Batavia Public School District 101 Board of Education Meeting for October 25, 2022.

001I'll yeah I see you a CER education October 25th 2022 at 7 o'clock p.m. uh Cindy could you please call the rooll here you're good present present here present Mattis meow present mitler here all right and Mrs miter could you please Le Us in the pledge to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands one nation under God indivisible with liy and justice for all Dr H are there any items to be removed from or added to the agenda tonight um the agenda is accurate however on two of the agenda items I've made an edit since it was posted on Friday one of them is to the Personnel report there was a person that we were hiring that person um we've removed from the report and the

002second edit was Sue pointed out that in the donations the donation for the districtwide mentoring program comes through beefy but it's actually chip in that makes the donation so we made that swap on the agenda the agenda is now after all right thank you all right first item or next item on our agenda is our celebration we would like to invite um Mike theel and Austin tosky with their group um from education Pathways hi I'm Austin savitzky and I'm Mike theel and we are the two education Pathways teachers at the high school so the state of Illinois addressed the need for future teachers so one of the Avenues that they have um sought after was hiring us Mike and I to do our class and in partnership with wansi we're offering to two dual credit

003classes this year at bavia high school one of the really cool things that we got to do is design our own classroom so our students that are with us now some want to be kindergarten some want to be all the way up to 12th grade we have flexible seating that the kids get to design their own classroom as well as some really cool Tech tools that we get to use and the kids get to I in their lessons so we're uh one really cool thing we're one of five area schools that has this program so it's pretty cool that we have this program um but who better to hear about it than from some of our students so here they are go come on hi I'm Mason Smith I'm a senior here at bavia high

004school I'm a part of the Ed Pathways crew obviously and um I want to be a history teacher one day so one of the greatest things in the future future Ed Educators program is the observations where students are placed all around the district in different grade levels and they observe the teachers for the day and see how they run their classes and it's really helped me as a student and a future teacher to figure out what I want to do as a teacher awesome uh hi my name is Anna schlaman I'm a senior and I want to teach element education um one of my favorite parts of the class was our actually our midterm lesson plan um this was broken up into six steps and each step like built upon the prior and um uh

005so we the lesson plan I chose to teach kindergarten and it was all about like feeling textures and it was very exciting and the other kindergarteners I mean the other kindergarten teachers chose to do things with like the five senses so it was very enjoyable and it really like helped me narrow down what I want to do in the [Applause] future hi my name is Katie Preble um I'm also a senior and I'm looking to major in early childhood education um one of the other things we get to do is our guest speaker panels that we have on Fridays so we've gotten to look at a lot of positions within the district like we've talked to our superintendent um our community outreach coordinator um even counselors within our school and and going in like as

006a person who wants to go into education it's really interesting to see different positions that I've never really thought about within a district um I also feel incredibly lucky to have this opportunity because um with looking at different colleges that I want to go to this past year um when I go on tours or to college fairs a lot of the schools like brag about how their education programs put you in the classroom like your first or second or even your third year being at that school and it's incredible that I don't have to wait until I go to college I get this experience as a senior in high school [Applause] so as you can tell Mason Katie and Anna are exceptional young humans and future teachers so we're very lucky to get hang out

007with these three but we also have 47 students currently enrolled in our intro class which is amazing right so with that being said our intro class is the foundation for education in the spring Mr T and I get to teach another grp group of students so these guys are getting three credit hours with us for their college transcript and in the spring they're going to take their clinical experiences and we have about 40 students enrolled in that class so an additional three credit hours where they're going to be in the classroom three days a week earning um 45 hours of observation time and that is really where they're going to narrow in on those experiences so six hours of college credit by the time they walk out of our classes that's amazing so this has

008been awesome so far as Mason said we've had two observations of the three that this semester where um we've placed students in over 80 classes within our district um and it's been awesome uh seeing the students being able to go in those classes teachers welcome them in guide them Mentor them um and we're just really uh Blown Away by the outpouring of support um by administrators staff teachers within our district and um we're very excited for this and the future of this and uh see how we can continue molding uh our future Educators so thank you guys very much for having us tonight so thanks thank you thank you so much that was amazing thank you that's amazing uh next item on our agenda is public comments uh so welcome to the meeting of the

009Board of Education everyone who wishes to address the board please see uh Cindy Rodriguez our recording secretary so you can submit your form for addressing the board uh please put your full name and address on the form were required by state law to keep a detailed set of minutes uh in general the board doesn't answer questions or engage in dialogue during the um public comment doesn't mean we don't take your concerns or comments seriously the board values active Community participation in our endeavors and encourages people to engage using all of the appropriate channels and systems designed with your input in mind uh we're not involved in the day-to-day operations of the district and so we don't um engage in the district business individually but if you have spefic specific questions or would like to further

010engage with the district you can submit your questions using the link on the website and an appropriate staff member will communicate with you so I'm going to hand it over to our um Communications manager Holly dman and she'll go over the procedures for public comment thank you president dremo speakers will be called up in order of form submission the first form received is the first person invited to speak when your name is called please come to the podium so that you can be heard all individuals speaking will be limited to 3 minutes the three minute timer is projected onto the screen and will start once you have settled at the podium since it might take you some time to get there tonight um at any time during this meeting written comments may be submitted to

011our recording secretary Cindy Rodriguez at my right speakers should conduct themselves with Civility and respect toward others in this room our first speaker is good point of clarification online it says that those representing group can so a member and I present put together a minute speech inste of two forms set one minute timer for of comment four and five yes you may have five minutes okay our first speaker is Stanley Oak well thank you it's good to be here good to see friendly faces first of course I always want to thank the staff for the fantastic job they do every day every year all the time and um of course the board for its involvement and inviting me here tonight giving me a form uh my main point is bavia needs a yes vote on

012the referendum we need it for the students we need it for our houses we need it for the assets of the district we need it for the good of the community so please vote Yes I think specifically the Board needs to be thanked for some very difficult work on a decision that boards have known about for a long time and uh I'm sure they knew it was going going to draw controversy so it's not easy but the board Rose to the occasion and did what's required and presented a very financially stable and favorable outcome I'm better speed up here um okay an old man at the podium means you're going to get a history lesson right um so now I'm really talking to the uh Community not necessarily the board this all stuff the board

013knows HC Storm never should have been built where it was or how it is uh it was built on a swamp um it was horrible traffic pattern uh very poor construction management in 1978 uh and we bore the price of it within years of that completion of the construction Louise White bad educational layouts structural Integrity issues um both schools suffer from poor entry security that's big today build on the cheap truly was like our high school was built on the cheap there's no denying that uh it has very limited handicap access very limited special education Provisions layouts focused on Trends in the 70s not suitable for today this board spent three years involving 150 community members in order to come to the conclusions they've come to touring facili and reviewing Architects engineers and Educators all

014concur this referendum is required and deals with safety school safety requires building floor plans difficult visibility inside a building is dangerous location of the library location of the gym location of the lunchroom spells for safety and if they're in the wrong place bad things happen to a lot of people previous boards and administrative staff knew this and applied workarounds that just no longer suffice I got four seconds sorry um so anyhow um sorry uh your vote Yes is going to protect your assets the assets of the school district it's going to provide for the children in our community and bavia needs a yes vote thank you thanks [Applause] St our next speaker is Peggy Scoopa hello again my name is Peggy Scoopa and I'm a PA professional in the district for 10 years the Tavia

015Public School support staff has been underpaid for years it was difficult for many of the support staff to see substitute teachers and permanent building Subs getting another pay increase their pay was just increased at the beginning of the last school year why are substitute teachers the only people you are concerned about giving a competitive wage to why do we need to wait for another District to raise their pay why can't Pavia be first I heard Kathy Dremel ask at a recent Board of Education meeting why can't Pavia be at the Forefront why can't Pavia show their employees what their value is in their paychecks we can't wait until 2025 St Charles Board of Education just voted to increase their pay sub pay on October 18th does this mean bavia is going to raise theirs again

016to stay competitive our pay has not been increased as we watch the sub pay go up again you raised the starting pay for support staff a little last year but you have not adjusted the rest of the staff that have being that have been here doing the job your employees are here to tell you that we need cost of living increases there are other districts and other industries that have raised their pay knowing that is what they need to do to retain their current employees cost of living is on the rise and we are feeling the impact every time you turn on the news or read the papers we are reminded of the ever increasing cost we are here to ask you to consider your employees and hear what we need we have heard numerous

017times that the teachers think of us as another teacher in the classroom I recently found an article in education week called par professionals as the backbones of the classroom they get low pay little support we are not compensated nearly enough for the instruction that we are giving to the students while we don't expect a teacher salary we feel that we deserve more we are partners with the teachers we know where we need to step in and when this comes with years of working in the classrooms we not only provide instructional support we provide emotional support we are a friendly face to students and sometimes a trusted adult that the students can come to talk to we build relationships with students in our buildings St Charles and kin have a clause in their contracts for longevity

018for their support staff and are paid accordingly St Charles has a pay scale for TAS which is what they call their Paras for staff with degrees bavia has neither of these these these items would help contribute to why other districts are getting paid more than bavia employees other districts employee contracts are available online for anyone to look at a TA in St Charles starting pay is $116.90 bavia pair professionals get1 1467 and my pay after 10 years is $16.10 which is way below what it should be after speaking at the last board meeting I heard from many teachers employ employes and parents of our students they told me they support us and asked how we can help our fight is not [Applause] over our next speaker is Martin burn good evening during this time of

019a frightening increase of racist queerphobic and other deeply problematic incidents at bavia high school it is apparent that the board and District feel that they are doing enough or maybe even too much to fight the hate that plagues our district you are not doing enough in fact you are failing you are failing at the most essential responsibility you have to ensure the safety of BPS students the students victimized by this everyday trauma experienced at school because of Any aspect of their identity and the district's inability to control it know no greater Advocate than Amber jersa while trust between School administration and marginalized students is quite low many students including myself regularly turn to Mrs jza to report and discuss these traumas Mrs jza does more for marginalized students in a day than you all have

020done all year she also contributes to the little diversity in BPS staff but instead of valuing this tire this tireless Advocate and so many others for students like me and marginalized students the district and the board have decided to antagonize her and punish her I have paid very close attention and let me tell you that what you have put Mrs jersa through for standing up for people who are vulnerable and people who are hurting in the district you oversee is stunning and it exposes this empty notion we hear time and time again it's a beautiful sentiment that you belong here but it's just not true how do we belong here when our district leaders are so hostile to the people fighting for us mostly at these meetings all I hear are the great things happening

021in this district and there are so many there are so many great things happening here every day there's no doubt about that but there were also major issues and time and time again we hear District administration essentially tell us that enough is being done and it bewilders me how anyone who has sat through these meetings as I have and I certainly as you have could come to that conclusion we know that there's a website we know that there's a statement and we know that there's an equity team that meets occasionally and all these things are great but clearly they are not working in the way that we need them to we have organized we have rallied we have written we have spoken we have cried the community which you serve couldn't be any clearer we

022are in desperate need of diversity equity and inclusion in our district and for our district leaders to take the action we so badly need for this to happen thank [Applause] you our next speaker is Mandy Stenberg all right um good evening board members and administrators my name is Dr Mandy Freda Stenberg I'm a professor at Northern Illinois University and more importantly a parent of a student at Grace MCW Elementary and Vero Middle School um in addition to being a BPS 101 parent I'm also a Girl Scout Troop leader and I serve as the volunteer Service Unit manager for Girl Scouts of Northern Illinois Service Unit 410 which represents all Girl Scouts in the BPS 101 District um I'm joined here tonight by a number of volunteers and participants in Girl Scouts and also Cub Scouts

023here in our district and we're here to request a change to policy 8 colon 020 categories and priorities for Community use of school facilities um so as you know or maybe this is a long time ago um a sent agenda item vote by the school board on March 24th 2020 um changed the official classification of groups like Girl Scouts and Cub Scouts and classified us as nonprofits that predominantly serve the constituents of the district under the new fee structure our organizations now must pay at least $7 per hour to rent space in our community school buildings which provide a safe meeting place for the children who attend those very same schools this policy change hadn't been enforced the following two years um but it has begun to be enforced as of this August and it's

024having a direct negative um impact on our troops ability to serve our students and also on volunteer morale per our district director of operations and our CFO our total rent rental usage fees for Girl Scouts of bavia in the last normal usage year which is 2018 2019 came to a total of $3,548 to put this into context that amount represents more than 50% of our service units entire annual budget so for us it's a big deal to put it further into context that same amount represents a negligible 7% of the district's total facilities budget and less than 0.002% of the entire budget for the district if policy 8 colon O2 were changed and our organization were moved from category 2 into a non-fee category the school district would still have 99.8% of its budgeted $1.5

025million surplus in the upcoming budget and the 330 plus bavia Girl Scouts could continue to serve the community and have access to the life-changing opportunities and experiences that they take back with them every day into their classroom communities in BPS 101 our district-wide strategic plan which I really like includes a commitment to collaboration by developing Partnerships that increase opportunities for students and Foster Community Pride strategic goal number four Partners in achievements specifically states to engage families and the community as vital Partners in the education process Girl Scouts does this we provide caring relationships and activities for all girls the impact of which is seen in community service projects that often directly benefit BPS 101 I want to highlight two recent projects that provide really great examples of this partnership first is um comes from Troop

0261675 this troop planned funded and completed the installation of a very popular GaGa ball pit at Louise White School a project that repr reprs a cost of $3,500 and more than 80 hours of work from the Girl Scouts their families and the Louis white principal um another great example comes from Troop 712 from HC Storm they made whisper phones for the reading specialist at their Elementary School this collaboration came out about precisely because the troop was meeting in the school so troop 712 met in the Commons area and teachers would walk through on their way home chat with the troop learn about their goal goal and share needs in the school as potential community service projects for the girls now for the last 110 years Girl Scouts including the over 100 registered adult volunteers right

027here in bavia have been working to build girls of Courage confidence and character and I'd like you to hear from one of them now hi my name is Leah and I'm a sixth grader at Sano middle school and a graduate of Grace McQueen Elementary School I've been a Girl Scout since kindergarten and want to share a few things that you might not know about how our troops work first Girl Scout Troops are girl-led this means we decide what badges we want to earn what service projects we want to complete and what experiences we want to have our finances are also girl-led we Girl Scouts raise the money we need to run our troops through our own fundraising you're probably familiar with Girl Scout cookies when I do fundraising I always like to tell my customers

028or my supporters um what we're saving money for a we can at Camp a service project to help the community in outing to a local Art Studio to learn a new skill one thing that I don't want to say is that I'm raising money to pay for my own school girl scouts for me has meant a possibility to express myself hang out with friends and do things I love most I hope that you will consider changing this policy so that my fellow Girl Scouts and I can continue to use the money we earn for Meaningful experiences instead of paying to use our own school building thank you for your time this evening and we would be happy to follow up with any of you if you have any further [Applause] questions our next speaker is

029Kimberly Tarver I also want to thank you all for the work that you do I know it's thankless work and there's great work that you do and thank you to all the teachers and District employees today I Rise to provoke thought regarding the district's Recruitment and search committee process for superintendent in addition to classroom experience the ideal candidate must possess some measure of cultural competence when we see cult cultural competence in hiring We Begin by identifying the knowledge and skills needed by the qualified candidate to lead work and teach groups of diverse individuals in respectful Equitable and inclusive ways Knowledge and Skills related to cultural competence are integral to our district where every District employee and every student has an opportunity to reach their full potential is valued for The Unique qualities each brings and

030the contributions each can make and where each can enter the classroom or the workplace every day bringing their whole self there to work to teach and to learn I support a process that holds Equity diversity and inclusion as core values throughout every step of recruitment hiring and onboarding representation matters and the search process should include representatives from all key stakeholder groups while I appreciate the community survey I am also concerned about possible embedded bias and and potentially skewed results every individual involved in the process should participate in training or to prevent or eliminate implicit bias including chains of inference based on vague information various types of cognitive error and discrimination and they should be equipped to identify such bias and appropriately interrupt and intervene in a constructive manner finally sufficient time is essential to involve

031stakeholders in meaningful ways in in the candidate selection process let's not rush this this is potentially a decision that will cost this District over Mill over a million dollars when you consider salary benefits and pension now more than ever it is important to get this right Thank [Applause] you our final speaker is Jeremy kta good evening my name is Jeremy kooka I am a bavia resident with students in Rolo middle school and Louis White Elementary School um I am here tonight as a parent and as an adult leader with the Cub Scout Pack 112 which is mostly comprised of boys uh at Louise White School uh kindergarten through fth grades this evening I would like to speak about BPS policy 820 AP1 categories for priorities for Community use of school facilities and the corresponding BPS

032policy 8208 A2 rental rates for Community use of school facilities while I feel that multiple groups in Category 2 that specifically cater to students should be re-evaluate re-evaluated in regards to these fees I'm here to speak specifically of The Scouting program as you are aware the community usage fees went into effect starting with the 2022 2023 PR school year while the delayed Implement implementation of the fees due to co was greatly appreciated the reality is that the fees regardless of when they were implemented make it cost prohibitive for our club Scout Pack to continue to use Louise White for our meetings if we were to continue meeting Louise White spaces our fees would be $728 every year in an average year we already hold over half of our meetings Outdoors at the Pavia VFW hall

033or in our fam's homes finding alternative meeting spaces has been a challenge as implementation of this policy has forced many groups in our school district to seek out new locations now spending $728 to use BPS facilities while they are not in use may not seem like much it can constitutes 28% of our budget um as Mandy said uh from the Girl Scouts um she has been kind enough to keep me informed of the ongoing discussions with Representatives at BPS I understand that there are costs associated with groups using the school in the form of energy usage and back office support um that being said after combing over the budget that fees the fees would appear to be overinflated in regards to the cost of coverage interestingly one thing that I have heard repeatedly from BPS

034staff members is that energy costs are rising and therefore costs need to be recouped for facility for facility usage yet the 2023 budget has a 3/10 of a perc decrease in the electricity cost budget budget and a 23.7% decrease in the natural gas cost how are these fees determined are we keeping in mind that we are contributing to the school district through property tax that being said there is more I feel to focus on than just numbers our CB Scout Pack contributes a lot to this community we help pack meals for Feed My Starving Children we give back to the bavia community through a food drive for the bavia interfaith Pantry participating in the annual bavia Riverwalk clean up the never- ending trash collection along Route 25 through the adop the highway program we par

035participate in ceremonies at the VFW as well as help them with projects around their grounds I ask that the board please consider moving our category to the category one fee structure thank you want to thank everyone for coming in we want to assure you that we've had a chance to hear you and that we um really value your feedback so thank you all for coming in tonight uh next item is our BPS Partners so I would like to invite Todd Swanson to the podium good evening everyone as the leaves Begin to Fall and the outside world arounds us moves into its season of dorcy it seems that the lives of our Educators continue on their ever hectic day-to-day Pace many of us are eagerly awaiting the festivities at Halloween holds with the promise of costumes

036and parades and parties in our elementary buildings even though I have to admit I'm a little anxious to see all those ghosts and goblins in class on Tuesday morning after a night of candy and Frolic however when we look through an equity lens we can't forget that there are those who choose not to take part in the October 31st tradition it could be for personal beliefs financial reasons or because loud noises or confining costumes create a sense of panic for them no matter what we can't ignore the fact that we need to ensure that we are constantly asking ourselves whose voice is not being heard in the things that we are doing in our schools this question must be asked by me as an educator by building level Administration central office administration and even you

037as the Board of Education not just with something like Halloween but even as but even in all areas of our educational system that is one of the most important things that our work so far with Equity has taught me recognizing whose voice is not being heard and going Beyond just the recognition of it but actually doing something about it speaking of voices being heard I would like to thank the members of the board who share that Vision no greater recent example of this guiding your work was when it was decided to have not only to not excuse me to not only have two focused groups of teachers meet with the superintendent search firm to help build the profile of our next superintendent but also just a few weeks ago in a special session when you

038chose to have the teams of stakeholders be involved in the interview process for our next superintendent one of the loudest and clearest messages that I've received from the members of the Bea is the importance of that Collective voice being a part of that interview process your movement towards this vision of equity and looking for The Voice that weren't being represented LED you to make the right decision to allow that to happen we know that each of you serves as boardly aison to one of our school buildings in each and every one of those buildings are a multitude of voices some that have been heard and others that have not we as teachers recognize that being a member of the board of education is not your full-time job even though it frequently takes up the same

039amount of time one thing that we would all love to see if you haven't done so already is to have you come into our buildings and seek out those voices in the buildings you represent what are those voices telling you what are you seeing whose voices are not being heard visit your buildings lrc when it's full of students to see and hear what we've been telling you about the important work our lrc directors do with limited support throughout the day stop by a do classroom or an El classroom to see and hear everything our teachers and Paris are doing to change students lives every day sit in on a specials and explor atories class to see firsthand the phenomenal things that kids are doing due to the amazing teachers and Paras in those classrooms sit

040in the teachers's lounge during lunchtime and begin to bridge the gap between you as a board member and you as someone looking to hear from staff about day-to-day life in our buildings I know that is asking a lot of you and for some of you it might even be impossible for you to be into your buildings during the day but I guarantee the relationship you Foster by making those connections in your building will will come back tfold positive relationships make the times when we have to have difficult conversations a little less difficult the next time we meet in this setting our world could look very different people in our community and state will be using their voice in the most fundamental Democratic way that they can and that is by voting our community will be

041using its voice to decide which way a referendum question will go the voices of our members will be heard when the outcome of the workers rights amendment is revealed and the voice of all voters across the state will determine legislative leadership in local elections all the way up to that of our governor I hope that each and every one of us here in this room tonight and at home throughout our community uses the power that our voice has when it comes to Casting our votes on November 8th while it's become easier to hear why someone shouldn't vote for someone or something on a ballot I'm more interested in how my vote will allow not only my voice but those who may be underrepresented will be heard and validated every vote counts and every vote represents

042a voice no matter who wins or if an initiative fails or passes I hope we all realize that whatever the outcome of this upcoming election there will be those who feel like their voice was heard and those who will feel like just the opposite it's how those who are victorious recognize and strategize a way to help those who feel their voice wasn't heard that will hopefully send the message that we are all in in this together as a human race and not just those on the side of a political party or an initiative so with that for now I'll simply close by saying let your voice be your vote thank you very [Applause] much next item on our agenda are committee updates from board memb so er mler will start with you sure um I

043just wanted to to provide everyone with a bit of an update regarding um the superintendent search um I am the liais on to the board for that search and um thank you so much for your comments tonight on that um I want to say that we're going to let the um the uh Consultants tell their story about um that Journey that we've been on further in November but I did want to kind of touch upon something TD mentioned earlier which is adding an additional step to our uh interview process and drawing in some important stakeholders into um our interview selection process so that is um exciting news to me and hopefully everyone else um I wanted to also talk about um the equity team meeting um that took place earlier this month and just kind

044of go through some um topics that were discussed briefly um the team honored the work of the ad hoc Dei groups and encouraged their continued work um the team came up with a plan to fill vacancies and expand the committee in the future to include more stakeholder groups um the team recognized the district as an aort committee to be intentional in its efforts to ensure that bipac um and other marginalized Staff feel valued supported and recognized and for those of you who don't know what bass is it's black indigenous and people of color and the team agreed that there's other work that they can be doing between meetings to accelerate the process um and I also wanted to mention that Bick will be meeting uh in two weeks and that's all thanks eron Craig so

045um I'm now a part of the capital projects committee meeting we effectively had a very good um kind of kickoff for the new group that's coming together and talking about it uh we went over the status of kind of some existing projects um in particularly the uh stadium bleachers and lights um it's been a good uh thing to see as a person who's kind of participated in that and some of the fun things that kind of occurring out there and that me personally I feel like that was a very good decision to kind of move forward with that for student safety and and um and never mind just the ability to kind of be able to function over there a little bit better also talked about um upcoming Capital Improvements AGS and J JB Nelson

046and the RMS servery cafeteria which have been planned for a while um but we're kind of continuing to move forward with kind of um goals and objectives that we're honoring to keep moving forward regardless of how the kind of referendum turns out and then we also talked about planning for years 2024 and 2025 is really highly dependent on how the uh referendum uh vote and so once we know how the taxpayers have decided things should be we'd be able to continue to plan but right now we're focusing on next year regardless because projects to get out to bid and we have to figure out what things cost and get things going all right thanks Craig M CAC met last month it was our first meeting um and it was kind of exciting uh they're putting

047together they put out a call for subject to area leadership team members and so we're planning on an Ela math and social studies uh program evaluation process that they're going to start after we put those teams together so the first meeting was um a really great opportunity to see those um Co co- leaders the an administrator and an educator working together to create an agenda talk about um what we need ter in terms of curriculum and assessments and um and then taking steps to move forward so I feel like that the real work is going to be starting we'll meet again on Thursday and start moving ahead with that so um that was postponed until Thursday so I have no news on that beefy meets Thursday but was actually cancelled so I have nothing there

048um um Hall of Honor I would say get your nominations in that was it pretty light month Dar all right the insurance committee did meet unfortunately for me work took me out of the state so Tony did provide me with a complete debriefing but rather than me just read his notes I'll let Tony share the contents of that meeting what was discussed sure um we did our financial tracker we're on track in terms of our medical insurance plans as what we would otherwise expect and um we did status of our um meetings around the district with staff about the upcoming changes for our medical insurance plans as we're moving from Blue Cross Blue Shield to health Grant so that is going well and uh that was that was the content of that particular meeting thanks

049joh sounds Christ I had my second resource responsibility advisory council meeting um this is going to be an overview but I uh had submitted my notes to our board secretary who will uh post it in the minute so if anybody wants to see more details they can um we had an update on current projects and the projects for next year however we have not doing any additional planning until we we find out the referendum results um we spent The Bu of our time talking about the selection of our next food service provider um and we have a new Option this year which is a request for proposal which allows us to select based on more on ideas rather than having the lowest bidder uh so we uh explored whether or not there are enough ideas

050to um pursue this further and we decided that there were so we are going to reach out to identified impacted groups which are going to R everything range from everything from our student ambassadors to other student groups to parent groups and Beck and our administrators and our cafeteria staff um we will reach out to them for feedback and we will um hopefully come up with a request for proposal to send out for uh people to submit uh their ideas and then also we discussed the possibility of moving off the national school lunch program we're going to see the pros and cons of that and come back and discuss that further also we discussed pardon for like the middle school and elementaries correct yeah because the high school is already on school so whether whether or

051not we want to join them um and that'll depend on whether or not it's advantageous for us to do so um we discussed uh enrollment projections which have changed since the last time we looked at them in our five-year Outlook looks like the um population decline is actually going to level off and stabilize so hopefully five years from now our elementary and middle schools um will level off and possibly be increasing by that point um did I get that right the enrollment will continue to go down but enrollment will stabilize at the elementary and middle school met levels but because the high school enrollment will continue decline overall enrollment will go down yeah we have to wait for the smaller classes to get through exactly um and then finally we looked at two potential Financial

052options in regards to our Capital Improvement fund um we know that we have been behind as far as what we should um have uh spend each year regarding maintenance um when I first came on the board we spent less than $500,000 a year now we are upwards of 2 million and we've been increasing that by 10% annually um and we are looking at increasing that by 15% in order to make up that up um if you look at various recommendations from various groups we should have at least 4% of our budget um allocated for um maintenance and improvements which means we should have at least $4 million so we're trying to catch up on that um the and so the we discussed their pros and cons um the potential downside is that after five years

053if we increase by 15% there's a possibility that our fund balance will start to decline um which could impact the cost of borrowing money um so we decided to pursue it for now and we may readjust as time goes on and we see what happens so that's it I was completely remissed because we have our student ambassadors with us tonight who are giving us a great opportunity to hear student voice I skipped right over you guys I apologize because we love hearing from here y you're all three here today okay hello everybody it's great to see everybody again um my name is mateline BU I'm one of the student ambassadors and I am a senior at Pavia High School my name is jarit and I am a sophomore at bavia high school and I'm also

054one of the board members and my name is Zara and I'm also a sophomore so we just have like a few things to talk about today and just some updates of what's going on at the school districts or at the different schools um and then yeah so girls tennis had a great season this year girls varsity tennis won the Duke King conference for the fourth time in a row which is a great accomplishment and then girls JB tennis won also won the Duane conference for the fifth time in a row and varsity won the ihsa sectional title with druth davati securing the title with her number one singles win and varsity had an undefeated season and also sent three girls to state cross cross country also had a great season both girls and boys cross

055country had great season with many team and individual titles girls varsity actually got first place in decain conference and now they're advancing on to um sectionals and um quinon L and Adam qualified for the sectional meet next weekend which is great and then volleyball is also been doing great they had a great season this we this year winning and placing high in many tournaments throughout the season they also had held a great event called volley for the Cure in honor of breast cancer awareness month and they had many sponsored for that and it's great that many seniors with great athletic careers are going on to college to play volleyball and and there was also some events happening at Pavia High School one of which was the Amnesty International fundraiser amnesty is actually a Human Rights

056group at bavia high school and we we're actually doing a fundraiser this week and we're raising money for children in Sri Lanka and um basically what's happening is that uh funds are given to teachers and whichever teacher raised the most funds have to shave their head at the end of the week so it's kind of a fun uh fun fundraiser for everyone so we'll see who the winner is um uh we have theater uh teachers and students work diligently to throw amazing produ uh production throughout the year um uh the Pavia Fine Arts Center is throwing a production of 42 second um and have improved um I can't really see that uh they have improved improved um Frost we're welcoming the incoming freshman's um was very successful this year many got involved in varieties of

057activities throughout the school this will be continuing events as it allows incoming freshman to come to school a day before the first day to walk their schedule and meet the award meet the awesome and crew leaders mentoring um The High School uh the high schoolers will also be continuing to Mentor at the grade school this year working with kids and social emotional learning uh by playing games and being there with uh with students with kids it lets them it let them have someone to look up to and relate to on a more age related level and then so our goal for this year uh we want to talk to various club members and presidents to get their their input on everyday life at the high school we also plan on working with the grade schools

058and their other principal advisory groups to gather data on their life at school and what could be improved on and we want to work on making everyone feel included in a club or a sport every school so we look forward to working with the board working with all the kids at the grade schools just to gather stuff to make our district even better so that's all we have for today but thank you [Applause] we do know it's a school night we love when people come to our meetings but we also recognize we have a lot of young kids in the audience oh we're going to go on to the report um part of our agenda but we thought we'd take a quick five minute recess in case any of the students wanted to gather up

059and head home um since it is a school night we didn't want you to feel like how do you walk out you can stay later yeah you're always welcome we love you to stay but we know it starts getting a little late so we'll Recon yeah when the um city council did that were you there when we did no was it when we were all there or Tony and I and then they that's going back I don't know how then to push the button you turn that off is is that it's on any conversation cuz I whed incessantly that there was one thday I to make once every two months meetings anytime but Thursdays e e e we go ahead and Rec questioning a few things the next item on our agenda is our consent

060agenda which uh gives us an opportunity to approve a number of routine business items all of which are um laid out in board docks so I'm going to ask Mr pi to walk us through the consent agenda yeah our first one is 5.1 it's the approval of the uh September 20th 2022 meeting minutes 5.2 and 5.3 is the approval of our October 4th uh 2022 special meeting and close session minutes uh 5.4 is our Personnel report um I did I I'm going just a little commentary um I did have a a board member reach out to me about a concern because in the same board book there's two Math teachers that have resigned and that has certainly not been the norm for us um I did want to say that acknowledge that yeah that's pretty

061unique um but we are definitely um in a position right now where we're seeing more people leave education entirely to pursue different careers where they have options like working at home with uh families and things like that um so there are reasonable explanations for some of these um I would like to give a shout out uh to Brian Gamblin um who's one of our admin of BHS because um probably in 2017 it was near impossible to find a qualified math teacher in October to take over position and in the midst of the great resignation um we're actually able to find a very solid qualified candidate to take over in the area of math at the high school level and that's really challenging so I'm really excited because you will see the resignation but you'll also

062see um the approval of a position um hiring and people resigning and all this stuff um it's really important to note uh this is not unique to bavia this is happening in most Industries and I can tell you uh with conviction that it's happening to all of the other K County districts and Beyond um I had the ability to attend a uh large unit uh District um Association conference several weeks ago the entire focus of the conference was about hiring and retaining staff the large unit district Association uh Dr Hitchens can speak to many school districts it is but it's districts from across the state whether you're in the Chicago region whether you're out in the Rockford region down in Poria or even farther south and we're all facing um the same challenges um I

063will tell you um I don't know if this is good or bad you can make your judgment but uh we had an HR panel I was not on that um but there were several of my uh human resource colleagues on that panel and uh multiple people on that panel made statements like there aren't any great Solutions out there things like that um clearly as we spoke about uh couple months ago um we definitely need to shift our approach um we need to um have more of a marketing approach and we're going to be working on that uh for this coming hiring season um but I'll tell you too that there's all kinds of districts that have taken on that marketing approach just in the last uh couple of years who are still short licensed staff

064today um upwards of 20 to 30 teachers not in their in classrooms today um even with that approach so it continues to be very challenging again um when you step back and look um at the big picture and you compare um some of our challenges to other districts we're still in a pretty solid position um I'm very proud of the fact that we have all of our classrooms full and I appreciate um all of the staff and teachers uh that continue to come to work every and support our kids because there is no more powerful and impactful relationship than that um certainly we have some challenges with specialized positions um that require us to do some outside Contracting again I meet with my colleagues in King County um twice a month one in one uh

065in person and one um online and I was at the uh West Aurora School District a couple Fridays ago and to reiterate we're all facing the change same challenge es and there's not this magic solution we'll continue and I I I can I can assure you that I will continue to do my best um to get the bass candidate pool uh prepared um for each of our buildings um and we'll continue to do that that work to the best of our abilities but the challenges remain um but it is important for all of you to know this is not this is not unique to bavia this is a massive challenge not just in the state of Illinois not just in suburban Chicago but it's Nationwide um we're not giving up um I love seeing these

066uh uh students that were in uh our boardroom today um that doesn't solve tomorrow's problem but it does it it does have potential to solve problems uh years down the road and and we'll have to continue grinding away at this so just wanted to make those comments because um I had some feedback uh from a board member or two about that so moving on 5.4 that is our Personnel report uh 5.5 is our payroll in bills 5.6 is our destruction of our closed session recordings from April 20th 2021 5.7 we had four significant donations um Dr Hitchens uh noted a board member noted the shift in in one of those donations I think it was board member lock um we also have 5.8 which is the renewal of carbon black uh 5.9 is our uh

0672022 school report card 5.10 is our overnight field trips for 2223 from bavia high school 5.11 is the authorization to begin the development of the fiscal year 24 budget and in conclusion 5.12 is the approval of the consent agenda all right any items on the agenda for removal or for clarification right then I would entertain a motion to approve the consent agenda as presented so moved second move by lock second by Meadows all in favor I I any opposed right consent agenda passes the next item on our agenda is our reports hand it over to Dr hit for our standard monthly reports great we have seven reports on the agenda tonight and reports are um discussion items or informational items that don't result in action at this meeting the first two are recurring they're there

068every month and the board is presented with our foyer request for the month and the treasure report um that you guys review and preparation for this meeting so do you have any questions about either of those for this month no all right then the next one is um information discussion if you would like it but the 2023 24 Cal school year calendar um is posted here as a draft and it has um there is a staff group that reviews it and provides feedback and based on their feedback we did um make one adjustment based on um but it's already included in this one and this calendar is very much just a rollover from this current school year so in the past several years our calendar started to look pretty similar um we just changed the

069dates moved the holidays around and keep the brakes where they are for the most part um we will send it to Bick uh Aon mentioned we have a bick meeting coming up in a week from Saturday and we'll get some feedback from them but generally the consensus when we talk to parents about calendars is that there's everybody probably has their own version of what would would be perfect but this is the one that we've come to know this one um we're actually a little ahead of a schedule to be able to approve it in November because you have a lot going on in December and so that way um if you guys are ready and you don't have any feedback I'll just bring it back for you to approve but this gives us a month

070for people to provide feedback including Bick um we know that this one there is local alignment now you would see more of our local districts starting at about the same time we do um and our winter break next year goes back because of where the Christmas holiday fell the like this year we have extra days at that winter break but next year it goes back to our standard two weeks with the two week or the three weekends included um and that and this calendar also has a pretty good balance of the semesters which is important um for the high school staff who might teach a world history class one semester in the same class second semester but have a different number of days and it could be off this one's only off by about two

071days I would say so it's the most balanced semesters that we've seen in a while it's because of we Christmas Falls makes it nice all right so any questions or initial comments otherwise I would bring it back next week next month next month thank you have another one next week um the next report is um we promised regular updates just because at this point we've been talking about facilities for three plus years and um through all of that Community engagement um you guys landed on a question that you believe reflects what the community um told us in those sessions and um our job isn't to convince one way or the other but to inform So to that end I'm going to turn it over to Tony to discuss what what you will see on the

072ballot number one number two he's going to talk about a frequently Asked question Tony and I go and present to different organizations we present it to the city we present to um whoever wants us and we provide information and the uh two frequently asked questions are about um why HC Storm and Louise White why are we um demolishing those schools in this um plan and then the second question is really a little uh misinformation that might be out there about what it means to um as far as the tax bill so I'm going to turn over to Tony thank you the Board of Education approved the the question that went on the ballot in August and the question is carefully crafted to comply with uh State Statute often people oftentimes people say you could write

073a better question and we did actually think of writing a better question but unfortunately um we don't have a whole lot of latitude as to how these questions are phrased and so our concern is if if you didn't hear about the referendum prior to arriving at the um at at The Ballot Box uh and you see this question you're not going to necessarily know what it means is as we've been saying for the past six months or so whatever it is as we've been discussing this question uh the bond and interest tax levy won't increase but you'll notice if you read this question which is rather verbose it doesn't say anything about that in the question uh it says shall the Board of Education essentially uh demolish and rebuild HC Stormer Louise White and do

074all sorts of work on all of its other schools and issue bonds to the amount of $140 million for the purpose of paying those costs thereof which is a lot of money um but it doesn't say anything as I've said about the bond and interest tax levy uh and that's the reason the reason why that is is again because of the way these questions have to be phrased uh but it's also our commitment to not changing the levy and so gets into why how the tax bill works the levy itself is um is a process that we'll undertake here next month that we do annually and it is a dollar amount a request in dollars as to what the board is requesting to um Bill essentially taxpayers and the bond and interest tax levy itself

075is determined at the time of the issuance of the bonds and is then calculated as to what how much money needs to be raised in a given year and that's handed over over to the county clerk and then the board has no discretion over how that is charged to the taxpayers the bond and interest Levy once the bonds are issued it becomes automatic uh and once the bonds are paid off the authority to Levy that money goes away this is only for the bonds as you know as the board knows uh we our annual Bond and interest tax levy is about $9 million a year and it has been for some time and the proposal on the ballot is essentially to continue that amount that 9 million do for the next 20 or so years

076as these bonds are paid off what often times we get in terms of a question is what about interest rates because we all know that interest rates are increasing quite rapidly in terms of the FED rates and then mortgage rates and and all those sorts of things um in fact I was reading an article a couple weeks ago that said mortgage rates are the highest that they've been since 2007 and the interest costs are quite profound compared to what we've been accustomed to these last years two years and so naturally people are asking questions about us issuing bonds and what that impact would be uh again since we are only levying $9 million per year the interest rate is whatever it is at the time that we issue those bonds and we back into those

077costs just just like saying if you're going to uh buy a car for example and you go to the dealer and and and the salesman asks you what can you afford in this case we can afford $9 million you walk in the dealership depending on what the interest rate is at that given time that's going to determine what kind of car that you can buy you've got let's say $500 a month to spend the interest rate is currently 5% well after you pay the interest what do you have left in principal to pay that's the same equation here so we're going to do our best to time the market we we can't issue all these bonds at a single time $140 million because of IRS Arbitrage rules you can't borrow all that money and then

078stuff it in the bank although that would be attractive right now given interest rates and what you could earn on on that money um we can't do that unfortunately you have to spend uh 80% of those proceeds within 18 months after insurance and so because of construction schedules and when bills would be paid we'd be issuing those bonds and probably three or four maybe five batches over the course of five years and so that hopefully answers the question that people have about interest rates why HC storman Louise White School um as the board is well aware and um probably the community knows that those schools were built in 19 1978 and those are not the oldest schools in the district they're kind of middle-aged as far as schools go and as you heard during public

079comment this evening uh those schools have been difficult to manage since almost the moment that they were built uh they weren't built right and they were built frankly on the cheap and uh they've been problematic ever since and now that they are almost 45 years old there's a heck of a lot of work that needs to be done to them including the roof the roof is original the doors and windows are original the walls inside the school are original and normally walls don't need to be replaced but in that school they do uh unfortunately the way it was built they were movable walls that were made of steel that literally hang from the rafters and when I say they hang from the rafters they literally hang from the rafters and you can push on the

080walls and they'll Sway and if you were to think about how things were in the 70s that they had had in con architectural Concepts in schools that were more open Concepts and more flexible but the materials weren't quite there yet um the thought was that maybe we could move those walls at some point but of course those walls have never moved in the 45 years that we've operated those schools we can't put any more electricity in them and that's that's an issue um that's just one facet but more importantly now with modern fire code the door closers the automatic door closers that go on doors that we have had to install when the doors close the wall moves too and when the wall moves when the door is attempting to close they have a tendency

081to buy and they don't lck or latch and that's that's a serious security issue that we have nowadays with the issues that we faced and that's just one of the many issues that we have just the way that they were architected schools were just designed completely differently and you look at the magnitude of all the work that needs to be done in those schools and the fact that they weren't built right to begin with we can't turn off the heat in those schools at night because the walls leech out like our older schools are more efficient in terms of energy management than those schools uh you add up the magnitude of all those that work that needs to be done and quite literally although people disbelieve us but quite literally it will cost more to

082renovate them than it would to rebuild them and so uh that's why HC Storm and Louise White schools just need to be raised and and rebuilt of course we're going to rebuild on the same site we're going to build a new school first so that we can continue to operate the existing move the students and the teachers to the new school and then raise the old one first and then we can avoid a lot of costs in student transportation or mobile classrooms and the like several million dollars and probably something on the order of 6 million dollars of avoided costs by building a new school immediately adjacent to the old one otherwise we'd be putting students through three maybe even four years of construction and moving different pieces of the school and phasing construction and

083it gets exceptionally complex to make the extent of the renovations that would otherwise have to happen there and even at the end of the day we still wouldn't have a school that would meet modern standards often times people say well your older schools um Ellis gusterson and JB Nelson they need a lot of work too and indeed they do and a matter of fact they also need an extensive amount of work but they're not in quite as bad a shape as uh the others um and we do need to be thinking about the decommissioning those schools it's not in the cards for us financially now to do so um but it's something that the community is going to have to wrestle with probably in the next 10 or 15 years it'll likely be another referendum

084for the citizens to consider as to whether or not what they want to do with those particular schools but that's down the road for us to live within our means now in terms of paying off the existing debt potentially issu new debt and not increasing the bond and tax the excuse me the bond and interest tax levy um that's where we this is what we can afford there's a lot of work to do at our other schools too um the middle school is now 30 years old it was built in 1992 and uh there's a lot of things that are tired in that building that need our care and attention and the high school as well we've lived off of growth in this community for many years in terms of our additions and Renovations we've

085experienced very rapid growth in the 80s 90s and in the ODS of the 2000s and we built a lot of additions onto schools and that was what we could afford to do at the time but we couldn't afford to go back and take care of the core components of those buildings and now now we're at that point where the the amount of work that needs to be done is quite large and um we need the community's permission as to what they want to to um they want us to do in terms of what they're willing to pay for us to make that happen this is the longest span by that our estimate uh as best we can tell looking at historical records that we've gone without a referendum uh this is last referendum was in

0862006 here we are in 2022 and that's a pretty long time um that's the longest we've gone since the 1950s without passing a bond referendum in bavia and um that's not how schools are funded we often here too people say all right if we say yes to this well don't come back and ask us anymore just take care of it from here on out unfortunately as much as we would love to say that that's not how uh managing school districts work especially with the finances that we have it's designed for us to go back to the taxpayers and ask them the questions for these big bills our operating funds just can't hand and we do know that the tax bills are large it's not a phenomenon that's unique to bavia as many people uh mistakenly

087believe it's it's how we fund schools in Illinois especially in affluent communities we rely excessively on local property taxes to fund our schools and it becomes an equity issue but and it's expensive but this is this is how we do it here in Illinois and hopefully in the years to come we can change that but that's not something that's necessarily within the control of Pavia that's something that we have to decide as a state and that's where we are so that was a very much longer winded version of what I had planned to say tonight but I hope that answers a lot of the questions that citizens have um about the referendum but i' certainly be happy to entertain any others that you have or questions that you've come across and your interactions with the

088community since I think it might be good Tony for the audience to hear that you know we solicited a wide array of voices from the community we landed on three different options and then we had a community group study it and engage with the community and uh this option is by far the most what they felt was best for the district to put on the ballot so it wasn't lightly decided and it was uh come to through a lot of interaction a lot of difficult conversations and a lot of study so uh we didn't come to this decision lightly it was no we didn't presented to us as what we feel the community uh wants yeah I think that's an important note Lisa I hear her say all the time when she's in talking with

089uh the staff or members of the community that the board the board the objective here wasn't to go and sell the community on some plan it was to see what the community wanted first and then ask the question so that we could move forward with that plan and live within our means and the expectations of the citizens other questions or comments right then we're going to turn it over to Chris to talk about the delate assembly so everybody on the board should have received in outline of the proposals I there are eight proposals that the are being presented at the delegate assembly um for most of them I am recommending that we go with the iasb recommendation The Only Exception is the first one um per Tony's recommendation because they are looking to um Lobby

090to increase the amount uh District could keep in their fund balances um because of the way that they're phrasing the question Tony doesn't think it's a good idea and he's our finance guy and I trust him um and I don't really understand all of that um do you have a more succinct explanation of 10 words or left 10 words I don't think I could do I won't do it it won't be as long as the B report that I just gave they're proposing to use What's called the Miller ratio um two times the Miller raising it from two times to three times which is used typically for um revenues generated by townships and other local governments in school districts we use a the ISB Financial profile which I know the board is well aware of

091here because we look at our Revenue to our fund balance to revenue ratios and we monitor those closely and we' obviously significantly improved our finances in the last five years but I that would make more sense to me personally to use the standard we use for all school districts rather than some standard that typically applies to other local governments so unless anybody has a strong um feeling or feels like we need to discuss one of these I am just going to go with the recommendation and Tony's recommendation otherwise we can have a discussion on some of them Chris I just um have one question and I we did talk about this last year I just need a refresher about the alternative fuel School Bus funding and the recommendation was no and you're saying to support

092that and I remember having a conversation last year about this because I felt it should be a yes so can you just and then by the end of that discussion I understood better so can you just refresh our memory about that a little bit so being representative of the community we don't own buses so basically anything they're asking for more funding to um increase um changing out buses to zero emissions in districts that have buses okay um if we were to do that that takes money away from the things that we do um so the question is is do we want to support other districts that have their own buses okay or you know when we don't so the net net is that one doesn't really apply to us anyway right because we don't own

093our own buses correct it doesn't directly apply to us but in theory the money that would go toward supporting that for other school districts potentially could take away from us cuz we're not in that position or we wouldn't have an opportunity to utilize FS waye fair enough thank you any other questions all right thanks Chris for representing us next item on the agenda is a discussion of our board governance uh this is a followup of our special meeting and we're going to have Dr Hitchens lead these um because she is actually the board secretary so she's the one who um uh sort of G gathers the information for us as we have our discussion she takes our notes uh presents it back to us to confirm that we all have a shared understanding of what

094what we agreed upon and what was said so I'm going to hand it over to Dr Hitchens to guide that discussion great the um discussion fell under the close um the Clos meeting exemption for a board self- evaluation when it's led by somebody from the Statewide organization your Statewide organization of the Illinois Association of school boards and although that was in Clos session it was widely agreed that the topics as we your conclusions would be presented for everyone to see so these were the conclusions of how um you would work together moving forward the first one um the first take away is that this was a very productive and collaborative meeting and that um the recommendation was that um you continue to strengthen your working relationships so continue to have discussions like these and bring

095it out into the open so that people can see um all of your working agreements and um the the the work that you put into this and the importance of the relationship and all of that you value um collaborating with the community and others as well those are go into your working agreements um if we did want to do another special meeting I would recommend that we would wait until January at the earliest just because of the number of things going on in November and December you already have at least three meetings scheduled in December board meetings to look at the superintendent search so we can we'll revisit that I'll keep it at your Forefront and we'll schedule something whether it's at a regular meeting or a special meeting or maybe some combination a special

096meeting right before a regular meeting to continue these discussions the second takeaway was that um when we have meetings like this we use the post meeting summaries that we see in a lot of our um collaborative groups where the team um at the end of the meeting sits down and jointly writes the summary of the meeting here are the most important things that we talked about and then those go up for all the staff to see and in some cases we make those public as well and so we talked about um we did that at October 4th we came up with our um takeaways and we all agreed that it was a collaborative and productive meeting and so that way when people are asking how did it go we all agree that that was what

097happened at that meeting and um it really is cathartic to talk about that together and so that there's no meeting after the meeting where you have to talk about what happened at the meeting we do it right there together the third um takeaway was that um you wanted to talk about at what point does an issue rise to a board issue so there are several things that were brought to for example in public comment or people email you and so just figuring out who best who is um the best person to respond some of these things do r to the level of the board and others have um other places that they can be discussed and we reviewed our communication decision tree that we created a in the last few months to talk about when

098an issue is brought how do we manage it who replies who's best to solve that problem Etc um and then we also said that um you wanted to talk about the different um data that you're receiving and we're going to um dig more into that in the upcoming months as we look at the different committees action plans and what data that they're trying to move needle on um we you also have that annual calendar of monitoring where you probably monitor um I would guess it's close over 40 different reports so they're either monthly um like the guidance counselor report is an annual requirement and there's data included in those there's the class of the graduating class that you monitor every year and there's quite a bit of data in there so um maybe you need

099to review those mon um that monitoring document that has the 12 months of monitoring and figure out um some of them are required by policy but others are just nice to have and are they are we presenting them the way that you want to see them and is there other data that needs to includ it that will be an ongoing discussion and then um you g annually you employ one person and you give me directives and you gave me five directives in May and so we talked about um putting those on a cycle so when the new superintendent comes on we know exactly when um you would give the directives and then give feedback to the superintendent um about their progress and their Performance Based on those directives and put a cycle together and then

100we'll talk about that in close session today to review my current directives and then um you do have board protocols um and one suggestion was to rename them board protocols rather than agreements because they're not something that you um that maybe when the new board comes on they didn't agree to them but these are still board protocols that we follow and then so we'll talk a little bit about that right now and then um oh yeah we'll talk about six and seven so number seven there was one protocol that you wanted to review about um when a board member meets with someone in the community um you do value that relationship building and of course when you meet with someone in the community you're not allowed to do um there's um you're not acting as

101an official board member because the only time you're an official board member is during a duly called meeting of the board of education but that doesn't mean that those meetings um aren't good ways to build relationships and to listen to perspectives and so um we did talk about that and there was that one um there was one part of that protocol that said um to bring a second board member to that and you guys want to to revisit that so the communication so maybe we'll start with the communication decision tree and then um review the protocols yes so those two things tonight yeah those are what are on our agenda tonight so maybe everyone uh has access to the decision tree maybe take a look at that and uh see if we were still happy

102with it if we wanted to agree to that one change yeah so the the the communication decision tree um I feel like that was the only item in question right was if the board determines that a meeting with someone from the public is to build a relationship and to listen it said something like bring um if requested or if desired bring a second member and so we need to to agree on that language do we prefer to bring a second M expect should be required to have a second member and these would not like the chance happening in Jewel where you see a board member and you wanted to ask them a question ask them a question or or but this would be there's somebody with a concern they want the board to hear them

103and so that would be like an official meeting that was set up with the intent of listening so what are your thoughts is it preferred second member required second member yeah expectation that a second member is coming yeah like if you and I were going to meet with Stan you know he's taking us out to lunch it's both of us got [Laughter] it so we talking about like the language like required or preferred is that what we're doing that was specifically what she said prer expectation yes she said we need to revisit that language my opinion is preferred in so much that it allows the flexibility based on the context of the meeting um but my intent on that also is that it needs to be in council with the superintendent and or board president

104to come to that decision not one makes that decision on their own I agree with that that's a good idea okay so like a determination to bring a second board member will occur consultation with board president Andor Andor one two three four I hear four of you saying that very specifically so yeah I agree that may may I ask a question what is the concern what are we what are we trying to protect I mean if we trust each other that we're going to abide by the rules as far as just listening and making sure that we're not actually doing bir work what is the concern that what is the problem that we're trying to solve here is there a concern with not having someone I mean like is there a a desire to not

105have a second person there well my concern is I know that occasionally people from the community come with concerns that they don't feel comfortable talking to just anybody about and so there may be specific individuals that they may relate to better and able to provide that feedback and I think that we need to provide a safe space and if that's in the group then we should provide it you know if that's with multiple board members then we should provide it with multiple board members but if it's not then I think we should give them the opportunity um to engage us in a way that they feel safe and so that occas us may mean that they don't want the superintendent to know about it or they don't want the board president to know about it

106so that what that's my intent really behind that is to give an opportunity to have that dialogue so that the superintendent or board or board president is informed and then someone says I really think I need to meet with them alone and that kind of trust relationship that you're talking about allows them to say you know what I agree with you or engage a dialogue But ultimately it kind of becomes your decision in the end right but it's about kind of maintaining an open communication so everybody understands who's meeting with whom and that and that maybe the to make sure the dialogue or the information learned comes back as well if it's pertinent and appropriate right I mean so yeah I think that that is the key is that if the person is so concerned

107that the board president and the superintendent doesn't know you just have another board member come they don't need to know about it it's no big deal well right I mean so that's what maybe you inform another board member maybe that would be fine too right and two board memb members go to this meeting well I mean sometimes it may be two sometimes it may be one it just depends on no it's two well and that's where we disagree well I'll tell you where I stand Chris is the reason why I think two is better is because when you're listening sometimes people hear different things and so if you have two people hearing oh I you might capture I feel like the constituent will be better heard and then when we report back to our colleagues

108you get a more complete picture probably of what the discussion is I absolutely age agree that that is the ideal and that that's what we should do when possible but I think we should be allowed the flexibility we're adults to you know have conversations and make sure that we bring back you know we the agreement is if there's anything important that the rest of the board needs to know we should should share that and I think that that is what we should focus on is what is the information that we need to share with one another and the information is is hey I had this feedback and I think that it's important therefore I'm sharing it with the board um and I think that you need to provide the flexibility so that if somebody in

109the community needs to provide that information in a safe manner that we can do so safely and still abide by the board agreements I I I would I would agree with you I think it's about what information gets shared so that if someone says hey I'm uncomfortable sharing that the particulars the information with the board president or whatever that it could just be hey I was approached by somebody and I'm thinking theoreticals now yeah they're uncomfortable saying who they are or what the goal or the message is I need to go talk to them and then it would be yes go talk to them or let's explore bringing another person and why that works or doesn't work or whatever else I I don't think it has to be like a a directive a directive or

110a pink sheet gets filled out anytime anybody wants to talk to a board member right you know and a decision I think the language you proposed is has latitude there so it's a discussion if okay I would hope that that is not the norm that every time a constituent wants to speak to a board member they don't feel comfortable so I mean we want to protect it but at the same time it's not Norm but there could be instances where it occurs in this process the way this Craigs put it allows for a little bit of flexibility but in general we would hope that the constituents would feel comfortable it might not there might be someone particular they not but there should be someone among the seven of us that they would feel comfortable eating

111the second person two board members and if not with a discretion and so the commun knows when we're having these discussions we're listening right that's the whole point right in in the end it may not really be a problem and I think that's why I use the term in consultation with not the discretion of the board president and or it's just I'm kind of notifying you this is my opinion I'm looking for some guidance or some input just to make sure it doesn't rise to a level that we all need to be concerned about it because they may know something I may not know well and the other reason that we talked about too is that we want to be really careful about not inadvertently triggering um a violation of an open meetings act because

112nobody's tracking who's having conversations by way of explanation one of the things that we I recently found out and I thought I knew everything about this was that you could you could a person in the public could meet on the same topic with three board members and that is a violation of the open meetings act it could and it could be construed as such and individually none of them would have known they did it right so that's part of the concern so so so the the key word is in consultation consultation with I still think you say preferably bring but in consultation with yeah I mean I think everyone's okay with the preferably as long as the in consultation with is part of it I know so you'd rather have it stronger but I think

113the sort of General acceptance was preferably with in in consult ation so that the the the expectation is we're listening we're trying to um make sure that we're doing a good job of collaboratively listening you know working together as a board but also not um hamstringing someone from being able to have a conversation that might be important okay I think that was the only thing on the decision tree correct did you have so it's just gonna stay the same no we added that the expectation is that the that we're we' prefer to bring two board members and that it would be that not the norm I mean like that's our understanding it's going down in record but the norm would be we're going to bring two board members we'll have a consultation with whomever is

114necessary and of course we can um if there's compelling reason okay so it's two members unless there's that's the norm unless there's some compelling reason and we'll figure that out in consultation with each other as we needed thank you all right and then the other one was the um board agreements formerly known as board member agreements that um uh so first of all are we comfortable renaming those board protocols yes protoc right everyone comfortable with meaming those board protocols so that we're not this is the right spot for the yes yeah and everyone was supposed to look at our board protocols which we've had for many years but we keep tweaking them which is good and then the consultant brought other another set that if we saw something we wanted to add and um I

115know Aon has something he wants to add so I was reading through it and um correct me if I'm wrongly spit for the community board member aging sort of a Cod of contact how we operate yep and as I was reading through it uh there is some language about one line about um how we interact with each other and I thought there would be uh good to add an accountability section to this and I apologize and know for everyone here this is the first time you're seeing it so I don't expect you uh to accept it at face value but I'm going to read it out loud and then I encourage a discussion about the language and if you think this is a good idea but for accountability there's three bullet points it says each

116board member agrees to abide by the agreements and engage in self-reflection second point if a board member violates an agreement is the responsibility of a fellow board member to address the issue with the individual as soon as possible and as directly as possible and third the full board should consider corrective action if a board member repeatedly violates the agreements and basically this is just a way for us to keep each other accountable and that if a pattern develops that I feel like this gives us the structure in order to address it we should probably change it to protocols like I said this is like our first draft so I would be shocked if it doesn't yeah no it's a good first draft I mean I I think that the key is that we just we

117need to keep talking to each other and when we're not like if we have an understanding of what our our um protocols areh then if we're not following them we have an opport we have a place and a a structure with and with within to address them um Aaron one question I have is the last bullet considered corrective action do you have any sort of example for that uh I don't actually because I'm not exactly sure back can I be that's one that's one way to go um you know I don't know I kind of felt like uh and I'm not sure like what legally we could do or how Works um but uh I kind of felt like keeping it broad um you know the citizens elect us for a reason and so um

118being a little bit not vague but leaving it open-ended uh allows the board them to make what they feel is the appropriate action I feel like if you get too prescriptive every situation is different every board is different so uh I'm not sure that we could write a document that would really address future situations I appreciate that I just want to make sure that there it's not empty words either you know so if we're going to say corrective action we should have an idea that we can take corrective action if there is corrective AC action to se point if we can't do anything you know well we can talk about more constrained lines of communication if someone's right that and and expectations of that know even just modes of behavior how we're CH out go

119yes don't do it again I mean I mean corrective action doesn't necessarily have to be a punitive measure against the person that it could be conversation it could be a it could be we need to change a protocol right that something happened that corrective action is on a protocol level as opposed to getting publicly admonished or whatever else this is yeah because the thing I was sitting there thinking is I was thinking the same thing you were is I'm like I I the first two bullet points I'm all for the the last one I'm trying to figure out what that well repeatedly violates you know so because it implies with the repeated violations then it's a corrective measure of said board member and I'm again not 100% certain what we could do you know yeah

120I'm not exactly sure exactly what's allowed or what's how that works either I mean again this is I know this is the first time you're seeing this so I apologize for that no this is good though see see it some got to see it something yeah get the discussion going so I mean obviously people want to chew on a little bit or maybe we could get some guidance on what a board's allowed to do within itself that might be helpful I or or what are effective ways to right it's not like we want to go crazy with authority we just want effective ways of helping us to follow our own protocols and I think I mean regardless the first two bullet points I'm all for and all behind frankly you know and I think those

121stand well enough on their own even if we say for right now we the first two get more information on because I'm also interested on what are do other boards have anything something along this line that of that third bullet point that might guide our decision process sounds good to me sure everybody else than I mean I I like the idea I just need to chew on process right yeah so do you guys want to add like now that we've seen these do you guys want to add it to the next agenda and we can come back kind of like policy come back and and you know word Smith or edit that as appropriate that sounds good and I think if we could get some guidance from some people that might know about what this

122corrective action thing like what are the options if board members are not otherwise is this something we should discuss at the next board training in January or whatever I mean well we probably want to look at I mean like I think I don't think there was a lot of um push back on any of these but I don't think anybody wants to be like yes let's do it the first night but I think we could talk about adding at least the first two bullet points at the next meeting and then you know figure out the next part after that but in the meantime I think there was a request of we don't even know who to talk to about who could give us advice on that but I don't know if you have contacts or

123yeah I um yeah I will look into it I I know some boards I was just on a different School District's website and they actually Place their protocols on their web page um on their board page so we can talk about that at the next meeting like we know what these are and if anybody asked they can see them but is there a place that we want to house them which is probably we would what was the district and you go if you go on their board page they have all their uh board protocols posted they look it up anyway so is that anything else on board governments I think we're looking at rather than trying to beat this all into submission in one meeting that we would just have continuing conversations about these Okay

124so we've addressed the board protocols tonight we'll add it to the agenda again to talk about the accountability piece and if there's anything in the board um suggested ones that we were given uh we can bring those back so uh we can add board protocols as many times as you'd like but I'm assuming that by Next by the next meeting meaning we can sort of beat those at a submission and then post them if we so decide does that work Yeahs fabulous all right that's it next uh one is uh responding to hate I'm gonna hand that over to Dr Hitchens to start us off great um back in September there was a racial slur written on a bathroom at the high school and um it we had a lot of um feedback about how

125we respond to hate and bias at school and there were some great resources that were sent our way um not that we don't have protocols in place obviously the most important protocols would be the ones that are the preemptive and proactive in building relationships and hoping it never gets to a place um so there's a lot to be said for um how we respond um preemptively but then once something does happen um you know people are asking questions do have protocols for interviews how we support people how we communicate and how we debrief and so um some of us took that the resources that were sent to us and and um and put that together and we put it on the equity team agenda in October and those conversations will be ongoing they didn't quite

126make it to that part of their agenda but this is what they were given and um I think that it was important um to put this as an agenda item to give you the opportunity to um chime in about our response to these hurtful and hateful acts so this was given to the equity team for their review yes and it's based on um some feedback that or some resources that were given to us so we tweaked it to like reflect um what it is that the protocols that we do so it was a good exercise in like we don't have we didn't have one document that showed um how we respond but these other one other District did and then the resource that we were provided was very helpful to help us reflect on okay

127H like how do we respond what does the investigation look like what does support look like so this is the start of that conversation so this could just be an update and we can get you know give the equity team a chance to provide their input into where we're lacking what's working what we need to do differently and they can report back to and or if you wanted to uh discuss this now I have how many um they met quite a few times over the summer and then they started their monthly meetings with the facilitator they did September and October but they met we had many meetings in the summer so two times with the facilitator yes okay Chris what were we going to say um so I have a couple thoughts the first thing

128that popped out to me when I read this comparing it to the original um responding to hate and school um resource that we received was that we don't actually have anything specific about prevention and I know you just mentioned it in the comment and how and we talked earlier about how a lot of these incidents actually are stopped before they actually happen right there's yeah we were talking about conflict specifically like violent conflict and um you know the the types of um the proactive work that goes into when we know when we know about something that's going to happen we do have P mediation and we try to work things out before they rise to a level of acting out or hate speech or violence and and when we do that the high school has

129a very good success rate um the support staff there working with individuals to stop it from going too far um but not everybody brings everything to the attention of the adults so we need to figure out why isn't you know yeah the why what I was going to say and what I what I would like to see is I would like to see that actually in writing so that people can actually go and say hey this is what we're supposed to do hold us accountable and whatnot um and then also um I'm trying I lost my train of thought it'll come back to me hold um and then other other concerns that I had um regarding specifically what we have here is like the investigation protocol um doesn't actually mention anything about helping those who

130were harmed um especially if there are people who are harmed beyond the actual Target of an act um you know if somebody is called a racial slur that may impact everybody in that school that identifies to that group and they may feel threatened so we may need to lend support to those people also and so I think that you know when we're looking through each of these we need to ask you know who's being harmed that we may not be considering um yeah that might belong in number two because it is about that's where we talk about support and we don't talk about others who were harmed but we do talk about the if there is a specific person that was targeted but we can add something like not only supporting that person but others

131who may have been impacted directly yeah I had that on here um and then how do we draw a line um on what triggers either a Class A Grade A School level notification or sport I think that we need to have a specific line drawn there or um so that people have expectations you know I know that every time this event happens it's going to trigger this type of communication it's going to trigger this type of support um again so setting expectations so that those we serve know what to expect and I think right now that expectation is not necessarily there um right because this is more of a we need to every incident we would look at the facts and figure out like who heard it you know where does this discussion need to

132happen the um you know the restorative practices was it a classroom does did it impact the whole school so yeah I think that you're looking for if this then that and the way it's written what we do is it's a case by case basis so and it seems like in today's world where there are phones and instant communication and video and photos everywhere it would seem it would be in our best interest to a in the sight of CAU and and overc communicate about something an incident and assume that people know about it um from my opinion because it seems to me that those who are impacted tend to find out about the incidents when they happen the only thing I'd like to think about in relationship to that statement is I think the those

133impacted need to have some say into how that information is rolled out that if something occurs to them that they're not comfortable being shared far and wide then that should play into the communication chain of what goes out absolutely yeah we we we need to meet people where they're at and some people are going to want certain types of support and some people might not want that exact same support and I would say I was trying to figure out how you're were talking about those that are impacted in the support of that and I was like right with you about how maybe that's in the second par set but what I would say is I think a portion of the investigation also needs to be understanding particularly in the case and as I'm beginning to

134understand as it regards to hate and bias is determining the extent of those affected that it may not be one individual person it may not be one student may not be one teacher but how broad is the impact of that event as a part of the investigation phase so that you know when you get to the support phase who you need to support the other part of it is during the debriefing we had mentioned um contacting groups for to help support us um I think it would be helpful to identify some of those groups as especially if those groups may be supportive for specific um oppressed groups within our community to know that hey this type of incident occurred we know that this group this community organization can help support that um and I think

135that having our community help come in and solve these issues is going to be beneficial because this isn't just a problem in our school buildings this extends out in the community and the more we can have those conversations the better off we will be and the more that we can incorporate the community into the solutions the better off we will be so what are you proposing exactly I'm not sure I understood your so I don't I want understand better so I'm I'm just trying to find exactly where is it um that when there's a an incident we would reach out we would identify groups to yeah identifying groups to contact and it's like all right uh let's see large scale uh screw Improvement student groups uh districtwide collaborative groups parent organizations you know I think

136we need to identify exactly who those groups are and who is willing to help and how they could help I I I think that keeping this kind of vague um allows for interpretation so that we may end up helping one group more than we help another so I think having things and writing and having setting expectations so that everybody has something to go back to will make it easier for us to apply this equitably across all groups so if I'm hearing you so you're saying again I'm just trying to understand if there's something happens we identify uh organizations within the community or resources within the community and that we would reach out to them to collaborate on correct and that is actually the recommendation if you go to the original Source um they actually encourage

137a lot of collaboration with the community in order to address these issues because they're CommunityWide issues and so I'm encouraging us to embrace the community more in having these discussions and providing that support because I think the community may actually have a perspective and the ability to provide um support in the ways that we can't simply because we don't have the diversity on staff and on hand I think maybe a first step would even be identifying if those are resources are in the Tavia I'm not even sure if they're there exactly yep and then after that maybe we I mean and that's why I think you know once you start identifying groups and finding out who they can help and if they can help then we go all right who's left out out who's who's

138doesn't have that support and what supports do we need to add but unless we actually start writing it down we can't actually identify who's missing so this has been sent to the equity committee as it is right now right correct so that's what they're going to be working so what well we have to determine that I don't know that with everything else that we've given the equity commune do they have time to do this or is this the priority or I mean my I want to make sure that we're providing the equity committee with the time and resources that they need need in order to accomplish what they need to do and I don't want want to make sure we're not overburdening them I don't want to tell them personally though whether this is important

139or not I want them to tell me whether it's important to them or not so if they feel that it's not within their resources they have available to do then yes it can kind of come back to us um but I I I might because my question I was leading to is I I like a number of the points that you brought up um if not all of them I think they if there was some sort of means of communicating that to the equity of this is the communication the discussion the board had so that if and when they do decide to review this that they would have that additional information to take into consideration as part of their commentary is to say no I agree with this point this point this point you should

140add those um I I I do not want to necessarily presume or tell them what they should or shouldn't review I think I want them to be able to make the determination themselves about what's important um if we decide it's important important in any way from our side that that's a different animal but I want to give them agency and I don't want to undermine their agency by telling them what they should or shouldn't do so let me as long as that agency includes the ability for them to say this is important but we don't have time or the resour absolutely I'm perfectly absolutely and and that they would say we but we want you right Bo to continue moving this down the line ABS because that's part of it is them giving us so

141that we're not fighting it's the collaborative thing we're not we're not fighting goals per I have no qus with that okay but I think we just it's it's important that we continue having this conversation obviously based on the comments it's needed other comments or suggestions all right that is all of our items for reports it we'll go to administrative comments from Dr Hitchens um I'll just talk about a a few of events that are upcoming for the board that are important that you have on your calendars the um in general there are um this doesn't affect all of you but there are Board elections and the window to circulate petitions is now I know I had someone from the community contact me I'm happy to be your resource to answer questions to the best of

142my ability the King County Clerk is the one that oversees the elections but I can help provide lots of resource and answer questions and um so I'm happy to do that and that the petitions close sometime in December so if you're thinking of running I know you guys have done it before but needs a resource let me know it there's some information on our website you could also email me and then the next time we meet officially will be November 15th at a board meeting that is like a week Norm earlier than we normally would but we have that short week for the holiday and so we will see you here on November 15th but before that you are all invited to the mayor's breakfast 7:30 this year it's at the homestead um on November

1433rd so just let Cindy know if you would like to join us at the mayor's breakfast I know at least one of you are coming and then on Saturday November 5th um if you would like to support the Bea and their scholarship fund and join us for their trivia night um invited to that as well that's my update awesome uh we'll go with board comments Chris you can start um I don't have much today just want to thank the community for coming out and being involved I'm very encouraged by that congratulations to all the four sport I mean all the fall Sports especially the tennis team the football team going into playoffs and cross country going into the postseason and good luck to all of those college or all those seniors who are filling out

144applications that are due by November 1st and the parents who have to fill out the FAFSA I feel your pain uh again I want to thank the community for coming out it was great to see a big turnout great to see people from the entire spectrum of age uh it's always impressive when I see our young people get up and speak before um our students and our kids always just blow me away um I want to Second Chris I know we're at a point here where a lot of the activities are winding down so I know it's the end of uh era for a lot of parents and students and so I want to congratulate them on how they've represented bavia and and I know we still have a lot of students pursuing their ultimate

145goals of state championships and that type of things so we want to wish everyone good luck and then um I'll beat Craig to the punch for once and say that I was at the football game and we got to see the marching band do their thing and I think that was a full performance I'm not an expert like you but uh I got to say it was uh I was in the marching band and all we did is basically play our notes and go from A to B to C and that this is something very different and it was very impressive and I appreciate all the work that those kids are doing so again um when it comes to our kids I mean the best thing about for me is now that we're able to

146connect and actually see these kids do what they do so uh just want to say thank you for everything they're doing so um thank you to everyone who came out and I would encourage everyone to vote that's it um I wanted to say a couple of things one thanks for everyone that came and talked uh today and and kind of gave us their perspective and their points that was um I I was in your shoes particularly for the ones that are involved in um scouts because I've tried to work those very same issues that when I was a scout leader about meeting in schools and how do you support the schools and all that other stuff um I'm going to say congratulations to all the student but I am would be remiss if I didn't

147talk about the marching band a little bit um the this weekend we've had a lot of shows in the past couple weeks doing their thing doing their shows and frankly their show wasn't really 100% done until the community night um these kids instead of marching from A to B to C to D you know they are there's about 150 different steps that they do through this whole show that they all memorize um and in fact because we didn't have the lights a lot of them were doing it in the dark at the beginning of the year and the drum majers were out there with gloves that lit up so that they could March um so the dedication of those kids is impressive and that meant this year that um they placed in every competition they

148were in this year um they were in the top four of every competition they were in um and in fact this weekend at ISU which is basically the state finals um they uh as a first in bavia history made finals so um it's a great culmination I very proud to have been a part of that um and work with the staff and the kids and the and how it collab aborative and involved they all are um and so um I just want to congratulate all of them they've worked very very hard and particularly for those seniors and my son is one of them it's a real good crowning moment for them and I appreciate everything everybody did um that gives these kids an opportunity to succeed and that's what I will end with today nice

149um I can't top what all of you guys always oh sorry I blocked the view I know you looked at me I got confused Erin sorry really I know it's hard to be the last person isn't it yeah so I just had a few shout outs um we go west chicago bavia Geneva for the upper eight conference champs for swimming girls swimming this past weekend so that's super exciting I know they're really excited it's a unique situation we have partnering with Geneva and West Chicago and um bavia of course and and they just all come together to make one really really really big girl swim team they swim out of West Chicago and so that was exciting um the other thing I wanted to shout out was future fashionistas was this past weekend and for

150those of you who don't know what future fashion eus is it is an opportunity for um our young aspiring fashion designers in town to come and partner with um some art students at the high school and design their own Creations whether that be something um it has to be wearable art so it could be jewelry headpiece um dress pants whatever you pretty much saw it all and then they put on after a couple hours of partnering with their new high school friend they put on a little fashion show so um the winners of that competition then go on to um share their wearable art at uh Rock The Runway which I think is in March this year for anyone in Bia to come see so it's very very exciting for both the participants I imagine

151for the high school students and it's a great fundraiser for our uh Studio program so um I had the opportunity to go myself and I really really enjoyed it so awesome awesome job to all the kids that participated whether it's high school or Elementary and the staff that puts it on cuz it's a lot of work um and I just really want to shout out um to the Future Educators program oh yeah I mean talk about oh I love to talk about the students that's why we're here and that was such a great highlight of great things that we're doing and just taking um things to the next level seeing a need and really honing in on it and six college credit hours is kind of a half a semester that is a big deal

152so um thanks to the teachers involved in that thanks to the staff for supporting that uh getting these programs off the ground with such Partnerships is a lot of behind the scenes work and thanks to the students who came in and talked about it because that's that takes a lot of bravery and I really admire that so um that's all I have for tonight which is plenty which was really good and I almost didn't let you talk I'm so sorry that was good stuff um yeah so you guys talk about all the amazing things I'm not going to um repeat everything great that you guys said we do have um Clos session on the agenda we have a number of items on our agenda for Clos session so I would entertain a motion to move

153to close session for the following reasons the appointment employment compensation discipline performance or dismissal of specific employ employees specific individuals who serve as independent contractors in a park recreational or educational setting or specific volunteers of the public body or legal counsel for the public body including hearing testimony on a complaint lodged against an employee a specific individual who serves as an independent contractor in a park recreational or educational setting or a volunteer of the public body or agent or excuse me or against legal counsel for the public body to determine its validity however a meeting to consider an increase in compensation to a specific employee of a public body that is subject to local government wage increased transparency act may not be closed and shall be open to the public and posted and held in

154accordance with the open meetings act and uh we'll also be talking about student discipline I would entertain a motion to go into close session for that very laborious reason move by miter second by matow we'll do the ends all in favor I there