001everybody ready let's call let's call the meeting to order um roll call please here we go here sorry here aaron chanding here here steve wayne here all right before we stand and do this dr hunt to introduce our students good evening uh at this time i'd like to invite ava goetz to come forward please so ava come on up here thank you uh for being here today thank you mr kirk for nomination uh just a little bit about ava ava goetz is a first place winner of the daughters of american revolution essay contest her essay oh give her a round of applause her essay moves on to the state level competition there were 34 fifth grade participants from rosalind road who entered the local chapters dar contest abel will be recognized by the daughters of
002the american revolution in a virtual ceremony on february 20th if i went a little deeper than that i got a few more comments about you here you're described as someone who is passionate about writing who really enjoys taking the time and and the pleasure of writing very talented extremely humble uh very have a great sense of humor but take your schoolwork very very seriously so these are all the qualities we try to instill and all the students here at barrington 220. so thank you so much for being such a positive role model and being here tonight to help us with the uh the pledge of allegiance so before we uh turn it over to the star of our show please give ava a big round of applause please stand i pledge of allegiance to the
003flag of the united states of america and to the republic for which it stands one nation under god indivisible with liberty and justice for allah i know we're squished congratulations okay just a few logistics before we get started on the rest of the meeting um big question on everyone's mind might be why did we move to station for this meeting and i just wanted to let everybody know that the board really wanted to be certain that all community members felt welcome and were able to be heard so therefore we moved it to station for this meeting please note that due to the health public health guidance the face covering is recommended and appreciated if you'd like a mask there's some at the table up here um and thank you again for your cooperation if the
004crowd does become disruptive i will be calling a break and the board will leave the room the board is committed to ensuring that we follow the open meetings act so we will not be having any discussions and i will ensure that that the open meetings act is not violated so please just be aware if that happens a gentle reminder that this is not a public meeting be respectful and kind throughout the board meeting that does occur in public and as you'll continue to hear throughout the meeting keeping our schools open safely with in-person learning is a top priority so with that let's get to the rest of our agenda so first up our next up we have sarah and talk to us about the high school okay so to start off i think many students
005have really appreciated having the option over masks and from my perspective most of them have responded really positively to it which has been really awesome to see and overall in this past week two weeks i've seen a lot of empathy out of students and understanding whether whatever choice you make so it's been really positive to see that change and then moving over we had a really fun event the special olympics basketball game um was an event at the beginning of february which was a lot of fun for students and there was a lot of support that night in the gym and it was just a great way to support those athletes so that was a lot of fun overall at the high school there's been great energy around the school as many of our winter
006sports are wrapping up their successful seasons such as boys and girls basketball wrestling gymnastics as well as the chess team and as student council we continue to plan events to promote school spirit celebrate holidays and appreciate members of staff in our community awesome thank you sarah any questions or comments for sarah i think we have a couple state level results that you might want to share our dance team and our chess team both came in yeah our dance team are trusting i'm afraid we're going to leave somebody out i'm afraid too but i i want to acknowledge all the excellence that we have here in barrington steve yeah you will help us out if we miss anybody right all right we've got a couple of wrestlers going this weekend to state as well so and
007our girls girls basketball team i know is the msl champs yes school musicals coming up so we actually have three wrestlers and uh actually four wrestlers going down at alternate just so more than a couple of basketball won the regional over last night and boys play for the msl championship tomorrow night in the main gym you're free at 7 00 pm it's going to be a great night so great lots of lots of fun things to celebrate all right sarah so you're welcome to stay with us um uh but if you need to go we understand that as well all right thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you next we're going to go into dr hunt's superintendent report good evening thank you i'm going to give a second just for the presentation
008i get pulled up there we go so a lot of exciting things happening you know towards the end of the year obviously we start uh you know when we get into a new year planning for next school year is underway and we've started looking at staffing and retirements and all that that entails scheduling at building levels as well and with that is looking at what what spots will be open for next year and one of the spots that will be open is we will be recommending this evening the hiring of a new athletic director and uh unfortunately due to scheduling conflicts i'm going to ask the board to approve ryan robinstein tonight and we will actually bring him to our next meeting he wants to be here to meet the board uh personally but uh
009he was described to us as mr lake zurich um so we want to give lake zurich uh an opportunity to get ahead of the curve as he's certainly a very vital member of their administrative team he's been there for 19 years served in the assistant principal dean of students as well as a teacher masters of science from northern illinois university masters in education from lewis university bachelor of science from illinois state university and physical education he's had a variety of experiences overseeing and programming clubs and activities for lake zurich and he's really been a a steady rock for that school district uh and in speaking uh with their superintendent he will certainly be missed and i i think will be a great addition uh to a very successful athletic program i want to thank uh
010steve mcwilliams thank our entire all of our coaches and everyone that has been involved in the process uh big shoes to fill but we're very comfortable and confident that he will continue the excellence of barrington athletics and and and bring a new uh fresh face to the program so again we'll be here next uh next meeting but uh we'll be recommending that the board approve him as a new athletic director for barrington high school this evening uh just want to recognize it is black history month in february and uh activities are going on throughout the district i know my son had brought home a book and i'm having a conversation with about martin luther king and uh reading with that it's a real opportunity to to reflect on where we've come um the work that
011we're doing in our school district under leadership of nate rouse and i know uh mrs bradford will make some comments as well so just wanted to recognize the importance of this month for our school and our district across the board i also want to mention i know the board of education we had plenty of conversations uh regarding a renewal of our apple uh lease we had the ability or the opportunity really uh facilitated by uh dr matt fuller uh to go down to uh conduct an apple executive briefing and this is uh uh unless you have done one it's kind of difficult to explain but i will tell you our program is very very respected and appreciated and we were able to spend a day really stepping away from everything and focusing on the future
012of learning so we had access to uh apple employees that really focus in on learning how do we solve problems for students what tools are available maybe what's coming down the pike a little bit it was great for our executive council to to really start to think about the future as that's really what we're going to do coming into the spring with strategic planning so a tremendous opportunity focused on the future of learning tools for learning plan and discussions on how we could grow as leaders in the area of technology looking at some of the adaptive technology that's available to our students and and how we can leverage that over time so i appreciate the opportunity and dr fuller for putting that together i think it was a very rewarding experience for our executive council
013team i also want to talk tonight a little bit about our the transition plan as the board of education knows there were there were three phases to the transition plan uh la i was hired really at this time last year and the board of education at that time asked that i focus on a couple of areas and one of them was to create a plan that really took you know would take place throughout the course of the year and the first phase of that was really february of of last year until june of this year and it really focused on developing an understanding of the organization obviously i was working in a different state and another school district so a lot of opportunity to just review information that was online and begin to develop relationships
014with with key members we rolled into phase two at the beginning of the the school year and in the summer and this was really focused on getting to meet members of our community our groups our parents our students and support organizations and really start to get an understanding of how our community members how our constituents and our stakeholders felt about what was offered here at barrington 220 in their school district as well as you know things that they valued and the strengths and the core of what what we offered it to young people as well as maybe some opportunities uh for for improvement that phase wrapped up really in december and the last one i conducted was in early january and i put all of that information together in a report that is shared with
015you tonight uh you you've seen a version of this i think i pushed it out before committee of the whole as well and i'll share i'll share this report with all the participants that that contributed to it as well as push it out to the community because i think it's a an initial lens and look at what we value here at barrington as we start to have the conversation about the future of our schools in in doing this i kind of put the doctoral student hat back on and really you know took notes as i conducted every focus group went through a coded process to look at emerging themes things that came out consistently among conversations in the report you'll find an executive summary that addresses some of the issues but i also we also
016as many people participate in helping with this looked at feedback specific to staff and feedback to specific to to community so i encourage the board as we we start to think about our future to spend some time kind of reading through this kind of digesting the work uh it is not meant to be comprehensive and take the place of focus groups and strategic planning but it it hopefully serves as a really good start for us to kind of launch off in that conversation just a couple of things that are in the executive summary and you know i failed the don't put too many words on a slide concept here but i'm not going to read this to you but i want to talk to you about kind of the big themes that emerged and certainly
017one of the strengths that came out pretty much pervasively across the board from our parents our students our community members i think i met with about 230 different people in these focus groups was the value of student opportunities that is provided to to to each and every student here a lot of people spoke about specific programs which are mentioned in the report but also just the opportunity to kind of seek out try things and if you didn't like them or you fail that's not a bad thing right you learned from that but also if there's an area of passion whether it be in in fine arts or whether it be in athletics or in in speech and debate there's opportunities for you to experience things learn and grow another thing that really came out of
018the student perspective is they feel like although we offer a lot of things if they have an idea an interest a passion and i remember i met with the students over here in station they talked about being able to go to staff members and being able to start a club or an activity and and have support of our staff that step forward so a real strength for the district came out in the student opportunity category also there and looking at areas was i think a desire to look at the programs that we do offer and look at how how students qualify how many students are in these programs what would be you know do we need to make modifications in terms of um how students you know maybe get into a program so there were
019conversations consistently around that uh that pointed back to some work that we probably should look at going forward a second area that came up quite a bit was the area of communication honestly and being through multiple you know strategic plans and surveying of community and talking with folks communication is always an area you got to think about how are we doing it now and how should we be doing it how do we reach our various constituent groups an interesting point here was really came and resonated from the staff in which they felt uh communication would come out broadly to the community and to parents before they were communicated with and i think just some neat some very natural and easy things we can do as a school district to ensure that our staff are on
020the front end of the things that the decisions that we're making the things that we're doing so they can be prepared to support our our parents as they have questions going forward so that area of communication was was a second area to come up last three the the strength of the community and the the sense that barrington 220 is what it is because the community steps forward and supports uh what what we do for kids and that means everything from taxes to referendums to going to pto meetings and being surrounded by volunteers that are willing to help so a real sense of appreciation from staff of what is brought forward by the community and a high level an interest in an engaged community and that doesn't happen sometimes when you live in a place and
021you that this is the world you know that doesn't happen everywhere so it's something we need to continue to leverage and foster as we grow and we move forward i think that points us to kind of where we've been the last two years with covet and we we have to acknowledge that's been a divisive issue and as we kind of transition towards you know hopefully the end of the impact in schools we can create opportunities to bring our community together uh to talk about where we've been and where we want to go in terms of of the school district so that was one area last two quickly grade level transitions really consistent feedback on strengthening the transitions building to building uh and activities uh one of the comments i i found was interesting because unit
022district is a unique term to me because when in ohio everybody's a unique district or unit district right but there was a lot of feedback on there's a lot of benefits to being a unit district and we need to leverage those we need to share those we need to sell our district if you will on the benefits that a uni district brings to the table so that conversation came up quite a bit as well as the transition building to building and then the last is professional development i think the staff is very appreciative of the opportunities provided to them from a professional development standpoint and the the resources that allow them to pursue areas of passion uh to try to take risks and to grow professionally i i think you know the other side of
023that coin is focus being able to kind of focus on really what is most important and what what would we implement with fidelity is something that we should look at and have conversations around so this is uh the result of a heck of a lot of time and energy sitting down with folks throughout our district but i i would i guess like the board to know because a lot has been negative as we go through there's a lot of very positive things that are going on in barrington 220 for students and there's a lot of committed professionals at all levels from a teaching perspective to administrative staff to our classified staff that are very committed to trying to make this the premier district that it has been and will continue to be so i know
024there's a lot of information in that report i do want to open it up if you had any questions specific to this transition report where this goes from here this has been shared with our consultants that are helping us with strategic planning uh one of the things i've asked them to do is uh certainly be aware of the information i gathered but vetted accordingly did the new superintendent hear what he you know what what what the people wanted you know wanted him to hear or what what they wanted to tell the new superintendent are these the real issues and dig into them a little bit more but i think it's a good you know step off and launch into the conversation about our future so i think i'll pause and answer any questions that you
025might have uh regarding the report any questions thank you for doing it yeah thank you yeah this is a very it's it's just excellent uh a lot of feedback from a lot of different people and i again like you already stated the great sounding board to start off with our strategic plan so really appreciate it so look for that guys um it's a good it's a good read about 12 pages but it's good well i think it's interesting that some of the same things came up between staff and community and parents and different groups so it's nice yeah i agree okay uh i i do want to address some of the things that have happened within the district um over the last you know week uh it's certainly been you know as as covet has
026been uh constantly changing this has been a difficult week as we've transitioned uh our school district because first of all i wanna i guess thank the administrative team and the staff that made all kinds of adjustments over last weekend i mean there were there were meetings held there were plans put in place uh our administrative team really stepped up uh to prepare uh the best possible opening uh with very quick notice to change kind of the dynamic for our students and i and i think what resonated with me was it was a constant conversation about how do we make this okay for students so they feel comfortable and uh welcomed whatever their choice might be in our schools and they've worked really hard i'd like to recognize you know sarah had mentioned this our students
027you know the strength of this school really lies in the kids that come in the door every single day and they have handled this um you know very very well in a very quick change and they've dealt with a lot of changes over the last two years so i appreciate all the work you know that they have kind of brought to the table i'd like to point out over the last three weeks from a case standpoint there's been a consistent drop when we look at building transmission if you go look at january 17th we're at 187 cases last friday we closed with 30 cases district-wide so numbers are moving in the right direction and we continue to you know put that as a as a a as something that you know kind of guides what
028we do um all of these fall within the parameters set within the criteria that this board adopted and i want to speak to the to the board of education i'd like to commend you for kind of pushing this administrative team when we're dealing with chaos to to talk about a matrix and things that we should look to create to create an off ramp for our community and our schools on on where this made sense the work that was presented shared here and approved has gone around the state and it's being used by various school boards and superintendents to really guide their work because i think everyone had a level of frustration that that wasn't coming to us and that we took the initiative here with our team and with with the board of education to
029create that i think speaks uh to the commitment of this board of education obviously the plan that was created took a little diversion uh based on on the ruling so i want to speak to i guess a couple of things first the the appeal as i've i've gotten you know some questions and and and and feedback regarding that there's been a lot of involvement in this process uh as we go through this um i i do want to point out in illinois uh as in all states there's appropriate exceptions to open meetings it's called closed session in other words it's acknowledged in law there are certain topics that should be discussed in closed session and one of those exempt exceptions is litigation i've been a superintendent for 10 years i've never had public conversations about
030pending active litigation against the school district and it's not that conversations haven't happened we've just had them in the appropriate places and and the board has been engaged in conversation about this we've discussed the litigation brought against the district as well as the district's level of involvement we've discussed this prior to the ruling that came out on friday february 4th and then and and made the decision to continue down the road of being involved to defend the district and the appeal i think it's important that the consensus i heard from this board was a sense of wanting to preserve local control to make decisions people have various opinions on which side of this case really does that but i think that is the heart that resonated within this board that local control was extremely important
031and the reasoning for being involved in this as as as going forward certainly there's a lot of people that think this should be you know happen sooner uh even jay carr today you know earlier today the illinois joint committee of administrative rules declined to extend the school mass mandate in illinois that expired yesterday on february 14th after 150 days jay carr declined to reissue the rules in emergency forum based on the pending of the t.r litigation before the appellate court so you you're constantly swimming in information and we're doing the best to turn it around i think the board's heads were was constantly in the right place regarding local control so as we process things over the weekend with the change on on february 4th uh much of or all of our conversation administratively was
032how do we best prepare that environment come monday for the change for kids wasn't conversations about appeal wasn't it was how do we get things ready to go for our kids um so in terms of uh you know this pending appeal and after advice from legal counsel and evaluating what what we what happened today i i think it is appropriate to make a motion to move forward with withdraw withdrawing barrington 220 from the appeal process going forward so there's one one point i wanted to to uh [Applause] the the second is you know we've got pending outcomes that may or may not happen i think we can all confidently stay a stay is probably not going to occur right now that was an option that we thought might come over the weekend or last week
033essentially a stay meaning you have to implement what happened last thursday so we we feel that you know again with legal counsel input that is not a likely outcome that a ruling on the uh from the appellate court will come we expect probably by the end of the week so the second recommendation and again after you know the j-car decision and where this stands and after evaluating where we're at is to remain in our position of mass recommended not required regardless of what the appellate court does on friday obviously we will evaluate that decision because it could go in a variety of different ways we'll come back to this board and we'll have conversations about implications i think there's consensus up here from everyone that i've talked to that local control is really important we
034spend a lot of time and energy administratively creating a matrix and how would we address certain situations and we'll remain flexible to you know as we move forward but i think in you know with our plan that was a little more incremental we i you know i described it as we got thrown in the deep end real quick uh if we look at the plan that was presented the numbers that we have today we actually fall into that category of recommended not required so my recommendation is we continue on um regardless of the outcome of the appellate hearing uh this week and that we communicate that with our constituents as well so i just shared a lot with you are there any questions comments from the board of education um on on kind of where
035we stand with these two pieces i think you summarized very well and um i just would like to recognize the administration and all the work they did that weekend too is i think you guys were working non-stop and really appreciate the time that you took to do that all of you and thanks again to the board for really thinking about and helping develop the matrix and providing your input all along that's really good glad to hear that it's it's being reused too because i know we all worked pretty hard so thank you very much dr i have a couple of questions on the appeal and also about our district um specifically so my understanding is that regardless of whether our name is on the appeal it moves forward the state's moving forward with it anyway
036right that yeah that that is correct and there's really two pieces to to this it's the the state appeal and that is more specific to the governor and i believe i have an attorney in the audience who can tackle me at any point i'm not accurate and there is the ability for local school districts to make decisions which i think is a concern when you start chipping away at that and if you remove covet away from all of this and masking away from all of this the ability to make decisions locally is something that i believe districts believe is very very important but to specifically answer your question yes it will it will continue so my understanding is if the appellate court comes down and gives school districts local control that would give us increased
037mitigation measures say if there was an outbreak at one of our elementary schools not roblin but any of our elementary schools for example in one classroom under the current tro we do not have the as a district we do not have the capacity to say oh second grade classroom your numbers are going from 5 to 10 to 15 cases we need you to quarantine we want to we have other mitigations but we can't use quarantine and we can't use masking and if we were to be granted local control say there was an outbreak and we were still and we we stayed the course for masks recommended not required but if we were given local control and there was an outbreak our administration has those tools back to be able to implement them if there were
038an outbreak in a classroom so i i'm challenged to respond on a hypothetical order because it could be written in a lot of different ways what i would say to you as a large part of this is from my understanding is providing due process to students and i think from that perspective we would have to be in conversations with the lake county health department on what we believe is appropriate and work through that process with them but we have more latitude than we would now which right now we have to go directly to the health department and they'd have to get a question and things like that okay okay thank you for clarifying that um the other what thing is you know i know that it was really disorienting for many families um in our
039in our district because we had you know five days before the ruling um approved us kind of more incremental plan um that would take us to situational masking and so um i was i was really pleased to hear that i think the majority of our families were talking to their children about hey let's be respectful of each other's choices um and you know regardless of whether family wants their child to mask or to not mask so i was really pleased to hear that um i did hear a few instances and i think this is not just us this is across the state um regardless of what happened in a district of you know there were there are instances of kids teasing kids for not wearing masks and then kids who are wearing masks who felt
040pressured to take them off and um to my understanding i think that teachers our staff have been doing an admiral admirable job of kind of you know coming in and doing their best but i'm wondering you know for those families who are concerned um what recourse do they have i would imagine a lot of this is within their teachers and their building principles but if they're concerned about a bullying incident um or you know making sure they're if they want their child to be masked making sure their child's mass throughout the day um you know what what are what are some of the steps that we have in place in our messaging kind of in in each school building for them so i i think i i would start with a tremendous amount of thought
041and energy was put into kind of reacclimating students here from building principles from pa announcements to activities provided to staff that they could do with uh to do with teacher you know do in their classrooms at the teacher-based level you know we had executive council members in every building when students came back and walked around and i i can i can speak to you know roslyn wrote i was walking around and you could hear the teachers going through lessons and having these conversations this thing same thing was happening at grove so i would say like any issue of bullying regardless of what the topic is or the reason there are ways to report it and they should be reported and i would certainly start at the teacher and building level and encourage any you know
042we've done you know we've always talked about this if a parent comes to you as a board member directing them back to the to the building and to the teachers the quickest and best way to address the situation uh but if they don't feel like they're getting a result there certainly to to contact me and we'll make sure that we're taking care of the situation thank you and then lastly our staff i know they again they've been doing an admirable job how are we supporting them through this too as they kind of are trying to process it for themselves and also dealing with different incidents that are happening in their in their classrooms and around the school buildings yeah i would echo what you said they have done a tremendous job i think this has
043been i i will not make a blanket statement this is a very personal issue for everyone involved i'll give credit to our building principals who identified people that may have concerns they reached out to them in advance to to to let them know kind of where things stood what supports were in place i know teresa and her office we we have support systems in place for employees that you know that that that need them so there are supports in place for for folks in our district thank you if i understand some of the reasoning behind going mask recommended this week and then thinking about what's going to happen in the future with these different outcomes um i know there's concern about a lot of conflict and about flip-flopping back and forth and the confusion for
044students and people in the community there's other mitigations that we can use right instead of this in this in the meantime that we're using right in our buildings i'm assuming that distancing and crowds and things like that are being taken into consideration in this in between time just like they've been in the past right yeah so we met one of the meetings one of the meetings on sunday was with building principals to talk about what the mitigations we do have in place you know what space is available to you know provide that and i think we go back way back in july we had a slide that was a scale right there's not just one mitigation that means everything there's a litany of those and trying to beef up where we can in other areas
045while we will remove this is those conversations have happened in buildings and we'll continue to monitor that thank you for doing that okay that concludes my report i just have one follow-up question it kind of goes off of leah's point so you know every district has you know or every uh school has a different principle you know running the school what is the district's position as far as uniformity as far as the way that these mitigation strategies are are provided for instance you know if there's you know virtually showing a particular event versus live showing or you know limiting uh lunchrooms versus not imposing as many limits in the lunchrooms you know what because i feel like we've been getting a lot of correspondence as far as well in one school this is happening and
046in another it's a little bit different yeah and in disclosure there were some inconsistencies that we had to address and when you've got a district of you know 8 500 students and you know 12 buildings to some extent that happens i'd encourage anyone to just let us know i think we've addressed things you know very quickly but some of them are nuanced too based on facility right what i can do in one building i may not be able to do in another building or vice versa so what may seem is inconsistent is just a limiting factor based on facility and layout but we certainly want to be consistent across the board and any of that that exists just communicated we'll we'll resolve it the best we can i know you know i had the opportunity
047with principals i know dr winkelmann meets with him on a regular basis as well and and has these conversations awesome thanks thanks brothers by the way yeah yeah thank you so much for all you're doing dr hun i think he said that there would be a an update for bussing um and how that is import how masking is enforced on buses did we ever do we have one or is that is that up to the school the school bus drivers my understanding and there was some there was some things pushed out whether this is my understanding is we are under federal requirements to continue to require masking on busing who are who is in control of enforcing that for us is i mean i think it's a little difficult for the bus drivers but i
048mean but are they given the authority to yeah there's a process in place just and again i try trying to take this away from the masking situation but if there's behavior issues on buses or you know things that happen on the bus there's a referral process to building principles that happens and occurs and those students are addressed and dealt with accordingly in the schools if there's a pervasive issue i would just go with through dr bine and he would work with the transportation company to address it so the bus drivers do have authority to enforce masking buses and then if there's an issue they'll work with our building principles yes now you know full disclosure we're not going to deny a student you know we we do the best we can we're not going to
049leave students sitting out in the cold you know we will refer to the building and the building will manage the problem from there okay okay any other comments great all right so next up is public comment so um at the public comment portion of our meeting we set a time for the public we value your thoughts and opinions and in accordance with board policy we ask that you state your name elementary attendance area or relationship to the district before beginning your comments we also ask you to limit your comments to three minutes today because we've got less than 20 speakers and you can see the countdown timer on the screen the board will ensure that all voices are are respected and heard in accordance with our board equity statement that's that states that we recognize
050embrace and defend identities abilities and voices of our diverse school school community emperor our board policy visitors and conduct on school property we the school district expects mutual respect civility and orderly conduct among people on school property the board commits to addressing issues and not attacking people and we will ask the community to do the same if someone has represented your views please do not feel the need to repeat their comments instead consider standing to show your support we ask that these actions do not delay or impede the public comment or the work of the board and again as a reminder public comment is not a conversation and does not necessarily reflect the views of the board if any comment requires further attention we will ask dr hunt to follow up and report back to
051the board so with that being said we have 13 speakers today so first up is miranda casper after miranda will be rachel roberts welcome hi good evening um my name is miranda casper hop rider i have a 10 year old in barrington 220. huff street would normally be our home school but my daughter is autistic and she's in the special education program over at lions i'm here for a couple reasons i have a few questions for the board first off is about the transition as i stated my daughter has special needs and the the pull of the the required masking was a serious issue in my house it's not just kids who are in special education it's kids who have immunocompromised parents who are immune compromised themselves kids with social emotional needs mental mental health
052needs and you guys pulled the rug out right from underneath us my daughter i worked two years to get her to a place where school was fun again and she didn't want to go she didn't want to be there because she was afraid she was going to get sick so what do you guys say to us where's the explanation of the loss of transition you guys told us it would be a step process and in one file swoop it was gone forget about what that does to us as parents think about what that did to our kids whether you're in general ed special ed whatever these are kids and they are looking to you to set an example the other issue that i have is my daughter's been bullied for various reasons but most recently
053i had her come home and tell me that some kid pulled on her mask and told her to take her face diaper off that's unacceptable at any level i don't care if you're 10 if you're 18 if you're 35 i think the thing is is that every parent here can agree we just have our kids we just want what's best for our kids there's a parent here who doesn't love their kid i can tell you that and finally my question is a pretty basic one um you guys say that people that you know the theory is people don't need kids don't need to wear masks because they're not gonna get sick so let me see if i understand this my daughter doesn't have to wear a mask to school and can be subjected to that
054but she can't take a peanut butter and jelly sandwich to school because there's some unwritten law that peanuts are not allowed in certain schools well peanuts are only dangerous to those who are allergic to them not everybody else it's the same thing with a mask why do you wear a mask to protect those who can't protect themselves just like with peanut butter thank you miranda next up is rachel roberts hello um my name is rachel roberts i have two children in the district we are in the lines area as the conversation around masking continues to evolve i challenge the board to remember that rarely is an issue black and white and interpreting the tro as we have we have failed to see those students who we have impacted the most immunocompromised and those who cannot
055reliably mask due to medical issues these children and their rights to a free appropriate public education are being marginalized by our response a downstate ruling should have no impact on how we implement federal law to provide safety to students with ieps and 504 plans protected under the americans with disabilities act our children should not be forced to stay home because we are too ignorant to see beyond our own interests masking when in class with or when teaching the immunocompromised is a reasonable accommodation to ensure educational access to all thank you thank you rachel next up is brian friggi hello brian briggy one at lions one at the elc we're all used to that preamble at this point uh as we sit here tonight we're a little more than a week into our abrupt forced policy
056shift while i was upset with the ruling and subsequent decisions i was looking forward to a return to civility sadly that has not materialized over the course of the last week we've seen bullying calls for the removal of masks from students who are willingly wearing them and even threats to call the department of children and family services on parents who continue to mask their kids meanwhile one of the prominent organizations calling for the removal of masks is now denouncing social emotional learning gender identity and more as parts of critical race theory this has become the real life adaptation of if you give a mouse a cookie undoubtedly you'll hear statistics tonight from those claiming that the removal of mass has caused no harm more accurately the statistics we hear tonight will be nothing more than
057the predictable outcomes of a system with no checks and balances the numbers i am more interested are how many kids miss school as a result of the abrupt shift how many parents were called because their student wanted to be picked up midday either as a result of anxiety from the change or displaying covet-compatible symptoms how many students are carrying covet home to vulnerable family members unfortunately these numbers are too nebulous to quantify in any meaningful way and won't show up on any dashboard or in any mitigation plan but the impacts on our community are no less profound as we see litigation continue and legislation take place i urge you to use any ounce of local control we regain even if that local control is in the form of remote learning during a fight thank you
058brian next up is beena come off ring good evening my name is bina kameth rain and i'm the mother of three kids including one at countryside foundations i'm also a pediatrician who wants to present some data about covet and kids i'm a little bit surprised about the tenor of this meeting and the idea that things are so much better to date 12.3 million coveted cases have been diagnosed in children this is likely an underestimate because not all kids are tested and i would challenge that our data as well are an underestimate almost a quarter of these were diagnosed in the last four weeks our current rates are coming down but they're still higher than the peaks of the last two coveted surges i'm appreciative that we have managed to keep our school our kids in
059school this entire year using coven mitigations to keep our schools safe and accessible yet this changed abruptly a week ago for students with disabilities these coded mitigations are an issue of civil rights determining whether they will have access to a free and appropriate public education that our federal laws require i am the mother of one of those children he has developmental disability and he does not wear a mask reliably and i could tell you stories about our history to get his health where we are now he is in a special education class and he receives ptot and speech through his iep things that we could not provide in a home school setting yet optional masking puts him and other children who cannot mask who are immunocompromised or who have other complex health needs at higher
060risk for covid my son relies on other people to care about him and mask to protect him so i thank those of you in the room who are masked how is this different from the reasonable accommodations we would make including banning smoking indoors to protect others or asking children not to bring food with peanuts if a child has a peanut allergy my son cannot tell me who in his classroom is masked so i do not have a way to understand his risk did 25 percent or 100 percent of his teachers and therapists care enough about him to mask the district has decided to protect their rights to make a choice that could potentially harm my child and to value their choice more than my child's health and i believe it is a violation of our
061federal laws we all want a safe and healthy community and that means we consider everyone in the community there are parents here who will not attend these meetings because masking policies are not enforced parents with children less than five years of age who are doing bedtime routines non-english speaking families who cannot be here without a translator they can't be here to represent themselves i ask that you remember those people you're making decisions and consider how to protect all of our children thank you thank you next is maddie rothenratheno good evening my name is maddie ruthio i was i went to grove avenue elementary school i went to station middle school and i'm currently a senior at barrington high school you may recall receiving emails from me regarding my concern for the mental health issues the
062mask mandates have imposed on to students thank you dr hun and mrs carram for your responses i'm currently a senior at barrington high school and has spent the past two years behind a mask i've been repeatedly shamed for not wearing the mask properly if it falls below my nose i've been called disrespectful by a teacher as well as numerous students i was even sent home from school because i chose not to wear a mask one day seventy five thousand people chose to ignore the the california and sophie stadium mandate and not wear a mask but they were able to stay and watch a football game i one person was denied a day of education because i didn't comply countless hours have been wasted dealing with talking about shaming belittling and worrying about if a student
063has a piece of useless cloth oh they're over their nose and mouth accordingly it's amazing what money will do i've been at a complete breaking point for two years i've not seen my teachers without masks nor the expressions and smiles from my friends at school last year due to my heavy class load no lunch and not being allowed to remove my mask to eat in class i had to make the hard choice to continue online learning my entire junior year i spent online the oppressive measures the government has placed upon our young generation have been lamentable the depression and mental health issues that has caused my generation and has only begun the long lasting effects we will see for many years to come last week as you are all aware a judge in sangemon county
064ruled in favor of lists of the listed plaintiffs against the defendants including dt20 she ruled for a temporary restraining order against the state requiring schools to mandate masks monday february 7 2022 i was able to finally walk in the high school with no mask smiling ear to ear knowing i would not get in trouble it was the best day of school i've had since my sophomore year i did not come here to talk about to talk about all the reasons why i strongly believe masks should be optional after all i assume you're all highly educated and know that masks have zero science to support their use there is no science to prove wearing a cloth math mask prevents the spread of covid in an age group where there is a zero percent risk of death
065i came here tonight to say stop stop trying to fight the mass optional route stop with the appeal there were only a handful of districts who actually did let us move on and get back to what school should really be stop being on the wrong side of history and start making a difference thank you [Applause] hi my name is paul rednecky student at countryside and a student at the high school i wanted to thank the board the last meeting really and we've got a series of meetings like this but last the last one i think was the the kind of a tipping point for me i spent a lot of time considering it aside from dr hunt those up here at this table are volunteers you you're elected to serve you're elected to spend your
066time you spend hours talking about things that you would you know i'm sure all of you would rather talk about textbooks budgets buildings desks chairs lunches and school bus schedules anything but covet 19. but thank you for keeping the conversation civil i know there's opinions on this board that are very divergent they disagree but you've been a good example to this community and trying to keep things on par now that said a couple other things stood out to me at the last meeting um one thing is something dr all schuler said quite emphatically is that as a as a school district as a community we need to find ways to protect vulnerable people masks aren't going to last forever i'm just going to be a little pragmatic about that right but under what conditions and
067the challenge you've heard from the board on bullying and bullying in both directions already in the public comment this evening the challenges really on this board and on this community how do we protect vulnerable people how do we keep people in school how do we comply with federal law and not cause the heartbreak that we saw in some of our teenage speakers that we've seen over the last few months that's a big challenge i think that's the core challenge that we face in in keeping this civil and keeping kids in school and keeping things safe um i'm interested in a couple things one i still encourage the board no matter the legal movements uh to continue to build out that matrix that was first approved i'm not quite sold on it myself it's one measure
068that we've sort of lived by and abide by with standards on and three others listed next to it that don't seem to factor into the conversation i don't understand how those other three factors that we're measuring play into that matrix so i'd like a little more build out of how that works and how the district intends to use that information also we've taken a lot of pains i know the nursing staff dr hunt you spoke to it a couple things ago went through a lot of effort to get vaccination data on cova 19 as a parent with a new immunocompromised person in my house i would have a lot of comfort knowing the risks that we face and part of that is communicating the vaccination rates in the buildings case data i think is still
069underreported people are testing at home i don't know if those tests always get reported to the school nurses so that's a data puzzle i don't know the solution for but i think it's one we also have to tackle so thank you for your time thank you for your time and your volunteers monica casey after monica will be marcia mccleary hi monica casey i belong to the grove avenue school district and i have a sophomore at the high school right now so last week we all experienced mask optional across the district with overwhelming positive feedback from both students and staff and it was very encouraging looking ahead for better times so many of us including myself had an opportunity to be featured on a radio station throughout the week and i just wanted to be clear
070that i commented and i commended district 220 for the leadership and the staff their emphasis on respect and on advocating that students respect each other and their choices and at the same time giving us the freedom to have each child show up to school in the most comfortable manner that they felt appropriate at the time whether it's with or without a mask so i continue wanting to thank you for that and giving us that ability to enjoy that week i know that just from my feedback personally it was a tremendously overwhelming happy week with a lot of nice feedback and interaction throughout our family so i want to thank you for that and i just wanted to comment regardless of wherever this appeal falls um there is no question that the decision to prolong these
071mandates is going to have a profound effect on our children it already has in the last two years um whether we want to acknowledge it or not there are significant delays that have occurred in in our children's education and potentially irreparable harm regarding their emotional cognitive and social development so it's important that you as a board and i'm sure you're all aware and are discussing these things at some of some of your meetings it's important to understand and place focus on how important it will be to ensure proper support and professional resources as well as training of professionals to assist our children in these transitions just hearing feedback today whether it's on one side or the other all of our children need support and they need professionals to assist them in that transition going forward
072and it's only going to help in our recovery from all of this over the last 24 plus months but thank you thank you marcia marsha mccleary thank you so much for um your decisions and quick movements um from the case outcome it was such a joyful week i saw so many happy students and my kids came home and said everything was just just so happy and i really appreciate it i know there's probably some hiccups and some things happening and i think that's to be expected but um i even steve said on the pto meeting yesterday that things were going um considerably well so i i commend you on reacting to the case so quickly um i did want to mention something um so i i thought about whether i should say this or not
073but a lot of people call me and they trust me and they talk to me about what's going on and sometimes they don't feel comfortable telling people in public especially if they're a teacher or something so i'm going to read you a little story and this is about the case because local control you know what you're asking for in the appeal would be um to take away due process from the parents and that includes quarantines and quarantines is a challenging situation for people and this is just a story i want to tell we always want to keep the healthy kids in school and that's what you all have said many many times publicly so here's somebody that i talked to last week who is really sad i'm this person i'm a teacher in another district
074with two children in d220 i'm afraid to speak out for fear of retribution or problems in the school or fear of my children being looked at differently or treated differently my daughter has been healthy quarantined twice school this year this school year and my son once each for 10 days neither of them ever developed any coveted symptoms nor did they test positive in all this my husband and i also missed nearly six weeks of work combined on top of being the only caregiver for my aging parents i found the vote to appeal denying our rights potentially again in the future for due process of law over quarantines to be unacceptable and i'd like to understand how that decision was made i am so frustrated over all the stress of teaching and then to have my
075children at home learning and quite frankly not having access to a lot of their classes was completely devastating to my household and i'm about ready to leave my profession and i find it ironic that i'm a teacher and i love my profession she said to me she said and then my union used my union dues to try to intervene in the lawsuit as well and try to keep mass on the teachers i don't want to discipline these students for keeping mass on their faces i want to get back to teaching the profession i love and i want to keep my healthy kids in school they never developed covid and never once was i asked by the health department what our side of the story was about why they were quarantined or who quarantined them or
076what happened because they wouldn't tell me so she was very frustrated and this is a part of due process of law that's half of the case at half of its mass but this is also a key part so that's why i think what you made is the right decision to take um thank you mark to change your mind thank you so much next up nelda munoz hi this is nalden munoz and i have kids at north barrington and station um first i gotta say thank you to all the moms who participated in the case congratulations thank you and thank you for giving us the opportunity for the law to show that all these mandates were on right unrightful and thank you for giving us the free of choice with that said uh regarding these school
077buses uh per usc 0249 usc ch 53 public transportation school bus service is not defined as public transportation therefore it does not fall under the federal regulations federal transportation rights would apply only if the bus is crossing state lines our buses do not cross state lines and fyi the barrington school bus company is a private company so therefore your federal regulation do not apply there um another thing today is going to be short i actually have a four-year request and i am doing it in public i don't know if uh miss lauren barofsky if she is here no anyway uh this one i am requesting because information on what are the kids learning at school there is no school um textbooks everything is on ipads and magazines and articles i don't know who writes these
078articles i don't understand who are these magazines that are considered school appropriate material so therefore i am requesting one for the rest of the year very specific to my children and please let me know who do i hand it out to thank you nothing maggie mcgonagall good evening everyone and thank you for being here my name is mogus da mcgonagall and i'm actually political candidate for uh fifth congressional district in the state of illinois um thank you so much for this is what's happening here it is the most beautiful view ever this is what freedom is this is what choice is so we all have a choice here we're all sitting very politely and peacefully here and having a great meeting yesterday was i had i got handed a survey from prairie school from one
079of the students and i want to read it out loud how old are you the answers are 9 10 11 12 13 14 or older question number two what grade are you in six seven or eight are you female male transgender do not identify as a female male or transgender question number four which of the following best describes you heterosexual straight gay or lesbian bisexual i describe myself sexual identity some other way i'm not sure about my sexual identity i don't know what this question is asking what kind of survey is this this is profiling where is the survey going to can we take a deeper look in that survey that was passed in prairie this is a screenshot taken by a student pulling this out i can pass this survey over but this is
080a serious issue right right here right now because first of all no children should be asked about their sexual preferences especially using sexual pres preferences to describe themselves since when we do that so can i please uh dr han ask you to look into that survey i'll give you a copy of it thank you thank you katie tesdale thank you katie tom eamon eamon i said it wrong thank you tom eamon parent of students at prairie countryside first of all i just want to commend you on dropping the appeal i had remarks to speak to that but i think that was a right decision there and i think today we hear a lot of stories about bullying on both sides and i i hear it from my kids at home and also i hear from
081the public today as well as others and another thing i could say is you know i think the tone at the top will go a long way dr hunt and i think at your opening onset of this meeting you talked about a lot of empathy and understanding and i see that in your messaging and the way you conduct yourself and i would just stress that that also extends to all the teachers in the school i think a lot of the students will follow and learn from the teachers and i think a lot of what they say uh goes a long way and if they are leaning one way or the other i think it could put a lot of pressure undue pressure on the students to act in that same way you know one thing
082i would say you know as well i understand everybody needs to go through this in their own way but i also don't think it's acceptable or appropriate when teachers will open up the windows in 20 and 30 degree weather and have them open all day i think that is you know not setting the right message there and i understand maybe some people are afraid in that way but i don't think that that's really in the name of safety so i would encourage you to really emphasize to your teachers that people the student student body does follow the teacher's lead and by doing actions like that or making comments about masking or anything else that will have an implication and impact on the students and i would really just emphasize your opening remarks earlier that everybody
083needs to go through this with empathy and understanding from one another and i appreciate all the challenges that you've been facing over these past few months but years actually and thank you for the the tone and the message you've been sending thank you thank you thank you tom [Applause] next up is jim mcgrath so i'm going to change the discussion a little bit i'm here to thank the district for nathaniel rouse's participation in the webinar event that was held thursday january 27th it was titled confronting the rise of school board disruptions the primary sponsor of the event was illinois families for public schools i work with the illinois indivisible social justice alliance who sponsored the event we had over 20 host organizations supporting this event including the dupage naacp the illinois muslim civic coalition coalition
084the asian american advancing justice just to name a few the focus of the meeting was on diversity equity and inclusion we had over one thousand sign ups over 650 attended speakers included jennifer berkshire and author christina pacquiao illinois state senator julie harris special ed teacher from tinley park as well as mr rouse attendance was from across the nation from states including virginia oregon michigan new york north carolina missouri alabama new mexico georgia florida indiana tennessee many attendees did not include their state on their reserve registration so i can safely assume there were a lot more states represented mr ross's participation uh with with mr russell's participation district 220 got national attention you can see the number of states the the high interest in this topic got national attention and recognition as a leader on this
085issue he had a great presentation we encourage our attendees to uh to attend their school board meetings to understand the issues and to support the current board members we want to avoid unacceptably raucous meetings that district 220 has experienced in other districts as well hence the title confronting the rise of school board disruptions so again i want to thank mr ross first participation thank you thank you okay so that concludes public comment maybe just a couple things that we've heard i think we've heard that there we continue to maybe see some bullying and we need to do something about maybe promoting their respect even more and then i would just ask that you fall for the specific special needs students that are raised against yeah so i just encourage everyone to please reach out to
086building level principals so we clearly understand the issues and i know our assistant superintendent of pupil services beth jones is here you know we certainly will follow up and do what is necessary to help any of our students whether they're on ieps or not but certainly reach out thank you appreciate that okay so next up is my report um so as dr hunt uh mentioned i wanted to say a few words about black history month i just want to read a short excerpt from the proclamation from the national black history month for 2022. uh each february national black history month serves as both a celebration and a powerful reminder that black history is american history black culture is american culture and black stories are essential to the ongoing story of america our faults our struggles
087our progress and our aspirations shining a light on black history today is as important to understanding ourselves and growing stronger as a nation as it has ever been that is why it is essential that we take time to celebrate the immeasurable contributions of black americans honor the legacies and achievements of generations past reckon with centuries of injustice and confront those injustices that still fester today as a board of education we look forward to continuing our commitment to equity we support and encourage educational awareness for students staff and parents as we celebrate black history month in our barrington 220 school community i noticed but i haven't had a chance to listen to it yet but even bhs tv had a recognition um on one of their pod on one of their casts recently so i'll i
088would encourage everybody to take a listen to that as well hear what our students have to say so on that same note um we do have our equity workshop set up for our next more next board meeting on march 1st so um please board plan to attend early for a closed session um we also had recently our first planning session with um on strategic planning and we're working on forming a suitable timeline and until when we get to community reports you can elaborate a little bit more if you'd like but please board watch for dr hunt's report this week for more details and um how we can get involved there also to the community on the same note you watch for a communication coming out whether in email if you're on the board email or
089on the district emails also a card to your home mail will be sent home requesting community input for the strategic planning so appreciate everybody's participation in that and that concludes what i have to report today so let's see what next up is informational reports any questions on informational reports that we received this week i just had a question dr ponte i i don't know if this is possible but there were an awful lot of foia requests and they were extensive and i'm just wondering if there's any idea how much staff time is spent on those requests we don't currently track staff time if that's something the board would like to happen we can start doing that from a cost and you know legal standpoint as well as legal has to review all of those um
090as well i i can only speak to the ones i'm involved with in terms of staff time i know there's a tremendous amount of time under the dr bine's office to you know go through that for sure i just think it's important for the community to know you know i think it's everyone can foia information it's public information but it does come at a cost and staff time an attorney attorney costs as well on that note actually several of these are honestly just asking for a copy of a foia that was already done is there do we ever just post the i mean how do are these public like why is there a way that we can have these available so people don't have to re-request foias i i do not know that the district
091has ever done that before those are certainly not the ones that take a lot of time because it's simply a sharing of information it's the you know it's the actual creation of the original i mean i understand that some have to be lengthy yeah obviously so that might not be an easy thing to do but yeah and some of them are you know i don't want to use the word thousands but hundreds of pages right yeah well we have seen thousands in the past yeah i think maybe before you're here um so maybe what you could do is give us a kind of a reminder of um how we address foias and in your weekly report this week sure and if there's interest in tracking hours and costs we can certainly do that sorry i
092asked if he could just give us a reminder of how we address foyez and what the process is in his weekly report does that sound like a helpful next step i guess i just think it's a public awareness of the time and staff and attorney cost is you know the process i'm not so concerned with i think unfamiliar but i think that it might be helpful for the public to know how much you know this costs so maybe in that tell us you know what that would i can tell you what that would look like in the report and then the board can make a decision on whether they want to include that information in in agendas or as a release we can do that that's unfair thank you yeah okay oh so next up
093is board committee reports so i know we've had policies certainly met yeah yes policymat um you'll see all of that um we actually met for longer this time because there's there's a lot to get through so um this will be continuing for the next couple of meetings as well we weren't able to get through everything uh in our meeting and then sandra just to follow up on what you mentioned um with our strategic planning meeting um you know you really touched on the highlights of it for the community but just to you know kind of fill the community in on every 10 years we try to develop a new strategic plan that really drives the decisions that the district is making and you know when i started my board service seven years ago we were
094kind of right in the middle of the prior plan and uh it was interesting to see you know these ideas that had happened years ago um get vetted out and discussed and brought to the community and you know all the different decisions that were made so we're we are overdue a little bit on this or it was 2020 so we we are we've had a few hiccups along the way which you might be aware of there are a couple things happening um but also we wanted to wait until dr hunt came in and really got established to help us drive these decisions so sandra and i both met with our team that we're working with and that team is going to include the community so in a lot of different ways so not just with
095you know looking at those surveys that you get mailers that you get the input there needs to be a buzzer or something that we like a little shock um we're not using the s word we are going to request for informations uh and um and then also just meeting with different people throughout the community not just like pto heads and things like that but all different uh constituents and really looking at all of our shareholders and different groups just to gather their interests their thoughts their perspectives on how the school district has uh been working how theirs their kids are thriving and how they see new improvements so um this will be a few month process but even after we come up with a plan it'll be another 10 years to implement that plan so
096there are plenty of times for you to get involved angela on that note actually i've had people reach out and ask how they do get to speak with you on this is there who should people be contacting i think they could contact myself sandra or dr hunt or all of us yeah and we'll push those opportunities out as well but and you can kind of draw their attention to them but certainly send them our way yeah maybe we could even you know well when we give our input and stuff we can talk about that too yeah but for now the three of the three of us okay also the district equity team met last week we had a great meeting over zoom and we're hoping to reconvene soon at different schools which we had started
097to in the beginning of the year to kind of learn the rhythms of each school starting with that though from the district equity team we i wanted to say gong si fatah and gong hey fat toy and i would say it in korean and other languages but i think i'm limited to chinese and spanish but uh but uh nuevo so we did have the lunar new year welcomed the year the tiger on february 1st and because of our chinese immersion program we had parties lunar new year parties across the district at every grade level especially our elementary and i think the kids had a lot of fun with that and i think families continue to have their own celebrations with dumpling making and things like that at their own home so it was really cool
098to see that a special shout out to mrs weirtz and mr yu who held a very cool event at the with in conjunction with the barrington area library they had their chinese immersion eighth graders pair up with chinese immersion kindergarten through third graders and the eighth graders read stories and mandarin to the younger kids and played new lunar new year bingo and i think some pandas were won and books and so that was a really cool enjoyable uh celebration too for our chinese immersion kids and a way to integrate the older kids with the younger kids so happy year of the tiger um also happy black history month um as dr hunt and sandra mentioned and yes shout out to vhs tv for the past few years they've come out with a special black history
099month episode and they're working on it right now and i think it's going to be released in the next week or so so look for that and speaking of black history month and other months as you may know the district equity committee is a district equity team is a cross-section of community members staff assistant superintendents and dr hunt comes at times too as well and board members leah and i serve on it so big cross-section of the community and the work is really equity in access not just with race but also neurodivergence and gender and sexual orientation so it's really a deep and broad look at equity throughout 220 and something pretty cool that nate roush showed us at our last team meeting is a cultural celebration calendar he's been working on and he uh
100he's been compiling so if you have suggestions please email him at endrouse at barrington220.org but of course he's got black history month but also women's history month national neuro diver diversity acceptance month which is october polish american heritage month also october italian american heritage month uh national arab american heritage month in april national american asian pacific american heritage month in may and hispanic latino heritage month in september and october and a few others and not only does he list that out he has links to lesson plans and ways to resources for our teachers and staff and also for our families across the district if you want to start talking with your kids and look for ideas to celebrate these different months that honor who we are as a community and as a country so i
101wanted to shut that out as well and lastly he talked to us about the isb illinois uh it's a an equity journey continuum and he shared this memo with us as a board but uh it's something new that isb has uh coming out that really assesses all of illinois school districts on equity with regard to student learning learning conditions and something called elevating educators and they'll be giving districts four grades one number one literally number one being large gaps in equity moderate gas and equity small gas and equity and minimal gas and equity so we'll get a chance to kind of see how we're doing in each of those buckets so that was an interesting uh update from from the uh school board um the state school board but we have anything else to add
102you covered almost everything so yeah yeah so just gonna say those acronyms is the illinois education you know those there's a lot of those that are confusing so yeah so it's statewide too this equity journey so it's nice we're a little bit ahead of the game i think compared to other school districts any other committee reports okay all right so next up is our consent agenda um do we have a motion to approve the consent agenda as presented second okay and before we i did not get the first very very okay um before we do a roll call at it let me just read through um what all we have on the consent agenda and first i wanted to point out that we have a generous donation from jim and connie nettles to the high
103school robotics club it reminded me also that we had some competition with robotics club i think we had three teams if i remember right if i read the tweet right that were competed at competing together at the highest level against each other all from barrington but there was even more um participants at that competition as well so i knew we would leave something out when sarah was talking so i'll give a shout out to the robotics club for their competitions ongoing as well um so on our consent agenda we have um the grants and gifts that we i just mentioned um december reports for 2021 exception bills um nslp exception bills activity accounts for bhs and even k-8 wage and payroll report the treasurer's report revenue and expenditures and january reports for the bill list
104and nslp bill list we have minutes both open and closed from january 31st and you'll notice that the clothes were revised there was just a time that was incorrect on them so we got that revised so um that just happened just before the board meeting so please take a note of that and also today we have a revised personnel report that will include um the athletic director that we spoke about earlier in the meeting any questions or comments on the consent agenda hearing none let's do a roll call sandra bradford yes steve wang yes aaron chan ding yes leah collister lazari yes katie carram barry alt-schuler yes angela wilcox yes right motion passes next up we have our action items the first action item is to approve the second reading of board policy we have
105four policies up um [Music] does anybody have any questions on them maybe just a real quick review with all all changes that were that were presented within these four policies um being the four policies being 220 powers and duties of the school board um two colon 120s uh board member development three colon 40 superintendent four colon 165 which is a new policy and awareness and prevention of child sexual abuse and grooming behaviors um any questions or comments on those changes that were um driven by press and new mandates all right do we have a motion to approve the four policies that i just mentioned did you get it i did okay all right let's do a roll call barry all chiller yes leah callister lazari yes katie karam erin chanding yes sandra bradford yes steve
106wang yes angela wilcox yes all right motion passes um next up we have an action item to consider approval to to approve a resolution for land donation for heart road pedestrian path and bridge um do we have a motion to approve what's as presented so moved second okay i'm assuming we're gonna have a little discussion on this yeah i think it's a you did receive a memo from nicole saterra to dr byne this is a land donation the village of barrington in coordination with lake county is looking to construct a multi-use pedestrian pass along the south and west sides of barrington high school property i think it's a a great thing for our students in terms of access and safety just to appreciate the the collaboration so we can put this in place for our
107kids any other comments or questions from the board and just to be complete so the community knows we're also doing a temporary easement so there's appear there's a part for the bridge where we have to give them a little bit of our land which we will get back but so they can do what they need to do it won't encroach on anything academic or sports wise for our for our students but so the donation is also easement yeah so this is a great thing for safety for students absolutely incredible i think we've been waiting years for this to have the sidewalks put in so it'll be huge improvement for us and we'll connect existing walkways that exist today as well okay why don't we do a roll call steve wang yes leah callister lazari yes
108angela wilcox yes sandra bradford yes erin chan ding yes barry all schuler yes katie karam yes motion passes okay so next we're going to move to discussion items we have oh my gosh um eight oh my gosh eighteen um policies to review we can just let them out we can we'll let craig guide us through this good job do you want to thank aaron and angela for putting in the extra time as we try to plow through all these policy updates all right let's start with two colon 110. this policy the two updates to it are allows the board to meet remotely without quorum physically present during a public health emergency and also make sure that the board president is responsible for conducting background checks for the superintendent those are the two content changes any
109questions from the board i guess not sounds like we can move that one forward for a second uh reading at our next meeting okay next one up is 2 colon 220. some talks about the highlights of procedural requirements for the board to review closed meeting minutes a semi-annual review and identifies which edition of robert's rules of order the board president must use when addressing procedure questions any questions or comments are we good to move that one forward i'm seeing head nods so okay next let's go to four colon sixty uh this deals with the coal tar sealant disclosure act a lot of discussions i i want to see you asked one just to know how much you know about coal tar well it's in the next policy too you're okay with that one we can
110go to let's do it okay this one also addresses the coal tar sealant that we just referred to as well as pesticides and the use in our schools and making sure we're filing following the guidelines excellent any questions on this one oracle and 160. i'm just assuming we don't use these products already right that's right okay we're in compliance we didn't talk about that at policy that we are aware we thank you for that leah that clarification okay or 170 next all right i'm going to keep going all right for colin 170 on safety this adds the word lockdown to the law enforcement trail as you know we do a series we're required annually to do drills in the district it also allows parents or guardians to request that their child not participate in a
111drug questions or comments can i just ask informationally you you later in there they talk about the aeds um does every school have an aed we do oh okay procedure in placeberry in each of the buildings we routinely check and test them to make sure they're working and replace any batteries and so forth yeah that's great i mean i knew we had them here at the high school in the middle school i didn't realize they had them at the elementary school but we have portable ones too all from prior acts that we're required to have available especially at like athletics or activities where maybe you're out on the field coaches bring those right excellent question good reminder all right sounds like we're good to move forward on that one as well okay next one for
112colon 175. this policy the language was added to specify the board president's role and our committee just a point of clarification green highlights are recommendations from press blue is actually recommendations from our committee we did add the language there that the board president and then our our added language was working in conjunction with the human resources department shall ensure that the checks are completed for the superintendent obviously with the board hiring the superintendent position it would be a a joint of the board president as well as hr making sure that that gets completed any questions on that one let me just add a good ad right i mean and if you look at the um the note it actually specifies that in the note but we just thought that it you know it was fine
113to pull that forward to the actual policy that's good okay okay all right sounds like we're good to move forward on that one too okay uh five colon 30. uh this policy the update is uh requires the board president to provide written notice to specific entities to assist with investigating conviction records including trs when required by law so trs is our teacher retirement system making sure that they are also notified in those situations questions on that one okay sounds like we're good to move forward okay next one five colon 100 this is uh including staff development program requirements that are related to the mandated reporting training and aaron's law we just added all pre-k through 12 instead of just kindergarten through eight and we're advised that this is happening already excellent good addition i'm happy
114to hear it's already been addressed all right okay next one uh five colon 120. a few updates this one this establishes uh definitions related to grooming behaviors boundary violations and sexual misconduct it bans counselors from intentionally soliciting and are accepting gifts from prohibited sources and our committee removed guidance from that title to be consistent with organizational structure we we really refer to those positions as counselors we don't really that's an old term of guidance counselor so we wanted to be consistent there that was a change by our committee questions on that one sounds like we're good to move forward okay he's going five colon 125 updates to this policy uh we removed all examples of personal technology um you know the rationale for our community is it's difficult to keep current with technology so when
115you have terms like you know cd-roms and all kinds of stuff in there that becomes so quickly passed say that we wanted to make sure that we didn't have that type of language in the policy was a recommendation from the committee we formatted and defined terms throughout the policy which is consistent with our other policies there's also language that provides guidance for district employees using personal technology and or social media that was included in this policy so we did do a little bit of cleanup you know just format as well as making sure it's consistent with their other policies i just had one question on that one um i remember this discussion on this description of technology is it okay that we don't say this includes laptop computers was this our change so we we
116made that change and we talked about it a little bit um it was basically because as we first started reading through it i was like what's an ultra book and what's a platform phone right and so then i was like well let's take those out because those are dated terms and then you know i mean i think that it's it is good practice to try to keep these policies so that they don't look dated and you know you never know like in two years if people are gonna still be i'm sure they're gonna still be using iphones but you know god forbid blackberry falls out of contention but it may and then people will not know so we just decided to take all of the references out i guess we could have just listed like
117kept laptop computers tablets smartphones but with the way technology changes you know we thought that the the definition of personal technology is so broad and all-encompassing that it really kind of captures all that anyway so adding the examples might just make the policy look dated in a couple years yeah i agree i like it i just want to make sure that we won't be out of compliance if we don't list the the major likely that they said i can double check before second reading um just to make sure that making that adjustment doesn't put us out of compliance right but i don't believe so i think if i mean if it did then we could put it back in without all the examples listed yeah we could just take out everything in parentheses that kind
118of gives that creator does that make sense yeah that was the initial suggestion is to take out the things of parentheses and then like angela said it covered it but we we did get to google things like platform phones have an extensive just stories about from angela better blackberry it sounds like i should have come to policy oh it's riveting let me tell you [Laughter] i know it was i was a razor guy so i was a little offended razor yeah there were a few people we talked about our hot pink razors nice nice so let me check on that one yeah we could just double check i just want to make sure we stay in compliance then you have to look at the future right right yeah um and just for those listening we're
119we're a little more than halfway through if we as we get into the next one here there we are thank you all right next one five colon we added the subheadings and defined the process for responding to inquiries from prospective employers on former staff members job performance making sure that we comply with federal law so these are the new headers and titles that were added to this policy any questions on this one all right sounds like we're good to move forward you guys stop me if you yep okay five colon uh 185 is next um this one the family of medical leave um legal references simply were updated on this policy okay sounds good okay five colon two hundred um adding uh that the superintendent must comply with individual contract in addition to state and
120federal law and collective bargaining agreements when managing terms and conditions of professional personal personnel's employment so just updating in that first paragraph making sure that that's noted as far as the individual employment contract all right looks good all right next five colon 3 30 sick days vacation holidays and leaves we did some formatting changes and then we added the additional types of leave added for service in the general assembly as well as leaves for victims of domestic violence sexual violence gender violence or other crime of violence any questions on that one hearing none sounds like it's good to move forward the new law that i think was just passed what about covent leave does that have to be mentioned at all in there i don't know if that will end up being a separate policy
121or not oh okay did that have a did that law have a duration i don't think it did but it specifically was coverthouse we should we should ask about that craig to see if that's coming up that's a great question i'll check into that one just to see if it's included or in a next update okay i'll get back to you on that one okay uh next six colon 50 health and wellness the district is required as a participant of the national school lunch program to develop a food sharing program this is currently in practice and this is one that we talked about will be added to like our next administrative meeting agenda to really talk through more of the administrative procedures associated with it the unused food sharing plan yeah yeah so okay okay
122okay uh six colon 120 we added the requirement uh for districts to continue providing services for students with disabilities who turn 22 during the school year through the end of the school year okay there all right okay two more seven colon 250 student support services adding the requirements for students affected by sexual abuse under aaron's law and so that language is added to this policy hearing no questions sounds like we're good to move forward okay last one 7 colon 315 we did some formatting defining terms throughout the policies that were consistent again with our other policies definitions added to policy for clarification and defines responsibilities and limitations of student journalists so we did spend uh two meetings actually on this policy to kind of go through it and make sure that we understood the policy
123as well as what is in practice and there were some questions for our group to consider and so what's before you is what the committee recommended as an outcome of those two meetings i think aaron mentioned this at the maybe two meetings ago that we spent quite a bit of time on this one because it had some some journalism stuff and some legal stuff so um and i think one of the big questions was in this part where it says student journalists there was i don't remember exactly what that like should strive for or something and that you give six standards for you know what journalists student journalists should do and you know erin brought her expertise as far as saying like she felt that this was important and it shouldn't just be like they
124should try to be accurate that the student journalists must provide these six um kind of elements in their publications so very good any questions or comments looks like you guys were very thorough yes we were very excited by this policy all right okay that was the last one right it was yep that's the hard work you guys yeah yeah appreciate that i think we have about a similar number if we get through all of those for the next time and then i think we clear the debt we will yeah and it wasn't like 50 or something you guys had to go through and then yeah it went from literally zero to 50. we haven't canceled policy meetings we had nothing and then they all publishing goods yeah cody's been really good at keeping up and
125and staying on top of our policies so i think we're in a good position for you know districts that may have been behind that was a large press update to now add to your list of policies to review so thank you excellent thank you guys for that great work next up is discussion on the academic calendar for 2023-24 we got we received a memo does anybody have any questions or did you want to present something looks like teresa's coming up no i did have a couple of community questions and i can't remember if we addressed this previously but um just people were asking me why we switched the spring break week from the second to last week of march to the last week for both this calendar and the previous calendar always the last full
126week the last full week and that's some policy okay so we must have it must have just fallen into yeah i think the very last week has one day in april or something like that okay so it's a full week last full week we must i think we had a few years in a row where we must have had a half week for the last week of march or something and that's why okay cool thank you now this year this calendar year spring break overlaps with easter so there's not that extra good friday correct correct that's why we get out a little earlier in may than we normally do yeah i noticed that i was like wow and it's leap year too so we have an extra day in february we're not paying attention to
127unless you show us [Laughter] that's why we have a calendar committee all right so we will bring this back for i'm trying to remember april 4th april 4th yes thank you for that you're welcome assuming there's no more question it looks like not okay great um okay next is a discussion on budget planning so as dr biden comes up uh we had our commit committee the whole meeting the board uh asked to see uh two scenarios regarding yes uh levy as you know a revenue uh source for next year uh just a reminder cpi's at seven caps at five so the uh dr blind and his team ran scenarios for zero and two and a half percent so i'll turn it over to you dude first of all i'd just like to say um i
128feel like i'm my daughter eva right now eva a few years back was a state champion in speech for the radio events and and just about a month ago was recognized on campus down the university of illinois from someone who is was forced to watch some of her events um as she was competing in speech at her high school but anyway with the microphone right here ladies and gentlemen i do feel like eva so i'm just waiting are you going to drop an octopus i may do a commercial in here which was a required part of the radio speech competition yeah it took a long time to get there it did well yeah and you gotta guess it's gonna be i think it was early yet so yes board members you have uh some information
129i've provided that for you as dr pon said was a recap on what our assumptions were as well as several different models and i'm happy to answer any questions about that as we move forward with some of our planning and budget development for this next year okay so just to cover some of the graphs with the general you know the the community i i don't have those in a position where i'm able to uh project those will they have access to these on this forum i mean if they go into our agenda will they be able to see these graphs i don't i don't know janine do you know where are they out in public or are they they're usually in public i'm not sure i was just asking okay or they may not be
130now and will be after the meeting we can make them i think these were prior because they were part of the committee as a whole the the probably the ones that have the lines probably these are your new ones with the two and a half yeah yeah right now they're they're not so we we can turn them on to go public tomorrow okay yeah as soon as they're presented to the board then we would do that the next morning okay so i just wanted a quick refresher on the one that we talked about on at our committee the whole meeting we had um a deficit that we were going to that you guys were going to work on i think it was just under 400 000 that's correct so um you are you still feel
131confident you're going to be able to address that correct yes that's correct uh board members we you know if we continue on a regular basis have conversations around the budget the way things are shaping up for this next year and i do believe that that deficit that we showed you at the community the whole meeting is something that we will be able to manage as we roll into the budget development process so did anybody have any questions about the other you know how the model changes when when we take those reductions in levy it's a significant difference so i don't have a question as much as i have a request so the way i'm looking at this when i when i see the zero percent increase option i'm looking at adults of approximately 3.6 million
132give or take this is so tell me exactly which scenario are you looking at i'm looking at this cpi at zero okay for levy year 22 23. or yeah i guess right fy23 only cpi at zero percent for levy year 22. correct yeah okay and the difference between um the budget 22 and the fiscal 23 number i'm talking about right which goes from a fund balance of about 52.1 to 48.5 right yes so that's a decline of approximately 3.6 million right so what i'm proposing or what i'm thinking is of so i get that you know the status quo if you will that was that was presented that's just south of 400 000 or just south of 300 000 it actually looked to me um it's something that you and dr hunt are comfortable kind
133of working through i guess my question is what type of undertaking would it require in order to have all the various budget owners take a crack at some piece of that 3.6 million within their own budget to see if we can get it back to you know a net neutral amount where our funds balance remains unchanged year over year yeah i i i will defer impart to dr hunt on this uh but i will tell you that it's uh you know looking for a three million dollar uh reduction you know the board has previously you know over the last this was probably about a year and a half ago uh maybe two years ago the board considered several different options for reductions uh from a half a million up to two million dollars at that
134time the board elected to go with a million dollars worth of reductions at that point in time and you know there's some level of effort involved to try and figure out what are what are those reductions uh what would they be uh you know to generate another three to four million dollars worth of ideas would probably require a fair fairly significant effort by staff to try and identify what programs will be affected what staffing will be affected in order to try and do that and then to weigh what those trade-offs are so doctor you may want to comment on it yeah i would just concur when you're looking at that level of reduction we're going to get into levels of programming that we're going to take some time to work through from a cost perspective
135okay well i guess for me i think it's i mean i do understand it's a time commitment but i think it would be worthwhile i mean we have a very capable administrative staff that i'm fully confident in and if i were to say hey guys look if we were down four million dollars what could we do i think it would be good to have an understanding of what we need to do because as we've talked about ad nauseam at this stage you know when we look at these numbers and they're continuously growing i think the question i think one needs to ask the question at what point do we have some reprieve or at what point do we you know pull a lever to try to change how we do things here as as a
136district and i and you know i'd like to be in the driver's seat of that rather than have that being forced on us because of you know xyz reasons whether it's through continuous decline in enrollment whether it's you know other things that could on a macro level change the ability for us to collapse and although this is not an action today i would pose to the rest of my board members over my fellow board members you know is there something that i think i think is something that we should as an exercise just have our administrative leaders undertake so that we have an understanding of what needs to be done well i think there's there's been a lot of work done on this in years past i don't know if it's going to be you
137know just like oh let me oh here's the page um but i i know that we looked i'm going to say two years ago but i could be way off about transportation we talked about what are the fees associated with you know small buses large buses activity buses um and you know we generally talked about well should we look at making cuts to this or are we in a pretty good spot financially and it's my recollection again i could be way off but i it's my recollection at that point we were like i think we're in a pretty good spot and i don't really think that we need to cut you know any of these services or things like that um while always encouraging the district to look for um efficiencies in transportation where they
138can be had but you know maybe pulling you know some information like that um i mean clearly the you know and unfortunately when you look at numbers like three to four million i think that the you don't get there unless you significantly cut staff which means you you know either increase class sizes look at programming or look at extracurriculars i mean those are kind of your big options and you know before i think we go down that path um and and you know there there are a lot of considerations when we have you know new contracts that we're going to be negotiating etc um but i do think we should have a kind of a consensus as to how much do we feel is you know like what we're looking for um but you know
139to me i with work that's been done recently that we can pull i think that that's it's very timely you know especially and all i can think of is transportation off the top of my head but i know we've looked at other things as well within the past couple of years maybe three and transportation was something that we did look at and we also recently did another transportation update where the the thrust of that was what is the level of service that exactly that we're comfortable with and both times that i've had the opportunity to talk with the board about that the board's been comfortable with the level of service that that we have understanding that if we wanted to save money on the transportation side first of all you save about 50 cents on
140the dollar that of course varies each year based on what the state reimbursement is but um that there would need to be reductions in the level of service that we provide to our families if we wanted to save money on it and we do regularly and continuously look for opportunities to save on on on transportation expenses as they are and i also put a plug-in we did you did just approve a renewal contract i'm hearing from some of my colleagues at other districts that they are looking at 10 to 15 percent increases in some cases those who are going out to bid are hearing from bus companies that are as i shared with you plus companies even saying this is really allows a year to go out for bid by the way and so i
141just commend you on you know forging a partnership over the next couple years with btc because it is to our financial benefit well that was all you dave thank you yeah thank you very much for that again getting numbers on and forgive me i i know sooner and you guys had said he had already done this but the middle schools that they're not split geographically and is there actually a savings if we do do that or is it negligible and um you know there are we we've talked about this before along the transportation yeah so maybe we could i mean it was negligible um but i know and i could dig up that memo and reshare that yeah right that would be good for sure that would be a good thing to do the other
142thing i would suggest is that we we work through our staffing as you know a process that happens every every year and we we are experiencing that decline enrollment and see what where that pans out as well as that would play into this and if the board was considering anything kind of more significant in nature in terms of staffing time i would like that process to be completed so we know where we land at least we know where we'll recommend it our recommendations would land and we can make decisions based on that moving forward to me that like as far as looking at any sort of efficiencies with transportation and i hope that we're still like tracking ridership and looking to see how full our buses are and if we can start to eliminate and
143you know barry was mentioning like when you ride behind the bus and you see it stop and no one gets on stops and no one gets on stops nobody gets um so you know i mean i think that if we look at that and then also i mean i i agree with what dr hans saying as far as you know enrollment is down we obviously have to look at our staffing and you know you look at those um and i mean you guys have seen it so easy where you look at the numbers of um the elementary um student-teacher ratios and they all look beautiful but um you know it wasn't very long ago when that was not the case and that was definitely um you know a serious discussion item but now if you
144look i would say 90 to 92 percent of the classes are under our recommended guidelines not even at recommended guidelines as far as student-to-teacher ratio which is lovely i mean i think that's where the that conversation can happen you see the enrollment we'll see does the board want to change the parameters in terms of class sizes and things of that nature which are our major levers to pull when you're looking at finances and i'm firmly an advocate for small class sizes but you know you also want to stay within our range and i think that again we've been very fortunate in recent years that we've been able to trend down trend down trend down but now we really are seeing our classes are all under recommended guidelines which again nothing nothing bad about that that's
145all very good but when we're looking at staffing i think that that's a very significant issue that and we may see the numbers from what dr hunt is recommending is is naturally falling into these parameters that you're suggesting and if not then that's when you come back and say we got to make some cuts i mean they're terrible conversations to have but i think that that's when it becomes a little bit more timely i don't know maybe yeah i also just just to add to that i mean we just heard this great report on the listening session that you just had that gave such great value to the programming that we have in the district and i feel like we before we start talking about pets we should get through at least the initial phase
146of the strategic plan to hear from the community i mean this we had some initial feedback but let's go ahead and get some more feedback and listen to that before we start to talk about cutting programs because we've already talked about it our committee the whole meeting that it will going beyond that 380 000 will mean we cut programs or we change class sizes well maybe to your point sandra the conversation in the strategic planning meeting needs to be the realities of our budget and the realities of our levies and stuff so people have an actual understanding of okay you don't want to go above two and a half percent or this is what it means and because i don't think that that is being translated and perhaps um so we can i mean we
147can talk about more communication in that area for sure yeah i think that's good and i you know and also i think the trailing levy you know i think that's always very confusing for people as well like they just look at what's happening right now but don't realize that there's actually the effect is is you know next year so i think it's really important for the community and the board to look at these projections that dr brian shared with us if we choose to do a zero percent levy next year that has an effect over the next five years so we're going to be over 30 million down so a three even if we cut three million next year the the projection with the zero percent levy is is that we're going to have a
148deficit of 30 million five years from now and well well i i i'm just saying it it's only projection yeah but to be clear very i mean if you if you change the 2023 budget to make it it's gonna triple trickle effect two so provided so right you've got to have uh you have to adjust your cost structure down yeah so if you adjust your levy down in one year and you do a permanent reduction in your cost structure then then you can preserve fund balance that's the the challenge is if you say well i'm gonna i'm gonna drop it but then we make a one-year adjustment and then those expenses come back up you you have a a permanent loss in that ability to generate the revenue but correct me also if i'm wrong
149if we don't do a raise in the levy next year that affects what we can raise the year after in the year after that's right that's right that's that's it that's so we're tying our hands through future levy raises yeah and i'm not in favor of big levee races don't get me wrong but i don't want to have a short-sighted decision for a one-year let's do something bold right that's going to affect four or five years down the road i agree with you those programs stay away too i mean the programs won't come back right right if you're going to maintain the programs wouldn't come back yeah to maintain financial stability you have to have your revenues and expenditures in alignment and so you know i advocate that we look at programming to figure out
150what is the programming that we want what are the services um the what what do we want our learner profile to look like things that we'll do during strategic planning and figure out what are we trying to achieve and then we can figure out well what does that mean in terms of programs that we need to offer uh or not offer and what you know what what is the community expectation around that whether it's things like transportation as we talked about or some of the other programs that we have so when you put that together then we can figure out what's the right cost structure to be able to support that so something like class size if the community were to say well hey we're we value our you know lower tax bills more than
151we value lower class size no no problem you know we can make that adjustment and figure out what does that mean if it's um and i'm just going to make up a number i'm not trying to lead anybody anywhere but if you said well we're okay with 30 students in the classroom on average that's going to be a target we provided our facilities can accommodate that and then we can look at well what's the right cost structure to be able to support a class size of 30. so you know i i try to advocate let's let the programming and the vision and interests of the board and the community drive what we make the finances look like rather than make and try to have the finances drive themselves and yield an outcome you know unfortunately
152it's it's very difficult to say as much as i would love to have you know a budget that's you know a fraction of the size of what we have today and what i can tell you is that it's not possible for us to deliver the same outcomes that we have with the budget that's a fraction of what we have today so you have to make some trade-offs at some point yeah i don't disagree with you that sandra but i disagree with you that we need to have community input um i guess what i'm getting at is you know this is a long process i think dr biden and doctor can attest to that it's going to be a law process whatever you choose to do uh so to that end i think it's incumbent upon
153us if we have an expectation i think we all do right fiscally responsible responsibility it's very near dear to all our hearts i mean if we have that expectation and understanding you know what needs to be done um i mean i i don't see any problem with putting this out in front not necessarily saying that we need to have a result in three months or six months because we have time for the budget right but putting this out in front of the budget owners putting in from dr bine and making sure that folks understand you know if this is an allocation to you of you know 500 000 so you need to remove from your budget in order to help us gap this 3.6 million deficit i think that's fair at this stage to put
154out there and you know quite honestly you know we keep talking about programmatic programmatic programmatic i'm not terribly convinced that programmatic changes are going to do it either quite frankly because when i think about it you know just look at programs that my own child lives in for example if you pulled her out of the program that she's in today it's not as if she's going to leave the district she'll just be in a different program so is there truly an incremental cost savings as it relates to her education maybe minimusly because you can hire a different teacher but but the stroke reality is she'll be still in the district she'll still cost the district money so i don't know yeah steve you're completely right you're afraid to change the immersion program that yeah yeah
155those students still need to be educated they will still be teachers maybe there's some savings on the transportation side maybe on some curriculum side there's not a huge savings to that program and i think the board took a look at that when they were bringing that program into the district as to what the incremental costs were and yeah yeah so you're absolutely right but the you know something like a three million dollar reduction you know that might be if we just think about staffing um it of course it all depends on which staff we're talking about but for if it was if it were teaching staff and we sort of look at teaching staff that's um earlier on in their career you know we might be talking about 30 to 40 teachers and so yeah
156so you start to think about well so which teachers you know would that be or if it's support staff and it's not instructional staff well then depending on which type of support staff that is you might be you know it might be more than that in terms of quantity based on what the average salaries look like so that you know the you know as we look at that there are some practical things and it has to be a long-term um you know adjustment so we talk about okay if we're going to make a tweak and it's it's not really tweaked we'll make an adjustment in our our the way we operate the district staffing levels otherwise it has to it can't be just a one-off we're going to drop it for a year and we're
157bringing folks back it's this has got to be the new norm and we lose access to those funds if our situation changes we lose access to those funds in the future we can't go back and grab them in in future years i will mention to you before there is some legislation that's pending which actually uh if adopted would allow school boards flexibility to say in uh in a year we're not going to we're going to have our levy be lower um and then within five years to come back and say well you know what now things are a little bit different and we actually need to go back and recapture some of that money so it actually provides a little a little more flexibility for school boards to be able to say i don't need
158it all this year um you know but i might next year i might need more and so i can come back and really have flexibility not always go with the max i can love you what i need um the challenge of course that we've had is that for most of the last 15 years we've had really low cpi and generally we've seen expenditures that have been growing at or above the cpi level which requires ongoing continual management if we have um cpis that are high you know we we get faced with that issue of the cpi's growing faster than our maximum levy is and then we have to deal with that as a bigger um a bigger structural issue uh but then you look at what are your eclectic bargaining agreements and if those are
159not giving out increases at the cpi level it makes it a little easier to manage so it really sort of depends on where you are you know in the process with the collective bargaining agreements and the economic cycle but it always is a challenge to try and stay with a balanced budget when revenues are kept and expenses are not so i think we have done a really great job here in barrington at delivering balanced budgets and out and results over over the last 20 years through a lot of attention and saying oh we're not going to just say yes to everything we actually will take a look and review and consider what are the expenses we have in front of us so but at this point you know i think if the board would like
160uh dr hunt or direct dr hunt to take a look at what those options are we certainly would would do that and that would be a process involved from a timing perspective for next year's budget you know i think staffing reductions as you know have a a fuse on them you know there's a time at which those decisions have to be made and from a budget planning and operational delivery perspective much sooner quite frankly is better while the budget won't actually be adopted until the end of the summer all of that structure and preparation for next year beginning happens earlier i just wanted to say that being on the finance committee for the past few years and watching the budgeting process and seeing us go through this tumultuous time two years ago when we really
161didn't know where we were going to go with our budget we were nervous about transportation nervous about school that we as a district were very cautious about spending we're very tight on a lot of things and held it tight and then we got funding and it was okay and we've got extra staff right now because of ezra funding and relief money which is great and that's why our numbers look pretty good i think and i think that's going to taper off and change over time so our staffing will go back to what looked more normal in the past and that'll also temper our budget because staff is the biggest part of our budget so you know from our meeting of the committee of the whole i was pretty comfortable with the estimates and the projections
162and you know comfortable that that 300 400 000 of like over budget will be managed i don't think i'm comfortable with saying hey let's go find three million dollars and change things completely i think it's always good to be cautious and keep looking at where we can save our money and how we can be frugal because this is taxpayer money we want to deliver a good education for a reasonableness right so that's kind of where i'm at and how i feel about this at this point so i guess my i i hear what you're saying um but i think that you know the one thing that we have to be cognizant of and that's why you know this whole budget process is just like a bunch of puzzle pieces that are kind of flying together
163at the same time um but you know we did hire extra staff for social and emotional issues and we hired all that staff with escrow funding that is going to go away but at our last meeting we heard beth say that we had double the hospitalizations than we had the year prior and we're not even through the year yet did i get that kind of right close yeah so you know i think that this whole process does it it's going to be different this year i think and i'm not on the finance committee so i mean i do defer to you to some extent but i it's not you know i mean class sizes we kind of already talked about but you know we do have um you know potentially additional expenses that you know
164we really we need to watch out for kids that are suffering you know with social and emotional issues and we don't necessarily have that usually baked into the budget and even though we had it this year i don't know that that money is going to be there next year so we may have to look at it and i rely on dr hunt to to do this but you know i don't know exactly how the staffing is going to come down when we you know start to look at you know some of the responsibilities that we have to these kids that are really struggling too and that takes more staff yeah to to be clear though with esther funds and dave kirkman if i'm wrong we're moving towards a place where the support direct supports we
165have in place for students will be in place for next year yes and we'll be able to cover those with lesser funds okay i i think you're you're you're intimating a problem you know down the tracks that we're going to hit you don't i don't think we solve all of these issues in a year no and then we're gonna have to start making some priority decisions you know it's the the comment of you know we can do anything we want we just can't do everything and [Music] where if those issues still exist a year from now we're going to have to make some really tough choices on maintaining those support services and what goes because you can't esther is not going to be there forever and we need to have those supports in place well
166you know and maybe that's this is also the time that we start to get ahead of it we have so many community groups that focus on mental health and you know are willing to extend as much help to the district as they can and you know maybe this is when we start to especially through your listening tour and you know having new eyes on this district and all of the resources that we have outside of just our budget how do we start to bring these you know individuals into the schools more and to make you know mental health assistance a little more accessible you know through our community partners so that could be when a lot of those paths exist already oh yeah the district has done a great job and maybe there's more opportunity
167there but i mean you know those those relationships exist and are very powerful and helpful okay so i heard a couple things i heard that we definitely want to get the the transportation memo that talks about the middle school and how that transportation dollars could be impacted i think i heard us agree that class sizes at elementary don't need to be under guidelines but they could be at within guidelines you know and not not too much over guidelines but within guidelines um so i'm assuming that that exercise will help us probably get even to the 380 000 that we already committed that we would find um but if not we can add that above and beyond um i feel like and definitely take maybe we can start taking a look at social emotional needs beyond
168you know when esser funds are are not no longer available but that's more of an increase or shift into what would have to change if we were going to keep it the same um it's also tough now to say what i'll need right here right over a year from now so again i would emphasize that you know we have this strategic plan and we and we listen to the community and we can as we discuss that we can talk about where those trade-offs might might occur um but the other thing i think we could all get better educated on i think is just the tax levy law like you mentioned another law that's coming that would sounds very interesting um but i feel like if we start to um reduce the levy now it really
169reduces our flexibility we also have other options to abate you know taxes later on so we can maybe we should educate ourselves on that as well before we start looking at cutting programs hey sandra if i could interrupt you for one quick second i agree with you and i you know i would be on board with saying you know what if i understood that administration was committed to making expense reductions i would be perfectly fine saying go ahead levy as much as you want provided that we can bait at the end of the year and it could be one-time items or it could be ongoing items i mean these are definitely things that i learned when we went to triple i that could be one-time items that could contribute to an abatement and i'm totally
170good with that ideally they'd be you know things that go into a run rate and are you know into perpetuity but yeah i mean as long as we have a plan so this doesn't need to be a budget the budget can still be you know 144 million i'm sorry 164 million in expenditures let's keep it at that i'm sorry let's budget that but let's figure out how we can make it 160 million or 158 or whatever right that's where i'm getting at and you know i think they're like again there are things that we can do down the line yeah of course there's things we can do i'm just not willing to look at them and do them right now me personally because i'm sure because i hear from this listening tour that programming is
171very important and i'm not willing to take a look at that until we until we spend some time with the strategic plan agreed in fact i would almost argue that we don't look at programmatic things right now directly um because like i said i mean i'll use my own kid again it's not going to make that big of a change i mean you eliminated i mean you've switched position a couple of teachers it's not going to move the needle all that much even if it's into perpetuity i think it's more structural changes i don't know what that means but thinking about how we do things differently and i can you know have conversations with both you guys offline because it's a long conversation but i can share things that we've done or i've done my
172own professional career and i'm happy to do that yeah i think the strategic plan is timely given the fact that we know that this is probably going to be the same very likely the same position again next year earth bite your tongue but let's but we could be so i mean we don't want to keep having this so i guess to your point like let's what what does our just what does the community hold dear and what do they aren't they willing to you know i mean let's just be realistic about where we're going with this so okay so we'll ask for the transportation memo from a few years ago um the old guys are gonna already have already committed to the the savings of the 380 000 that you're working towards in addition to
173that maybe um keeping our elementary within guidelines um uh and then just do people want to learn more about the text levy law does everybody want to learn more about that sure okay so maybe you can help us with that um [Laughter] yeah if you could do that that would be really impressive yeah that'd be useful for the whole country i'm gonna work on that so if you do see a reduction in cpi and that's all you [Laughter] i also think if we could easily link to these projections for the community um from i think i'm sure samantha will do it through our board of education communication email but if you know we can make sure to highlight these productions so because i know that the community can't see the graphs now but if we
174can make sure to do that tomorrow make sure it's clear sure so that they could see how the differences in uh cpi would um our capturing and not capturing would affect our fund balance that would be great i think that and that would also follow up with what you asked for is there anything with respect to social emotional any action we want the administration to take right now no i don't think so okay all right i just want to make sure okay so i think you guys have your direction great thank you board thank you thank you thank you thank you so much good discussion guys um that was oh let's talk about our agenda items for march 1st we have some recognition for fine arts that's exciting we have the second reading on apparently
17518 policies with a couple follow-ups on two of the policies i feel like there's something else that we wanted to add to march 1st oh our equity workshop i can give a brief update you know my report on how that goes is there anything else i'll introduce the new athletic director the new athletic director that's what i was thinking is there anything we need to do for this equity workshop does it really work we need to do it that's a good question i don't think so we can ask can you ask neighbors anything i haven't heard anything about it about us doing any prep work that i think they're going to educate us up and give us space for discussion and learning and thoughtfulness i know i attended at the triple a conference uh a
176workshop and i think it i think it's going to be have some of those same elements and there wasn't really nothing to prepare so but if you just let us know in your weekly if there's something we need to do okay all right sounds like there's nothing more so do we have a motion to con to approve the confidentiality of closed session minutes second and a roll call katie carram angela wilcox yes sandra bradford yes aaron chan ding yes steve wang yes leah callister lazari yes barry alt-schuler yes all right and well wrong the record still two gymnasts competing on the vault at the state meet on saturday correct yes all right this is why you can't capture it all thank you steve thank you steve good luck to them um all right so at
1779 36 i'm going to ask if there's a motion to adjourn second second all right any any opposed goodnight all right we are adjourned thank you so much