001activities throughout our district including just to name a few cross country the musical student council and the dance team Aubrey not only follows school-wide expectations of being safe responsible and respectful but also exceeds those expectations in all areas of our building Aubry is an inclusive helpful and driven student she comes to school with so much spirit always bringing her a games you should see her on our spirit days Aubrey Hopkins is the true definition of what it means to be a big Hollow Warrior so I get that I get the privilege of telling them when they get the award and I had Aubry called down to my office and and she walked in and I go don't worry you're not in trouble she goes I didn't think so because I'm a good student so it's
002pretty funny but she uh she definitely appreciated the honor that uh her with her teachers nominating her so congratulations Aubry let's get a quick picture here with all of us here here come on over here let's move this yep I'm good you're good you sure thank you congrats congrats [Applause] all right so now we have uh our employee of the month and this month we're sharing between two so if I could call uh Jose Ramirez and uh Martha Gonzalez uh [Applause] Aubry as well we do have a plaque coming so there'll be a plaque coming so uh but I'm gonna let Derek swederski talk a little bit about why uh he nominated both uh Jose and Martha and I can also speak to the fact that these two do an outstanding job for us and
003our facilities team they're just amazing uh always have great attitudes they're what you would they're model employees for us but I want to specifically have Derek talk to you about why they were nominated so yeah um last year we had an event um it was a sporting event and there was a individual that lost a large sum of money large sum of money it wasn't an envelope with a check and some other stuff we looked couldn't find it looked all over um year went by we were setting up for an event um a couple about a month ago about a month ago and they were pulling the bleachers out and they were cleaning underneath the bleachers and they found the envelope without hesitation they didn't like take it and run to the bank or anything
004like that they went to the front office um gave it to the front office ladies the office ladies were able to find out who it was the lady came in was so very appreciative of these two for you know being you know honest and trustworthy and not taking the money that I've never seen somebody so happy um Jose and Martha are amazing employees um very loyal very trustworthy very hard working and they'll never say that's not my job they bend over backwards for this place and I'm honored to have them here so thank you guys for all the hard work you do [Applause] and last last but not least we have four softball players we want to honor this month for achieving Straight A's in all their classes while participating in softball it's not an
005easy feat so I'm going to call them up oh I forgot how I'm trying to quit quit Kaylee Cuellar let's get over here okay she's absent all right Nila Johnson [Applause] Katie Gardner back again this month and then uh Kaylee Brooke is Kayla Brook here yes Kelly's here I didn't see her thank you and that'll conclude our recognitions feel free to stay if you'd like but you don't have to foreign okay all right board member code of conduct review I'll just read it I'll represent all School District constituents honestly and equally and refuse to surrender my responsibilities to special interest or partisan political anybody any questions on the consent agenda please have a motion approve the consent agenda motion thank you Doug and Gary yes Peter yes yes do we have any public comments superintendent's
006report Mr Gold thank you um I just want to jump in real quick I know we just approved consent agenda I wanted to point out that Transportation building grounds committee meeting there are uh if you have any questions on that uh agenda I shared report just let me know I can there's a few we talked about a lot of stuff there there's some projects we're looking at that we're trying to tie into a grant this spring so nothing nothing there is committing any Financial output yet we're going to try to put in a grant I do have we did approve two things that committee wanted me to move forward two things that we do have in the budget one is a facility assess facility security assessment so somebody is going to uh school security expert
007is coming on campus in the next week or two that's going to basically spend a day here and and go through all of our buildings watch our procedures they're going to test some things out and they're going to provide a a report on any holes they think we might have in security so we thought that was a good idea for this year and then we're having Architects come in next Monday to do a facility study uh to give us a five to ten year plan for the board uh to know what we need to look for in our building improvements the next 10 years all of our HVAC equipment all that stuff they're going to go through everything so I just want you to know that was on the radar um with my reports I'm
008going to start with a um sorry we're gonna bite up Mr Cornwell and Miss walls we're going to talk about a field trip to Puerto Rico that they are in this walls is planning so I'm gonna let her share a little bit we have it as an exhibit I think it's exhibit seven in your packet so miss Walsh would you like to speak a little bit Mr Mr Cornwall either what don't look at that you can you can turn it around just face the board yeah never sure who I'm talking to yeah um so I'm going to hand it over to to Mrs Wallace here in a minute because for any of you that know anything about Mrs walls you know she's a phenomenal teacher um in addition to being a member of the community
009and she is you know one of the easiest people for me to manage I wouldn't even use that term but she is the person who comes to me and says here's an idea and I have it all fleshed out and do you approve so I get problems presented to me all day and Annie's like here's a solution here's something additional that we can offer to our kids that we're not currently and I have everything worked out and are you okay with it and it's like she she's she makes my job easy so I think it's a fantastic opportunity for our kids and she's put in a lot of work looking into it and collecting all the relevant information obviously if there's more information you guys need we can get that for you but I'm going
010to hand it over to her and let her explain the trip okay I'm very short okay all right so um thank you for the introduction Josh I just thought I would start a little bit with an introduction to our program just briefly for those of you who may not know I teach fifth sixth seventh and eighth grade Spanish fifth and sixth graders take the trimester of Spanish either in fifth or sixth grade and then they have the opportunity going into seventh grade to sign up for all year Spanish all of our other electives are semester based but because it's a language we have all of seventh grade and all of eighth grade available to the students to take it's designed as a two-year program and many of my students I would say almost all of
011them continue from seventh grade into eighth grade so this opportunity would be for my 8th graders that are currently seventh graders a little bit of background on why this trip has come about it's something that I've always been thinking of doing I've done a lot of traveling I've been to several Spanish-speaking countries that's kind of my thing it's my passion we spent three and a half years prior to me teaching at Big Hollow living in Panama down in Central America and that was an experience that you know just changed me and really shaped my life so giving something like this to our students would be really incredible I was approached by Mari Anto Maria I believe is how you say her last name she's a Spanish teacher in the Salem School District Dr King had
012connected us and she came to observe some of the curriculum that I'm using in our classes and she approached me asking if I'd want to go in on this trip together and kind of plan it all together she has done trips before and I thought that was a great opportunity for me who's traveled but never with students to kind of jump in with someone who's a little bit experienced I included a lot of information Josh could tell you I talk a lot but I don't want to talk too much for you all but I did include kind of a rationale a formal rationale explaining the benefits um how it really ties into our District's mission and vision for our students and um and yeah I think it would be a great opportunity for our students
013um it would really build upon what they've done in our class grow their proficiency give them a deeper understanding of the culture that they've been studying many of my students plan to go on and continue in high school so it really just gives them a more solid base of a cultural understanding adding this first-hand experience will expose them to a different culture they may not have been exposed to and a new place will open their minds about how how people live someplace else how they work in this other place what it looks like what their houses are like I can share all of that with them in class and I do and we investigate that and really experience a culture in class but doing that as a first-hand experience is very confidence building and empowering
014for students and that's one of the biggest things that came out of my time living in Panama it was just over and over again every time I accomplished something using the language or was put into a situation where I had to negotiate with the culture there differences or the language differences or barriers and it was really empowering and I think that would be really beneficial to our students to experience at such a young age and really open their eyes to a more world view good so all the information is in your packet do you have any questions for Annie that come came up as you read through it so I haven't surveyed parents yet because I didn't want to get all of my students excited and then not have the approval um Mari the other
015teacher already has eight uh families interested students and then I think some a parent because of the younger age we I believe we're planning to open it up to a parent traveling as well I'd still like to keep the focus really on the school aspect and the bonding with the students with their peers but I think it would be beneficial to allow you know open it up a little bit to allow parents to go just not having it turn into like us so we have 25 kids in the class we have I have roughly like 22 and 23 so around 45 kids total I my own kid would be in the class at that age and he would definitely go um so there's one and I suspect that I would have quite a few families
016interested um I have I outlined in the packet that I gave you some fundraising opportunities I met with Bob and we talked a little bit about kind of what I called work to earn to help the students raise the money for their trip I spoke with Cindy Horan as well she's like the master fundraiser right with BTO so she's helping me brainstorm some ideas as well and I also was exploring a little bit more on the website they just opened up our our portion of the website that parents would see as well and there seems like there are some opportunities for students to get financial assistance which would be really awesome I'm going to look into grants as well things that we can help our families to make it Equitable for all students to have
017the opportunity to be part of is a certain oh yes yeah so for every six paying kids um one person is free so the first two people would be the other teacher and myself and then the remainder of that Mari and I are still discussing it but we'd like to take obviously another chaperone if we have a large group of students but we can split that free spot as a discount among all of the students I spoke with Robin who's our consultant asking her some questions about how does the fundraising work if we fundraise you know let's say we're selling candy at the volleyball games how do I get that money to you so it doesn't get messy and she said they have an entire system set up for all of that this is something
018a lot of schools have done explore because one of the top I would say three companies that teachers use to travel abroad so they've got everything thought out and really organized chaperones are there to have kids on the trip like this um well so for every six kids there's a free adult so technically if we don't split that out for discounts for students every six kids we would have another so that would be one to six really I mean is that what your goal is um I would think at least one chaperone for me and if Mari has a chaperone as well so we'd have a four adults with you know roughly 20 something 30 kids um I would love to spread the wealth a little bit among the kids I wouldn't want to just
019take every single free spot these are kits that I've been teaching since fifth or sixth grade so I feel really comfortable with them we have a good rapport report so I think it's there's Behavior contracts that they sign it's their their parents sign it as well so I'm not concerned about um you know I'm not worried about the student to teacher ratio I have 28 in my seventh grade class right now and we do great so I'm um based on the information that they gave me it said that there would be triples or quads so three or four kids I believe everything is based on you know like the girls would stay with the girls the boys would stay with the boys they actually have included in the price and everything um they call it
020like a nighttime security chaperone so that we can sleep as teachers and not worry all night that somebody might you know get out um so that I think is really great for us to you know I can set that worry down for a little bit at night make sure I'm not losing anyone someone else is in charge of that they I included the um I reached out and got this the liability and insurance information I think is what I'm not I don't know the insurance kind of legal stuff but I included all that in the board packet and there's a lot more information that I can provide as well from online if there's anything else that you would like I just have one it looked like this the trip was in June of 24 so
021after they graduate yes so it would be June 10th to 15th of so that we wouldn't be missing any school days does it um [Music] do you know when they start their summer school classes so those kids would need to know do we have the day the summer school they usually start as soon as we're done with school okay yeah yeah because that's like two years yeah but they typically have started as soon as we're done it's usually like a week so that would be probably the first oh true so that might be their first or second week so it's basically one full week that they would miss um I'm hopeful that we could work with the teachers at Grant to allow them I mean they're coming back with this amazing uh experience there's actually
022I was looking uh when she opened up the whole online platform for us um there's an opportunity for students to get high school credit if they do I'm not sure I haven't looked all the way through but there's something that they can do some kind of report I'm guessing or you know papers more with the trip when they get back to earn extra credit for high school or college speaking for myself I know Brody loves your class and loves you and um I but if he's going to play sports in high school he has to take summer school so I would hate for him because once you play if you you get you know he wouldn't get a study hall unless he takes summer school classes and um I would I would hate for him
023if something could be worked out I think it would be great for a lot of those kids I know a lot of the kids that are in class with him are in the same boat he's in um so I think that would be really nice if something could be worked out I don't know why I have I have quarterly articulation meetings with Grant High School okay and we also are working on putting a meeting together Annie wanted to talk to their their SP um their Spanish Department specifically about the entrance exam so we already have a meeting that we're working on scheduling so we can definitely talk about it at that time but one of those meetings I think it's a great idea a great opportunity for the kids thank you for bringing that up
024that is not something I even thought of and since we're so early in the planning stages that's something we can definitely talk with the high school about and not surprise them within may like oh wait we have all these kids that want to leave summer school for a week so Kevin you bring up and they do their trips over spring break yes if we if we pull the liabilities all covered in the in the plan we're still agreeing to the same liability contract I'll double check on that Gary too I'm pretty sure we're good question is so the cost the total cost listed here as they do fundraising or whatever does that number can then be reduced or come down or yes so I when I talk to Rob and our consultant about the fundraising
025so there's a couple different options um I'm planning to have a pending approval I'm planning to have a parent meeting on January 19th um I double checked there's no other sports and things going on at our school East that night and if parents sign up by February 7th they have the 75 discount it's not a ton but it's something um they can reserve their child's spot for fifty dollars and then that will put them into a monthly payment deduction kind of system that Explorer has explorca has all set up so it divides from basically starting in February all the way through June when the trip happens which really breaks it down to make it much more affordable they can also pay in full immediately and there's a third option where they can pay a they're
026fifty dollars and then split it into two other payments um with the fundraising it sounds like whatever money we fundraise we would just then give to explore cut and they they handle all of the payments and the parents Financial all of that stuff that doesn't go through us at all and then they would go through and reimburse the parents however much their child had earned through the fundraising some of the fundraising options I tried to put on there so you could see some of them are fundraising that would be more whole group kind of like a no cook night or 50 50 raffle that would benefit all the students equally and then Bob shared the idea of kind of the work to earn type fundraiser so students babysitting for concerts or meeting nights other different
027things that they could do that would be more they would feel it personally like if I go babysit some of the kids in the district at our school for an hour then I earn you know x amount towards my trip so they they can really kind of get that hard-working what is um what's the cancellation policy I mean a lot can happen yeah so there's different um I guess like trip insurance insurances that the Pam the families can add one of them starts at like 16 a day or something there's another one that's even higher um I did not look a ton into the insurance options because it looked pretty standard like trip coverage um that's something I could look more into to share when it says 16 a day deeper like per their travel
028day so it would be our trip is six days so yeah um it definitely looks like they have some some things built in um and I would imagine things like that have come up before with this company being so yeah uh prevalent and used so frequently do we have any liability insurance to cover if they go down there in the trip operator all its operation now we need to get back the entire group of students to Chicago I'll have to check what's our responsibilities is now a Big Hollow trip yeah okay I'll check on that I believe they have I think their policy said they have 50 million in liability and it said um I think there was something if there was like a medical uh you know emergency something that would happen that they
029have coverage to fly the student to the states if needed they pay them I'm just trying to think what's our backup plan if I think this company is huge I know they do the high school Spanish trip yeah to Spain that's been going on for 20 years yeah I don't have any I mean this is a it's reputable this is a flight company I have backup plans in place they work with vetted tour guides so I can tell you like for example if you've ever been on a cruise we booked our um Excursion for cheaper not with the cruise and we showed up and the guy's snorkel boat was like not there and so we just you know it didn't work out we didn't get to go but I think this would be more like
030the Align along the lines of you booked it through the cruise the cruise ship says oh that guy's boat's not working today but we're responsible for this we're gonna find somebody else so it's not like things would get canceled or you know they would just they would make sure it based on everything that I've read they make sure the trip happens as planned they have multiple people that they work with there to make sure that everything goes as much as you can planned is this something you plan to do annually yeah so that's something that Josh and I um throughout a little bit um especially because knowing that I'm not going to go until those students are already in summer starting summer of eighth grade my seventh graders next year um I would be needing
031to start pitching this and helping them raise their money and everything so that's something that I'm still kind of thinking about ideally I would love to make this trip every year with my students um if if it gets to be something that's really stressful or a lot to do every year I think I could combine possibly and have seventh and eighth grade go together one of the things that I put in the planning on the planning page was that um that the students need to be students that took Spanish in seventh and eighth grade I don't think we want our program to be flooded with students in seventh grade who take Spanish just to take the trip to Puerto Rico which is awesome and then are not really there because they have a passion for
032learning the language you know so I want to make sure that we're kind of balancing things out also I think that could create a really large amount of students possibly um so yeah so for right now I think every year as long as it goes well it's exciting but you know it's it's exciting and a little scary but exciting so I would just need a motion to approve it if the board is okay with it okay please have a motion to prove the 2324 field trip to Puerto Rico for the great Spanish class second yeah all in favor any opposed I just have it thank you all right thank you oh my gosh thank you so much I really appreciate you putting your faith in me and and everything that we're gonna do good luck
033can't wait to be great we're back it's gonna be good yeah yeah we'll have to have you report back next oh I will I will definitely we'll arrange something Spotlight right there yeah yeah yay thank you so much everyone yeah the next item actually uh Mr Cornwell stay up there's uh he's gonna give you an update on eighth grade graduation yeah so obviously over the last couple of years graduation has looked a variety of different ways because of kovid um and I think that doing it different ways we've learned some things that we liked and other things that we didn't so I wanted to get some feedback from stakeholders to figure out what kind of celebration ceremony I guess we wanted to have going forward so I did survey parents and I also surveyed students
034parents actually suggested that we survey the students and I thought that was a good idea so for parents we had 161 families respond out of 203 roughly 8th grade families so really good response rate and almost 60 percent said they wanted a traditional ceremony so the survey offered traditional ceremony basically McHenry Outdoor Theater what was done previously or a hybrid of the two so ceremony here and then go over there to watch the the slideshow and like I said almost 60 percent of parents said that they wanted the traditional ceremony and then students excuse me it was over 50 as well so I did have an initial meeting with uh eighth grade parents who volunteered to help with planning right before break and that meeting evolved from let's talk about ceremony to let's talk about
035all the things we do for eighth grade so it's it's becoming a a big thing but um the the most important part is that we did decide that we're gonna have a traditional ceremony we're still exploring possibly uh using other locations aside from here so I've got we've got some calls out to a couple of different um facilities to see if we could have it elsewhere so that we don't have to have tickets or have an overflow room for streaming yet and there's a lot to plan but we are confident that the majority for students and and parents would like a traditional ceremony so we were returning to that and then um there was talk about a slideshow presentation and that's something that will still be included it'll just be part of the uh the
036traditional eighth grade lunch so Best of Both Worlds cool all right and we have great technology here looking at UMass over there can we do something this year where we actually live stream it on on our YouTube feed for all the family members who can attend or out of town yeah I haven't talked to Matt about that yet but yes I would I would like to be able to do that all right thanks thanks Mr Cornwell thank you good shape there any other questions any questions on that all right thank you uh next item is approving the calendar for 23.24 I put together drafts of the calendar I share it with the administration team and then I uh share also with the Union leadership as per our contract they have input on that and uh
037so I share with them this calendar actually very much mimics the current school year calendar um we what's that it doesn't mimic this year's I I don't know why we brought the kids back for a day and a half after winter break oh I didn't even realize that I was like I would have never oh let's realize that I mean we have a so we're with the winter break we're kind of stuck because we have to line up at least unless we want to vary from it but we've always lined up with Grant and great they do something stupid like that then we could just we met like line up with the brakes and spring break s the winter break and spring break is where I line up with them and they're where we're stuck
038is uh they're lined up with Tech campus so the whole anybody who feeds into Tech campus has to have the same calendar as all those kids go there so that that's the only thing on the calendar we've not ever varied from but I'm I'm willing to if it goes crazy it's changed for the first year next year worked out okay yeah the start of the Year Grant usually starts a couple weeks earlier than us because they have uh they get their semester done before Christmas break full winter break I did reach out to Gavin and Fox Lake to see when their start dates are because I know this year there was um for for us we felt like I know I know our start date's a little later but uh We've we've done different things
039where we started on a Monday with kids and or middle of the week with kids it for the beginning of the year it really has worked out best for our staff and our students if we don't start the kids on a Monday because that's a big transition first week so we bring in staff on a Monday we do a few days training and then we bring in the kids as a little start and then the next week is the full go um that has worked out pretty well with transition for kids from Summer to school so that's what we did this year again it seemed to work well Fox Lake and Gavin haven't set their first days yet Fox Lakes did tell me that they're they're probably going to be around the same day that
040we're looking possibly they're not sure but it'd be either the 24th she said or they could go as early as 17th but they were thinking 24th so anyway everything is the the same as far as the flow of the calendar with this year and and next year other than that winter break not having the split week yeah so my I emailed you earlier my only concern was it seems like we do start a week later than other surrounding districts um and then I know with the younger kids what we ran into is almost all of the summer programs and on August 4th oh okay so you're looking at yeah two and a half weeks of child care you've got to find and then when the high school goes back the week before that really puts
041parents with two yeah see I just didn't know why we didn't start at the same time as Grant if like we were to start on the 17th which I think Grant actually will start I have to I actually have that tell you give me a second Grant actually probably start earlier than 17. they'll be the week of the eighth uh but yeah we like if the Institute days were to start on the 14th I mean it's a week earlier but it seems like yeah I don't know it's no I understand yeah I feel like two two years ago that's where we were and then I know we pushed it a week for covid and we never jumped back to where it was after that okay yeah let me look at the I can tell you
042what Grant start date is here 12th you know the grant grant will start on the 12th Saturday or late the 14th sorry 14th yeah Vince teachers coming back on the 10th and 11th I I mean if you if you all want me to take it back and I can do that too we don't have to approve it this month but I mean so get winner Gavin and um they haven't decided yet yeah they have I text them both today and reach out they haven't they haven't made their decision they're just putting their counter committees together now yeah the bottom line is more about grades child care and stuff like that you couldn't get it at the beginning or end though if you get it you say we go but we go a week earlier than
043out a week earlier earlier no no not the summer school programs no not summer school child so Park District stop so you've got to find Child Care somehow oh for two weeks for kids that are home alone um Gammon are going to be on the same schedule from now on that's fine too but like yeah last year we did start for us I think for I'll be I mean I'll be honest administratively we really don't we're talking about seven days yeah for some reason I know at that first board meeting we're all like wow everybody's in school but we're still I remember that conversation the uh I'm fine to go back to the we can go back and talk more about it if you're not ready to improve this it's fine we can go back
044and and uh um yeah I mean be nice to see what it looks like yeah um I can reach out to the local uh I mean especially selfishly I have a graduating eighth grader next year he might make it and uh he would he would at least get a week off before he's got to go to school and then maybe that could help with a Spanish trip or what I mean you may push that trip up yeah two weekends in a row three days earlier again so the more we get you're done well yeah because I mean I think when like like Connor and Riley graduated they got they got I want to say it was like a Before Memorial Day that and the uh the brothers had to go to school another week after
045they were already oh I don't think it was just a day yeah yeah sometimes eighth grade depending yeah depending on when it all fell in the calendar I know that one year was Spirit as a covid but yeah well let me take it I'll take your suggestions I'll put a couple calendars together and uh um we've always given the staff an opportunity to have input as well so I'll do that and then um I'll bring it back to you next month cool sounds good thank you table it yeah we'll table it yep so don't do not need some motion I think uh since we're not getting unless one somebody wants to give me a motion but let's say if we don't get emotion we'll disable it yeah I have to have a motion it says
046on our sheet oh okay second thanks all right Transportation update I have Mrs aren't and Jackie Laskey here Jackie's our transportation coordinator she works closely with Mrs Arden oversees the program and I just wanted to give I want to give you a a heads up on um it's not dire but we have we're spending a lot of money in transportation that was not budgeted for and it's primarily for outsourcing transportation and uh um I thought both Jackie and Christine could do a good job of explaining to you how we're designating drivers and what's going on and Jackie and Christine Jackie went ahead and put all this data together so I'm going to turn it over to her so she can go ahead and go step by step and go over all the documents with you
047thank you Christine okay so basically an overview with the transportation for this year we've hired six new drivers this year to help us because of the driver shortage last year so we're definitely in better shape we can continue to hire more to get us even better we do have on the first page it kind of just breaks down these first six drivers are the ones we hired for this year as you can see all of these drivers currently are being utilized for a route so they're not really right now sub drivers they are used every day due to other drivers that are out on leave illnesses anything else that may come across that as you go further down I've broken it down by bus number driver who covers it how many runs they do a
048day so how many times a day they're driving we do have some of our drivers that are also helping with our out of District sped schools as well covering middays for students that will come half day at Big Hollow and then finish out at an out of District school for the afternoon or vice versa on our second page is where it kind of breaks down a little bit more explaining where we've got six of our Big Hollow drivers that help out with the out of districts bed schools that we go to it shows the sub drivers that we still do have um which is basically myself Derek chalk match which is our maintenance crew as well and a couple of other subs but they are limited availability due to other obligations that they may have
049with our vehicles for transportation we do have 1971 capacity buses so those are the large buses we utilize 16 of those for in District routes to bring our students to Big Hollow we have three large buses that are used for backup so whenever any of our buses break down if we have sports Charters field trips any of that those are what those extra buses are used for we do have our small buses as well that run Pre-K students back and forth every day as well as they're utilized for the out of District school schools that we go to three vans we also have that also transport our sped students out of District as well so we have a total of 28 Transportation vehicles in all that are pretty much running every day give or take
050a few regarding Charters and field trips comparison from last year to this year we had 27 Transportation employees we now have 33. we had to eliminate Route 13 last year due to the shortage and kind of combined routes thankfully since we are in better shape we were able to bring that back and lower the capacity on our buses that we have going so it's definitely an improvement from last year on the next slide or the next page that you have is more in detail of the out of District students that we transport on here it's breaking down the drivers that we use for Big Hollow to transport to all of these different schools and the two companies that we're using right now to help us as well to transport some of these students we have
051top line transportation that helps us with two students that require a wheelchair accessible vehicle we do have a wheelchair boss but we are currently using that as well to transport to two other different schools that are in the completely opposite direction Chain of Lakes is helping us with a total of nine students a top line is helping with two we share one student between chain O'Lakes we transport in the morning here then take them to Palatine and then Chain of Lakes will take them from Palatine home so we do share we have a total of 21 students total that are going to 10 different schools outside of Big Hollow so that is where a lot of the costs is coming from is the help that we need uh of course in a perfect world if
052we had all the drivers we needed and all the vehicles we needed we wouldn't have to be Outsourcing as much this number has enlarged a bit this year the difficult that we're having with and it also shows on the bottom of this page that we're having with the outsourced um at a district schools is all of their start times are pretty much right around the same time so if we had different start times we could probably juggle this a little bit better with more of our drivers getting these kids to and from but since they're all pretty much 8 45 and 9 o'clock we just aren't able to do that right now um and we have had four students so far so it kind of rolls on to wow that kind of rolls onto the
053last page but throughout the years students may get different placement changes so they may begin at one school and then certain things may change and they say now we need to transport to a different school so that may take a student away from one of our drivers and we now can't get them to the new school they've been placed to so now we have to Outsource them to channel lakes or Transportation or Top Line last year and that's on the next page last year we had a total of um six different Transportation companies that we were utilizing to help us transport students to the various locations this year I was able to knock that down to just two which is Top Line and Channel Lakes this is pretty much the breakdown for every single student
054I'm not using any student names but this is the breakdown that they charge per trip per day for each student and that's where the cost has gone up because of us not being able to do it ourselves let's see what else I've got on here I already broke that down oh yes yeah so the last page on this explains that we have 14 students so far this year that have returned a Big Hollow with an existing IEP to be outsourced we've had um five new students this year that enrolled that already had an existing IEP from where they came and when they came to us we then continued that on only one student so far this year we've actually had to implement an IEP to up that update that information so the challenging part with
055the out of District sped transportation is it is a variable every single day every single day it's going to change I may be told this week they're going to this school and then next week no we've got to change it to this and that's all we have another student starting you know two weeks from now so with the out of districts fed it is a constant juggle and it's never going to remain constant or the same it's yes and we do have students that transition so they may be full day out of District out in say Palatine and as we continue to see and improve we may slowly start bringing them back to Big Hollow so then they spend three quarters of the day over there and a quarter here and as it continues on
056it starts progressing to where now they're back at Big Hollow full time so there's just a lot of variables that are going on with the out of District special education that we're providing are these students spread pretty evenly across the grades or do you see a grouping at a certain lower grade higher grade as of right now we pretty much have majority of our students they are Middle School grade I would say we have probably about thinking of all the kids on my I'd say four over at Primary Elementary roughly around four but majority are middle school so some will be transferring out yes that is another thing so I know like last year we had two to four students that transferred out because now they're in high school but then guess what I got
057four put on again this year so they will they will transfer out as they continue on with Big Hollow and what would it take for us to bring this more in-house if we're paying 2200 a day drivers if we had more drivers drivers and vehicles easy because we would if we I've held off on buying Vehicles because we still have the drivers and vehicles just set we had more drivers we would we would we would one more just getting a wheelchair bus and if I had a driver for it we would save a ton of money because but right now we don't have anybody to drive it and uh and I've contacted all of the companies we used last year probably 10 to 15 companies looking for wheelchair accessible to help us out Topline was
058the only one that was that had a vehicle available for us because there are some days I know it looks like we have a large sub list there but most those are employees that have other jobs here there's some days where they're all being used too yeah but Jackie and Christine have done a really nice job of it's like a puzzle every day and we've never had to kids haven't seen a delay like as far as like double routes and things like that but we've gotten close a few times but um I if I could it makes me ill to pay what we're paying Outsourcing drivers Outsourcing some of these routes the top line one is the one that's most frustrating yeah how many drivers do we have a day what's that or how many
059drivers do we have we have 33 of our own so if you divided 2200 a day yeah how much would it be theoretically pay our drivers to you know yeah right it's crazy and and not to I mean we we will get this will all go into Transportation claim next year our transplaced transportation claim will go higher the state will get we'll get you know probably 70 of this kicked back so it's not like all our costs but it's still very very frustrating and it's gonna it's gonna take our it'll take our transportation fund balance down I just wanted you to see that um we're doing what we we're talking about it and uh if I can if we can get and we can even Explore I was just thinking while you were talking there's
060a couple of things we could explore by moving some drivers around and paying a smaller amount if I I just need to get another wheelchair bus though to get that Top Line off if we can just get rid of using Top Line I could it would help um but the uh and the the five additional students that we weren't planning this year that hit us right at the beginning of the year and I think the other thing is that we're now going to more places usually you can put more kids in a bus and go but we're going to 10 different places so they're they're students that come to Big Hollow one is for middle school and one is for the Pre-K they just know that we can't find a wheelchair bus to here yes
061and in order yes yes they got us right right yeah they they charge per trip they don't do like what um Chino lakes does the 222 per mile they charge per trip and we just literally I mean you've looked we can't find anybody else with a wheelchair so we said we don't have one we do so well the problem is is we're utilizing our wheelchair bus to go out to larimont and their start time is the same start time as ours we could get the middle school student here we just couldn't get that student home and then we couldn't get the Pre-K kid to school but we could get them home so it sounds like we need to see the lease yeah and the students that we use for our wheelchair boss are younger so
062we're going to be needing that for the next couple of years if they were like eighth grade then I'd be like oh next year will be good it's not gonna be like that for a few years and we need a second wheelchair bus which we could buy it's just uh just didn't want it to set but now that you know maybe maybe we can look at maybe moving drivers around somehow are those students do they have to be are they could they could we get a normal size bus with a real wheelchair the ones that we're bringing to Big Hollow yeah yeah no they require wheelchairs yeah yeah so these four kids that we have two for Big Hollow and two that are outsourced they have to have wheelchair I I know they have to
063have a wheelchair but could they because they make the full-size buses with wheelchair oh ramps could we utilize a row that would yeah we could yeah if we had enough they had to be oh yeah as long as there's a wheelchair lift that's fine yeah it could be any size yep because that could be a possibility too and then you'd be on a normal yeah that's a good thought too we will work on it I just want you to be aware of it Jack you did a nice job putting this together but you're doing uh and and I I think when I asked her to do this it felt like she was in trouble I'm like no I just wanted to be very clear but that you know this is a big puzzle and they're
064doing a good job with that and uh um but we're gonna keep grinding away at it so thank you very much all right thank you last item for me is just approving the Press policy second reading no changes from last time second motion motion second yes foreign