001to order a regular meeting of the Board of Education March 21st 2023 at seven o'clock P.M Cindy could you please call the roll here hello president here Meadows presentler would mean please lead us in the pledge I pledge allegiance 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 all right Dr Hitchens are there any items to be removed from or added to the agenda tonight there are not all right favorite thing for all of us is we're going to start with some celebrations I would like to invite um Scott Bayer and Ryan Farwell to tell us about wrestling this year that's where that stays okay you guys hear me okay well I thank you for the opportunity to come
002here to acknowledge some of the accomplishments of our kids this year uh Ryan speak about the our Mr Farrell coach Farrell speak about the uh the boys side uh but I would like to say before I get going how proud I am to see him uh do a great job with those guys this year and their team so I haven't done that for 10 years it's a it's a a labor of love and uh he's doing a phenomenal job with it but I'm here to talk about our girls team uh it's my first year doing that and so uh it's been uh a very fun year for me it's been a breath of fresh air in a lot of ways I'm super proud of these girls that we have in attendance we have some of
003their teammates here as well I guess what I'm most proud of is the uh you know the process that they've committed to it they're doing something very hard and uh it's not popular yet uh it's going to be it's curls wrestling is the fastest growing sport uh in the country uh for uh in in all you know areas College uh high school and uh also youth so uh these guys are groundbreakers as have been the girls that um in our district that came before them but um we uh we've got a lot of really young kids on our team a lot of freshmen and sophomores uh and um you know most of them are pretty inexperienced we do have a couple girls here who've been wrestling through our club their homegrown Talent uh and been
004wrestling since they were real little and and Lily's still a little real little but um they they uh they they've represented TV for a long time and so um super proud of of these three girls accomplishments I want to say that uh one of the things I feel best about uh is being able to offer this sport to uh the 51 of our population that I think you know uh will benefit for as much as we have on on our 49 side so I did end the season survey and uh like to uh to a person they talked about the resilience they built the confidence they built the ability to you know sort of overcome obstacles and over you know conquer doubt and things like that um and really derive a deep sense of accomplishment
005for what they're doing so uh and I think the biggest thing that they've developed is kind of a Sisterhood uh with each other and uh that's been real special for me because the the two girls that I'm gonna talk about tonight um that have been part of our club they've been doing this kind of on their own in a lot of ways and so they've got teammates now and I'm super proud of that but the girls that I have here I'd like you guys to come stand over here if you guys would Lily and Sydney and Susu come on over you have to be seen so because they're the ones that uh end of the season are really high note I just want to give them uh the credit they deserve and so I'd like
006to talk about Susu first she's a senior for us um she was in my uh class during hybrid and so I couldn't put my recruiter hat on as well as I would have liked to have I had her and Brad's daughter Lily in my class and they both came out this year as seniors both had great years and and uh Susu um I knew was going to have a really great season we went we I should talk about our schedule if we went to Iowa uh and uh I you know I had to find a schedule that would accommodate our experienced girls and also our novice girls too and girls wrestling is a very similar Place throughout the Midwest and and so I knew I kind of picked out the right tournaments like you know
007the girls could find their way uh to have have some more experienced girls to wrestle those that had some experience uh and so I knew that Susu was going to be uh in the hunt for um you know a strong State finish when she wrestled the uh returning state champ from Iowa into overtime and this was very early in the season she's got great balance and she's really strong and uh she you know throughout the season she won uh tournament she placed in most of the tournaments she wrestled in she was a sexual champ this year and uh finished with 28 wins and and uh really could not have had a better season and we're super proud of her and so that's that's Susu paw so foreign like I said she's a product of our
008wrestling club her parents have you know coached and helped out a really active uh here in the community and uh I'm going to talk about City next but you know Lily grew up through the club having Sydney kind of as a role model uh and uh when Lily came into to school we talked a little bit and she didn't think we could find teammates for her you know she's she's been you know wrestling for a long time and I know she's talked to friends about wrestling but we found some teammates for her uh and she was the one reason I think a lot of them stayed out she really has a great attitude and um is a good young leader on our team and she finished with the third highest uh win total that we've
009ever had in the program she finished with 44 wins this year uh and um she was a champion at uh Pontiac a really big tournament uh down there she was she placed at our tournament in Wisconsin uh she placed in our term in Ohio and she was third at sectionals and she had to beat some top ranked wrestlers to to qualify for state and when she was there she uh placed fifth medal down there so really great season for her let's give her a hand too and uh the last wrestler is kind of been our poster drill for the season she hates that I'm bragging on her right now I'm about to brag on her she's one of the most humble people I know uh but uh she wrestled uh obviously at our club through
010the middle school she started on the varsity at the middle school and probably would be good enough on most teams to start on the boys team um she uh his she came into the year already having one two state championships uh one with the iwcoa well I should say last year and here's what she's done since last spring if I could lay it out and she's going to start turning red I know that but uh you know since last spring she won a Fargo National Championship uh which is in the freestyle the Olympic style so she's a national champion she got a chance to compete with Team USA at uh Buenos Aires Argentina and silver medal there this last early summer and then later in the Summer she had the opportunity when the opponent ahead
011of her went down or her um the girl that made uh the world team um went down she got to sub in for and she placed fifth in the world in Rome this summer and uh later on beat that uh same girl in a flow wrestling who's number one competition so she has the number one ranking in the country right now um and she won every tournament we took her to not not shocking uh and she won another state championship this year beating a girl who called her out on social media uh and was the number one girl uh at 138 she went hunting for Sydney and Cindy Sydney uh took her out so it was pretty pretty uh pretty exciting uh so it was the best uh finals match in in the I should
012say finals uh she came away Victorious and maybe the most impressive thing is she was in helping with the kids club the next day she came in and um was working with her little brother who's in our in our kids club there's a great picture of her out there on the internet helping a little girl in our club that same day on her knees kind of talking her building her up she came to RMS with me in October and had a line of you know 50 kids out in the atrium when I told him that you better get your autograph from Sydney Perry because he's going to be the Olympic ladder here coming up so um you know they flocked over to her and she's just kind of you know been everything we've asked her
013to to be for us and so super proud of her uh these girls and every girl on our team so um yeah just happy to be here foreign [Applause] hi I'm Ryan Farwell um again I'm really appreciative of you guys uh brought us down here and thankful that I get to acknowledge our season that we had and uh some of the guys that had uh run there at the state tournament we have one of them here tonight and I'll talk about him here in a little bit we had some scheduling conflicts with practice and stuff like that as they moved on to another season but overall uh this year we had a great year we uh we finished uh in top three in almost every single tournament that we've been in uh and then we
014had uh some individuals make a run down the state nine sectional qualifiers and then four uh that moved on to the state tournament um all four of them are the ones that I'm going to be talking about here tonight and all four of them were team captains for us um they've they have been there in a pivotal role of creating the culture in our room they lead by example they've committed themselves to this sport uh and and they do a lot of right things and of course that's that's why they're captains um they they are true leaders of our team uh they they've done some special things and it shows in the results that they get at the end of the year um we have two captains that are going to be moving on they're
015not here today um but those two are going to go down as probably some of the top Pro the top two most successful wrestlers in Batavia wrestling history uh Kaden federoff ended his career with 152 wins the highest that any uh Batavia wrestlers had he had the highest single season record at 49 and he's a four-time state qualifier three-time State Placer was in the state finals and a four-time conference champ again he couldn't make it here tonight uh then we had another senior moving on that was kill Andrews again uh guy who came through the club and wrestled from his freshman to senior year he ended with 140 wins overall he will be second I believe overall in wins was a three-time state qualifier finished in the top eight is junior year and then finished
016with a state medal at sixth place um another one we have is returning uh that will be Aiden Huck he's uh he's of course a junior so he's going to be a senior next year he'll be a two-year Captain um he's now a two-time state qualifier and uh his junior year finished in the top eight uh the one that was able to come today you know I'm gonna have you come up uh this is eno Garcia again Junior captain of our program uh Eno here had a little bit late start coming back from an injury had some adversity at the start of a season um but he handled it like a true professional would again he led as an example in our room and he never made an excuse he he came out he competed
017with the top kids in the state immediately stepping on to the mat even after not being able to be there with us for the start of the Season he was in the finals of almost every single tournament except really the state tournament where he ended up placing sixth uh Eno also just joined a pretty elite club in Batavia wrestling where he recorded at the state tournament technically his 101st win but he is now a centurion where he's recorded a hundred wins as a Batavia wrestler so we're we're very lucky to have two Representatives that have been captains for us and that are returning next year and can return and can continue to build on that culture and we're really excited about our season this year and what these guys returning can do so thank you
018for having us and Eno Garcia [Applause] so I think I might have made a comment last time the wrestlers were here but um I grew up in Iowa and so um Iowa it's like if you hear like Indiana everyone grows up with the basketball in Iowa wrestles and I wrestled for a couple years wasn't tough enough so I had to move to an easier sport football but uh I just want to say that yeah wrestling is the toughest sport that I've seen in the mental toughness it's competing the discipline you have to have I still remember going out to that mat and looking the person the eye and if you don't have a good day you're going to end up on your back there's no one you can blame but yourself so I want to
019say that I'm sure your parents are very proud of you your coaches are proud of you our community is proud of you and I do want to speak to the women I've been following you very close and you know your legacy of what you're achieving is fantastic and you're I'm sure you're we're all proud of your accomplishments but I think your greatest Legacy As you move on will be that next Generation I can speak to my neighbor I have a neighbor's daughter who's 10 years old she's in the kids club she's been looking for an outlet and I know she's worked with some of the girls in the front we're all here and the impact it's had on her mental Outlook her physical Outlook her parents changing her demeanor her confidence so someday you'll be
020able to come back very soon and women's wrestling will just be like any other Sport and you're the Trailblazers that are going to establish that for the next Generation so I just want to thank you for all you're doing for those next Generations that are going to come behind you so congratulations on that thanks Aaron next item on our agenda is public comments did we have uh public comment sign up we do have one okay so uh welcome to everybody tonight um anybody else that wishes to address the board please let Cindy know right now because we're doing public comments uh just a reminder that in general we don't answer questions or engage in dialogue during public comments it doesn't mean we don't take your concerns or comments seriously we really value active Community participation
021in District Endeavors and we encourage people to engage with the district we have a number of channels designed specifically for that we're not involved in the day-to-day operations of the district so we don't engage in District business individually but if you have specific questions or you'd like a follow-up please let us know there's a way on the website or you can let us know tonight so I'm going to pass it over to Holly dieterman who's going to explain the procedures for public comments thank you President we have one public speaker Bob McQuillen Bob would you please come to the podium we have a three-minute timer that will certainly be displayed up on the front board we asked you to speak to the group with Civility and respect as we will address you thank you thank
022you again my name is Bob McQuillen and I live in Batavia the district's position on the April 4th referendum if approved would be that it is not an increase in school taxes it has promised that debt payment will remain at 9.1 million dollars per year if the referendum fails Property Owners will receive about a 10 percent decrease in the school taxes in my case that would be about 630 dollars per year quite a savings the tax savings would take place at the same time the current bonds are retired my question is why is the district saying that a yes vote is not a tax increase if a no vote leads directly to a 10 percent School tax decrease doesn't it make sense that a yes vote is a hidden tax increase I have always been
023taught that a higher number is an increase over a lower number six six thousand and three hundred dollars versus five thousand and six six hundred and seventy dollars is an increase it seems people it seems some people don't agree with that concept bottom line I would like to know if each board member thinks a yes vote is a tax increase or not your reasoning would be also appreciated I realized that school board members don't normally respond to public comment during their meeting but I believe the community is very confused over this issue and and because we vote for each board member individually it is important that each board member's reasoning is heard secondly during the league of women's voters last week it was revealed that from reports filed with the state of Illinois for the
024previous and current election three companies have contributed twenty one thousand dollars of twenty one thousand three hundred dollars that the I'm just going to call them the yes group has raised all three companies currently or will possibly have large contracts with the school district if the referendum passes while legal do you believe it is ethical for an organization with a direct benefit from a referendum passing should be able to con contribute such a large percentage of a campaign committee's funding I have other questions but I believe Mr Mathias plans to address those later in this meeting thank you and again I would appreciate comments from each board member um but I know it's not normal uh next item on our agenda is our BPS Partners I'm going to invite our student ambassador thank you ladies
025yeah thank you so much [Music] um so we just have a little quick presentation today um first I want to say good job to all of our winter sports for having really successful seasons and for representing Batavia so well all right so first of all girls soccer boys tennis baseball and softball and the boys lacrosse season has started and they've already had a few games and hopefully they'll continue to do well and also a big congrats to girls track and field and voice track and field for winning decane conference both varsity and jv1 Decay conference and there were some new records set and some amazing accomplishments Rock The Runway recently put an amazing show out so I'd recommend anyone who hasn't seen it yet to go see it next year because they had some truly
026Innovative designs and it was such an amazing show to watch um black student union and Equity Justice Community organized an incredible event commemorating black history last month we had amazing speakers and the students loved it International open circle celebrated Persian years today and we'll be talking more about it on Wednesday for cultural education um the picture below is a decoration we did on the lrc today thank you next item I would like to invite Todd Swanson president of the Pea to the podium good evening members of the board last month I came before you with a message of Celebration this month I am focusing my comments on the topic of gratefulness especially to you as members of the board these last few years have seen our world in education turned upside down from a global
027pandemic to an ever-increasing threat of a catastrophic teacher shortage in the near future we are still here educating our students and shaping their lives this reality has many contributing factors our amazing staff of certified Educators and our dedicated support Personnel throughout the district are on the job each day no matter what challenges they may be facing outside of their classroom walls connecting with their students pushing their limits of thinking and striving to provide a place of safety for varying thoughts ideas and emotions another contributing factor that has kept us moving forward is you as a board there's no secret that there have been bumps in the road that in full disclosure could have divided us and impaired our working relationship month after month you have heard from me and other Educators speaking on a vast
028array of topics from where I started as ba president five years ago to where we are now I feel that this board has made strides to move from hearing to listening and instead of automatically accepting to questioning have outcomes always been agreeable absolutely not but I do get the sense that in most situations we have not only been heard but listened to as well and that can be substantiated in the comments that you make as board members and the ensuing actions that you take case in point will be when Lisa and I both talk about our follow-up from the June 21st meeting we had together last summer we will be providing you with a requested update that came from being able to have difficult conversations with you as a board with smt and with ba
029leadership around trust collaboration and communication that again will come up a little later in our meeting what I'd like to address now in relation to gratitude is your willingness to use what for some of us has been a completely new different or underutilized lens and that is the lens of Dei as a board you've begun to ask the questions of whose voice is not being heard in your decisions in what areas of our district are we falling short in regards to supporting all of our subgroups what do we need to prioritize and going forward with this focus in mind this work has been messy unstructured and at times seemingly unproductive but we are at least having the conversations that show your willingness to look at all of our students and staff and if we are
030falling short asking why it is and how we plan to fix it there's still a very long road ahead of us as a district but at least we're on the road together as a board you have made that commitment to educational equity and for that as a Bea we are grateful there are some in our community that feel that this focus is distracting or leading us in a way that we shouldn't be going as a district this leads me to another example being grateful to you as a board and that is that you recognize that the Educators and support Personnel in this District are the experts in what it takes to educate the students of Batavia you know that even if we had the best textbooks on the market our students would get little benefit
031from them if they were not in a place of social emotional stability that would enable them to begin to not only take in the information but begin to synthesize it in a useful manner establishing relationships building trust guiding supporting diagnosing and educating takes time skill and professional judgments that our staff makes over and over each day day in and day out you realize that teaching is so much more than divulging information to a class that in itself is made up of a diversity and skills diversity and Readiness to learn diversity and traumatic experiences and diversity in everyone's state of social emotional health in fact what we don't see that which exists on the inside of our students is as diverse as the individual faces we see looking at lettuce each day in our classrooms there
032are also some in our community that say we need to stop worrying about how kids feel or protecting their feelings to get back to the basics because our test scores are drip are slipping you'd be hard-pressed to find an educator anywhere that would disagree with the statement that our kids are more than a test score picked from one moment in time but there is truth in the fact that scores are dropping when you look at year-to-year Trends in fact based on the data for the Illinois school report card this trend could be verified however I think that when it looks at data all the data needs to be looked at to help make a complete picture yes scores in Batavia have dropped on iar and sat over the past few years but so have they
033in the districts that we seem to always be comparing ourselves to like Geneva and St Charles in all three District average scores have been going down from even before when the pandemic hit in regards to sat in both English and math all three of these districts had scores decrease at this exact same amount from 2017 to 2022 English scores saw a four percent drop in all three districts and mass scores dropped five percent in Batavia and Geneva and six percent in St Charles for iar the drops in all three districts from previous to from prior to the pandemic until now range from nine percent for Batavia 16 drop in Geneva and 18 drop in St Charles for ELA similarly drops were seen in math as well on iar Batavia with a 13 drop Geneva 9
034and St Charles 7. so to say that Batavia scores are dropped is inaccurate but an incomplete statement when scores are dropping at relatively the same rate in the districts We compare ourselves to this leads itself to a more systemic conversation that impacts education as a whole but one that certainly needs to be had if one wants to dig even further into the whys of these drops you don't have to look much further into the data than to the exact reasons why Dei becomes so critically important you want our test scores to rise then we need to look at why our most marginalized subgroups are underperforming on the English portion of the iaar test last year 43 percent of our white students in Batavia met or exceeded expectations while at the same time only 16 percent
035of our black students did and 22 percent of our Hispanic students did our El population had a meet or exceed rate of five percent and our IEP students 12 percent in order for our test stores scores to rise overall we need to make sure that all students have the same opportunities to instruction and resources that meet their needs that is educational equity and why it is so critical sat data mirrors iar data on the English test 53 percent of white students in Batavia met or exceeded goals while only eight percent of our black students did and 19 of our Hispanic students did in math on the SAT the trends are similar 56 percent of white students met or exceeded while eight percent of black students did and 16 percent of Hispanic students did again if
036we want overall changes and averages to rise as a district the data shows plainly where our most critical needs are and your commitment to educational Equity will hopefully leave our collaborative structures to putting supports in place for those that need them while providing opportunities to continue to enhance the instruction for those already meeting and exceeding is a district that we have plenty of opportunities for growth and much work still needs to be done however that should never take away from the great things that we are already doing in our district that doesn't mean that we don't become complacent either after tonight there's only one more board meeting with this exact board intact I want to make sure that you all know that the Bea is grateful for your time that you dedicate to being a
037board member we are grateful for you asking questions and we are equally grateful for thinking about how these decisions you make will impact not only those that you hear from but from those that you don't you respect all the voices in our community and my and resp and represent all the voices in our community in my mind that is almost an impossible job but I've seen you listen contemplate and evaluate your decisions in ways that ensure Maximum Impact for students Educators and community we may not always agree or see eye to eye but that doesn't take away from recognizing the work that you do for the community of Batavia and for that we are all grateful and with that I'd like to thank you all for your time and have a great rest of your
038evening start with you missed the recent Equity meeting but Bick met last Saturday it was the last meeting of the year of course it's a meeting of the minds between all the booster groups in Batavia always great idea sharing and a delightful time as always and that's all I have thanks Karen good day I'm gonna ask Mr Pierce if he could uh provide an update on the sniping committee because unfortunately I was not able to make it today yeah we had a good uh actually we had a great meeting it's the longest we've met we got a lot a lot accomplished um were um kind of coming together it was funny uh Josh bulac from the business office attended and he used to be on the stipend committee he walked in to me and he
039goes wow this is like all new people and it's really true it's really turned over um in this last year with new members which I think is great we still have some of the old guard the OG is still in effect and are are still doing some good work but what we did today is we um we looked at some of the submissions that staff members have made for our um for stipends we talked about ways to navigate that because as you probably know we don't have like an injection of new funds into our stipends at this time um and so there's some opportunities there we also are hopeful that we'll have some new money um and so with that we prioritize some of the stipends that have been um uh applied for um a
040real asset to our team has been a couple of Staff members at the high school and the middle school who are involved highly with our different programs and they have great insight and so overall um as uh uh Keith osvastated he said I feel like we're we really took a step forward tonight and so we did a lot of good work and we're kind of setting the stage um we're going to meet again uh in uh end of April our jail be sent out an invite for that probably tomorrow and we're going to keep doing the work I did notify all of the members of that committee that it's probably gonna to get us teed up properly for next school year we'll probably need to meet probably during the month of June just to be
041ready for the fall so that we can kind of use all of our resources to provide the best experiences and best opportunities for our kids to be a part of something so overall thumbs up it was a really good meeting 16. Greg I was not at the board meeting last month so David do you have anything about the construction the capital projects committee last time you know what I wasn't there either [Laughter] so I'll give a quick one this was a while ago because we only meet quarterly as a part of the capital projects committee a quick update um there's one coming up I think next month uh just kind of getting prepped for summer work double checking lead times which is the architecting construction manager we're on top of because that's the banging of
042everyone's existence and construction right now at the time we were looking at the revamped referendum website a little bit more to kind of understand that and how that did but other than that it was a quick and kind of efficient meeting so anything to add Tony I thought I can recall yeah it's been a while yeah thanks uh CAC met last week and actually had a really great presentation um they talked in depth about what their needs were what was uh what was working what they thought that they would want to focus on for summer work and I believe that conversation is going to continue this week um but yeah it was a very robust discussion and it was it was really um really gratifying to see those teams come in and talk about the
043vertical articulation that we're trying to do within the district and ensuring that our curriculum is as up to Snuff as possible so um plaque met last week which is nice because usually they meet right after our meeting so I actually have something to report um they're actually starting to make some progress um they talked about um they've been working on this master list of all professional development that's needed by the faculty and staff training and they're trying to make it accessible for everyone I believe that'll be through the Intranet um and some good progress so trying to make sure everybody knows what they need when they need it how to get it that type of that type of doing good oh and beefy we'll meet Thursday a scholarship committee met Monday I've chosen scholarship recipients
044and they will be notified after Thursday when the whole committee votes to officially officially award officially accept it so yes it's nice and thank you Todd for attending that was a great meeting quick yep to the point in and out in under an hour great I think we've refined it over the years you know we've gotten down we've gotten that nerve system set so awesome thank you great seniors yep Aaron uh the insurance committee met on March 9th I was able to attend virtually and the conversation focused on just our transition to healthgram and providing supports to our employees and their families so they can access the benefits that they deserve I do have an exciting announcement to share with the board though um as a refresher uh you everyone probably at this with this
045body remembers on January January 24th this body approved a one-year contract with Modern Health which is an online Health Services platform that's going to be accessible and I'm excited to say that on March 13th that officially rolled out and so those in the audience in the community watching online what modern health is it's an online platform uh where employees of the district and their families can receive one-on-one counseling um I have it actually print out here unlimited group support sessions uh a library of guided meditation just a wealth of resources we know mental health is on everybody's mind we're very proud of this program and so we're just hoping that everybody that could use services like this takes advantage of it and then the last thing I'll just say is I want to give a
046quick shout out to Kathy enger for her service to the district she was the district's benefits coordinator she's now moved on to a new opportunity I'd get a chance to know her a little bit on this committee and I can say that she served the district with this distinction and we're sorry to see a relieved but we're happy that she's found another opportunity and we just want to wish her well and thank her Erin yes how soon as I think you'll be able to get us any sort of data in terms of how much this new health gram is being utilized uh Tony I don't know I'm sorry I do know that they're reporting statistics are robust but I haven't seen that end of things I mean it's still early yet but that's something I
047think that would be in the last week yeah one of the advantages of people can you come back like in three months right maybe summer time summertime yeah well I can't say one of the reasons why and I want to speak for the committee but um one of the reasons we decided to implement this program is that the current health services provide being provided were not being utilized very much and so we're hope and we know there's a need out there so we're hoping that this platform is something that people this is like an online this is online sit at home and yeah kind of a la carte and you know I think everyone thinks of mental health is like sitting on a psychiatrist couch and this is not this and this is actually when
048we did the research most people don't like that environment they want something a little more Anonymous so we're thinking the buffet of options here is going to be more something that more people will want to access and utilize so yeah the time will tell though and I I certainly wouldn't expect and it's on our mind I think it's important to bring that back up sometime maybe summer or fall to see how it's being utilized because if we could grow the scope at a cost effective right model I I think it would be very well utilized with students you know Todd talked a lot about our test scores and I mean I've said it many times our test scores are great but if our students are hurting they're not going to do well on tests so
049thank you so much for bringing that up how is this rolled out to the staff well there I can tell you there was a Google meet at 3 45 on Monday the day so there was a chance for everyone to get in there and ask questions I mean okay again I don't know how many people don't know how to answer that but there was also videos explaining it to him so there was a lot of resources to explain to them how to access it yeah they received emails and they received um so more than one or two actual mail yeah so and so it these are the kinds of things that take a while to upgrade okay they don't really know what it is but right we've got actually there's cards that we put out
050there's one actually out on the counter on here that just paper pop-up tent informs people so like in the staff lunchroom whatever we're working on making sure that everybody knows about it okay thank you okay all right anything else all right Chris uh wreck did not meet so I got nothing huh uh next item on our agenda is our consent agenda was which is our opportunity to um approve a number of routine business items all of which are detailed within the consent agenda so I'm going to ask Mr Pierce to walk us through that tonight sounds great 5.1 and 5.2 are the approval of the February 21st uh 2023 meeting and closed session minutes 5.3 is our monthly Personnel report 5.4 is the payroll and bills 5.5 is the destruction of the closed session recording
051from September 21st 2021 5.6 is our donations we had a sizable donation from the city of Batavia for the post prom fund as well as a very large donation from the Batavia wrestling club for wrestling match Batavia High School so we thank both of those organizations for that 5.7 is the approval of the special education contract with um Nia and just just to give a little more context to that um you know I think that you could look at something like this and say well are we doing all this because we're you know we're short staff and I think there there's some truth in that we've we've definitely had challenges um hiring occupational therapists but it should be known too by the board that um we've contracted services with NAA for a long long time
052I've been here a decade and we were doing it then so this isn't anything new it's really providing the supports and the services for some of our most challenged and needy students and they have Specialists that we may not have access to and so that's uh the the driver for um for this contract and so you can see the size the most sizable costs in here are for OT and PT services and utilize those Services a lot of days for our students because they need them and so it's a very necessary function um and we believe that the uh the cost while expensive is very much worth it for our students to support them um with that 5.8 is our curriculum contracts 5.9 is our annual ihsa membership renewal from BHS 5.10 is the Fox
053Valley Career Center intergovernmental agreement and then we finish up with 5.11 which is the approval of the the entire consent agenda any items on that agenda for removal or clarification all right then I would entertain a motion to approve the consent agenda as presented move by myself or second by lock all in favor aye aye any opposed all right next item on our agenda are reports I'm going to pass it over to Dr Hutton's to start us up great there are five reports tonight and this section of the agenda doesn't require none of these reports require a vote that would be the next items so for the reports the first two you see every month and normally you don't have questions because um they are recurring and if you do have questions I'd be happy
054to entertain those now in the third report is Administrative procedures and Exhibits and I'm going to turn that one over to Brad sure these are just some administrative procedures and Exhibits related to our bullying and harassment policy out of section 7 of your policy manual and these are just support systems for our bullying and prevention program that we run really we ask that any student who is experiencing bullying report it to any adult that's the reporting system that we use there's a number of different ways they can do that but we want them to reach out to any adult within our system to report bullying and it triggers a series of responses from the school to make sure that student is supported and can work through those issues so and that doesn't happen again so
055these are just some support systems we look at this data pretty closely and monitor it especially at the 612 level we take a look at this on a monthly basis and track this data to see our progress in being proactive and present in preventing these issues this looks like it just came from press these are pressed okay any questions on that right I have some thoughts that I'd like to share um obviously bullying is a topic that I don't know about the rest of the board but I hear about relatively frequently in the community from people who have their kids who are suffering from it and it's one of those things where as a board member I know that we track the data but I know that I don't believe that we've actually seen the
056data ourselves and I'm wondering if it's such a hot button issue and because literally it can mean life or death for some students I'm wondering if we want to prioritize this enough so that we get a report and then start establishing some parameters that we to know that we're making progress um so I want to throw that out there to wonder whether or not we as a board would like to receive that some of that information and find out um whether or not we're tracking the data in a way that we feel is best Chris mentioned that to me earlier today so we talked about ways that we could do that in a couple of ways that we already do that the board has its annual calendar of monitoring reports annually and then the public
057also there is a law that the public sees our bullying report and we we review policy 7 180 and we're required to put that on the website so in August we'll put annually we put up a report on the um on the website that tracks or that talks about all the number of incidences so last year I think it was 85 for the District 65 students and about 45 of those 65 students were middle schoolers so this like Brad said this year the secondary discipline or student Behavior team we'll call it meets regularly meets monthly at least to sit down and look at this data but it is available to the public on our um the publicly facing there's a section of our website in the bottom left-hand corner I think it's called like required
058postings uh public records for you it's on that page so it is we have a lot of monitoring there's um probably close to 100 things that our policy requires us now and some of them are also required to be put on that foia page so we'll we'll make sure that we do a better job of communicating that when that's made public and and if you guys have any changes that you want to make to are monitoring calendar for the year feel free to let me know is that what you were thinking Chris well I mean I haven't looked at that report to know what information is there so I don't know if it's useful I guess I only thought that was for like right you guys have an internal one and then we are required
059to on that page you can see there's a couple dozen reports that were required yeah make easily available oh that's weird we have a lot of great opportunity for us to look at that yeah you know or the next board we got one more chance Chris true so for this um the procedures and Exhibits boards the board doesn't vote on them these are the ways that we Implement your policy so but we do want to make sure that we're transparent and show everybody how we do that work all right so everyone's going to look at that we can talk about it next one yeah uh we don't need to bring it back because it doesn't require a vote but no no we're talking about oh the miners looking at this yeah just looking at the
060um whether or not the monitoring will answer the questions or whether we would like to got you talk about new ways for us to see if we're making progress to reduce billing thank you welcome the next topic is the referendum update we've been happy it feels like the last uh year but I'm here to talk about our most recent referendum and um I'll we'll recreate the conversations that you had in December and in January when you made the decision to put this question back on the ballot um the reason why you put this back on the ballot is because when it didn't pass there were 24 votes that separated the yes from the no you asked us to do surveys and focus groups and bring you back more information about what the voters were saying
061and what we heard loud and clear is that our communication no offense Sally or communication people weren't aware of the referendum we felt like there wasn't we didn't leave any Stones unturned but that is not the case because people 245 people showed up and didn't even answer the question on the ballot and there might be a variety of reasons for that but over and over in our focus groups and on the survey we heard people didn't understand what we were asking they didn't feel like people were talking about it and so you said to me I think that we need to do um to ask this question again but double down on our efforts and try something different when it comes to communication because people want to understand what it means to them individually and
062for example one of the things that you asked us to change was that people were confused about their taxes so there's a tax calculator on on the referendum page of the website and all of our Communications talk about um why you would vote Yes and why you would vote no these are in our mailers and all through it and you would vote no because your taxes would go down because we did hear that people didn't understand the implications so if you vote no your taxes will go down and you can visit our website to look at our tax cap calculator to um to verify your specific situation we also asked every school to put together a referendum information team among their staff because staff also they are a source of information from a lot of
063our community members and some of our staff also felt that they didn't have the information and Tony and I think that we're great at presenting but people I think so yeah we think we're pretty good um but in all seriousness people want to hear information from a trusted source and for many people that's their neighbor or their teacher and so we wanted to make sure the teachers had the correct information not telling people how to vote just making sure you understand the question because the question does read it is quite complicated it is long and people say it's a bad question but that's the way that we need to ask it because we are borrowing up to 140 million dollars and we are guaranteeing that the bond and interest payment will remain level it will
064not increase that payment it that we make to pay off our bonds will remain steady at 9.1 million and so we revamped our Communications if you go to that website there are we've been getting a lot of really positive feedback about from a lot of people supporters and people that aren't supporters but they are saying that they're able to find the information that they're looking for there's a one-page document for every school about the implications for that school um there are one page stories we wrote right now I think there's about nine stories on the website that are one pagers of the frequently discussed topics in the community and people have found those helpful um so helpful that in the past when we presented to you as part of as part of our debrief of
065the November referendum we talked about how 200 people visited our website and we guessed that Holly and Tony were about a hundred of those people and now we're up to 2 000 Clicks in the last uh two weeks so we have people's attention we've had information booths which we didn't do last time so just to make sure our parents have a place where they can easily ask questions um Dominic has a information poster that's been in the lobby of dfac the past couple weeks we've been at bingo nights we have posters in the lobby here just making sure people know where they can ask questions and we do have a lot of people reaching out asking questions and finally we had that Forum last week and that was really well attended and I appreciate the
066League of Women Voters um helping to inform our public and give multiple perspectives about what's on the agenda and finally our my part of that I'll turn it over to Tony but our next set of communications you're going to hear are about voting and that um no matter what your opinion is that we want everyone to get out and answer that question on the ballot so right now you could do that at the Batavia city council there's lots of construction but I'm sure you'll find a way once you get there it's a little hard these days but they are open nine to three I believe every day this week and then Monday through Thursday next week and then you can also go to King County they even have some weekend hours that you can go
067and vote and then your normal polling places on April 4th are just a few of the options available to you um Tony I know you've gotten a couple questions from board members that you were going to work into this presentation as well yeah to do our best we'd be happy to answer questions that anybody has it doesn't matter what your perspectives are we just want to make sure that people have an understanding of the facts so that they can make an informed decision some questions that we get I've got three of them here that I'll run through and do my best to answer and if you have others certainly that you come across so we can discuss them here tonight too if bonds are going to be issued over a period of up to five
068years as they are how can the board know that rates what the rates would be at the time of issuance and so to restate that in another way a lot of people hear that you know we would issue up to 140 million dollars in bonds and people assume that and we wouldn't do that there's a number of reasons why one is the primary one is that you know you have to basically spend the money when you issue those bonds within 18 months and that wouldn't be possible for us to do so as we're you know these are major construction projects and so we expect to issue them probably in um what we call what are called tranches or or batches and we are tempted to plan is that there would be four of these tranches
069that we would issue Bonds in over a period of five years and after the five years the authority to issue those bonds expire now those bonds would be subject to the market rates at the time of issuance and so right now Market rates are roughly around you could expect like four percent which is a heck of a lot higher than what we were talking about a year ago unfortunately but if you look back to 2007 when we issued bonds to do the renovations primarily at the high school but there was a number of Renovations that occurred district-wide the average interest rate was about five and a quarter so if Market if we were to issue these bonds today we'd actually be paying less than um what we paid I guess it was like 18 years
070ago when we issued these bonds prior not not quite so 8 16 years ago um and as you know and as I know Sue knows when Market rates came down we were able to call some of those bonds and refund them with rates that were much lower than when they were originally issued and so by spreading this out over time ultimately we don't know what the rates are going to be but on average we kind of hedge our our risk over time and so if rates are too high we might issue fewer bonds if rates are low we might issue more bonds depending on how all these pieces fit together so we don't know but we have some tools in our toolbox to address the issues as best we can the next question is how
071would you come up with estimates of cost if you can't tell us exactly what will be done at each School and the reason why we can't tell folks exactly what will be done at each school is because of the way to set this up on the front end when we looked at we did the community engagement sessions we looked at and what was option a option b and option C option A was you know let the taxes go down and we wouldn't issue new bonds we'd have to come up with money out our operating funds to to make this work happen and as we all know we know the pressures on our operating funds and all the other things that we attempt to do option b was fill in the expiring bonds and carry those
072taxes forward and option C was increase taxes and we heard resoundingly from the folks that participated in those sessions go with option b but what option b meant was that we were going to hold that Levy for bonded interest level at 9.1 million and we're going to back in the projects to that amount it's like walking into a car dealership and saying I'm gonna buy a car I don't know which one but I'm only going to pay 500 a month and so depending on what the interest rate is on the loan that you get what your credit rating is and in this case what construction inflation is really determines the scope of work that is going to happen that's the challenge and we don't know until we design it and we bid it and so
073in some cases we might have some choices in terms of what we bid and what we do we might say all right well to do the restroom Renovations at JB Nelson school is going to cost a lot of expected and so we're going to put our efforts into Ada door access maybe we do we can't do all the Ada door access but maybe we do more of it in light of what the referee or the restroom improvements would cost those are the kinds of decisions that I expect that we would otherwise face um when we when we get there so we're talking about the needs in general and the budgets and there's going to have to be some room in there once we get to the other end because again there's a lot of unknowns
074between here and there but that is by Design the way we set up this referendum we're telling taxpayers we're locking in the payment and we're leaving the variable to be the scope of the projects within reason lastly related to what areas will be cut from the plan if we can't get it all done and those that's a hard question to answer because of the nature of what I just so um hopefully all goes well and interest rates go down and some of the inflation pressures that we're facing maybe in over the period of five years where we're issuing those bonds which is more likely the case things are going to kind of wobble as we go through and we're going to have to make decisions as best we can but what we can say to
075the taxpayers is this plan this master plan that we've developed is designed to save taxpayer dollars to the extent practical and directing as much money as possible toward our educational programs and minimizing those construction costs so that we can get the best bang for our buck and that's what we've tried to accomplish so I'm that's that's the plan why does it stands at the end of the day the bonded interest tax levy if the referendum passes will remain at 9.1 million dollars of course taxes would go down otherwise what other questions might I answer questions I just want to say I appreciate the challenge that people are having understanding the concept because a lot of times you go and I want a house and how much does that house cost right you know what you're
076buying you can go look for a house that matches you know your ability to understand what you can get but the reality is and we see it even I'm an architect and I work in this market the challenges of the variables that are out there right now make it difficult to understand how much you can buy and what you can buy and so the ability to say I have this amount of money I wish sometimes my clients would tell me I've got this amount of money help me understand what the best I can do with that money is we spent significant amount of time effort into a certain extent money on trying to understand an educational master plan for the people that we worked with on and I believe they did a good job um
077the the thing that does is that creates a series of priorities and things that we need to focus on first which is the big thing because you couldn't do the way that we're working now without having an understanding of the priorities of what we have to accomplish because there's not a we know since we're not doing everything we are at the have to accomplish not the want to accomplish and that have to accomplish is going to take some ways of that team and that group and the staff and everybody else to be creative and trying to figure out how to be flexible with the dollars and flexible with this face system we can accomplish two goals with one dollar so that's well said Thank you and to add on to that analogy is some people
078are asking us I'm going to buy a house in five years tell me what the mortgage rate is going to be it's like I don't you know that's that's the real challenge that we face or how much is my money going to be worth in five years at the same time yeah and then it just right now things are I mean six months two years ago or a year ago wood was through the roof it's not So Much Anymore steel was through roof not so much anymore but you're dealing with weird lead times on electrical equipment that you I mean you just can't understand them first so that's why they have this plan because they actually need to look at those things understand what kind of projects we can accomplish in the five years because
079the lead time on stupid things like um card swipes on doors are 40 weeks right now 40 weeks almost a year good man yeah I said almost all right any other questions under my friend I do want to say just I want to compliment Holly um on the redesign of our website and the reorganization the Simplicity of it I can say personally speaking from my experience in the last two months I've had much higher engagement with people in the community asking me where they can access the information and the feedback I've gotten is it's in a for a complex amount of information it's easy to understand and easy to much easier to find than we had before so I just want to thank you for that Holly I think the website gets people talking no
080matter which side you're on that was pretty prevalent I think at the big meeting this weekend some of the conversations around the the website and where you can find information and specifically the videos came up so thank you yeah I was going to say the thing I like about the videos a lot is it starts to take the what am I getting for it out of the equation which is where Things Fall Apart for people to be able to decide to spend the money if it's if I'm not getting something out of it then it is well I don't pay taxes so that my kid necessarily goes to school I pay taxes so all the kids get a chance to go to school and so it while you may appreciate the way taxes get spent
081and not that's a different part of the equation but people can then understand the breadth of the the dollars will be spent that we can to affect the most good okay all right next item is us um having discussion coming to a consensus about how we're going to address our next Board of Education meeting April 4th election did I mention that already so there's also a school board election on April 4th and our your board policy says during March you decide what date you're going to seat the new board so it's not a let's wait and see who wins it's let's pick the date now and that's the way your policy is written and so we've done it different ways in the past since I've been here we've done we've picked a date after the
082April meeting we do have to wait um we have up until 40 days after the election to see the new board that is a change it used to be 25 days and so we need to pick a date that is no later than 40 days after the April 4th election to seat the new board um I put down so um one option that I I wrote down you could have both on the same night that's how Aaron we were over at Grace McWane and Aaron sat off to the side while we had our meeting and then she was called up and then this last time I think you guys did the same thing right now yeah but times before we we separated those so I thought I put an option on here where we would
083take advantage of that 40 days give the new board members a little extra time to onboard but this decision is yours we just need to make it tonight and there's four of you that it will directly impact so I think your voices are probably the most important to be heard so our next meeting is April 25th Year I'll come in April 25th no matter what no matter what question of whether or not are we also having that second meeting that night to bring on the new people or are we going to put that on a different evening I am previously engaged for May 9th so I vote to have it all done in one evening there I'm fine with that yeah I think I'd rather have it at the end of the board meeting too
084okay you go to that I don't have an opinion one way or the other so okay that was easy and then the other at that organizational meeting um you will the those of you who are on the board will approve your dates your regular meeting dates for the following year that's something you do every year and this is has to happen at this organizational meeting and so I just have the draft here um Cindy put these together she just rolled over this year's dates and did the corresponding dates last year November is always a challenge because that we always have our meetings on or after the 19th of the month so that our business office has time to prepare their monthly reports and the payroll and uh November is a little tight squeeze for them
085but they did verify that they can make that happen for that month we could but um that would be really close to the next one yeah we would I would have I would just have to talk to the um business office about how that would impact payroll and their approval of their bills that they have to one way or another we can make it work their preference was for November 14th but you're picking one that's too close to the next in either case true yeah so you um you guys can have that discussion at that organizational meeting we're flexible either way on that November date sounds like okay the next item on our agenda is our items for Action tonight uh the first item is a recommendation for cameras I'm going to invite Dominic Gutierrez
086come and talk to us about those good evening thank you for your time tonight if uh if I'm too brief by all means ask me more detailed questions but I want to respect your time at the same time I'll jump into the next slide right away for us here this is the what uh it is five uh Panasonic Panasonic pan tilt Zoom cameras with robotic arms three of those would be installed in video production and two would be installed at the Fine Arts Center two Panasonic PTZ camera controllers would be installed at video productions as well those could control either independently the studio cameras or they could control the b-fac cameras at the same time and then students could do live remotes from the stage into the live world that we exist in now head
087on to the next slide for me here so why we've been tracking this for two years time and the cameras that we originally purchased we purchased as the pandemic was happening and we purchased them to get us through the pandemic so that our students could be able to perform be seen share their art in doing so we did the most cost effective that we could at that time with less regard for quality and under the expectation that it would all be over and next slide please it's not um so you'll see here the amount of people that view performances by bfac in person is the blue and the red and the yellow is the amount of people who are viewing performances whether live at home or on demand at home this is just data from
088December 1st through March 22nd next slide please in the last 30 days 12 175 minutes have been watched at home in the last 24 hours 300. not quite 24 hours because I pulled that earlier today so people probably have watched since then uh next slide for me please so we uh the more of the why uh we've gotten feedback basically that feedback from the people who have been paying for this system and we've been selling DVDs and renters rented out when they rent our system and uh we've had people pay to watch some things online um the feedback is that there should be a better quality for that which we are charging so in an effort to retain that Revenue into the future uh we would like to improve the cameras this would allow future
089rentals and future Blu-ray purchases to in essence fund the purchase of these cameras for the future so next slide please we did engage in testing the testing was threefold I skipped ahead too soon but that's okay we tested uh based on the quality we tested based on the ease of use and we tested based on the cost and we tested three different cameras in the month of December we did that for two dis two rentals and one District event we had both staff and students operating the equipment to see the varying levels of ease of use based on whether they were students or had some training to make sure both could do that uh now we can go to the next slide and we'll talk about teaching uh and go just go to the next
090one too while you're at it uh industry equipment is what's important for our students to learn on and uh this is the type of equipment they're going to engage with when they are entering college or when they're going into the world to do this type of work in these fields the next one I like to talk about is the family access because for those online performances for students who are in elementary whatever grade they're in all the way through high school when they have family that is watching their educational process and they are seeing these performances online you have more engaged total families that are celebrating the students who are singing in a music concert and they're talking about that with them when they're at holidays together and we're seeing a wider net of how
091families are engaging with those students from Mexico to US to Canada and in Germany is where people are watching these students from whether you're a parent who is traveling or you're a grandparent who lives somewhere else you're able to be part of those students education and that is highly crucial um and then the increased student access currently our location that we can do this from is the b-fac booth if you've ever been in there it's really small we'll just say it's it's small it's not intended to have a classroom worth of people you know human beings in it and so our goal is for more and more of these events to be live streamed by the students who are taking these classes two problems with that currently are one they don't have this same kind
092of equipment over at video productions to learn on and the second one is the space you can put the 20 students in the control room over over there but uh but not within our studio so this would allow these two systems to operate either independently or in unison as one system next slide there so this is for the students and it would be help to coordinate our equipment across the building since uniform go to the next slide for me and the renters this would address their feedback from those clients who are actually funding this um and we have more than paid for our initial investment in the original purchase and it's now time to say okay you've been paying for it and you say that you want a better quality let's give you a better
093quality and then our students can also have that benefit next slide Holly so questions is it anticipated yes every year bfac identifies one of our production elements that needs to remain viable uh both to our students and to our community and we pick that as a project that we want to work on uh this year's video next slide so does that mean it's in the budget yes it does all the funds for this are in our current allocated budget for the year it just reaches that dollar amount where we need you guys to do the final step that's all I have I hope I was brief enough but detailed enough so I'm I'm happy to answer any questions that you may have or none at all I love presentations from the beef Act based on
094past Revenue how long will it take to pay for these cameras based on the last bit of Revenue not counting any kind of potential price increases Etc we'd be between two and three years and they will last longer than that they could last longer than that yes I mean it I mean everything's a computer nowadays I don't want to say yes it's going to last longer and then in four and a half years that I'm right back here but everything's a computer nowadays so I I would I would be very comfortable to say that they will last to be paid for Dominic how long um uh 12 years now um in that time you have come to us with a number of things and in my history of 12 Years on the board never once
095have you let us astray your um your creativity is matched by your ability to actually do a budget which is really impressive for a man in your position um which is why I have a great deal of comfort believing that these numbers that you've brought us are well researched um I think you've done a really great job I would say the most valuable thing that you've done for us is you have balanced these great opportunities for the community while also maximizing opportunities for student learning and I think that is the most valuable thing that the b-fac brings to us thank you I love the opportunity for the student s when Aaron called me today with some questions I'm like Dominic's not going to steer us wrong he's got this great opportunity any other questions I
096really appreciate the fact it's already in the budget yeah thank you for thinking anytime everything uh Tony our CFO everything makes sense to you financially I'm assuming Tony you would not have put this on our agenda it's just a Tony Danza moment it is yeah right I do appreciate Dominic's ability yeah it's gonna have to come down I'll say that I'll I'll be honest when I first saw this I was um I had a lot of questions which have all been answered so again like whenever I see anything like this the three questions the first two questions I ask is this anticipated it's in budget which down when I had so nicely put in his presentation and then the third thing is anything that's going to increase access for our community and I can say
097personally like professionally I give presentations and it's assumed now that there will be a online component where people that are off site will be able to view what's going on so it is a reality that's never going to go away and and so now they have a better understanding um yeah I'm in support of this and I just want to thank you for that presentation thank you Greg had something um two things as a person who has paid for a couple of days and whatever else I appreciate the attempt at increasing the quality because it is a little lacking but that's fine because I knew what I was buying and I knew what I was getting so I appreciate that we're kind of bringing up the level of that I also wanted to say that
098I do appreciate because there's some sort of story about bfac out in the world that I read every once in a while about how it you know is is not educationally impacting kids how many kids ever get to use it blah blah blah because they see all these other things that are happening there but at its core it's for the students and I appreciate your presentation bringing that back to the educational impact of the students which you alluded to you know and it's not just that but also I don't want to under State as a person whose parents live in Colorado that use this as a mechanism of staying involved in my kids life call them up the next day and talk to him on the weekend about what he saw and what they did
099and how well they sounded and everything else that's impactful not only because they're away but impactful to my son who plays So currently there and it's one thing I will probably miss when he goes off to college because I'm not sure I'll have that same advantage that my grandparents and my parents have here so thank you all right any other questions right then I would entertain a motion to purchase five cameras and two robotic camera control stations from b h Inc for a total sum of 51 491.43 second by kilburg all in favor any approach any post all right thank you so much Dominic I would just add one thing he's been in the district a lot longer than yeah um we'll hold on one second for Chris who had to step out for a
100second yeah okay um next item will be uh laptop excuse me laptops and desktops oh I'm assuming Chris read the book so we'll let Dave do his presentation and then of course has questions he can catch up when he comes back in it's hard to follow that right all right that's pretty scary I'm actually here I might piggyback off of you actually because I've had an idea um so basically I'm here for our three-year plan cycle that we have for every computer for our staff and student devices for the computer lab areas the high school this round um basically I have a three-year cycle for every I'll call it groups of buildings so the elementaries go the RMS building goes and then the high school goes and then I start all over again three-year cycle
101seems to be the best just due to Hardware age requirements that we've seen for classrooms increasing and other various types of dynamic changes we've seen one being stuff like you just talked about we have a lot of cool stuff so the hardware requirements have never gone down we've always gone up I'm at the point where at the high school we're at 200 laptops and about 150 desktops so you've got computer labs such as the photo lab the graphics lab the video lab we're doing video processing with the classrooms as well we are actually increasing that footprint because that class has actually seen increase we used to have 15 in that lab we're bumping it up to 30. so this stuff's taking off massively which as a hobby I love this stuff too as well so
102if you guys have questions this is basically refreshing them for the next three year cycle I have also added accidental damage to the laptops we've had some weird stuff happen over these past years I've been here between laptops falling on the floor someone dumping a cup of water on the laptop staff or student doesn't matter but a lot of times when that happens our previous setup you could not fix it it was more you got to buy a new one just with how HP does their warranty so what I've done is actually move these devices into the same exact plans we have for our Chromebooks and the price point of it the prices of course have gone up and I was doing kind of like some math with what we've done previously but I find
103we're about we actually got a better deal adding the warranty than we'd had without it so for me it worked out very well and now when someone breaks it you're not waiting for a brand new one you just send it in you'll get a loaner until it comes back so turn around it's gonna be a lot better as well awesome you guys have any questions or all right then I would entertain a motion to the purchase of 200 laptops and 150 desktops from its Savvy in the total amount of 435 875 dollars any opposed all right next item on our agenda is a resolution for the honorable dismissal of teachers I'm going to hand that over I'm assuming to Steve but it doesn't say yes okay um this is something that we bring to you
104every March um across the state of Illinois uh Illinois school code requires uh honorable dismissals to happen 45 days before the end of the school year so across the state of Illinois March board meetings uh these resolutions are usually happening um it's a sad day because every name on that list is appreciated when we hired them uh what you see in front of you those people who were hired were covering like a leave of absence for a year a part-time position maybe a mid-year higher there's multiple mid-year hires in there of people who have stepped into classrooms when we really need them needed them and have done a great job and so all these people are really really appreciated because they've known they're coming in for like a year or a half a year here
105and and doing the job and they've done it well and we we appreciate every person and name on that list having said that um there's a lot of people on that list too that and by the way the reason that we let go of the people who are covering your leave of absences or a temporary contract or part-time people is so that we can um make sure that we make the right decisions for our staffing plan and don't overstaff and and can kind of assess what the needs are and then make the right decisions um and so having said that again um some of these people will be hiring back because they've done a great job for us and we will have openings for them um for the people who have covered part-time positions if
106we have part-time positions for them which will determine probably in the next few months we'd love to have them back and so um that's why it's termed honorable dismissal they've done a great job for us and we appreciate them and for many of them we're hopeful that we will have a position we can bring them back because they've done a great job so you'll probably see some of these names in our board report next month as new hires and uh I'm hopeful that um those folks get the opportunity to solidify themselves and remain with our staff for years to come so that's the report on that if you have any questions I'd be happy to answer them any questions on that it's pretty straightforward all right then I would entertain a motion to approve the
107resolution as presented so much all right oppose all right last item for Action is our district collaboration hand that over to Dr Hitchens and Swanson wow I don't think you've ever been to the podium at least they're collaborating [Laughter] okay all right so Lisa and I are both here to kind of give you as a board an update uh about um some things that we started last summer so our first question that we are answering for you is why are we doing this presentation um and just a little background knowledge just so everybody is familiar with what how we got here um the ba leadership met with smt in the board last July or June 21st at a workshop to engage in problem solving around systems of collaboration and climate in the district this constitutes
108the update that you as a board asked for about our ongoing process and how to you so number two why are we presenting this update um as you know we're gonna have a leadership turnover as in our superintendent on July 1st and so this was a priority that we review our collaborative systems so everybody kind of is on the same understanding of what the mission is for each of our collaborative structures when timecam takes over in July uh the third reason why we're presenting this update to you is just to ensure our systems are focused on results and we've had previous committees come to you and give you updates about what their work has been throughout the year so far and those results are we want the results to be driving where we're going in
109the future so that's the third reason why and then the fourth one fourth reason why we're presenting this update to you is that it's like our priority for this whole overarching umbrella that we were talking about um we're beginning to build that trust we want to ensure that true collaboration is happening in the district and improve communication because those are the three things that really came out of that last June meeting that we really needed to work on as a team together and that is trust communication and collaboration so that's why we're making a presentation to you today and I'll turn over to Lisa sure um the next question is why why do we even care so what are the benefits of collaboration and why did we care so much that it is core in
110our strategic plan it's one of our Three core strategies um because I could tell you it's probably um some people when I I know when I was hired here in 1994 we weren't talking about teams of teachers sitting down weekly looking at data and making lives better for all of our students it was I was hired I'm in this classroom and and I'm going to go about and shut the door and do what I want to do and times have changed I'll tell you that right now um the benefits of collaboration the reason that we we really value this is because if I shut my door and come up with a decision on my own it's not the best decision we know that the best decisions are made when there's diversity of thought in the
111room and that we actually build on each other's ideas and we come up with the best most creative innovative solutions when we work together nobody likes to be left in the dark and so I know that when we collaborate we are committed to communicating out what we're talking about and just having people in the room be part of that decision making helps to improve communication and information throughout the organization hopefully that leads to improved morale and improved motivation when you feel like you're part of something big and it's we're more productive and efficient with our time when we're able to divvy up tasks and and do these things together and then just in case we forgot in our strategic plan we commit to collaboration and we commit to sharing decision making we practice interest-based problem
112solving we engage in professional learning communities we commit to developing Partnerships that increase opportunities for students and increase Community Pride and we commit to engaging in active open communication within an environment where it's safe to express differences share successes and learn from our mistakes so that's part of your strategic plan I'm going to come back to the Strategic plan in a little bit here but the next question that I want to answer is what does it look like at BPS 101 what does collaboration look like so like Todd said when the new superintendent shows up and new board members we want to be able to say here's all of our collaborative teams that exist here's their purpose and we wanted we made it a goal to make sure that all of the Committees knew what
113their role was what their purpose was so when the new people walked in they'd be able to say tell me what you do and it goes back to that man on the moon everybody should know that what their job is and how it impacts students and so um I did put together like this is a work in progress but I do have just the list of all of our building-based collaborative teams and district-wide teams and these aren't even all of the teams that function in an organ in our organization and I didn't hand this out to you on purpose because like any good teacher I know if I hand it out you'd be reading it and not listening to our stellar our presentation right now Sue is looking at it she grabbed it off but
114it is a um there is a lot to say this is this little two-pager is just the tip of the iceberg these are very complex structures and um with multiple functions and um ways that they go about their business but this is just the starting point to show that it all starts with that collaborative team that I just briefly mentioned about when our our students learn when our teachers sit down and look at the data and figure out how we can get better so we set aside time for our teachers to do that and that's called the collaborative team a lot of us call it the PLC team um and those me weekly or at least a few times a month throughout the district where these teams are sitting down looking at student data and
115that's way different than when I started here in 1994 as a matter of fact um I'm not going to name names but one of the teachers that I worked with this was just different in 1994 didn't let any of us look at the tests that she gave the students and we were teaching the same class because it was proprietary information but think about what was missing like that collaboration where we could have made it better we could have shared in the workload and we could have had consistent um data to look at our students so we can have common understanding of how our students are performing and help them get better so that is just a brief overview of collaboration in our district and then my turn again so just like Lisa was saying with
116her chart with the different groups um all of this is still a work in progress and I don't want any of you to think that we have reached the Finish Line because we haven't we have a lot of ways to go together but at least like I said when I made my comments earlier we're on the right Road together so I just wanted to make that clear but one of the questions that I know you as a board has that we should be answering for you is like what have we been doing to work on those three targeted areas for building back trust and collaboration and communication so there's five things that I'd like to highlight with you and the first thing is really that June 21st meeting that was the first step in this
117whole process it was actually a starting point to actually identify what the problems are to have real conversations those tough conversations about where are we at together as a district what do we need to work on what do we need to focus on that initial like owning and awareness of that of the things that we needed to work on that was step one in what we've been doing um step two uh as you guys know and you've directed us to we've been having ongoing meetings with uh Bea leadership and smt uh every four to six weeks we've been processing through we've been talking about things uh one of the things we've been working on most recently is the climate survey that we're going to be talking about a little bit in the future so that
118would be like the second thing that we've been working on this year to um getting back under the umbrella of the three things for trust climate collaboration and communication the third thing is like our committee work and Lisa said in our document you know it's identifying purposes identifying goals so everybody's clear on their roles um this is the one that's really still our biggest work in process we have a lot of committees that function at varying different levels and we want to make sure that we are providing the supports for all those committees to do the best job that they can do so so our committee structure our committee works are still really big goals as Works in progress but at least we have a vision of where we want to go with them so
119some of the things under committees that Lisa and I kind of brainstorm together is that we want to build trust amongst the team members that are on those committees by establishing Norms by talking about what our goals and expectations are and the roles and responsibilities on those committees those are things that each committee is tackling piece by piece little by little but eventually we're going to get to a point where that becomes a way of business on those committees something else that we talked about too that's really important on the Committees that wasn't really happening at the same level in all committees is just open and effective communication on those teams which gets back to that communication piece of the umbrella that we were talking about earlier transparency and shared messaging from those teams and
120most importantly equal voice on those teams between Administration and the teachers that are on those committees in the past some teachers will be like afraid to speak up because they're like well this is my boss or this is an administrative in the district and we've made it very clear this year through you know the work that we've done together through Bea when we've had our own meetings you have an equal voice to every other person on that committee whether an administrator or a fellow teacher everybody's voice should be heard everybody's voice should be valued and you're working as a team together so I think that is really one of the ones we made a lot of growth on this year is just to make sure everybody's voice has an equal footing on the committee and
121then as Lisa does to just fostering that culture of collaboration and teamwork through shared leadership and our PLC but also this year we had a co-chair that was a Bea member on CAC along with an administrative chair and I believe there's also a co-chair for plaque as well this year so those are two things that we're trying to establish a role of shared leadership and shared decision making on those committees so as far as committees um you know like I said we're not at the finish line yet but at least we're in heading in a better Direction than where we were before we had that June 21st meeting so that was the third thing we've been working on this year the fourth thing is our negotiations and even though we're still actively negotiating and can't
122really divulge a lot of concrete information about what's happening uh with collaboration during negotiations but I can just kind of say that the topic is certainly something that's on the discussion table for negotiations um and that's about all I can say about that but right now until we actually have a finalized contract but we're taking some of the conversations that we've been having all year together and as a team both Administration and Bea through our contract negotiations trying to see how we can get some some teeth into our contract for that as well and then the fifth way that we've been kind of monitoring this year is just with this climate survey and we've been talking about the climate survey for a while and I know some of the board members had questions about you
123know why this climate survey what's the process been so I kind of jotted some things down about the process for this climate survey um uh it's been a hundred percent collaborative between smt and Bea leadership so I just want to make sure that that's clearly known it hasn't been smt has said oh here's a survey that we used before so we're going to use this one this has been completely 100 percent a joint venture between both of us as teams we've met together as a joint team Bea and smt um four different or with four different survey vendors so we actually you know kind of brainstorm and we leaned on Administration for this as teachers we don't know too many survey vendors but um ones that they had used other and other districts that have
124used and we actually had them come and we did some virtual meets with them we met online with uh three uh of the survey vendors and we found out that those three really weren't quite meeting all the needs that we were looking for in a survey on basically where their results were focused on were more at building level and we were able to get building data uh to some extent from our five essential survey and the surveys from these first three vendors that we looked at were only going to kind of and it's okay to have cross-referencing of data but it wasn't going to give us what our biggest function was it was more of a macro level of a district sort of survey results and data at a survey level from a from a
125district level and so that's why we came to a fourth different vendor and that vendor was called Hanover and um when we interviewed with them they said that they would have some building level things but as well we would be able to look at some more district-wide survey questions that might get to some of the things that we were talking about with those issues of trust collaboration and communication that we were targeting as our areas of improvement and so for that main reason along with the fact that Tom Kim in his current District in Niles right now they use Hanover as their survey tool and so that information he's going to be able to see that information know what the required follow-up is going to be and over how they take that excuse me take
126that information and then create targets for us to work on together it's going to be something that's very familiar for him plus it's going to give him the most recent up-to-date information about the district that he's going to be stepping into on July 1st so I know one of the questions that someone on the board had is like why why are we doing this now is this the best time to do this right now and we really feel together with both sides from Bea and smt this is the best time to do this right now because we're going to be able to provide Tom with the most up-to-date information as far as what the climate in the survey looks like as he's coming into the district so those are some of the things that you
127know we were trying to anticipate about why we were looking at Hanover um let me check back my notes Here uh uh oh somebody asked about why aren't we um doing like our own survey right and so the biggest answer to come back to that one is that knowing that trust is one of the key issues that we targeted back in our June 21st meeting it was very apparent we needed some third-party outside source to come in and not only administer the survey gather the survey data disseminate the survey data and kind of help us come up with a plan moving forward that was totally not a Bea survey it wasn't a BPS survey this is a total outside third party very objective group that would come in and provide that information so that's why
128we were really looking at outside sources instead of coming up with our own sort of survey so that answers that question hopefully and as far as a timeline for the survey what we're looking at now of course depending on approval for Hanover is that there would be representatives from Hanover that would meet with Bea and smt we would go over sort of like what their set survey questions are but the great thing is is that we can curtail that survey if we want to get more specific information or if we want to not ask this question but ask this one or change this so it's reworded this way and that was again one of the biggest points that we were really really excited about especially when it came to that District piece of gathering that
129information is we can kind of curtail some of those questions to hopefully make light of what is what it is we're trying to solve as far as trust and collaboration and communication so that adaptability of their survey um was happening in the first part of April where we'd meet together and kind of craft the survey the survey would hopefully roll out by the end of April that way the data would come in right before the end of the year where we would be able to kind of hand that information off to Tom and then from there take that information and look at it for next steps once Tom takes over in July and then roll that out to the district um you know however Tom and the new smt feels it's going to be best
130to to roll forward when we continue to meet with them with so hopefully that answers a lot of your questions and I know Lisa's got one more part um the last um just the conclusion I would say is that with the leadership changes definitely a strategic plan would be the next step that any District would embark on at this at this juncture I think that the we haven't we've done reboots of our strategic plan but the time is probably right to redo the whole thing make sure that we have Clarity in the plan because it should be the thing that we're pointing back to that says this is what we value as a district these are our priorities and this these are the measures that we're going to use to determine if we're successful or
131not and um you know that there's often competing interests or you know we're looking at different sets of data and I think the strategic planning process is pretty comprehensive it's not just one survey but the survey would definitely feed into this strategic plan um comprehensive review that you would do and they would look at they would do a very thorough needs assessment they would look at all of our systems and all of the data that exists and um you would be embarking on this and um so you would be able to use this survey as a part of that process because this survey is um community-wide or it's for parent students and all staff and so there's different things that would be measured not just staff climate it is called a climate survey but it
132also looks at the student learning environment and so it is one piece of the the review of our strategic priorities that you would engage in so I do feel like it would be helpful for that and I would add too one of the other things that kind of sold us on Hanover is there's a component of it of mental health assessment for the people that are taking the survey so if students were taking it app could be taking it as well and so there would be some information that we would get back and probably the the best thing that I heard from them is that whatever the information is targeted then we will be able to as a district to figure out okay here's this piece of information that says we need to look at
133our curriculum in this area so let's hand that off to CAC or we need some more professional development when it comes to this topic let's hand that off to plaque so this is a multi-functional multi-layer assessment that is hopefully going to be able to be parceled out to our collaborative structures that are throughout the district so that's another one of the reasons that we really liked the Hanover product so we try to incorporate the questions that you gave us ahead of time into the presentation but I would open up now for other questions or comments I wrote down a list of things that I needed to hear in order for me to want to back this and the big one that I am not 100 on is and first I want to say that you
134guys are the experts and obviously I don't know anything about climate surveys so I trust that you've done your due diligence um I also trust that you guys are working collaboratively and nobody's being co hurt coerced so I'm very comfortable knowing that the Bea the admin and our future superintendent agree um but I like to hear reassurance that there's shared expectation on how the data will be used um because obviously data can be used in a variety of ways for a variety of purposes um and unless we have shared expectations along with that collaboration I worry that this may cause further harm if we don't if we're not on the same page right like tied into that how do we get buy-in what if we don't like the results of the survey I think part
135of that role comes with a rollout of the survey and then the rollout of the data that comes from it and it's a communication piece so that kind of ties back into our overall communication is something that we really need to work on so we need to be specific in saying that this is what this survey is telling us at this point and if you agree with it or if you don't agree with it we can still have conversations about that about why you feel that way so I I think if we just say this is something that we're entering in a joint venture together with Bea and administration and this survey data is going to be like our like our driving force about how we're going to move forward as a district together and
136so making that expectation known up front and making that expectation known in communication when the survey results come out it's I can't you know wave a magic blind and make everybody believe that but that's going to be the message that we give out and we're also going to create an Avenue that if people have other things to say about that they don't believe it they want to see you know more in-depth information about it we can provide that for them and have those conversations but there should probably be some sort of accountability piece we get survey information that says students aren't engaged that's going to require us to then look at our pedagogy um processes and potentially change them I'm a teacher I don't want to hear that but the bottom line is if that's
137what the survey date is saying then I have to be willing to commit that I'm going to make changes I also have experience of seeing these results come out in a different District where there is no accountability and there is no buy-in and so nothing's done with them so my concern is like do we have like a plan of yes we're going to sell it yes we're going to roll it out but regardless no matter what the survey says no matter what we find out we have expectations that the entire purpose of the survey is to impact student learning and we're going to be holding people accountable for implementing whatever we find needs to happen like how do we have assurances of that one thing that um Ty talked about in the future planning he
138talked about us being partners and figuring out like the the survey questions specifically the ones that could be added is to have it be the board partnership as well so I have a board representative or two join us for those meetings to make sure that we're headed in the right direction and have that voice to make sure that there's that accountability place and the accountability in place but also that we are going to use the data and we all have that shared expectation of how it's going to be used because I think that it is possible that things would be cherry-picked because sometimes that's your go-to you use a survey to confirm your own biases and so I believe X so I'm going to find the survey questions that show that that's true and we
139need to make sure that doesn't happen and I think one of the things about having this third party is they'll come back and say these are your top things and there's a lot of competing interests in our organization of people needing resources and people having ideas and we you you do need to be on the same page which is um this this could help like I said before feed into the Strategic plan but also to say we do understand that that might be a concern of yours but these are the three that we picked related to staff climate for this year we can't do everything we can't be everything to everyone at the same time and so it would I think help us to say your your feelings are valid and here's the but they're
140not the top three that we've decided whatever Hanover comes back these are the three things that we say would make the biggest impact for this year because we can't just keep adding we have to streamline what we do and I think the other thing Kathy too is that with Hanover it's it's a multi-year process so it's not just a one-time assessment and they say here's your goals now go goal right um they're going to come back in and they're going to reassess in the second year and they'll reassess in the third year to make sure that accountability for reaching those goals or if you're falling short in those goals how can they help provide more Direction and more support I think that was one of the things that really sold us on Hanover is that
141they're in for the Long Haul and it's not just a one and done but more of a continual check-in with this third party that's helping us facilitate that exact thing out to our staff and to the members in Batavia one question real quick if you don't mind is that did you coordinate and kind of work with Tom a little bit on his opinions or thoughts associated with this yet or not yet we did not so he is um currently employed in another District that's why it's awkward time is valuable we did um ask him if he had a lead after the first three vendors that we met with we were not sold on any of them so um we were trying to reach out and somebody said we should ask our new Super Future superintendent
142and this is the one that his district uses and he does endorse it and so they did a similar survey at that school that is ongoing right now or they have wrapped that process up dude I don't know that specifically I think they give it every year but I couldn't tell you that for certain okay I think there's I mean there's some it alleviates some concern I have that shares with yours that if he's aware of this process and he's aware of how it rolls out there's not only expectations on what Hanover will do but on what we need to do to make it actionable data and then also effective data for us to be moving forward and so I think part of it is maybe at our if we just say as a group
143go forward with this as a part of our kind of first set of goal setting and meetings with him is that we bring that to him and say this is an expectation of the board that this is how this is our expectation with this data and and put that as to a quasi-charge to him about that product I want you are asking us as a board to spend forty eight thousand five hundred dollars per year and you're talking about multi-years it's a three-year contract three years and if I'm hearing everything correctly both the Bea and the admin are committed to this three-year program and regardless of what the data tells you to go with the recommendations of this firm and try to adjust the data so that we Target those goals not adjust the data
144adjuster plans well I mean well I mean adjust the data as in long term we want the data to change so that it looks better yeah that's what I meant by adjust the data obviously right you don't want to change the numbers we want to change the numbers through action right and those are I think those are my concerns is that it's very easy to do these and it's all great but one of the things that we've talked a lot about is that we're not always connecting things back to learning and there's been a lot of other um forces at work but bottom line is we're a learning institution and so that's my concern is is um this is important so healthy teachers impact learning but I want to directly related to like you know
145that's all great if they're all happy but if they're not focus on learning that's not the direction we want to go in so that's just the the philosophy and the direction is every single thing in this should connect back to learning for students I really appreciate the fact that Tom has experience with the Hanover group I think that that's very helpful however my concern is especially at this price point having him commit to something that's three years long when he just got here although I will argue too Tom when he interviewed if we remember one of the things that he did say that he had experience with and was going to be a focus was digging into Data to see where we were falling shorter than we wanted to be and then creating plans to
146move forward so that is in line with what he'd already said and I'm sure he's flexible enough to be okay with the tool that he's already familiar with if that's the best tool that and he was big on collaboration so if that's the best collaborative tool that we can find with the data how quickly you know I'm been very vocal about low hanging fruit how quickly could this survey maybe produce some low-hanging fruit for us to make some movement to show that we're acting on this investment I think we'll get the initial data back before the end of the school year so depending on what that data shows we would be able to meet with smt and Bea and just kind of say is there something that that sticks out as something that we can
147do that's actionable and instantaneous to get us going to move that needle so until we actually see the exact data we're not quite sure but yeah I would hope that would be something that we would see right away if something is evident that we can at least latch on to and begin working with Tom on right away so what's the I'm I'm it's probably in here and I just didn't see it what is the proposed timeline um so I see the payment schedule but so the timeline that we were told from Hanover is that they would be meeting with us in the first couple weeks of April to just finalize the questions the survey tool itself the survey would roll out at the end of April and then they would get the data from that
148and disseminate it back out with recommendations and and jumping off points to go forward uh before the end of the school year what's their typical participation generate with the survey Philly tough time of year right yeah well that's the one thing I was thinking is after a free break yeah oh man oh man yeah it is like we do a survey in another place that is nearby and even like early in the school year we put aside time we have students do it and you walk around just saying hey can you log into the survey and do it and I still had less than 80 participation so just to be clear for most surveys do not require 100 participation to be statistically valid right no but our concerns but our concern continues to be what
149voices are we not hearing and why are we hearing right and so that that is again the lens that we've said and agreed that we need to look at it through Rippling I think what is going to because I agree it's a turning point to that question Aaron is that whole idea of a third party outside that's running the survey um we have a current survey that we use in the district called five Essentials it's a state provided survey um for a variety of reasons there's not a lot of buy-in to that with the staff in the district for you know like I said for a myriad of reasons giving staff an opportunity to have a new Fresh survey that's not a survey we've currently used or seen how the data from that survey has
150been used in any sort of different way in the past and again in that communication piece when that survey rolls out this is your chance right this is this is a new opportunity that we have I can't guarantee numbers to you I mean I really can't I don't I can't answer that for you yeah but it will be a priority in our communication that we have gone to these lengths of meeting for an entire year starting with you as the board and working together through ba and smt to provide you with the opportunity that you're telling us you want your voice to be heard this is your chance so you mentioned communication I'm glad you brought that up so would the communication come from the Hanover or where the communication come from you too or
151you and or all of the above I would imagine it would probably be both to some capacity but I know speaking for me as president I would have additional Communications that I would you know put out through Bea channels through our executive board and through ba Communications with that exact same message you asked for your voice to be heard here's your chance okay so I guess you know um I'm tired of this I appreciate the work you've done trying to collaborate and I know it's been important work but you are asking us as a board to spend 145 000 500 145 500 over the span of three years to essentially come up with work that you can't guarantee the staff is going to buy into I as a board member my fiduciary responsibility is to
152the taxpayers and I know people are going to laugh at that because we just sit here and we just approved 400 000 for computers and stuff like that but if this is truly going to be collaborative I'm not even going to think about passing this unless you and the teachers are going to buy in and pay for half of it does that make sense makes sense we don't have a budget for that well then so I think that that's how it's going to be I think we um it's clear that we have some reasons to not vote on this tonight but there are reasons to vote on it so I'll I'm gonna talk about what I'm here I'm hearing we have unanswered questions financially um it might be more than you're willing to spend the
153process needs to be more defined about like timeline and process and who's going to communicate we don't have that level of detail for you tonight and I'm hearing also that you think that Tom needs to be more involved in this conversation so those be those would be reasons to postpone this vote I hope that you wouldn't outright reject it because we really do both believe that this is something that could be helpful but we might not have the right timeline or the right process together so reasons to vote for it tonight would be we I I'm not sure of the timeline if we say if we don't vote on it tonight with um Hanover research whether or not we'd be able to get it and I'm done by the end of the school year um
154that would be a reason to vote for it and that I really do believe that this would be valuable information to feed into your strategic plan and and um Todd is correct that we do both believe this is the right solution so is it the right solution tonight that's what you have to decide if you need a little more time for us to go back to the drawing board and be a part of that conversation so that's my take on what I'm hearing I got one last question is there an off-ramp I mean if for some reason after getting the first survey results if everybody in the district agrees that it's not what we're looking for are we still obligated for those times it's a three-year contract okay so I'm thinking that we probably need
155to make sure that there's more information I'll just throw my two cents in here so my thoughts are I'm if we did this I'm not sure I mean I do appreciate the work you've done but I'm not sure what's like what once we get the data like what the action steps are that and then I do appreciate that Tom has experienced it I think it would be foolish uh not to have him be a part of the process if he's actually used the tool and and provide his feedback on what works what doesn't so he could help guide this process so I would think I wouldn't really feel comfortable about implementing this unless he had a chance to get his hands around because the way I'm reading this is this could drive a lot of
156decisions moving forward I want really him to have a big saying that I wouldn't feel comfortable kind of not saddling with it but here you go and you didn't get a chance to develop how we're going to use this tool because but for me to to Sue's point to spend this amount of money I don't have a problem with it if we're going to actually think it's going to improve student lunaring and the student experience at this point it's not clear to me how that would work I just think they need to have some skin in the game I'll add Echo what you said about Tom I'm willing to wait I know that that's not what you want to do but I'm willing to wait to make sure it's done right I don't understand how
157this fits in the budget I haven't heard that yet and we've got at least two new board members that people are going to vote on so for them to be part of this decision I think would be more than appropriate at this time so I would hold off on voting so what are we asking them to bring back to us a waiting until the new board is seething seated be a conversation with Tom see a specific Act actionable plan as to how we're going to use the data Chris did I miss anything on fear I think that there should be some type of board either observation it's part of the process just so that they could you know we can make sure that we have an unbiased observation of what's going on as far as
158how we're making these decisions like we always have board members yes yeah but you see you sit guaranteed buy-in or well and the truth is we might not get buy-in but we can solve expectations of what actions happen right so like expectations um consequences conversations all of that right so whether it's so that can look a lot of different ways but if we're partnering that I feel like we can address but I would just I feel like we want a little bit more of a specific plan to assure us that there really is buy-in there really is going to be a plan instead we're using this data regardless of what it says and we're going to focus on student learning yeah but probably the biggest one is that the the new board and new superintendent
159should have a say in this and I would agree so the next question is do we want to do you guys want to talk about it the next meeting with the reorganization meeting or are we willing to push it back and we might not be able to do the survey this school year but we hit the ground running next school year I would like I think Lisa's and Todd's points are really good that this will help form a strategic plan but that strategic plan isn't going to be the first thing Tom does in the first month he's here right I mean it's going to be a process as he gets to know us gets to know our community okay so can you address those things and then yeah I just don't see you're going to
160have much buy-in anyways in April and May no no right I would write with the survey concern with that that's a concern so a timeline so which um so board participation in The Next Step also so Kathy as the president you decide who sits on what teams so if you can let me know who um will be working with us to put that plan together and to be the voice of what we just heard tonight not that we weren't listening but make sure no yes absolutely you're that voice at the table absolutely and I think she's wonderful what did we decide we're going to get a timeline we're going to get some more actional items we're going to put it not make a decision on this until the new board is seated in the meantime
161as they continue trying to beat out that plan one of the four of you that it's going to for sure still be on the board should be the person sitting in on that committee that makes sense so we can talk about that if you have a volunteer or whatever all right you good with that well yeah either do you have questions for us that you feel like we didn't answer um uh I don't think I have any questions I think that like it's okay I just want to leave you with I do feel like this is the right solution and we will come back with they will come back with a better plan with the I feel like it's not a no it was more like a not yet that make sense kinda except for
162sale except all right I think it's good I do I like it but I'm not I don't like the money I need to beat it out of them all right so that was that last item on our action and we um set that aside for the moment so we're not going to take action on the survey activity tonight so we'll turn it over to administrative comments um I just have one today is World Down syndrome day and if you've if you're on social media you'll probably see some of our um staff tweeting about that and I'll just read you the quote from the world's Down syndrome organization their theme for the year is with us not for us people with disabilities have the right to be treated fairly and have the same opportunities ever as
163everyone else working with others to improve their lives so we need to work with them not for them awesome thanks Lisa Chris we'll have you go first for coming okay I have some prepared statements today you only have to listen to this two more times so um hello Community if you're like me it Feels Like Everything is happening everywhere all at once from local elections to Spring Sports and activities there is a lot going on in our small City as a soon to be former member of the vivitavia school board I wanted to use one of my last opportunities from behind this desk to highlight an organization that is near and dear to my heart I appreciate you taking the time to listen to me and to learn more about the Batavia Community diversity initiative
164or bcdi first let me tell you a little bit about our work with care the Community Alliance for regional Equity a partnership created by the Chicago metropolitan Agency for planning for those that don't know last year we were one of 12 organizations selected to help create a more Equitable and inclusive communities by giving a voice to those who are traditionally excluded from the planning process a minister representing a partner organization provided a great quote as we got started we may not have it all together but together we have it all it has been amazing what we discover with diverse voices at the table last week we had our third meeting and our first meeting hosted by one of our partner organizations we were honored to be guests of access living an organization that has been
165in the front lines of protecting the civil rights of those with disabilities since the passing of the American Inn with Disabilities Act it was great to see spaces designed to provide maximum accessibility at our meeting we discovered the four projects we're going to work on this year we'll be focusing on the first project over the next few months before moving on to the next what we were only introduced to the project and have yet to dig into the real work I was very uplifted by the work we were able to do one thing I found to be enriching and impactful was when someone suggested that we need to tell stories over data while collecting and analyzing data is a necessary tool for most Endeavors we need to remember that there are real people behind those
166numbers whose lives are affected by our decisions it is those lives that are most important not the numbers the data should be used to improve those lives not to Simply alter the data while it is wonderful we were able to do work for our region there are also benefits for our community cmap is committed to providing resources to help us identify and solve problems here this ranges from data analysis to identify high priority problems to helping us find funding to do the work additionally bcdi has received an honorarium to participate in this work which allows us to fund our own efforts in the community since our Inception we have made a conscious effort to learn as much as we can to do our work as honestly and as efficiently as possible we have learned to
167move at the speed of trust it is important to be deliberate and intentional when doing this work and always be willing to learn and grow if you're interested in learning more about what we're doing and want to support our work you can reach us at board bataviacdi.org or find us on the web at www.butaviacdi.org we can also be found on Facebook Instagram and YouTube finally if it wasn't obvious I want to let you know I have no intention of stop serving our community I am committed to building I am committed to building coalitions to make our community more a more welcoming space for everyone where everyone has the best opportunity to thrive if there is any anything additional I can do to make our community stronger please do not hesitate to reach out to me
168thank you for your time your trust and years of support go Bulldogs and go vote thanks Chris good it's so I want to start by thanking everybody who attended tonight who everyone who emails the board everyone who reaches out with questions it's really exciting to see our community engaged right now we have a big election coming up so I just want to thank everyone who's participating in the process and getting informed about all the issues and getting interested in what's going on with their schools um I wanna wish the best of luck to all the candidates on April 4th it takes a lot of courage to put your name on a ballot um so and it's vital to our democracy that people are willing to step up to serve so I want to thank them
169for that and wish them luck um I want to encourage people to vote you can go vote right now April 4th is the day but um I like to vote early because it's a very quick and painless process so there's lots of opportunities so please get out there and make your voice heard it's again very important to our community and the future of our community forward and um I just want to thank again all the volunteers in our community that support us I had a chance to participate in a fundraiser at my daughter's school and you know I think people still have short memories that it wasn't that long ago that we were separated during covid and I still every time I'm in a group setting kind of have to pinch myself to say hey
170we're back we survived and now we're moving forward so I just want to thank everybody for that and I just want to wish everyone a safe spring break if you're traveling be careful I know when we get back it's going to move fast before you know it we're going to be talking about commencement so uh everybody get some rest and we'll see when we get back from spring break thank you I just wanted to congratulate the girl women's wrestlers girls wrestling team again and just I hope they really understand Aaron made the comment about your neighbor girl that's wrestling and how it's changed her life and they really are making an impact they're changing lives that's so wonderful and I hope they really heard that and understand that that's awesome um I I don't know
171what more I can say about the referendum um that hasn't been said I really thought about making a big long speech and stuff like that but just don't believe everything you read on social media oh my Lord um go to the website get your information there bps101.net do your research go vote it's vitally important so thank you have a great spring break thank you I'm going to say ditto to my previous board members who spoke so thank you for being so eloquent on that I'm going to keep it short and sweet I just wanted to kind of talk about um One Thing Really which is some Avenues thing and that unique happened kind of um in my sphere as working with the high school and and kind of being around that um it's amazing how
172we get opportunities for our kids to participate in things in extracurriculars and they actually get real opportunities as a part of the music program and the Jazz groups they played over at the venue in Aurora which is where I was last week so I appreciate everybody allowing did you so do that it was an amazing event um sat it'll be one of the last times I see my son play there but then also just last weekend a number of families braved the trip into Chicago because the wind Symphony was able to perform with some other high schools that they effectively rented out the CSO and played at the Chicago symphonic orchestra event that's place is where we started my wife and I were talking with control Circle that we saw with our oldest son there
173my youngest one was like seven at the time when Marsalis go and he had a little bit of a kind of a primer on Jazz for your elementary school kids so they talked about all that right beforehand so um just amazing opportunities that are available and I want to thank the parent volunteers that helped organize all that and that those in the organizations that helped contribute to make that an affordable event for everybody to be able to go to and that other schools who I believe may have invited us to be a part of that I appreciate that it was really kind of unique and kids don't get to stand very often on a real professional stage sorry I'm not gonna I'm not not gonna be fact there over Dominic but to kind of do
174something like that that they played there so it was an amazing event a number of us kind of got box seats which was a lot of fun to sit in I felt the rarefied air for a moment I called my way back down to the level I deserve to be at so just thank you to everybody who's part of that process so thank you thank Craig RJ um I'll talk about the referendum Sue will you do it it's not a long speech really uh so since the referendum failed and we made the decision to put it back on the ballot I've been a lot more active than I probably should be online definitely more than I want to be but I really appreciate the conversations have been happening out there we found out that we
175had 2 000 visitors in the past two weeks on the website so congratulations on that because I believe leading up to the voting in November we had a thousand visitors total since the building our future together website was put out probably three years prior to the voting so double the amount of visitors in just the last week is is fantastic and I want to thank everyone who's been going to all the different events I know a lot of you have been going so thank you for going to the different events we've been trying to be out there for the public for one-on-one conversations I've took some questions and you guys handle them so I really appreciate that because those are straight from public comments that I saw online so I appreciate that and I've definitely
176just in the past week I think that the I think the Forum was a real success at the library getting that set up was really important because I mean a week a week's time on the Internet is a long time and over the past couple days there's been a lot less I should say chatter and definitely a lot less misinformation being out there I definitely Echo what you said about watching for the misinformation um I know that the two groups out there the vote Yes and vote no have been doing I think what they you know feel is best to get the information out there um and I appreciate that to help make sure everyone understands the impact of the referendum but I definitely would love for people just to use the website that we
177have or reach out to the school board directly would be great uh on a lighter note yesterday I was at the public library for the battle of the books which was the first I've ever been there it was a lot of fun for those who don't know it's it's all the fourth grade and fifth grade classes make teams of four and they read eight books over I think it's just like a two-month period and each of the groups has a they have a quiz that the Librarians put on for them and one winning group from each School each of their our six elementary schools competed at the Battle of the books for the library last night it was crazy intense these little fourth and fifth graders like they're hiding their their boards before they'd hold
178them up for everyone um I I might be a little biased to say that h.c storm one and my daughter was on the team another name so that was exciting to be part of so I was happy so that's it that's fine thank you thanks RJ Aaron um I just want to encourage everybody to vote no matter which way you vote it's important that you do so um I can tell you from the people that I spoke to after the last vote um if everyone who told me that I meant to vote I should have voted I forgot to vote would have voted we probably wouldn't be in this right now so no matter how you vote just please vote it's really really important be safe on spring break and that's all from me today
179yes to the good and bad of going last is you guys are incredibly eloquent you cover every single thing um so I'm just going to give you guys a quick little shout out uh tonight's meeting is a perfect example of how we ask questions we listen to each other we discuss and we always focus on what's best for students and that makes me really proud to be part of this board we do have um closed session tonight but there's no action after it so I would entertain a motion to adjourn to closed session for the reason of collective negotiating matters between the public body and its employers or their representatives or deliberations concerning salary schedules for one or more classes of employees [Music] closed session no action actor