001call this meeting of the board and of Education in order Sydney would you please call the roll here present black here present next I would invite Aaron to lead us in the pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands one nation under God indivisible with liberty and justice for all are there any items to be adjusted removed from the agenda I have two minor adjustments to the consent agenda the consent agenda is accurate but on it did change from Friday so since Friday we added one FMLA and we added a set of minutes because you had a board meeting on Friday and Cindy was able to get those meetings prepared for or the minutes prepared for you so those are in there um she
002got those in there yesterday and the rule is with minutes you're supposed to approve minutes this is just fun fact um when you have a meeting you write up the minutes and then you have to approve them at the next regular meeting and then they have to be posted on our website within 10 days of that but with board docs they're posted automatically it's just a little side note a little history lesson on open meetings Act anything else nope okay uh Holly any public comment no public comment all right well seeing as none we will move on to our BPS partners Todd I know you're not used to us moving this fast keep it going it's a new ship up here Todd pressure's on good evening members of the board tonight I would like to
003take just a brief moment of our meeting time and for Rob and Raquel and Danielle you may not be aware but the word brief and Communications used in conjunction with me don't usually go hand in hand but that will be the case tonight first off I want to give all of our district district retirees one last shout out which is three days left of the school year your dedication to the students of Batavia is what makes you all great and in turn will make you greatly missed next year let the adventure that is the next phase of your life begin to our staff I know that there are days that seem like they will never end but in spite of that here we are down to the last three days of the school year it
004just seems like last week it was spring break and now we are almost to Z in the letter countdown I know we're told this over and over but I want you all to take this to heart this summer take time for yourself take time for your family and take time to do something that brings you peace or brings you Joy indulge in The Simple Pleasures that life brings your way but also take a moment while you can to reflect on the successes of your year whether little or large we know your bucket is running pretty close to empty with all that you've given to your profession your colleagues and your students and their families now is the time to restock for the 23-24 school year have a great summer to all of our BPS staff
005and come back in August ready to rock another year finally I would like to recognize our students both those who will be returning next fall and especially those that will be crossing the stage at NIU tomorrow night your teachers thank you for your hard work your perseverance and your dedication to making sure that you are leaving here on Thursday with a little more knowledge than you had at the beginning of the year more compassion not only for your fellow students but for all the people in your life and more desire to see what the next steps hold for you and I mean that's Holly to bring up a picture for you all to take a look at so as this picture's coming up um I had the great honor of being invited by my fifth
006grade class that is graduating tomorrow night to come back to hooverwood as they reconnected with their Elementary School and those who are part of their Journey for some of those kids I have not seen them since their last day of school with me seven years ago others I see quite regularly but nevertheless I want to tell not only the seniors who are partified us that are part of this Photograph that I will cherish forever but to all the graduating seniors no matter what elementary school you went to or who your teachers there were and then to your teachers at Rotolo and finally the ones you spent the last four years with at BHS we are all so incredibly proud of you and the adults that you become please know that there will always be a
007little part of you written into the fabric of our lives and we hope that you'll take a little piece of us with you as well wherever that road leads you next be proud of your accomplishments be diligent in your Pursuits that you will undertake next in your life and for my kiddos in that picture and five us I hope you remember a poem I gave you on our last day of school together it talks about how some people measure success in terms of monetary gains or inanimate possessions but for you I hope that you measure success not by the money in your bank account or the car you may end up driving I want you to measure it by the friends you have the friends you will make and treating everyone you meet whether family
008or stranger with kindness and empathy being clean of heart and Broad of mind and to the stranger kind is how that poem ended when I gave it to you seven years ago I hope you all remember this as you walk across that stage tomorrow night and set forth into the world as a Batavia graduate so congratulations to all the graduating seniors go out and do great things send it over to Lisa first yeah yeah um we have so so many committees in this district and these are the this is an opportunity for all staff to come together make decisions have voice and what we do at this part of the meeting is we have each board member who is um one at a time um one board member gets assigned for committee as an observer
009and this is the time of the meeting that you would normally share out and part of the committee's charge when they finish a meeting jointly the Committees sometimes they run out of time but jointly they're supposed to write a statement that's the summary of that meeting and we do Post those for all the staff and um so that's usually what you would share at this part of the meeting Craig did contact you and give you as the president he assigns you to your committees so he's already contacted you and made those assignments for next year so at this point you probably don't have any updates to share because things ramp down real quick and and in May there are for five of the Committees they provided a mid-year update to the board in December or
010February that would be plaque rack student services and the equity team so there were five committee updates um mid-year and then there's the they have a year-end summary as well and you can find that we are on our website if you're a staff member or you have staff email which you do you go to the staff Tab and then you'll be able to see under groups nope under topics Holly just placed this year in summary there so you go to the intranets and then you look at the topics and you'll see committee um collaborative committees and that will if you wanted to review those summaries and I think they'll be really helpful As you move forward next year with or this summer with starting to think about a strategic plan because there's some really good
011recommendations for you as a board to focus on because you can't focus on everything and it's your job to pick some high level really high impact strategies and give the give the rest of the district Direction and say these are the three most important things so this will be a good source of data for you as you start to think about that and any other questions how will we know where to go or will they contact us or do we have to reach out to them you'll be added so every committee has an email group and then Brad I think manages all those email groups so he has the list of who's on what so he's going to add you to those committee groups and then you'll also get Google invites to the meetings you'll
012get a bunch of notifications that you've been added to Google Calendar in like July mid-july okay good question good question any other questions no okay seen that we'll move on to the cassette agenda according to our board policy I'm sorry yes sir I actually have a committee update oh my Lord did you go get her no go ahead may I provide one you may please so well we uh the stipend committee which Steve oversees uh we met and um I just wanted to bring it to everyone's attention that since I've been part of it for the past I think six months now there's been some really great strides the stipend committee oversees funds distributed to uh groups that um activities at all three levels of schools whether it's I don't know the right definition for
013it that any type of group activity that has been established and has a sponsor for over two years so they decide as a committee where these funds are going to be distributed if there's new groups that are coming if there's groups that need changes if there's new coaches if there's things like that and they've been doing a really good job the past couple months just reorganizing everything so that we know exactly who submitted what stipend at what time and they're kind of in a nice order and also they've been reaching out they've been making a lot of effort to make sure that the folks that want to have these groups and activities are actually apply lying appropriately one of the things that they ran into last year the feedback was they were missing the deadlines
014and people didn't know that they're missing it so really good job this year I think of making sure we hit the deadline on the flip side of that as we're going through negotiation there wasn't a lot of decisions that want to be made yet until that had all gone through so Steve sent out a really nice letter to let everybody know we've got your information we're going to be getting together early and right before school starts again to make some decisions which again a nice call out to that group because they're committing extra time to get together before school starts so um just want to commend the stipend committee because they're doing a really great job the other thing that I just learned about is a program called Summer melt have any of you guys
015heard of this so summer melt is and I need you to correct me from wrong Steve but it's the idea behind this is identifying students that are at risk for attending post-secondary schools so in the last year the school counselors identified 122 students that were at risk where they didn't think the student had planned to go to university and they were worried that they might not pull through with it maybe they are our first generation maybe they didn't know how to fill up the FAFSA maybe they didn't know exactly all the stuff to take to get to it so they actually work with those students over the summer to help them get into college so I thought that was just really great ones and I asked Steve at some point where I'm I'm hoping we
016can get some actual numbers he has he has a number oh do you actually have the numbers on yeah they work for the 54 students okay over last summer nice is that hit them in is that Junior to senior year so after they graduate the statistics around students who say yeah I'm going to college and then yeah over that summer period you see that melt on which is why they call that the summer melt and those kids who had intended and had the grades and sometimes scholarships don't end up registering going to you know those appointments so this is a little bit of a push and it's a lot of contact by a couple of our counselors at the high school that do that and work with those students and they've seen good results that's
017great and the other nice thing about this is they look like that's awesome yeah shout out to Belize who is one of our partners they are a big supporter of uh supporting this program really appreciate it that's it that is a very good report to interrupt me on fantastic thank you sir happy to do so better than me just saying beefy meets tomorrow can't wait till next month um all right so unless there is anything else from anyone else before I move on okay consent agenda 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 routine recurring Camp routine recurringing can be grouped together for efficiency Steve I hear you drew the
018Short Straw would you like to read I'm the all-time quarterback actually I know I know um just and before I jump into this real quick um there was a question about the meal price increase and if if you've uh done a deep dive into board docs which I don't recommend but the last six years you will always see this uh as a consent agenda item um whether you know this or not um the reason for this is the government sense like sets like a rate uh for the the prices and we're well below that rate and so our approach has been on an annual basis to bump it up that 10 cents uh to kind of get closer and closer to that rate and so you will continue to see this most likely on this
019consent agenda at this time of year um on an annual basis so just to give you a heads up on that for in the rationale for why we why we operate that way so let's jump into this 4.1 and 4.2 is the approval of the April 25th 2023 regular and special meeting minutes as Lisa spoke about 4.3 and 4.4.4 is the approval of the May 19 2023 special meeting in closed session minutes 4.5 is our monthly Personnel report 4.6 is the monthly payroll and bills 4.7 is the destruction of our closed session recordings from November 16 2021 uh 4.8 we had one donation a sizable donation from the Batavia wrestling club to support wrestling mats and kids going to wrestling camp at Batavia High School 4.9 is our textbook approval which is sitting right over
020here by Dr Newkirk 4.10 is the approval of the mentioned meal price increase 4.11 is the approval of our food service contract extension 4.12 is the appointment of our Auditors 4.13 is the approval of our stop-loss insurance contract 4.14 is the approval of our Google workspace for Education contract and 4.15 is the approval of this consent agenda anyone have any questions or anything I have one comment yeah uh meal price increase so I did reach out and had a couple questions about Josh responded very quickly and I just asked how does our what are we're asking families to pay compared to our colleagues Up and Down the River and I can just tell the community that we're very competitive in that regard so folks can know that we're giving a really good value on that
021so thank you for that appreciate it any other questions I have one yeah sure um so my question is for the textbook approval so that one is 11 we're going for 11 years out of date so say um what determines like what's out of date the high school sets up a cycle where they take a look at these because textbooks aren't something that we have for every content area but AP and dual credit require them as we get that outside curriculum so they say you have to use certain textbooks so we put all of those courses on a cycle of reviewing those and when it comes up in their rotation at the high school if the high school teachers are like yep that's up for Renewal we put in cni a small budget for renewals
022of textbooks each year and they kind of make the decisions about where they kind of rank in terms of the different needs sometimes the needs are based on we've had a large number of kids so we need more textbooks other times it's this textbook's out of date so we need to take a look at it and you said this is only for high school like I'm gonna say the elementary or middle schools they don't have I know they don't always have they don't have a cycle like that yeah come through the high school because of dual credit and AP they have a cycle of all those classes that we run that they take a look at those textbooks thank you Brad anyone else okay see no further comment or revisions I would entertain a motion
023to approve the consent agenda as presented so moved second can I call the favor yeah you would say move by oh yeah move by uh Aaron second by RJ and then Newton yeah all in favor aye emotions any opposed thank you hearing none motion carries thank you and reports I'll turn it back over to Elise every month you use the treasurer's reports and there's nothing unusual unusual or different this month on those reports nothing that stands out but this is your opportunity to review them we also have foia report every month but this month we didn't reply to any foyas so there was nothing there to show and then the next um but I would entertain any questions that you have about the treasures report and then um this part of the agenda is reports
024meaning there's no action um and I will turn it over to Tony for the next report the invite up the representatives from the city of Aurora to join us at the podium they are here to talk about an exciting development that is about to get underway which is in the city of Aurora but within the Batavia school district and it's adjacent to the outlet mall it would be uh the new Hollywood Casino to be constructed there very soon good evening my name is Alex alexandru I am the chief management officer for the city of Aurora we are pleased to be able to join you tonight thank you for welcoming us um while we physically may be quite a ways away from Bilter um and Farnsworth where the casino is going to be located it is
025in fact as you well know based on the very successful experience of our Chicago Premium Outlet Mall within the jurisdiction of school district 101. in fact that is known in our circles as the most successful Tiff in Illinois if not one of the most successful in the country so with that backdrop we wanted to come tonight to update you on the relocation of the Hollywood Casino from downtown Aurora to property immediately west of the Chicago Premium Outlet Mall on Farnsworth so tonight I in addition to myself um pleased to have with us Chris Minnick our Chief Financial Officer and City Treasurer Trevor dick assistant director of the mayor's office of Economic Development and also join not speaking but here is aldermen at large Ron Warman who also has children in the Batavia school district and
026lives in the vicinity off of Builder so really wanted to update you comprehensively about the new casino especially with a focus on financial impact because I'm sure that would be will be of keen interest to all of you so with that I want to turn it over to Chris and Trevor and I may be back up and we're happy to answer any questions you may have thank you excuse me thank you Alex uh Chris Minnick as CR as Alex indicated I'm the Chief Financial Officer and City Treasurer for the city of Aurora and it's been widely reported and Alex mentioned it tonight that the Aurora Hollywood Casino is moving from its current location uh in the downtown out to an area out just north of I-88 approximate to belter and Farnsworth and while there are
027many factors that have contributed to the decision to move there are a couple of major factors that I'd like to talk to you about now the primary factor is a decline in attendance at the existing Casino facility as well as the resultant decline in Revenue as a result of the decline that hap has happened in the attendance figures additionally oh thank you additionally over the past 30 years there have been some significant changes in the gaming industry and particularly as it applies in Illinois the relocation of the casino to the site at Bilter and Farnsworth will allow uh the developer to take advantage of many of those changes that have occurred over the last 30 years and the new location at builter and Farnsworth will allow them to have a new modern and expandable facility
028and as they develop to be able to adjust to Future changes in the gaming industry the development of the new casino site will be um or is actually governed by a Redevelopment agreement that was passed by the city and entered into and executed with the developer in the fall of 2022. and um my goal tonight is to outline the financial impacts of of some of the more significant provisions of that Redevelopment agreement and specifically how they impact Batavia School District 101 but before I get into those factors I'd like to go through a little bit of the background related to the site itself the site consists of nine Parcels three of those Parcels are developed six of them are vacant and five of the nine are actually already owned by the city of Aurora they
029were Acquisitions in Prior years currently those nine properties generate a little over forty eight thousand dollars in total property taxes and of that forty eight thousand about twenty nine thousand eight hundred and fifty comes to school district 101. the uh the predominant number of sites that of parcels excuse me that make up the casino site are in the city's existing Tiff District number seven TIF district number seven goes back to approximately 2010 2011 and we expect that it will expire at the end of calendar year 2034. uh and of significance uh those nine Parcels that make up the casinos the future Casino site are currently not contributing to any of the Tiff revenues for Tiff number seven all of those Parcels are either tax exempt they're below the base value that was uh ascribed to
030the properties uh during the imposition of the district or in the case of one or two of the parcels they're actually outside of the Tiff currently yeah for one second Mr minute could you explain what a tiff is Tiff is a tax increment financing District that's a specific development Zone essentially that is set up and the purpose of the Tiff is to provide economic incentives so that development can occur typically what happens there's an analysis done that um a developer wants to develop a certain property with a certain use or for a specific purpose and for whatever reason the economics of the site simply do not allow for the development of that particular parcel the Tiff district is a tool that allows for cost assistance incentives to come back to the developer and it's paid
031the whole premise of a tiff is the property tax rate or property tax revenue is Frozen based on the value of the TIF district when the Tiff is established then as the development occurs the assessed value of that particular parcel or area Rises the the increase in the in the value provides the revenue to be able to take on those economic incentives that's a tiff 101 really quickly yeah thank you you're using that word a lot I want to make sure the community understood what you're talking absolutely absolutely so as I mentioned there is no contribution to to tip number seven from these nine Parcels currently uh and the Redevelopment agreement as it was passed actually calls for creation of a new micro tip a small Tiff that is extremely focused uh in its purpose
032and in its in its scale to be able to provide the incentives that we talked about a second ago only the casino property would be included in the new micro Tiff only those nine parcels and the city is currently in the process of developing that micro tip there's a specific legal process that has to occur when a TIF district is created there are certain studies and plans that need to be prepared we're in the process of preparing and finalizing those reports now additionally there's a series of public meetings and public hearings that need to happen uh when you create a TIF district and we're in the process of developing the schedule for those hearings and meetings with the goal being that we would finalize and establish the TIF district prior to December 31st of 2023.
033so how does the RDA impact the the current situation that exists between School District 101 in the city of Aurora there is an existing intergovernmental agreement that was entered into in late 2011 it includes the city's tifs seven and eight essentially Tiff Aid is immaterial for this discussion the site is actually located in Tiff seven one of the provisions of that particular agreement actually calls for the city to declare a surplus of 10 percent of the gross incremental revenues on an annual basis what that means is there is a provision in the Tiff code that provides that once a surplus is declared those funds are turned over to the county and then there is the county goes through a process to split and rebate uh that those Surplus revenues among the overlapping districts that are
034contained within the Tiff um that that process is is handled in the code and the city is required to declare under the intergovernmental agreement 10 percent of the incremental revenues as Surplus for the most recently completed year um in calendar year 2022 that process resulted in a payment of approximately thirty nine thousand dollars to school district 101 we do expect that during calendar year 2023 or early 2024 as a result of that process the school district will receive an additional forty thousand dollars from that particular from that particular Surplus um additionally moving forward and discussing some of the RDA Provisions uh the casino like any other property owner will be liable for property taxes once it owns all the properties related to the casino site any of the incremental taxes that are generated by those
035nine Parcels will linear to the benefit of the new micro Tiff District the city plans to use those incremental revenues to pay debt service on the bond issue that the city will be issuing a little bit later on this year to to fund the city's contributions to the to the casino development however the RDA the Redevelopment agreement also contains a provision that if the incremental taxes are less than 5.25 million dollars in any year then the casino will make a payment to the city for the difference so if those nine Parcels that make up the future Casino site generates a four million dollars in incremental property tax revenue the casino will write a check to the city for one million two hundred and fifty thousand dollars that works out to be essentially a guarantee of
036about of incremental revenues of 5.25 million dollars annually this particular provision of the Redevelopment agreement begins two years after the bonds are issued and it will continue any year while the bonds are outstanding so under the under the terms of the new micro tip the city for its part intends to continue to honor the 10 annual Surplus distribution for the new casino microtip what this means is 525 000 will be declared Surplus annually that represents 10 percent of the incremental revenues of 5 million two hundred and fifty thousand dollars based on uh the school district's portion of the tax bill of 61.6 percent of the property tax bill that would result in a payment to the school district on an annual base basis of 323 400 dollars Additionally the existing intergovernmental agreement would continue in
037existence and we would continue to pay the 10 annual Surplus for the remaining properties in tip number seven until Tiff number seven expires in 2034. we do anticipate that that would as I mentioned a moment ago be approximately forty thousand dollars annually the next slide just simply shows and reflects what happens uh under the current Arrangement Under the Blue Bar uh on that graph and um what the annual the new annual Surplus distribution to the school district would be after the development of the Tiff so as we mentioned at the beginning of the presentation approximately 29 850 comes to the school district via the tax bills from those nine properties um and we would anticipate that that this that once the the uh new casino is up and running and has been constructed and is
038operating that that there would be a payment of three hundred and twenty three thousand dollars annually which means an increase of approximately 293 thousand dollars uh being paid to the school district on an annual basis over the life of the Tiff that would accumulate to approximately 6.8 million dollars uh compared to a to a revenue stream of about six hundred and eighty six thousand if the current condition were allowed to continue for the next 23 years um that represents an increase of about 6.1 million dollars uh in revenue and payment District to the district over that over that lifespan of the micro Tiff um additionally once the new micro Tiff closes about 23 or 24 years from now the school district would receive about 3.2 million dollars in property taxes annually from the casino development
039assuming that the casino property continues to generate that 5 million 250 000 in property taxes and on the last slide uh for my part of the presentation in addition we would continue to make the payments under the existing intergovernmental agreement of approximately forty thousand dollars annually that number will fluctuate a little bit as the value of the property uh changes within tip number seven and over the remaining 11-year life of the Tiff we anticipate that the school district would see revenues of approximately four hundred and forty thousand dollars in addition to the new microtif tax dollars so those are pretty much the Salient points of the Redevelopment agreement and how that and how they impact um the school district uh I'd be happy to answer any questions that anybody may have relative to the to
040those items I have one question um so the so the timing of the 323 000 when would we expect to receive that probably around 2026 that as I mentioned um the bonds were anticipating issuing the bonds in calendar 23 and then that Pro that individual provision of the Redevelopment agreement takes place or kicks in two years after the issuance of the box okay just a couple of clarifying points uh the 5.25 million is not a cap it's not a ceiling we were very adamant that it had to be uh that as a minimum and that's why the provision of the RDA has them kicking in to get it back up to that level we needed that to make the math work to cover fully the bond service without impacting very important to the city of
041Aurora that we preserve our gaming tax revenues that we use for different opportunities to fund in the city of Aurora so we did not want Debt Service to erode off of our gaming tax and so it was a very significant achievement for us to have the casino and Penn gaming approve it uh just a real quick about the project itself before I turn it over to Trevor we're at close to 400 million dollar investment uh this is going to be a Las Vegas style Resort this is not simply going to be a casino that you see along the highway in Iowa or Michigan this is truly a comprehensive Resort uh there will be a minimum four-star hotel five restaurants a spa a significant event center and a state-of-the-art casino and as you know Penn is
042one of the top Casino companies in the world not just the the city of the United States and they made a significant acquisition of bar stool Sports so this will have a significant draw in the Chicago region in fact we firmly believe this will be become the number one Casino in the region and we'll wait to see what Chicago decides to do but as far as a Suburban location as a draw this we firmly believe this will exceed all projections and expectations so just wanted to lay that out to you as well and then I want to bring Trevor up Trevor up quickly to talk about kind of the site plan and some other things as part of the improvements that's the financial question before that yes sir I'm just wondering um what the impact
043is on the Aurora School District well um they're really you're talking about the Aurora School District where the casino is currently yeah so do you want to talk about what they're getting currently and then what the future may hold yeah um currently uh there is some property tax revenue that does in your uh to the benefit of the school district from that uh Casino site um the uh the school district um the plans are well let me the Redevelopment agreement actually um considers that once the new casino is up and moved into the new location the the developer will be responsible for removing the current casino and returning it to a developable state uh for the city so at that point there will likely be some sort of development on the uh on the existing
044Casino site and that would contribute to the property tax revenue for the school district in Aurora at that particular point in time which school district 131 131 but we have some significant significant plans in the works which we're not ready to publicly talk about yet for the site once it's restored back and the old casinos completely removed along right now the casino is going to operate while the construction begins so that's going to be approximately two years so it's going to be probably sometime in before that so again it's a timing thing because they're able to continue to operate the casino for as long as they can before they turn the lights off and start the wrecking ball so they want to time it so that they open up and lose as little time as
045possible that's in everyone's best interest s okay uh Paulie thank you okay so we had a very successful open house last week uh we had a lot of residents uh some board members and Tony were there um and uh was very positive uh informational Gathering session very well attended we had representatives of the city as well as the casino and a whole bunch of consultants and so I wanted to show you really quickly the illustrations that were shown at that open house the first drawing here is the site plan uh if you can visualize North being to the uh to the up top part of the screen that's Farnsworth running north south built her across the top Church Road in the back it's very difficult to see probably from where you're sitting but it's a
046color-coded map there's a legend essentially you'll see a 3D rendering at the end of my slides that I'll show you a little bit more but the purple is the casino there's great the darker gray is surface parking there's a 1700 space parking garage in the lighter gray the hotel well juts out on an angle there'll be five restaurants across the front as well as an event space that Alex mentioned for small concerts a mixed martial arts boxing things like that nature one thing that's really um in the new casinos now which I think I I personally like is now if you have a family or even if you don't like gambling you can access the restaurants the hotel the spa The Event Center without even stepping foot in the casino if you remember back in
047the day you'd have to go through the casino first and try and find all of that they've realized that really eliminates a lot of the visitors families Etc so this is going to be a very exciting site plan here if you go to the next slide Holly traffic and transportation was one of the biggest concerns we heard from the very beginning so we hired our consultant uh Penn hired their consultant we also have our own Public Works transportation department so the three of them work together on reviewing each other's work we have a very detailed traffic study it's very very thick and once again I apologize it's very probably difficult for you to see here but we looked at this part here for the transportation improvements adjacent to the site and so we've got where
048Farnsworth is going to be widened three lanes in each Direction with turn Lanes improved signals turn Lanes D cell Lanes we've also been working with the tollway they're going to open up that second off-ramp when you're going westbound to go north that was a coin only they're going to make that an iPass as well because they don't do the coin anymore so we'll have two ramps we're also considering a direct lane from that ramp directly into the LM mall so it would be a dedicated Lane which we think would also help a traffic flow so we're working on that so we've got a lot of great improvements for the area and then the next slide Holly built her road which is still in the Builder I'm sorry the Batavia School District we're also going to
049be winding this to four lanes so two lanes in each Direction a match what is existing on the west of Premium Outlet boulevards and to the east across the the bike trail one thing that we're including in our project is the design of a pedestrian bridge over builter so that that at grade bike crossing that's there right now can be a great separated Crossing for safety for bicyclists as well as pedestrians we think that's a great benefit to this whole project as well where to where is it going to get widened yes so if you see um I don't have a point I'm sorry but you see where the main premium Boulevard Drive comes up thank you Alex here comes my pointer go ahead Alex so um this is the Builder entry which you get
050into the outlet mall here that's Pepsi just the left so it will be widened uh where's Furniture so that's not quite on here but it's going to be widened all the way here all the way to um almost near DuPage Parkway almost almost towards the Earth yes so the city owns all this acreage here it's about 50 acres and so we're in the process of obviously acquiring the property necessary to widen Builder hopefully with a median and Trevor mentioned improvements on Farnsworth there's going to be a median as well on Farnsworth some restrictions from turning left which has backed up traffic in the past as cars were heading Northbound so we tried to not only look at the um Casino area itself but pull the lens back and look at impact north south east and
051west of the casino because remember 8 million visitors come to the most successful outlet mall one of them in the country so we were trying to Leverage the 8 million visitors with what we're doing at the casino and these Road expansions are going to happen concurrently with the construction of the casino so that hopefully they're when the casino opens the roads are done and it's outside that's the plane best late planes right correct because I'm just so the people that are living there I'm sure that's a concern for them is that uh correct correct thank you Alex you're a great pointer thank you you might want to stay up there just in case why we have a whole road that nobody sits in so and as Alex said Holly if you go to the next
052slide as Alex said instead of just looking at a typical development and just looking at the adjacent roadway and the signals as Alex said we pulled the lens back because we knew traffic and transportation was going to be so important to this project and so you can look at our traffic study we even looked at intersections south of I-88 for example and at each of these intersections there's recommendations if there's going to be projected traffic and what those improvements could be and so at the open house we talked to a lot of the residents who had a lot of questions and they seem to be very happy with the plan that we had to help make sure that we had great Transportation flow in the area okay next slide this here is the 3D rendering
053this is the current concept right now they are um their Architects are from Las Vegas we continue to work with them on literally sharpening their pencil but this is the vision for what this casino campus complex will look like you can see the parking garage on the left the casino in the middle and then the hotel on the right the hotel is Alex said earlier is a four-star hotel about a 225 room hotel with a spa the five restaurants are going to be some amazing restaurants that I don't know exactly which ones are going to be at but the casino is very excited about the people they're talking to of course the parking garage on the bottom left as well can I ask how many jobs is this going to generate well that's a great
054question and uh so close to was it 1500 permanent jobs 1500 or maybe 2 000 permanent jobs and I used to I used to have a guesstimate for the construction jobs but it's it's a very significant number and it's a two-year project and we believe them that'll be tweeters because they want to get this open and running as well so we're very excited that's Holly I think that's the last picture um but once again I just wanted to give you a highlight of the renderings that we showed at the open house we also if you have any other questions that maybe I didn't talk about or if you think about it later after tonight on the Aurora Hollywood casino's website you can go there and they have an FAQ a frequently asked questions they have
055about 29 questions and answers of the commonly asked questions that we've received over the last year since we've been planning this so that's another great resource if you have any questions after tonight questions I actually have a question for Alderman Warman yes I know the Tiff micro tip has to be approved I know you can't see the teachers you don't the city doesn't anticipate any problems getting that approved we actually if I could speak into that and we actually I want to say you did it I'm sorry we first introduced it under mayor Irvin's Administration starting in 2017 and all the micro tips we've used have been spectacular successes one of the benefits of a micro tip is it's a very focused limited uh scope so you're not unnecessarily encumbering other properties like the old
056application of a large Tiff so the micro tip really is targeted to a project so if you come to downtown Aurora for example the former School District 129 West Aurora headquarters which was in downtown that was a microtiff and it was slated to be torn down so it is a very successful apartment building in Downtown Aurora market rate apartment right on the river um give me another microtip oh I can't forget the former Copley Hospital anybody that's familiar with Aurora knows far east side the old Copley Hospital was basically a cancer on on the east side of Aurora and through the Strategic use of microtiff finding the right Development Group use of historic tax credits I won't bore you with all the details 116 million dollar Redevelopment and I encourage all of you to go
057and see the new bloomhaven campus it includes Western Bridges which is a very pioneering not many in the country maybe less than 10 uh living for persons with cognitive and other disabilities along with senior living that they just opened there's also going to be a new health clinic in the back in the community a Fox Valley Park District park with a splash pad beautiful walking path all because we micro tipped it and that leveraged a lot of opportunity financially for incentives so we're very proud of that and you know tiffs get a bad name rightfully so in some areas of Illinois because they were not used properly we don't do that in the city of Aurora that was my question because I know they are controversial in circles they are when they're used a general
058area the wrong way and someone else will develop it but a specific and remember Chris mentioned the increment the eye and Tiff the increment is what really drives the ability to put these millions of dollars together to create these projects which otherwise would not have happened and so we had a decision to make in downtown Aurora and as a city this was not a referendum on gaming uh that happened 30 plus years ago when they decided to put the casino there this was really a simple choice if the casino remained in downtown given its declining performance it would have ultimately gone away so it was move or leave it where it is and none of us wanted a a white elephant building that we would get stuck with and so this really was a win-win
059and I think this is certainly a tremendous opportunity for the Batavia school district and as we appreciated your support from the outlet mall we very much look forward to your support on this important project so stay tuned exciting things ahead and I'm sure no one's gonna mind that eight or nine hundred percent that was not a uh a typo on there that was a pretty uh pretty healthy increase and I know you'll put that money to good use any other questions thank you for the presentation thank you thank you appreciate your service we have a copy of it do you mind if we share it across the board members of this presentation it's up to you guys no problem it's a public document that's what I thought you were going to say thank you okay
060and we're available for any questions afterwards and we appreciate Tony participating too thank you appreciate it thank you foreign policy reading yep we do have one more report and it is policy so in um Illinois most every school board belongs to the Illinois Association of school boards and one of the great benefits is that we pay an annual fee of 750 to get advice on policy at any time the legislature meets and makes a decision it probably touches there's an example on this policy report it probably touched 10 different policies and so they have a group of attorneys and advisors and volunteer Educators that meet and go through all of the school code and make sure that they'll tell us here's that we get a press report you can log into iasb and see it
061at any time I don't have if you're having trouble sleeping it's a great document to read but they give us four a year so they take all of the changes and give us four ports a year and it then once those reports come in our hands it says here's all the changes here's why we're making the changes then we go and we look at our policy sometimes we have homegrown policies so we have to figure out how to marry the two and so then our cabinet Senior Management cabinet look through all of those recommendations and bring the ones that make sense to your attention so you always read policies twice so this is your first reading and then you can look it over if you had a question tonight great otherwise you can let us
062know in the meantime if you have questions and we'll bring it back for discussion at the next meeting those are policies those are like your rules and your laws and the way that our district is governed and then there are procedures that go along with it and those don't require board approval press also makes recommended procedures so if the legislature says we have to do an employee history review an EHR real simple just ask every single place that this person has ever worked if they had any misconduct and then it's a Well intended but now we have to change 10 policies plus we have to put procedures together to actually Implement that so that's why you see a lot of changes to procedures here that Steve and his department will have to implement because now
063we have to um talk to every employer basically of every person that we hire and ask for records and then it's two ways so also if somebody has ever worked for us we have to be able to communicate with their new employer and so there's a lot of different procedures on how we're going to implement that so those are called administrative procedures we show them to you if you don't have any questions we go ahead and Implement them and Exhibits are like it could be a sample letter that we use or the the two that are on here are the exhibit here's the list of everything that we have to put on our website that we have to make available to the public so those are called exhibits that is a history lesson on iasb
064policy and the when we use the word press we try as much as we can to align with press because otherwise we're needing to consult our own attorneys and like I said this is 750 for a year for all of this expert advice on how to align our policy with the school code so um you have this policy report I don't know if you have any questions now or if you want to look through it and bring me questions that we could talk about next time I'd entertain either right now any questions I think when I was a brand new board member you gave me a binder this thick and said go off and read us your recommendations so I appreciate you guys doing the hard work this time yeah you're welcome this this so
065the the just the summary of all the changes we have to make um and then the the red line versions is 177 pages long for this issue of press and we get that usually four times a year so and this one's actually short sometimes they could be 300 pages that we have to go through and and so that's why we try to always align with press because it makes that review easier because our red line would match their Red Line when we do a homegrown policy um like for example we had one on an instructional materials but now we have three different policies that talk about instructional materials which is why we're doing a little cleanup here so we could just match press because it's confusing which one is the board's policy if it's in
066three different policies so we try to stay depressed whenever possible all right any further questions all right next are items for Action curriculum contracts Brad I believe I miscategorized this and it should have been in the consent agenda because these are existing oops contracts that we have with either testing agencies or subscription services that we have used for a number of years you can see the report there about nwea who does our map testing formative which is an online platform that quickly grades assessments and then Naviance which is both a tool for building career awareness and also getting kids looking at colleges so that's the portal for that those are three R contracts that we'll renew for next year as you said earlier this is a good example of one of those things that would
067be in a consent agenda because it's a regularly occurring it's a regularly occurring so you need to explain it every year okay but I appreciate you taking the time to explain it this year any questions I guess I do have one question like these type of situations um would we know are these increases from what we previously paid and then your your thoughts on whether if it is an increase is it acceptable yeah we take a look at those costs every year everything goes up every year so most of these contracts are up um about two to three thousand dollars from the previous year so that is um about the going rate for those when subscriptions become too costly we do really evaluate that because our budget isn't unlimited and there's always a well of
068Need for subscription Services when I started this job 13 years ago it was maybe like a pretty small percentage of my budget that we spend on subscriptions and now it's uh I would say it's a huge part of the curriculum and instruction budget is to make sure that we have access to all of these tools so it's growing own exponentially over the past 10 years we try and maintain consistency so teachers get used to having access to certain tools but also minding sometimes they go up like exorbitant rates people do different like ways that they charge for that whether it's per student per site and sometimes they make a shift that we don't find acceptable and other times vendors don't keep up their product in terms of safety in terms of student data safety or
069the product itself becomes really stale over time or teachers are asking for a change too sometimes so any other questions I would just say like something like that IXL is something you've used for years yeah we've used that I think six or seven years yeah and the Naviance I know is something they they've also used for quite a few years too that just provide consistency I think is important too but okay with that I would entertain a motion to approve the one-year contract estimates to IXL annual license in the amount of forty thousand seven hundred and fifty dollars Northwest evaluation Association and a WEA for forty seven thousand two hundred and fifty four dollars formative for forty one thousand 762.49 and PowerSchool slash Naviance for twenty nine thousand four hundred eighty four dollars and fifty
070three cents if you air Andrew yeah okay all right all in favor all right any opposed hearing none motion carries thank you great um the next uh part of the agenda I just took overview sorry is Administrative comments so it is my turn um and I have a couple tonight first of all just a quick celebration Amy Nelson breakfast here last week and she invited all of those Community um organizations that help provide services for our students and families and there were just so many specific examples shared of um you know they outfitted a dorm room for a student who needed or a college apartment for someone who needed it to food um security rent payments things like that in every organization that was invited just had the opportunity to share about some of the
071great things they were doing it was a great celebration chip in United Way uh the Batavia Mothers Club Chapel Street Food Pantry um couple other a couple others from the ministerial Saint Vincent De Paul many different groups that just step in when we have a family that needs something and um the way it was said is they they won the lottery if they moved to Batavia if they're a family in need because there are people who will step up and hope so that was a great celebration and thank you to all those Community groups um also for my comments tonight I wanted to talk about upcoming board meetings we have a couple extra board meetings um the next one is next Wednesday we have it on the calendar for a 5 PM special meeting to
072talk about negotiations hopefully approving uh the new vea contract at that meeting on May 31st we have our regular meeting on June 20th on June 27th we have Tom Kim who's here hiding in the back row who will be joining you all for a very special board workshop and I know you have a lot of thing I know I know so iasb will be helping you yeah exactly um I uh Laura Martinez who is a Batavia parent but also your field director for the Illinois Association of school boards will come and facilitate that meeting and she'll talk about what it means to be a board of education and that is just the kickoff of you guys thinking about strategy and your leadership and um like I already mentioned once uh you know strategic planning is
073really something that would be that need you need to jump into and a couple examples I already shared the example of um like coming up with we can't do everything so let's look to the Committees and look to the staff and the administration and say what are some of the big things that the board should be focused on and you guys set that tone and say these are our priorities and you have that work coming up um another example of something that this we need to talk about we'll put it on the agenda for June but the referendum so we need to Circle back and start thinking at a high level what the next steps are really in November it was close people told us put it back on the ballot we didn't understand the
074question we put the question back on the ballot people didn't necessarily love that we put the same question back on the ballot they um it did not pass in April when we put it back on um but we definitely had people's attention we definitely communicated it so we can interpret the no vote to say this wasn't the right plan so what do we do next this plan has been in the works since 2017 and so we need to think of a different strategy as a board so we can put we can start that discussion at the June meeting but that is really something that'll be ongoing over the next few months as we think about a strategy because our facility needs um our facility needs are real you just got an email today from somebody
075wanting you to talk about our facilities and and it's it's valid we do have needs in our facilities and then maybe an upcoming Topic at one of those meetings could also be tips because you um heard quite a a great presentation today but they're not the only Tiff in town so maybe Tony can talk through again just that background for everybody what is a tiff but also what tiffs are live within our district and what does it mean to as a fun exciting agenda item at some upcoming meeting we're going to pair it right with Comprehensive annual report that it'll just keep everybody Wide Awake yeah those are my updates unless anybody has questions or comments for me about any upcoming topics all right I've seen that the board comments are next Sue since we've
076arranged everything I was going to start at that end and congratulations you put yourself into it I'm going to let you start I'm going to be short and sweet congratulations to all the graduates I hope everyone has a wonderful summer that's it you could have talked just a little bit about it I have some notes so sure I'll take I'll take some time congratulations to all of our 2023 graduates um I wish all the best of luck on their future endeavors um also thinking about the students who are moving from elementary to Rotolo and from rotello to BHS one of them is my daughter who is moving on from Storm I know I'm like she's my she's my oldest so um a lot of us are pretty emotional but I we have had such an
077amazing experience I still have my son who is in Kinder currently so we get to enjoy them for a lot longer but they really did an amazing job over the last six years and just getting her ready for the next step so um sad but really excited um you know we're really fortunate to have some amazing Educators and staff members um really at every level in our district there's one in particular that I do want to shout out to Amber jursa was recognized I don't know if everyone I'm sure we've all seen the different communication but um last weekend she went down to Bloomington Normal at the Illinois State Board of Education so those who excel in Teacher of the Year banquet um so there she was recognized and celebrated as the um North suburbs
078Regional teacher of the year so I mean that's that's a pretty huge deal I think she was one out of 12 finalists and I don't know that we've ever had video be a finalist so I mean that's huge um so I was really you know excited to see that and just it really brings it back and I think it's a great time for us all to grow together and hopefully I'm sure we're going to have more to come and that's really exciting um and just speaking of that I mean she was there with different um you know ISB board members and the um IES president and ie directors so it's just really a great opportunity um I think probably for her and a lot of other Educators they spend so much of their time caring
079and pouring into everyone else that it's like if you're celebrated it's kind of it doesn't sink in right so I just want to recognize her because she is amazing and I don't think that just like so many other teachers and staff members I know they just they will hear the Pats but I mean truly it's amazing and so it really speaks for our district and how fortunate we are so I just want to take a moment to recognize her as well as all of our awesome other staff members um I also wanted to say next week kicks off pride month so happy pride month and um I hope that everyone no matter if they're going on trips they're staying around whether it's a summer of survival or picking up another job that there are times
080just like Todd speaking of Todd just being able to take some time and pockets for ourselves so that we can come back in August a little renewed ready to grow together and really ready to go edit I have comments as well so I want to thank everyone who attended the meeting tonight including the city of Aurora for that detailed presentation I learned a lot and I appreciate them answering all our questions and even though we didn't have any open comment tonight I do want to thank everybody who attended meetings this year shared their thoughts everyone who sends us an email everyone who meets us on the street and shares thoughts or concerns or praise I just want to tell people that you are heard we do listen it does help Drive our discussions and it
081really is essential for us to figure out where the district needs to move to so I know we asked the community really engage this year and I do want to thank everybody who participated in that process and like my colleagues to my ride do want to talk about commencement it's tomorrow night at Northern I believe it's the 152nd time the Batavia High School will hold a commencement ceremony for the class of 2023. I have a daughter who's a junior so I will know many of those children and um I can tell you that our community is proud of you we love you and we're excited to see where your lives lead and what you will accomplish but I can tell you if you need us we are still going to be here supporting you cheering
082you on and I want to wish their the graduates and their families the families are you know to get to that road is a lot as someone has three kids um so congratulations to all of them and then since commencement is a natural time of reflection I would like to say thank you to a few more folks starting with our board secretary Cindy Rodriguez I want to thank Cindy for her hard work this was her first year as the board secretary I'm sure she had a lot to learn and I just want to thank her for her hard work her responsiveness her diligence um you know you always help us do our work efficiently even in old dinosaur like me who has to print out paper documents of maybe a few hours before meeting so
083I want to thank you Cindy for all you do to support the board and our work and then just to the greater BPS community so I want to start by thanking superintendent Dr Hitchens I see Tony got a new name plank so now I'll say doctor in Glacier Dr Newkirk Steve uh Pierce Holly beachman and everybody who works here at rosly Jones for their hard work I want to thank my fellow board members Raquel Danielle Rob Craig RJ and sue for stepping up to serve our community and I also want to recognize outgoing members Kathy Dremel Aaron meitzer and Chris low for all their hard work this year and for their previous years of service and then I especially want to thank our people on the front lines our hard-working principals and administrative teams of
084course our teachers our paraprofessionals our aides counselors the support staff our coaches our nurses and trainers maintenance and custodial staff food service and transportation teams all the parent volunteers whether it be a PTO a booster or just helping out any way you can at your local school that your kids attend and also of course all the local businesses and service organizations that support our school I mean it really is a community effort and we are so fortunate to have so many people that are willing to engage and help our families and kids and then of course just everybody who keeps keeps helps keep our students safe dry and comfortable sometimes I think we take that for granted but if you don't have those Baseline things covered it's really hard to learn and I just want
085everybody who knows that contributes to anything that every one of you is essential and every one of you is seen and appreciated so thank you for your work and then finally I just want to thank the parents and the BPS 101 Community as a man and a family that we have three children my wife Kathy and I have three children we can't do it ourselves and we rely on our friends neighbors and our community to help raise our children and um together you know I think we're doing an amazing job and tomorrow we'll sort of be like a nice exclamation point to the job our community is and then finally in that at least I want to thank my wife for allowing me to serve on the school board it does take me away from
086my family it is important work I believe and I do enjoy the work but without her support uh I could not do this and she might be watching tonight so Kathleen thank you for that and with that I just want to say thank you and I hope everyone has a relaxing and safe summer all right so uh I'm gonna first start off by calling out the sixth grade science teachers at Rotolo particularly this was spearheaded by Deb Nelson and she got the Estes which is a rocket company to actually come out and build 200 rockets for the sixth grade students and they kind of had like a a barrier that was like okay that's the moon and they helped launch rockets to see how you know the altitude and that they could reach the moon
087and so forth which um you know she got grants and everything so they built 200 rackets basically for free and they launched them and so she was part of the stem program but um so it's Deb Nelson Julie singenberger Jody um uh yes thank you Jody stoneberg and then Sam Wigley so they were all there and they helped do that um so just that's I think that's pretty great they bring into bringing stemming back into the schools and then uh lastly just to the class of 2023 congratulations best of luck in your future endeavors and like they said if you ever need anything you can always come back and we're here to help thank you jumps over me [Laughter] um so uh uh once again congratulations to the graduates uh 2023 graduates I will say
088I hope you guys have a little better weather tomorrow night than we did last year because it was an absolute downpour leaving uh the ceremony so I'm sure some of you remember that thank you to the teachers and support staff for all your relaxing summer and recharge and get ready to get back at it in August um thank you to Steve Brad and Tony they met with me over the last few weeks uh put up with uh probably a lot of dumb questions for myself just trying to learn a little bit about how their organizations run some of the processes that we use so appreciate the information guys and I do know that uh we got a lot of challenges but uh you three gentlemen are the right people to help us get through them
089so thank you um I feel like I've got some negative things so I'm sorry uh positives and negatives so first of all I'm really happy to hear we're going to talk about the referendum again I had the positive and happy experience to go to storm Stampede which is HD Storm's field day that was a lot of fun I ran the fling section where you fill in your shoe so it was surprising how many shoes went backwards but the kids did really good about saving each other um the sad part about that was seeing the cones that had to be used to prop the doors open because the need of the facility so that's all that's I don't mean I don't need to be negative I'm sorry I need you to be positive after me I
090will be so um the the casino is amazing and I'm so excited about that and obviously the revenue sounds great but I'm having a really hard time um it you know acknowledging or I don't want to to have all this excitement with the loss of Revenue that's going to come at the expense of the children at the Aurora schools um so I think I'm gonna probably dig into that a little bit more just get some more information on exactly how that all happened because I would assume that um losing 200 300 000 a year towards school districts is or if they're even at five million dollars a year which is is that what we were told we're going to be at some point so if they're losing that much revenue for their schools I could
091only imagine what their situation is right now um all happy here grads congratulations I look forward to being at the graduation tomorrow but sad because I'm going to my daughter's fifth grade celebration tomorrow and I'm probably gonna cry but that will be I don't know something I'll be sad and happy at the same time and then last we're all talking about summer and all the breaks that everyone's getting but I do want to remember or remind everyone for us that you know we are going to be having more meetings probably the summer than we've had in the last couple months so thank you to all of all of you all of us thank you to us thanks thanks to me um I know I'm really excited I'm really grateful that you all are willing to
092do this because I know it took a while for us yeah the summer so I'm really happy and proud of us that we're going to be getting some things done before the new school year starts take it away okay I am just going to keep it short and sweet because in the past Kathy would stand up here and say I can't say anything to add to these sorts of things but you won't know me so I'm gonna just Barrel through it a bit um no I am this is a big year for me in particular just because my youngest is graduating tomorrow so he today went to Grace McWane and stood up there with some of his best buds that he met in kindergarten are still some of his best buds now so that's very
093excited I guarantee I will be crying just hopefully not during the speech tomorrow I want to say as a husband to a speech pathologist in a school district sort of a teacher that you know you're at the midpoint of the year and you're going you can make it you'll do this you'll get there it'll be great and now they're at the end you guys this is your home stretch I pass along to the teachers and the staff and the custodians and everybody else that we appreciate all of the hard work that they have done for the entire year and whatever break that they decide to give themselves over the next couple of months because they don't all get to take a break for the entire summer so that please take what you can and enjoy
094what you can but we really appreciate all the effort everybody puts um lastly to our former fellow board members I'm very excited particularly about the three of you that are joining us I'm getting to know you guys over the past couple of weeks I'm looking forward to it again and particularly the kind of new kind of jolt of energy and excitement and things to look forward to taking care of and and what we can accomplish as a group is very exciting to me so that is all of my comments that I have for tonight so thank you very much um going to then move on and say I would entertain a motion to adjourn to a closed session for the reason of collective negotiations matters between a public body and its employees are the representatives
095or deliberations concerning salary schedules for one or more classes of employees so moved so moved by AJ and Sue and second by Sue all in favor aye any opposed motion carries