001coming to this but we're recording yeah we're recording now that's also my big hint that it's 7 o' oh yeah okay it is now 7 p.m. Tuesday November 14th 2023 and I call this meeting of the Board of Education to order Cindy would you please call the role gz Thomas presber present here here here pres Meadows present thank you very much uh since our last meeting we lost a student student at bavia high school we would like to take a moment of silence to reflect on that loss before we recite the pledge thank you thank you very much next I would invite Danielle to please lead us in the pledge algi to the flag the United States of America and to the Republic for it stands one nation under God indivisible with liy and justice
002for all thank you Danielle Tom are there any items to add or remove from the agenda no sir okay all right superintendent Kim would you would like to address the bo would you like to address the board with any comments I would um so tomorrow is uh School Board member appreciation day and I wanted to take a moment just to thank say thank you to all of our board members for your service um just as a token of gratitude to uh at the end of the evening please small gesture of gratitude um we've got a little treat for you to take home with you is just a well something to enjoy for your time and serving on the board and you know for many who don't know what you do um you know being a
003governing body that oversees a district that has an operating budget that most people will never see you know in a in a personal lifetime or at work most likely and decisions that are made and then um even on the heels of heavy news that we've dealt with over the last several days things of that nature just wanted to say thank you for your service and appreciate uh we appreciate you so we just wanted to take that time to say that tonight thank you app all right public comment welcome to the board of educ the meeting of the Board of Education if anyone wishes to address the board this evening please see secretary to submit a form for addressing the board please put your full name and address in the form do we have any before
004I read the whole thing we do not okay do you mind if I just skip in general we all right thank you all right Bea part BPS Partners Bea Todd Swanson how are you Todd great thank you good so I think I'm sensing a theme of brevity for tonight so um don't take it on my part uh good evening everyone um it just seems like three weeks we were just here again so a short turnaround time um just a couple quick announcements that I have uh first off for the board to know that came as a result of our last bargain with Administration and vaa we created a new committee called the DCC the district coordinating Council and Tom and I have been working on getting that running for this year and we wanted to
005wait till all of our district committees had met at least once this year and the equity committee had their first meeting just last week and so now that we've accomplished that task Tom and I are setting our agenda for the DCC to get together and kind of have our first oversight meeting of all of our district committees um we don't really know what to expect with the DCC since it is brand new we don't have any set Notions of what this committee is going to look like or how it's going to function or as many times we're going to meet we're going to kind of work on that together as a joint venture between the Bea and administration but just to let you know that the DCC is going to be meeting on the 28th
006of November so by the December board meeting we should have a report back to you on how that meeting went that's number one uh number two um congratulations to the board members on your recognition for board member appreciation but besides your day being tomorrow tomorrow uh since it's American Education week this week is ESP appreciation day as well so for the esps in our district we just wanted to say from Bea thank you for everything that the esps do um we've said time and time again uh if weren't for the esps uh we would be lost they help us in the classroom they help us in the lunchrooms they help us get our kids in and off the buses um they are so invaluable um we can't thank them enough so uh hopefully uh if
007you see an ESP tomorrow reach out to them thank them for their service to our district and to our students and to our families because they are extremely critical in our district and then the only other thing that I have is whether you're traveling across town or across the country have a great Thanksgiving and safe travels everyone and we'll see you in December thanks thanks Todd best Mara hello I am Mara Schuster and I am the Besa president I work at HD storm Elementary as a principal secretary so tonight we continue our series of Besa highlights of a support staff member we are Besa we are the branches of the educational tree this slide is just a reminder of the questions we pose to our besta members to share a bit of themselves to us
008tonight's featured besta member is Laura versillo she is our lead campus monitor at Louise White and also our besta Treasurer the verilla family has resided in bavia for 20 years she has been married to her husband Randy for 26 years and they have two adult boys who graduated from betab public schools Zach is 21 years old graduated early from bavia high school during covid he is in his second year apprenticeship as an electrician and work working on his electrical engineering bachelor's degree through his Union her other son Tyler went through Fox Valley Career Center during his senior year at BHS earning his EMT license at 19 years old he works as a medical technician in the ICU at delnor hospital while attending wabansi nursing program Tyler just returned from Africa on a Med medical missionary
009trip Laura's mom has recently moved in with them from Michigan after having some medical issues and they love having her live with them she is so helpful always cooking baking and smiling besides their two turtles tuck and Shelly that they inherited from Tyler science teacher for Mato they have their trusty German Shepherd bboa who is seven years old bboa suffers from severe allergies and separation anxiety at 100 pounds he also identifies as a lap dog Okay so Laura loves to do crafts especially quilting which is her latest work she enjoys gardening coloring painting and writing she teaches children's Bible studies and tutors Elementary grade school children like many parents being close to your child when they are at school is a great opportunity Laura was PTO president for several years when her oldest started school
010at JB Nelson and continued volunteering through the years she started subbing atavia and then became a permanent par professional at Early Childhood before transferring to Louise White which has been her home for close to 10 years being a par professional is such a rewarding job her passion for children with different abilities continued to grow and she became more involved in the special needs Community she started writing social stories to help the students understand some expectations she encouraged encouraged by others she began publishing children's books based on much of what was experiencing daily she found the real challenges were not teaching non neurot typically de developing students but explaining to neurot typically developing students understanding and empathy of different learning styles and abilities her books explain different situations with challenges and she became a certified registered
011Behavior technician and participated in many special education resource fairs and events over the years throughout K County besides selling her books she made fidgets and heavy weighted stuffed animals and various items that could help with children with special needs she believes that mental health issues do not have nearly enough not even close support in place especially at schools different learning abilities and styles challenges have increased over the last decade and continue to rise desperate to find a solution or at least help decrease these challenges she created a not for-profit organization called inspire higher NFP with some of the grant money she was able to become a certified social emotional learning educator from rers University to educate children as well as adults on social emotional learning comp competencies these competencies include self-awareness self-management social awareness relationship
012skills responsible decision-making as well as how our brain works differently these competencies have been left to teachers to blend and with within the academics this is completely unrealistic as teachers struggle to get through all the academics in a day for the last several years Laura has been offering her services to underprivileged children at after school programs and camps she has taught classes online and in person to parents and to Educators Laura has recently changed her position from par professional to lead campus monitor this enables her to work in the office assisting and then helping with teachers as well as spending time with students which she Absol absolutely loves thank you thank you Marsha right next is our student ambassador Zara how are you today good good all right I'm Zara I think jarit might be
013running a little she is right there so you perfect perfect timing good perfect timing I love it you can start us off okay hi guys my name is Dre and this is Zara and some of the success this week is that um we have more like college fairs um in our school so that we get to visit colleges and some of the colleges that we visited in the past is youc I actually went to one myself it was amazing and next um this Wednesday we have Northeastern and then in the future we're also going to visit Wazi and um during Halloween week we also had um um like a pumpkin con contest for the clubs and students who participate in and it was really great to get people participating and we we had some artistic
014uh pumpkins as well so it was great and then we also had our first mentoring um officially um last week and we got to connect with some kids and it was really amazing yes and then also recently many of you may know the Mean Girls they've been advertised all around matavia they put on some great shows I went to Thursday one I was surprised to find it packed on a Thursday evening but I'm sure their Sunday and Saturday shows were just as packed and it was great to see their amazing performances and all the work they put in it really paid off and then we also have a lot of sports going on winter sports are starting up with wrestling gymnastics as well as basketball and speaking of sports football has been doing amazing this
015season and they're going to be playing this Saturday actually in the semi-finals against Mount Caramel so so root them on and really proud of them and then that's all for today thank you could I ask one question I'm so sorry the very beginning you mentioned did you go to UIC to visit it or yeah we was like a college um a college visit and we got to look around the campus and they told us more about like the school and what they okay so this is because I think they had a grant for beefy so I'm just curious about sorry yes okay and so you took a bus yeah okay that I just wanted to make sure that that's so cool how that worked out okay sorry it's a little personal thing but good but
016we never hear about the how it works out seems like it worked out well this time good okay good all right bardly aison reports uh RJ are you good to start at your end you have one I have no updates right now you are you were prepared weren't you rob um I so curriculum committee I uh unfortunately missed the the last meeting um due to a conflict U but got an update uh from the committee uh via email uh some interesting data which was new to me I had to ask Brad's help to kind of interpret it and what it was uh but seems like it's um um data that uh helps to assess you know future curriculum needs so I'm looking forward to seeing more of that as the assessments continue throughout the year
017and U work with the commit on that but I will be at the next committee meeting do you want to talk about rack and sure um so they've started off talking about the um food service and they surveyed some students and parents at a couple schools in the district um and those results will be the drivers for the rubric um and then they're going to put some bids out and then they're actually going to have taste tests so if anyone wants to be a taste tester lottery for who gets to go right um and then the next day talked about the um warm safe dry um just more on that and um how they're going to plan to break it down between Louise White s storm and the other schools for the next five years
018okay thank you uh Insurance committee meets Thursday so I have no update at this time nothing in the future not that good yet it should be an extra good report next time looking forward to it Danielle anything on your end uh yeah I I since I wasn't here last time I didn't give you guys plaque um they met back on October 19th and our next meet their next meeting is um Thursday actually um so it was the first meeting of the year uh the committee discussed its direction and um they have a goal to make a multi-year plan that aligns with the district goals um teacher voice the teachers voiced um the desire to have input on what um professional development is offered um then they spent some time reviewing the standards for professional learning
019I know I don't know how many it is each year that they they need but um there are 11 different standards so they kind of it was really neat to see them all kind of talk about what is at the top of their list so just to share what kind of came to the top in general or Equity practices curriculum assessment and instruction evidence implementation Equity foundations culture collabor ation inquiry and Leadership um and then uh the committee agrees that having the new strategic plan um completed will help them be able to focus on a direction and one quote that kind of like felt really relatable that I want to share is if you don't know where you are going it's very difficult to tell if you arrived so it's just kind of they're trying
020to figure out where to go and like that way you actually know um is this even helping the students and how to determine that so um yeah the next meeting like I say is Thursday well they'll focus on looking over planning guidelines and collecting and reviewing evaluations from the staff from the last um PD session um so there's that and then Equity just had their first meeting of the Year there was tons of energy and excitement um Tom was there as well um I think the staff is really happy to be back at the table and they really hope that this year is going to bring um some action and some forward movement um we read the group read and I read along with them um before going it's called the move moving from Equity
021awareness to action which really resonates because there's been a lot of identification but I think altogether they feel like there's not a lot of action so it's kind of like how do we start having that action so um there was a lot of good discussion I was only able to be there for an hour so I think the other conversation I just wanted to share was you know who who else needs to be in that group and I don't know if is it's okay if I share what they I think they wanted to talk about various students that maybe can join on the committee perhaps I don't know if um if there was any more discussion best bu representation um just to ensure that there's various voices that are there for the committee um so
022I don't know is there anything else that you would add in Tom I think you did a great job that's exactly what it was yeah okay yeah that's it right thanks Danielle Sue uh beefy will meet Thursday and honer meets a week from today so there's really no updates other than it was exciting to hear about a beefy grant that was actually in use and stuff like that guys made her day so thank you that was exciting no because normally we never hear about it so even though we're supposed to yeah the only thing I'm going to add is we had Bick on Saturday morning so if everybody's not aware what Bick is it's effectively most if not all of the organizations that are either parent involved parent l or affiliated with the district meet
023to kind of brainstorm ideas share what they're doing it was first meeting was good this one was really good it was well organized everybody um kind of it really started to share ideas like some were like oh you do Winter Wonderland over at Grace mcwain and they didn't even realize that we did that and what it meant and how it run it's been going for like 20 years so it was a really good idea to see like particularly the PTO kind of share their ideas it was really amazing so it was a good meeting okay anyone else for anything else on that otherwise we'll move on to consent agenda okay according to our board policy we designate a portion of the agenda as a consent agenda for those items that usually do not require extensive
024discussion before board action these items are generally routined recurring and can be grouped together for efficiency Steve would you like to share anything before we take action I'll share the agenda shocker 4.1 and 4.2 is the approval of our October 24th 2023 regular meeting and our close session minutes 4.3 is our monthly Personnel report 4.4 is our monthly payroll and bills 4.5 is the destruction of our Clos session recordings for May 24th 2022 uh 4.6 is the acceptance of a couple of donations we thank uh baf and bavia Arts Council for their donations this month and 4.7 is the uh adoption of some uh policy amendments second reading and then lastly 4.8 is the approval of this consent agenda okay any questions I have a couple sure for um and I'm not saying anything about
025that I'm just curious so for press um let's say like I know a lot of legislation goes like might pass on January 1st so let's say something passes in on March let's say this past year on March 13th so does press start working on that right away and then as soon as they're done they give it to us or do they kind of wait for the last minute great question no that's a great question so they have a team of people that keep an eye on various legislation and bills that are kind of working its way through our system in Springfield and then uh depending on when the date is of you know when it goes into effect uh press will issue some guidance on what we should be you know being mindful of we
026do have other agencies that we belong to that will keep us informed of what we should be looking at what may be coming through and passing what might be going through vetto session um and things of that nature so the timing of When Things become uh live for a school district is depending on how the bill was written and they and whoever submitted that uh in Springfield they determine with their language as to when they want the rule to go into effect okay so if it says that say they say okay we we were in session we are in session today and I just say hey I'm gonna put this bill out there nobody knew about it passes then how does and I let's say I give it 30 days so then does that give
027us 30 days to or does it have like press like press hurries up and then we have 30 days from that they'll work as quickly as possible but uh typically it's yeah it depends on how it's been written so if it's in advance of any agency like press to give us guidance we would have to probably take a look at it ourselves and do we always wait until press's policy to do ours or usually usually that's usually the the practice because it is uh everything that we receive from press is usually reviewed by a team of legal experts at uh the iasb so they have like a panel of U attorneys that review all that y that's all I have thanks thank you only question okay good thank you I will entertain anyone else before
028I move on no okay I will entertain a motion to approve the consent agenda as presented the moved moved by erens second second by Raquel Cindy please lead us in a roll call vote Thomas present yes sorry yes yes yes Meadows yes yesberg yes AR yes thank you very much motion passes Tom is there anything to share under this evening under reports well uh our foyer reports are presented to the board we had those two submissions are there any questions there okay okay and then Treasurer reports Tony nothing out of the ordinary apart from our investments which again are are substantial and unusual for us historically okay any questions on the reports all right thank you action approval of the Fieldhouse floor replacement he Mark how are you today how are you good okay um
029last month this was brought into a report um this is part of a bigger project um the reason this is coming this month is because of the timing to um get the floor in production make sure it's here for the summer to actually do the replacement of it um the other part of the bigger summer of 24 projects will come next month and that would include the Fine Art Center the Fieldhouse uh maintenance pre-cast maintenance um lighting the things that we talked about um specific um last month during the report um this particular one um is just for the floor um I know we talked about a little bit last month um and I'm bringing it tonight for um approval I'm trying to think if there's anything that I was asked that I've missed or
030if there's qu maybe it be easier if there's just questions because there's nothing I added a few more in this report tonight that I didn't have last month so at this point if there's any questions that the board might have anything any questions I'm just trying to Compare the numbers was it 13 million last meeting and it went down that that was interior so that also included the estimate for the lighting oh okay yeah so that's the this is just for the floor okay when you saw it you probably yeah not probably you saw the interior and then the exterior numbers so this landed roughly budget where you were expecting this is right it's about in it's between1 19 and $20 a square foot okay it's right about you know usually figure the that type
031of flooring is right around $20 $18 to $20 range um so this is right in there we did add some logos for this um in the center of the courts um the reason we were able to do this is because um doing the weight room floor and this floor kind of together even though one's getting done next month and the other ones getting in the summer we're able to get that as a discounted rate to put in the um the center logos so that's kind of the only addition but the cost is exactly the same okay I guess just procedural question did didn't we vote on this last time or we we just got information got information last time information yeah last month was a report one of the things the board did approve prior
032that maybe you it's coming in is uh the weight room floor weight room yeah that one was approved so that was that was September yeah two two meetings you got it you got it okay we'll continue our conversation on capital projects and General next month okay for all that other stuff yeah correct and and more bringing what Mark mentioned we'll be bringing to you the uh the bids for the work to complete the summer of 24 projects and we'll also talk about 25 and Beyond so it'll be we'll be talking about a lot of capital projects next month and just always this time of year for your information the reason that's not coming tonight because we didn't have enough time from October 24th to tonight to actually go through the bid process the bids are
033due this Thursday so it's just the timing piece of how this board meeting F yeah because that's actually a hard bid process that you're talking about for the other one this is through a co-op purchasing agreement yep okay do you mind explaining what a co-op purchasing agreement is because a lot of people may know yeah um basically the easiest way to explain it is is these prices have already really been bid out um so instead of going through the public bid um it's an agreement we use this one is sourcewell which and Craig would know this but this is kind of sourcewell is a very standard yeah um to use it's I mean at this point I get the reports every month and the amount of different companies that just continue to add to it
034each month um everything from you know vehicles to field house flooring um to I mean the list really goes on and on and on I mean you can really do this through if custodial supplies um and this one is more of you kind of can narrow down exactly what you want um and it's you can be very specific in exactly what you want in here and it just it kind of streamlines the process a little bit more I think um and you can kind of do it a little quicker and you can go and as I did to other different companies to see exactly how they compare for specific type of floor and I would say doesn't happen all the time but I think this is becoming more and more throughout school districts and talking
035to different colleagues of mine this is happening I would say more and more I did a gy bleacher replacement which three years ago you would never thought to do but it was like okay great sign on the dotted line and it's been pre-bid and the nice thing is for like Tony's perspective and yours you can actually get a you get a precise idea as to what the cost is before or whereas people trying to take kind of rough guesstimates as to what the economy is doing and the trade market is doing to to when you open bids so well and I would say especially now where we're at it's good to have reliable data on it okay any other questions okay hearing none I will entertain a motion to approve the purchase and installation of
036a new Fieldhouse floor at bavia High School in the amount of$ 1,6,2,5 from kefir USA so moved second what was that was that Sue so moved by Sue second by RJ uh Cindy please lead us in a roll call Vote Yes yes sler yes AR yes Gonzalez Thomas yes Meadows yes thank you motion passes don't I get thanks Mark uh oh what would you like to do I'll vote [Laughter] Yes getting used to these roll call votes on everything right now all right Administration comments Thomas there anything you'd like to add this evening um so the only comment I have for this evening um is just to let uh family Gavin's family know that our thoughts are with him are with them and um you know obviously situations like this are one that we hope
037we never encounter again um but I also want to take a moment to thank all of our staff and our administrators for giving thought and care and supporting our students and supporting each other so um that's all I have for this evening all right thank you all right board comments Sue start out at your end if you don't mind sure I would just Echo Tom's comments and our thoughts and prayers are with the family at this time and um just on that note wish everyone happy Thanksgiving and be grateful for what you have yeah exactly hard to say yeah you uh I'll share a couple things um a couple things I participated in on Friday last Friday I've attended a Veterans Day uh ceremony at Rola Mill School uh Tom was the guest of honor
038featured speaker I'm not what was your official title served in the Mr Kim served in the United States Marine for from 998 to 2000 years very inspiring uh speech about public service and that kind of thing and I just want to say that um it was a pretty moving ceremony actually the kids there was the orchestra was there the band and the choir and uh especially when they played Taps there was a lot of tear actually it was very moving so very impressive and then Saturday I was at the football game um I want to say that uh Rockford hon naiga was a uh very gracious host um football team is really clicking on all cylinders Mark son is a member of that team so uh it's very exciting we should be very proud of
039the effort uh they're definitely playing their best ball and we're definitely going to have a exciting football game on on Saturday and then left from Rockford came back and uh saw Mean Girls And um just unbelievable I mean unbelievable I mean I don't know how these kids do it incredible show I had my daughter with me she was Star Struck the whole time um I mean I think the feeling I left after those two days was uh just the vitality and the energy and I mean the kids just it's like the future is unlimited and um you know and then that to end on a sad note but then to get that news about Gavin was really a gut punch because uh you realize how fragile it is and as everyone has said before me
040uh you know there's really not much that can be said but that you know when we lose one member of our communities it imp impacts all of us and so just thoughts and prayers and love and resources to the family and those impacted by Gavin and I just want to also Echo that you know some the toughest job in that area is you know the people that have to be there to support those kids because I know some of those people that are providing support are also deeply impacted by that loss and so I just want to thank them for uh their courage and compassion for what they're doing so um and then just I hope everyone has a safe Thanksgiving as well thanks um so just saying uh Happy Native American Heritage Month uh
041Happy lated Veterans Day Tom Tom and anyone that served thank you for your service I'm happy to anyone that celebrated the dwali this past Sunday um tomorrow like they said is National think AB board the school board member so thank you all for serving and then also uh thank you all to the national uh support professionals that you know support our schools every day just kind of go online that you know with uh the loss of Gavin and those people that out there supporting his family and his friends and um I just hope everyone has a very healthy and safe uh Thanksgiving um so first of all I I know it's been said but uh thoughts and prayers to Gavin and his family U first and foremost um secondly I did want to share that
042uh um I was at AGS earlier this month uh with Senator via it was a program that principal Stevens had um uh I guess signed up for or applied for and you get a uh public official I think that comes and is uh the principal for the day there and um so Senator beia came out on it was a Monday morning and uh Tom was there as well and uh it was just a good opportunity to dialogue with her um um on some she asked some good questions about what are some of our challenges and and Tom and um uh Holly was there too and uh principal Stevens they you know they they gave some feedback and it was just it overall just a good dialogue that's how I describe it but to me the
043more uh uh enjoyable part of the day for me was uh we greeted the students as they came in um that morning and um heard couple comments I just want to share one one child one student was telling us about an upcoming trip to Michigan I think for a vacation and then another another student was talking about the past weekend you know how they they went to a friend's house but uh you know just it was those kind of comments and some of the students were of course like who are you guys and what are you doing here um but uh but overall it was just that it was uh that uh atmosphere was so encouraging U for myself and um I think it's a good reflection on the school the principal the staff and
044the teachers so uh great job um by that that whole group and uh it was just a good day so I have nothing to add add okay um I will close out uh with just saying I um everyone's comments on here I do thoughts and prayers for Gavin's family um and friends and colleagues uh but I also want to say thank you to all the staff that make sure that people are aware of the resources that are there for them to support them um I know a lot of work kind of went over to try to get everybody prepared to be able to do that over the weekend so when the kids came back there were resources available so um I had also heard that mean girls was beyond amazing I expected no less because
045my my son has been involved with more than a few of those but they keep raising the bar every year so I'm happy to hear that so other than that um I would entertain a motion to adjourn so moved by Aaron second by Sue um all in favor I all opposed motion passes it is now a record 7:38 p.m. and the meeting is adjourned get