001e anything to add to the [Music] agenda okay please have a motion to approve the agenda motion Vivian Tiffany my God hear uh all in favor I any oppos eyes have it academic Spotlight kindergarteners you're up all right Miss oh miss Lin's gonna come up and get this started thank you you okay I'm Liz Larin the assistant principal at the primary school here to introduce our kindergarteners who have engaged in an alphabet boot camp so kindergarten the floor is all yours hello can I get all my kindergarteners over on that blue line over there they're going to do a mock fashion show for you all okay all right so one of the main things about kindergarten is they have to learn their letters and the sounds they make so we start the year off with
002an ABC boot camp where we do one letter a day and during this students get to bring in an item that goes with the sound or the letter and then at the end we do this big project where students make a vest with a letter and all the things they get to decorate it however they want and it's a family project that they do and they would like to Showcase that for you today that's awesome so cool oh my gosh that is awesome I know [Applause] yeah great job kindergarten thank you so much [Applause] accomplishment recognition Mr Gold okay we have a few accomplishments we want to recognize to start the night off uh first if I could have our 2024 boys cross country team come on up coach Eric Walters is going to come
003up as well boys come on up real quick and I'll let Coach Walters share a little bit about the group on the green line green line six what we missing seven either way all right oh hello that's hot mic all right so our boys cross entry team were our conference champions second time in this conference that we've done that in the five years we've been at uh they placed third at our sectional for make our third team has qualified for State uh statistically speaking this is honestly our best team we've had TimeWise and we kind of did a time trial thing like compare teams had our best times best score against any other team so boys congratulations something that You' be proud of down state they had our highest finish as a team at 21st
004why instruction individuals or okay okay people we have here today we have and Jacob Reyes Harmony leth Jack walls Harrison Pope Marcel kubak and Luke Leon after today we have Jaden Lopez Ben Carlo Verge Isaiah Vegas I'm missing one person Matthew Todd thank boys congrats boys good job boys okay we also had a girl qualifier for the state meet it's our third girl qualifier for the state meet so jillan Morales come on [Applause] up yep yeah as I mentioned julen is our third qualif girl this to qualify as an individual for a state meet overall finished 83rd out of over 200 runners in the state meet downstate congrats awesome okay now we have our students of the month and we will start with M uh Miss Lin are you introducing this awesome okay okay at
005primary for our student of the month is Cole Jacobson and Mrs Wheaton's class we'll have them both come up [Applause] here the last time I did this were like four people here so you're getting a good audience huh all right I'm just going to write what I wrote um on the nomination form so Cole is always a star student in our classroom he is friendly and caring towards others he works hard all the time even when things are tricky for him the love and excitement towards learning is so refreshing to see Cole is so proud of himself when he puts new Concepts together and is able to do it on his own he is always listening and following our classroom and school expectations I am lucky to have him in class okay Dr bian col
006all right I am very excited to announce our um student of the month um one of the most humble students that I know Bradley Martin and his teacher Mrs bird if you can come on [Applause] up I to I'm just going to read what I wrote so I don't ramble Bradley consistently demonstrates outstanding qualities both in and out of the classroom he's a dedicated student who embodies kindness and responsibility he completes his assignments and offers helps to others and math Bradley shines as an exceptional partner actively listen to others ideas and thoughtfully build in upon them he exemplifies our star school our star expectations and he is consistently displayed safety respect and responsibility and he always has a Charged Chromebook every day since day one his Chromebook has been charged so um anyway Bradley's commitment
007to supporting his classmates and his dedication to learning make him a true role model and I am very fortunate to have him in my class okay Mr Cornwell all right so this is an extra special student of the month winner because every month it's eighth graders so when I told the fifth grade team we had a fifth grader finally they literally jumped up and down and screamed and half the people in the meeting were like what's going on why are they screaming because they weren't paying attention I'm going to invite uh some of our fifth grade teachers up [Music] to talk a little bit about our student of the month Gavin hegstad come on up bud do you are you ready for your [Applause] speech all right so like Mr Cornwell said it's always eth
008grade so the fact that we have a fifth grader here for the first time since I've been here we're all supporting Gavin tonight because he's that awesome so we are thrilled to have Gavin as our Middle School student of the month representing fifth grade finally Gavin consistently demonstrates an impressive work work ethic kindness and a positive attitude that inspires both classmates and teachers Gavin approaches every assignment with enthusiasm and determination striving to do his best whether it's working through math problems writing essays or participating in class discussions Gavin's dedication to learning is clear Gavin is also quick to help others when they're struggling offering explanations and encouragement to classmates in a patient and supportive way for his commitment to learning work ethic and kindness to others Gavin is truly deserving of the student of the
009month award Gavin's positive attitude and sense of responsibility have made a beneficial impact on our classes and we are proud [Applause] oh yes yeah okay and I have the uh privilege I believe of uh announcing our employee of the month this month we asked our staff to nominate one of of our primary uh teachers certified teachers and would Greta Adams please come on up so Greta you're the you're the first one that's going to get this uh Jimmy our Tech Guy made this uh belt that's going to be a traveling belt that says Big Hollow Warrior employee of the month so Jimmy made that that'll be a traveling [Applause] belt so Greta I'm going to read what was uh written on our nomination form and then our entire staff vot us on this so I
010am nominating Greta for several reasons I've known and worked with Greta for as long as I can remember in those years I've seen her always carry herself in a positive and professional manner she has always taken extra roles that have been a great benefit to our school and our district she was the district sub coordinator for more years than I can count which seems to be a 2 247 type task yes it is uh she's been has been or played a role in a reading night as far as the days of sleepovers in the school coordinating people and or persons for assemblies Etc always wanted to step up get involved and make things happen although she did not teach my child or grandchild I have seen her in action as a teacher as well she's
011proven year after year that she's up for the challenge and I've seen firsthand some of the challenges she's had to deal with yet she never loses Focus her temper or her love for being a teacher she's definitely an asset to the primary school the Big Hollow School District and if you've had the privilege to call her friend consider herself lucky because she's a keeper and someone you want in your Corner this was an anonymous submission but I think there's others that feel the same way so congratulations Greta give you that and that concludes our recognitions we're going to continue with the business meeting but you will not hurt our feelings if you step out again Tex again prod we can get those thank you though yeah we're good thank you and then it was all
012right board member code of conduct review Miss enters will thank you do we have any questions on the consent agenda can I please have a motion to approve the consent agenda Mo second Peter yes Pon Yesa yes enters yes Johnson Lions yes Bennett yes superintendent report Mr Gold okay um first item is a the uh annual school report card is now online the 2024 report uh state law requires that uh I review the report card with the board and the community I will send a link out to the report card to our parents um soon in fact I I did last week uh just a brief brief report on that to them but um the report I'm going to share with you tonight we we I presented this different ways in the past um but
013this report I think gives a really good synopsis of of the data that's in the school report card it's the uh it's a report that ekra provides us and it's the Illinois report card analysis exhibit nine in your packet and if you want to start on page three of that exhibit so I'm on exhibit page three and uh you'll see table one student achievement um and what I'm going to point you to because uh I've mentioned in the past while you're while you're getting to that spot I'll bring it up again but I've mentioned in the past how um our Illinois State system is set this the school report card or the IR data analysis is has will give us a percent of students meeting or exceeding grow uh meeting exceeding standards and um Illinois
014determines where that cut score is I think the most important thing that we focus on as that you shared with me is what's important is how do we compare to other districts uh because whether if it's 30% of kids are meting or exceeding or 50 is that good is it not good and it's really in how how we compare to other districts in Illinois um is what's important because uh the Illinois sets that cut score and I will tell you in a meeting I was a at with the state superintendent last month um the cut score is going to change next year um it's going to appear that all of our kids do much better because they've realized that Illinois has set the cut score at a really difficult spot and it makes the schools
015look like nobody's meeting standards an example would be the SAT has a cut score for what they think is college ready and that score in Illinois is not proficient so um so they're adjusting that so next year it's going to appear that our scores go up I'll will tell you that's why we're focusing on the percentile so we'll still just we're just going to look at the numbers that compare How We Do compared to the rest of the state and that's not going to change from year to year no matter where they set the cut scores that's not going to change so the column I'm going to focus on in this report on that table you see the district percentile column for 2024 um you can look at the 2023 as well there's there's there's
016uh you'll see under 2023 you see State value District value District percentile and then 2024 you see State value District value District percentile um so it'll show you the two years and how they compared State Val so for ELA proficiency the first line State value is 39.8 that means across the state 39.8% of kids met the standards for ELA that's what that means and at Big Hollow was 46.1 so that puts us in the 64th percentile compared to all the districts in Illinois so how you would Define that would be we would be scoring better than 64% of the school districts you'll see and this is the trend we've seen is our math is not where we want it to be so our math is is lagged behind um State value is 25.7% of kids
017meeting exceeding math standards we were at 22.9 puts us at the 42nd percentile we did increase by 2 percentile this year or by one percentile but uh still not where we want to be the science proficiency uh we are at the state value is 56.9 we are 55.3 the 46 percent that's the first time I've seen uh um the last two years actually first time I've seen our our science dip we've always been right around the state average on that so we we have to take a look there uh the ELA participation and math participation you can kind of ignore those that's just how many kids participated in the test you should have really close to 100% uh the the next two are really important I believe Ela growth percentile let's start there the ELA
018growth percentile they take all of the kids and how they scored the prior year and they compare them to students who te if I if I scored a 620 in sixth grade in seventh grade they compare me to all the kids that scored 620 in sixth grade and how they did and that's how they determined growth um our Ela growth percentile is really really good um you can see that the state value is for it's going to be right around 50% so it's 49.3 that's the average growth in the state our district value is 56.5 but the that puts us in the 82nd percentile in the state so it means our our kids are growing at a pace that's faster than 80 that's uh better than 82% of the schools in in the state math
019growth percentile again our math proficiency scores were lower than what we expect what we hope for our growth percentile is solid we're at the 60th percentile in math for growth um and then eighth graders passing Algebra 1 we just uh this is probably more of a scheduling thing than anything we but we it's something we do need to look at um we have basically two set sections we have a section of algebra that graduates 8th grade every year and a section of geometry so we have 40 kids that are graduating with either algebra or geometry already passed and that is correct right Josh okay and that's that number is putting us set low end in when you look at our total population so we something we probably need to look at and I know they're
020already looking at at the lower grades fifth starting a fifth grade doing some more advanced work to get kids ready for that if if we keep going to the next page page four um it breaks down other the the school report card has all kinds of data in it's demographic data um and you'll see on this page you'll see salary data uh average teacher salary I'm just going to jump to the percentile column so teacher salary is in the 75th percentile Administrator salary is in the 69th percentile our local property tax is in the 58th percentile uh our eav per pupil that's our assessed evaluation per pupil is 58th percentile our instructional spending per pupil is in the 27th percentile um which means we're spending less uh to educate than than than the average we're
021in the bottom quartile operational spending is also uh low at 45th percentile that's actually going to drop further because this is still accounting for uh um I believe that would still be accounting for the uh debt that we had paying the uh bonds so that will drop off this year the last page or the next page page five of eight on this exhibit lists demographic data so uh we are currently uh 52% of our students are white that puts us in the 24th percentile at the state level uh 6.7 students are black percent are black 30 .7% of our students are Hispanic if you look at our Trend over the last 10 years our Hispanic population has gone up significantly um Asian population at 4.3% English learner population at 15.1 has also doubled in the
022last uh 5 to 10 years uh students with IEPs at 13.7 that puts us in the 30th percentile the state average is 15.7 so we're under the state average on that number of percent of students with IEPs low income um is at 38.6 that's as high as we've been um and that puts us in a 35th percentile in the state the average in the state is 47th per 47% we're at 38.6 uh you can see that was a almost 5% increase from last year um and we've gone up um I'd say we usually were trending in the low 20s for for a long time and then the recent years we've jumped up to almost 40 and then the page six of eight um nothing alarming here enrollment at 1684 puts us in the 73rd per
023that just means of all the districts they compare to we're we're larger than 73% of them uh there's a lot of small districts in Illinois our attendance rate is right at the average 47 percentile so 50th percentile of the average Mobility is low here our chronic absenteeism of a little below average which is good our treny is right at average uh our average class size um I would say that number it's the 8 88th percentile which is not that's not a good number though that means our class size is higher and I think it's really our Middle School um it's also a function of our schedule uh which we can we'd have to talk about how to how to reduce that but we're at we're at like 25 students per class the middle school or
024above but we have smaller grades coming in to the middle school so that's going to go down um teachers with Advanced degrees 77 percentile then teacher retention 23 percentile which that's a low number and the last page is um information that's pulled off that five essential survey that parents fill out staff fills out and students fill out so um we get scored on those and those that survey we get scores in these areas and now what this data does that I have not seen other than I mean I've econe and I've seen push this data out there but it tells us how our score compares to the rest of the state in that percentile score so the effective leader score of 54.3 we look at that and we feel like man we wish that was
025better um but that puts us in the 73rd percentile in the state which is a solid very solid score collaborative teachers puts it in 80 80th percentile involve families at 79th percentile uh supportive environment at percentile which is an area that our our uh principles when they see uh the five essential survey data they put that into their school Improvement planning Ambitions instruction right at the 50 50th percentile the Student Response rate and the teacher response rates I mean we are at uh 93% of students 92% of students responding um that's a little less than average uh across the state but uh teacher response rate is 86% and then the last page of this exhibit just shows you the two years for ELA and for math the light gray is how the state performed the
026light gray dashed line is where we were last year the dark blue graph is how the state performs so you can see in 20 24 the state progressed but our line also moved to the right quite a bit so we progressed as well and then in math you can see the state really didn't change much and neither did we uh you can see that the the state graph in the for the two years remains pretty similar um and then uh our line we did go to the right which is positive but we didn't go to the right as much as we hoped to go to the right so are there any questions I threw a lot at you there and I spoke a lot but U wanted just to review that table with you yeah
027on the five essential survey yeah was that covered prior to school or did were these results were that was out quite a while ago right or no the five Essentials we had yeah we we got that data in the summer is that right principles I think five Essentials we got in the summer yes okay the supportive environment I I know we keep talking about all the stuff we're adding but it the numb still going down so have they elaborated on where they feel they're not getting that support I'm gonna have to I may have to unless the principles can speak to that right now I'm putting you on the spot but I'll have might have to get back to you on that I'll have to look at I can see I need to go back
028and look at what the I thought about that today and I Didn't Do It um I need to go look and see what the questions were that really aligned that supportive environment question so I will get back to the board on that by the end of the week here because that's a really good question I I read through that this morning and thought the same thing so I mean additional Staffing we put in place to help out and Yeah there must be something we're missing so see yep good question excellent all right thank you um last items are very quick immunization update uh this was actually the best one we've had since I've been here uh there was only one student that was uh not U meeting the compliance as of the deadline we have
029to hold them out of school until they do comp comply and and we're all in compliance now but as of the compliance dates we had one that was not uh our nurses work really hard to get that done uh I have in there a staffing plan guideline for you for exhibit 10 just gives you the dates at the April board meeting or March board meeting I'll give you a rough draft of our staffing plan for next year and then April we will approve it or vote to approve it at the board meeting and then I just have a small change we have a we have a committee called the negotiations committee on the board it only meets the years where we have negotiations going on um there are things at times I'd like to bring
030up the talk about like Staffing for next year and I don't really have a board committee to bounce ideas off of um so I thought if I could just change the negotiations committee to human resource committee that would encom that would Encompass negotiations as well anything Human Resources would be if I wanted to talk health insurance Staffing or negotiations probably that' be okay all right so I guess we just need a motion all right can I have a motion to change the name of the board negotiations committee to human resource committee second Tiffany and Vivian all in favor I any oppose I that's all I have Kevin all right thank you anybody any questions on the employment recommendations can I please have a motion to approve the October 2024 employment recommendations Ashen Doug Bennett yes
031Pon yes sesa yes Johnson Peter yes Lions yes ERS uh TX what do we have here the tax l oh I'm sorry did we do the uh employment recommendation yeah okay um the tax levy is exhibit 12 and it's up on the board there but um I met with the finance committee last week we reviewed this uh for a little bit you'll see on the end of year fund balance reports the bottom line is our 2024 fund balances um if I were to point out any uh any discrepancies there I would say or not discrepancies any anomalies a little bit transportation is going to be one you'll see it went up significantly last year um primarily because we received some uh we received received a couple Transportation payments that we weren't expecting at the end
032of the year we usually get them at the start of the New Year um so those showed up on last year's books um debt Services went down significantly we've talked about these things with when we approved the budget this year debt Services went down but that's because we're not no longer levying tax money for that um and then the the far right there's a health Life Safety column that shows a negative $400,000 balance that's because we didn't have that fund last year but we spent some money at the end of the year but we got the bonds in July and that that fund now has quite a bit of money in it so um so we take the fund balances into consideration when we do the tax levy if you go to the next page
033you'll see a list of all the late County Elementary districts I try to give you this data every year so we know where we're at as a district and you can see with our bonds falling off we are now down near the bottom as far as our tax rate we're $271 last year um that was with uh most of the bond payment falling off so the only districts that are below us right now are band round out in Lake Forest and those communities are drawing from a tax base that isn't comparable to ours so um and you'll see that on the next page the next page it lists the same districts all the elementary districts and uh the center column I've shared this data with you before a percent adequacy the state of Illinois if
034you're at 100% adequacy they're they feel like you're getting the revenue that you should that that you need to run the school district and uh We've always trended in the 60 to 70% range this year I think we are at 71 um that's the highest we've been and that's a benefit that's due to us getting more funding from the state uh but you can see districts the number of districts uh starting with Fox Lake actually at 114 at 103% all the districts above that are above 100% adequacy um and uh the far right column tells tells you how far above in actual dollars how far above or below adequacy and you see Big Hollow we are at 7 million below adequacy that that means that um we would have if for us to be at
035100% accuracy we'd be getting $7 million more per year which uh would be a number I wouldn't even know how we would spend $7 million a year but um that's where it would be so I think we're we're putting out a very good product for for our community for the dollar that we are asking from them on the uh tax levy history the next page shows you uh what we are recommending in the far right column for a tax levy this year um I won't bore you with all the numbers but uh in that Levy if you go down the far right column you'll see an increase from the prior year the total increase does not exceed 5% it's at about 4.9 9 7% um we we kept it below that the uh you'll see
036a bond payment of 1,121 1875 that is for the new health Life Safety Bond we I think the the the target of the committee was that that does not exceed the prior year extension for Bond it did a little bit by 7,000 but that's uh negligable the um the overall recommendation from the committee and I have to bring this back to you next month for final approval but um well here I'll actually I'll go on to the next page no I'll finish it up the next page has the bond payments um you'll see one small table for an outstanding long-term debt as of June 30 2024 there's a small table that says tax levy year 2023 that means we already received this money it's the $1,095 payment that's going to go out in February and
037that'll officially pay off all the bonds that we've had on the books for a long time the B table with the bottom is the new Bond schedule we just took for the health Life Safety bonds and it'll start off with a the payment of around 121,000 1,1 121,000 the last page of this exhibit just states that uh we were we would we are recommending an increase of 4.97 uh there's no tax truth and Taxation hearing because we did not exceed 5% the the next page is the actual tax levy certificate it's a draft again I have to bring this back to you next month for a final but um anticipating no changes uh this would be what I would submit to the county next month and uh the the CPI that the CPI increase this
038year was around 3.6 so we won't get this full tax levy they we're asking for 4.97 it'll be less than that and uh that they will tell us that we can get so um we usually ask for a little higher than what uh just so we make sure we account for all the eav in our in our district we did have a significant our assessed evaluation is increasing significantly uh compared to probably other areas in the states and that definitely other years we were at probably 15% increase this year in our eav which is pretty high so that's that's again this is just we're approving this on first reading next month I won't go through all that again I'll just give you give you the tax Lev certificate we'll vote on it again but any
039questions there no anybody any questions all right um can I please have approval of the estimated tax levy for 2024 Second Joe and Vivian jesa yes Peter yes Johnson Lions yes Pon yes Bennett yes enters yes phase two with ver G yeah I can just I'll speak to this real quick um there's a lot of work in here uh the building grounds committee facilities committee has been a part of this discussion um we the the first document exhibit 16 goes through all the work but I I want to point out that the committee decided to pull the uh Middle School to pull the chiller from the Middle School out and uh um exhibit 15 Matt if you could pull exhibit 15 up I'd appreciate it I forgot to mention that one um okay so exhibit
04015 I believe it's corrected there yes uh shows where we're at we've had a couple things happen with our bond payment or the bond that we got I'll go down because I'm I'm not sure if your document online is is is the same as this one on the screen is it okay it is all right so we did a bond this summer for the 10.68 million that's at the top that's all the work in phase one and two that ver recommended and that's what they estimated the costs at that's what the Architects approved and the state approved so we did that and then we then we found out we got the safe we also included in that work was the uh window film the new door lock systems and the new intercom communication systems all
041are safety projects so all that was included in that 10.6 then we got the safety grant that we didn't weren't expecting so that's the 500,000 so I added that in so that puts a said 11.1 million in the health Life Safety fund the first phase one total cost was $4 million and 4, 39,000 phase two we have an estimate here of 3, 392,000 the window film the door locks the communication system those are all the communication system number is pretty accurate the other two are guesses right now we're putting those out to bid in the next couple weeks the other two um but they're I try to guess high so the total we're at is 9, 87,000 34 uh the amount of money we have remaining is the two Mill around $2 million the only
042thing we have left to do of all the projects we were planning is the Middle School Chiller so we're well under budget right now which is good um we the facilities committee talked and the chiller right now doesn't need to be replaced so we want to hold off on that and I just shared with the committee and I share with the board that we have to keep because the bond included money to replace the chiller if that happens now or if that happens 10 years from now we have to have the money in there because that Bond was already made or received to do that so uh so we just need to keep the funding in there for that but yeah so after this if we approve this phase we'll have all the work done
043and for the phase two fa first two phases the only thing left would be the chiller when it needs it but right now we don't see an urgent need for that and we have the money in the bank for uh the health Life Safety to do it so and we have we're about a million dollars under budget which we might be able to turn around to look at some other health Life Safety projects in the future so which could be parking lots might be the next big thing the playgrounds are actually not a part of Health by safety yeah yeah I don't think I can get those in there so that's it for that and then uh any other questions on phase two all right can I please have a motion to approve the phase
044through contract pricing with ver G motion second Doug and Joe Pon yes sesa yes Peter yes Lions yes Bennett yes Johnson ERS yes this is just proposal for the after school school program the replace uh the child's place program that was here a couple years ago uh CIP is a local group and uh the only difference is I just want to be very upfront I I'm recommending that we uh their pricing is based on us charging a $1,000 per month rent we were doing 2,000 at one time uh the cost ends up going back to our parents anyway I feel I felt like and I talked to our facilities committee about it uh if we keep it at a th000 that means they're still they still have some there's some uh there's some cost to
045them but our parents are going to see the uh their quotes were based on that $1,000 so our parents were seeing the benefit of that keeping it low because we don't have extra costs we're not hiring any uh we don't have any extra costs other than lights so and I wouldn't call those extra cost because they' probably be on anyway while they're here so so yeah all right have any questions do they have a tenative start date their plan is the right after winter break and actually tonight at 8:30 I will be sending out 8:00 8:30 I'll be sending out registration information you've had Parents already asking about it so cool any other questions no can I please have a motion to approve the before and after school program proposal by SAR depy child care
046Ash Tiff Bennett yes enters yes Pon yes Lions yes sesca yes Johnson Peter yes uh resignations we accept the resignation from Laura mil Jensen food service worker we accepted a resignation from Cynthia sarpolis 8th grade science teacher we accept a resignation from Megan katel Middle School lunch modate do we have any publical comments no information items uh no fo does anybody have any questions on the monthly reports to the board no uh the next regularly scheduled board meeting will take place on Monday December 9th 2024 with Clos session beginning at 6m an open session beginning immediately following Clos session can I please have a motion to adjourn second Tiffany Vivian all in favor I any oppos I just have being