part of the process of issuing is new new bonds is we need to restructure the existing 34 million dollars of outstanding debt because of the current interest rate environment we are able to save um 417 dollars in interest as a result of this restructuring i'm so following any discussion it is recommended that the board of education approve the resolution providing for the issue of not to exceed 34 million dollars in taxable general obligation limited tax refunding school bonds series 2022 a for the purpose of refunding outstanding bonds providing for a levy of a direct annual tax to pay the principal and interest onset bonds and authorizing the investment inside bonds by
011the education fund of the district please have a motion second thank you all right questions foreign you're all done and it's fine but are you floating a geo non-refund a non-uh i know a g.o uh non-refundable can you fund something yeah we have to refund we have to refund ours before we can issue okay that's correct all right so what is the expected uh the expected coupon rate um was going to be like one percent ish one one an angle uh one to one point two five percent on the refund we have our ratings call on wednesday or our sales call i should say on wednesday um that's going to be a little higher obviously because it's being issued sure it's a new issuance still a good deal still very good okay would you please
012call the board certainly gerson hi moons [Music] thank you no i i will i carry seven to nothing and then of course you can see our freedom of information request um it was a rather lengthy one but very just won this particular match was that difficult to do no not difficult just a little time consuming you know who is this guy who wanted it and why do we know no idea he's actually uh um he's the sort of 211 teachers union at 211. so he's probably looking for information as they negotiate their agreement makes sense that's all i have tonight dr sorry um so we move on to the consent agenda can i please have a motion to approve the consent so moved you can thank you please pull the board [Music] oh hi [Music]
013oh it's cold outside it's frosty thank you all right everybody okay all right uh thank you everybody uh just a couple uh final items tonight under the informational report first you can see um the work that mark and our librarians in the communication arts division put in updating the library collection development policies so if you have any questions about that feel free to let myself or mark know also just in front of you for a little bit of light reading you can put on your nightstand is a fully updated open meetings act and freedom of information act uh pamphlet from um the uh i think attorney general's office so um school board iasb okay very good feel free to uh read that at your leisure um also just wanted to make note that uh we
014are going to be reaching out with some requests for dates for a site facilities committee meeting and possibly a finance committee meeting sean to discuss the summer of uh 2022 uh campus improvement 2022 2022 and 23 uh projects so hopefully sometime in february so we'll we'll send some um requests out for dates for that and then um given that uh we're i have all of our students back uh after a break uh we're still of this pandemic we thought it would be a good idea to school-wide spend a little time on providing students with continued emotional social emotional supports and so troy wanted to give just an update on what we're going to be doing this winter yeah so um we we're really excited to have the opportunity brought on by the state to provide
015all students with five mental health days and so um students can call in they can take a mental health tape it will be excused i won't show up in any way for the teachers or anybody else to know it's just an excuse day um they can make up their work and um the one thing that we it's actually in the statute and we also believe in is if students are taking multiple mental health days we're gonna we're gonna call them down and find out how we can help so um i think it's a it's a great opportunity for kids who feel the stress of school and worry about that perfect attendance and all those sorts of things to to take a day where they don't have to feel like they've got a doctor's note to
016support why they're staying home um and give them that space so we're it is five per year that's what's been allowed by the state but we're going with five for second semester because the law came into effect last week so count this as a year for the first time and quite honestly we could all use one right yeah this year certainly yeah and i think it'll be i think it'll be something that'll really help students okay how are we doing what's your sense of how we're doing and how the kids do it you know that's a great question the the kids are doing awesome the kids are happy to be in school and masks are uncomfortable but quite honestly our kids are pretty good at them now that's a you know they're used to it
017i was i have a young son he spent 20 of his life in a mask right like you think about what that looks like so they're pretty good at it and school has been a great outlet we've because we want to make sure that we've decreased the density of kids in the lunchroom we've expanded lunch into both the field house and the sports center and so you can really spread out there's some individual seats to take but it's still just great to walk through the launch room and see the group of kids in the lunch table having a chat right like that that is the best part um what's your sense of how they're handling the stress the stress of being different yeah i i think for them at this point they're so happy to
018be with their friends and after i think that i think that the year away that you know whatever was it was not a year six months and a half away really taught them the lesson of how important it is to be social and i i will they value i have kids tell me all the time like you know i didn't really want to get up this morning then i'm like you know what it's a great day to come to school like that they're in that place of being at school is it's way better than being on zoom about the staff so that i think here's the thing the staff i was worried coming back and they are um they're so dedicated to the work that they do with with our students and i couldn't be
019prouder of how hard it i know it's difficult for them and you know we have there's about 200 kids that are out on on quarantine right now um ish uh and that's about 100 180 about 180 now um and so you know that's a lot when you think about all those kids they each have five or six classes pretty much every teacher's got a zoom going on at some point in their day and they are they're just excited again they're a lot like they're a lot like the kids teachers really thrive on the interactions that they have with kids and that's why we do this job and i think there's a pretty healthy understanding of how much they missed on that last year and i think people are just happy to stand in front of
020their class and talk about stoichiometry or you know i'm always hocking you and eric about you're the two that have to know when the plate is too full and i trust you totally i just worry that uh it's silent suffering and uh it's a lot i'll tell you we're at the upper limit yeah we're i'm sure you are yeah the thanksgiving dinner right it's full like there's a lot of food on that plate there's a lot of stuff going on yeah but i i do think that people just have such an appreciation for being back and i will tell you there's some people that are scared right now you know with the numbers as high as they are of course they are um but they're they're doing such good work with our kids i just
021walked through the field house on the way out here and all at once there was fencing practice there was basketball practice the cheerleaders were practicing and there's a consortium choir i think or band concert something like that in the pac all that's what i walked by just to get here in one five minute period and they're just coming back we had we had 60 kids go to a ski trip this weekend um ski trip i i appreciate that you're keeping those things rolling and keeping all their activities and i think that is as important to them as sitting in class and you know to a lot of kids that's so meaningful so i think that's that's a great thing to just you know if you can be in school and wear a mask you can
022do those things and wear a mask and be safe and you know i i do applaud that there's not a lot of shifting and taking things away from them because i do think that helps to your point dave i think that you know you've got to keep things as normal as possible and i think that the kids really appreciate that they do is is there anything or can you come up with anything not now but down the road that will easily convey to the staff that we understand and we appreciate it we we've given that some thought we may ask you all to help us with that as well i mean it would go a long way for sure people that are really in combat here to know you're not alone we understand we wish
023there was something to do yeah we might deploy you for something well absolutely i'd like to say thank you in some meaningful way to say we appreciate it we understand even as simple as an email or something that we could send to the staff i mean anything you think yep i think we have some ideas we have some ideas we will yeah we will okay we'll talk about it and i think that's a really great point and we we normally have a little celebration right at the end of the semester and we did we'd do our prominent figure our uh super pats and our awards for faculty and we we didn't do it this semester because the numbers were getting worse and it was like probably no need to bring all of our staff together
024just i mean what if we get everyone sick that's probably not a great idea so um just you know we just keep missing some of those opportunities are are there so i suppose what i would really like is just to somehow convey that we understand yeah and we're not just sitting here with our heads in the ground or any other orifice that uh that we understand yeah and that goes a long way it did for me and i would like to just have them know we're in it with them as best as we can for sure that's probably what they need to hear that very thing thanks yeah thank you i'm troy i'm curious has if there's 180 kids out now i was talking with eric um i think the first day last week and
025i early last week you had about 150 so have the numbers been creeping up you know we're we're actually going we were able to um bring back about 50 kids today so we have a lot of kids who started the year on quarantine because of the over break so that number is actually coming back and it's going to bring the number down i think the number that you're seeing now is the highest it's going to get it's going to come down from here because we started the semester with a lot of kids coming off a quarantine yeah who were positive and so they're coming how about the teachers yeah that numbers are pretty good yeah the number we're we're in the 20s that number will come down significantly when we move from the 10 to
026the five day quarantine yeah 20 20 is a number or is a percent 20 is a number okay out of 350 yeah yeah it's pretty good but that's good yeah we're we're really happy and i think you know we have a lot of vaccinated teachers and i think that that's paying off i mean 98 of our folks are vaccinated so that's really paying off now when we got to this point it's helping them stay healthy tell the difference are we still providing the volunteering population test yes so whoever needs to get a test will be tested well the population type whoever wants to be part of the population testing can be part of the population test yes yeah and we have a sign up form we'll actually probably put that out again in a week
027or two here in the minuteman or the digest in case other people want to sign up but we'll just get you a bag full of test tubes and um and the stickers the labels that are for you you can't just show up on a tuesday and say like i'd like to start the test we have to gives us a day to get us the stuff together and we we advertised that a little bit uh over break or near the end of breaking god sean i forget exactly how many new kids and teachers but yeah we've got a couple hundred couple hundred new folks yeah so what would trigger a planting so a quarantine or the school going remote uh no like the 180 kids who are on quarantine so you you either have coppin you're
028a positive test so we would the if you come back on the flag on the on our saliva test we then ask you you have to take um either a binax test or a pcr test to get us a positive result and then if you have if you have covet um you will be out for five days and until your symptoms are done and you're one day fever-free so uh also if you are a close contact in there this one's pretty complicated there's a lot of ifs and hands so if you're a close contact and you weren't wearing masks or you live in the same home and uh you're vaccinated or unvaccinated all those things have different outcomes but they couldn't get you quarantined also so it's it's that so um i guess what i
029care is to do all those kits for quarantine get on the same links yeah so we are making sure we're it's it is a lot of working parts um because every kid has five or six classes and so all of those teachers we we do our best to protect everybody's privacy so we don't put it out in a big way we just send it directly to those teachers and they have to get the zoom link back to the kid and with the five day quarantine by the time we find out that they have covet and we get the zoom links out to them usually they only get the zoom links for about two or three days because you know normally you don't know you have coveted you go home you get a test you maybe
030you feel sick you stay home one day then you get a test you've already missed a day or two before we even know to give you the zoom lengths so it it's not perfect like they don't happen immediately but we're in a couple days to get it going getting you know once we get confirmation that you have covered we're getting the links and then uh you know we're also still counting those those are days that students are absent so um they're excused absences of course because of covid but we just have some questions about that too you're marked absent but you can watch class from home on game because you weren't here so so how's your feeling do you feel right now what we're going through is a worse well the worst isn't yeah the
031worst is an interesting word i i think i think it's going to get better i think we're in a place where we want to hear this it's going to get better from your mouth to god yep one last question yeah then i'll get off this there's six of you here tonight working for the company how are you doing you okay clay wise are you okay yes very good you guys okay oh yeah i'd like to know if you're not you do it sure we rely on each other it's a good team i mean i'll be honest i was out for a couple of days pending a test result and i was really just itching to get back well i appreciate that i just want to know that the stress is manageable i don't want to
032make mistakes when the when the oven gets too hot that's all i'm saying okay we're doing okay thank you anything else on that so uh last item you have in front of you a memo from uh the isbe specifically from uh jeremy duffy um who i believe works in council counselor's office for izb uh and this is a follow-up to the conversations that we've been having about um the residential placement uh issues and challenges that we've been having if you recall we had a lengthy conversation about that um we as a result of those conversations um really leaned on um our school district council and other resources and networks that we have and tried to collaborate with isb to see you know what exactly they're thinking behind not reimbursing those students uh for the residential
033placement in non-approved facilities when a hearing officer actually um uh requires us to to do so and isbe has turned a corner and actually has made the decision to reimburse districts for those non-approved facility placements um yeah does that include us that includes us wow so that is a big deal is this specific for the young man yes um and all other kids no i know yeah but but yes that's such a horrible story yeah and so we feel really grateful that is be listened i think they understand um the spot that they i think maybe inadvertently put districts in um and so they've been very very um it's the right thing no kidding so again i thought you might want to read that memo you have a copy of it in front of you
034it's really um i i just i was just really happy that they that they you know you we can complain a lot about you know the state and isb and things that happen this is something good that they did and they should be applauded for them so good good good news don't ask for a raise [Laughter] and that's all i have eric um i know you've been talking with joel and with dan yeah because i know dan was gonna do introduce some legislation for us he did mick duding yeah and we're gonna keep going with that is bees actually asked us to keep going with that so um they want to be part of it yeah they want to be part of it can i have a motion to adjourn so move second [Music] motion
035curious all right thank you everybody thank you everyone be safe you too steve