001e e e all right it is now 7 p.m. Tuesday August 20th 2024 and I call this meeting of the Board of Education to order Cindy would please call the role here here Thomas present present AR here gilber here meows present the Pledge of Allegiance will be led by Sue thanks Sue to the flag of the United States of America and to the repblic for which it stands one nation under God indivisible with liberty and justice for all thank you um are there any items to be removed or added to the nope okay all right any public comment today none has been submitted none so I can spare everybody me reading that all right PPS Partners Drew welcome good to likewise good evening everyone uh I'm pleased to report that so far we've had an
002awesome start to the school year um there's definitely a Vibe this year and I've been saying this every semester since 2021 um so famous last words um but it also feels like there's a sense of normaly that we haven't had in a really long time and I've talked to a lot of my colleagues and they uh share that sentiment so uh let's ride that wave um um having to go back that far reminds me though that no matter the circumstances our members rise to the occasion to make sure that we are there for our students starting on day one last Monday on opening day I had the opportunity to speak to the district and my message was simple and something that I'd like to reiterate to anyone that wasn't there if we are all serious
003about giving our students the district that they deserve we must do it together district and building Administration the Bea Besa the Board of Education every single stakeholder we all have a moral resp responsibility to work together for our students in that same vein the baa has made it clear since May that the district's recommitment to working with the Bea is a welcomed and necessary step needed to finally address the trust transparency and communication issues in the district since May we have seen progress towards addressing those issues but there is still work to be done getting on the same page requires mutual respect and trust and that isn't something that just magically happens overnight it takes time it takes commitment sometimes it's uncomfortable and that's okay okay the struggle is worth it because our students are
004worth it and my offer to the Board of Education remains on the table if you're interested in the Ba's view of where we are and where we're going as a district I'd be more than happy to sit down and talk over some coffee at Limestone to our Bea members welcome back in a warm welcome to all of our new members that are now part of the BPS Community you're all rock stars that go above and beyond for your kids every day of the year whether it's the first day of school or the last day of school at our uh Bea general meeting that we had uh on Monday I shared with our members that the single most important thing that we do as a union is support our members so that they can support our
005students I also offered my personal philosophy that being Union means standing shoulder-to-shoulder together in solidarity regardless of whether you're at the Early Childhood Center or all the way up to 12th grade at BHS we are all part of the bavia Education Association unified in our commitment to our students and when we are united we can move mountains and on a personal note a special shout out to uh all of our early childhood and kindergarten instructors for welcoming so many of our firsttime students into the bavia school Community uh at the end of last week I asked my son um so kindergarten is pretty awesome right uh and his response yep uh a man of few words indeed but believe me when I say that coming from him that answer speaks volumes solidarity forever with our
006brothers and sisters in Besa go Bulldogs thank you for listening good night and good luck thank you drew next is Kevin for Besa welcome Kevin thank you water along with me because I having some allergy issues with all this weather so excuse me good evening everyone I'm gonna just adjust this a little bit Kevin bman with u with besta um for those of you who are not aware Marsha Sher you know moved over to a position here in uh arj and I uh by succession moved up to uh become president uh of the organization I have to Echo what what Drew said you know with the short time that we've been back in uh in a session with with school and classes everything appears to be off to a very good start uh with the
007students and with the organization in fact last week best primarily the Paras and the uh uh campus monitors participated in uh training sessions uh here at the high school and then we had a breakout session for just the uh campus monitors um Steve and uh Tony um helped with those and and uh Tony led the campus monitoring session and the feedback that we received uh from participants for both those sessions was overwhelmingly positive I shared some of that feedback uh with both Steve and Tony and please a report that that was um as I said very very positive um i' like to say that tonight I might go a little bit longer than I typically would but there's two reasons uh for that um the first is this is one of those odd occasions when
008I I really know what I'm talking about and and two I I have the opportunity to talk about people that I truly love and and it's the campus monitor team over at RMS and by prefacing this a little bit I had originally intended to to deliver this presentation at your June meeting following that long uh meeting that you had back in May family circumstances prevented me from attending the June meeting and then on the Tuesday or the me the date of the uh July meeting that morning I had tested positive for covid and I thought it would be a good idea not to come by that day so after long delay I get the opportunity to present what I consider to be and and hopefully you will too um a very positive report about my
009co-workers at Roto middle school and a team that I I think when you hear this you would be very proud of and and should be very proud of I have a a couple of slides uh that I hope will help you uh become a little bit more familiar with these people and I have to thank both Cindy for keeping these things on the agenda my time with you on the agenda and Holly for maintaining these records for the past couple of months so Holly if you'll put the first one up which I think yeah here are the uh the faces of the people I'm going to tell you about and I'll start first with Fran up there at the very top Fran is our lunchroom uh campus Monitor and the the key role that Fran
010plays is she she maintains three big binders containing the um uh student IDs for 8th grade seventh grade sixth grade and it might sound like a simple task but these IDs are what the students use to purchase their meals and and really move things along during that short period of time that students have to uh purchase their lunches and again it might sound like a simple task I always thought it was until the one day that I did it last year and messed it up within a matter of minutes to the point where one uh student approached me and asked uh is Fran coming back tomorrow and I said boy I sure hope so but why do you ask and he said well you messed this up pretty quickly only he used a more earthy
011term uh and and I didn't write him up or anything because it was a very accurate way of describing what I had done and and he said you know you're going to Old FR an apology and I said yeah I will and I did when she came back the next day I apologized for what I did but she got everything back on track rather quickly but more than keeping that that uh uh operation running smoothly Fran is uh has a great talent and skill for building a report for these kids and here's where that's really important you know the students will of course have contact with their classroom teachers all day Fran is one of the few adults that during the course of the day these kids will have contact and interaction with and she's
012able to build as I said these relationships with kids and I'm able to see this 5 days a week during the course of the year and so on a Friday a student might tell foran or when when she's talking to them and passing these these IDs back and forth oh I'm I'm I have a birthday this weekend and so they'll talk about that but the really neat part is you know on Monday or Tuesday when France sees that student again she'll say well how was your birthday what happened what went on and they'll have this this exchange and this conversation and it always reminds me that the these are the conversations that you and I used to have at one time with bank tellers or the sales clerks at retail outlets and all of that's
013been replaced since we now do most of our Banking online or self checkouts and and things like that but France still maintains that type of relationship with these young students who often get a Hard Knock for having their faces planted in devices and as I said I get a kick out of this because because students don't come into the world with phones in their hands and they don't they don't develop those habits they learn that from adults and it's always I always get a kick out of watching Fran interact with these kids for that short period of time five days a week building these important relationships with them and them building relationships with her so I like I said I always think that's a a key part that Fran has uh in our in in
014her role with our team the next person I'd like to tell you about is Gabby Warz and I think uh Gabby's probably the youngest member of our team not just in in age but in uh service with the district she's in her second year with us now I believe the greatest skill that Gabby has not only uh in her ability to work with uh uh and and uh with the students gab's bilingual and brings uh interpretive skills to her work which we really learned last week last year is crucial we have a growing number of uh students whose uh English is a second language both um for them and their parents and while we have I think three maybe four staff members who are in that role those are mostly teachers who have teaching responsibilities
015and aren't always available uh to uh interact with the students and more importantly with their parents Gabby has never hesitated to step up and fill that role to work with parents when they come in to have documents filed with the school and as important to work with students who um might find themselves down in student services or in um say lunch detention or just have questions on on uh for some of these students particularly last year uh it was their first encounter in formal education uh in the United States so Gabby was there to help them make that transition and uh as I said never hesitated to step up and and fill that Gap so as again uh proven her her U invaluable assistance with the team the next uh person I'd like to tell
016you about is Kea Fulmer and where Kea is uh again another another terrific asset is her very just evenhanded approach to all students yeah she she if they are brushing up against uh uh ADH in to guidelines and things like that I've never seen Kea uh get fired up get get get um uh to the point where she might be losing or cool with students it's just in a very matter of fact but direct approach with students what you're doing is uh uh beyond our expectations or not meeting our expect expectations and you need to bring it back in and it's a very effective approach and it's it's uh something that I I think is one of K's great assets real quick story last year uh and you're probably aware of this um plain closed
017police officers from the Pavia uh police department constantly test building security they'll they'll you know test the doors and things like that we had one instance last year uh through no one's fault they they found a defective latch on one of the doors and were able to enter the building it wasn't as though the the doors were propped open or anything like that it was simply a defective latch they made it into the building about a quarter of the way up a hallway but it was Kea who identified that these uh uh individuals were not properly credentialed they did not have the lanyards they would have if they had entered through the front door and had been raptured into the building appropriately she stopped them both questioned them how they got in the building what
018they were doing in the building and then escorted them to the main office so they could be properly uh raptured in so she did the job directly by protocol and handle things as they are supposed to do or be so again uh the team did the job as it uh was intended to be done leaving Kea and moving over to Hillary uh Kennedy in the middle of there I need to stop and kind of back up all the women you see on this page here they're all moms okay and that's a quality they all bring to their job they all approach the students they work with with the attitude of you know their mothers and they they approach all these uh students well aware and conscious of the fact that they are dealing with someone's
019children and I think the one that emphasizes this or acknowledges the most is Hillary Kennedy and whether she's dealing as many of us were last week with some emotionally upset sixth graders new to a big building or as I saw her many times last year toward the end of the year some Ram bunin eighth grader who were feeling the end of the school year Hillary doesn't hesitate one way or another that many times last year I would see her approach a table of eighth grade boys and simply say as as most moms will you're exceeding the or you're not meeting the expectations and it ends right now and in a very calm manner bring things to an end and without hesitation without being intimidated by a group of eighth grade boys and she's a great
020credit to the team Maryann Le neerman there is as it says is our lead campus Monitor and I would say there isn't another person in this District at least I haven't met them that knows the district's handbook for student conduct as well as Maryanne neerman does and she doesn't lure that over people she does she's not a martinet about it but if she's going to correct a student's uh conduct or expectation meeting expectations she does it in a very evenhanded and informed manner if she needs to correct a student how they're conducting themselves in the hallways or in a common area like the lunchroom Maryann will do it in a very informed and evenhanded manner the student walks away from an encounter with Maryanne not understanding what's going on it's not because maryan didn't do
021a job of explaining why they were being dis or or talking with her um so I I've always tell people that Maryanne is probably the school board's best friend inside Roto so this brings me to the last person up there and this is Chris Evanson um I tell you that I could probably talk about Chris Evanson all night long but I won't I promise you that um for those of you who don't know Chris Evanson uh she is a long long uh ter employee of the district but she also embodies what I think is bavia if it's probably would be easier to list the people in bavia who do not know Chris Evanson than to list the people who do and before Chris um you know she's been with the district for a long very
022long time she was the head chair leading coach at the high school for 10 years and when I joined the district and was a campus monitor at the high school Chris trained me over there and so when I learned that Chris was transferring from the high school over to the middle school I was very happy I knew we were going to be getting a very talented and personable campus monitor now one of the kicks I get with working with Chris is if you're not aware of how the system works over there uh we rotate um uh time on the front desk uh processing people in and reading them but one of the great kicks I have is when Chris is on the front desk and young parents come in and Chris will greet them and
023it'll be a a student or a parent who Chris once had as a student on the chair leading team and all of a sudden there's a a connection because that parent now has a student at the middle school and they're talking about that parents days as a student at the high school when uh uh Chris had her as a as a student on the chair leading team and it always reminds me some of something that people have told me over the years since my wife and I moved here to bavia in 20 uh 03 which is bavia is like a larger version of uh Mayberry that you will constantly run across people you know and Chris is like a living embodiment of that but the real thing that I think makes Chris Evanson stand out
024I saw this at the high school and I've seen it time and time again at the middle school is Chris has this incredible gift and if you'll pardon me for saying it in these terms I consider it more of a blessing that Chris has an incredible ability to connect with young students particularly females who in days years ago when I first entered the field we would call these students or they were labeled as at risk uh students who for what whatever reason they were finding themselves in a position where they were making decisions or involved in situations that were jeopardizing their academic careers but Chris has this ability that whether it's from her years as a successful businesswoman or her years in this work and in her position that she is able to connect with
025these these young girls speak to them in a very direct manner make a connection with them and help them find a way to get themselves back on a very positive track whether it's academically or just behaviorally and help them put themselves in a more positive direction and it's something you know whenever I see it and I see it a couple times a year it it leaves me in awe that Chris has that ability to connect with young people who really do just need a little bit of guidance to put themselves back on a more positive track as I said I could go on talking about Chris oh you know all night long I won't but these are this is a very positive team you have a you know assembled a great team campus monitors don't
026always get the recognition they deserve but this is a a team that I think the entire District ought to be proud of um Dr Kim has met many of these people you know Steve H put the team together um uh Tony knows many of these people uh from working with them I know Josh has has worked with these people when or several of them when he was over at the building you have a wonderful team of Administrators there at the middle school there's no doubt Tara has has a good team around her you know there's a boatload of wonderful and talented Educators there I just wanted to let you know about a an exceptional team of Campus monitors I know all of you have busy schedules but if you ever get the time uh in
027your day to stop by and meet some of these people face to face I encourage you to do that you you won't be disappointed even if it's for five minutes to meet some of these pokes folks and and just let them know uh who you are and just to say hi to them I told you I was I was going to be a bit long I hope you're not disappointed that I took up so much of your time oh Holly would you mind going back because this is one of our favorite pictures it's a goodlook group um we'll try to put you on our mailing list for this holiday season so you get a a look at us but one of the nice things about the team is you know there's no reason why we
028can't have a little bit of fun uh doing doing this and Evanson deserves credit for this too whether it was her time at the high school or here at the middle school she makes a big effort of building staff Morel for all the employees and um as I said she deserves credit for that but that that was our Christmas card from last season so thank you for your time have a good night everybody you Kevin we'll see you again next all right uh no student ambassadors today I presume thank uh so board Le Aids on committee reports I know some may have started but everybody's just kind of getting their notifications I think it's meeting set up I've seen some of those so anyone have any committee reports at all yet no okay all right
029for the next month uh consent agenda according to our board policy we designate a portion of the agenda as a consent um agenda for those items we do not usually require extensive discussion before board action these items are generally routine recurring be group together for efficiency Steve would you like to walk us through the dance card for the night absolutely 4.1 is the approval of the uh July 23rd 2024 meetings or meeting minutes uh 4.2 and 4.3 is the approval of the August 1st uh 2024 special meeting and the Clos session minutes uh 4.4 is our PST Personnel report um quite large uh the HR office was busy I would say in end of July August we're used to that um but I I did want to highlight um uh you know we we've had
030a lot of discussion in the last couple years about our parpro issue and I don't think we're all the way there but um we're definitely in a much better position uh than we have been uh the last several years I think uh if I counted right I think we hired if you look at that report I think we hired nine uh pair professionals and I think uh five uh pair professionals may be resigned so that still is plus4 to the good um and when you add in our contract uh some of our contract Paras I I think we're instead of looking at a deficit of like maybe 14 to 16 the last few years at this time of the year we're probably more like 3 to five at a handful um if not lower and
031again it remains very fluid uh I'd like to give a shout out to Diane Cronin over at AGS she called me yesterday with a uh Community member standing at her desk saying this person is interested in being a PA Pro can she go visit the ILP program at uh Grace MCU and we connected her with Jeff Moda and I think she uh that that Community member went there today and hopefully we can get her hired because that's an area that we uh definitely need help um we uh we did uh extend that uh additional pay um internally um that didn't necessarily uh get us additional PA Pros but it is getting more people from the outside um that are coming in and uh joining the organization so that's been a real positive uh we're not
032all the way there yet but we are definitely in a better position than we have had since uh 20 the start of the 2020 school year so that's a positive that I wanted to share with the board uh 4.5 we have our monthly uh payroll and bills uh 4.6 are our donations and we would like to definitely thank Office Depot and grad images for uh their donations to support um our schools and our students uh 4.7 is our curriculum and special education contracts and then finally 4.8 is the approval of our consent agenda right anyone have any questions or comments yep so on the Personnel report just a quick question um I see Cindy con she's a jbn says kindergarten enrichment .5 and says pair of professional so is she a pair of professional .5
033she's actually both is if I can pull that up here where does it say oh I'm sorry I that's I didn't put in 05 yes she is a point she a lot of times we do this if you've paid attention the last few years again to address the uh Personnel uh challenges we've had we've we've sometimes have put partnered uh positions together and so yes that is definitely an omission and it Cindy is not 1.5 uh but she is 0.5 on both of those positions so thank you for noticing that we can make an adjustment and then uh really quick uh down at the bottom it says a Brooks cyber cyber Nagle seasonal curriculum and construction uh I'm sorry curriculum and construction I'm just curious what that is for we during the summer we often
034hire um seasonal uh staff members a lot of times these are like Pavia high school graduates who are in college and uh you'll see them for sometimes for Tech sometimes for operations and then over the summer we have uh the last few years we've employed them to support the curriculum uh instruction Department they're doing a lot of copying printing uh resources and materials for our early childhood kindergarten students and we've had the same person in place for the last couple years she had to go back to college on like August 5th so we hired um Brooke to kind of fill the void uh before school started and I don't know if she's still with us or she's leaving soon and she's off to college yeah she's off to college it was a very brief window
035and gone but yeah that's what we do and they trust me if you're here in the summer you'll see lots of uh lots of things happening with materials for our students and then uh so 4.7 the curriculum education contracts I start at the top the danet Myers um pull my so she is employed at with Partners is that what that is for mhm okay and then I guess um she's going to be helping with co- teing training English learner support and pair professional development and newcomer so I'm just like I guess my question is is if we do we have an e person like is there someone on staff that's strictly e and um I'm just curious if that danet Myers doesn't work with them and rather that eel person give the support to our
036District employees and provide the co- teing training like I don't know how who leads that in our district like the co- teing training the English learner um the newcomer support which that might be something new because of uh the influx of um immigrant children yeah the past couple of years we've seen a lot of newcomers to the district and just providing support to our staff and how to navigate some of those relationships and language barriers um we have a pretty small curriculum department so Jen Hicks oversees the El department so they've been meeting the past couple of days to go through curriculum reboots and D is a support that we can um contract out to work with those uh teacher teams on those areas that they need we've not done co- teing with detet that's
037something new this year but detet has provided did EL support in during summer curriculum week and with teams especially at storm for the past couple of years so we've used her in the past for the E support have we used it and then she have we used her for the uh par um I'm sorry professional development before the professional development yeah General professional development yes so she's delivered a lot of newcomer professional development to our staff last year and the year before but that's a continuing need for us and then the Angie souland so she a consultant for the region he works for the Roe um and then we get days from her to support our bpsu program okay so so the bpsu that's our signific that's our program um and she's going to do
038um it says there in support Educators in their efforts to meaningful Implement curriculum build relationships and utilize techn ology in a remote Blended and hybrid learning environment so is that mean it's kind of like she's like a a tech more of a tech person is that what that's doing like is she rolling out tech programs or no it's it's more instructional coaching she uses technology she tries to infuse technology but her expertise is really in instructional coaching so getting teachers to kind of look at their classroom look at their instructional practices identify areas where they could be improving and then to work with them along the way to track that Improvement so we don't have instructional Coes here we do but this is to support the the bpsu program so I guess it's like why
039don't we use our own instructional coaches to support the bpsu program because if it's our program like we can't go to Geneva you can't go to St Charles for it so I'm just curious is why we we have to have an outside person rather than our own instructional technology individuals in our district to do it we could but we feel like all of our coaches have like full case loads managing their building so this is extra and then the uh Bal psycho educational Consulting are we Contracting them because we're currently down to psychologists or would we have them even if those positions were filled no i' much rather have them filled this is a fill in because of the lack of school psychologist specifically at Rola yeah right okay and then the Sun Belt um
040provides a special education so if I read it correctly sunb Bel is using vocal vision and the vocal Vision will provide us with the services for um over the over like the person will assess like um individual over the computer is that what that is MHM okay and sunv focuses on like um for each 504 for IEPs you have to have a nurse review all of that paperwork and do a file review or if a student has a medical issue which is causing them to need accommodations or modifications you have to have a nurse be a part of that team so will the nurse be a part so nurse is with sunb Bel or is it our district nurse we prefer our district nurse um but there's so much to do that this person is
041providing help with those evaluations okay I'm for this company I can say not person so I'm just curious because it's the vocal Vision it says it's done over the computer is that preferred or wouldd rather have it in person we would rather have it in person but it's hard to find people to come in for those short periods of time that's all I have for that person refer that section okay yeah those contracts do highlight our need for certified School nurses so um certified School nurses have both a teaching degree and then they're an RN and then School psychologists they have Advanced Training and they are very difficult to find these days we're hopeful we have a we have a current RN who is uh working on who's employed by us who's working on her
042uh CSN uh lure and it should be completed by the end of the semester and we're hoping to hire that person uh for the whole second semester and then we will have we will be fully staffed at the CSN level to highlight the fact that yeah we've had parapo issues the last few years we've definitely had psych issues uh at Rolo and we've also had some CSN issues but we're not the only ones we're definitely not the only ones okay any other questions on consent agenda all right hearing none I will entertain a motion to approve the consent agenda as present presented so moved by Aaron second by Sue Cindy please lead us in a roll call Vote yeser Yes yes yes AR yes thas no yes thank you all right next agenda item reports
043uh starts with Foya requests Tom anything to share we had two requests this month and both were provided that's it thank you next is Treasurer reports Tony nothing out of the ordinary for the treasurer's report but I did add a little bit of a narrative to that report which is not typical that helps to explain what's in the attached file if that's helpful to you please let me know if you're looking for more information that might otherwise any questions or comments for Tony on that all right next our policy updates um at our last board meeting we had um a discussion around our bowling and harassment policy so I just wanted to continue that conversation um H's going to just show you like one feature that Dave and the tech team have been working on
044so if you navigate to and this isn't deployed to all of our policies yet but because this was a an item of discussion I will you unclick the button there so typically you would go to our board policy manual and you would see the board policies as they're adopted uh but the tech team has been working on something that I think increases the transparency of the changes that the board might adopt which I think is really helpful for the community so when a policy is being considered for changes you can they're going to have that red view proposed changes you can click on that and see a Redline version of that policy so in our last conversation we talked about there is there was in the late spring there was a new bowling policy put
045out by the Illinois Association of school boards uh for our review and you can see that in the redline version currently there just a couple of like highlights if Holly Scrolls down you can see a couple of areas of red you can see that in that first area of red they talk about the protected classes that are there that we want to make sure that um they're listed there and then further down it's just a strikeout further down there's a little piece about some of the timelines we talked about 24hour notification for families um that their child was involved in that bullying potential bullying incident that is in that red line version we don't have this it's available online so if you go to that policy but it's not in here okay it's not in
046the board book now but if you go that's so that is something I think that really helps kind of show what potential changes are out there so if the community has feed back about that that gives an opportunity I think for them to see what is potentially changing there it I think it's help probably for the board too uh to consider any of those changes so just wanted to kind of highlight that kind of progressing Tech feature that I think brings transparency to the board policy process as we talked about last time we are required to submit our board policy for this particular policy 7180 bulling intimidation harassment to the state of Illinois for review um which is why we use the Press version of it because we know that it's compliant with school code
047and the updates to the law so one additional piece uh thanks Brad I wanted to add is that uh board as you know we've talked about a board committee right comprising of the board two representatives and then partnered with the administration and so if you're wondering well is there a reason why this is coming out ahead of it it's to address the timeline that Brad has Illustrated to the board so that we could get a second read for you by the September board meeting before we submit it into the data portal for isby um the other piece is we are going to be meeting um Rael Aaron and I we're working on a date to actually bring us together um to to kind of start working on all of our board policies so that CU
048as you notice you know you probably seen in every board policy there's a reference to different other policies that might touch this and um other legal references so aside from this particular policy there are other policies that we will have to take a look at and so for the board um you know that opportunity will be coming uh from our Representatives on the board and then eventually the whole board for review and conversation or discussion so now we're going to work on this in the committee but is sort of the plan that for the community we would do something like this where we're looking at a policy we'd have a period of time where they could see old propos new review it and then another board meeting it's like sort of a grace period to
049digest it before we implement or not really I mean it is but you know one of the things that Brad pointed out is we belong to the Illinois Association for school boards they have an actual Commission of attorneys who review the new laws and then take a look at the board policies that exist in their uh press manuals and then make the uh recomend mended changes that boards take and so specifically to 7180 state of Illinois is collecting evidence from school boards that you have adopted their new policy otherwise they are maintaining a spreadsheet that shows which educational agencies are out of compliance and have not approved it so typically when we do um policy changes um so you mentioned a second read what what is the Tim table usually like if you have to
050do a first read second read and approval like what we do with the budget right we is that kind of similar to the timetable we would normally look at or typically the second reading is the evening of the approval so the first read and then your second reading is the approval that you would talk so when you say first reading is that like we're working on when are we working on the actual policy as a board do we work on that decide on it and then we let a month go by and then do a first reading let a month go by and do a second reading so for like this one how are we getting how would this be a first reading then so that's actually great question um that's actually why I'm raising
051that this specific policy we're bringing to you collectively as a whole board right now the second reading will take place at the September board meeting only because we're still working on getting our policy committee going here so we're a detailed review and potenti poal like language questions in a policy that's being recommended for a change is at that policy Comm but then the representatives of the board will bring that to the board on the first reading and ex and walk through as a board all the changes that are being enumerated in the Press policy changes that's how it'll typically happen Daniel uh right now I so like I'm saying it that's not happening this way right now because we just agreed as a board to create the policy Committee of the board right so right
052now this is why with where we're at we're bringing this to the board for a conversation all the redline changes you're seeing are exactly what iasb has recommended as board policy changes got you what happens when we do adopt the policy and if it so it sounds like we're doing this just for the sake of filing with the state in a timely manner correct by 9:30 I mean that's what it sounds like so if we do go adopt this the way it is where is our language as far as the conversation we had at the last meeting the questions that are still kind of on the table as far as our understanding of like do we need to implement other changes because I don't think that we've had time to do that um you know
053you sent some great information as far as like um s sp90 and some of the other things and I don't see that that information necessarily shows up in our policy the way that I would feel comfortable coming from the board um um so what does that look like for us if we were to okay this version now but need knowingly like I don't think that this is everything that we need so I would imagine some of what if I you and I have talked before about it I would imagine someone that would appear in our uh potential uh board policy procedures like the procedural aspects which are things that come with a board policy um so an example uh there's a board policy on student fees right with that board policy it just enumerates specifically
054how we govern student fees but procedurally there are ways that we create forms and adjust to whenever that policy changes or the needs of you know if we're moving from uh no more cash in hand to a completely digital electronic way of collecting it there might be new forms that we have to update and we would just update those as a procedural item so to your point you know we do have forums we have reporting mechanisms if those are things that we see that need to be changed and altered and we get the feedback those are things that the board doesn't List have to approve through the policy those are things we work together as Administration and with each building's committees and and edit like uh update those documents so what happens if we don't
055adopt this by because I don't I don't I I know I personally didn't walk in here understanding I was doing a first raing um I still don't have an understanding again some of the things that we had talked about I don't think we fully circled back on everything closed those circles and understanding so I want our policy especially personally I want the policy this one specifically to I want to make sure we do it right and I want to make sure that we're thinking about all of the questions that we've had again we're not responsible of how you guys function it but without this being where it needs to be there is no accountability there is I don't think it's very like it can be strong but I think we've already acknowledged some of these
056little gaps that we have so without that being in there I just if I'm not ready to move forward and if anyone else felt that way what happens like what happens I'm not entirely sure other than one thing I do know uh Daniel is that the state is monitoring which districts submit the policy right that's been adopted um there's a spreadsheet that they have that they publish on their website under this particular area yeah um as far as your desire for The Conversation Piece i' probably contend the board can have that conversation right now with each other so that you can um together as a team put thoughts on the table together so that there's some understanding of what you may want us to take a look at you know under the redline version for
057the next by the next board meeting and give us time to review what those potential language changes and thoughts are that you guys are looking at in the policy I don't know the red line so the red line is what IB IBB right y they're Rec they want to see every District basically implement this in their policy right like this is the minimum that we need to do with to comply right the redlined information like the new that's that so if we were to submit this as is I guess I don't think I was I don't know if I understood perhaps if we were to submit this this way just to comply with the deadline what can we as a board continue to have a discussion to amend this policy without any other issues I
058I think so that was going to be a question I was going to ask is like Okay so let's just say we recognize we need to do something to meet our requirement is there a way that we could still continue the conversation about this one to see if we need to amend it at a subsequent board meeting after submission if there's consensus on making that those adjustments so that we can continue the conversation I don't think you have to adopt a policy and then not talk about it for another year no I I don't think so either I mean I think one of the purposes of this new committee is going to be so we can have those conversations and take a little deeper dive and have a little the board can have a little
059closer touch yeah we said I I know that this won't be the case for all but we did have an entire meeting we did I mean I submitted questions two months ago regarding this and we have had a discussion which I know we're not going to have for every policy that's going to be with the Committees for I don't want to to see us drop this it's fair I don't think I need to I don't want to drop it for a month I don't want to drop it at all because because of the the way that you know just things just naturally fall off we're already in this discussion we're into the school year so like I thought I was coming here today to get the questions answered and everything like that but I do
060understand we need to comply I'm willing to do that for compliance as long as we can revisit this um um but with movement so when we talk about the board committee you're going to have two people who are going to sit down and read this policy right let's just say it's this policy okay and then what are they doing are they going to say hey guys we need to act on this are they going to be recommending that we make amendments like what's what's happening here and then where does that come to a board discussion with all of us so that would Norm that's ex I'm sorry were you talking to me I was talking to everybody yes you yeah so that would actually you spot on you it would come back the two committee
061members would report back to the entire board and share what was covered you know um the administration would help develop the memo before the the two board Representatives we'll capture minutes um update what the changes are from the discussions on the policies and then they would walk through thinking but then the board would have the opportunity then at that time to weigh in and contribute to any of the policies being reviewed and discussed okay I mean I don't know that do you feel like that you guys need to review this one when we've already been talking about it as a board in order then to have another discussion do you like we're already this has already been on the table I'm okay I mean I I mean if that's the progress of the the procedure
062I would hope that this is the first thing that you guys are reviewing so that it comes back to us right away but it seems like we're kind of going backwards then um I mean we're having a meeting to talk about it so I can't really Danielle and Tom and I are going to get together and talk about it so ra I'm sorry um so I imagine this probably would be the first thing so I mean we were going to have a meeting to talk about it actually so I mean I know we do have some pretty detailed things that we were talking about the last meeting and I don't want to talk for you ra but um I tell you my my main concern like say that so my first thing is is let's
063get compliant and then let's amend to fit our needs that's where my and that's not just for this this one is for across the board because that's you know I want to be compliant yeah because I don't want to know what happens if we're non compliant well we already are with this one so right like we're already non-compliant in the way that we are not revie in my opinion we hav we haven't reviewed certain policies and very yeah so that's that's my goal is to get compliant and then we amend okay to fit our needs so I think what it would be is we want to get in compliance and if the board has other aspects of the policy that we want to look at closer that's where we would step in to make further
064refinements I I guess am I the only one that's looking at this like we know it needs amendments we know that it's not serving our community correctly am I alone in that no we agree with you we're just we agree with you I think there's a commitment to bring it I mean I'm hearing at least from people bring It Forward again I'm a little concerned that things move slowly and understandably right so we're going to get compliant and there may be a a quite a few other policies that we're not compliant with so months can feasibly go by months and months and months before this goes back on the table um and I just this should be our a priority is keeping our kids safe we have two things that we have to do for
065kids we have to uh you know provide them access and we have to keep them safe okay so I would say like if the board wants us to be the first policy review then I would have no problem being you know that once we're compliant then we give it that second scrub to further refine it to where we need it to be I I think that's really the perview of the two of you with guidance from others to determine what are the most important ones to address first I'm not aware and I just kind of asked Tom and he's probably thinking about it I'm not sure there's many other policies that you have to have a compliance on they're just like when they come from press they're recommendations from the minds of the legal attorneys
066you can adopt them at whatever rate you feel is important a lot of times we may find ones that this is an urgent issue we're going to go ahead and adopt it and then we're going to double back back again to talk about it to see if there's some things that need to be done because this group's going to kind of not only look at policies for whether we think they're out of date whether they're not appropriate for our needs or also if they're um if if they just um I put this if if they they kind of rise to the level of like need and when they need to be adopted an urgency right this one's clearly has urgency and that's why it's kind of going out of the proper sequence that we would
067like to do yeah but we're we're like it's like we thought about the committee and part of that was because of this and now it's like we're going we're taking it out of order we were talking about bullying we were talking about reviewing this we were getting questions answered and part of this it kind of came up and I think part of other discussions we should have a committee now that committee is taking it's taking priority of this discussion and that's how I'm looking at it because we've had this like you know put on an agenda since June and here we are in August and we're just going to put it backwards again and that doesn't make me super comfortable we've had a little progress as far as having an open discussion that's it um
068so I don't know I I just I'm I'm not super comfortable putting back on the back I mean I understand your fear right like if it gets kind of feels like it's getting back bured as it were it is right and and it's and and if it is back burner then it's it's mostly out of being able to try to meet the compliance requirement and the the past performance I guess would be from your perspective of saying hey it may not come back like if we all commit to it and maybe it doesn't come back or it gets pushed behind it that's I don't hear that from other people that are talking right now I think it could come back at the very next meeting to continue the discussion can I can I just maybe
069try and help uh alleviate some of the concern about the status of some of the work um one I do want to share with the board is that uh all of our Administration has gone through some retraining over the summer um and then based on some of the concerns heard I know principal PCH has also spent time with her uh Administration and the Deans in looking closer at some of their protocols that they have at the middle school and again that's that is born out of the conversations have been occurring since the like the May board meeting um and then over the summer that was part of the intentional work that our leadership team was working on in designing the other aspect is ISB has issued a template on the I know data had come
070up right we had talked about data as a board together and so data is another aspect that we're actually looking at right now as well um one of the things we are going to do is uh more than likely adopt the template that is is suggesting because we have to enter this data at the end of the year and so for us that takes us into power school and making sure we're formatting the data so it meets what the state's asking us to do now one of the things that I know the board I talked about at one point I might have been the June board meeting possibly July um you had asked about what type of data is it that we keep versus what has to get reported and for us we do maintain
071data that goes all the way down to the detailed level on the students on the students and identifiers right the state is asking us though to submit types of data codified in a manner that makes sure it's not identifiable but obviously for us our Administration especially at the building level maintain the detailed records because if they're looking into the matter they need to have the record and know who they've spoken to Etc and what the incident was so there's a descriptor to it um and I know the other question was just trying to make some efforts to make sure that our uh visibility and knowledge and understanding and education piece for students and staff was occurring um I know Holly uh immediately within the next uh time frame since that board meeting uh went and
072visited with the principles and took time to make sure like the I think we had mentioned to you all the bathrooms is one of the common areas that we our buildings will put up signage and information on how to like report something Holly I know confirmed and went around and made sure that our buildings were being any if there was any blind spots there that they were taken care of that if there's any gaps any any of that stuff so I know those are uh definitely the concerns that were shared and that's hopefully at least sharing out and reporting that that's where we're at um I know at the July board meeting the one thing on some of the questions um I'm trying to look at notes um and then from the building level teams
073and our cni department uh we're I would say approaching this from kind of a multi- uh solution based approach so one of the things that I shared with the board was that infographic that shows at a large scale systems wide how we're trying to promote the educational components for uh the social emotional side to to what policy 718 addresses and that is the work that our teams have been doing it's been coming from our student services team um our school social workers and counselors and the administration at the building level um and then our coordinator here at the district in assisting them with all that she's uh got special certifications that surround this type of work so that's kind of like that large scale side of things um at the building level our teams are
074definitely working on some of the resources to ensure that there supports for example one of the um contracts that was approved under consent is with the family counseling services so those are aspects and opportunities that we offer to try and help in a restorative manner when there's when there are issues that that we have a what do you call like a a list of different resources like a good toolbox for us to go to that might work for what families are comfortable with or what the students comfortable with um is it perfect and is it done my answer is no that is merely an update I'm just trying to provide for the board at the moment so I'd say for me um and like if we don't have any other pressing policies like not that
075we can't multitask but I would rather get do one and get it done right the first time and then move to the second one unless something comes out or we have to change and amend another policy like right away like that's my goal with this policy review is like let's look at them let's see where we need to fix it and amend it um and I mean the Bullion One like I just I know that will be on my first and foremost is to get it right and unfortunately I don't know when our meetings are going to be I can't give you a timeline because we got to set it up you know how often we're going to meet um so I don't want you to feel like like I'm not putting it on the
076back burner but again to get it right you kind of got to take some time to get it right when you say okay so can we not have a board meeting we talked about that um having a board meeting when we need to take a little more time allow all of us to digress things um is that not can we do that for this specifically like so that we can have more talk time about what we are looking at from the for the policy so like what you I'm trying to think maybe what you're looking for would be like maybe we we're going to meet we're going to figure out a meeting time to set this up would you prefer if it's possible for us to have that meeting before the next board meeting so
077we could make adjustments to it and then at the next board meeting that would be the second pass and that would have the refin of our committee meeting in there already or are you asking for a special board meeting to discuss as a board as a whole this again um to continue the conversation I don't want to sound sound repetitive I got I just I'm I'm a little I know that you guys want as the board committee for policy review to look through our policy see if we have any others that need some attention and then I understand one do want them one at a time why can't you guys do that and us as a board we're addressing this I'm a little lost on that because we already know as a board this needs
078work so why don't why is this not front and center while you guys are still meeting you guys can still meet and look at the other policy stuff can you not and decide like hey yeah we need to work on this and this but while we're also working on this I don't that's what we was saying like this will be the first one we work on yeah this is going to be the first one we work on right so nothing's going have to go through the committee and because I'm I'm a little confused why does this one have to go through the committee for you guys to look at it and say yeah we need to look at it it doesn't have to but this is the one that this is the one that we're
079doing because we we want to we're going to amend it to make it fit us so this again this is my thing is like so we're you guys amend you guys actually make the changes to the policy they don't they make recommendations to bring to the board so let's just say like yeah hey we're going to change the that's why we're talking yeah this is like we're going to change like to say hey we're going to make you know uh everyone wear use black pens like we're going to make that so we're just going to bring it like Hey we're going to amend this you have to use black pens we'll bring it to that's what it's saying like so you know something like that so we're going to we're looking at these harass the
080bullan harassment one we'll get it compliant and then while it's working to be compliant we're going to amend it to fit our needs and what we want other outside the what the uh Illinois School Board wants right to make itavia but yes and then you bring that to the board yeah say this is what we this is what we feel will help so we would probably give updates like this now we're in compliance also based off discussions we've made X Y and Z changes based off discussions and that's in a board meeting under policy and then we're doing like what we're doing now we're talking and then what we're so let's say I was like Hey where's this then that goes into the change I what is like like how does this all count you
081you you can make your recommendations and then yeah we can discuss it in fi yeah like yeah I think that's a great idea we missed that or whatever yeah it doesn't get kicked back to the committee again it could all kind of get fleshed out if and we feel it the only thing that may need dependent on the level of recommendation is an attorney review because we don't want to kind of get in a bind on something right but it and and make sure we're clear on the understanding of what's a policy and what's a procedure but beyond that I think whatever just like has happened in the past press makes a recommendation in the past individual board members I think Rob did some and others have kind of looked at it and said okay
082this is the rec this is what press says we recommend this one don't recommend this one we recommend this one we don't recommend that one they may take what my expectation would be is take the kind of the meeting minutes that Tom had from the meeting we had last month and see how what's missing from this policy based on what was discussed at the last month meeting say these are the items that we think should be incorporated into policy these are the items that are procedure based that would be following the policy and then they can make those recommendations it's not their goal is to try to make the policy an alignment with the board's needs not their particular needs right right right so so I don't think the conversation we had last time is
083lost I think there's some efficiency potentially in allowing them to meet between now and the next board meeting potentially and by the way when they meet it's a board committee it is subject to open meetings act they have to post it they have to post it people can come whatever they want they'll review it they'll talk about it and then they can then bring it with the heads up if we want on particular cases like I think might make sense of here's what we discussed and we get about a two week heads up on what might be coming so that we have time to digest and Talk Amongst ourselves individually you know think about it research talk to Tom talk to whomever and then allow that time for then the discussion to happen in open
084forum as it's supposed to and then make a amendments and in theory if everybody's agreed upon adopt the policy change that with that one it's not first reading second reading you get to adopt it right no no the first reading and second reading thing is probably because it has to be like officially submitted to ISB or like the the budget has to go through a very specific process because the level of public involvement they want to make sure occurs yeah this hasn't been talked about in detail so I know you guys are like kind of looking at me it's not that I don't trust you it's that this hasn't been explained to all of us um and I just want to understand that like there are certain things that each of us can catch like
085when I was reading through um the um Senate Bill 90 that you sent like there's a lot of things in there that I think would really help us right and it should be stuff that I think our policy does adopt so I'm hearing that you guys take that information you look at that see what applies to bavia you take all these things in consideration you guys make revisions or amendments whatever you need suggest it then you guys will send it to us a couple weeks before we're actually going to see it is that what I'm understanding that's what I'm hoping happens that's what we're working on it so this is a brand new committee so that would we're probably taking up half the agenda they might have discussed in their first meeting right now yeah
086yeah which is great because I mean the Commit This committee concept is fairly new right because we're recognizing that with the Strategic plan and with this uh The Bullying requirements and I'm sure there's other ones that we want to make sure there's more diligent review process of policies than we've ever really had to do in the past so this is a new structure that that thas seen at other locations that we'd like to kind of bring here so that it's an efficient conversation so we stay on point and we allow people to say okay the two of the board members have taken with maybe help from a third if they needed on a particular topic has said okay we're at least in an an agreement and understanding and then they kind of pitch it to
087the rest of the group right and and then that way the rest of the group can say okay I you know trust their perspective I understand what they're saying but here's this this and this and if everybody goes yeah sure let's do that we can if not adopt the policy we can formalize the r the language of the policy then get it formally reviewed however it needs to be reviewed and then adopted the next month so so this being you if I could just add a little context because this is what I was going to talk to you both about so I'm glad we're talking about it now um you know one of the things when it is is a board committee and there are board members assigned as the co-chairs so for the meeting
088to even be able to uh take place both co-chairs have to be present in order to meet uh the open meetings act and so that's an example of where this is why a board committee designation is very different than an administrative uh committee um that some of us lead right so for this work um another example would be of where as a board if there's something that for example this very topic if you would like to be part of the conversation and contribute you can be there it it's following the op meet meetings act um the only thing you won't be doing is you're not making actual decision by action you would be making a consensus to recommend that it does come to a board meeting for the full Board review if that makes sense
089so it's because it's like a a committee amongst colleagues basically so if you think it of it in a different way maybe uh Steve Tony and Brad they lead their own committees but they don't have the authority to to provide the finality of an action from their committee work it actually comes to me for approval uh so it be similar and we're all peers right so you're all peers and colleagues but the co-chairs will lead that conversation then at the end if there's a consensus to recommend let's take this to the to the full board then it's the full board that makes the action and decision on that so yeah yeah and is new so I get it it if there's other questions please Danielle I appreciate you continuing to like dive into it to
090figure it out it's a good it was a good discussion so I got one I guess clarifying question so if we have recommendations um for what updates we would like to see in this policy we can go ahead and submit that to you right so you can even come to our meeting or come to the meeting right join us what I'm saying I mean I guess the way I'm envisioning is like we would host our meeting and we would say this is the policy we're reviewing all the board members would know it so you have a chance to look at it and then if you have any feedback prior please provide it and then if you can't be at the meeting we'll take that input make recommendations send a committee report back to the board
091before the next board me so you have plenty of time to review it and then we can have a pretty robust conversation we we all convene together okay Mak sense yeah that's how I'm envisioning but it's up to you know yeah I I guess I just wanted to make sure that there there was a Avenue for uh anyone to submit um recommendations or what they think some of the language might be or you know so that's that's there and then I'm also hearing that the the priority is uh specifically the bullying policy right right off the bat here so this is the number one priority the one off there okay very good the only thing I would say is just for recordkeeping more than anything else feel free to anybody to email them directly with
092your comments you don't need to run it through me right this is that just copy me and Tom so that we can kind of keep it for record keeping purposes and this does not do anything with our emails are too like we're not as long as you just send like and Tom if you can confirm as long as it's like you send it to one of them and then and then kind of copy me so I'm saying aware of it I think that's fine okay as long as there's no dialogue and back and for fourth and it's a oneway street so what couldn't happen is we can't respond they can't respond to you like I would I would even hesitate to go like great idea don't like just you know thank you very much acknowledged
093and then and then come to the meeting to discuss it if you decide to there's going to be a little figuring it out yeah and then the other thing I'm thinking about is so then when we have a proposal for a policy change it has to be reviewed by The state lawyers uh so uh question um we would probably depending on what I would argue that depending on what the amendments are we may or may not take it to our attorneys and the reason being is um so sometimes some of the board policy updates are nothing more than legal reference updates in the footnotes those are typically when you get presented to the board it say says it'll say something to the effect of non-substantive changes I struggle with that word um right so what
094it means is the policy language itself is not being altered there was probably some legal case that occurred somewhere where they changed the legal reference and just updated it to a more recent case or something of that fact the ones that such as 7180 there's um Redline changes that exist within the policy now iasb has a team of legal counsil that has has reviewed this and recommended it to all member districts right if we were to amend some of the aspects of that policy to fit what the board is looking for I would under that policy I'd say let's make sure once we're done let's send that off to uh our district counil that's our attorneys just to make sure we're covered right because sometimes what's being recommended for changes is going to be consistent
095to what school code or Illinois state law or federal law is is stipula right um some of the aspects though that we talked about to me can also be placed under procedures which doesn't require board policy impact which is where quicker action can take place and I think that's where we can be more responsive and act like so for example if we start to get feedback that the QR codes or the bathroom signage is just not being as impactful or as effective right and is not um not something students are voicing back to us saying like I feel comfortable reporting like that right then we we can create new procedural steps as quickly as we need to and work with the relevant stakeholders and Comm and groups of employees to make that actually happen that
096wouldn't be a board policy that's actually the board policy might State something to the effect of a reporting mechanism is in place that's the policy but the procedure you know we didn't pick and choose that yeah in that instance you can n on it there's more flexibility to it um and again I think what personally I you know we're going to get direct student feedback through through the new Panorama survey that we're going to be implementing this year and I think that's one of those pieces right when we talk about inclusion and feeling belonging and safety we're going to hear and so if for example that I just gave if kids are saying I don't I don't want to report it through that I prefer I'm making this I prefer talking to my counselor then
097we may have to change on how we advertise and what we look at right even though that's a that's a very acceptable way to do it now um we may have to change the way the posters look or make it more explicitly clear you know and and um I don't I'm just trying to give an example off the top of my head right now to explain the difference between what administrative procedures are versus the actual board policy right and one thing I've kind of learned sitting here is like it's really important to distinguish those two because if you start Implement if you start mandating procedures within your policy you can't change them without coming back to the board and making those recommendations like if they find out that the QR codes are not working and
098they get data that says that they need to change to the counselor they can change that from a Wednesday to a Thursday if they feel it's the best rout to go right so does our policy have to reflect like I I know I've mentioned the what is it the um Tom you sent it to us I don't remember the name it was like buling act but it's the sb90 in within that document there's like one thing that had popped out I mean it's a long 50s something page document but I I'm I'm used to reading the stuff from what I used to do and it's fine I go through it and like one of the things that had jumped out was you know that every student should be able to report their bowling to whomever
099they're comfortable with in the building and so is that something that we and that's something for you guys but just out of curiosity like for if I was going to make recommendation does that have to be in our policy if it's here like on the if it's part of the bill language does it have to show up in the language and our policy probably make it in part of our procedure like you like so like if like he said QR code's not working and may maybe it's in our policy but let's say it's not yeah so then we can put you can report your instances of bul and through the QR code website for your trusted uh BPS employee so it actually exists in our current policy as it stands right now it's it's in
100there it's already explicitly stated um aside from specific named administrative positions um it also goes into stating any staff member with whom the student is comfortable speaking I think in part of it was saying that you could have that person with you is when you were dealing with it so um you know so if a kid is like hey this teacher is my person this teacher can come with that student to talk to the dean or whatever and so is that because it's a bill does that policy or is that procedure does it have to be listed in policies I believe that's a procedure I don't think every piece of it because also if there's already a state bill that floats out there sometimes repeating State bills in your policies gets very very difficult and
101and by difficult I mean don't mean hard to do I mean you end up that's like the attorney review you end up conflicting so that if the state Bill changes then one day then you end up having to change your policy to match the bill so the bills always supersede our policy period am I correct on that we went through yeah we have to follow state law whether your policy tells us to or not right so if the state bill says it it doesn't matter what our policy says we have to it has to be followed so no we our policy does not have to quote correct that's what I and in some ways you might not want it to but you can make a statement in there like it will follow like there's probably
102a statement says someone one of our other policies is we will follow all state laws yeah yeah so yeah I just wasn't sure if that's something that's a good question we have to put it very good discussion okay I would hope so with being our policy yeah yeah all right um any I'll just say this we're going to meet we're going to find a time to meet and then we'll probably let the board know pretty within the next probably five business days when we're going to have our first meeting okay Mark so everybody upset and just to reconfirm we are looking to first read this today today as the changes as required second would be next meeting to have it put through but we are all like in agreement that we are doing that with
103the understanding of amending it well yeah so like we're going to review policy will be the Pol this like this will be the policy but we can do our procedures which amends to like to fit our needs and if we need be we if need be just to clarify if need be you can modify the policy to tune it to what we want it to be yeah that's what I'm in in excess and I mean maybe they get together and they meet and maybe we could do that beforehand in this because the first reading and the second reading correct me if I'm wrong don't have to be the exact same policy they can have amendments to it because that's the whole kind of point of first read second read right right so yeah but we're
104not going I just want to make again I'm just clarifying and making sure that we're on the same page that we are doing it on this but we are coming back once you guys do your thing and we will with the understanding that we may be amending the same a policy that we are looking to approve next month yes yes correct yes okay any other questions on this all right any other policy updates any other policy update will come through the committee this is the one that we wanted to prioritize okay all right thank you very much um actually one thing I wanted to I'm to question so we may end up with a mix of ISB recommended revisions and then our own personal like ones as a board inquiry not an answer that I'm
105asking for is can those be like tagged or footnoted in that very nice in my opinion kind of redlined document so that if you're looking at it you know this language was recommended by ISB and this language is recommended by us that's a good idea it's a great idea unfortunately with what we have there it it's not capable of doing that there's ways that we could indicate that of course but not in that red line you play FL notes and stuff in there or no okay by the way just yeah we can we can add more features that's def that's something that's was homegrown for us and and we're we have other features in mind that we plan on adding and so it's something that we can put it on the wish list maybe yeah
106certainly because I think it would be helpful because when I'm looking at it I I don't know what was responsive to our conversation or versus what was required by the you know right and and my opinion it could be like a at the end of a sentence a little parenthesis I little parenthesis b i stands for ISB b stands for board or something like that you know some sort of indication yeah I floating it out there so okay all right uh next uh we now have items for Action so we items 6.1 approval or review of the data dashboard all right so board as I uh had shared before tonight's item for you does not have to be acted on tonight I just want you to be super super clear about this because I realize
107you are seeing this um you know with fresh eyes and having a firsttime discussion the only reason why I had listed this as discussion and action is in the event that after reading your board book if you all came to a quick consensus and felt very comfortable with one of the options that are presented to you then you could act on it tonight otherwise if the Board needs more time we're good to go um okay so uh having said that uh with the adoption uh the board's adoption of the district strategic plan um we made sure that we had called out that our data dashboard uh would be an area that the measurement the measur measurables of our areas of priority are what we are using to be transp arent and hold ourselves accountable uh
108to the goals and priorities of our work right and so moving that forward we're giving you options to take a look at as a board what you would like to do in terms of how we interface with the public or anyone who lands on that um data dashboard and in front of you you have uh three options the the links that were provided to you will give you an idea as to what each option looks like um and we also Prov provided you with the ability to scale that basically um you know if you take a look at row four that's us doing the work and we can do it that comes within the scope of our own abilities and uh that would obviously be free in terms of not needing to add any resources
109to maintaining that version of a dashboard Row three is uh another St to take a look at this one does have costs associated to it um again we tried to highlight for you kind of just some summary details and what the pros might be to that option and then we did the same thing for row two with clear go right so the annual fees if you notice um are lower there's for each of those paid options there's a startup fee and a setup fee um if we were to go with that so I'll just get started I'm sort of leaning towards option one or two not the third one I know it costs money but I feel like this is what these people do and so we'll get more act the data will be uh
110more interactive and uh I think the interface might be easier we won't be figuring it out if we do it ourselves I mean I'm sure we would do a good job but this is what these people do and they've been doing it like item two is for the city of Pavia so people are used to using that information so I'm open to a discussion on all of them but I'm leaning more towards the first two options even though there is some cost associated with it so if you click on those links do we see the actual yeah you do can we do that here for so can you go review kind of like of the three options which one is more realtime data like gets updates more regularly I know one of them is we
111do the work I mean all of them we do a little bit of the work address that it's more about the layers of data that's presented okay so like this every time I clicked was another layer right so you have it could be just where are we at and completing our fiveyear plan we're at 70% of it and that might be all that somebody wants to learn right um somebody want to drill down farther into each of the priorities and each of the key performance indicators under each of those priorities and if we've accomplished those goals and what percentage we have completed and what action items are tied to each one of those goals and how much those have been completed um that all that information is available in all of the systems that we've
112shown here however because this is developed as a layered and um Dynamic site it is the user chooses what layer they want to how far they want to dive whereas if we create it it is a snapshot in time okay so this is and and you would say here's the 10 snapshots that we would like displayed on our website page and with those snapshots will be updated twice a year so so these numbers might only be in all of them updated twice a year but it's the amount of dat so the accuracy is the same it's the amount that you want how granular you can get exactly okay so what we see here for what we have now that is what we would keep there are no ways to add layers into what we see
113here like in this one on our right that so basically it is almost like um we could cater what you saw on that page so we would say no we don't want to see that indicator we'd like to see this one instead um however granular you'd want that to be or top level you'd want it to be and then we would pull that report take that shot put it up on the website twice a year and it's accurate to that time like I said I and I can show you the example as you just showed me on your screen the one for us yeah so this is taken from five laab which is where we put all of our information from our student information system and all the different tests and reports and everything that
114goes up into it so this is the current data as of today and some of it shows year over-year which is somewhat layered but it's a snapshot so these numbers really won't change for most of this because you know they only take map tests a couple of time you know it's not it's not changing right ACT scores are not changing every week right so we're providing accurate data to the day that it was pulled but with these other websites they people could look at from different 10,000 ft to really granular basically M and we can we could say on those websites we could put a limit like we could say we only want it to go down to building level not to grade level or not to you know whatever layer we want it to
115stop at we can put a pause with this we would just be able to specifically pick which 10 five 30 maybe one tied to each key performance indicator that we display on the page as a static image one of the things that's kind of neat about the the New Orleans one is that it kind of talks about progress and Status right which I didn't necessarily see on I mean it certainly is not on the one that we're kind of currently doing ours as a and we can add dialogue yeah yeah but not layered right so like it could be even that we put our strategic plan up there and then we make a little picture or link that takes it takes you to the one key performance indicator image that shows the graph or chart
116um and have a lot of information in there that says this is how we got to this this is the part of the Strategic plan this ties to and dialogue within that page but something like this shows you okay so this would be like for us our three key priorities let's say would be shown right here and this shows you by the these colors down here how far we are and accomplishing our priority number one right um priority number two priority number three and again you could go into here and say all right here's our priority number one here's the 12 things that we have identified as our actions action plan to accomplish this and then next layer could be what the ACT you know each of the data sets that tie to it but
117again it kind of gives descriptors along each of these paths to say what it means and also gives you its own little percentage do we know what we're going to have on the dashboard so I that might be helpful to know if it's just like test scores I don't know that we need it to be super interactive but if we're tracking progress of various things that need explanation behind it I don't think ours will do it you know what are we tracking exactly to we decide that hasn't I mean that I think that's part of one of the next steps yeah I think this is just saying okay this is the framework it's in and maybe right now the question is do we have one that's kind of robust enough to be able to allow
118for the depth we may get to you know because I think there's going to be some need and I mean as a person who's tried to kind of work through particularly like when we were looking at kind of referendum stuff and things like that there's a lot of data there and it's like this is pretty navigable um that I think I think we would do a great job at it don't get me wrong but I think there's ways that some of these other kind of template is things would allow it to get a little bit more rich and feel more kind of approachable as well I mean I I love a bar chart as much as everybody else but when it kind of spins and does fun things you know there it feels engaging so
119and again the data is exactly the same it will be the same around the back side of this literally Jean Marie will if we decide in one of these let's say we go with clear go she will throw information into five lab up into Panorama or wherever the next place is and in here click click click all at the same time it's the same exact data it's just how we are presenting it out and what layers we choose so for like ours we can't say this is strategy one and in that layer then this is under strategy one and here's a goal under we can't do that with ours could we it would not be dynamic like in a in a in Aur click on this link click on this link go to this page
120or here's the next page or it wouldn't be like all right I saw this number here and I want to know the 10 decisions that went underneath that and here's the four goals that they're trying to accomplish it would it would it would just be like a kind of a a decision tree kind of like we' be going here and into this space and down to the next space I mean I think I like this and we're going to be talking about the budget soon and that's an example of like some people just want the 10,000 foot view but I mean you can get super Grand on a 100 different metrics on that so to your point I'm sure there'll be some things we're measuring that's pretty cut and dry pretty basic but then there'll
121be a lot where different members of the community are going to want looking at it from different levels of granularity and so I like having that available to them are any of these more facilate inputting the data than the other no okay if we made a decision how quick can we Implement um I think they were 60 days because the data is there so you have you have some data to put in telling it yeah it's just telling them where to pull it from or us putting it in and Hol the Gap time is due to them doing a site buildout to our des and the layout and the coding and yeah so the big difference between two and three appears to be that three is more TurnKey they will do the graphics they will
122help create it they will give you the template that you will start to input data in teach you how to build that so you can build others later two like you highlight there we're solely responsible for creating Graphics Matrix and the dashboards they basically give you they give us that framework like that you saw in the city of bavia site where it's like here's the different ways to drill down we would then it's like dropping like you're when you're designing a website you pull this box in and you drop it here okay well I want a text box here so I can describe all the information that I want it to and I want this to be displayed as a pie chart and it'll show you how what data to pull into the pie chart
123so it's a little bit more of a build on our side um whereas the other one we would say these are the 12 pages that we would like or layers that we would like it to have here's all the data they walk us through they show us how to do it but they also would create like the first 10 and then if we decide that over time we would like you know here's a new metrics we want or data set that we would like to show show on our dashboard we would know how to make that 11th one or whatever and adjust it over time or hire them if we decide we need to for timing to well we'll P an annual fee for them as to keep up with any kind I'm just saying
124if we want another page or another depth I'm sure they have an ability to help it because that's it kind of explains why there's a fairly Hefty difference on the setup feed component between those two yeah what's your preference h knew it was going to come Holly the question I um it's tough for me to say I was I of course we went to the city of atavian because they had the dashboard got their recommendations say they love working with them it was a great process staff loves it all positive feedback about the clear go proposal so that was kind of a a a good starting point for us I knew we wanted the Baseline of what we've had in the past and what we could do in house and then I was like I
125did research on just regular dashboards and then this came up as one that many used as an example of a polished place so then I reached out to that company to get a proposal the customer service aspect from both of them is very highly rated testimonials are fantastic for both of them um I I think that as a user personally and this shouldn't be a reflection of what the community would necessarily want but having something that is more interactive and easy to navigate and pretty to look at the New Orleans Public Library I think fits that bill yeah I mean that's that's kind of my inclination is just because I want it to be engaging and I want it to feel rich when you're looking at it and so that people will be interested in
126diving into the information to the point they feel comfortable you know so that's my personal opinion I would vote for ease of use it's the top priority and ease of administration say readability yeah okay let's keep it simple I would throw out there that we don't know the target audience exactly we don't know what we're going to have on here and it's hard for me to imagine spending that much money to put data out there that we don't know is even going to be looked at I'm just I'm looking at this thinking while the city's spending that much money yearly to have this datea out there that I've never seen before I'd much rather put this money somewhere else um maybe even take a year to have our dashboard created in house before we decide
127to make it pretty that's just my thought moment if we don't do a change in the dashboard you know we had talked about going to the Strategic plan that we would have like by like when did we I think we said two times a year that we would get updates kind of on where we're at so we'll do a by annual report one the first coming within either December or January for the board and then the next one coming at the end of the school year so even if we didn't have something like that in place click click click the community could still hear potentially like this where we're at on strategy one you know or whatever your updates are like just going off of what RJ is saying if we try to update ours
128alone and it may not have all of the interactive faces behind it but just kind of see like what data do we actually need to take from the Strategic plan what are we looking at the public can still access information via like your updates and via the website that we have correct right let I hear you RJ like I I I don't we don't know what we're putting on there we don't know I feel like people have made it clear they do want to see like where we're at on things but I don't even know what we're putting on there necessarily it's different can I can I uh do you mind if I help with that question that you're asking pleas so the Strategic plan I would I would probably say actually does give anyone
129who puts their eyes on our organization's plan uh an indication of what we are going to be putting on there um example being one of the areas call for student chronic absenteeism and that our goal is to try and reduce that number to to get our students to come to school on a regular basis right um so to me if I if I were just a parent or a Community member I would just naturally assume all the district's going to put something having to do with student attendance on the dashboard does that make sense that makes sense right so then um another one from a teaching and learning perspective would be like act because the states moved from the SAT the ACT this year so because that's only a onetime assessment per year and it
130comes at the back end of the year and we don't get the results until the summer so for us next year on our dashboard we would have an ACT score reported right and then on our dashboard year-over-year moving forward we would be able to have that metric there right um in terms of uh sense of belonging our Panorama survey that's going to be um administered this uh multiple times throughout the year that gives us an ability to report out what percentage of our students are saying I feel like I have a a safe adult to speak to right or connect to and that we would be able to show that and obviously we want that number to hit 100% but we'll get a baseline going and be able to kind of report that time over
131time so I mean so when people are looking at that it's like we're looking at a focus on how how do we uh Foster that sense of belonging for students to be in our schools then again that's where um you know we talk about the specific data that we use and that's why I'm I'm excited that you all approve the Panorama recommendation because now the students are actually going to take their own survey instead of the old tool that we used previously so here's here's a and this may be a question just for clarity so it causes me thinking when you're talking about like as an example chronic absenteeism right you're going to go here's the data to one of the two top companies and that's going to be whatever data we're having to collect
132in on that uh by grade by school by K12 K k6 K5 whatever K5 k68 High School by ethnicity by gender however it might get you just upload that data and then they will work to figure out how deep people want to go for option number three somebody has to preet up what those they're going to be going into and begin to make those images is for each one of those potential exploration points right so the data will already be there it's just we'll have to do the drill down ourself to get to that image then pull the image and put it on the website right so you have to like intentional decide which ones whereas if someone just goes up to the other websites they're almost creating on the Fly the image that the
133rosette or the pie chart that they're looking at whereas someone i' almost have to say well I don't see this chart on here then Holly would have to go okay you're right that's a great one let's go make the chart and put it on our website so RJ I do agree with you I think what I'm the lens I'm viewing it as is you know we talk about transparency a lot and this is sort of our transparency and transparency means different things to different people so this would give a greater bandwidth of people in our community to be able to access to the level of details that they might want without having to make requests all the time well I I want to see to this level or I mean you're never going to make
134everybody happy no matter what tool we use but this seems like this might hit a bigger cross-section of people to hit that whatever Sweet Spot they're looking for when it comes to the level of information they want to obtain does anyone feel the need to reach out to community and see what they want I mean is that necessary we've never asked the community what what are you looking for when you're looking at data is that worth it with a price tag of this amount to see if it's even something that's necessary or do you guys feel like you've heard about that I've not explored that with any I have no no leaning on that personally so but do we want to engage with the community and see what what they would like since they're the
135ones that are accessing it you're saying like a survey we would send out I I don't know how that works but yeah I guess maybe a survey I don't know I don't know I think part back I don't know yeah my initial thought is along the line what Tom was talking about earlier is kind of a part of the development of the the Strategic plan process there's kind of specific things we've already been told and like what may be up for discussion to kind of ask is say hey maybe at the by our next meeting here's the list of the things that the Strategic plan seems to imply that we would already kind of have cr Amis and this this this this this that might be those initial sets of charts and maybe that can
136give a little bit of framework of okay right now we're talking about 17 of them with three data sets below hand or we're talking about 17 of of them with 95 data sets below them that we can't do we can't potentially do on our own I mean if we have data that we can look at that was taken from those sit Downs maybe that's the approach we need to take first to say like you know how many points do we have how deep does the community actually want to go that was not an area of focus so there's not going to be very specific feedback for that um the feedback with with regard to it was more focused on communication from the district to stakeholders which is where we got our feedback in regards to
137a specific um to your point about the dashboard itself there's no there's not going to be really any feedback in that not for that part I'm saying I I guess what I understood from what Craig was saying was use those conversations to say here was a feedback you know there was this concern this concern it was attendance and that like is there a need to have are there like legitimately from the stuff you guys took in from the community conversations oh oh absolutely that that is what the plan is so if you you to look at what we have can that be done on this like what you took in can we put it here with what we have or do would we absolutely have to use an outside company to get deeper into different
138levels um so this goes back to uh I think what Holly was trying to explain is that if we go with the in-house version we don't have the Staffing power to get as uh adaptive and flexible as I think you see in the other companies and their features that's kind of one snapshot it would be I get that but I think you're saying like can we provide the extra layers and everything what we would have to do is curate the data to think about each like think of like um like a photo book you know like the old photo books right uh there one picture right there we would have to create page after page with all those templates and we could do it but we don't have the current we we wouldn't be able
139to um pull staff off of their projects right now to do that on a regular basis is what I'm saying so the people who are on the steering committee you guys and the people who are involved in taking in that data do you feel that we can appropriately communicate with our community what they were looking for from those surveys and all that from this website that we have already well the way I look at it is uh we can communicate for sure we can put a version out there okay um but I think what we what we found is and demonstrated by the use of the previous dashboard was there was no engagement or um and so the way I look at it is um getting the data is going to be the most important
140thing but I think if you put a right site um visually make it easy to use easy to understand that's the direction I think that they want to from from the feedback the last site was well one it wasn't really updated that often and two it was to me it was kind of hard to understand really and and one the other thing was maybe not all the the metrics were um were what they wanted so but that's part of the Strategic plan was to get that feedback and say what are what are the stuff we're going to we're going to do so that's my perspective but Tom one other question so the so back to the resources like are we going to are you feel comfortable that we have the people in place to be
141able to populate this uh like collect the data and be able to um yes you know populate the sites so it's already being done and I did um meet with Jean Marie who's the one that already puts the data up to all the other sites and she said that just the couple times a year whenever those frequencies happen for whenever the test results and data come out when she puts the information literally would just be an upload because they take the same file format that she's already pushing up to like five land and yeah because I think the one you could make this as pretty as all get out but if you're not updating it and with accurate data um you're just going to lose everybody it would be updated either any one of these
142it would be updated at the same whenever the information is available H if we went with one of the first two vendors I mean is it a year one-year contract so yes they're one- year contracts they of course encourage fiveyear something the length of the plan you know to keep it consistency and they so discount on the way but I we could do one year I mean so kind of where I'm going to with Rob is we're trying to get more engagement I mean we could try it for a year or two and see if and then you could survey people like how do you like the new website is it working for you is you know I mean if we're trying to pull people but I I would say I if if that was
143the case I would probably go with like the RJ trial of just putting up the 15 data points that we found are most important that were shared through all the feedback to the Strategic plan find whatever those data points are true and see all of those then create the dashboard put it out there hey everybody here's this dashboard here's all the information it ties back to our strategic plan follow along as we track this year-over-year and if nobody's looking at it then maybe we go with a company to help us create more Lively engagement because we're hearing that people like it's stale it's boring it's just pictures on a page I want more than that is an option I will say the engagement thing means something my company does some things like with facility assessments
144where we like determine when the end of life of equipment is I know Stellar exciting right but we have bar charts that we do that talk about how much you're going to spend year over year and year that's fine it's great but we use a product called powerbi that comes as a part of an that does these super interactive rosettes so you can click on it and click on it on I can bore a board member to tears but as soon as I put that rosette up and I click on it and it spins and it opens and it does things everybody gets immediately engaged you're getting excited just talking about it try to keep away no yeah it's I mean it it just it kind of it's kind of quite amazing about how it's
145like just change the course of being able to digest the data for people as well now can I ask a quick question for H here uh H can you remind me because I think you covered this with me sorry um do the vendor products have the ability to track clicks onto the website like Landing visit sites we can it's it's a full uh dashboard for staff I shouldn't use the word dashboard but interactive uh report and we do too program that we could P how often they went to each of the different layers within the pages I mean for me like the question you asked earlier right we have a we have a fiveyear or so strategic plan do you take year one to say okay we're going to collect some data so we know
146what we're going to put up there and everything else we put it up there and the thing that we've already been doing and it cost us effectively no extra money right and if that is digestible and reachable and and we feel it's not and then we go get some input if we need to about are we communicating well enough and a feedback we later then we say okay that's not working maybe we do need to level up our game a bit that's the real question here in my from what I'm hearing before from the discussion and there is something to be said the fact that this is a um hot topic now and we'll probably get more people looking at it when we watch it then we will right so do we want to launch
147with here's the 15 things we think you want to look at or do we want to launch engagement with our community with something that is dynamic and interactive that they might want to come back to to look at over year over year and that's a great good point so I don't I mean if people want to continue talking about this I think for me personally what I would like to do is maybe we don't have to vote on this tonight we had a good discussion I might do like a little personal poll of people that you know hey what do you think of the district website engagement and do a little personal more research on it and then come back the next meeting and might have a little more anecdotal okay thoughts on it Anybody
148Everybody generally agree with that yeah I'd like to go in and I'm going to be honest I don't think I've ever clicked on all the stuff so I would like to see what's in there and what we're what we're actually working with right now well and Holly you brought up a really good point right there's a chance that we say hey we got this new communication tool and we're showing you all this new and they pull it up it looks just the same as it did last time I don't think it's new at all we're promising you transparency and nobody knew if it was updated or anything else okay we also do have the opportunity before a year too don't we we're like whoa this really isn't working the way we thought we can always
149give it to something different if we came back next meeting we're like let's see how it goes okay Dan I agree with you uh I think if the board lands on wanting to use one of these outside groups I don't think my recommendation will be locking us into a 5year agreement or anything like that just for your point that you're making that one okay so I'm if I'm hearing because I saw the head nods we'll just bring this back as an action item and discussion again at September right yep okay all right thank you awesome thank you for the conversation I do want to say I think Tony was excited when he mentioned asset ended life I thought it was the reference to rosett well rosettes unfortunately my budget presentation doesn't have any rosettes but
150I do promise that it'll be quite a gauging you like data P charts all right Tony let rip all right I'm going to connect to the projector so that I can navigate through the documents momentarily yes so this is our final review of it it is is up for adoption tonight so it's one action But it includes two components one is the official adoption of the budget and it that budget includes fund transfers as well that are outlined in and that can be done under One Singular motion correct okay killing time here while you get connected appreciate that thank you this home bre you do not want that we' all like to sing Happy Birthday go for it I'm grab a wire sure I'm okay thank you yes Garson all right just a quick run
151through of the components of the budget it's changed slightly since you saw it last overall deficit of 1.2 million however there is a surplus in the operating funds we estimate that the pending fund balance would be some 64 million and the fund balanced Revenue ratio would be about 48% uh you'll notice just comparing to Prior years overall revenues would be $133 million that's down slightly from the prior year where it was 133.5 uh and the reason why there is a decline in revenue is for two reasons one we spent the last our federal funding for the pandemic so that money is spent we're not getting any more of it and we're going to start to see a slight decline in property taxes as we're paying off our bonds and I'll talk more about that in
152a bit meanwhile our expenditures will increase from $130 million to 134 so that gives us the difference of 1.2 and you can see what the net Surplus was for the prior three years um be very clear that the deficit is not in our operating funds it's in capital expenditures and as you recall each year we transfer money from our operations and maintenance fund to the capital projects fund and we use that fund as a savings account or kind of a piggy bank because of the size and scope and timing of capital projects I'll show you more about that in a bit so the deficit really is driven by spending a fun balance from the capital projects fund and it's intended to be a temporary thing uh we're going to see an increase in salaries and
153benefits um that's not a correct number I think that it wasn't a 39.2% increase in exempt staff um it's a probably a 9.2% increase uh so that's an error um but there are is a sizable increase in PA Professionals in terms of wages and uh in terms of um positions so we had a lot of vacancies in the prior year so we're comparing actual spending to what we budget so that's going to increase by 11.4% there a moderate increase overall in teacher salaries we'll talk more about that briefly and then um significant increase in benefits because we're bringing the 403b and 457 B match online for for teachers so stay tuned for more discussion on that overall we're increasing Staffing by 11.4 FTE so despite our enrollment declines we're we'll have more staff um and
154that is for specialized programs and for administrative support and so overall we'll see a staffing increase of 4.2% enrollment will be expected to be or enrollment as of the first a of school was 5,181 for what was called the fall housing report that's on October 1st but that looks like it's going to be very near our enrollment for the year um that is a little bit more than what we had projected in our enrollment projections that I share with you last fall so that's some 21 students more and that's primarily at the elementary level so we have more students moving into town than we expected and more than birth rates alone would lead us to predict we see so that's I think good news is is that seemingly spread pretty evenly across the district or
155no they never show up wish is not evenly distributed they always show up and seemingly the wrong spots overall however our pupil to staff ratio will go from 7 .9 to 7.6 and just a few years ago was 8.2 so uh we're hiring more staff we have fewer students that ratio is improving and our class sizes I would argue uh looking at average class sizes have never been better in our history at least since we have been in modern times monitoring those as closely as we do that doesn't mean that there aren't issues with class sizes here and there it's just again kids showing up in Pockets that you you know don't necessarily have control over or if you add another SE section it just doesn't make sense to have classes that small because it's
156not efficient um so overall I'm going to jump around here just just give you some better insight into what is in this document go to the profile overall you'll see that we have a what be a financial rating from the state of Illinois the State Board of Education analyzes School District finances um years ago when I first became the chief School business official for bavia we were on the kind of we were almost almost in morning status because our finances were so poor and over the course of these last 10 or so years they've improved quite dramatically in fact for the last for the last two years and will be this year we expect to have a 4.0 rating which is the highest rating that you can get so that's wonderful our bond rating do
157you just put five up there so that we can try to achieve for something or four as high as we get four as high as you get okay four it's like a it's like a grade point average four is the highest you can get there's no honors waiting or anything our bond rating has improved from the third Notch to the second with S&P so we have a A doublea plus Bond rating our fund balances have improved quite dramatically and that's one of the reasons why we have a 4.0 we're not issuing what our T called tax anticipation warrants where we were doing payday loans we didn't we used to have to borrow money to get through the year so that we could pay our bills don't that anymore and a lot of re one of
158the key reasons why our finances have improved is because we've been able to contain our spending and benefits so for a number of years our spending would be on average it would increase for benefits 15% some years it would be as little as 12 and others it was as much as 18% and you can imagine benefits are very expensive and where they're increasing at that clip it puts a lot of stress on the system and in the last five years we've been able to keep that increase to either zero for most of these years and this year we're going to see a 5% increase in our insurance rates so that's a success story overall um wanted to show you in terms of what our expenses are on a cur student basis so this is our
159what we call our operating expenses per pupil the green line is us so in 2020 you saw our operating expense per pupil was some almost $15,000 that was obviously a very strange year that number was lower than it should have been because there were a lot of unrealized expenditures in that year because I think you remember what happened there was a lot of things that in the later the last half and quarter of the year that there was expenses that we didn't we didn't see come to fruition however in 2021 we saw a lot of expenses come to fruition because we were dealing with Blended learning hybrid learning and we also had a lot of money from the feds to deal with the pandemic so that increased things and you see it kind of check
160and increasing to some would I expect to be right around $20,000 in the current fiscal year and we're comparing ourselves here to the K County average the average of spending operating expense spending per student in all the other districts in K County and in the state of Illinois so for 2022 and 2023 we were a little less we don't have the numbers yet for 24 and 25 but I would expect we're on par with those so we were less slightly yeah about it in 21 we were we're going to continue to see pressure on this as our student enrollment continues to decline we expect that it will stabilize somewhere in the next five years but as it's simple math right if your expenditures are going up and you're dividing that by the number of students
161you have and that's going down you're going to see increases in your operating expense per pup that's not unique to bavia that's happening all across the state of New actually all across the country what cost the same to heat the high school whether there's 1800 students or 1600 yes I do worry about hiring more staff and I I do get this out there there are definitely needs and escalating expectations escalating needs and expectations that we need to meet the needs of students and we do need to have more staff to do that but as we have fewer and fewer students that becomes challenging and so what I always talk about is we have to stay on the Glide path and for reasons I'll talk about momentarily is our only lover for new money is from
162local property taxes that's the only place where we're getting any money uh we do get we I I guess I'm not being fair to the state of Illinois since we're tier four we're at tier four funding so that the state of Illinois does calculations every year to determine what is adequate funding for school districts and it's a wonderful formula because it's Equitable but for us however they have determined that we have adequate funding and so what we get is a whopping literally $55,000 in new money from the state of Illinois as as a tier 4,000,000,000 not 500,000 $5,000 literally $5,000 new money from the state of Illinois and we can't expect any more money from them to support general education because we have adequate resources here locally to take care of it so the only
163place that we're going to get more Revenue to deal with the needs that we face is from local property taxes but there's good news on that front I want to show you here's the property taxes from since 2019 the green bars are average Market valuable home I'm doing market value in 2023 so the market Aver the the the median market value of a home in bavia was $399,000 in 2023 so if you ratchet that back based off of the average increases in our equalized assess value that same home would have been worth very near $346,000 in 2019 and that home would have paid 6,668 in property taxes in the current year they're going to be paying 7,329 but next year as we start to pay off these bonds we're going to see that Bond and
164interest payment decline significantly it'll have itself and we're going to see a decline in property taxes in 2020 in the levy year 2024 just keep in mind this is what confuses me all the time there's school years calendar years tax years Levy years and all these things combined suffice to say people are say well I was expecting my taxes to go down they will it just that tax bill hasn't that that Levy year hasn't happened yet so when we do the 2024 tax levy we'll Levy for yet less and when people pay their taxes in 2025 they'll see smaller tax B have a question sorry yeah so the green bar is the average median the median Medi and the red so if your if your home is $3.99 you pay is the 7,000 go to
165the school or that's just your taxes that's just going to the school those are great questions thank you for asking and I gloss over those details but these are school taxes okay um going back to Staffing momentarily let's look first of all at their Staffing to student ratio I mentioned that earlier you can see our student enrollment in the blue bars and then there's two lines that cross them the yellowish orangish line is the P teacher ratio so those are teachers in our classrooms you can see that our ratio was 12.9 students to every teacher in 2021 and then now that that is down to 12.1 and that is a market difference in that span it seems like fractions but that's a huge difference and uh the same for the people the staff ratio that's
166all the people that work for the school districts that's going from 8.2 2021 to 7.6 in 2025 so hang on so for 20 so so the budget for 20125 you have the 12.1 for the pupil to teach but in there but in your thing I'm sorry it says 7.9 ratio student to teacher ratio so 7.9 you'll see is I want thank you for paying close attention I appreciate that and I do make mistakes so you know I I found one earlier so I apologize but here's the 7.9 in 2024 our pupil to staff ratio was 7.9 and in 2025 it'll be 7.6 the broader Trend 2021 is coming down from 8.2 right so that's what I'm saying like you said the 12 one is this teacher yes but in your report it said 7.9 there's
167two different ratios and I only mentioned the Staffing the general Staffing ratio and the summary I think I I don't I think I know what you're talking about here yeah on page six is it a typo your that's a typo I think right there is that what you're talking about that so well right here the and pupil the teacher oh I see what you're saying staff the staff and St yeah got it got it does that make sense yeah got it got I got itk make a mistake I apologize we got it you got it this is why I print but and so just to be clear it's any cert teacher is considered a certified staff yes it's your teachers your instructional coaches and the green bar is everybody who works here uh looking at
168uh just we talked about was driving this deficit just Capital outlay part of the conversation that we had last month and these these transfers wanted to make sure it was clear what's happening in in this graph here I'm showing these blue bars which are the allocations or the transfers to the capital projects from capital projects fund so our contributions each year into the piggy bank you see we made a big one in 2023 and that number is declining at 24 and 25 in 23 we're gearing up for the work that we did at Alis Guston and JB Nelson school and a number of other things so we've made bigger contributions and the size of that work and the timing of it was such that some of those bills really came due in 2024 and you
169can see we spent the Lion Share of that here but I wanted to compare what's going into the account what's and what's coming out sometimes we have to save money because some of these projects are so big for a couple years to be able to afford them and sometimes the timing of when we get the bills and when the project or when the work actually happens we can't always predict exactly which fiscal year I think that's an important point because we're trying to live within our means so we're you know we're saving before we start unfortunately contractors don't take IUS so we they they do accept checks and cash but um we don't pay in cash of course but uh we have to have money there to pay those bills you don't show up with
170a suitcase no cash discount I forgot did I I may have asked you this but by law do we have to have a balanced budget um if you don't have a balanced budget you have to file what's called a deficit reduction plan with the state of Illinois but that's only for the operating funds okay so technically with what the state of Illinois looks at they're looking for a balanced budget with the operating funds and that's exactly what we have okay let's So This 1.2 million deficit is that would that be considered not balanced then or I consider it not balanced yes okay but we're going to make we're going to bring the funds in from another source we have the money in the bank we're spending money that's in the bank we're spending more the
171money that's in the bank our fund balance yeah we're spending more of it than we're taking in in a given year because we were planning to and uh we're not overspending what's there okay does that I'm not doing a good job explaining it unfortunately well I'm saying you're going to you're going to be compliant yes we're we're compliant we don't have a deficit as far as the state of ill is concerned where we have to make adjustments to how we spend money and uh yeah hopefully and this is the list of the capital projects that we're be tackling here in fiscal 25 now on fiscal 26 that's when we'll start paying for some of the work that we're doing at we're planning to do at HC Storm school and at Louise White actually Louise White
172wouldn't take place until 27th um but there'll be significant outl for those for that work you'll see the bids come back for that probably in November where we would ask you to approve that even though they are not captured exactly in this budget other questions or thoughts that you have yeah didn't we just resurface the tennis cours that was like uh I think that was nine years ago and they're not they're in rough shape One tennis courts I seems like Chris can speak to that are they bad they're bad but doesn't it seem like we just redid them they're terrible they're terrible we can't we can't host tournaments uh just so the board can keep in mind too uh last year last December we approved the warm safe drive plan right which had a 5-year
173projection and vision for the capital projects we needed to do um you know as we come towards the back end of what Tony is sharing and presenting to you we're going have to keep in mind that we will be coming back to you at some point with a new fiveyear more plan because as you know I mean everything is on a cycle of Maintenance and so you know we have that coming uh we're continually monitoring I know Tony and Mar are constantly in touch with what's needed and so are our building leaders so just to keep that in mind I did forget to mention kind of the biggest areas where we're seeing increases one is our retirement incentive for the Bea um we had a lot of teachers who retired last year and so one
174of the reasons why we're seeing only a 2.5% increase on teacher salaries is because a lot of teachers retired we incentivized them to do so and the teachers that are coming in behind them are new teachers they don't cost as much so that is working that does mean people are getting 2.5% raises they're getting usually much more than that uh and then the other thing that you'll see here is regular programs k12 and you'll see there's a 49% increase there uh that's a sizable number it's about a million dollars a lot of that is driven by the new matching program coming online and so that is a very innovative program that's as far as I know is unique to bavia where the board is matching contributions to 403b and 457 BS that teachers make up
175to $1,000 and that thousand is geared toward younger teachers that are making less so the less you make the more you get and it phases out the more money you make and the reason why that's important is because all of our new teachers are what are called tier two in the pension system so the pension benefits aren't anywhere near what tier one was so if you were hired after January 1st of 2011 you're considered tier two and your pension benefits and the years that you can retire is completely different than what has traditionally been the case and these individuals will have to say for their retirement and what we're trying to encourage them to do is to do that when they start working for us right away and if I can just add something sorry
176Tony we didn't talk about this but it's really exciting for me personally because and during our intakes every year I always try to talk about save for yourself save for yourself 403bs 403bs and a lot of people I think they hear that but they don't act on it now they're acting on it because we've incentivized them to do so and so feel like we're setting up our new staff on a very good trajectory we actually had uh I had a teacher who we have a teacher here who's transferred who's from a different District probably worked eight or 10 years elsewhere and he's like I have never seen a district show us and basically encourage us to get 0 403b in my life and he's worked at a couple school districts and he's like and I'm
177a 10-year person and I haven't had one but I'm finally setting one up so this is good for our staff long term and I'm really excited about what we're seeing yeah so I am very excited about too and it's something that I do brag about with my colleagues because I I I think this is exactly what we need to do to help people who are in that that tier level another item that's increasing dramatically I would say is the people trans ation activities in athletics that's increasing sizeably but that is paying for the um activity buses that the after school activity buses that take students home after school activities at both the high school and middle school is that well used um I yes there's certain routes that are used more than others and there's
178certain times of years that it's that it's used more and less depending on what's going on in the in the seasons but good now need to do a better job I think of tracking that and probably recording to you how well is you I'd like to know because I remember asking about it years ago oh no those buses besides there those schedule routes and times they are used for other stuff at other times then or these are yellow buses oh yellow buses so we're paying not the okay these are the contractors we use the word we have activity buses the yellow buses we call activity buses too so that gets really confusing this okay all right not the I know which ones you're talking about but I would be happy to entertain any other questions
179that you might have before you so so our rment is up 4% this year and last year it was up quite a bit right we had a big increase we had more than I expected last year to Our Moment technically is down but it's more than what we projected it to be down right so more so what do we project it CU you said well I thought it said that you we were we at 4% of an increase this year was that from last year I think he was pro4 more than they projected oh I see projecting 5161 we ended up at there's a little so enrollment was last year I just go and grab was yeah like big number 5248 that was an official number that came from the fall housing report right now
180I'm using a temporary number in 25 file housing report we capture on a October 1st of every year okay so the 5 5181 is how many students we had on the first day of school when I went into the system I expect it's going to be very similar to that when I go in on October 1st is that typical language to be used because I I would want to know just overall what enrollment is is it up or down but that's in a way to me could be misleading or misinterpreted um I think it's important as a distinction from a budget driver so like since so many things are kind of hinging on number of students from budgets then you project a certain amount of budgets because that sets the denominator for kind of so
181many of these things we're looking at that when it's up or down a little bit it does that but I get I agree with you like is is there another statement that just says okay like in this that might be student enrollment is 5181 we projected 5160 like it kind of says you know that's a year-over-year overall increase but it is less of a decrease by0 4% than expected or something I could add another statement in there my Approach is always to as few words as possible because I that's the philosophy the premise here being is I'm referencing section C7 in the document so that you can see the full picture um but it does State enrollment is 4% higher than projected I could say enrollment what last year was just a couple of words
182I I'm very miserly when it comes to words and then the right above it the 11.4 that's just any full-time staff or is that only for the specialized programs and administrative like was the 11 only for them or was it 11 across there's two ratios there to reference it's saying that people to staff reg ratio is 7.6 down from 7.9 the prior year no I'm talking about the one above fulltime staff you have 11.4 the the very top oh uh where it says 7 the 11.4 full-time employees a total of 679 says addressing needs in special programs and administrative so the 11.4 were those only for the specialized program or administrative or was that just everything this year we just added 11 yep the primary areas that it went to were specialized programs in administrative
183administrative support but that was everything but you can if you click on Section C6 you'll see exactly where the Staffing changed so we can go there briefly so here's the overall numbers when the in the chart you see we were at 658 we're up to 659 or 679 in 2025 and it's broken out by members of the Bea members of Besa and everybody else other questions so my high level takeaways from this I appreciate this Tony this document is a great document because it does summarize a tremendous amount of information but um basically we're I know we're technically that balanced because we took fund balance for capital projects but we're paying our bills um our student ratios are as strong as student to teacher and staff are as strong as they've been depending on your
184perspective they're lower than they have been in years and um we do have money to do what we've identified as some immediate capital projects without distorting the ratio of that fund where it would put us in Jeopardy uh if something catastrophic happened so we have a little buffer there and with bonds expiring the burden we're asking of our local tax base will go down are those all accurate statements yeah those are all accurate okay thank you any other questions okay I will entertain a motion to adopt the fiscal year 2025 budget including its respective fund transfers as presented so move so mooved by Rob second second by Aaron Cindy please lead us in a roll call Vote Yes yes yes motion passes thank you all right next is staff and board comments Tom is there
185anything you'd like to share this evening yes all right so um as we are all aware we are we finished day five of being back in school and one of the things I wanted to make sure I drew our attention to uh board is a big thank you and gratitude appreciation to all of our custodians our maintenance teams our technology teams the arjac team here in this building um our building secretaries and um all the other support staff for all the work that they did and preparing to open our buildings for what you even heard from uh our ba president and our besta president was a really successful opening week um I think um you know having visited and having our team uh leadership teams out and about in the buildings I heard uh really
186good reports coming back on how we started the year so I just want to thank all those people in the hands that go into making that happen right justes doesn't happen over magically overnight um I also want to thank our new bus company um you know they're transitioning in and taking our account they are um fully staffed with drivers which not every school district is able to report and having been on site and meeting the management team and meeting all of the drivers um which was fun uh they're also able to supply backup drivers to our routes so right now um they're still working on some of the logistical you know things uh drivers are learning how to take some of the routes where because the roads are not being populated with student drivers and
187parent drivers so it's a little different than when they were practicing over the summer where the streets were a little bit lighter but I think they've worked all that out now at this point I also want to thank Our Food Services team um that's a new company as well with Organic life and um as promised and delivered by Josh and and his entire Committee of students and other uh staff members um it's being well received and so really appreciate all their hustle burritos yes some of some of our children have reported back to the board already that they're happy with the new food um but they really took to heart the concerns that were being shared by our students on the service delivery quality delivery so I really appreciate our food vendors um you know
188hustling like that um okay so one of things just a reminder looking forward to seeing any of you if you're able to make it to the corn boil this Friday um you'll see my team and I will be there too just supporting our um you know local groups that'll be represented there um give a little shout out to beefy support our our foundation uh they'll have a tent and I just want to close with um piggybacking off something drew said um you know with the idea of how we opened the year last week um at our opening Institute day one of the messages that was shared is that as an organization moving forward is a key uh aspect to making sure that as we look at our strategic plan um using the growth mindset not
189of all the just the individual talents and abilities of our staff of our students of our our leaders but as an organization if we want to actually move the needle as an organization is doing it together with a collective organizational growth mindset and I'm really excited to see how we're going to move that needle together um you know we've already been working on a lot of new collaborative structure ideas that exist within uh how we do business but also just bringing some new ideas to the table and considering it this way that the more opportunities we focus on more Solutions we'll see and the more progress we'll see for our students um and and just the overall success of our district so with that I'd like to just say let's make it a great 114th
190year of BPS 101 I had to sneak in that little historian thing that's all I have thank you every teacher board comments would anyone like to volunteer to start otherwise I'll pick an end of the table I'll start thank you sir I have nothing to say I yield my time to Mr arando wow ah so um just Echo some of Tom's comments uh for the start of the school year the some of the feedback I received to mostly from my daughter who started her senior year um at BHS was it was very smooth enjoyable experience um joked about the food but she did comment that she really liked the the food in the cafeteria area um so U thank you to the staff um Administration um for getting that set up and organized and I
191think it went really well so U and I want to wish all the students teachers have have a great great year looking forward to hearing especially at these meetings looking forward to hearing some great successes and accomplishments um through the course of the school year here um and then just real quick I'm I'm transitioning to the resource responsibility advisory Council and I think Josh we got the meetings set you got the meetings all set up for the whole year I think so um got that in the calendar and Steve's invited me to the stien committee as well so we'll start on that and uh made contact with principal modaf at GMS I'm going to meet with him on Friday and we're going to set up um um some time for me to uh interact with
192the uh Community there right jum over me go ahead uh so yeah just welcome back to all the students and the Tavia uh BPS staff uh I just hope you guys have a safe and healthy and fantastic school year that's it uh I'll use my usual comment where I want to thank everybody who came to the board meeting tonight everybody who reached out again it does inform our discussions I want to welcome the students back I want to Welcome All the new students I want to welcome all the new teachers and staff we have quite a few I attended the welcome event on the 12th and I always kind of Marvel that the first day for teachers sort of resembles the first day for students where they're all started getting back in the groove and
193you can see the excitement and a little bit of anxiety getting started but once they get in the flow it's great to see so uh I want to welcome them I also time kind of St my thunder but you know that first day of school I'm sure there's a lot of anxiety cuz getting that machine cranked up again with the buses and the lunches making sure all the tech works it's a tremendous amount of work to get to that point so uh everybody really does take a entire team to get that accomplished so thank you to all those folks for their hard work and um I'll just sort of end with yeah we we have a lot of kickoff events the corn boil on Friday is a a big one a lot of PTO are
194starting up but um you know I think when we think of like new students and and starting a new we really encourage students if you see a new student to reach out to them and make them feel welcome and one thing I would encourage members of the community is I think Kevin said we're a little bit like Mayberry sometimes and that can be good and bad sometimes because we get comfortable with the faces we're used to seeing but if you see a new parent at pickup or at a PTO event or at the corn boil those people want to engage but sometimes it's hard to so I would say you know be that Welcome Wagon and and welcome them to come join you or uh sit by you at a game or a an event
195because those people want to engage but that first Contact would so be hard so let's try to make sure that our families feel welcome especially those new faces we see and uh just I am excited for the the new year to go and uh go Bulldogs you guys did great I don't really have much to add um one thing I want to say I want to Drew your your son was probably there but at storm you know we took my son and we stayed in chitchat a little bit and the kindergarteners were all like ga outside and you know these aren't even our kids like the people I was with and we started to get te ey because they like turn around and blow a kiss and my God was Drew crying were you crying
196no TI never it was precious and the organization that they did for that it was so good I mean there's so many people coming up to the building but it's so fun at the beginning of the year it kind of like sizzles down a little bit as the year goes on but you just see so many people and everyone's excited the kids are just like coming out and it's been so great so really thank you to everyone who's put in the time and effort to start the year off and I hope all of our students are feeling welcome um welcomed and and kind of settling in a little bit um I think you guys kind of covered everything else oh I did want to say I am going to meet with with Rob was talking
197about his assignment I will be meeting with Dr Smith at the high school and I look forward to that because I feel like it's really not a place that I've really spent much time you know like I mean I haven't been to every elementary school but that is just it seems very far away I mean but Ally is in seventh grade it won be there but I'm like oh than you think I don't I mean she sent me like how to get inside I'm like I don't know this is kind of scary but I do look forward to to doing that and then working with you on the student ambassadors I think that'll be really cool to really highlight our student voices and hopefully we kind of get all of the different levels of uh
198the district all the different grades and stuff but I'm excited so hopefully like I said everyone's settling in and feeling good so far I'm good thank you uh only thing I'll close with is um just you know welcome to all the new teachers that uh are now a member of the uh Bea as well as all the other staff with Besa and administration that are here and the new students that are with us so that's exciting um Everybody starting and I appreciate you guys mentioning all the kind of new committees you're jumping into so I got my invite for a couple of them so I'm staying on the capital projects one so you can't get rid of me that fast um but uh I also then went and met uh with Kristen over at AGS
199so Rob you have left some very very big shoes to fill over there because they spoke very highly of you um so we went I went over there and it's been there's almost some tears in mine because my kids are long out of elementary school so it was kind of fun seeing the differences a little bit between the schools between grace MC where my kids were there and the kind of going on the black top and all the kids kind of pulling in at once and Kristen and and her team did a really great job of making me feel welcome I ran into Tony there who gave me a little tour of the school and it's kind of amazing just like you're talking about settling in we were remarking that like all the excitement outside
200and were in and and it was just like the quiet descended on the on the school and the kids were just in it and the teachers on top of it and it was just a really kind of like really nice settling down like you kind of think the craziness continues no everybody was just engaged it was really good and I met a number of the PTO um that was there as well so it was kind of a good nonstop shop day for me so I appreciate though they had no intents on that efficiency I appreciate it so um so I will end it with saying thank you to everybody for the hard work they did to get everything up and running that's on not only the staff but I also want to say you know
201thank you to Tom and the administrative team for making sure everybody's the cogs are in the right spot and the wheels are spinning so thank you um we do have have a closed session tonight uh there is no intended board action after that closed session uh so we will be moving to that we can check in here if you so desire to sit around and wait uh but I didn't think so so but you're more than welcome to so we're moving into close session as I said we do not have any action items you're welcome guys here thank you all right get water break bathroom whatever you need to do we don't have to do anything oh no yeah I do I totally forgot gosh no all right so the time is 9:38 I will
202entertain a motion to move to close session allowed under open meetings act for the purpose of exception 5 ICS 120 C1 so move by Raquel second second by RJ Cindy please lead us in a roll call votez Thom yes yes yes yes yes gber yes yes thank you all right thank you everybody