Berwyn South School District 100 Board of Education Meeting

001you now okay hello uh apologies for the late start here in open session um at this point i do need a motion to convene to the public hearing can mike please i will motion to public hearing thank you motion made by lopez seconded in by oh second dressl to convene into public hearing at 7 22 roll call please andrews gonzalez here russell here steinfeld here lopez here dawn absent with notice motion carried sorry sarah did you call elizabeth i'm sorry could you call elizabeth oh jimenez sorry president thank you okay please stand for the pledge of allegiance thank you very much all right public hearing for the 2021 amended budget notice is hereby given by the board of education of berwin south school district 100 in the county of cook state of illinois that the

002amended budget for said school district for the fiscal year 21 is on file and conveniently available for public inspection at la verne education center 3401 south gunderson berwin illinois 60402 at 8 30 a.m to 3 p.m beginning april 30th notice was hereby given further given that a public hearing on said budget will be held at 7 pm on the 23rd day of june at heritage middle school 6850 west 31st street berwin illinois by the board of education berwin south school district in the county of cook state of illinois next is the opportunity for public comment regarding the amended budget specifically if there are any members of the public that would like to address the board regarding the budget please adjust or come to the podium and turn on the microphone okay hearing none i uh

003i need a motion to adjourn from the public hearing i will motion to adjourn all right motion made by lopez seconded by jimenez at 7 25 on the roll call please andrews hi russell dawn absent with notice lopez aye jimenez aye steinfeld aye gonzalez thank you very much i now need a motion to reconvene in open session thank you motion made by jimenez all second seconded by andrews at 7 25. roll call please andrews here russell here gone absent with notice lopez here jimenez here steinfeld here gonzales here all right thank you very much and moving on to the superintendent's report um before we jump in though i just want to say a couple of things about changes to the agenda going forward for board meetings so tonight we begin the new agenda that the

004board agreed upon at our last governance meeting held on june 7th so you will notice that public comment is now between the president's report and the action items that will allow anybody from the public that wishes to address the board regarding specific action items on the agenda the opportunity to do so before a vote and it will also allow when the school year starts we're going to start meetings with highlights from schools and students and staff so we'll be able to allow the public to speak and also highlight members of our important community um public comment will be limited to three minutes per person the time has been extended to 25 minutes so that we can hear more voices and there will be a second opportunity at the end of the meeting before announcements for

005anybody who is not given time during the first session to address the board also at the second public comment is when we will read emails from the board or i'm sorry emails for public comment and as we continue through summer we will be tapering off that practice public comment through email was initiated as a part of the emergency order from the state of illinois regarding the pandemic and now that we are able to meet in person we love to hear from people here in the room and also as far as email is concerned the public is always welcome to email the board through correspondence those emails do come to each and all each each of us and we read them very thoroughly so we definitely encourage the public to continue to communicate with us but

006there will just be some changes as far as emailed public comment okay moving on thank you mary thank you good evening everyone thanks for being here tonight we have a couple presentations to kick off the superintendent's report beginning with our business manager jenny hosty is going to give a background in kind of a financial history and where we are right now in district 100 thanks mary thanks david it's like a movie theater okay so this is kind of a short budget presentation on history of our budget what our budget's made up of and where we've been and kind of where we're headed to so our budget is comprised of three main categories it's your local your federal and your state over 51 percent of our budget comes from state funding that's within evf grants but

007a large portion of that is with evf which is evidence-based funding which used to be general state aid our budget expenditures by object the green and the purple represent the majority of our budget which is made up of salaries and benefits and that's typical so 75 percent of our budget is based on salaries and benefits as we're building the budget one of the things that we look at is where is our enrollment where is our transfer in our enrollment and this first bar represents coming to 2020 we have a decrease in enrollment we're watching that very closely to see where the trend goes because that then dictates where our salaries are not salaries where our staffing needs are at um with our students our you can see the three bars in between the horizontal bars

008the yellow one at the top is low income is a slightly slight dip in low income the green is a slight increase in our english language learners and the blue is a slight decrease in our special education population this is our trend of our expenditures i'm sorry a trend of our revenues from 2000 and i'm sorry i can't read that from way back there 2011 2011 to 2020. you can see our our purple is our state revenue and that has um within our education fund that was when we got that great big increase with evidence-based funding from the state this is our expenditures from 2011 to the blue and that kind of greenish color represent the salaries and benefits and you can see as we go from here to ear they're year to year they're

009just slight increases this represents a combination of the two this is the revenues and expenditures going all the way back from 2007 to 2020. the orange line is your expenditures and your green line is your revenues you can see three-fourths of the way through the chart where the orange is much higher than where the green was and then you can see our expenditures exceeded our revenues that was in when we started talking about going for the referendum the blue at the bottom is our fund balance which uh is the money that we have on hand so you can see in 2016 when our expenditures were higher than our revenues our fund balance dipped very low this was when we were in danger of issuing tax anticipation warrants which is borrowing against to make your payroll

010that was a very scary time this next graph is our financial profile score which is also found on our state on the state website from the illinois state school board this goes from 2013 to two thousand twenty in two thousand thirteen we had recognition the next year we review then the next two years that was the fifth two thousand fifteen two thousand sixteen i referenced earlier we were in warning when you get into warning that was that is when it kind of cues to the state they may come in and take over and guide you from there we were able to then in 2017 come back to review and then 18 1920 we're in recognition across this is our bond structure back in 2019 we um the board at the time voted to restructure our

011bonds the gray is the original bond structure and you can see this starts from 2020 and goes forward to 2035. in 2020 and then 21. sorry i'm losing my breath 20 and then 21 and then 22 our bond was getting very very high so we restructured the bonds and the new bond schedule is the blue which then brought it down and normalized it then you can see in 2025 we drop way down so 26 through 35 our bond our bonds drop significantly this is a this is afr at the top this is fund balance projections this relates to the blue that was in the bottom of the other chart but this starts with 2016 when we were very very low and it goes till 2026 at the very end and you can see as we

012go it's afr which is our audited financials those are actual data then the middle one is predicted budget and then the rest forward are projections these are all done with a financial calculator through forecast five you can see in 2020 24 we start to overlap again where we start eating into our fund balance where the expenditures start going above our revenues this is compare our comparison i know it's very hard to see this is a comparison to all of our area feeder districts the dots on the side to the right are the size of the district so the one on the far right is cicero and then the orange dot is us and then it kind of goes from there what this tells you this one's easier to see here is that red line is

013us this is our operating expenditures per pupil so we are down towards the bottom of our operating expenses per pupil the orange line is the average and the very top one at the top is berlin north this is credit to where the data comes from it pulls from different sites from the state website it pulls enrollment data it pulls your financial information it pulls your operating funds all from various reports from within the state state website future budget considerations heavily look at enrollment projections where we also look at what are the additional resources to address our student needs we're just coming out of a horrible pandemic what are the seats what are the needs that we need for our students long-range facility planning we still have a lot to do our esser funding yes we've

014received money and ester funding those are short-term expenditures and i'll talk more about those and the evidence-based funding when i do my financial financial update in the middle of the meeting our evidence-based funding there is a new allocation that we are told was approved we're still trying to narrow and pinpoint what exactly that means as we look at salaries and as we do projections and as we do expenditures going forward our only real new source of money is our levy and our levy is capped at cpi which is consumer price index which for 2021 is 1.4 percent so our other new money coming in this year will be the esser funding but those are one-time one-time revenue not to be not to sustain and our evidence-based funding if they approve the allocation each year going

015forward and that's the end of my presentation anybody have any questions are there any questions jenny can you explain the ramifications of a negative cpi and negative cpi i can't answer that with dfinity because that's been a discussion with our group of business managers of what does happen if it becomes negative the closest we got was a zero it would be no increase at all i don't know if it would be a negative levy that part i don't know okay thank you something to definitely watch for though thank you everyone any other questions from the board okay okay um all right our next presentation is just kind of updating the board um on a topic that has been discussed uh across the state and the country really for quite some time but something that we

016are really starting to see and be hit with in in district 100 um so that is the illinois educator shortage so there's lots of data and information out there around this and it's something that we want to make sure that we're continuously paying attention to while this impacts every part of our district i specifically highlighted there are some of the impacts around our board goals we talk about you know wanting to make sure all of our students are college and career ready and recruit support and retain high quality staff those are two of our board goals that really focus this bring this into the spotlight so there's been several surveys done over the years i put some of the most recent together but in 2020 there was an illinois educator shortage survey conducted by the

017illinois association of regional superintendents of schools and that gave us some information regarding you know where superintendents across the state were reporting seeing shortages so some of those larger numbers 77 percent responding to the survey believe they have a teacher shortage problem 93 of school districts surveyed believe they have a substitute shortage problem which we have definitely experienced here for quite some time um at this time 938 positions were not filled or filled virtually and 257 classes were cancelled or put online at the time of this due to not having enough staff to cover those positions so one of the big you know highlights in that report is that this study confirms illinois's acute teacher shortage is growing and the ongoing damage from the covenant 19 pandemic will only make it worse for the long

018term so this is something that we are constantly working to recruit and bring people into our district and on top of that really working to retain because there's open positions across the state um and and so we we really want to work hard to keep the great teachers we have here in district 100 also advance illinois does a lot of work around the educator pipeline and what does that look like for incoming teachers that are coming into the profession the discussion here this was in fall of 2019 was a data analysis and the four main areas that were seeing the biggest shortages were special education stem bilingual esl and elementary teaching other because this is an educator pipeline they could include paraeducators it could include social workers so those were kind of put into another

019category that includes there there are still shortages in other areas so some of the highlights here from 2012 to 2017 illinois has experienced a 50 decline in students completing their educator preparation program so teachers that are in educator preparation programs have dropped by 50 percent as far as when they start and when they complete and so you can see on the graph they're going downward is the yellow or orange line is the people that begin a program and the blue line is the number of people that are actually completing that teacher certification program so that is a significant decline across the state there's more educator completers are particularly needed in high-need subject areas so again i said special education elementary bilingual um you can see in each of those areas there are more open positions

020than there are people to fill them so particularly in the bilingual category there 150 we're 150 short in the state of what is needed to fill those positions and that's what we're seeing across across the board in some of these high needs areas over time again this is special education which is something we've continued to watch and some of this is there's also less programs available from 2012 to 2017 for example special education programs offered um dropped from 71 to and act people actually completing these programs from 2012 to 2017 dropped from almost 2000 to 912. and so over time the the number of people coming out with the degrees to teach special education are decreasing same with bilingual programs we're dropping from um actually completing from 1500 down to 947. that was in 2017

021which is where this data was was from and the same with programs in 2012 we had 112 different programs in the state that offered bilingual education down to 72. um and so those are just numbers that we that are just realities for us in the state that we need to continue to pay attention to this is our illinois has a website isb has a website that anyone can go to and kind of check out where these unfilled positions are and so each of those represents a year so this year there's 4 121 positions that are not filled in the state of illinois and in cook county alone 2173 positions that are not filled and so you can see that that has increased over time and that's so we have more and more school districts trying

022to recruit a smaller and smaller and smaller number of teachers and this is a high needs position you can see in the middle the greatest need there is special education but we also see that we have unfilled bilingual positions in the state 99 when we look at math and science what has which has become noticeably harder for us we've been able to fill but we have a lot less candidates applying for those positions and so you can see in some places we still have 80 to 90 positions in science that aren't filled across the state a little bit less for math but still some concerning numbers there and this is a similar data for cook county same trend that we're seeing with special education but but many positions within cook county are still remain unfilled

023and this again is by category so when we talk about unfilled positions when you go to that website there's teaching positions but if you see there's many many teaching positions unfilled that accounts for almost or 1700 but then that includes paraprofessional positions support personnel other licensed staff and administration so across the state there's there's still unfilled positions in many of these areas so this is you know brings us down to the district and kind of granule level and i think it really tells a story of what we're seeing back in 2011 the average number of new applicants per week that district 100 received was 67. this year the average number of new applicants that we receive is 10.7 per week and so that is a significant drop in the number of candidates that we have

024that are applying in our district you know i want to make sure that i highlight this is just an example but dual language is an area that we're really trying to work to staff as you saw from the previous state data it's been very very challenging across the state to fill bilingual positions this year district 100 had 11 dual language or bilingual positions open for this upcoming school year five of those positions currently remain unfilled and so we continue to to get out there and try to bring people to find people but educators everywhere are doing the same thing um within our our hr and and hiring departments reaching out to other districts everyone's looking for and trying to find bilingual teachers so and when we look at that since june 1st which is not

025too long ago and we're getting close right to the start of the school year since june 1st we've only had three new applicants of those applicants we've hired one one we offered a position but that person declined and took a position somewhere else and one did not have the bilingual qualifications and so we're getting to a point in in the summer right where we're we're seeing very small numbers of candidates so this is just a reality that we are continuing to work through and continuing to work with staff but we're seeing this more and more each year and i think it's something that the board really needs to be aware of we have been able to fill our special ed but but our pool is pretty small in in candidates so that is something that

026we're watching pretty closely as well is our special education so in response over the past few years the board has been supportive and and trying to invest more in teacher salary and benefits and course reimbursement and providing more in as far as increase in recruitment and retention initiatives you know we really value teacher leadership and providing opportunities for our teachers to be leaders and really we're really proud of the staff that we have and they're doing an amazing job serving the students of our community and we want to continue to invest in them and let them know how much they're valued as teachers in our district we have had staff members attending job fairs we've had our principals and other staff go with to share about what's happening in our district we've expanded our postings

027and our outreach we have several different groups that we belong to that illinois associates association of latino administrators and getting that information out in specific groups to try to publicize our positions as much as we can reaching out to colleges and universities we're posting on social media and then doing some personal outreach if we hear someone might be interested in our district it's reaching out to them personally and letting them know about the opportunities that are here we've also created some new partnerships trying to do some grow your own programs so we have partnered with morton college to have nursing interns here in our district to keep investing in our nursing we've had some success with our social work interns we had three interns this school year in our district and two of them were

028hired which was fantastic um and we also had um some we for next year we already have six student teachers placed and four of them are bilingual or dual so we're trying to recruit and get in some student teachers that will fall in love with our district and want to stay in as they become teachers after their student teaching experience so these are some of the things that we're continuing to work on as a district and you know continuing to improve in these areas and this kind of outlines some of our most recent our teacher turnover data it's something that if you've attended board meetings for for the past i don't know eight or nine years we've always been talking about how do we really work on retaining our teachers um and so this just

029highlights our teacher turnover rate which we're we've we're started to put a little dent in and trying to keep our our teachers here in our district and so that's something that we continue to talk about and continue to invest in so that kind of gives an overall summary i wanted to make sure that there was some information shared kind of what's going on across the state as well as what's happening here in our district do any of the board members have any questions i have a clarifying question um when we were talking about um the number of let me see if i can i can put this in a way that makes sense um during one of the bar graphs you were saying that i believe what you were saying and just i'm looking for

030confirmation that there are not enough people certified in the state of illinois to fill some of those high need areas correct there are let's for instance a thousand positions available but only 750 people certified okay yes great thank you and that's and i know it's kind of small and you board members you can probably see it better in your report but that's in this one where that little gray is almost like this is this is more we need this many more to cover the need yep and again this is a report from advanced illinois that went from 2020 or to through 2017 1819 but then this one was the most recent one that was you know kind of painting a picture of now we're going through covid and so there could be some things that

031could get worse before they get better um and and i know there is so much investment across the state in this educator shortage and trying to increase the pipeline of kids going into educational programs but it will it's something that's going to take time certainly any other questions all right thank you okay all right sorry next on the agenda this is just a brief update 2021-2022 school year at this point we do not have many updates we have not been issued any new guidance from the state around some of the questions that we continue to have if you remember we shared last month that we will be planning to go back to school we will be planning for in-person some of the guidance that still remains is what will the guidance be around masks six

032foot social distancing versus three foot social distancing we know that one of the biggest challenges that we know we will face is if it continues to be six foot social distancing during lunch hours it will be very challenging that has been communicated and there's been a strong push by districts across the state to get that guidance from the illinois state board of education and the illinois department of public health so we can be sure that we have time to plan we hope to to see that within the next well as soon as possible we hope to see that so we will continue to keep everyone informed as we get more information but at this point we're encouraging our families to continue to register um that our goal will be to be back in school in

033person and that we will follow up with more information around some of the logistics of the school day once we have more information all right summer projects so they are moving along um and we have had i'm trying to find my notes on the summer projects all right um so summer projects we have been moving along keeping up with keeping the board updated i we meet every wednesday with our construction crew and our architects to talk through where we are so the air conditioning units are moving at all three schools in the gyms so we're waiting on some piping and things to be installed before those units actually go in freedom the demolition in the front has completed except for the one area that's holding up that one section so that will that is on

034track um and today at the hiawatha playground they did pour the cement around where the new play equipment will be going and that will be coming in at the end of june correct george june 30th yes um so george you have anything to add as far as the projects today is jenny anything else you want to add i know you've been at the meetings as well nope yes it's moving along it is very busy around here there's lots of work happening but it's good work um okay george 10 years ago we paid a company to switch um thank you yes and we've had a great uh relationship with our contractor there's a lot of communication and we meet with them every wednesday so the board can expect every wednesday to get an update on how

035things are going and then we'll do updates at our our board meetings this month we did not receive any foias the information around attendance is in the dashboard and i will turn it over to jenny for the financial report thanks mary um our revenue for the month of june to date is 2.8 million our bank balance as of today is 44 44.2 million um i'll discuss the cash flow are you able to blow that up just a little bit yeah perfect okay so our may so for the month of may our revenue was 4.2 million and our year to date was 53.7 million for total revenue at 97.32 percent if you can see at the very bottom of that highlighted column it says 92 if you take 100 and divide it by 12 by the

036month of may you should be around 92 percent you can see our revenue is 97 we've collected more than what you would anticipate that part of that is the structure of when you receive your tax revenue so you receive the bulkier tax revenue twice a year not throughout then you look at expenses our expenses for may were also 4.2 million but our year-to-date expenses are way down they're at 44.0 sorry 45.0 million which is roughly 85 85 percent if a normal it would be at 92 percent our expenditures are way down now we have also had a year without students in in the building so you would naturally not have as many expenses because you don't have students in the building so can you go to the grant snapshot thank you jim this is our

037grant snapshot these are all the various grants that we have throughout the district and what i'll highlight is the very bottom can you scroll to the bottom of it okay so the last one two three lines they're very hard to read but one of them is the digital divide grant through the state of illinois that was cares dollars specifically targeted for [Music] needs for providing remote learning so things like your hot spots things like your connectivity for your hot spots things like keeping your internet safe so that because there are still our devices out there sorry um the other one the one on top was the the just above that is the cares one and just below that is the cares2 and so cares one digital divide are completely spent and then the other cares

038grant is about six up it's the governor's grant for early childhood that one is almost spent it will be spent by the end of the month here's two we are starting to expend on that grant and these are all short-term dollars so they're all short short-term expenses there is also cares three which has another acronym through the state of illinois um and we're looking into what that would be starting july 1st but they haven't opened and they haven't told us what that is yet so the next one over is the amended budget that you're adopting tonight so the amended budget that you're adopting tonight you can leave it right here sorry jim you can leave it right yep perfect the amended budget that you're adopting tonight so we go through the process of of adopting

039the tentative budget in april then it's on display for 30 days we actually have it on display longer at the district office and then in june we have the final amended budget that is approved and it has to be sent to the state before the end of june as of right now we talked about in two slides ago our total expenses are at 45 million our total revenue right now is 53 million so our surplus right now is 8 million however we still have june to go through and so that will change before we get to the end the budget on the right far right column is a projection and it takes into account all of the grants so as you have this amendment all of the grant managers have to amend their grants and

040then this gets put into this amount here in this in your board book you also have the very very long excel version of the state form that's what's actually submitted to the state i put this together as kind of a summary to show you a snapshot of exactly what does that big document mean can you go to the budget 22. there we go okay so here's here's our assumptions as we start building the fy 22 budget so just so the board knows we go through a process when we build the budget we meet with individual budget managers we meet with the school principals we meet with the grant managers and we really assess what are our student needs what are what is it that we need to be able to service our students accurately so

041then we put together our budget assumptions so our of what with things that we know our revenue our levine our levy is at cpi which is consumer price index it can't go higher than 1.4 we are a tax capped district so it is brought down to 1.4 our evidence-based funding which is nicknamed by the state as evf we budgeted conservative we budgeted flat we heard there's approval of more money coming in but we don't know what that dollar amount is so this is only a draft in the next in july you'll approve the tentative 22 budget it'll go through the same process again we'll leave it on display for 30 days more like 45 and then it has to be approved and has to be adopted in september and sent to the state before the

042end of september so then we also going back we have federal and state grants we definitely have seen an increase because of the cares dollars with grants our mandated categoricals we budget flat those are the other smaller state payments like your transportation orphanage special ed those those types of reimbursements so then we look at our expenditures our salaries are your union and your board approved increases your benefits for this we projected a three percent increase utilities we kept flat liability we kept flat workman's comp we kept flat supplies materials we kept flat the hardest part about trying about having the covid year is it really threw all of your different budget numbers out of lack so now it's taking a look at the whole budget and how are you going to bring it back and

043normalize it to fit what it fit what it used to be going along so we do our best with projecting forward so other con other considerations are our enrollment projections our capital projects with our o m and budget planning our continual monitoring of covet impact to our revenue and our expenditures and our esser funding which is at short term expenditures and revenue so then jim will do the last slide and then i will wrap it up okay so at the very bottom this so i kind of do a two-page snapshot that you can see in board book the first page is revenue and i kind of outlined it by state federal and local and you can see towards the bottom our cares grant our esr grant our digital grant our early childhood grant those will

044all be zero because those will not be new money coming in for next year those are one and done the 3.1 of the cares 2 will be carry over to next year but that's also a one and done there's discrepancy with the state whether it has to be sent spent by september of 22 or september of 23. jim can you scroll to the bottom then so we kind of go through wait can you go back up just real quick and i'll explain something really quick um just to the top of the second page sorry i'll be more just more descriptive if you can see where it says imrf fund 50 capital projects fund to 60. within the budget you have fund 10 which is education fund 20 which is operations and maintenance fund 30 which

045is your bonds fund 40 which is transportation fund 50 which is your imrf and your benefits with payroll benefits and then fund 60 which is your capital projects and fund 70 which is your working cash so at the end of our tentative budget i can read it to you right now it we're looking at a 5.8 million dollar surplus however not all of the expenditures are in there yet for the 3.1 of the grant of the eso grant so like i said it'll be continual monitoring of covid money of sr grants of how it comes in and out and how it flows next month you will have the fy 22 tentative budget to approve and that gives the district spending power to be able to make payroll to pay our utilities to pay our bills

046and that's the end of my report oh one last thing completely not related on the board agenda you'll see the aramark renewal this is our last year of our aramark contract it's a five-year contract so this next year we'll be going out to bid again for food service provider and that's quite a lengthy process that we go through with this state and that's the end of my report all right and that ends the superintendent's report thank you very much okay up next is the president's report and we will start with uh elizabeth and joelle regarding the equity and anti-racism resolution take it away uh thank you andrea do you want to say anything about you're um sure that's fine um i uh so initially um the resolution um committee was made of myself and elizabeth

047and recently i decided to step away from that because i really felt that it needed the time and focus that i did not feel like i could provide at this time and i think that elizabeth and joelle will do a really great job um bringing this to the rest of the board for review thank you and thank you for thanks to you we are doing this work uh so moving forward joel gonzalez and i will be working on the interracial resolution jill and i met tonight and i was able to brief him on the feedback we received from the community members from our first meeting with anti-racist resolution committee and the members that were present and i believe that the three most important takeaways were the communication representation and engagement so after tonight tonight's meeting

048we will communicate with the rest of the school board members and get feedback from them once we receive feedback from board members we will continue to work on the resolution and ensure to include the issues brought up by community members and continue to work with the rest of the school board and of course community members is there anything else that you want to add joel i'm just excited to be part of it you know looking forward to getting some work done with them thank you all right policy did not meet this month so we are moving on to the legislative report take it away legislation is a lot of law bills that were passed and some that are waiting for government signature so the one important one that was just signed by on june 17

049uh president biden signed legislation to make juneteenth a federal holiday ensuring june 19th as a national day to commemorate an end of slavery in the united states um in the state of illinois the 2022 budget was approved within that budget there is 42.3 billion spending planned that includes 350 million dollars increase in evidence-based funding for k-12 schools so i'm thinking that's what you were referring to earlier and um an associate social equity bills they're passed both house where senate bill 820 this bill extends early childhood intervention services from pre-k children having an iep or individualized education plan reaching their third birthday and to preschool enrollment the other two bills that passed the house was house bill 120 house bill 160. 120 is requiring team unit for modifications for cultural values religion or modesty preferences house

050bill 160 requiring schools to excuse the students from pe when participating in religion fastings the next two bills were sent to the government for signature which is house bill 370 and senate bill 817. these bills are let's see i don't have more information on those but house bill 370 requires a unit of instruction of asian american history senate bill 817 prohibiting school districts to have policies that apply to hairstyles associated with race ethnicity or hair texture senate bill 1965 is also speaking of the celebration of juneteenth national freedom day senate bill 564 which is january 17 mohammed ali's birthday to the school code commemorate holidays and adds a curricular mandate to history curriculum to include contributions made to society by americans of different faith practices bills on mental health senate bill 2109 requiring school board

051members to train on trauma informed practices for students and staff house bill 470 and senate bill 1577 allowing student excuses substances for mental or behavioral health house bill 12 to 12 requiring the state children's mental health plan to recommend that all youths receive mental health education and care in school special education support bills are senate bill 2748 and house bill 40 making permanent and extending special education students oh i don't think that one is important to us it's for 20 22 years or older if they are in special education allowing them to continue the school in that year so it will not pertain to our grades and let's see if there's there's a lot more but then following our new school requirements that we have to be to follow so senate bill 818 requiring kindergarten

052through 12th grade comprehensive sex and health education house bill 156 requiring school districts to supply all four through 12 great bedrooms with menstrual in hygiene products uh senate bill 805 which requires that school districts add to their school wellness policy a plan for distributing unused food for needy students and there's a lot more views so i think i'm gonna stop there because i don't want to put you to sleep so that's all for today thank you all right correspondence there is no correspondence okay just public comment okay thank you all right um thank you for to the board for the president's report and now we move into public comment so anybody that wishes to address the board made approach the podium as i said before it's three minutes for a total of 25 minutes and

053if i forgot to add earlier that if a person was just to address the board in multiple languages time will be allotted for that okay and be sure to state your name and address for the record please thank you hi uh my name is jonathan palace i'd like to start out by thanking all the board members members who voted against the proposed ridgeland estates plans last last meeting you demonstrated that when the people speak you listen and this is how you can continue to build trust with a community that feels that we've been unheard and betrayed by special interests during the board's listening session about the racial equity agreement one of the biggest takeaways i had after listening to everyone share their ideas was the fact that there was little trust in the school board

054and i don't blame the school board for creating those divisions because they've existed for a long before most of you were even in your positions but i hope you can continue to work to build trust and hear the voices of more members of our community and in order to do that this must be a safe space for members of the community to voice their concerns and share their opinions unfortunately at the end of the may 26th meeting that safety was shattered by one of district 100's employees after the session adjourned george lombisis approached the community members myself included who had spoken against the ridgeland estates and began to point his finger and yell at us another district employee thank you escorted him out of the out of the door but his actions were aggressive and

055completely uncalled for in addition to his actions on may 26th mr lambisis continued his attack on community members with no truth no facts and no shame on june 8th when he spoke at city hall indicating that community members were led by alderman rob pavone he falsely he falsely categorized me and the other community members who spoke out about the richland estates plan as alderman pabon's cohorts comparing us to maga and q and on supporters i could point out that many of us spoke out in several meetings before the actual vote the one that alderman pavone was in attendance i could point out that i had no idea that alderman pabone was going to be here that night but i shouldn't have to defend why i was here that night i shouldn't have my integrity question

056because george was upset that he didn't get the vote that he wanted i shouldn't have to worry that if i support something that he that goes against the will of george lombises he will get up and begin yelling at me his actions over the past few weeks have demonstrated that this space cannot be a safe space for community members especially not for parents and students in district 100 while he's in it therefore i'm requesting that george lombisis no longer be allowed to attend school board meetings his presence creates tension and is intimidating to community members who fear repercussions for speaking their minds as long as he's in these meetings community members cannot trust that the district is creating a place where their voices will be heard and that they're safe from aggressive behavior continued support

057of mr alembice's presence during school board meetings demonstrates that the district supports his actions allowing george lombises to continue to have a presence will not help to repair the damage done by previous school boards school administration or city administration allowing him to be a part of a presence of this of these meetings will not build trust it will not create an environment where community members feel comfortable to share their thoughts and concerns and if you're committed to improving relationships between school the school district and the community it serves you'll continue to stay true to the vision of d100 that we believe in student-centered classrooms and schools that are supportive safe and responsive to the social and emotional needs of students staff and families and that we believe in engaging with families and community members to

058create partnerships that actively support students development and learning thank you for your time and i look forward to continuing to partner with you hello my name is rhonda mejia and i'm a resident of the fifth ward i am here as a follower from the last board of education meeting because first i wanted to thank the board for making your own individual voices heard i appreciate that you heard the community and that you voted in support of that i understand that i or anybody in the community will not always agree with every single vote that the members of this board take but it is extremely important for me and our community to trust you and trust that you will always listen to our voice that is what we're asking for we just want to be heard

059i spoke at the last sport of education meeting on may and i wanted the opportunity today to address some serious concerns that i too experienced at this meeting i shared information regarding the demographics of the educators in the student body within district 100 while i was up here speaking to everyone miss diana i aka ms bass a principal of one of our local schools wheeled her hands and was shushing me along with other inappropriate remarks questioning the accuracy of the information that i was sharing there is a problem with this behavior coming from a school administrator during a public comment this behavior coming from a leader is inappropriate unprofessional and should not be tolerated because it causes harm to the community's voice will also discouraging others from speaking up if the information being shared in

060public comment is incorrect there is an appropriate way to question and or correct information and i welcome that always the information i shared was not something that i personally made up it was information that is publicly available through the illinois report card for anybody to access as as if this behavior was not discouraging enough after the meeting ended another school employee george lembesis got up from his seat visibly upset at the board's members votes and confronted a group of residents while pointing his finger into one of our local alderman's face while stating quote you guys are happy now but this is moving forward whether you like it or not end quote that evening we all saw how mr lombassies had to be physically removed from the area by another school administrator thank you for that

061then on june 8th mr lembesi stood at city council and falsely accused an alderman of leading quote leading a group of north berwin residents many whom are members of a cicero based political action committee i am not part of a committee many of whom attempted to course board members into voting for something that is neither in the best interest of district 100 nor in the best interest of the city of berwin i do not believe i tried to coerce anybody from this board he inappropriately grouped us all into being north berwin residents which we were not he also said that we were all in the attendance by labeling us as supporters cohorts and most recent juveniles he further compared us to maga and q anon supporters and falsely accused us of creating divisiveness and lies

062through lies unsubstantiated facts shame and promoting race beating ignorance and hate we are not here to do any of that we are here as residents of this community we are here because we want to support the board we want to support our children and all other families that's why we're here creating this voice and this was all because most of us have spoken up at multiple public meetings against many things but more recently against the the casper development this development does promote gentrification and displacement of our current community members gentrification is real and it's not a term we are misinterpreting like he stated i was going to read the definition of gentrification for him but he he was stepped out so i'll skip that part nor rob or anybody else encouraged me led me uh

063like course me uh or anything similar to come here in state at the last meeting i didn't even know rob was gonna be here i didn't know half the people were gonna be here but again just like mr jace stated we shouldn't have to explain ourselves and our integrity i'm a berwin resident i pay taxes and i have all the right to be in this meeting like any other resident that is part of the open meetings act you don't have to live in berwin to be here the attempt to continue silencing our voices in this community continues outside these board of education meetings every day mr lim bessie's speech should not be protected because he was speaking while present in that meeting in his capacity as an employee of the school district his speech reflects

064poorly on our schools and community as a whole when berating a public official as he did it depletes the ability of the school community and government to work in tandem he was not speaking as a private citizen like i am on a matter of public concern and his unprotected speech should not go unpunished i would also like to remind everyone that although i was the only person to specify my address being in the north berwin all of the public comments were made by berwin residents south berlin specifically that's irrelevant since again the open meetings act specifically allows any person to attend an open meeting of public business regardless of the area of their residency this is just another example to question our voices and our credibility so i ask how can a community member feel

065safe when to come and speak in an open forum how are parents of district 100 students supposed to feel safe to speak up when a d-100 employee acts like this what is the board's policy about such employee behavior how will the board ensure that this does not happen again how will the board protect the voices of those that attend these meetings and those that rely on the few to speak up how will a school administrator and a district employee be held accountable for their unacceptable behavior again we're not here to create any division we're here to support you and it we want that support reciprocated thank you hi my name is kayla i live in the fifth ward i've lived number one my whole life i went through the public school system here in berwin

066i'm from elementary school all the way to modern west i know i now have the chance to watch my brothers and family grow and navigate berwin's public schools last meeting i understood that there were fewer little resources to guide school boards through anti-racist work so i wanted to share with the board today a few resources to kind of kick start this anti-racist initiative in the district i put together a list that has resources to provide like some background to the topic the first half of the list is generally kind of like what i assign my students in my race and ethnic relations class this work is done by scholars of colors with the focus on women of color the second half of this list is a more targeted list that a colleague from the school

067of ed helped me put together these resources are tied to anti-racist work and education specifically k through 12 curriculums if it's okay i would like to pass these sheets out there's only um sorry there's only seven copies i'm sorry i printed it for the board members i hope these resources are helpful and aid in creating an accessible inclusive environment in the district i've left an email at the bottom of the sheet if you all would like to reach out for further collaboration or any questions anything like that and then i would like to echo the remarks of the previous speakers i would like to address the behavior we witnessed at the last board meeting on may 26th while i'm excited that we are thinking about anti-racist initiatives that center community-led discussion i'm also a little

068upset by the behavior that we witnessed last board meeting it was incredibly disrespectful and again thank you and i was this man over here who had to remove um the head of the grounds and building administrator we also saw administrators hush and silence members of the community and parents of the children that we're supposed to serve these actions inevitably lead community members to disengage and withdraw from meetings where their voices are supposed to be heard and valued this is not okay when we're trying to start an anti-racist initiative these are the types of behaviors that will lead to withdrawal and this is a place that's supposed to be safe where parents can come and voice their concerns and opinions i hope there is a disciplinary process to hold these employees accountable for their behavior towards

069community members and again parents of children in the district or community we are here to support you all i don't want to end on a negative note we should all be working together with these community-led initiatives and that starts from holding the people that are supposed to work for us and with us accountable every step of the process thank you hi i'm nick penaronda resident of 3633 euclid uh i really just wanted to come to open forum today to uh thank all of the uh excuse me board members trying to remember which meeting i'm in hello but i wanted to thank all board members that voted last month in support of the community i really appreciate that it's really important to know that folks have individual thought here and that they are actually listening to

070residents that's part of why we elect people and not appoint people um and so it was just really life-giving and heart-filling to see that we are actually being acknowledged that's like a really important thing i think going forward it allows for us to feel like we are involved and that we can be properly invested in the future of d100 and so i'm just really really grateful of course i want to hop on the the train and also just um condemn the behavior that was been done specifically by um george lombisis um the last council meeting i thought was really embarrassing and um was just a really poor show of character and poorly represented d100 but y'all are doing a decent job of representing us so thank you so much um hi everyone my name is

071suzanne donnelly i live in the third ward my daughters both attend attended emerson then my oldest is about to head into heritage and that's part of my reason for being here today um first like many have said i do appreciate the board listening to the community and i'm hearing us when we raised concerns about what was going on with the ridland um uh property um and what that would mean for the community around that school i spoke with i didn't attend that meeting but prior to that meeting i've spoken with a couple of our board members because i have i was concerned about the richland estate but i was also raising at that time another issue that i wanted to consider that issue is around school uniforms i actually during the last year a former

072heritage student and i'm sorry i don't know what elementary school she attended helped guide my youngest percy as she navigated the very challenging waters of developing an iep for herself learning how to um she's still struggling with reading and so the school has been really great in helping her and helping us do that and so i mean we call her our nanny i don't know i was just very fortunate that we were able to bring this woman in and help percy um specifically every day because goodness knows how the teachers would have been challenged athena is her name and she talked to me about some of the challenges she experienced as a heritage student who then left the berwin school district and went to riverside brookfield high school and what she raised was the impact

073to young women in their developing ages because of our school uniform policy specifically the uniforms that we choose negatively impact the equitable education opportunities for women these are young women who are starting their periods these are young women who are nervous about their bodies who are concerned about how people are going to perceive them concerned about what's going to happen tomorrow they aren't understanding exactly when it's going to start and even once it does start we all know i think every single woman in this room has even at 48 years old sorry i shouldn't swear um still have moments where i'm surprised and we are asking our young women to go to school in uniforms that are light tan pants and attend classrooms comfortably without concern to stay focused on their education and their learning

074where at the moment every second somewhere inside their head they're thinking about am i going to start my period am i going to have an accident am i going to be made fun of and if i do what is my solution what do i get to do i can change into my my gym clothes i can wrap something around my waist because that's what i'm going to have available if it happens and all that is is a signal to everybody else in the school of what has happened and it's a big giant sign across their head that says look at me i had this accident i don't know my own body girls have enough that they're dealing with i think trying to limit any of the additional pressures that they have from them is important

075so that's the first start of why i bring up the the uniform the second reason of why i bring up the uniform is berwin is a very working class community and i like to think about as a professional in my career what do i do when i go into a job interview or when i want to go in and impress somebody and what do you do and i think we all know we dress for success we put on our best outfit we might put on makeup we might not we might fancy up our hair we might go get our nails done but we find the outfit that best represents us and frankly these kids know what brand is and it's important to them i'm not saying to rate themselves against each other and judge themselves

076because they do understand the reasons why we have uniforms considered in the first place and i see that there could be value in that but ultimately these kids know that how they present themselves to the world is a reflection of them and is a reflection of where they're going and they see their parents do this too and so if you look at oak park and you look at riverside and these wealthy communities these kids don't have uniforms they get the autonomy to be able to choose and have a say in who they want to be and how they want to be represented but even if they did have uniforms like let's say what is the prep school starts with an f what are their uniforms i believe blazers suit referenced uniforms so i just asked

077myself are the uniforms that we are choosing if uniform is right are the uniforms that we are choosing designed to set into our kids minds a path for success and leadership or is it necessarily maybe closer identified to service work and i'm not saying there's a problem with service work i want to be very clear there service work is important we need service workers we need people who help and do every level of job skill but i am saying that when you're in a working class community and you give children uniforms that reflect only a certain level of salary and and wealth within their within their world that maybe possibly well around them wealthier kids get sort of a uniform that identifies with ceo we might be telling them something that we haven't considered they're

078hearing and they don't even know they're hearing it until they get out of school and they get away from it and they start experiencing more of the world and they go gosh i saw that and i know this because of talking to athena who attended these schools but then went to riverside brookfield and and discovered wait i don't have the stress anymore i'm not worried about if i go to an after-school activity that has blended kids from all over the community over the greater western area like i'm not feeling bad because i'm walking in like this and they're walking in like that i'm not feeling bad or nervous because i'm worried that i'm going to start my period so i would just like us like to ask the board to consider reviewing and assessing the

079real reason why we have uniforms and the real reason why we have this uniform i'm i i think you can probably guess i'm a new uniform kind of person based on the blue hair and the piercings um i like to be able to express myself my way and i believe teaching autonomy is critical to our kids especially at this age teaching them how to make smart choices and to be able to represent themselves well but even saying that at a minimum i think assessing what our choices behind our uniforms so that we set our children all of our children but especially giving our women our young women equal footing as they walk in the door every single day i think that is really really important and needs to be assessed thank you hi my name

080is anna wagner and i'm very happy that you're doing the racial equity work in our community i think that's very valuable and needed i would encourage you to have more parents and more reaching out to parents i i don't mean that as a diss to what you've already been doing but it would be great to see more parents coming to the school board meetings and i just want to remind you that when we're talking about disenfranchised groups the one group that we never let speak for themselves are children they are the only ones that always need someone else to advocate on their behalf and so when you're thinking about doing racial equity work i would hope that you would also include children into those groups and to reach out to them thank you ever very

081much to everyone who uh shared with us tonight um we will move on now to the action items mary do you have something that you like yeah there's a couple things i wanted to just point out to the board we have our regional safe schools program agreement with west 40 that's something we renew every year for kids that we we haven't taken advantage of that in the last couple of years but if there are students or families that need additional support through west 40 this gives us that intergovernmental agreement to be able to do that i would also ask that the board on item d the point the calendar so in the calendar we moved we worked with the teachers union to move an institute day to um the morning of conferences parent-teacher conferences but

082in addition what i'd like to ask the board to approve is an amendment to this um we recently were informed that the election day that was originally scheduled for march 15th is now moved to june um and so we had moved casmir pulaski day to that day and it we could actually have cashmere pulaski day on actual cashmere pulaski day now and so we'd like to amend that with the movement of casmir pulaski day to march 7th rather than march 15th so if everyone is in agreement with that when we um when andrea adopts the or asks for a motion it would be with with the amendment of march 7th for kasmir pulaski day so that was just a movement there the golden apple scholar partnership agreement that is to address or to help us

083create a partnership to address some of the teacher shortage concerns that we're having and find a partner that can help us to recruit teachers that we need so that is just the partnership agreement there jenny spoke about the air mark then we have items about the truck surplus so we're surplusing a truck that is from that is no longer no longer operating and then approving a new truck and so similar to the processes we've had in the past where we needed to have updates to things within our district we want to do this on a rotating basis so you'll remember our board members that were here we when we replaced all the lunch tables at the elementary schools we did two a year so we can make sure we had that in our budget but

084our trucks are becoming very outdated and they're requiring a lot of maintenance so we want to begin a cycle of some replacement so our oldest truck is this 2001 we also have the 2003 2007. so there's some that we anticipate in the next few years it may be more cost effective to replace rather than continue to invest in maintaining so this is just one for this agenda but i wanted to explain that process that we plan to go through over the next few years okay then can i have a motion to adopt the consent agenda as amended as discussed for item 16d i will make a motion to adopt a consent agenda thank you first by lopez can i have a second i'll second seconded by andrews on the roll call please steinfeld i russell

085aye andrews aye lopez i jimenez aye gonzalez aye don absent with notice okay thank you very much motion carries now we have another opportunity for public comment and this will be the portion of the meeting where we read the emailed public comments would anyone like to address the podium or approach the podium thank you hello everyone there we go right there um i actually wasn't planning on uh speaking tonight but um i'm david avila i'm over on 3509 highland um i just wanted to say well thank all the school board members you know i know each and every one of you some of you i just met recently this uh this a lot of times is a thankless job you guys don't get paid um you guys are spending what three four hours tonight away

086from your families um and you do that and then you guys some of you get roasted on social media which i think is really unfair you guys are only trying to do what's best i do want to thank mary havis for keeping open contact with me at all times as far as with the health board i know we've talked frequently to make sure that the teachers first and then you know admin and and now our children get vaccinated and i know we'll have once they adopt the 12 and under children for pfizer i know we'll make we'll be in touch again to do another big push hopefully before the school year starts i want to thank andrea drosso for first uh putting in for the equal equity and anti-racism resolution and thank elizabeth and joelle

087for working on it continuously because i think it all starts with an idea it has to start somewhere and i want to just thank everyone on the school board and everyone else for uh helping our school children my daughter two my daughters go into the school district so obviously as a former school teacher this means a lot to me thank you all right sarah go ahead so these are the emails that came in for public comments the first one board of education i hope this email finds you taking the time for self-care and reflection i would like to express my deepest gratitude for the stance you took at the last berwin south district 100 school board meeting regarding the ridgeland estates project i understand that this the decision was difficult and there seems to be

088more questions than answers surrounding this development project but your leadership was seen and appreciated i personally know how challenging it is to fight against the status quo and your vote truly reflected what the community demanded as board members it is your duty to protect the best interests of your students and their families and i know you did this by not accepting the terms that were proposed to you i hope that you can continue to advocate for the district and demand more from the development project our students deserve green space families deserve to stay rooted in our community and our community deserves resources not more real estate development you have the power and ability to balance the needs of the students their families and the larger bourbon community as a whole thank you julia fort berwin

089resident and former district 100 board member dear school board i want to thank the school board for voting against the ridgeland estates agreement i believe voting against this agreement was in the best interest of the school district several aspects of the proposed agreement would have put the school district and child safety at risk the proposed agreement had several things in it that i found problematic first the fact that the school district would have owned property which contained another entity storm water detention vault never made sense to me especially with the additional factor that a parking lot was going to be paved over the vault what would have happened if something had gone wrong with the vault and had to be entered from ground level would that have resulted in having to jackhammer the parking lot

090what would have happened if the vault leaked or caused a landslide or some other problem would the school district have been liable given the vault was on school property under the new plan for ridgeland estates the developer the developer will not be installing a storm water detention vault instead the vault has been replaced by a storm water detention pond the fact that the developer prefers a pond to an underground vault with a paved parking lot over it is an indication as to how problematic the proposed vault and parking lot were second the proposal to allow 24-hour unfettered access to the district's private driveway next to freedom middle school was also problematic and could have caused liability problems for the district it would also have caused traffic headaches and affected child safety to children entering and

091exiting freedom middle school third according to the text in the revised plans the south alley can still be used as an access path to to the school for fire safety the district is getting a second fire access path even under the new plans so i applaud the school board members who voted against this agreement this agreement had too much risk and liability associated with it i also suggest that the district investigate the ramifications of having a stormwater detention pod behind its property and whether the pond could be a source of mosquito breeding regards ted corbos 3247 ridgeland good evening i am a parent at pershing and have recently filled out the survey on how i prefer the communication from the district i would consider myself somewhat tech savvy and able to write an email or

092two my question is if we are keeping track of all parents and guardians that were not able to submit this survey they are the ones we need to reach out to and i would like to know the plan for this also at the last meeting i remember a board member commenting how freedom has no fire truck access from the rear i would like to know why is this all of a sudden a concern when the school has been around so long already this isn't fair to our students to all of a sudden try to make a deal with people trying to push them out of their neighborhood what is the next step for the school board to make that school safe for all thank you teresa ruiz to the new district 100 board i just

093watched the recording of the may 26th board meeting and i have to say it was the most disturbing meeting i've seen since the days when there were people coming down to abusively yell at the board over the referendum i voted for almost everyone on the current board and i can't tell you how disappointing it was to watch the new board make the same exact mistake as the 2018 board did there are there are several parallels between the tragic 2018 vote to lower the district's tax levy and the present board's vote to deny freedom middle school a quarter of a million dollars in much needed access and renovation in both cases misinformation about the board's options power and a tent appeared repeatedly in berwin facebook group postings in both cases people with little to no apparent

094understanding of the issue showed up at meetings to scold the board in both cases the board mistook the people who'd been bamboozled by disinformation on facebook to be the voice of the community and in both cases the result was that the board ended up violating their oaths of office by capitulating to their demands what struck me about last month's vote was the sheer er irrationality of it at least in 2018 there was a legitimate difference in perspective on the intent of the referendum and the people fighting to lower the levy expected lower tax bills in return in the present situation no one at all benefited in any way from this action you didn't stop the project from happening you just denied freedom middle school a much needed parking lot that it was finally within reach

095of providing the district the bdc and the city spent months negotiating a deal to the school so the school could get something out of this yet you flushed it down the toilet to the tune of 250 000 and for what to appease a few people acting out of spite for the mayor was it worth it as the zoning board took their vote to approve richland estates last week they were baffled that the school board didn't accept the deal that had been made on its behalf frankly anyone who actually knows anything about the situation was perplexed by your vote the only people who weren't confused by it were the people who get their information through the filter of rumor half truths and innuendo on facebook because those are the only people who could buy the flimsy

096premise that replacing an abandoned eyesore with taxpaying pins amounts to displacing the community in reality adding pins spreads the tax burden out effectively decreases property taxes for homeowners but even if you bought into the nonsensical premise yelled at you by people who don't seem to understand the relationship between property taxes and district funding why would you think refusing a free parking lot and fire access give the board veto power over the deal itself it makes no sense outside the group think hall of mirrors that is social media so my two main questions here are when you were elected you swore an oath to respect taxpayer interest by serving as a faithful protector of the school district assets in what way did your vote on the ridgeland deal serve to protect the district's assets as you

097swore to do two if you weren't acting in the district's interest by protecting its assets whose interest were you acting in giving you the benefit of the doubt i'd guess that you believed the facebook pitchfork mob when they told you they were the voice of the community but are they you must have noticed that people spearheading the alleged controversy over ridgeland estates are almost entirely former candidates who with the exception of rob pabone lost the last election the whole misguided hoopla over this issue is an obvious sour grapes tantrum thrown by people who believe correctly i guess that if they can't acquire power through elections they can at least intimidate the school board into obeying their commands by threatening to call members racists on the internet or tokens as elizabeth jimenez alluded to in her

098recent facebook live event on the subject they played you like the 2018 board got played and they did it the same way you have to understand that for years there's been four or five people who week after week come up with some manufactured controversy and try to make as big of a deal about it as possible on social media it's the same few people exploiting every iota of dissatisfaction that occurs in this town and attempting to turn it into political leverage amongst the kind of people who spend an unhealthy amount of time on the internet on their best day these posts get maybe 10 likes by the same 10 people every time but the sheer relentlessness of their social media presence creates the illusion that they speak for more people than they do so what

099happens next time this crew decides to spite the mayor at the expense of our kids schools i'm begging you to learn the obvious lesson here if you let the squabbling of local political forces manipulate the board it's the students who suffer you cannot govern the district according to the whims of a small pack of cyber bullies and the people they've manipulated with their lies that's what the 2018 board did and they left behind a permanent legacy of malfeasance and disaster you still have time to avoid that fate but maybe i'm wrong maybe you weren't intimidated into this vote hard to say since there was no public discussion before the vote maybe you walked yourselves through the mental gymnastics necessary to reach the bizarre conclusion that it's racist to have a residential rather than an industrial

100area next to a school maybe yourselves brought the lie that the school board rather than the zoning board would decide the approval of the ridgeland estates project if so you took a gamble with the board would decide the i'm sorry if so you took a gamble with the district's resources and lost if that's the case i'd ask that the next time you make an ill-advised quarter of a million dollar bet you use your own money not taxpayer funds meant for our kids thanks for listening and better luck next time jason jensen parent homeowner taxpayer voter dear district 100 school board i am a taxpayer that lives in the first ward although some that work in district 100 see those of us getting involved in our community as being outsiders which just reads as another racist

101trope we actually live in this community and pay taxes i'd like to remind everyone sitting in an elected position that you are in these seats because you were elected to represent us you answer to us the community for those that don't know i work in educational technology focusing on equity through anti-racist education and spend a lot of time researching school districts throughout the country as part of my job my boss and mentor is a former cps administrator of over a decade and also gives me great insight into the politics of school boards again just giving these class classes credentials for those at district 100 that feel we are unqualified to speak out which by the way is a classist and racist way of thinking anyone who lives in this community should be encouraged to participate

102in their community it is also my personal passion to get cops out of schools in case you didn't hear cps's jones college prep lsc voted to remove cops from schools on june 11th the source is the website bit.ly cops out now as i mentioned in the previous school board meeting school boards in san francisco oakland st paul and seattle have all voted to terminate contracts with police or agreed to not renew contracts i am very curious as to why district 100 feels the need to have cops in our elementary schools if a high school is downtown chicago doesn't need cops in their school why does an elementary school need them why doesn't why does an elementary school with children need cops do you see us as criminals do you understand that you are normalizing the

103surveillance of our majority latinx community at childhood do you understand how that is racist i asked since the majority of the leadership at district 100 is white i am especially curious as to why we have cops in schools when it doesn't even come out of our district budget could it perhaps be that like the rest of berwin this is a political move if we have nothing to lose budget wise why not just remove the cops from our elementary schools i will patiently be waiting for your reasons justifying maintaining cops in a school full of young children i'd also like to know if you would personally feel okay with having cops in your children's elementary schools if a school full of adults can't handle disciplining a child in a way that isn't traumatizing then perhaps we

104need to reevaluate the entire institution and those in charge of leading it i look forward to moving the conversation on this topic see you at the next school board meeting anna torres the last one dear board of education at the community meeting regarding anti-racist resolution community feedback it was mentioned that there are not resources that exist to reference i would like to remind the board of education president that i personally purchased for her and the vice president the book black lives matter at school by denisha jones which literally has multiple blueprints on how to do such important work thank you for committing to the work julia ford south berwin resident that's it thank you very much all right on two announcements um i just have two quick announcements we want to congratulate alfincita jimenez who

105will be our new assistant principal at piper next school year and we also want to congratulate kristin caparoa who will be our new assistant principal at pershing elementary school next year so congratulations and welcome okay at this time i will entertain a motion to adjourn this meeting all right good meeting venice to make a motion second i'll second seconded by andrews to adjourn the meeting at 903 pm roll call andrews aye russell aye lopez aye jimenez aye steinfeld aye gonzalez aye dawn absent