001e e e we move back into Open Session can everyone please stand for the pledge the flag right there I pledge of allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands one nation under God indivisible with liberty and justice for all all right does anybody have anything to add to the agenda can I please have a motion to approve the agenda motion second Ash Tiffany all in favor I any oppose I just have it academic Spotlight M oh yeah I will all right um I'm gonna turn the mic over to uh Dr bian colana to introduce the elementary okay all right good evening everyone we're very excited to be launching what we're calling an intergenerational volunteer program uh last year uh we had a delightful intergenerational
002volunteer former teacher um who came in um each each week worked with our students was a great experience and um so uh I had a chance to get together with Marcel draal who was the host teacher and create uh work together to create a program um that we could use more widespread throughout the building uh since the pandemic you know volunteers have been coming back in slowly but surely um which is really working to our advantage for our children so Marcel is going to take a few minutes to share with you some information and uh she has a a couple of guest speakers as well so Marcel Draco hello okay so determining our why and everything we do is super important especially in the realm of Education um it helps us make sense of our
003purpose and gives us Direction it guides us to make a meaningful impact with that being said the why of our intergenerational program um is to increase Civic engagement between Generations promote crosscultural um a awareness and provide resources to students that may otherwise be inaccessible Our intention for this program is to redefine roles at each stage of life and create ways to strengthen um the bind that ties us so meaning we are responsible for one another in our education so here's our plan we're on step two and three we started with um finding interest so we took surveys of um parents Guardians family members and of teachers and there were there was lots of Interest which um we were excited about after we found that interest we started assigning roles so we paired volunteers with teachers
004based on their interest for example small group reading time small group math time um just spending quality time even with the kids pen pals clerical work all kinds of opportunities um and now we are having a joint participation in regular activities for a fixed period of time so it'll last all school year um with these pairings um eventually we want to do a community outreach um so we can connect more with the community outside of Big Hollow um and have that back and forth communication and now I want to introduce Liz Hunning the one that sparked um the interest of this program so welcome Liz Honey hi um I I was a career teacher 40 years in both the public and private sector and as a te classroom teacher I always had help in fact
005I even had Korean TV in my classroom and they got to learn the culture and I feel it's really important that our kids don't always have the opportunity to meet grandparents or older community members and I think this is a good way and it teaches them respect and they can learn from them I have been my life has been enriched being in Marcel's room today I walked in there and the kids had painted a pumpkin for me I mean that was that's a beautiful gift but the kids come up and they will you work with me today will you listen to me today and it's it's really good for the kids to reach out and Trust adults we need that trust in their kindness so and of course I was there for my Charlotte okay
006go ahead I really liked it because Miss Henning was a really good teacher and she made it fun for us to learn I think having a visitor in the class is fun because grandparents can make things funner thank you very much that was very all right and then just a little bit of research um with this program um we found or they have found that it improves self-esteem in students um Behavior improves reading skills and academic engagement and that is all does anyone have any questions thank you for taking a risk trying something new very cool awesome all right accomplishment recog Mr Gold Miss Mullen do you want to come up and start with primary we're going to introduce some students and employees of the month real quick here and I'm going to turn around
007and invite Miss jany up to introduce our primary student of the month okay um I am proud to announce that the P Primary School's student of the month is my amazing student my first grade student ker panid Singh can you come up here koned [Applause] and I wanted to sh stand here hold it carefully um kpan comes to school each day with a positive attitude and an eagerness to learn he has excellent participation during instruction and he always shares great ideas with the class especially during math time kpan is a kind and patient friend to his peers he has done an excellent job learning our classroom routines and expectations and sets a great example for his classmates kpan is a wonderful example of a Big Hollow star [Applause] Dr beon colana okay I'd like to
008First Call up our uh this is elementary student of the month and it is Grayson Grayson Gentile so come on up Grayson a round of applause and then I'd like to call up um his teacher Mrs Michelle Connelly who nominated grayon for this award so I'm not as uh young as Miss jany so I need to put the glasses on so this is this is Grayson he is a star student in every way he works hard in class and wants to learn he participates in every disc and adds on to what others are sharing he's a great listener not only to teachers but to peers he helps classmates when they're struggling academically and socially he's taken on the role of Mentor for a new student in our class and for a student that needs a
009little extra um Grayson was not asked to do this he just saw a need and filled it so I'm proud to be Grayson's teacher and so proud that he's the elementary student of the bun [Applause] Mr Cornell good evening everyone I'd like to call up Miss Kelsey Zach to recognize our student of the month at the middle school us okay um my name is Kelsey Zach and I nominated Phoebe so Phoebe can come on up um Phoebe after I nominated her I found out two situations that happened Phoebe actually won this award in sixth grade correct yes and she was running against her fifth grade brother Nash this month so that's actually pretty hi Nash pretty exciting um so I nominated Phoebe because for our first month of first month of school she's been a
010shining example of what it means to be a big Hollow Warrior both in the classroom and outside of the classroom um so she follows our expectations of being safe responsible respectful um in activities not just in the classroom and in the hallways so she's constantly pushing herself to be her best best version um she's involved in many things throughout our building including epic buddies which she works during our epic period with our Lop students so our students who have special needs um choir soccer geometry Advanced Ela um I feel like I'm forgetting something anything else you do njhs okay um she's kind to all of her peers all adults and even her brothers when she sees them in the hallway right Nash and Finn yeah she advocates for herself and is very inclusive with others
011we are excited to see Phoebe and all of her accomplishments this year as an eighth grader keep up the great work and keep being a role model Warrior [Applause] okay I have our employee of the month and I'm going to tell you he's very nervous about this tonight so Francisco Paco is what we call him Paco is one of the hardest this was an anonymous post or recommendation is one of the hardest workers I've ever seen it seemed like he doesn't have an off switch he's always moving and not at a slow pace he always has a smile on his face and will always stop to say hi I can tell you the I can't tell you the times I've have seen him stop what he is doing to help someone else out either by
012opening a door or help carrying a box he takes great pride in his work and it shows on the elementary side we are lucky to have someone like Paco on our facilities team also nominated by a teacher who states Paco has been wonderful he is consistently cleaning all afternoon and evening he stops to help students who are in need I have watched him do that several times and I can just say um he's a joy to have in our buildings um and we are glad to honor him tonight I told him he had to give a speech but I promise you we won make you do that come on up [Applause] Paco yeah yeah yeah thank you everybody for uh how me um I like my no no too much to speak English but I
013like it my thank you everybody that's [Applause] great you can see why everybody likes Paco so much all right well that's all the exciting stuff you guys are more than welcome to stay but if you would like to leave that's completely up to you um you're welcome have a good night don't I didn't know he was going to talk we're almost done we have two more weeks left basically we've been having all right we'll just keep moving on yeah board member code of conduct review Brian you're up what am I doing now you got to read it out loud okay I was strive to keep my board focused on primary work of clarifying the district's purpose Direction and goals and monitoring District performance all right does anybody have any questions on the consent agenda can
014I please have a motion to approve the consent agenda motion Second Joe and Doug yes yes yes yes my report superintendent's report Mr right all right uh item a is the uh just some information for you District leadership team we actually have a meeting coming up this week um it's a group of teachers administrators from across the district we meet three times a year I shared with you the objectives that we talking about this year it's just an update uh item Item B is a uh an exhibit 10 is Health Life Safety annual report we had a inspection done this fall um actually I will say it was probably our best one in the last 10 years so we did it was a good good inspection um they commented on how how much progress they
015feel like we've made in some areas um I've we've already responded to all of the issues every one of them was minor so uh Derek uh swerski did a really nice job getting ready for that and uh we feel like we've we've come a long way in a couple years so uh item C I'm going to let our building principles step up uh we do you guys can go ahead and come on up um we do uh annual School Improvement planning and each of them has spent a lot of time working on their school Improvement plan for their particular building um I believe we have this set up right I should have checked beforehand exhibit 11 is the indetail school Improvement plans for all three buildings what they're going to share is just a quick
016summary overview of that so we're not going to go into all the details but what you'll see are the are the uh in the weeds details of each School Improvement plan they will keep that plan in front of their leadership teams throughout the year um and that those are things we're focused on throughout the year and then in the spring we will take a look and see uh once we get assessment results back from the I it helps us dump uh feed information into that plan we'll find out figure out where they ended up with their plans so I'll let the principles take over all right so Mr Gold said a lot of what I was going to say sorry that's fine um so each of our three buildings are using the goals from the
017district strategic plan and we created our building level School Improvement plans from those goals sorry thought we' easier into it you know first time so our building leadership teams and grade level teams uh have already been analyzing data from various assessments and we'll continue to do so including I map uh the kids assessment and gold uh we'll also continue to use fastbridge a tool that we adopted last year to more regularly monitor students progress toward their goals and make adjustments to instruction and supports when necessary uh specific targeted goals and action steps will be set at each building level based on the assessment used in each grade level so we're currently in the process of analyzing the I results and taking the teams through that so we're setting goals around that currently and then they'll
018do the same with the other assessments at the other buildings um as has been the case the past few years the teaching and learning team and building administrators are facilitating a thorough I analysis they actually took place today uh for middle and then in addition for grade levels that do not take the I assessment we are setting measurable goals using our map growth to ensure that we are collectively working to improve our I scores which begin in third grade and then more information about the specific strategies and implementation plans as Mr Gold mentioned can be found in your in each building School Improvement plan okay and then our second goal um just similar to the the first goal but first goal is on focus on academic second goal is on culture and climate within the
019building um each of our buildings um we focus and continue to focus on um how we can foster empathy and a sense of belonging in each of our buildings um fortunately a couple of years ago we established some baseline data which has been very helpful to move things forward for all of us um looking at the humanex data that we obtain from our staff uh staff members uh five essential survey information as well um from both staff members and parents uh and then our PBIS uh School climate surveys that we um uh solicit information from our students and uh we use that information obtained from those surveys uh to create our very specific and measurable efforts um any plans any new plans that we might um generate uh for you know as each year comes
020comes along here um the whole Focus being to have a positive impact on the community's perception of our buildings being safe um secure and inclusive uh learning environments for our students um and then if you wanted to take a look and you had any um questions certainly we're happy to answer those but taking a look at our school Improvement plan really drills down to what each of the buildings are um offering and um as uh action steps and and goals and all of that so any questions at all very good at the end of the month the State's going to release the school report card for the districts so we actually have I could I was wanting to present that this month but uh it's under we can't do it till the end of October
021it's under like uh um forget what they call it but the Press can't release it yet so uh next month we'll share our school report card results which includes I from last year and those kind of things that's all the data they're going through right now do you guys feel you have the resources you need to get some of these goals are pretty admir they're pretty lofty I mean it's good to have those but I'm just saying you guys have the resources you need to get what you want done done yeah I mean the instructional coaches in particular are I mean our the coaches in our building as you guys know it's year two and they're fully booked for round one of teaching of uh coaching cycles and we're already taking people signing up for
022round two so that's made a big difference in people improving their instruction we've got PD coming from outside side so we can give the teachers you know the skills and knowledge that they need to to move the needle so yeah definitely awesome thank you so much appreciate it item D I've uh shared with the board we the uh School violence prevention program Grant we received $500,000 award uh this month we were notified last year we thought we were going to get it we were hoping and uh but what's happening now is uh that there's been a lot more interest across the country in this grant so it's very very much uh very competitive um so we were one of 10 districts in Illinois that got the grant so it was very good to hear that
023um we have uh projects underway that I will be talking to the uh building the facilities committee soon um we are I'm working with the architect right now to drop a um request for proposal for uh window film Project which would basically be uh um what we're looking at is all interior windows and all first level exterior all first level exterior windows with a uh window film that um I mean bulletproof wouldn't be the right word but it would be it's it's basically going to uh provide that Ty that type of security um and then also a door lock new door locking mechanisms across the district on every door uh it would become a key fob situation instead of hard keys and it would be uh controlled through the network um through Bluetooth technology and
024we would be able to lock things down from a device uh so it's just another security layer that we're going to add so those those projects will be covered uh by the Grant and I'll go into more detail in the coming months as we uh before we approve any projects it'll come to you so any questions on that all right residency update just real quick I thought I'd bring it to your attention in case uh uh it comes to your comes your way uh in the community but we are we we are doing a deep dive into residency this fall uh teamed up with national investigators and uh it's a group that will they take our database run uh our addresses through their database sorry their database and um they're determining if we have any
025what they would call Red Flag situations and they're visiting homes double-checking make sure parents or kids kids are coming from homes that live within our district and uh we've been navigating this for probably six to eight weeks and uh we have a significant number of families right now that are under question I would say we're uh above 20 would you say Melissa yeah above 20 families so that would be number of students would be higher than that so uh we we're still some have withdrawn our already some are we may have to go to residency hearings and that'll involve the board so um just want to give you an update on that any questions on how we do that or yeah what is if they choose not to leave the district what is what are
026the options protocol what is it that's a great question because I've not um so what we'll have is we'll have a residency hearing if they and then we will determine that they can't can or cannot attend um what I haven't ever had happen is if they refuse to leave after that we probably would just have to go to some Extreme Measures if they showed up we'd probably have to have somebody take them back to their like law enforcement or something I've never had that happen but uh um we're at that stage right now where we're getting ready to determine what to do next so resident to hearing or are you going to with just withdraw yeah then uh the ISB resolutions committee um this would be new to uh Brian uh everybody else would would
027know a little bit about this but the Board conference there's an i the IB has a resolutions meeting and uh in your packet it's exhibit 14 there are some decisions that we have to make tonight on guidance to give viven Vivien is our is our uh our representative so she will attend the meeting and she'll vote how the board determines the uh the vote to take so um I I can lead us through this com this discussion trying to on the uh they have several uh resolutions that they recommend that we that you do adopt and and let me I guess I should clarify what you're going to do is tell Vivian where the Board needs to vote on these and she's going to vote ISB will determine which way that vote goes with all
028the representatives and then it still doesn't change anything as far as any laws there's no it just change it tells I ISB where they want to advocate for change so um there was uh five six areas dual language ebf which is evidence-based funding tax in tax increment financing there was Faith law Health Care coverage and polling place those are six items that they put in there I don't know if you had time to read through all of those but they recommended that we do adopt those did anybody have any uh questions on any of those or um I read through them I'll say and none of them them are alarming to me that the the ISB should put their all right I agree okay Tiffany when you read those was there anything that was like
029you were surprised about or that you okay yeah there was nothing for me either uh the HealthCare coverage one is interesting uh getting all public schools able to pool together for health insurance would be interesting I mean if they can pull it off it'll be great yeah yeah so the bigger the pool usually the better your rates so um I don't know if they'll be able to pull that off but so I guess I maybe the way to go about this is does anybody have a problem with uh the recommendation if the ISB to adopt to vote to support those any of those in those that first six otherwise we'll have Vivian just go with that okay and then the no the no adops were uh cell phone and uh their I think isb's uh
030position on that was to keep this as a local decision local that was their position um the Office of the Inspector General I don't remember what that one was about that was to make sure that all the money is being spent correctly and all that yeah but I mean they said leave it a local decision doesn't the cell phone Ashley cell phone are you talking about yeah I mean then we don't have to worry about dealing with it oh yeah it's a good point I mean I think it's something yeah the way things are moving it may get to that well State there's like several states that already did seems like it's going the schools are getting landed through whatever decision you're right yeah I mean we already have ours we do but I think
031it would help other schools I mean if they did a state ban then it would help other schools not yeah do with it but um the office Inspector General I that one I don't I just I don't remember exactly uh why we would nothing was alarming of that one Faith's law their rationale was um I read that I was guess it was just kind of confused in general so like we hire an employee they they come here with a clear background they're here for 10 years they get arrested for domestic battery yeah they don't tell right their ad in any part of AD a chance that could happen so you have no there's no like continual I guess for like us our driving records get sent to our employer every month yeah which comes up
032if we're arrested pull over anything like that automatically because I get teachers don't have that I didn't no we don't so once they apply for position right we do the background check then that's it right you're done forever you're done forever right kind of the question I'm not sure of is if there's some uh sort of like uh misconduct that is a a legal misconduct that would prevent somebody from teaching I think there's a process in place where is there State Board of Education notified but i' I'd have to check on that because we've had that happen where then it gets to us through the back door we didn't know something happened and they comes back through the State Board of Ed so they must they have something in place but I honestly don't I'd
033have to research that a little bit this the faith law is new and what it does is every time if every time if you apply for a job in a district um and we hire you we have to reach out to your prior employers and they fill out a form that says you've not had any it's basically around sexual misconduct they've never left a job or been accused of or sexual misconduct at a prior job that's new okay and uh I think they're trying to streamline that to make it easier um uh because it is it's a lot of paperwork that flies around right now and we're relying on districts to um get us that paperwork and they don't always do it so uh so it says they're rationale for uh not supporting it says
034committee members determined that conducting the ehrs which is the process to get the paperwork for current employees could cause confusion impose legal and Collective bargain challenges for school districts given these challenges these employment decisions are best left at each Local District and attorney so yeah so they were wanting us to get basically do the same thing for all employees at this point which we that would be very difficult to do but uh to Kevin's question I would need to do a little research to see if there's something that could happen legally with somebody that we not become aware of it's possible so that one I need to do a little research on well do you guys want to keep this at do not adopt what do you want I just don't understand why it would
035be a bad thing to be able to review your staff I I don't yeah I don't understand why they're saying no I mean I see why they're saying it because they're saying workload but we come up with issues that we for the safety of the student why you yeah let me do a little on that I's aess I think they're saying that I think yeah I think they're saying it'd be difficult to impose that on all districts but could we make that decision yeah yeah I'll do a little research on the feasibility of that uh on our end as well and then criminal background check was for for board members school board members right that should be put on the the county clerk should yeah yeah like this I think that's what they were thinking
036too County clerks are in charge of the ballot if doesn't want to pay to run back that's her problem yeah you run me go [Laughter] ahead is that the last one then yeah yeah okay the are not present so I'm going to do a little checking on the Aaron's law okay okay Faith law Faith law yeah Faith law sorry all right so we got Vivian's ready to go um and then I just the last one is exhibit 15 uh I won't make Dr Pitman present on this but it's uh uh from ISB the performance report that we did meet meet expectations on that so thank you Dr Pitman for your leadership over that uh there have been years in the past where we've had failure on that so we're very good there very good and
037that's all for me all right anybody have any questions on the September 24 employment Report with the addition can I please have a motion to approve the September 2024 employment Report with addition motion second Doug and joeff oh it all [Laughter] good yes yes yes yes yes yes anybody any questions about the school maintenance Grant can I just say one thing on that real quick the um because I didn't get the facilities committee together uh I will soon we're going to meet in a couple weeks within the next couple weeks um but in this this is the $50,000 and we match it so it's $100,000 project so we have we plan on doing one more classroom which we've talked to the facilities committee about at Primary Elementary one more classroom construction inside and we'll probably
038going to stop there so uh that would be next summer that's usually about a $70,000 project and then uh I we really have been wanting to do this for a few years but we've been having trouble getting a uh any companies to help us with it I don't know why but uh we really want to make our playgrounds eventually accessible to all students we have students that have uh are there in wheelchairs and they can't access our access our playgrounds so I finally have a contractor who I just actually met with again today he gave us a proposal I mean it's a big proposal so it's something we're probably going have to phase in over a few years but I figure while we can get some matching money maybe throw pieces of that proposal into
039it so we'll I'm going to meet facilities committee and and see if there's we can take some of this matching Grant to do part of that pro project so uh we have an increased number of students that are in that situation when they can't access our playground say it's really hard to see at recess for so one of those playgrounds over there new since we since Co we have put money into those to uh fix them so one of these proposals is going to be uh one thing that can make them immediately accessible is just taking out the mulch and putting in the uh if you've seen the playgrounds with the rubberized surface they could at least wheel out there and be out there with their friends and stuff right now they can't even get
040to the they can't even get to it because it's all so that's that's one I don't really want to take down to Ash's point we put a lot of money into fixing those playgrounds so I don't want to take them out right but we can get rid of the mulch first and put in those uh rubber the rubber they did that at the township at Grant yeah yeah Fox like to did all access I have not talked to him but that's this type of stuff we're looking at yeah yeah yeah so that's what we're looking at I'll talk to the facilities committee about it more all right anybody have any questions on the school maintenance Grant can I please have a motion to approve the school maintenance project grant for 2025 motion Joe and [Laughter]
041Tiffany yes yes yes yes all right anybody have any questions on the audit report I do have two hard copies if anybody would love to take one you can very well done yes very well done report was very very good for those of us the board on a while it they didn't always used to be very good so they're very good now thank you all for everyone for your hard work thank you can I please have a motion to approve the 23 24 audit report motion second Doug and Joe yes yes yes yes yes yes um we accepted a resignation from Heather adamy Elementary lunch monitor we accepted a resignation from Jessica Walters food service worker do we have any public comment no um anybody any questions on the foyer request one question yeah so
042that request for evacuation plan doesn't include our safety loc it we didn't uh they requested but we denied it okay because of that reason okay so we didn't give them anything okay okay yeah anybody questions monthly reports for the board no our next regularly scheduled board meeting will take place on Monday November 11th 2024 with Clos session beginning at 6 pm and Open Session be beginning immediately following Clos session can I please have a motion to adourn motion second Ash and Tiffany all in favor I I any poos