001Motion >> second. So, ours is tax capped. Um, so our levy is pretty straightforward. But anyway, then in March, we're giving you a staffing plan for the following year. And that's, you know, staffing is a significant uh piece of our budget. And uh again, we're we're doing a staffing plan when we don't know uh okay, we're doing a staffing plan in March when we still don't know what our funding is going to be for the next year. So that's a difficulty that we have in May and June. Um we are I will find out what the uh state budget's going to be. Still don't know what our state allocation's going to be in May and June. So we are trying to work on the budget again not knowing what our state allocation is going to
002be. And then August, in fact this year it was right before the board meeting in August. I finally found out what our state allocation was going to be. So I was able to get that into the tenative budget. Um but we still at that point we don't know our health insurance costs or anything like that. But so the budget I'm giving you tonight is has got all the information we need to do the budget but um you know by the time we get the information revenue information that we need for the budget the staffing decisions have been made. So um so that's the that's the complexities of the timeline. I think you know as board members some of you have been on the board a long time uh but this so this might be familiar
003to you it might not but these are the different uh funds that we have in the state but in our school district budget the education fund operation maintenance debt service transportation IMRF school social security is fund 50 capital projects fund 60 working cash tort fire prevention safety education fund is where most of our money is spent that's anything related to teaching learning professional development um you know our teaching salaries our food service salaries are out of there as well uh technology operation maintenance is the buildings debt service is you know when we pay in our bonds uh transportation obviously you know what that is IMR from retirement capital projects fund 60 you've heard us mention that over the years fund 60 is money that we get from uh uh right now we've we've had money
004in there from pro uh property development they impact fees going to fund 60. Um, we don't get a lot of that anymore, but we will be getting from the projects that are going on right now, we'll be getting some checks there. Uh, working cash is like our savings account. Um, you can see these arrows tell you how you can move money from one fund to the other, which is really isn't a whole lot of movement that can happen, but you can see working cash you can put you can transfer to any fund. Uh, TOR is is basically our our our uh property insurance and our workman's comp. It's a very small fund that we we spend about a couple hundred thousand a year out of. So, we we put about 200 in, we take about
005200 out. So, we keep a small balance in there. Fire prevention safety, that's fund 90, and that's where we've been doing all this work with uh all the building projects we've been doing with Baragy. All that has come out of fund 90 which we did the bond uh last year and that money went into fund 90 and we're making the payments out of fund 90. When we collect the tax revenue for the bond payment that tax revenue is going into fund 30 and getting paid we pay the bond out of fund 30. That's debt service. So that's our accounts. Um this right here is okay. So this graph right here represents and this is what I want to spend a little bit of time on. This is our these are fund balances for all those
006funds that I just described over the years. So if you start if you start with the I don't know if you can see this or not but if you start with the blue this is the education fund. Um, I remember sitting in uh in a uh the elementary conference room with the board when I was interviewing and we were and I was looking at the budget sheets and we were we were here at this negative number for a fund balance and I thought that can't be that has to be a mistake. We can't be there. But that's where we were at in 2015. Um, so you can see our education fund has has grown over the years. But you can so last uh we had this bump here and I I think you all remember
007a year or two ago where I mentioned to you we got some payments at the end of the year I wasn't expecting. We ended up a lot better than I thought that year and that was that was this bump right here. I kind of thought this would be more of a uh a small, you know, a gradual increase. So we would did a bump here and then a decrease the next year. This was this right here is where we ended the year on uh June 30th this past year. What the drop here is the current budget. This is where we have some issues to deal with. That's that's our current budget. Uh and because we can't continue that drop, we can't continue that drop. Uh the yellow line is debt service. You'll see that it
008does drop off significantly right here. But don't that's a good thing because that means we don't have the debt service only had a balance because we were getting money from our taxpayers until we pay the bond payment. That's where the balance was. So we just aren't doing that anymore. So you'll see very little that that's dropping. That's a good thing. Um this one right here is the uh working cash. No, that's not working cash. This is capital projects. Um we had we had close to three million in capital projects at one point. We spent that down just doing various projects on campus and then we went up again and now we we're taking it back down. Uh you can see this year we're we're uh again seeing that go down. That's not something we levy
009money to. We don't levy money for that fund. Um IMRF and M is this red one here and you can see on and M stays pretty steady. It jumps up because we we sold the land and we put it in on&m and then we took it out of and M and put it in fund 60. So, and we put some of it in fund 30 because we used it. If you remember, we wanted to abate the taxes a little bit because we had a bond payment that was getting pretty big. So, um but anyway, so that's um that's fun and m we don't want that to go too high because there are some tax implications for that uh that tax. So, we don't we don't put too much money in in fund uh 20. The
010on andm transportation, same way. We we usually stay steady with transportation. we keep it at a, you know, a minimum balance, but uh last year it was a little higher and but it's it's we we lost money in transportation last year, this past year and we're projected to lose money again and there's really no way to get revenue and fund in the transportation fund other than to levy for it. Uh when we do the levy this November, we can levy more money in transportation, but if we do that, we take it out of somewhere else. So, it's that's a challenge. Transportation is gonna be a challenge. The only other revenue comes from the state. And I'll show you some uh we've been seeing some uh um inconsistent revenue uh coming from the state in transportation.
011The IMRF, um I'm going to have to, you know, we this is one we keep just a little balance in because we have to pay our IMRF and Social Security. We don't like to build this one up, but um you know, it's projected this year to get closer to we're going to have to put more money in in that count. Okay, that that this one I don't want to go through all this. This is just the numbers that uh are behind that graph you just saw. Um I I do want to point this out because the state this is not really a state issue in some aspects because uh the general state aid revenue for big hollow has we've benefited significantly from the evidence-based funding model that came into play back in 2017. um 2017
012they the evidence-based funding went into play and it you it used to be that when the state put new money into the system that money got spread out equally to every child in the state of Illinois in evidence-based funding they realized that um there are some districts that don't have as many local resources to support kids as others do and uh so we are considered one of those districts we're tier one district so most of them um I believe like if they put 300 million into the of new funding into the formula. I believe it is that 150 million goes into um tier one schools gets divided up amongst all the tier one school districts and we are tier one and then I it's I don't know the exact number but the next tier two
013gets a chunk and that goes to all the tier 2 schools and the tier one schools. So we there's so that if you're in tier one you benefit significantly. Um we have benefited for a number of years. You can see our our Whoops. our uh increase has been significant over the years and it's really helped us. It's it's helped us reduce class sizes, add supports for kids, and when we get evidence-based money, I have to when I do the budget, and it's in this budget here, there's a sheet in there that says, "How are you spending the evidence-based funding money?" And I have to explain how we're doing it. And there's only there's certain categories where you can spend it. and it's usually around more supports, lowering class sizes, those kind of things. That's what
014we've done. Um I will say for this year, you'll see you'll see that um our increase is not so much. I anticipate this is where and I I'm going to own mistakes here, okay? But I in March when we're making staffing decisions for this year, I'm anticipating and that we we are going to continue to get the evidence-based funding money that we've been getting. We've been getting anywhere from 600 to a million extra every year in the formula. So that's been coming every year. And um so that's why we've added some positions in the last few years like and uh so we've been but we're doing it anticipating the evidence-based funding. This year I was anticipating 6 to 800,000 and uh this year we got 220 I think. So and I didn't find that out
015until the second week of August. So um it went down. One of the reasons it went down CPS fell into tier one. So that 150 million that's there for tier one was split up amongst all the school districts but CPS was one of them and so it took a lot of the tier one money but they're in the same formula as we are. So um that's is how it worked out this year. The mandated categoricals are if you see transportation regular transportation sped and then sped private facilities. These are things we're mandated to do. Mandated to provide transportation whether they go to school here or they go to school 40 miles away. We're mandated to provide transportation the private facility. Sometimes we have students as you all know that um we can't serve here. So
016we send them to a private facility to get better to get better care better service uh for their education and we're mandated to pay for that. The state though is man is uh by statute the state has to give us some reimbursement. Um we've seen erratic re reimbursement and uh you can see um 24 we we had good reimbursement numbers and you can see where we ended up all of these went significantly down last year. I did not anticipate that. So we were low I think I shared this with you this summer. We were about a million dollars lower than I anticipated. You see a flat line because I don't even know I've made the the budget sitting in front of you. I don't know yet what we're getting this year. I won't know for
017another month or two. So, I just in the budget I just made it flat. I just I'm I don't want I can't I don't think it's going to go down more, but uh I can't anticipate an increase. Um this is real quick. We we do get some funding. It's not a I mean it's it's significant for us, but um it's called corporate per Oh, I spelled it wrong. personal property replacement tax, corporate personal property replacement tax. In the h in the history, it's always been around a couple hundred,000. And then after the pandemic, and I don't even I can't even explain to you why. Actually, there's there's something with the economy that's tied to after the pandemic, you can see we got a huge increase, which we benefited from. It was huge. If I made
018a if I would own a mistake here, I would think I should have probably not counted that that was going to continue. And uh you can see we've seen a significant drop the last two years. So we're down now to where we're still higher than what we were before the pandemic, but um there are districts that get millions of dollars in this um small districts. It's just the the way the formula works and they saw a significant bump and now they obviously are seeing the same decrease. Um over the years what this graph shows you is just and I won't spend a lot of time on it but one of the goals the board has always shared with me is um once we got out of and you can see in uh 12 13 14
01915 we had red higher than blue that means our expenses were higher than our revenue and we were in a lot of trouble at that point and we were doing tax anticipation warrants. We were doing some things just to get out of the debt. And then six, you know, we started showing some signs of uh our blue going higher than our red, so our revenue going higher than our expenses. Once we got to a certain point, I you know, the board's direction to me was we want to continue to add programs for kids, supports for teachers, those kind of things, as long as the revenue is higher than the expense. So that's what that's kind of how we stayed. And uh but you can see this past year, we did not do that. and we
020c we just can't continue that trend. Um I I want to point out a couple of things that are a little bit out of our control. It's that costs for out of district stuff is going high. It's it's kind of going out of control. And this would be special ed out of district tuition costs. So in the you can see that in the in the past here's our cost pretty steady around I would say for a long time we've been between five and 800,000 and then post pandemic the cost just went up and it was cost and number of kids um had have gone up now this year I I'm budgeting a little bit less than I think than because we had some costs that we think went away but we also have kids moving
021in that needs. So, um I'm I'm not and Seedall's costs are going up as well. So, um not overly optimistic there. Um I'm not going to spend much time on this. This is the same graph for O andM, same graph for transportation. And you can see this last year in 25. If you look at 24 and 25 together, it we basically broke even. This is the year we got a lot of we got a lot of revenue at the end of the year that I wasn't expecting and this year we did not. Our revenue went significantly down from the state. So those two years together we basically broke even but uh you can see the year before we we went under. Um so we really have to make some changes in transportation this year. There
022was a time where our balance got so high in transportation we actually lowered the levy a little bit and now I'm kind of wishing we hadn't done that. working cash. This is there's no expenses in working cash for ever since I've been at Big Hollow and it looks like all the way back past me. We've just put we've put money into working cash, but we don't take anything out. We've never transferred money out. So these uh the blue just represents how much revenue we had each year. These years here, these last few are higher because not because we're putting more in, it's because we're earning a lot of interest on the money. So we're putting a h 100,000 in every year roughly. Um, but our interest rates right now we're drawing we're getting quite a
023bit of revenue off that. Uh, just real quick, um, I'm this graph represents the dark blue is how much money the state is putting toward this is for the whole whole statewide. The dark blue represents how much money the state is putting in for private facility reimbursement for special ed. You can see for a number of years that the light blue is what school districts requested because of expenses. So you can see for a number of years what the state was putting in and what we requested. It was almost identical. And then the gap gets a little bit here, but now you can see where that's going. So post pandemic costs are going up extremely high. The state's not going to be able to keep up with it. There's just no way. Same thing for
024transportation. Look at the gap that this is happening right here. And we got hit with this one year. This is why it's a benefit to buy vans and have more drivers and not outsource because we've got to outsource transportation to a cab company. We had a quote the other day and Matt can verify. I think it was $500 a day >> a trip. >> Yeah. So, we are doing everything we can to not to not outsource. Yeah. Kevin's retiring now and starting his cab company. So, this this right here, I I really can't dump this on the state because the states putting a certain amount of money in for transportation reimbursements and they just can't keep up with the increased costs that these companies are charging. They just can't. Um, this is regular transportation reimbursement.
025So, again, uh, I would say you'll see the costs. This is across the state. the when we do a transportation claim, you can see the costs have gone up extremely high and that's because as you all know there was a driver shortage became it's a free market and you had to you have to pay more to get drivers. You got to pay and then the what's killing us is the lease payment on these buses. I think it's gone up over 100% since we started this in 2017. I I I should have pulled the number for you, but I I think we leased the full fleet of buses for 300 to 350,000 in 2017 when we took it over. And the last lease was over 700 for about the same number of buses. So, and it's
026not it's that I could there's not many leasing companies we can go to and every one I've tried is the same. It's it's the same thing. So, we are going to look at some options with transportation. It's possible we can try to own the buses. Uh, but we have to figure out how that's going to work. Um, I think I can skip that one. But anyway, so you you look at the u the budget sheet and uh on your the budget you have on your in your packet. Uh it would be really on the first sheet is what you want to look at. Um you can see on line I'm looking at your first sheet. There's a It shows a deficit of 1.9 million in education fund operation maintenance 156,000. Uh debt service, do not
027worry about that uh negative there. Um that's uh a little harder to explain, but in the end that does not end up happening. transportation, you can see uh $340,000 deficit. IMRF capital projects. Capital projects, again, there's deficit there, but that's uh not money. We're not putting a lot. I actually didn't anticipate much revenue there because I don't know what the impact fees are going to be. It's very possible we'll get more impact fees than than uh our expenses there. Um, these budget numbers, as I've given you in the past, I've always told you I've tried to pad them a little bit in case we have emergencies. These are not padded as much. I tried to get this as tight as I could. They are definitely padded. Um, but um, these numbers won't be as bad
028as it looks on this sheet at the end of the year, but they're not going to be great. And, uh, just to be really transparent with you and and anybody else, um, we're going to have to make some changes for next year. So, um, don't know what those will be yet, but we'll have, you know, our administrative team and, uh, I've talked to union leaders about it. Um, we'll go through a process and we'll try to prioritize. Um, we just have to be really smart. We're we're not in a situation where the state even says we have to do a deficit reduction plan. So, it's not like we are in that dire of straits, but if we just continue, if we don't do anything, then we're going to be there in a couple years. And
029so I just don't want to I don't want us to get there. So we have to make some changes this year. Um because we just don't want to see that slide. And then uh yeah, we just want to be part of that. So that's where that's where we're at right now. And the the positive is that we've done a lot of things like reduce class sizes. We've got really good class sizes, but at the same time, so we've added teachers to reduce class sizes. At the same time, our enrollment has dropped. You'll see that in your report tonight. Our enrollment this year is less than it's ever been since I've been here and before. Um, back to 2012 is where I have data, I think. And, um, uh, it's the lowest it's been since then.
030I can't explain why. We have we have development happening, but, um, we had 154 kindergarteners this year. That's the lowest it's been. um you know we used to get 180 to 210 for a long time and so that's part of the reason why our state funding has dipped because that is also based on enrollment and so um I'm I feel like we are almost to the point we are actually almost to the point we're going to get out of tier one and into tier two. So that 220 we got this year will look really good compared to what we'll get next year because uh if we if we go into tier two, it's uh we're going to get much less than that. And uh and part of that reason is because of our enrollment dipping.
031So so we have uh room to make some adjustments for next year. It's not, you know, it's not we're not in a situation where we have huge classes and no resources for kids and have to make cuts from that. We don't have that situation. We do. It's just not a comfortable thing to know that we have to go through and kind of tighten things up. So, not something that any of us want to do, but I think to be smart for the district. It's the only other option is to go to referendum at some point. And I think we need to try to do we what we can to shore this up first and then if it doesn't work in a few years, we could go referendum. But, but that's really a board decision if
032you ever decide you want to do it. So, probably shouldn't even have thrown that word out there right now. But we are, you'll see during tax levy time, we are one of the lowest tax rates in in the county. So, we've uh we've done a really good job with that, keeping our tax rate really low. So, we are one of the lowest in the county. So, there's definitely room to do that if we ever wanted to. It's a little longer budget hearing than typical, but I just want to really put it out there for everybody. I'm going to do something similar share this data with each of the buildings offering a optional afterchool meetings next week on Tuesday and Wednesday I think one at middle school and then one at primary elementary and just really
033be transparent with them kind of show them exactly what I showed you this is where we were this is where we are and uh won't you know and let them ask questions so that's what I'm going to do next week any questions all right thank motion. >> Second. All right, good evening board. Um, so we're going to tell you a little bit about a campaign that started at the middle school last year called No Place for Hate. And it is a Do I have a clicker? Oh, right in front of me. Um it is a national campaign that um has a lot of resources for schools to help us do what is always in our school improvement plan every year which is make sure that our students feel welcome, included and have a sense of
034belonging here. So, we worked with a consultant last year. Um, our equity teams did and we had a situation here at the middle school where it led to us asking the consultants if they had some recommendations for what kinds of things we could implement to to try and make some meaningful change. And so, they recommended this and it is a free campaign that we signed up for. And it has a lot of great, like I said, materials. There's a lot of uh schools that are using it. Whoops. I don't know how I got there. Um and you know, like I said, a lot of support. So, um helping students feel heard, helping teachers have some of these difficult conversations because teachers do struggle with them and how to have them appropriately. Um and then helping
035us to kind of have an infrastructure um in place. So um it's very student driven. So there will be student committees um and then we come up with goals and we survey the students to kind of identify what the challenges are and then we respond to the survey results and they have a very large bank of activities both lessons and just activities and campaigns that you can do around the school to help make it feel more inclusive and welcoming. Um, so again, we did this last year and one of the challenges was the equity team was working with the consultant and so I kind of took on the no place for hate campaign myself and it was too much for one person. So this year all of us are going to have our equity teams
036kind of lead this work but still involve the students. So uh we have had an initial meeting with the equity team just to put a timeline together. Uh, one of the things that we're doing at the middle school level is, uh, we're going to have applications for kids that want to be part of the group. So, they will actually join some of our meetings and help us do some of the planning. We're going to do the student survey next week already so that we can get some of the data from our students so that we can help so we can identify what the areas of need are. Uh we'll have a kickoff assembly to kind of build some excitement and then we'll have students apply to participate and then uh we'll plan some activities, lessons
037during advisory um and whatever else the the students and the committee kind of come up with that would hopefully help respond to the results of the data. Um and all of this work is aligned with our yearly school improvement goals like I mentioned. Um, and it helps us um with responding to our climate survey data as well that uh we give every year. Um, and we're also realigning or we're we're adjusting our student of the month criteria to align with this as well, just so everything is is streamlined and all um cohesive. So at the elementary level um we are obviously following the the lead of the middle school but then um putting it at an age appropriate level for our elementary age students. Um we've enrolled and familiarized ourselves with the program. Um we're
038using the synergy data report to drive um the types of activities that we'll select. um hoping to do three activities, one a trimester across all um classrooms and then um some will be whole school uh while others will be grade level or classroom based. Um we'll be using our elementary building equity inclusiv inclusivity and belonging team to lead our activities. We've had meetings with the lead on uh this uh committee already. Marcela Draco is our our lead for that. U we have a committee of seven staff members. So representing our our building quite nicely. Um they'll help to uh talk about the timeline and plan the activities here. Uh we have a meeting coming up in within the week. Um our fourth grade starbursts are going to help to assist in the implementation of No
039Place for Hate. Uh they'll work with our in collaboration with the equity team and then our um uh starburst team. There's a team of teachers also that facilitates that group. So, we'll help guide them through that and um it will be helpful because we have a starburst uh in each classroom each trimester. So, they'll be able to uh communicate as well with the the younger grades. Um we've recently also had some discussions about pairing up our uh first graders um with our fourth graders uh and doing some things in the same same regard. >> Well, they didn't uh leave me with much to say. So for primary, we're leading the work the same way. It's through our equity, belonging, and inclusivity committee. And that's pretty much we have representation from all of our grade levels
040at least. And a lot of our activities are going to be based on the no place for hate um resources and as well as our synergy report to kind of drive what our initial activities are going to be. And we are also registered. We are participating in the training as well. Some of the information that we're currently working through because there are still more layers to the training is a lot of the student participation. They recommend third fourth grade. So that's where um Vinnie was kind of talking about having like these buddies and her building come down to our building and vice versa to kind of lead the work, but we don't know necessarily what that's going to look like right now. Um but that's in the works and really you guys covered everything. Thank
041you. Second. >> Yes. >> All right. Uh back at it. Exhibit 14 is uh your attendance report. Oops. Did I skip something? >> Sorry. The uh certified staff exhibit 13. That's our new teachers. If you get a chance, read through that. You'll see all of our new teachers, a little bio for each one. We have a at least a two big hollow grads. We have a couple big hollow parents. Uh so I love the connections there. Um, I've been meeting with them one-on-one and they've all had really good reports with uh how everything's gone and their transition. So, you'll see a lot more information there about all of the new teachers. And then, uh, next item is analysis of enrollment. And you'll see that exhibit 14. And again, like I mentioned a little bit ago,
042you see our enrollment right now for 2526 is at 1611 students. Um, and that's again goes back to 11 and 12. we were 1773. So that's uh that's our lowest. Uh and and that that pattern you can see of kindergarten classes coming in has been pretty small recently. So um in that exhibit 15, you'll see classroom sizes. Uh that's something to pay attention to. So, you know, our goal was to get at K4. Our goal is to get to 20 for classroom averages and uh um that was our intent in moving to nine teachers per grade. And doing that at the same time as enrollment's gone down has uh you know, you can see that we are at we're pretty low numbers in some of those classes, which is great. It really is a good
043environment. Um, it's one of the reasons why I feel like we've had uh um I feel like our our discipline has been better uh this year and last and uh that's probably that contributes to it. Um but uh yeah, so that's our those are our classroom averages there. Any questions on the enrollment? All right, item C is not happening tonight. Cindy was sick. So, uh, uh, Cindy's going to do a a ba back to school bash report and, uh, I would share a little bit, but she wants to come next month because she wants to talk about, uh, some of the activities she has coming for the year. So, uh, I'll let Cindy, we're going to move that to next month. Um, then it the next item I'm going to give you this real quick.
044Oh, they do have them. Okay. Sorry. Um, you have a you have a flyer next to you that says state of the district. Um, actually I just realized it doesn't anywhere say that on there. Um, this flyer is a state of the district flyer for us. We had it created. I had the administrative team provide input. Um, did share a little bit with staff. Uh, my goal here was to give you a snapshot. If you look at page one of exhibit 16, um I'm I broke this down into into different areas across the district. The first one is teaching and learning. So what you'll see on this flyer, I won't go through every bullet point here, but this is for you to look through, but um you'll see down the center, the right side of
045the flyer of the first page, these are areas I think we uh should celebrate in teaching and learning. Um and then on the left side you'll see areas where I think we have opportunities for to get better opportunities for growth. So areas to celebrate you'll see I'm going to highlight a few things. Big hall students achieved 70th percentile nationally in math growth in last year's map. Um we exceeded national average for math achievement in last year's map. Uh we had we met met the national average for ELA growth and achievement in 2425. And then we scored in the 64th percentile in ELA proficiency and 80th percentile in ELA growth on IR in 24 last year. We haven't got the IR results yet for those percentile reports. So those are things to celebrate. Um again, not
046going to hit every bolt on this page, but our our EL uh we had some EL test access testing celebrations. Our EL students performed really really well on the access test. Um, we've again gone through some class size reduction initiatives that have really helped at K4. Uh, we've added some excellent curriculum resources in the last years in both math and ELA. Um, and we've had a a nice focus on advanced learning in our district and we're trying to push that down to the primary and elementary. Uh you'll see on the left side though I have opportunities for growth because not everything is going great and we have room to improve in some areas and our I math proficiency is an area that we've struggled in and we feel like we can do better um and
047we continue to put some efforts in there. Additional advanced math program for third and fourth grade is a goal of ours to kind of push advanced opportunities for uh younger students and the same for ELA. Um and then we have a professional learning community model here and we just want to make sure that we are doing that the best way we uh we're doing we're we're getting the benefits out of that that that we should. So those are areas that we are trying to focus on for areas of growth for teaching and learning. If you go to your next page um school community engagement and culture this is the whole page for this and I put in here some things that are going great here. I I think the work that Cindy facilitates with the
048community development outreach with the bash, the the reading festival, the trunk or treat, the STEM expo, the cultural fair, those are really great community events. If you've been to any of those, you see that it's, you know, uh it's something that brings the big hollow community together, which is a really cool thing to see. Our staff climate culture has been really solid. Um at the on the HumanX Insight X survey, 80% of our Big Hollow employees rated their uh their their ratings were considered highly engaged and highly satisfied uh with their jobs at Big Hollow. On the five essential survey, we uh scored in the 73rd percentile for effective leaders, 80th percentile for collaborative teachers, and 79th percentile for involved families. Um those are all great things to celebrate. Um, I think another thing on
049this page I'd like to highlight is the cell phone free environment for students at the middle school has been a really positive bonus for us. On the left hand side you see enga uh opportunities for growth in this area and you'll notice I checked increasing family engagement to strengthen connections with big hollow families. Um I think we've seen a we've seen a str we're struggling with that a little bit. Our PTO involvement is very very limited. Um uh and then I will say in some of the family uh or the parent advisories that we have, we don't see as much participation as we used to. And I don't know what that's a result of. Uh it could be a positive thing that people trust us and they don't feel like they need to be on
050those committees. But uh it could be that just there's just a lack of engagement. And uh that includes a citizen advisory council which we have our first meeting in a couple weeks. But um I used to have people on a waiting list for that committee and I don't anymore. uh we we we might get 30 sign up and we might get 15 to show up. So, it's it's kind of uh a challenge. And I do let them I've even gone to where I've let them uh submit things they want to see on the agenda. So, I want to know like what do you guys want to know? Like we'll we'll and uh um so the the people that come are great. They are great and they're very engaged and they really enjoy it and they
051keep coming every year. So, they're they're great. So I just see as a goal that we can do some things there to increase family engagement. Um reducing classroom disruptions and enhancing student and teacher safety is something that's come up on surveys. So we continue to keep that as a focus. That's one of the reasons we brought in a a keynote speaker at our opening day to talk about classroom management strategies. And uh um uh we have seen again I' I've shared we've seen some uh across all three buildings we've seen some improvements this year. I don't I don't necessarily uh say that's a result of the opening day institute but it's just u um we've seen improvement in discipline across all three buildings but and then improving attendance this is a tough one uh our
052attendance and this is a national trend attendance has decreased significantly after the pandemic and attendance rates and we are showing an 18% chronic absenteeism rate in the 2425 school year um uh and then chronic truency rates of is of 8%. So these are things that we want to try to work on. We do work closely with our ROE, but uh it's definitely a goal we need to have. So in facilities op and operations update, so your next page, um again, uh safety and security fall under this. I we've done a lot of work in this area. I think we've done um as much work in this area as I would stack us up to any any district in the in the state. But um so we've done a lot of work in this area to
053improve this the safety of our buildings. Um we've done playground improvements uh outdoor learning space building improvements. Uh I feel really good about the work that we've completed with Varigy over the last two years the phase one and phase two. I think the district is can feel really good about uh not having any significant work on the buildings uh for another 20 years. So, uh, with those projects nearly completed, uh, the next big one will be parking lot replacements at some point, but, uh, uh, it's not necessarily right now. Um, opportunities for growth is on the right side. There's only one check mark there and it says future expansion opportunities. And I only put this down would be was is that uh if we were to if we were to see a large subdivision or
054two go in, we would have to consider what that impact would do to this campus. But right now, I will tell you, with our enrollment down the way it is, we could soak in another couple hundred students and not really make any changes. So, it would take a pretty large subdivision for that to happen. Uh the next page is financial update. Um, things to celebrate after, it's hard to say things to celebrate after that, uh, budget hearing I just gave you, but uh, things to celebrate. Our financial rating has been the highest uh, rating from the Illinois State Board of Ed since 2017. Uh, we've had a tax rate deduction for our taxpayers. Um, until this last fiscal year, our funding balance has increased across the board since 2015. Um, our EAV in the count
055in our district has gone up steadily. Um, again, we've secured bonds to fund the maintenance projects that are going to uh keep the district um secure for quite a while. And then I one stat you may not know, I just found this this summer that says fiscally conservative spending 2024 report card shows instructional spending per pupil is in the 27th percentile compared to other Illinois districts. um reflects an efficiency while maintaining strong student outcomes. Um things opportunities for growth, managing deficit spending through a strategic budgeting, adapting to reduce state funding for transportation special ed. These are things I just covered for you. Planning for uncertainty in the future Illinois education funding. I don't see things turning around in the state real quickly. Um so we're going to have to be strategic here. And then the
056last one I believe, yeah, the last one is governance updates. That's that's you as a board board. I think that the strengths we have as a board tenure. You can see that we've had people that have served on this board for quite a long term and they're committed to effective governance. Uh this board has always been very transparent. Um live stream meetings, clear publicly available board agendas, online publication of packets in advance of each meeting. Those are very transparent practices. Um and I think you've shown a real proven record. I think that uh an opportunity for growth is that there could be some anticipated turnover in this board in a few years. So um we have to do be strategic about recruiting uh board members. So So anyway, I tried to what I tried to
057do with this was pull put together a snapshot view of what's going well big hollow and what are things we can work on. So that's what this this document gives you. Any questions? That was a lot. Okay, and that would be it for my report. Yes. >> Yes. >> 2526 budget questions. >> Motion second. >> Yes. accepted a retirement from congratulations to the board. Our next board meeting on Tuesday, October 14, 2025 full session beginning at 6 p.m. open session. Anything else? Please have a motion to go.