Batavia Public School District 101 Board of Education Meeting for October 24, 2023

001evening everyone it is now 7 PM Tuesday October 24th 2023 and I call this meeting of the Board of Education to order Cindy would you please call the role AR here hilber here Gonzalez Thomas present ma here here Meadows present next I would like to invent invite RJ because he volunteered on on knowing lead us in the pledge I pledge aliance to the flag of the United States of America repic for which it stands one nation under God indivisible with liberty and justice for all good job RJ thank you you're welcome Tom are there any items to remove or add to the agenda remove from or add to no sir okay thank you next item tonight we'd like to celebrate a success of uh with about Kathleen Terry Tan and the BHS art Department would

002you please come to the podium Mr Owen yeah thank you good evening my name is Chris Owen and I have the pleasure of being a music teacher at Pavia High School a new role for me a few years ago was being asked to help my fellow Fine Arts teachers as a coordinator and advocate for large events that we do at the high school and help advocate for some of their needs it's in this capacity that I have the pleasure of speaking to you uh tonight to congratulate my Fine Arts colleagues on the Illinois art education association's department of Distinction award for bavia high school for 2023 to 2025 These Fine educators work tirelessly on behalf of their students creating new projects to Showcase their art and media allowing space and time for students to tap

003into their inner artists to express thems in safe spaces and providing feedback in an authentic way that always focuses on the growth of the student from where they are currently not where an arbitrary bar might be the journey is where the learning occurs I could speak briefly about the criteria on this award is chosen but suffice it to say that each of these educators put students first before anything else and does whatever is needed to help each student find and express themselves through their artistic medium we're all fortunate and blessed to have them work with the artists in our high school and their bavia Community speaking from personal experience I'm a better music educator and Fine Arts educator because of conversation conversations with all of these Elite Educators and I wanted to take a moment

004to acknowledge all of their work and accomplishments to earn the prestigious Department of Distinction award for Pavia High School for the second time their names are Jennifer Carpenter Josh casburn Lucy Jensen Jennifer Melendez Kathleen Ty ton Andrea schindelbeck and Emily Smith additionally a former bavia High School teacher Don zelus was also instrumental in earning this award for bavia high school please help me acknowledge their many contributions and achievements to our school district high school and Community there some of them are s we uh we distributed some of the uh pamphlets of student artwork and the accomplishments to the board uh and administrators this evening so feel free to peruse those and uh I'll be sending to that that to you digitally tomorrow too if you wanted to check that out there there's a couple examples

005that I think a couple of my colleagues have here too uh furthermore One of These Fine Art Educators received additional accolades from the Illinois art Education Association Kathleen T ton uh if you know me this is sidebar if you know me a little bit I might cry a little bit here um because I I'm very proud of her Kathleen received the Illinois secondary art educator of the year without a doubt you've seen Kathleen's student work throughout the community on posters apparel signs and even with the new bavia community flag her graphic students begin with a desire to learn a new artistic skill and grow their passion to do incredible professional work there's no doubt in my mind that Miss tyry tun's are expertise as a graphic designer physical artist and educator sorry I can't I

006get worked up when I talk about people that I care about so sorry about that I have a marching B banquet tomorrow it's going to happen there too um um there's no I'll start that sentence again because it's a good one um there's no doubt in my mind that without Miss Ton's expertise as a graphic designer physical artist and educator blessed in the art of teaching that these students would not be as talented as a and successful as they are She's continually on the pulse of changes in the curriculum with the artistic Community to design new courses to meet the needs of the students in the everchanging world of graphic design she's a continual and uh Ardent advocate for students sponsoring numerous clubs at Pavia High School including pride and future creative professionals speaking from

007personal experience and as a fellow Arts educator she makes all of us better by thinking and challenging our ideas and coming up with new uh creative ways to support artists at the high school there are few Educators who are more tireless advocates for their student and their program I'm always in awe and I'm purposely not making eye contact with her right now um uh because of her students professional skills and her gift for teaching students of all abilities please join me in acknowledging Miss Ty ton as the Illinois art educator second yeah probably going to yell at me later for crying but congratulations Kathleen well thank you anybody have anything they want to say or add okay well thank you very much job well done of course and we all appreciate all your efforts and

008I love having the moment of kind of celebrating the success to remind the great job our teachers do for our kids um so next is public comment we welcome the meeting uh welcome to the meeting of the Board of educ Education if anyone wishes to address the board this evening please see our recording secretary to submit a form for addressing the board please put your full name and address on the form in general the board will not answer questions or engage in dialogue during public comment this does not mean we do not value or take your participation take your concerns or comments seriously the board values AC of community participation in the district's Endeavors encourages people to engage with the district using appropriate channels and systems designed with your input in mind board members are

009not involved in the day-to-day operations of the district and cannot Engage The District in business in District in business individually if you have specific questions or would like to engage further with the districts you may submit your questions using the link on the website and the appropriate staff member will communicate with you our PPS 101 communication manager H Holly dman will now explain the procedures for public comment and call up the speakers thank you president Meadows speakers will be called up in order of form submission and today we have 10 people that have signed up to speak and each of you will get three minutes we also ask that if somebody before you has already said exactly or basically what you are going to say say I agree with what they have to say and

010then we can continue on with our meeting the first form we received is a first person will be invited to speak when your name is called please come to the podium so that you can be heard all individual speaking will be limited to 3 minutes and I'm going to be putting a three minute timer up on the screen I will start this timer when you are set at the podium we ask that you please abide by that because it makes a really annoying noise once the three minutes goes off and it just kind of Echoes In Here at any time during this meeting written comments may be submitted to our recording secretary Cindy Rodriguez who is at my right speakers should conduct themselves with Civility and respect towards everyone in this room our first and

011I apologize in advance if I don't pronounce your name correctly Helen [Music] ratlo want to talk about the Farnsworth Builder Tiff tax financing or tiffs traditionally have a 23e lifespan 23 years ago my son was a 9-year-old fourth grader at Louise White now he has a a career and a student debt a wife a house a mortgage and a stepson in 23 years he went from a fourth grader to a stepdad of a fourth grader the farnworth Builder Tiff will affect the students you have now the preschoolers waiting in the wings students who will move here from others places and students who haven't even been born yet property taxes are the engine of local government they must increase to meet inflation and increasing need the Tiff district will allow the casino to freeze their property

012tax at the current level while they build a facility worth hundreds of millions of dollars the property taxes above the Baseline will stand their hands for 23 years your needs will not stay level you will have more students there will be new technologies equipment books there will be salaries and benefits to attack attract and retain retain quality staff there will be maintenance and probably new construction with property tax funds diverted to a tiff either you have to do without or find Revenue elsewhere EAS Ro School District waited for 23 years to reap the benefits of the casino and then the casino applied for and got an extension EAS Aurora ended up waiting more than 30 years for prop for prop full funding to reach them at which point the casino announced their plan to move

013and build and get a new Tiff pen entertainment is a billion- dooll company that could afford to do this project without a tiff the CEO makes $65 million a year with which is 130 times the 500,000 that you are being offered to split seven ways they also had a vought a g video gaming system for over $300 million and then sold it back for a dollar you need to organize with the other taxing bodies to vote no on the Farnsworth Builder tiff with a no vote you can negotiate a better deal for your students a tiff doesn't have to last 23 years it could be 20 or 15 or 12 and the full proper property value property tax value of the development will come available sooner likewise you could negotiate to get some of that

014increased value in two or three years after the construction is finished you could get a 2080 deal or or 3070 or 5050 but the world of possibilities will only open up if your res Representatives vot know at the Joint review meeting you should if it should happen that you cannot get three other taxing bodies to commit to vote no as well then you still have time to sign the intergovermental agreement before November 8th the yellow handout um has projections of taxes diverted based on the city of Aurora estimate thank you next is Pat wer hello thank you for the opportunity to speak um my name is Pat Wier um Tiff districts are tax increment financing districts tiffs are created by slicing an area out of your taxable map and funneling any incremental public dollars away

015from public services and into the hands of the mega Wealthy on paper tiffs were invented to help develop blighted land that would be hard to develop otherwise unfortunately tiffs have instead become an easy way for big developers and large companies to publicly Finance large projects and Pad their bottom line to shift the risk to the public and shift the profits to private individuals a feature that makes the new proposed cassino tip especially egregious I really do like that word um is that it is a m micro Tiff meaning it only encompasses the property directly owned by the single entity pen entertainment there's no way to use these dollars outside of the Tiff District to develop other land nearby because the Tiff is so small at least with other larger tiffs you could potentially develop other

016land and develop and Revitalize a given area this micro Tiff is simply a cash grab facilitated by the city of Aurora tiffs are an abuse of property tax law by carving out more tiffs we limit the number of properties taxed to fund our public bodies if we maintain or increase spending while we remove taxable Parcels property taxes must increase for everyone within U the districts to make up the shortfall I'm going to present four scenarios they're short I guess see the time here okay I better get a in scenario one vote Yes approving the intergovernmental agreement as is would give you only 10% of the tax revenue for 23 years plus and potentially higher revenues in 23 to 35 years if the casino doesn't fail scenario two vote no do not sign the intergovernmental agreement

017as is demand more concessions either a larger percentage up to 100% or a shorter Tiff so that you can reap 100% sooner so potentially higher revenues in 23 years if Casino doesn't fail three no Tiff I mean vote no no Tiff at all and casino still builds they have the cash and they can afford this development without public funds taxing bodies get 100% of increased revenues if the casino doesn't fail the last scenario no Tiff at all and casino doesn't build properties is sold to other entities and property taxes develop naturally I meant it uh next speaker David Canon share a little too okay hello everyone my name is David Cannon I am from Aurora I'm here uh with a spooky Halloween tale East Aurora School District and Tiff number one a cautionary Tale in

0181986 the city of Aurora created Tiff number one a legal mechanism which diverts property tax dollars from their rightful destination of schools and local governing bodies to an unaccountable undemocratic bucket of money to subsidize private development as is the case with the new casino Tiff District in 1993 Hollywood Casino run by pen entertainment opened in Aurora and began paying incremental property taxes not to taxing bodies but into Tiff number one the school district encompassing the original Casino property was Easter School District due to Tiff number one Easter schools for went any incremental property tax revenues from the new casino for 23 years in 2009 after 23 years before the initial Tiff expired it was extended another 12 years currently allowable by state law over those combined 35 years Tiff number one diverted over $50 million

019away from public tax bodies into an unaccountable undemocratic pot of money Easter War schools missed out on approximately $31 million just the school with the new Cino Tiff District this could be you in 202 sorry in 2022 after 35 years of waiting Easter R School saw their first dispersement of Casino property taxes totaling $323,000 per year and now as the school district is finally posed to benefit from the casino pen entertainment and the city are moving it to a different jurisdiction to give pen a better return on their investment any promise of future tax revenues for public schools was a bluff the company has demonstrated that they will accept your tax concessions UPF front but have no problem leaving you behind in pursuit of profits they've demonstrated that they are not a faithful partner and

020cannot be trusted in the long term based on conservative city of Aurora figures if the new casino Tiff district is approved bavia schools will miss out on approximately $74 million in tax revenues $74 million that's city of Aurora figures the city of aora has proposed an intergovernmental agreement which is before you today where the taxing bodies will get 10% of any incremental taxes and 90% will go to pen gaming that is a bad deal you must not sign that by taking a hard line you strengthen your hand the buck stops with the school board you are the decision makers for the students staff and parents of bavia school district 101 and you are the ones who will be held personally responsible for those decisions please do not send staff to make that decision on your

021behalf the bavia school district should please votee no on the intergovernmental agreement agenda item 7.2 please also pass a resolution that would send a sitting board member to the Joint review board meeting on November 8th vote no at that joint review board meeting and have District 101 staff run the numbers yourself to make sure that you understand it entirely thank you so much next is Ivon dwy I agree with everything the predecessors said but Hollywood Hollywood Cino where it currently stands is making money Aurora Tiff was dissolved on 10262 21 the taxes that were assessed on the casino in 2021 were $ 38,3 3412 the taxing bodies in that Tiff District would see would be seeing the benefit from their 30-year weight now the casino will move and take with it the tax dollars that

022should rightly go to the taxing bodies who put up with the loss of Revenue and the opportunity cost of forgoing improvements or upkeep the tax dollars would have provided this is government sponsored theft and our tax dollars promote business expansion the city of Aurora purchased the property to be used for the new casino development back in 2017 the property was not truly blighted because if the casino was to be built there which they planned this there was potential for profit pen entertainment has made plenty of money from the casino and in fact could afford to build that property without t a tiff several times over why should taxpayers not be only be giving the land to the casino but paying to develop the property and the infrastructure surrounding the property when Penn's second quarter 2023

023operating income was 44.6 Million gaming revenues alone were $1,292 uh8 million doar not counting food beverage and hotel and other operating income carving out a portion of Tiff seven and eight has the same effect as extending the Tiff beyond the 23 years and is taking higher Revenue producing property from those two tiffs which are set to expire in 2034 we teach our children not to talk to strangers to go and tell someone who can be trusted to act when I read the offer of the poultry 10% of the money to go to a special allocation fund to be distributed to TA taxing bodies along with the NDA the district agrees not to make statements or take actions disparaging the new Tiff District the existing existing Tiff District or the project the red stranger danger Flags

024go up if this is such a good deal why would the school district or any other taxing body have to agree to this statement obviously bavia school district has some experience with Tiff districts given the Aurora outlet mall which was only one successful tip and one Washington Tiff which was not so their experience could be a blessing to the Tiff or if it was not performing a curse this is akin to the city of Aurora paying protection money to the school district or if you prefer a bribe for the school district and other taxing bodies not to oppose the school districts uh could I just finish this one little sentence the Tiff the tiffs are self-perpetuating and are nothing more than corporate welfare at the the school district stands to lose over $74 million over

025the life of te the opportunity cost of forgoing improvements and repairs to the school for 23 years if the Tiff doesn't produce the aformentioned increment to pay the proposed money what are your guarantees for receipt Carl he can read the rest is Carl Carl dwy 1156 Pine Street poav Illinois first of all this has been my first official time to uh welcome superintendent Kim to our neighborhood and his family to our neighborhood it's great to see him and I watched at least three board members over the Su board meetings over the summer and it looks like the board and Mr Kim and all the staff did a really good job they're really attentive and one of the things I heard from uh editors once upon a time is the public comments time is called the

026deer and the headlights in front of most boards you know they just go to sleep but in this case I watch your meetings all summer long and I thought the comments were good and the attentiveness was good uh I'm not going to repeat what anybody said I'm mainly just going to focus on 7.2 about the agreement uh intergovernmental legal a I'll go through some problematic areas I see okay first of all of course the the aora can Surplus whatever it wants so that's not an issue it goes out to all the taxing bodies when I get to section four support by the district uh to vote in a certain way um at the Joint review board uh I have to say if it looks like a duck walks like a duck and quacks like a

027duck it must be a duck so this looks like compensation to a public official for voting a certain way in a public meeting and um that gives me problems in fact so much problems as that I go to one board member who used when I'd go up to talk he says I keep waiting for the other shoe to drop so I would say that constitutes a brass and I feel obligated to um contact the FBI office in L and have them review Aurora's office and if you accept it to review or accept it that this is a material um compensation for a vote and I don't think that's correct um with Integrity the other I'm running out of time I don't want to hear that Bell again most of the rest of this is okay

028I wouldn't wave the trial by jury and you can be sued so i' been very careful what I sign here giving away your rights thank you Kio good evening my name is Kate coo I'm a bavia resident and mother of three children attending our excellent Public Schools I want to begin by thanking teachers staff and the bavia school board that have gone above and beyond to meet my children's needs especially since two of them have IEPs my primary purpose for speaking tonight is to ask you to vote no on the intergovernmental agreement with the city of Aurora and ask the school board to send someone to the Tiff joint review board meeting that will be held on November 9th and cast a no vote at that meeting the fact that pen entertainment is pursuing a

029tiff District to use taxpayer money to pay back an 8 a $58 million subsidy from the city of Aurora is of great concern that $58 million Bond will be repaid by tax Sellar that are diverted from bavia schools pen entertainment is a multi-billion dollar company and their CEO makes $65 million they don't need a tiff they don't need a subsidy and bavia school shouldn't pay for it the Tiff is projected to generate more than $120 million in Revenue under the current agreement that money will be diverted from our schools and into pen entertainment's Pockets instead we should push for 50/50 Tiff and use that money for the school repairs we needed to fund through the failed referendum we need to look out for Pavia residents taxpayers and our budget not pen entertainment's bottom line the

030existing Aurora Casino starved East Aurora schools for over 30 years and they just now started paying their taxes to Easter War schools we should negotiate a deal that gives bavia a bigger piece of the pie not live on a promise of future revenues our needs to M our needs to maintain our schools are now not 20 years from now or 30 years from now thank you that's all I have have a good one next we have Julie ster great all right hello we are the reading specialist representing each of the elementary schools and one of us has her doctorate in Reading collectively we have 83 years of experience in this District role which has changed dramatically during the last n years our goal here today is to to inform you about our Vital responsibilities as

031reading Specialists and to help you understand why our role is so valuable historically we were regarded as leaders in the instruction of reading and writing working alongside administrators and classroom teachers such Partnerships led to effective curriculum which translated to successful engaged Learners bavia was a place for other Educators to observe and return to their own districts with ideas and materials we are an essential partner to parents and their children as well as to our colleagues our skill set comprises those of a diagnostician a researcher a designer and a data analyst at the September board meeting superintendent Kim presented an outline of his strategic plan which includes identifying District resources well that's us we are very willing and eager to return to a role which would permit us to use our knowledge and talents to guide

032instruction reading and writing for all elementary students not just those who participate in a tier three intervention as diagnosticians we know how to go beyond Universal District assessments and dig deeper into a student's literacy profile this is crucial especially when they aren't responding to classroom instruction at a comparable Pace to their peers from there we could design instruction that better supports them if we were allowed to do this it would help those children and in part May address the over identification of students of color for which this district has been cited frequently during the past nine years as researchers we are the specialist in our domain teachers have many subjects to teach but we have one making us the experts we stay up to date on current reading practices and research and can synthesize that

033for teachers to benefit tier one and two instruction as designers we know how to create instructional practices for students based on our work as diagnosticians and researchers we can take a boxed program and customize it by adding modifying or taking away elements in order to best fit the needs of the students in front of us additionally in years prior we have designed and offered professional development to our colleagues in both reading and writing instruction as data analysts we use information daily to make instruction C decisions about our students this responsive teaching is critical to supporting atrisk readers relatedly we know how to gather District data and look at it from both a current and in terms of instructional practices and materials in conclusion we believe in the importance of this role which has existed in

034the district for the last 40 years at least our colleagues and school families have relied on us we know how valuable it is to have a reading specialist in every building we are your inhouse literacy experts minutes next is Julian heckbert all right good evening board members everybody I am here to talk about the casino Tiff I agree with what most of my fellow residents here have said so out of respect for your time I am going to skip to the very end of my little speech here so pen entertainment they don't they don't need this money you know um they spent more on stock BuyBacks last year than we stand to gain um from voting no on this Tiff they spent 91 million on stock BuyBacks just in one year and we stand game

035about 74 million over the full 23 years they don't they don't need this money we do so I would urge you to appoint one of you to go to one of the elected officials on this board to go to the Joint review board meetings to take a look at the financials yourself and to vote no on the current proposal on November 8th so that we can negotiate for a better deal that's all I've got thank you next is Mary Lee Lou good evening I as Julian said I won't uh I agree with my the prior uh people that have spoken in regards to the Tiff so I will just speak to slightly different places in the sense that um this 74 uh million in funds that will be diverted from your District shortly you're going

036to have a presentation for your Capital expenditures requesting 52 million this year so if you have one year that you need 52 million to do projects those are going to have a a long lasting uh not repr progressions but they're going to be long lasting for the students in 23 years the Fieldhouse the other uh project you intend to do will outlive this Tiff I'm the parent of two teenagers it's potential that I will actually have grandchildren that are not even conceived of yet be born graduate college before the benefits could be done of this so your body is making decisions today that are affected a full generation that we don't even know about yet so as Julian stated I uh encourage you to make a resolution tonight to send one of you as an

037elected uh body members instead of some staff and also to um resolve that you stand in opposition for uh granting a for-profit of dollars um because as he stated they don't need it um thank you so much for your time and finally John le uh good evening board uh first of all I want to thank you I served on the East Aurora School Board uh for four years and during the May discussion where the city of Aurora came and presented to you some of you asked the question what does this do to East Aurora some of the other speakers have done a good job articulating how this wasn't just a it was a short 23 25 year Tiff and then got extended and that's how Illinois Tiff law is written and if you think about

038the life cycle of a building is or a project is 25 years A lot of people are even in their building less than that so you're effectively negotiating deal for the lifespan of this building um I am also a sitting Aurora Alderman uh who you also had asked what about the other um um Alderman because I know Alderman Worman was here what do they think this is an issue I ran on I can assure you that Ward one residents uh some who are here tonight are against this uh because it will dramatically change their lives and decrease their property values but you know your role as a school board is to set policy on these tiffs District 204 has adopted an official policy opposing Tiff districts and they are so far the only successful that

039I taxing body that's negotiated effectively against uh what I would call aggressive negotiating strategies by the city of Aurora uh making one of their tiffs down to a 15-year Tiff there's a number of levers that you can pull to change it uh either to make it a 50/50 Tiff which is a point nobody's made yet um we do have a a sheet and a handout and I'll email it to you if you haven't got it yet using the city of Aurora's own numbers numbers that were presented uh at this in May that this will generate $5.25 million a year that's money that doesn't go into the taxing bodies but instead goes into the the Tiff district and over the course of time that's $120 million so over the course of 23 years so we are

040financially pot committed to $58 million not a vote I cast um and prior to my time on the on the board but if if we're only need 58 why are we doing a math problem with 120 million so something to think about so would Echo some of the other um points that have been made by my peers and also encourage you to talk to District 204 about this before committing to tonight's um uh vote on the intergovernmental agreement I personally just left the aora city council meeting and voted no on it and um I would encourage you to talk to the other taxing bodies and um I would encourage people to attend the jrb even if you're not there as a voting member just to educate yourself and and I will be sending out an

041invitation for November 4th 10:00 a.m. we will be holding a tiff 101 meeting that's going to be slightly different and very factual um in the merrywood community center thank you that concludes our public comment thank you very much thank you to everybody that came and spoke today I'd like to invite our BPS Partners up uh Todd Swanson welcome back we missed you last month but he did a good job filling in for you good evening everyone um I find it kind of ironic I'm standing by this sign that says always learning and always growing so before I even started my comments I just wanted to say thank you to everyone that came to educate me and the people sitting in this room and everybody listening and watching online about Tiff districts I learned more about

042Tiff District in 25 minutes than uh I think I have ever known about them so thank you for coming to speak and to help us all learn and grow so that was really appreciated uh tonight I'd like to begin by continuing to focus on our district accomplishments last month I shared some news that our art department at BHS was one of three schools in the state to receive the school of the distinction designation by the Illinois art educator Association and as we just celebrated at the beginning of our meeting tonight we have yet another Illinois art educator of the year as one of our district colleagues in Kathleen Terry ton in a span of just five years we as a district have our second Statewide art educator of the year for the entire state of

043Illinois on our staff in 2018 Don zulis also received this prestigious recognition and recognition of our BPS staff for an art educator of the Year other accomplishments our bavia marching band competed in the State marching band competition last weekend at ISU and placed second overall in class 2A was awarded best visual and this marks the highest placement in this class in our school's history it also marked the second 6ity year for the bavia marching band to be selected for the State final in the finals this year bavia marching band placed 11th which is the highest placement in the school's history this caps off a season with many awards and recognitions in other competitions with the band placing first or second repeatedly our football team is yet again Conference champions and is poised to make a

044deep playoff run the fall sports teams of soccer volleyball cross country tennis golf and cheer are all winding down their seasons and to all of our students and all of our staff in every one of these are that I mentioned who contribute to every win and grow from every defeat thank you for making our fall Sports season memorable leaving behind Sports and Fine Arts for a second I'd like to spend a moment on academic recognitions coming up in the consent agenda you'll see the Illinois school report card and in all of its data you will also see that each one of our BPS schools received a commendable or exemplary designation on the 2023 school report card this accomplishment comes on the the shoulders of all of our District employees But ultimately it's at the hands

045of our students who apply what they've learned in their classrooms receiving commendable status are Louise White Grace MCW JB Nelson Rola middle school and bavia high school this level is reached when there are no underperforming student subgroups but they're not quite in the top 10% of the schools in the state however we did have three of our elementary schools break into the top 10% of school in the state this year and received exemplary status congratulations to Alice gusterson HC Storm and Hoover wood for receiving this recognition an interesting piece of information I learned as I dug a little bit deeper into that data was that our top three performing schools in the district also had the three lowest average class sizes in the district ranging from 19 to 21 students per class these three schools

046had the highest percentage of students who met expectations for growth and Readiness on the I state test as a board I think that is extremely valuable information for you to have and to ponder as we move forward in planning for the future the Bea is also working very closely with Tom to get our Equity committee up and running this year as they have their first meeting scheduled on November 9th Tom and Amber jersa are the co-chairs this year and we are looking forward to using Tom's message from opening day of inclusivity to be the lens the committee operates under this year we're also excited to have Danielle be the board rep on the committee this year I'm really looking forward to some amazing things to come from our reinvigorated and refocused Equity committee with all

047this great news does this mean that it's always sunshine and roses with everything in our district of course not we are continuing to work with District admin on curriculum issues at the elementary level and Staffing across the district as we continue to seek out the wise of decisions to help with with understanding and transparency that's one thing I'm most proud of my members for doing continuing to seek out the why for a decision that has been made that doesn't mean we have to agree with the decision but at least we will know what led to the decision the other piece that would be help tremendous or this is the other piece that would help tremendously and Clarity and buy in is to be a part of the discussion even from the beginning as you heard

048earlier from our reading specialist we are a district filled with experts in our field fields we are just shy of 34s of our Educators holding a master's degree or higher problem solving together as admin and Educators experts at the front end makes transparency and byend even higher on the back end working together from the beginning builds a lot more trust and provides better communication and transparency than coming in after a decision is made and dealing with the Fallout to clarify and figure out a path forward as always I would personally welcome any questions that that you as board members might have if you heard something tonight that is stuck with you which I hope that it has I look forward to any conversations that we may have together as always as well I thank you

049all for your service as a board for your work on District committees and to those of you that have been able to connect with staff in your school Liaisons Educators really do appreciate seeing you and having a chance to talk with you when you come out into our buildings with that I'm going to say Enjoy your last few days of October and have a happy and safe Halloween thank Youk you Todd next I would like to invite up Laura for Besa please hi everybody I'm Laura versillo from Besa and I am the board's treasur and um I'm not sure if you're from familiar but every board meeting we've been uh coming here and talking about besta employee I think it's important um we have wonderful teachers but we also have wonderful support staff and it

050would be nice for you to know just a little bit about um each member and if you look at the slide Besa the first one here we feel the PPA we're the branches of the educational tree so just remember this because later it's all going to make sense not today but it will so just so you know what we did is we sent our besta members just kind of a questioner to get this started so when I'm reading these stories this is where they're coming from we just asked you know simple light questions how long have you worked at BPS um did you work at any different schools did you have different titles are you a bavia resident tell us about your family your hobbies um why do you work here and what do you

051like about working at BPS what's your best memory working day and what is something about your job or about you that is unknown um if you could change one thing about your job what would it be and then I just said you know be um happy to fill in whatever else you want to include so today I am um I have the honor of introducing Nikki shindle back and Nikki is a dedicated lunch recess supervisor SL campus monitor at Louise White School Nikki's Journey with the school spans eight years and her story is one of dedication and commitment to the well-being of our students Nikki embarked on this path when her youngest daughter started first grade after years of being a stay-at-home mom she was seeking an opportunity that would enable her to return to

052work while accommodating her children's school and activity schedules she knew she wasn't going to go back to being a high school math teacher after starting her family a friend pointed her towards this role affirming that Nikki's natural affinity for working with kids and her desire to be present for her two daughters at school made a perfect fit Nikki's personal life is filled with joy and respect responsibility she's been happily married for 21 years raising three wonderful children in the savannah division in Aurora Jason her 18-year-old son is currently attending wanzi Community College while her daughter's Madison 16 years old uh bavia High School Jr and Mason 13 years old at rotello 8th grade keep her busy with activities especially Scouts in Spirit Week crazy ha day and Halloween in her free time Nikki enjoys crafting

053reading gardening and exploring new places the reason Nikki continues to work at Louise White school is she cherishes the interactions with the children Benny of who she's come to know and who recognize her the relationships with her colleagues and the flexibility that fits perfectly with her schedule are added bonuses not to mention the ability to see her girls when they attended at Louise White the memory she's created by being a part of their Elementary school years are truly special in Nikki's role as a lunch recess supervisor campus monitor every day is an adventure it's a dynamic role that's never the same presenting new challenges and surprises some days go by smoothly while other days are filled with incidents like spills resolving disputes among friends addressing injuries and ensuring students leave with their belongings left behind

054in an orderly manner however Nikki does emphasize that there is some room for improvement as a lunch recess supervisor campus monitor they often face situations where some training and guidelines could prove incredibly beneficial they haven't received any training for emergency situations like fire alarms or tornado drills leaving them to rely on their Common Sense furthermore more they would greatly benefit from first aid choking and seizure training especially since they interact with the children daily Nikki's experience as a high school teacher and mother have informed her approach but dealing with elementary students that are not her own requires a unique set of skills in conclusion Nikki schindelbeck is not just a lunch recess supervisor campus she's a dedicated mother an enthusiast itic Scout leader and a valued member of our school Community her commitment to her

055role and her love for the children are evident in her everyday efforts as she continues to contribute to the students launch and recess time she also highlights the need for improvements that would not only benefit her but also make this role more attractive for other parents who may consider joining our team thank you for your dedication Nikki thank you thank you and next are our student ambassadors you guys are hiding in the back hi guys I'm Jer and cesara and these are some updates from BET High School okay so this month the girls wrestling team are starting off strong with a lot of committed members athletes um we also have Eco club uh creating a bat race uh festival for this Halloween I know some members who are really excited for that next weekend and

056for some success the girls tennis um qualified for States and they're ending the season strong and speaking of like additional clubs this year we have um M un um which me and Zara actually went today and the meeting Ended as a success and with future plans and like committed members as well and start uh talking about things that's starting up this year is um mentoring program which allows high school students to team up with the elementary schools to help build connections between the high school students and the elementary students and I'm one of the mentors that's in that program and I cannot stress enough how much like this really like like builds connection between the high school students and Elementary School students it helps build like fun and authentic relationships I'm like really excited for

057it it's something I look up to you every year all right and for some other successes we have um choir put on a great performance for their October concert and uh to reiterate football had a great season and the band cheer and dance all put on a great show and they have their first run of playoffs this Friday which is really exciting and volleyball also is fired up with their season and they recently won their first Regional playoffs so that was super exciting and they're actually playing against Bennett right now I believe and um like mentioned before the art programs at the high school have been getting some great recognition along with the teachers who have been doing some amazing work I can say cuz I just finished my 3D art class and it was

058amazing and shout out to miss tyri who won the secondary art educator um of the year that's amazing amazing work done by the teachers and also wanted to highlight a new uh program set up by the BHS counselors It's called the scholarship series and I'm really appreciative of this I went to the other event and they kind of educate students and parents on like different financial aid and scholarships that students can get access to so it's a really great thing that they have on and they have more programs coming up and as mentioned before we went to the model un meeting today actually and they're tackling different world issues and and kind of giving students the leadership skills they need to go forward so overall a lot of great things happening thank you thank you

059thank you okay next is board the aison committee updates are there any committee updates I have an update okay get my notes pulled up here does anyone else have one they can I can just go real quick I go um don't everybody jump at one mine real quick we just um beefy meets actually Thursday but today this afternoon we had a little Branch off of Hall of Honor um which has been on Hiatus for the last year or so and beefy has taken overhaul of Honor which they originally started it but um so we've gotten our committee together and we're starting to talk about it so it will be back for next year so we're working on that great thank you do you want to go M I have two that are kind of I'll

060go I got it pulled up here so the insurance and benefits committee met on October 12th I was able to attend virtually get a good discussion Josh does a nice job summarizing our discussion so what we discussed was the Open Enrollment presentations that uh were sent out to staff um and kind of a preview of what we we will be sending out we reviewed the CHC participation data which is up from last year um we looked at an overview of what's in driving Insurance costs in the district and we looked at a lot of different metrics we have a great tool where we can really do super fine detailed analysis of what's driving cost so what we're sort of working on for the next one is working on creating a quarterly standard of data review

061so we can kind of simplify things we can see how we're doing that's what we talked about do you have another one or that's it that's it okay perfect okay um first uh the stiping committee um so just to re iterate remind everyone the stiping committee is a group that helps uh maintain guidelines and make decisions on uh student clubs and activities there's a set aside amount of monetary funds for these groups and um there's members that decide which groups are going to receive funds for this so as you could if you just hear that like that it sounds like oh that could be pretty messed up um so if I could explain it best over the past year it's as if we had leaves everywhere you know know fall fall theme we had leaves

062everywhere and they raked it all up this this committee did a really good job over the past year they put a lot of work into it um so first I want to recognize all the members because they've they've really worked hard they were working um over the summer off their you know regular school hours as well so Steve if you can help me really quick because I'm just realizing now that I haven't said a lot of these people's last names um so how do you pronounce Shelby's last name gages so Shelby gages is one of the co-chairs with Steve and then Keith oth Keith oth and Adam Lester are two members that represent Roto then there's Chris milka and Diane kissper who represent Elementary and there's Justin nson and Brian Gamblin that represent vavia High

063School correct okay I'll say as a side note because my students go to um HD storm Mr milka's there Chris milka he takes extraordinary notes I mean I don't they're just they're amazing if you guys ever want to see them I'll be happy to show them to you they're colorcoded everything um it's true so the stip in the stip in process and I've heard this from other other um from students parents the sing process was kind of a little unorganized over the past couple years there was paper applications there was online applications there were applications that were getting out of date um people weren't sure what the criteria was for getting chosen for the stip in um the committee uh just sent out right before the meeting started Steve sent out a message to all

064the BPS colleagues um explaining the timeline a very nice well-written timeline um for when processes are due when the decisions were going to be made and they also came up with um values to guide their decisions and making so they have a clearly defined system um they're worried about equity and access for all students at all levels that's why we have two members from each different grade level there at the meetings um the stiens are going to be centered on activities outside of professional duties and the stiens are going to be fair equ and Equitable to all staff and buildings besides the student students at all levels so the email just came out all the BPS 101 colleagues will be seeing it whenever they're checking their email um and I just it was just great

065so I just want to recognize that that's what happened so they made a lot of progress um we're going to start rolling with with new decisions um in the next couple months here with the the new timeline that they proposed anything you want to add no you said it very well okay a lot of good work all right um and then my other update is with Fox Valley Career Center um in May there in May of 2023 the the fvcc was a recipient of a fire apparatus driving simulator actually from the city of bavia fire department so something for us to be proud of because if you don't know Fox Valley is associated with a lot of other schools in the area not just bavia uh so the fire science students and staff actually travel

066to bavia to pick up this machine and bring it back to the school do you happen to have a a picture that um the the picture to put up there know s did you have that I'm sorry I thought that I had sent that over to you let me send that really quick because that send it to me RJ okay Twitter account that was over there yeah okay okay so Holly I'll send it over to you and I'll continue to talk about it I just wanted everyone to see the machine so it's the machine is on the first email of that chain the first the first email that chain and um I'll send you another picture as well that I want you to share so essentially this is a machine that is going to go

067a long way to helping the fire science students um it meets it helps meet a lot of the requirements for Illinois standards as you can see it's almost like um you might have seen a any type of driving similar like an airplane similar so this is what it's like for them to be driving a uh fire truck um the the students actually had to take this apart and put it back together so Not only was it a challenge to get and they were happy to get it but um the the uh principal over there wanted me recognized Evan C uh he's one of the students who put a lot of time and effort into actually getting this up for the fire science program so thank you to Evan c um and let's see I just

068want to make sure I got this and then if you got the other um did you see the other one that I sent um just want to note that that uh our very own superintendent was able to go there and drive an old airport fire truck I don't know if you were sharing that but I wanted to share the photos of as well everyone just eats into my comments so that's all right you're joining time oh do you have the picture of it yourself no I was going to talk about my visit that's sorry you're taking care of it to took half my statements you're oh he shared that with you oh God so it's nice to see that you're getting your hands dirty know what the students are going through so that's it any

069question keep that up for the rest of the meeting you'd rather see that than the [Laughter] agenda just kidding all right thanks um Raquel go ahead and for the all right joint committee meeting effectively so capital gains or I'm sorry Capital project and rack um combined and we actually had two meetings uh prior to this one so our first one was on 928 uh basically they just were talking about the 2024 projects for the summer um and then uh not to steal anyone's Thunder sorry Mark but um there is basically going to go with a for the next few years they want to do a warm safe and dry that's going to be their main focus for the next uh Five Years on their projects um also they talked a little bit about uh the

070food service and the HB 2471 Bill about healthy meals for all um and they're going to send out a survey um to parents and kids um just talking about what type of lunch they have there's like a couple options so we meet that criteria for the uh that Senate bill um and then um in the last meeting uh they talked more about um The Five-Year Plan and uh um we have some contracts are going to be renewed like buses um our energy costs they're trying to work with those and then also accommodating for full day kindergarten and then they went more in depthly into like the actual years on what they are want to do for the schools and the costs and the projects and they kind of like broke it out so that basically

071it okay anyone else Rob um I guess I'll just mention I we did have a curriculum committee meeting uh unfortunately I was not able to attend I was out of town uh during that meeting but uh I did receive the the notes and the feedback and it looks like they started um reviewing some of the subject area leadership uh Team charters for sign science Ela social studies and essential programming um grades three through 3 through 12 um so that that started um leans was also picked for those subject area leadership teams um to help with communication so um so those were the notes coming back from that meeting great thank you in case everybody hadn't noticed that if I'm still in your thunder I apologize in advance um that the committee is kind of where

072there's a lot of reorganization ation and a lot of relook and that came out of kind of con constructed dialogue working with the teachers and staff so I appreciate all the hard work from all the teachers and staff and everybody else to really try to pull this together as the new year is starting and get here to be able to kind of talk about that and I'm excited for the opportunities that are going to come from those revisions and changes so thank you for that all right consent agenda so 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 discussion before board action these items generally are retuned recurring and can be grouped together for efficiency Steve as usual would

073you like to share anything before we take action no I have nothing to share No Beyond this uh consent agenda okay you ready yep 5.1 approval of the September 19th 2023 meeting minutes 5.2 is our monthly Personnel report 5.3 is our monthly uh payroll and bills 5.4 is the destruction of our close session recordings from April 19th 2022 uh 5.5 we have several uh donations a lot of them very considerable we're definitely grateful to uh DM Hendrickson of cier City Florida bavia Arts Council and then considerable donations from beefy Are Much appreciated uh 5.6 is the uh authorized the application for our school maintenance project Grant 5.7 is our school report card uh 5.8 is the BHS overnight field trip approval 5.9 is the authorization to begin development of our budg approval of this consent

074agenda does anyone have any questions or comments yes I have questions okay so on the Personnel report I'm just curious how the incentive program is going um because I see the only thing that I see on there right is that there is three Paras that resigned and then um three Paras that were hired within that time frame so just how is it going uh ironically we had a meeting with um our besta uh leadership tonight and they asked the same question so they pre me in advance um unfortunately I'm I'm I guess I'm sharing that we have not seen great success with that um having said that I just got an email uh tonight or this this evening um from a uh staff member with a potential lead so I'm hopeful that that works out

075but to date um I can't I have to say that we have not seen any success uh with the incentive program um but we still got like a month left so um with the eight FMLA the staff is that going to impact us too I'm sorry with this the FMLA the eight staff that going to be an FMLA like do we have to replace all of them or I mean you know or they just kind I know like there was an intermittent FMLA so yeah it depends um it depends on what the FMLA leave is is uh like and what it constitutes um with intermittent FMLA I would I would share with you that interm intermittent FMLA is usually used for uh situations that may be fluid or a little bit unpredictable as an example

076um maybe a staff member has a loved one that has been diagnosed with cancer and a treatment plan is being developed and um if you've ever had a family member that's dealt with cancer uh there's a lot of unpredictabilities um they may have uh chemotherapy or radiation on Tuesday and after that treatment you know you may have to drive them to and from and be there to support them on that Tuesday and you might be able to come back on Wednesday but maybe um they don't feel so well after that after that treatment and the staff member has to take an additional day off and so what intermittent FMLA uh does and how we cover it generally speaking would be with our uh very very valuable um building subs or with a substitute teacher um

077the there's other FML in there that maybe are um uh longer in nature or excuse me maybe more uh uh consistent in nature where someone is out for a significant period of time maybe they've had a child maybe they're having a procedure um something along those lines and again depending on the length of it the uh people that we can hire sometimes we hire to replace that um a short-term person for five weeks six weeks eight weeks um or sometimes we again utilize our building sub so it really depends um I would say that FMLA is a uh an important um process to provide our staff some flexibility to deal with some very difficult situations but I would also say that um it's not a one siiz fits-all it's pretty complicated and complex um and

078it it's really individualized uh uh for each person recel I'm sorry I was just gonna say I noticed the two that caught my attention I don't know if you saw only there's four of them that are less than a month long and and then three are intermittent so I was assuming that we wouldn't replace for less than a month I mean we probably it it it all depends because you're not going to go through a uh when again it depends on the FMLA if we have for warning then maybe we would go to try find somebody for a short term but if we find out on Tuesday night that a person is going to be out for four weeks starting the following day probably not time to go find a brand new person unless we

079have a connection with somebody a lot of times we have a lot of cons assistant substitutes in our buildings um that know the building they know the staff they know the students um and those people fill that void for some of those more shortterm two weeks three weeks four weeks that might be it too it just depends so I know this will probably not be liked but I know that besta has a little over a year in their contract and maybe we need to kind of look at opening it up and what needs to happen for that um I just think it's something that we need to look at because seems like we're losing more than we're gaining I'm sorry oh I just said I know that besta has a little more than a year

080left on their contract and it might be something that we want to look into opening back up um because I know I think like we're losing more than we're gaining like they can go down the road and get what $2 more oh yeah oh yeah so then um going going back to the um the the bills and pays um I just have one and I still I didn't I'm sorry if I missed it Tony but I didn't know there was a mohawk again for the 11,000 and I don't know what the Mohawk is yeah Mohawk page 71 um it says Mohawk USA Education I just didn't know what it was again I don't know what that is I does it say what next to I come up again and then um so going to the

081report card I just have a couple questions is for science I just we why is there a higher participation rate for ELA than science do we not give it to everybody is that what that is or like because like math and Ela had a 99% participation rate where science had 77% I was just curious we only give it to um I'm not entirely sure but I also need to make sure that the board is aware as say stated in the memo that the report card link that's provided to you is where we house the report card that data is actually under embargo by is it's not going to be released and updated until October 30th okay so what's currently up on our on our website is um reflective of the previous two years ago oh

082two years I saw they work in our so on October 27th is be will take be taking down all live and active report cards updating them over the weekend and then then on the 30th they will be released and that's why we're coming to you for permission to release it once ISB has updated the report cards and it goes live and then our technology team will update our our uh link to reflect where the report card data so this one so I'm sorry so this one is live now or it's going to go live on after October 30th okay we're just authorizing them to release the information okay it's a bit of a technicality of the the board has to do oh okay yeah we're required to get your vote of consent I see so

083that then once the state makes all those links live we can actually publish it oh okay so everybody knows that you'll be able to view it very soon but we're just authorizing the district to release that information I think it could be made more clear in the memo but it says the upcoming 2023 report cards they're not they're not there yet okay so the report cards always work in a year a so so when you see the new updated report card it's a fiscal year 23 that's it okay thank you R any other questions okay I will entertain a motion to approve the consent to agenda as present so moved second so moved by Ain second by Sue all in favor I thank you Tom is there anything to share this evening under reports um

084yeah so we'll just go ahead and go down the line um under 6.1 board the foyer requests are presented to you as as responded to okay questions okay uh moving then to 6.2 under Treasures report I'll turn it over to Tony if there's anything to add for nothing out of the ordinary to present here uh under Section 6.3 you see the draft for the 2425 school calendar we just wanted to get that in front of the board for review uh Dr new newerk and the union have met and Dr newerk has also met with leadership and other constituents to make sure um we made adjustments that would appropriately Fit For What the draft calendar needs to look like um keeping in mind that the um Governor has reinstituted the mandatory no day of school on

085November 10th for our election no I'm sorry I'm using Veterans Day weekend sorry November 4th I believe it is for our our voting day so for the state 5th November 5th just thanks for looking out Steve um so November 5th so anyway so that's what built in we did have a draft we had to make an adjustment once that came out and then so um you have a month preview we wanted to present it to you and the public and then we'll have a vote at next month's meeting okay right we have and then the next item is actually uh board member lock under delegate assembly is there any discussion there um no I just wanted to point out that everyone at their seat has um the information for the delegates for triple meeting read

086through them if you have any comments you can go ahead and email me your yeah just so just so everyone's aware Sue is volunteered to be the delegate sort of volunteer told yeah cuz I'm the only one willing to get up in the morning and go I think that's what it was um and so that's a part of kind of the triple I session and school board members and others get together to kind of feel like they should kind of Lobby for or against at a state level so and don't put too much weight into this because it's not actually making decisions or acting anything it's just stating a position on various um uh educationally related topics yeah okay any questions for Sue please feel free to give her any information that you have or

087opin meeting on next month not not this meeting but the confence that meeting yeah okay board policy okay board policy um so this is a first read for the Board of Education um I would like to note and give some thanks and appreciation to uh Rob and Danielle for meeting with me we spent time looking over all the policy review that you're seeing here tonight um we walked through them um Rob are you comfortable if I just kind of run through it and if you want just jump in jump in right okay so uh we reviewed policies the the first set of policies you'll notice um let me back up we subscribe to press which is a service of the Illinois Association of school boards this is a um a service that is provided to

088hundreds of school districts in the state of Illinois um the policy review process is reviewed reviewed and vetted by a team of attorneys through their Association that focus on school law and they maintain and track how to continually update what school board policy manuals should look like as the state of Illinois passes new legislation impacting schools right so what you'll see in our board policy manuals um or specifically on board policies are typically like footnotes and legal references in addition to the bulk main language the core language of a board policy um what you see under policies uh two colon 080 2on 170 4 colon 045 and 4 colon 100 along with policies 7 colon 275 7 colon 305 7 colon 330 8 colon 025 and 8 colon 095 you'll notice that under those specific

089policies I reviewed them with both Rob and Danielle and then in those policies they they are just updating legal references cross references as new um case law might have come and been decided upon then they will go ahead and update those things but if you look at the policy itself that's in your board book none of the language was substantially change changed at all in the policy Sometimes some of those M minor changes they're actually cleaning up a typo they may have caught that was not caught in the past they clean it up but it is a change to policy so you have to review it and then approve it okay um the ones that will'll spend just a little more more time looking at more closely um so the policies I just read to

090you that's exactly what's happening nothing substantial in in the actual policy itself is changing and and I don't know if are you good with that okay um then if you take a look at board policy 5230 talking about maintaining student discipline um the following four policies that um the board is going to be reviewing over the next month are four policies that do not C currently aligned to the Press manual and some of these are um policies that have not been updated in years um so what you see before you is a recommendation to approve the Rewritten policies as presented by press which would bring us aligned in into alignment with current best practice and advised practice by our uh legally reviewed Services through iasb um so under um 5230 you'll see there's a reconstruction

091of some of the language in um from what our current board policy is to what we're recommending and some of it in terms of the language that we're asking you to adopt will remove language that's in the current policy under student um maintaining student discipline however that language can be found in other areas of our board manual such as section six so some of the language there is not being lost it's just simply cleaning up this particular policy as recommended by the uh press group okay um under uh policy 6 col 010 um same thing our educational philosophy policy is not aligned to what is currently in press press is actually providing us with a much more robust policy format as you note in in the attachment um and what's nice is a lot of

092the review areas are covered by the very committees that you as board members just reviewed that you participate in so like curricular things might go through CAC things regarding facilities might go through rack Etc right or even matters regarding inclusion and Equity that might go through our Equity committee at this point too as point of discussion okay do I have any questions so far awesome um the third one uh policy 6190 so at the moment we would also recommend this change um there will be a a major overhaul by going to this policy this has not been uh updated in six years and so we felt that it'd be necessary at the moment to go ahead and and move towards the Press policy language on extracurricular activities all right byar um and then the final

093one on student travel we are recommending to adopt policy 6240 uh in particular I do want the board to uh be aware of the fact that we currently have this policy under Section 7 as policy 7320 uh we are recommending that that policy stay there and that we allow ourselves to work through that because that is currently the existing policy there are some things there that we use as part of our protocols in the district when it comes to student travel and field trips but we have nothing under Section six so we are recommending that we adopt section six's uh policy that was recommended by press and then we will work to align section s's policy and then at a later date present that to the board so press is is six hours the press's

094policy yes so this is where it gets a little tricky right um so the policy we're asking you to approve is 6240 or review for next month approval is 6240 we have a policy already in place that is similar to the language and spirit of this policy but it resides under Section seven right now is the is it is a suggestion to move it to a different section specifically or is there a large difference in no so this is a policy that hasn't been updated in five years currently since we don't have anything under Section six we're trying to make an effort to kind of bring ourselves back to what is being recommended as best practice for our board policy manual um this had some iterations of some homegrown language into it which we wanted

095that's why before we undo anything in this particular policy you know what I mean like no good deed goes unpunished you know if we were to change something there and and being the new person here um I don't want to accidentally undo something that was intended in good spirit but then all of a sudden we're like tomm you just eliminated that policy with the board so it's like we want you know we're going to take time in understanding that one and make sure we dig into any of the uh edits and changes on that but the policy under Section six would work for everything that our district needs to do so there's updates on these you know five years is that because laws change or just that's primarily what driving most of this right yeah

096or case law or something that has caused it's not like we have an inherently bad policy it's just the law no and then like this one 7320 this is just one of those cases where some additional language was added and then modified into it so I want to make sure that we're we are bringing ourselves to you know some of our better pract strong practices that are being recommended with updates but I want to understand also what some of this language uh what we want to tweak to make sure it matches then what we're philosophically pursuing yeah and it happens like you said with some regularity and I think two years ago when I did this with um former superintendent it was like 800 Pages worth of review it was monstrous at that time we

097used to have a whole committee yeah yeah so yeah the last uh as you know I mean last uh three to five years has seen the most educational impacting bills passed through legislation at the state in Springfield in the state's history impacting schools so it's it's uh a lot of districts are trying to keep up with all the changes and updates okay thank you can I ask a question or a favor maybe yeah and it's just me maybe it was done this way before but like I know there's the link down here below the PDF but is there some way we could have a link like I'm looking at parental involvement involvement 8095 could we have a link on that where I just click and get it takes me to the I think I hate

098change yeah I think that's how it used to be and I could just click on that and it's easier for me to does that make sense yep so if this table that's in the board book up here on the agenda had hot links live links to those actual policies is what you're saying yes okay right I mean problem it's not that I can't go down but then I have to scroll down the whole thing and the one that I'm looking for for which what I'm probably going to end up doing is printing out the whole thing anyways but while I'm going through it I can just click on the one I want to no problem does that make sense yep it's just I think it's easier okay okay maybe not well uh we can certainly

099do that no problem thanks Sue um you all right so if there's no other questions on that uh we will if you do have questions in the meantime between now and the next board meeting please do not hesitate to contact me I'm more than happy to spend time talking to you through anything or Robin Danielle um I think they have a really good understanding of it after we talked for almost two hours right so um yeah we did have a lot of that yes um all right so then the final item under reports um is our capital projects plan report and um Tony are you good to go at this time if I turn it over to you sure I'm going to invite Mark to the podium as well so I'll kind of kick things

100off and the intention here is to have a discussion uh not necessarily simply a presentation there are two components to this plan and the first are the projects that we've identified for work in this fiscal year which is fiscal year 24 work that we would that would take place this this summer you'll notice that this is a report we're not asking necessarily for your approval but we are asking for your asent that we're going to start planning for these projects this summer and so the next component of that though are the the warm safe and dry components that we've identified as being post referendum what we need to do to keep our schools warm safe and dry in the Years Beyond but first we want to start talking about what needs what we believe needs

101to happen at uh in particular the high school this summer and that would be uh replacing the weight room floor as a matter of fact that would wouldn't happen this summer because it it would actually happen over winter break yeah because uh that floor has deteriorated rapidly deteriorated rapidly and um it needs needs repair and then the other work would happen during the summer so I'll let Mark talk about those but then we'll come back to the warm safe and dry components ler as Tony mentioned the Wai room floor the board um already passed that last month in action um the next two are mainly focused on the Fieldhouse and the Fine Arts Center and basically with those two I'm going to start in the exterior first um it's really maintenance that's needing to be

102done um they are starting to show their age we're getting to the point where it's 13 years old now um some general maintenance that has to be done um obviously it's a little bit different than your house but it's very similar to your house um you have to do maintenance in your house this is just maintenance when you get to the field or the Fine Art Center they have 45t pre-cast walls it's a little bit different a little bit different equipment that's needed um and this is actually great thank you for queuing pictures so um there's some pictures up here on the screen uh this is looking at the Fieldhouse one of the overhead doors and you can see there's some really what you're seeing right there is some discoloration but if you look a

103little bit closer um you're starting to see some cracks in the walls um things that need to be filled um part of this will be painting as well and you can just kind of flip through and I'll let you know when to stop since I'm not controlling this thank you Holly um we're still the Fieldhouse so some more pictures you can kind of see that diagonal crack going up that's going to be filled um and sanded and then it will be painted just some more gutters are involved in this as well um that's one of the down spouts this is as you're seeing the stained this would be on the north side of the building you're seeing a little bit of stained concrete this is from where water is dripping from the seams now when

104it's like this it's not that big of a deal it's 70° but when you get those mornings that um are about you know 30° 25° that freezes so we're constantly putting salt on that so that's definitely causing a slip Hazard this is looking at the FI um um BAC Fine Art Center so if I say BAC it's just that is bavia fine art center most of you know that but I might say that more than once um this is looking at it at its Western exposure just kind of an overview that's right I threw this in so you know it's aavia fin art um this one's just getting into more of the cracks this is up close on that 45 foot pre-cast wall again a lot of you know it really only is the stripes

105are one color and the rest of it one color right now you're seeing more than one color because of the different fading and this is facing the West so it definitely gets that Western Sun this is an expansion joint right here as you can see now it's for the most part has done its job but I show this picture because if you're on the inside which I could not it's not was not easy to try to get an inside picture of you can see daylight um it's very difficult I mean I could have but I wasn't I'm taking that chance to get that picture but you you can see daylight from the inside on this one so this is starting to cause some issues is that beef or is that the that's be so basically

106Su from the stage kind of in the if you're facing the back of the stage in the upper leftand corner is there a lot of moisture coming in there then or no there's not a lot of moisture I mean it's when I say daylight I mean it's very little it's not like you're opening your window and seeing daylight but that caul is your only correct difference between you and the outside yeah so can continue okay now the next part is with this since we are doing extensive work outside we're also looking inside the Fieldhouse um again same age this is just a picture of one of the um protective wall mats um again it's um showing its age and needs to have some updates light lighting is another one that will be in this so

107these are original fixtures um they were upgraded to LED tubes two almost three years ago now um we had a the engineers come in and do a measure of light so they measure in foot candles and currently in the Fieldhouse right now we're at 17 foot candles we should be at 50 foot candles um so that is a pretty significant difference and if you're at the high school that difference is when you go from the gyms into the Fieldhouse so if you happen to be there because the um the gyms we did update that lighting it's three years ago now um picture right here is of the floor um the floor is basically the life of this floor they say is 10 to 15 years so we're kind of right in that middle um and

108it is definitely showing signs that it needs to be replaced um you can just kind of there's quite a few in here Holly oh that's right the other one is this is what's called a Copa so what a koopa's job is to do is basically it's what's vents the air so before we had Cooling in there it was a way to draw in outside air and exhaust the air out so when you just kind of really in your house same thing you're bringing air in and then you're bringing it out the bottom part of this is a pan that really catches the water because it's open well kind of but it's open outside so when we get a heavy rain and it blows from the south or west it drains down there or melting of

109snow these were not designed large enough So the plan is to replace those to a larger footprint so it holds more water and literally then evaporates water that's the design of the cupas so there's five of these the two that are on the Far West End of the fuel house leak onto the floor and one of them happens to be right in the middle of one of the basketball courts so that has caused issues over the well a few years now again some other pictures of the floor you can start see just the discoloration of the floor and really in this floor it's um it's also holding a little bit of dirt and that's really been from years ago when it was originally um installed and cleaned you can see in some of these pictures

110some of the line lines are fading and this is also a picture of just another example of the light lights so really what's happening to these some of these lights if you look at it it's a like the bulbs above you um the whole bulb should be lit these are starting to burn out in almost quarter sections at a time replacing the whole thing or the the whole fixture yep The Proposal will be to in place the entire fixture and it's more protected um fixture so unfortunately you know those are sometimes targets let's kick the ball and see if we can hit the lights but the the lights that are being proposed to be put in are really meant for that space and really I didn't get a great picture because we have all the

111cages that are kind of strapped up now some with zip ties but all of the clips are breaking and um things like that it was that it okay so this work would take place this summer and it makes sense to do this all at once because we're going to come in and do the Fieldhouse floor obviously we're going to have to shut down that facility for several weeks to do that and we may as well take care of the lighting and the other issues at the same time um because that space is used every day most of the day all day long one of the reasons why the foot candles are as dim in that space as they are is cuz those lights they're pretty much always on yeah so those lights can be controlled

112um so we can turn them on and off and I just got a request was probably two weeks ago they come on at 6 a.m. and they go off at 11: p.m. to turn them on sooner than 6 because there's groups meeting there before 6 o'clock so I had to bump that time up to 5 a.m. this is some of the he most heavily used square footage we have in the broad section of the community I mean not just students and teachers y it's it's it's used that's why the floor looks the way it does and it's it's it's showing its age you know it's so I know almost 14 years old so it's been it's been utilized for past like might consider sporting events I mean when the weather's bad marching band goes in

113there and uses it for continue their practices when the weather's bad instead of canceling that are we um we're open for discussion right now on this yes um could you do you know what items fell off of this I I assuming this is all within our budget right that's why this is a report not a request right could you tell me what items four five and six are that didn't make the cut so to speak um that'd be a good question for for Mark uh there's we're constantly looking at the list of things and right now um you know when comes to warm safe dry it's a pretty massive number right and so we're trying to package these together in a way that would make sense it isn't that you know we cut off necessarily

114four five and six because we actually we'd have an excess of work that we would do uh in terms of funds for capital projects that we could in fact undertake this year as you recall we move money from the operations and maintenance fund to the capital projects fund uh kind of using that as a piggy bank so that we don't have to use all that money in a given year and we don't whipsaw between surpluses and deficits and so in for these particular projects there just happen to be urgent and ones that we can package together in a way that makes sense but the next topic area are the ones that are also urgent and items that are in uh not good condition that we need to talk about how we're going to package them

115together in different ways I just want to comment that maybe I need to absorb this more but it's doesn't sit well with me the the I understand some of the foundational things but discoloring lights being broken because our kids or the students are hitting them um choose my words carefully here um it just feels like a lot of problems that a lot of other schools would love to have and that's why I'd really be interested to see what areas we're not addressing for this um I get it I know you guys put a lot of time into this I just would like to see more of it maybe we could talk later about part of this is we've been waiting for project to undertake projects because we were in fully anticipating the passage of the

116referendum so that's the other Factor here too and because the planning times on these projects are so long we have to plan in years these are the ones that we can pull off in the time frame that we have left this isn't a all these things uh you know how to figure out how to get everything to fit is it's an art and it's a science were these part of those the original top priority yes from the team that did it before the team that did the review well these ones weren't in particular because at we knew we always we knew what we're going to probably get somewhere between 10 and 15 years on the Fieldhouse floor we knew and we had that marked in our we call it our capital projects database that has

117had has held a place there for basically since we put the floor in um but we were trying to figure out what is our what are we trying to Envision what the future is going to be for our school facilities how do we make those facilities match the educational environment of today and be flexible for the educational environment of tomorrow all we're talking about here right now today though however post referendum is maintenance we're not we're not talking about any functional improvements that would actually improve our facilities for our programs in in for educational environments we're just kind of keeping the lights on Yep this is what we're at we're just but we had been waiting for many many years as we were building this master facilities plan working with the community to get stakeholder

118input on what they wanted to see in their facilities and talking about what it was that uh we were willing to pay for and afford and we all know how unfortunately that referendum turned out and now we're left figuring out what the next steps are this Project's identifi for work this fiscal year it's kind of the interm step these we are things that we know that must get done okay the next conversation that we need to have though is how we're going to keep our schools warm safe and dry Beyond um NE this coming year and how are we going to be able to fund that how much of how much can we afford to pay for these projects uh because as you can see it's it's a massive amount of money and the longer

119we wait the more expensive it gets and the more our our facilities deterior but these are just the essentials of the essentials this is this is these are not wants these are needs so just a few questions um for the I know the the BAC the cock's Coming Undone but the cracks and the gutters is there any water damage on the inside of the buildings or um just in the Fieldhouse as far as those kopas leaking really the gutters are just outside on you know concrete and that's just you know getting new gutter gutters to to fix that piece but as far as in the Fine Art Center right now there's not any significant water damage coming into it um but again when you're like I said before when you're dealing with a 45 foot

120pre-cast wall that can change pretty quickly so we definitely Mount and those really these inspections that you know professionals came out and did has been over a year ago at this point um so again this is just something that you know they're inspecting these because it was time to inspect in the Fieldhouse and really more than that got done but this is one that are packaged together you know really the entire building got done but this is just one portion of it at this point and you can see it's not just paint when it comes to these pre-cast walls if we don't put a Fresh coat of paint on them and and treat these cracks we're going to have bigger problems on our hand this isn't so we just want to make it look nice

121no this is this is what we need to do to protect our investment we're very lucky to have what we have and we use this facility extensively and it requires real work and maintenance to do that and it happens to fit in our budget right now it happens to be a project that we can pull off relatively quickly until we can contemplate the next steps for warm safe and dry I'll point out that one of the discussions that came up a lot during the referendum discussions was why did the buildings get to this point why weren't they kept up so there's a good argument on the on the side of doing this is the maintenance to keep it regular instead of asking for a million dollars to fix it or a couple million to fix

122it so thank you um and then a couple with the floor um will the new floor be like a like an upgrade from like the existing like you know like has the technology gone and made it better yes this is definitely going to be an upgrade to what is there now and is there any special cleaning like um because I know in one of the meetings it said that we didn't clean it right um so just what what do we have to do to make maintain it better yeah so basically the manufacturer gives you exactly what you do to clean this there's two types of FL floor there's the track surface and then there's the court surface um and really with the court surface and well both of them we have already have the equipment

123um the track surface is basically you got to keep it clean not scrubbing it clean but keep it clean with like a sweeper um and then the other one there's there's you know 6 months a year 5 years you know know it's it's all laid out exactly what you have to do it could be better maintained I I plan on being here for another 10 years yeah I do want to say I mean this these repairs are not because of a dereliction of Duty and maintaining it's there's a shelf life for the yeah and so things need to be replaced or repaired so you could say maybe we would done you know we were waiting on a referendum to see what that happen so maybe we waited a little bit like a year maybe like

124this was the backup like we knew this was coming if the referendum didn't pass so yeah the referendum had no bearing on when we need to replace it right yeah it would have needed to happen anyway could could you know could we get another year out of it yeah we probably could um but um you know we've got a lot of other projects that need to be done too so we we got to figure out how this stuff fits together and what makes sense need to be asking what's not Nam you have other questions recel mm- no I would suggest then that we move on to warm safe and dry to make sure that you have an idea of what that is and it's a pretty plain title as you would as you can tell

125and and and and I think it captures the essence of what we're trying to accomplish here these are the what we call the priority one and priority two projects that we identified in our Master facilities planning process as you know we hired our Architects drr and they came and did a very in-depth assessment of our schools and it wasn't just to find the stuff that needed to be replaced it was to Envision what educational spaces need to be like today to beat um our needs for students and to meet uh the Styles and needs of our teachers and then to make sure that those were flexible enough to meet the evolving needs of tomorrow and so it was a full plan that was in intended to get us from you here to there over a

126period of about 15 years well with the failure of the referenda um we are left without funding to to keep working on these projects and the capital projects committee has been struggling with the the amount of projects that need to be undertaken and and the approach that we would take to get to them and so um that's why we started we undertook this master facilities planning process um so here we find ourselves now and we want to talk more about what what these Bare Essentials are going to give you an idea of what uh kind of the categories and concepts of what they include and start beginning this conversation in terms of how we might undertake them with THS that we have available you want to talk about these pictures Mark can talk about the

127picture sure what you see here is what's called a rooftop unit so this is similar there's four of these well eight total so four at HC Storm and four at Louise White um and you can also see the picture of the roof which that roof probably like yeah okay that's a roof well that roof is 45 years old um it is definitely ready to be replaced it has been um we are having some roof this is actually thank you um for going the next one if I want to take a little time on this picture if you look at the different colorations of that picture so that's a roof drain you can tell how many times that has been repaired I mean literally you can start counting the different colors and the different age of

128that um and really that's what I've been in this role now seven years and every single year we come and we are repairing these roofs um and we do it throughout the entire District annually um more time is definitely spent in Lou white and HG storm because of the age um but back to the rooftop ones really if you're talking about replacing roofs you're not leaving rooftop units that are 15 15 years old there um because you have to remove them to put the roof on um and we are having some you know mechanical issues with some of the rooftop units at those schools as well um this is just another picture of um the roof this is Louise White also can show the Skylight so each one of the Pods at storm and Louise

129have um natural daylight comes out in the center of the Pod this is one of those which um I believe that well I know that one's being replaced a lot of them are starting to um drip a little bit um seals are breaking things like that and I can't wait a couple more years on these because um they have to be replaced you can keep going Holly again another example of the roof and a rooftop unit this is when we talk about the shell of the building the outside of the building um you can tell there's some cracking going on here definitely tuck pointing is needed um continue this one's Louise White I believe I got a picture yeah there you go my reminder now moving into um domestic piping this is a picture of

130um bathroom at JB Nelson so when there's a leak that occurs you cross your fingers that you can figure out exactly where to start punching a hole into the wall um to fix it and that's at least two repairs done inside at the bathroom so it's galvanized pipe um it is original mhm this is so both um Gus and JB Nelson have tunnels that go underneath the building um oh that's not a picture this is a picture of in the pipes that are in the bathroom in between kind of the bathrooms that feed both um boys and girls bathrooms we're going to get to the next one though there it is so this is a tunnel um at JB Nelson this is JB Nelson so both domestic water and the heating and cooling so the

131hot water and the cold water that Heats and cools is all run under a tunnel system um and that is literally the height of it it's not even 4 feet tall if you go to the next p picture and yes those have to be posted because it is a confined space and it is always always a contractor that comes in at a higher cost than just working on a normal piping so none of our employees in the district have this um certification this is a picture of an air handler that's from that's late 80s you go to the next picture and just kind of shows you the piping that feeds it this is an example of a univent in a classroom so that univent I tried to capture the so basically if you see those

132you know five to 10 students sitting right there compared to the five or 10 students that are sitting away from there they're either going to be really hot or really cold depending on the season um it's not the most efficient way to cool or heat spaces but I wouldn't Ian I would say that's most of our buildings are done that way and then the next picture shows the inside of the univent and this univent um this is an example at JB Nelson and guson these are from these were installed in 1989 um they're definitely pass their useful life same type of situation at the sewing so the 1995 Edition at the high school very similar experience for students as far as and then the other piece that univent seem to do is they tend to

133make a little bit of noise and we're always in there adjusting and you know making sure the covers on correctly or if the loose piece in there um but this piece it's I try to get this picture a little bit better but you can tell the piping in there that's feeding it has a number of I just I call them Band-Aids they not really Band-Aids but they're just different repairs that have happened again these are just examples you know of what we're talking when we're talking warm safe dry um this is the outside of sewing and we are starting especially in this corner starting to see a little bit of water penetration um nothing major at this point and highly the next two are just more examples of seaming I believe that is it Mark

134quick question with some of the piping that you're referring to in some of our buildings uh for the water lines are some of those uh original to the building's footprint yes yeah so you're talking 1957 1955 so when you showed us pictures of where we have to punch through to fix things um is it possible because of the age of some of those pipes that when our teams are going in to try and repair those that it's going to compromise the Integrity of some of the other original piping or that area itself and require larger repair most of the repairs we doing are within feet of the other repair okay and basically it's like a big boot that you put on and you just clamp both ends and you're really putting copper boot on a

135ice pipe and that's how it is throughout that um entire building as you pointed out sometimes cutting out galvanized pipe is a violent process to the pipe and you can cause other leaks down the line and we always try to depending on the repair try to go to the seam you know but sometimes that doesn't work that way so it suffice to say JB Nelson like the entirety of the galvanized piping at this this point at this age needs to be replaced because it's essentially a you know it's going to keep breaking and degrading yeah and this is the same situation at the high school so the original part of the high school so um the 1966 part um all of those are still original galvanized pipes that feed kind of the the center of

136the high school so to give you a better idea of what's involved in all each of these projects kind of a breakdown by ear is um provided in the board report that's the the CPP list or the cap capital projects planned list and uh H if you would open that up please giv you a little bit of description of the school and the and the scope of work and an estimated cost in the fiscal year in which with which we could undertake this work we're talking about substantial costs however particularly when you get to um to stor and Louise um that's so we've also provided a a performa in terms of like you know funding in terms of what the district could afford with operating funds increasing the amount that we allocate in operating funds

137toward capital projects and spending some fund balance it is theoretically possible that we could undertake this work but this is should be thought of as a framework is again one project that you might undertake you might it might make sense to package that with another project you know a year from now so any one of these projects could be removed other projects that we are unaware of at this time could be added they could be combined with others they could be repackaged this is just kind of like a highlevel framework to think of in terms of how we could address the idea of keeping our schools warm safe and dry and it would cost something to the tune of uh you know 52 million over five years this doesn't do anything again to improve our

138educational environments this facilitate better instruction this is just warm safy this is bare minimum this bare well right these are the highest priorities we had to kind of I don't want to say eliminate push down the line some others but these are the highest this isn't investing in new technology or no this isn't investing in um any kind of efficiencies that would like you know let's say maybe uh you know we pay pretty significant costs for electricity uh you know we pay PR signant cost for demand charges this wouldn't wouldn't you know uh this isn't any kind of investment you know like geothermal that could make our our schools more uh efficient in terms of heating them or cooling them or even putting in better insulation to keep them you know prevent heat loss or

139or thermal penetration those sorts of things this is the bare minimum well an example too of some of this to like push kind of push down towards outside of 5 years is is um there's two of the chillers at two elementary schools that are at a point where they should be replaced and here it's proposing to do a Refresh on them and what a refresh means is to kind of go through and get another five years you get a five-year warranty so hopefully push that down but again it's not going away it's just you know trying to be more you know fiscal with your money and do it that way so it also assumes each that there's a 5e an average of a 5% escalation cost because as we know inflation is a real thing

140especially inflation in terms of school construction cost costs which have gone up well over 20% in the last couple years but we're assuming you know as time goes on these projects are going to get more expensive and so we we have some basis of we have a basic assumption in there for that you know it could be more it could be less um but the longer we wait the more expensive this get it also includes um secure vules for storm and Louise as those are the only two schools that do not have them as of right now um but what also isn't in here is the the full um investment in terms of costs for supporting full day kindergarten so we're close to being able to support full day kindergarten from a facility standpoint but

141there's some things that we need to do so that we can support that additional section in our schools I could the when we look at this fiscal year we're we're going July to junee for fiscal year right I did fiscal year in June 30 yeah so for FY 2026 when we are finally going to address major safety concerns at two of our schools we won't actually see that Improvement until fall of 2026 there's 2027 school year that would so those those Renovations would be pretty extensive and they would require both extensive planning and then and bidding and so that's about the soonest we could pull it off so they might not even start at that point because they no they would they would they would get underway in uh fiscal 25 potentially but we need

142a we need a proba we need about a year to to plan those projects and that would involve displacement of students or is that unable to decide there's a chance it could where obviously we wouldn't want to do that I this is it's heartbreaking to to even see this site but you say this placements on trailers is that what you're talking about we we well no because we couldn't afford to do trailers but there's obviously there might need to be phasing in terms of how we we tackle some of this stuff and so we have a like a high Lev plan conceptual where we you know we've talked about this preliminarily as to how we might approach it we don't know until we actually start working with the Architects and Engineers to actually put pen

143to paper and figure out how the pieces fit together and then work with our construction manager to make it happen the dollars you're really showing there like on FY 26 is actual construction dollars not necessarily architectural fees construction management fees or anything else that are occurring the years beforehand we do have some uh um allowances for those the they're kind of packed into your number but you may be expending some of those in the earlier year or two that that's the top line item you see up there fees okay fees is because yeah yep thank you you start playing before and it's never on the same fisc year so the 25 is planning for 26 correct actual construction work thank you one of my questions is just for everybody's purpose refresh my memory which I

144know but just for purpose of discussion which are the two schools that we were potentially replacing as a part of the referendum those are they storm and Lis white storm Lou and white so the one consideration I want to bring up for discussion or consideration for the board is by doing significant potentially by doing significant Renovations and I'm not saying we shouldn't be doing these I'm just asking the question we potentially put a Jeopardy and ability to in the future significantly renovate replace those schools as a part because you would be obenson throwing out you know putting good money after bad right as a point again I'm not trying to weigh decisions because I believe a lot of the work is critical in nature but I just want to make sure we're aware that the

145part of the difficulty of being a board member is making decisions like this so which is probably why it's breaking your heart oh yeah there's no improvement to learning environment right and want the students to have better grades which I've Heard lots of times from the public um so yeah it's disheartening and the ability to achieved that later is now effectively established as Renovations not replacement I mean these are our top priorities that we're saying for the next five years to address top priorities yeah I mean I'm not even seeing in here the doors that have to be you know um hinged open because they don't they don't hold open appropriately others that's a good question so could you say that again Health Life Safety isn't that part of something you have to do every

146year or set yeah we're just about well 2024 so we will be getting the 10e health Life Safety survey that is going on as we speak okay so be in here or some that have already been done in there you'll see some um fire alarm and smoke detectors and heat sensors upgrades in tools really I see Life saf storman Lou is on there I know for sure even at um MCU and hooverwood yeah okay those are important since there's no sprinklers in the schools oh yeah no we don't have that in storm and Louise correct well there's some of Louise C cot at Louise has sprinklers my question is you're laying this out you're saying based off the current assumptions we have that there's a way to us to fund this current assuming it's possible

147but a lot of things have to go our way um great like the last meeting I before we were talking about how we' really never been in a better financial position where we actually have the capability to do some of this stuff before we were having to take out loans to make payroll not that long ago so we've worked very hard to get to this point but if we were to do this this would probably put us I mean this is like walking a tight rope it is yeah and the assumption is uh that we're increasing our allocations for capital projects by 15% each year that sounds like a big number and it is a big number but keep in mind escalation costs for cap just in the last year was 20% so we're not

148even keeping up inflation true Tony I think one point I'd like to point out for the board too is what's our new money for state aid what was the increase uh $5,000 literally it was it wasn't like 5,000 per student it was $5,000 so essentially we we are remaining static flat on our state aid while you're hearing a presentation is talking about inflation on construction projects which is real school districts all across are facing that and that's why you are seeing some school districts announcing aggressive plans to address it just like why we're having this conversation with you as a board we do need the board to have these conversations um you know if you look in the uh papers uh District a little bit to the northeast of us um just announced to their

149board they have a list of a potentially close to1 billion do in capital projects that need to be addressed so um and that's probably not going to go down if they tried to tackle that entire list um fortunately we're not in that type of situation but um oh Tony sorry I cut you off I just wanted because we were talking about inflation and and cost shifts of of where our funding source is coming from so that's in terms of state aid that's where we're at and then additionally the state is requiring full day kindergarten with a $5,000 bump this year so one of the things that we're working on right now and this is the season for us to do our annual fiveyear Financial forecast and and usually we'll bring it to the board you

150know right about uh November or December time frame somewhere in there we expect that we'll have that done we've done some preliminary numbers with what we know right now but we're not yet finished with our um audit for the last fiscal year so we we have to work with our resource responsibility advisory Council to finish that that projection and we'll have some more information that would get into a little bit more depth about this performer that I've shown you and whether or not those assumptions will hold but this is something again it's a framework we we know we need to do this work we can't sit on our hands nobody's going to come save us we have to start what is what are the highest priorities and how are we going to tackle this um

151and so the only way that we can do that is by having these conversations with you and making sure that you understand all the the puzzle pieces so that we can fit them together and make decisions as to how we move forward to best support our students and make sure that we keep learning moving forward because the decisions that we make today they really will affect the Next Generation we see evidence of that all over you know I've been lucky enough to been part of this organization for over 25 years I can see evidence of the decisions that boards before you made 25 years ago and the capabilities that we have today the decisions are weighty but I know that we'll we'll figure it out and we'll keep moving forward let me ask you this

152question by funding it if we were to do this by ourselves without getting going on a different route or coming up with a different plan I mean what kind of things would this limit us from doing other types of investment that might be required well the Assumption the the base assumption is fundamentally that we don't hire any more employees more than we have today I I didn't add any more FTE into the financial assumptions and the numbers are starting to go the other way when you get into the out years now you know things play when you get into years four and five of any forecast you know a little bit you know you can't you can't get things exactly but the basic assumption is not a single not a single more higher given our

153history I don't think that's a realistic assumption you know CU I've been saying this we have fewer students now than we did 10 years ago and yet every year we're hiring more FTE but we're going to have to wrestle with that if we want to take care of our schools we're going to have to wrestle with that these are very challenging decisions well I'll just say that you know I mean I you're right we have to face this now we've made decisions as a community and now this is this is a cold hard facts and um it's just a little disheartening because what we're talking about is such basic stuff warm safe and dry yep I mean we'd all hope we could do a little bit better than that for our kids I guess and

154the people that work in those buildings and they're in those buildings so and we had the opportunity and the good news is that we have done some work that this is even a possibility that we're you know we can even entertain it CU five years ago or 10 years ago we would just found what we would have done yeah we couldn't we couldn't do we would have done it we just went ahead yeah that's true and then that's when it really got bad right no we were talking about laying off 100 teachers uh over 12 years ago and we were facing the Great Recession yeah can't have questions why are you raising your hand no no you can send an email that'd be absolutely fine so you can mul this over a little bit if

155there's anything like as I said earlier you know I don't want to like you know I have a tendency to cheer people up when I talk about our finances sometimes but um this help with that that's a baseline for our conversation in the coming months we're going to be you're going to see more of capital projects you know if unless you want to take a different direction for the Fieldhouse coming to you for approval but we're going to need to you have to keep talking about this and what the next steps are we get more information from this financial forecast you get more information from our strategic planning process you know in input from the community and you have more information when we get to the levy and we build in the next year's budget

156and those sorts of things and so all these pieces will fit together so I don't want you to feel overwhelmed but um I do want you to have again all those puzzle pieces so you can put put the put it together well and to highlight something that Tony has already raised um and R.J this was part of your conversation is that uh with some of the projects it does take a longer runway for us to start getting official plans in place bid processes moving so um this conversation is important no decisions on the docket tonight unless you have other direction for US unless you have other direction for us on this on the Fieldhouse and the BC or and if there's anything else that I missed Mark that you can think of so what I'm

157hearing is on the the safe warm safe and dry element there's going to be continued conversation on that so any questions that you'd like to have us po POs to you would be fine as needed and whenever needed correct but what I'm kind of hearing is a opinion or consensus on the board from items one two and three as to any objections to moving forward with those three items it's actually just two and three two and three yes we already did one didn't we thank you one is two months away yes thank you okay thank you I have the next one too okay you don't want to sit down for 30 seconds Mark I've been standing here long enough I think all right so next are items that we require board action uh first one

158Mark has um retaining possession of the podium uh for the approval of purchase of a delivery truck uh as it says in the report we have two delivery trucks for the district um the one we use the most is 2016 um it has 60 plus thousand miles on it um doesn't sound like a lot all of you driving vehicles but this is the truck that basically drives through town oh at least three times a day it's to every school at least twice this delivery truck does all of the lunches so the middle school does all the lunches for the East Side elementaries and the high school does all the uh lunches for the Westside elementaries this also delivers a number of different supplies and you know anything from a ballast to copy paper to Elementary

159student supplies um the backup is over a 100,000 it's definitely seen its age um the plan would be is to basically you know retire or you know put for auction the oldest um box truck and then the 2016 the one we're currently using would kind of go as a backup now I say backup it really is a backup if something would happen to the one we have another one because we have to get lunches to school I mean that's kind of a a necessity um but even through the summer um they're used both of them trucks are used a lot during the summer and this time of year both of these trucks are used um the oldest truck I kind of have a 10 mile radius of aavia at this point seriously gre's laughing cuz

160he knows I know very well um and that's about all I can go but the the current one um we use both of them for both um marching band we just heard about marching band for their competitions they go to one of these trucks takes their equipment and football um they're a little bit closer they use the other truck um truck for their equipment so these are used all the time um and I've been looking to get a truck now for about a year and it's probably going to take I hope it's not going to take a year things are getting a little bit better with vehicles and to get them but this is you get the chassis you have to put the Box on it and you have to put a lift gate on

161it so all of this takes a little bit of time because we deliver pallets and so it has to lift 3,000 lb because that's what the salt weighs about and that's what all the copy paper weigh that we take well to the different schools so even though I mean I'm hoping that I doubt I'll get this before winter it'll probably be towards Spring that um even if I get consensus tonight that's how long it's going to take any questions on purchase of this vehicle Mark you have a idea of uh if we auction off the the truck or sell it back what what we would get for that uh believe it or not we I would estimate about5 $6,000 but who knows yeah it could be 10 it could be two yeah it's kind of

162one of those things I'll buy that too no well we'll put a lemon on it I can tell you that it won't go down Tru it's just going to go wrong my I mean just to point out because we did get kind of a question um emailed to us about kind of like the mileage on it I mean these are not not easy miles this is not highway miles of driving 40 50 miles at a time this is a mile and a half stop the truck turn it off do the thing you need to do turn it on again it's heavy wear and tear on the vehicle so and I can personally attest particularly from a marching band as a you know the amount that we use those trucks and the Really the ability to

163take the money that was saved and turn it back in toward props and student usage and food and other things that are budgeted toward it was immensely helpful to the marching band and the um music Buffs themselves because they didn't have to donate or to you know provide as much money as they had in the past to kind of cover the rental rates which are4 to $500 a weekend for when they do that for five or six shows so it's been critical and that dollar that $68,000 amount includes everything so includes the you know lift gate that's on the back includes the box it's the whole thing all right any further questions okay hearing none I will entertain a motion for the board to approve the purchase of a new delivery truck in the amount

164of 68,276 26 so Move Motion by RJ second second by Aaron all in favor I opposed okay thank you very much appreciate that report uh item 7.2 is approval of the [Music] intergovernmental agreements um there is an Act statute uh statute that um allows the governmental bodies the public bodies of Illinois to um to cooperate to kind of delegate powers or transfer powers or to um to work in a Cooperative fashion um between them and and that's essentially what we're doing here is approving an intergovernmental agreement we're not approving an NDA an NDA and legal parlance is a non-disclosure agreement we don't do those in fact it's you know it's very difficult to do you it's almost almost impossible you wouldn't do an NDA in a in a public school district we're doing an IGA

165an intergovernmental agreement so I just want to make sure that that's clear to folks there's no NDA here there's nothing that nobody can say um and the reason why the city of Aurora has approach just on this is because we have an existing IGA on tiffs Aurora tiffs seven and eight that work very much the same way that disperse a surplus at 10% of whatever the increment is to the the taxing bodies and for the same uh kind of agreements that they won't contest uh like not support the Tiff itself so what we have here is very much a replica of what we already have an IG we already have in place with the city for that and one of the key reasons as to why they have replicated that is because this casino Tiff

166will pull a series of parcels out of Tiff 7 as it exists and turn it into this new um Farnsworth buil or Tiff that for its purpose of funding the development plan for the casino two more Parcels if I recall correctly would be added to this Tiff but essentially this is the agreement that we currently have on these Parcels with the city of aural we agreed to it some years ago I don't remember the exact year off the top of my head but it was probably something like 2013 or something like that um you have a question was that part of the expansion of the mall or is that something different that's well there's part of that and so um you know these were created about the time where they expanded uh the outlet mall

167yeah and because that Tiff had expired was one of the most successful tiffs in the history of the state of Illinois uh as a matter of fact but they wanted to expand that outlet mall and so the the board of education at the time entered into another IGA with the city and with the developer to um to do a tax rate and we've and re I think it was last year that we actually fulfilled the obligations of that that tax rate where we paid uh the city and the developer back their their property taxes to to build that that development which now we continue to earn taxes on so that was an economic incentive for them to expand them all I think what's challenging here is is the butt four clause and this is where

168things get really tricky with tips tiffs um you know but for the Redevelopment plan and these economic incentives that go with it the development would not exist it's kind of the criteria that you that you have to establish as a as a municipality before you can move forward with a tiff but for these conditions in terms of having this economic incentive this plan or this development wouldn't or this Redevelopment would not happen not necessarily this development but Redevelopment of that space wouldn't happen not NE perhaps not with the the the vision that the city might have so it gets contentious in terms of how folks interpret that when it comes to tiffs the municipalities themselves they really hold all the cards so we heard from public comments in terms of like how the process works

169and where the money comes from there'll be a joint review board and all of the public bodies that are affected by or have an interest in and that Tiff are invited to attend they're not required to attend and those that show up to the Joint review board meeting get a vote and they get to decide in that meeting as to whether or not um essentially the Redevelopment plan is necessitated by the conditions that exist but for as I mentioned earlier now if those public bodies which in would includes this the city of Aurora they get to send a representative too um if they vote Yes for that Redevelopment um still requires action from the city council if the public bodies majority vote no um it still move it could potentially move forward as a matter

170of fact the power still lies with the city council of aora all that happens after that is they require a super majority to make it happen so again when it comes to tiffs the mun municipalities hold all the cards they also have other revenue streams unfortunately in this particular instance um the city of Aurora receives considerable gaming revenues from this ConEd or stands to receive considerable gaming re revenues um they receive gaming revenues from the old Casino which have dwindled over time is that casino hasn't competitive with other casinos in the area especially as the gaming laws have evolved but they would also stand to receive taxes from sales taxes from other you know incidental um transactions that may occur in neighboring properties because that casino is there certainly with the outet mall nearby and

171then the hotels you know municipalities have the ability to assess fees and taxes for occupancy of hotels those sorts of things so the city has other revenue streams unfortunately we as a school district we've got two revenue streams yeah well three one is property taxes which we all know we rely exceptionally highly upon here in matavia they fund 80% of everything that we do quite literally come out of the pockets of residents of the school district and fund our our programs we get the balance of the money from the state a little bit of money from the feds and a tin bit of money from student fees and other incidentals that we you know go on here but not much to speak of so those are the three revenue streams and all that the state

172that you as a public body have control over is the property taxes in the sense that you get to Levy for those amounts up to an the the the tax cap but that's it and so any new development that goes on in town is of keen interest to the school board because that's basically what's funding your schools any new dollar that's going to go into educating our students to make our schools better to improve our educational programs that's going to come from property taxes not going to come from anywhere else question is but for this economic incentive will the casino be here that's the question unfortunately you as a public body don't have much power in making that decision that's it's that's within the pvy really of the city of Aurora and uh and their

173city council you get to talk about their plan and you get to weigh in on it to some extent but even if you vote no and and the majority of the public bodies where there with you vote no all that's required Thena is a super majority of the city council of aora so the question that you have before you is the city's offering 10% of the Surplus that they would declare we would get our proportionate share in terms of uh the tax rate if you say no to this it is in my opinion not likely that you'll get anything you get nothing for the duration of the Tiff other school districts have been able to get um better deals uh but those my understanding is that they are because those particular tips generate students they're

174usually building uh homes or or town homes or apartments that are going to increase property values and they're going to bring students into their schools you never really can quite tell how many students are going to show up but depending on the nature of those developments you can do you know some estimations but in those instances those are real costs that are going to be immediately borne by the schools and so in those instances the city has increased that Surplus but here the city has committed to a development plan with pen for this casino and this Tiff will repay the bonds that are going to go toward the casino and they would be repaid over the duration of that Redevelopment plan and so if they were to give you more money they'd have have to

175come from somewhere else because they built a plan assuming that uh the money coming into this Tiff which literally is the cassino is going to fund the payment of these bonds so as you well know when it comes to bonds those obligations are due first so you as a public body were to issue bonds the very first thing you have to do is repay those bonds you can't do anything else but to repay those ponds and so um the city of Aurora also has those obligations and if they were to give more money to the school district or the other taxing bodies they've got to find another place to get that money to repay those bonds any questions I've got plenty to say but looks like you want to go first go ahead RJ all

176right my thoughts are jumbled all over the place on this I've I this is by far the most constrained I've been on on a decision for something which is so funny because it could be completely irrelevant whatever I say so I'll just say it um first of all thank you to everyone that came out here I appreciate that I know we're not in discussion with everyone but still thank you um I'm confused by the public stance on this and what I mean by that is we wanted the referendum and the public said no I understand some people said do it a different way but it was no and don't raise our taxes or you already raise our annual taxes we don't want any more tax we don't want any more expenses um then there's the

177building proposition by HD storm for new houses which would bring us in more tax revenue the public says no we don't want those houses um then we have a bird in the hand right 300 $1,000 or something like that 10% every single year so we would is guaranteed correct guaranteed 10% every single year well it's 10% of the property taxes that it generates okay so 10% of the property taxes that generates public says no we don't want that money but on the other hand I'm also trying to figure out how much value is in 300,000 because we the ref run was 170,000 I can't or 170 million I think we settled on $300,000 to get $170 million of work we need to do 500 years we have a Prof forer right here I could tell

178you we're budgeting $300,000 to upgrade fire alarms at Lis white there you go so so is it $300,000 is great or can or is there really some sort of significant value of us saying no and now we're going to get 20% and then does that move our projected goal of $170 million to 250 years instead of 500 years so I'm just super conflicted because it's just like if we get $300,000 a year or $600,000 a year let's say they bump it up they they double how much we're going to be getting and I'm just going off make believe numbers here is it worth saying no to now not have a chance to get $300,000 instead of saying yes and we have $300,000 immediately on the other hand it cost us $70,000 to get a new

179truck so what's the value of $300,000 so as much as I'm not giving any direction or any answer I'm just letting you all know what's on my mind right now because it's just like I would love to say well the public says you know they voted for us in this position and we've heard from maybe 20 people and the public on this and every single person just said no don't vote for this so I don't know maybe maybe that's just the way I need to lean because 20 people spoke up and said no I'm confused so if anyone has a good answer for me I'd love to hear it I don't have an answer for you I have questions so all right maybe that'll help all right so again I want to thank everybody who's

180here and you know you've been here for two and a half hours so thank you um first question if we send someone to the Joint review board do we have the ability to negotiate on our own a better split or shorter term on the Tiff The Joint review board meeting is not a place to negotiate anym so all we're doing is up or down on that yeah you get a vote yes or no on that that's it you can have ask questions and have a conversation about what their plan is but ultimately you you can vote you vote on their plan yes or no and again if the majority of the taxing bodies vote no city of Aurora can move forward with a super majority of their Council another question is what would be the

181anticipate so I know like I've heard like okay tips like when West Wasing Washington was downtown but that in my opinion that's a little different because that was people housing moving in potential students busing with this casino I mean what would we anticipate the burden it would place on the district from cost but for this economic incentive if the pen came in and built this casino it would mean um a lot more money obviously to the district's tax rolls that's my next question is what are we what is that area currently approximately I don't expect you to have the exact number what's it generating tax revenue for us at this time nothing the city of Aurora owns those parcels and it this tax ex so there's zero I'll let some other folks speak I got

182a few more maybe I might want to ask but what does the outlet M bring us that TI I haven't checked recently in terms of what uh it generates in terms of property taxes but uh when it uh I recol recollection serves when that Tiff expired it generated 3.2 million worth of new construction toward our property taxes so basically $3.2 million revenue for us that's on an annual basis but yeah that's just the altim Y right understand not neily that's a very successful I mean that's like you said that's one of the it's kind of a little bit of an anomaly and I would also say at the time that that tip was created in I don't remember when it was the 1980s I know that um it was in my opinion a blighted area

183met the definition of of the need for support for a tiff my humble opinion but there was no plans to build an out model of any kind when they created that Tiff it was hey we need to do something about this area it needs economic Redevelopment but there was I'm unaware of what their plans were at the time but I know that it didn't include an outw and then what does the sorry what does the uh Casino employ now do you know what their numbers are like how many they employ no I do not know but as you can recall um that that casino was built in the9 early 90s when uh it was a river boat C when you actually that literally had to be on the water and the boat had to go

184out in the river and then literally and then come back and then they kind of relaxed those requirements and then it didn't actually have to leave the dog and and now now we have landbased casinos like the the markets in casinos has changed dramatically and as I've saw the the the values of of the the taxing values of those that casino has changed over time both because of the facilities and how it was used and I would imagine too the the nature of how the gaming laws have changed and the competitions that that that that casinos face no because the evolving expansion of of of gaming my thought is just um really quick is this what they employ it might be obviously prob more but if they employ 250 let's say this one due to

185the restaurants and the hotels and that venue if they employ three times that could that be an impact on us like you know people will move I I worked for the valet company for the casino so I didn't work for the casino I worked for their and they brought people in from out of state that wanted to work there I do know that the city of Aurora has published their estim of you know the number of jobs it will generate I just don't remember what it is off the top of my head but that information is is available from the city I mean in theory if people moved into the area or bavia and the district in theory they would be purchasing homes and they would that that's the ancillary effect outside of the Tiff

186that it's not subject to Tiff so if property values go up because it's a more desirable place to live therefore in theory it would help bolster property tax and keep in mind you know we came from a riverb casino that was designed for that purpose and this is much different this is a casino and a hotel and several restaurants and so this is much more than we're not necessarily comparing Apples to Apples for both between both of these casinos according to their website 700 jobs which would double their current employment roster they're adding 7 be total total so they're currently estimated they approximately at 350 employees um their site is stating that it would increase to 700 they don't give a specific number on what amount of construction positions will be created for the project

187itself they just said hundreds so they don't give a specific number so Tony back to I just want to understand a little bit more like back to the negotiating point of better Tiff terms because I heard that a few times what in your opinion is our ability to impact like the Tiff terms as a a board as a board um functional functionally I think it all comes down to leverage because ultimately as I said earlier the municipalities when it comes to tiffs they they hold all the Cs and uh and and so whether or not you go with along with it or not you know they can make this happen with you or without you here they're offering us 10% I do believe the city of of Aurora is offer trying to genuinely be our

188partner here understanding that you know our interests can sometimes compete but in some cases they're alligned and that recognizing to some degree uh the nature of how schools are funded and other public bodies it's not just about the school district but the reality is is that the school districts not just bavia but all school districts are the vast majority of of the cost in terms of taxes and the other public bodies are fractional the only other large public body after us would be the city of Aurora itself and it already has its own best interests and after the city of Aurora it falls off sharply in terms of those percentages so generally speaking the other public bodies don't much care okay doesn't affect them as much and say we we send someone to this board

189this review meeting and we vote know is there can we for lack of a better word punished or penalized and like they they'll take that the 10% away from us yes they haven't said that they would do that but if I were in their shoes that's probably what I would do Tony I have a question so when these tips are being discussed and talked about was our district do school districts are they at the in the group that's negotiating these well typically Municipal now so again Aurora is approaching us attempting to be a partner typically municipalities would just do it right that's what I'm saying so it was don't approach us with we were at this meeting where we started to talk about and we said well we want we didn't have a vote to

190say well we should historically when we're working with the city of bavia on tiffs we don't talk about IG they just do it they just do it and I've gone to Joint review board meetings historically with the city of bavia and I voted no on the board's behalf and we have for that re we have voted no yes and and usually it's not this amount of money involved no that's Tony who are who are we voting towards I guess I should say is this are we voting at a proposition from Aurora or on a proposition from Penn from the casino well I I think it's really both um this very much brings um uh economic a bigger economic engine to that area well I'm wondering who who came up with this 10% the 10% again

191was Aurora attempting to be a partner with us after the um success of the outlet mall knowing that you know how all this thing all these pieces work together and so when they created Tiff 7 and8 which didn't have a defined plan at the time they pledged to us the 10% okay cuz I'm just trying to get to the you know we say no because we think pen can give us a higher percentage is that really what we would be saying if we say no would we actually be saying No thank you Aurora thank you for offering that 10% but we thought you should have negotiated for more and you didn't they we're negotiating with the city of aora we're not negotiating with pen but I would tell you that most municipalities don't negotiate anything

192with the the public bodies they just do it and us saying no to Aurora wouldn't get them to go to pen and say hey we need more because it could it could it could but they don't need our authority to do they don't need us they don't need us they can go on their own I understand but I mean I want to learn from history here we we saw what happened the with the past Tiff that the same exact company Situation's a little bit different but the same exact company with the same exact idea and I think based on what's on the front of the board right now this is how it's going to play out if you vote no and decide not to move forward with the a I think the city of aora

193is fine with that does not give us the 350,000 annually okay that's it if I'm being really direct about this conversation I've had conversations involved that's what I'm trying to get to and that's what I'm getting down to the IG that's in place is with the city of Aurora as the signatory lines are indicating and if the board decides to vote no that's by me board that's your decision but just so you know this isn't going to help their process they're moving they have a joint review board set scheduled already um I have been in other districts where Tiff discussions have occurred and Tony's absolutely right cities plow right through what they want to do they have the right to do it and listen I know there's a lot of feelings around this I we're

194not economic Specialists we're Educators right so but we're just in front of yeah I mean they have a structure of how they plan on making all those repayments and that formula is built in accounting to this particular IGA with anyone that they're you know signing on with so um to ask them at the 11th hour to restructure it completely on our behalf with a negotiation is probably if I'm being real just if you're asking me for my thoughts based on your experience well in my opinion based on where we're at discussions I've had I think really the decision if I'm just boiling it down for for you is um you know you can vote no send the message of what you want to do as a board that's totally cool but just know then don't

195expect that the city will still honor the agreement that was inside of this IGA they're not obligated to even offer it in the first place they're also definitely now not going to be obligated to offer it once we've actually voted and taken action against it is my point I mean I'm only and I'm only jumping in RJ because you're asking about what are the terms and ability what are the abilities to negotiate terms with them based on conversations I've had I know Tony's been kneee involved in making sure the terms of agreement um you know don't allow other things so yeah what time in one of your previous roles did this scenario come up and did it happen that way um no there was no offer of an IG the municipality just said we're doing

196this just as Tony pointed out we tried to fight it but the city moved forward with it anyway because we didn't agree with what they were considering to be a blighted area given that it's a main Corridor that was that felt pretty good to go I think fundamentally the problem is with the way that the tax or the Tiff statute is structured that's that's the problem and I want to point a clarification so I know we did get involved a little bit and there was there was an ask that if this was voted yes and we uh approved it or you know gave our consent or whatever that we would agree to any other tiffs moving forward and we actually did negotiate that said no if we voted yes or we didn't vote against it

197I should say we're only looking at this one if there's something that's proposed in the future we reserve the right to vote no on that down the road correct yeah so this isn't like a blank check for future tiffs just for this Tiff because way tips work on when you have adjacent tips you can move money between them you can transfer funds you can you know you can adjust boundaries those sorts of things we wanted to make clear that this agreement is simply for this um Farnsworth buor Tiff for this casino you know there's probably going to be other developments in this area because other makes other properties more attractive they're probably likely to be more tiffs but we're just making making clear that this arrangement for this particular Tiff is the only Arrangement that

198we're looking to agree to and nothing Beyond it and the original language kind of implied not stated that we were giving consent to Future Tiff adjustments or without that so we already from whatever strength we had utiliz that as a means of protecting our future interests yes and then just to clarify because it addresses a bit RJ's comment that from where your understanding of how the deal between the city and pen is structured is to a certain extent contingent upon this 10% and whatever other igas are out there and that's why you said earlier if there was an ability to provide a higher percentage to the district that would have to come out of some other Coffer because that's not in alignment with their Prof fora for what they're doing with pen yes so it

199be the city would have to find a new Revenue source to cover it that's or pen would have to take less or pen which is you know a bet that it'd be difficult for others to make I presume said so I just like I'm curious is why they came to us if they didn't go to East Aurora because like right there in Aurora they came to us as a school district I'm just like well there's a very clear reason for that yeah they came to us because this development is within the boundaries of our school district so that that's you know districts I think you know we bavia School schools We Touch parts of Geneva We Touch parts of North Aurora We Touch parts of Aurora we even touch parts of Elburn although nobody really

200nobody lives there but so our district this development is in our school district that's why they came to us they have to come to us because that's what the Tiff law requires this has nothing to do with EAS schools the the old casino is in the boundaries of EAS schools the new casino is going to be in our boundaries right next to the outlet mall which is in our boundaries south of Bilter that's is that that's us yep that's us we go past i88 down there in that cor I know we got I know we were on the north side of Bilter I didn't know the south side and I know it's also two and there's a long history as to why those boundaries are what they are but that's a different discussion yeah a

201Aurora is actually our second largest um area of drawing students and families 10% of our student body comes from Aurora any other questions I'm G to pause a long time here just to give you guys a moment to think about it all right here yeah um so hearing none I will entertain a motion for the board to approve the intergovernmental agreement with the city of Aurora concerning Tiff districts in the vicinity of Farnsworth Avenue in Bilter Road so moved motion by lock second second by Aaron and this is a voice vote so all in favor I I opposed okay motion passes all right next is Staff board and comments Tom is there anything you and the administration would like to comment comment on this evening yeah um I'll I'm GNA modify my version since Todd

202did his usual thing and then took most of it and then RJ jumped in on that too so appreciate that but um I will say this uh past week had a great opportunity to see our Fine Arts programs perform and um during the performance you know uh one our students did a spectacular job and and I really appreciate all the staff that um support our kids to getting to that level of ability I also support uh thank you to the staff at the BAC for uh running those evenings throughout those nights um I really appreciate what Mr bar said when um giving uh appreciation to the audience that he also noted and I couldn't agree with this more appreciation to all of our music teachers in the district who really have built that foundation for

203our kids to be able to by this point now at their time in their career in this District perform that they were at the level that they were able to execute and I thought that was a great um tribute to all of our music teachers in this District um having built that passion for music and excitement um you know for myself I just I was able to really enjoy the event close my eyes and just listen to the kids performing each night and it was just it was beautiful they did an amazing job and I think it's a great reminder of what we're here for we've talked a lot about tonight about buildings brick and mortar which are so critical and important Tony have and I have had great discussions around this but I also

204you all know Bor I how I feel this is a people business too and I just want to say thanks and appreciation to all of our teachers or support staff our administrators for making such a moments in opportunities to be able to happen um you know you've heard so many great things being presented tonight from about what our staff are doing I think that's so critical um and that we just keep in mind I know it may really feel like a lot of Doom and Gloom I just want everybody to remember uh we have great people doing great work with great students and um I think that we should not lose sight of that and on that note I I'll end I won't be labor this but you know I was talking with Zar and

205d and as our student ambassadors and it just reminds me of the hope of this generation and what our future brings I just had this amazing conversation with them when we were preparing them about what our board agenda included I just that's one of the I don't know Bard if I've made you aware of this one of I know Craig and Aaron know but one of the things I've been doing is meeting with our board ambassadors before each board meeting now and walking them through the agenda they look at it when we release it and then we have dialogue we do Q&A these are our future leaders and I have no doubt that those two are going to do amazing things in this world and one and tonight was such a great reminder we're talking

206talk they're going to be releasing a really cool project that they're working on right now and as I'm allow I was given permission I can only tell you that it is going to be called uh bond to Beyond and it is absolutely what you've heard me talk about in terms of just how much more emotionally connected social their intelligence is just so much higher than what it was with me and my friends I don't know how you all feel as adults now but I don't recall ever thinking the way these two young ladies thought are thinking and wanting to take action and I'm so excited to see what they end up doing with it um and we also it's part of this whole people thing that I am always about uh we did honor our

207principles last week and celebrated and appreciated them and their leadership being a principal is a very very difficult job maybe right after my job I don't know but that was very self-serv that was a joke that was just a joke no but honestly the principal ship is so tough and um just wanted to say thanks to them but again like I said so much stuff going on and I know there's a lot of work we have to do but if if you think about it that way there's just there's so much light at the end of that tunnel so just thank you and thanks to my team and thanks to all of you all I got okay board comments RJ do you want to start or you want to kick it down I can start

208um so the season just ended for bavia bavia Youth Cheer this was the first year that bavia youth Athletics had a cheer group from first to sixth grade no tryouts no Cuts or anything like that I third grader participated in it and found a new love um I never envisioned myself as a cheer dad congrats yeah looking like I'm be D and a cheer dad yeah exciting but um it was really great so so Props to the to the um the T Youth Association um it was so amazing to go out and see on our field every Saturday morning um there was at least six different teams of of cheerleaders out there because there's no Cuts there's all all the different grades and they're out there cheering on whatever grade level uh flag football teams

209were out there and then to finish it off man time's flying I can't remember if it was last Thursday or the week before but we did it under the lights where we actually played all the games on the football field which was amazing that was the first time I was ever on that football field that Turf is amazing but um it was it was really neat you know the the the cheerleaders held the banner and the football teams ran through it all that jazz and it was it was really neat and then at the end of it the football players gave uh all the cheerleaders uh roses which was very nice the the the football teams were good the whole season about actually sitting down and watching the halftime show which I also really appreciated

210that the coaches were having them do that to show you know that they're part of it and that they're thankful for the cheerleaders being there to support them so um yeah just really grateful for that opportunity and um happy uh principal appreciation to all the principles out there I I agree it's a very tough job um that's it thank you um I will keep it brief here but uh few points uh just uh once again congratulations to miss uh Terry Tan on her award um that's awesome that really reflects well on our school district um so congratulations to her again and I think I heard it mentioned in four different uh spaces if you will um so that just shows you what a great achievement that was um I did want to say uh I

211really love the besta presentations every board meeting I find those you know just a a great way to represent uh some of our employees um and our support staff that's uh really making a big impact on our school district and um I'm all for keep keep doing that I I'd love to hear about uh all those things and I love to hear about the personal side of uh of the uh the staff there so um and then uh just a plug for Mean Girls the musical I think it's coming up November 9th 12 and uh I was a big fan of the movie so I'm really looking forward to the musical oh my gosh um just congratulations to the beta art uh and then Mrs Tian and this have a safe Halloween okay all right

212uh I want to thank every everybody who is in attendance this evening I reach out to the board your voices are important I think we had some pretty Lively discussions they were driven by a lot of your comments and input so thank you for that it's really vital to the work we do we need to hear every voice out there um again I want to Echo all the celebrations we had I mean with the art Department I'll say I always come in early and look at the artwork I walk in here right behind me this is Kayla bash 7th grade she's my neighbor I took a picture of that and sent that to her mother father and they were thrilled and she was super excited about that so uh you know I think one of

213the things that strikes me so last week I think I was out almost every week with football and the marching band and one thing that really strikes me about bavia you know when I was in school when you were underclassman or Junior High you kind of felt unseen you know it wasn't until you became a junior or senior that you got a chance to shine and what really I wish wish Mr Owen was here because I have a a fifth grader who's playing clarinet and I have two older kids and they tried music and they they were out of it with an ear but she Lily is taking to it um and so they had their performance and it got rained out and then they rescheduled we went and they did the performance and it

214was amazing and she was looking for the clarinet and she's on every note but then what he does is he says hey all the future young kids who are just starting can you come down here and all those kids come down and then the percussion did a performance and then they have a poster of all the seniors available and they have Shar to say okay kids you can go get an autograph with these kids and my daughter went out and saw the one kid she recognized and she got his autograph and so what I think was great about Pavia is that we're instilling these kids that yes your achievement is to be recognized and we come here and we celebrate but really what you're doing is you're inspiring those younger kids because they look up

215to you and and you're showing them what's possible because when you're in fifth grade and you can't make a basket in the big hoop or you can't get a note out of your clarinet without a few few squeaks and you see those other kids and you know hey they were just like me and you can do this too I mean that's really amazing and so uh I just want to thank our school district for creating that culture because that's really I mean I get I'm getting Goosebumps right now thinking about it um and then the other thing I just want to say is yes thank you to our principles I had opportunity to speak to principles at high school middle school grade school that is a tough job I mean that you know every day

216they're just putting out fires basically whether it be their staff the teachers the parents it's a tough gig so if you have a chance to see one of them and say thank you for what you're doing I know they appreciate that um and then I guess my son's a football player so I'll say hey Friday we got a football game and uh it's a tough game for a first round so if you can get out there when you go to a game you're not only supporting the football team you're supporting the cheerleaders you're supporting the pals the music all those kids I've come to realize when I and I'm going way too long CU it's 10 o'clock but I'll say soon as you go go to a game and after halftime some people leave people

217like what are they doing I'm like those are those parents for the band you know I mean so when you go to a game you're not just supporting the athletes you're supporting everybody so go Bulldogs and again thank you for everybody who came tonight I don't even know where to start so I'll just say it was nice to see you Carl and ion tonight so take care that's it um I will just kind of summarize a couple of things um one I appreciate again like everybody said everybody coming tonight I mean I think tonight was a very good example of kind of the emails and the discussion um I think in my tenure on the board I have not yet seen a um a approval or an action that was not unanimous and I applaud

218everybody for sticking to what they think is right and what they want to move forward with and while that might not be what other people wanted um it shows that we have an opportunity to engage in dialogue and I appreciate that everybody did that tonight um on the one thing I do want to mention that um I had heard because I while I am not having a kid in Marching Band anymore I cannot quit and that's a personal problem but um I was talking to some other uh parents and staff and they and I will give acolytes to Tom because they noted that you were there at every performance and it was felt and it was seen and they felt that you know they appreciated you coming to kind of really understand what it was

219about and to see that so I appreciate you as our employee of the board doing that effort so thank you um and then last for everybody that kind of came to the community night um the one interesting thing about the community night this year was it was right before the bid band competition down at ISU so they went and did the performance that night and then three or four days later effectively they were down state in Illinois performing for that and that's effectively the playoffs the N you know their big Super Bowl for the state of Illinois um and so I would be remiss not to State you know that they are continuing a tradition of Excellence they are utilizing the capabilities that the district and the board and others and the staff importantly as

220well have given to those kids and they are running with it in in style and in um in effort and in rewards so congratulations to them and congratulations to the staff and those that volunteer and those that help it is cast really in my opinion if not thousands that's an exaggeration but it's definitely hundreds that help pull that off and this year was a unique year it was the biggest set of props that the crews ever handled it was a significant number of kids and they um made big big headways and then lastly the pair off of yours the other thing that I noticed about vavia is we make a a lot of effort to engage the community in our efforts so like the community night and the band events and the music events and

221everything else of giving the opport opportunity for the outside those that don't have kids to participate if you were there at the community night there were far more people there than once and one interesting note while there was a kid you talked about your kids getting the signature that Chris Owen was telling me that there's a um I'm going to just say at least a grandmother in a wheelchair being pushed around by her daughter SLG granddaughter with the seniors and he said she's been coming here as long as he has been running the community nights to get signatures from every single senior on that card so it's wide ranging not just your seven or eighty olds it's your 80 or 90 year olds that are enjoying the event so thank you and with that um

222I will oh this one's a little different today huh so um so we are be moving and AD juring to a Clos session uh we are uh I will entertain a motion to move to a closed session allowed under the open meetings act for the purposes of ception 5 i l CS 2 col parentheses C parenthesis 1 in case you're noticing I don't have to read an hour and a half of a statement anymore so thank you to who figured that out um so um I will entertain that motion second by Rael second by RJ all in favor I I opposed I'm not in fav