001pledge of allegiance to the flag of the united for which states stands one nation under god indivisible with liberty and justice for all all right can i please have a motion to enter [Music] all right there are two exhibits for the budget hearing i'm going to just really refer to the first exhibit if you look at we're going to look at the last three rows june 30 21 june 30 22 june 30 23. comparing those are the numbers that you can see where we started last year and where we ended last year in 22 june 30 22. just know that the 22 numbers are non-audited we're still in the process of finishing that but they're they'll be really close so you can see that in the education fund we i would say remain steady went
002up a little bit o m uh you can see went down significantly remember we transferred 200 000 or 2 million out of o m so that's why that that went down so much 500 000 that went into debt services and and the other 1.5 million went into fund 60 which is capital projects so that's why you see the capital projects line went up so high um transportation fund uh went up a little bit state i would say basically stayed steady imrf social security went up a little bit and working cash is the uh fund that we are we have been putting about a hundred thousand a year into working cash along with any interest earned and then the torque fund is the fund the last one that that pays our property insurance and workman's compensation
003and that's the only thing that comes out of the tort fund so that's why we keep a pretty small balance but it looks like i'm going to need to transfer some money in there because our costs have gone up a little bit um the 2023 numbers the bottom line is our our estimated budget for this year and as i've told you in past years that's the number if we were to spend 100 percent of the budget so that looks a lot worse than what it's going to be um you know our goal is to end up between 90 and 95 of our spending last year was a little higher a lot of that was due to the esser grants grants that we received and we did spend as much of that as possible because we
004did get reimbursed for that so it kind of threw the percentages off but again our goals will be between 90-95 expenditure i anticipate with this budget the education fund we should be really close to break even again um i'm gonna be uh o m as well uh we should be okay transportation is one i'm a little more concerned about i will say that transportation because it does look like a significant decrease for next year but i i did underestimate the revenue i think i hope i did but i just don't can't guarantee what the state's going to give us so i didn't want to promise anything so it's possible that'll be better than what what i projected so and then capital projects uh it looks like it's going to go down a hair but i
005also it's hard to guess what we're going to get on impress or or on uh i've lost it the uh impact fees are just tough to guess uh the the new apartment complex they are going to give us another round of 2 the remainder of the 400 000 so they paid half of it they owe us another 200 000 when it's completed i don't know when that'll be might be sometime during this year but i did not budget for it so um i think i've covered everything the exhibit two is the actual budget uh that we would be approving tonight but it has that you know really has those numbers that i just shared on the bottom line or in there [Music] when we vote later um we will have you sign the budget sheets
006i had to print this off i had to type your names on there so that's why it looks like it says everybody voted yes but we would change that if that doesn't happen so i had to have names in there to print it off so um any questions as you read through that anything that you want to ask me about or just a quick question yes sir was there any material changes to the budget from the last presentation oh good question thank you uh one material change i would say are two two one was uh uh at the last budget presentation i didn't really know yet what the insurance costs were going to be health insurance because it was still open enrollment so that that was a significant change it was uh probably a little
007less than what i anticipated and then the other significant change is we get money from it's called corporate personal property replacement tax cpprt and i'll be honest with you i don't know a lot about how they determine how much cpprt money we get comes from the state it was something that uh has been in place for a very long time and we don't have any say in uh in that they just they just tell us each year what we're gonna get if the illinois economy is doing well then we get more that's how it works and last year we got probably double what i thought we were going to get but i didn't think that was going to happen again this year so the first budget i gave you showed a lower amount and then
008i found out that it actually is going to go up by 10 this year so it was 200 000 more than i anticipated so i took the 200 000 and put it in o m because we were a little with all the new uh custodial changes this year i put it in there because we were we weren't sure what how that's going to end up so essentially all the changes were in our favor yes correct nothing significant yeah um under education why is it so much less for from 22 to 23 it's like 5 million uh from uh 22 to 23 yes the from 5 million down to 3.5 yes that that 3.5 would be if we spent 100 of what i'm budgeting here but if you if we spend um i try to and
009i've just always done it this way and i can tighten it next year if you want me to on the projection i just try to budget for emergencies but the the expenses are 1 million or 19 million budgeted if we spend 95 percent of that 93 to 95 we would be at uh probably break even what percentage do we spend for 22 we in 22 we were probably 97 98. that was more of the impact of those s or grants because we spent it was like 1.5 million and we spent all of it so that threw the percentages off for everything else usually we're below 95 percent anybody have any other questions uh can i please have a motion to close the budget here motion second doug and gary all in favor aye aye any
010opposed eyes have it uh anybody have any questions on the agenda can i please have a motion to approve the agenda with the employment edition second ash and vivian all in favor aye aye any opposed eyes have it item seven board member code of conduct review gary i will respectfully listen to those who communicate with the board seeking to understand their views while recognizing my responsibility to represent the interests of the entire community very nice thank you anybody have any questions on the consent agenda can i please have a motion to approve the consent agenda motion doug and ash yes do we have any public comments no next item superintendence report mr gold all right we are going to start off uh by introducing some new staff new certified staff for this year and i
011see we've got a good crowd here so i want to thank you all for coming i've just asked them to [Music] introduce themselves to you and our new staff i do this because our board approves all of these hires and this gives them a chance to put a face to a name so uh i thank you for giving us your time this evening i know it's kind of inconvenient possibly so i appreciate you coming i don't care the order just anybody i would just like you to introduce yourself if you um have teaching experience maybe state how many years and where you came from if your new teacher maybe share uh where you graduated from and then i'd be great to hear if there's you've got anything that you've enjoyed about your experience so far
012go ahead sure i'll go first my name's rachel ford i'm the new pe health teacher one of them um i was at mchenry last year this will be my second year in a school since i graduated first year here very excited um so far i've really appreciated the support that i've received from every staff member in the building and the social emotional support that we're trying to provide our students what grade are you at i am fifth through eighth so pe health sees everybody yeah i went to illinois state hello i'm taylor mendoza i'm a new third grade teacher at the elementary i also graduated from illinois state this is my first year teaching so i'm very excited about that something i've loved so far is just getting to know my students and also having
013once again the support of the staff and the families that i've been working with so far hello i've never talked to the microphone um i'm kennedy kiesken i'm the new third grade resource teacher this is my first year i student taught so i went to southern illinois university carbondale and something i've enjoyed so far is getting to meet like my students i'll be working with and just the support from all the staff members has been super uh helpful and i went to big hollow hello my name is william glaser but i go by billy so saying william's really weird this is my first year teaching i just graduated from illinois state university in may i'm a third grade teacher here and i've really enjoyed making those connections with the students every one of them has
014really kind of taken a liking to me and they've really shared a lot about themselves so it's been really cool to make that personal connection with each and every one of them awesome hi i'm morgan george this is my first year teaching i'm a fourth grade teacher i also student taught here last year and i'm also a former big hollow student i graduated from carthage college in and what i've enjoyed about big health so far is just the family community feel throughout all the buildings hi my name is tyler heeman i'm one of the new 4th grade teachers here this is my first year teaching i also like so many others have graduated from illinois state university this last year my favorite part about teaching here i would say so far is really like the
015family aspect of the staff members i feel like they're just so supportive and we do a lot of things that i never experienced when i was student teaching and so it's one of my favorite things hello my name is veronica contreras i am the new kindergarten dual language teacher and even that is my first year here at bicolo as a parent i have been here for seven years so for me it's a dream come true come and be part of the family again you know be involved in everything and it has been so awesome last year i thought second grade at north chicago district 187 okay hi i'm daisy ariana i'm the multilingual service facilitator here in the district my roles in education have changed throughout the years but this is my seventh or eighth
016year in education um i'm very excited to be working with everyone i've had great experiences so far everyone has been very open to collaborate so i'm excited to see what the rest of the school year holds thank you hello good evening everyone i'm suleiman qazi and i go by mr kazi i'm one of the fourth grade teachers um and it's really nice to see everyone um one of my favorite moments um of being in epic hollow just is just the culture and the positivity that everyone um shares with one another and it's really like this this like contagious positivity that keeps us going and keeps us moving forward uh despite any hurdle that we all face so it's really awesome um and uh did i mention i graduated from university of michigan so yeah okay
017wow this is not my first year teaching my name is megan schack i'm the special ed eighth grade teacher here at big halo middle school i've been teaching this is my 11th year when i figured it out 15 in education i've taught kindergarten through 12th grade um in all aspects i've taught edie life skills cross cat resource so i've been across the board um i think i received my degree from national lewis university with a k-9 and then my master's is in special ed and ell and currently working on another one so an educational leadership um so far i've enjoyed my experience here the kids have been amazing just getting to know them and getting to know the community your community night was lots of fun and really enjoyed it um what else i think
018that was it it's good oh it came from danville danville district 118 down in central illinois it's about 45 minutes east of champaign-urbana van dyke gene hackman a couple sports stars yep that's how most people know it yeah thank you so much i really appreciate you all coming tonight i you won't be rude if you get up and leave trust us it's fine so you can stay for the meeting if you'd like but uh welcome to big hollow and you guys been off to a great start so thank you yeah thank you welcome [Applause] the next item on the agenda is item b and it really is just a list for you to see these are the people that have achieved tenure after the 2022 school year we want to recognize that group so that's
019in the board agenda that's four years of continued service full-time at big hollow item c is board policy updates for press issue 109 and it's exhibit 11 in your packet there really we did we as a policy committee we did not meet on this one there was no significant changes to this a lot of uh legal changes and minor minor uh language changes in the policies but we did not there's nothing in here that i would say is significant uh issues so just need a motion to prove that on first reading and we'll bring it back next month as well all right anybody have any questions on the board policy update can i please have a motion to approve on first reading the board policy update motion second warren and vivian uh all in favor
020aye any opposed i just have it uh item d is the one just it's an fyi for the board it's a special education parent survey uh that was uh given out by isbee last year they send that to all of our our parents of students who have special needs and um you can see that we had 20 parents respond and then out of how many uh dr pittman how many would you say 200 families so it's not a large number of response and i'll be honest with you i i was very pleased with these results because usually i i think that a lot of people would would respond if they were angry and to have 20 respond and then have good results uh i think it says uh some good things about what's going on
021with the special ed department so i wanted to make you aware of that i filled this out oh good as a parent and that's good to hear i have to say that they don't give an option for like not applicable because there's so it's sometimes like yes yeah so it's yeah that's it that's not good because i would guess a lot of these you don't don't apply yeah yeah so lauren the question there must be something because there's some questions that were only answered by 18 instead of 20. i'm yeah i might have not either maybe they let you skip yeah okay all right uh item item e i just want to have a discussion with the board there's nothing to approve tonight i've been talking with the round lake police department about the sro
022program they are and i did bring this up with the finance committee there i do have money in the budget for sro just in case we do move forward um i just need to i guess i would like to know from the board where you're at on uh on your philosophies with an sro in our schools it would not just be middle school be across the campus um i will tell you like there's there is it comes down to the person you get in that position whether or not the program is successful and we would be looking at having somebody here to arrest kids that's not what we're looking at it would be somebody here to do some education in the classrooms to be on campus to also provide a safety aspect to us for
023us to kind of oversee our campus safety program like our crisis management planning um those type of things to come to be to be here with a law enforcement set of eyes i don't want it to be i'll be honest my first administrative job my at a high school i inherited the beginning of an sro program and i'll be honest when i started i didn't really want it and as it turned out we had a great person in place and he did a fabulous job and and uh it was a benefit to the school and so uh my mind was changed there are bad examples out there of programs um but so i've talked to round lake about this at length they are to the point where now if we were interested we would negotiate
024how the costs would work there i looked into this at lake county with the lake county sheriff's department and the cost was pretty high i mean they didn't even give me a cost this year because they said they couldn't staff it so they did but i would guess it'd be around 150 000 to do it through lake county through round lake they are uh willing to just uh they will have to hire a full-time officer but they're not gonna charge us a full-time officer we would pay for the number of days that we use that officer so 180 days roughly is what our charge would be so and i think that i can't give you a firm cost that's because we don't know the cost of the it depends on how much experience the officer
025has that they hire but i i can tell you it would you know roughly uh be between a full full year in finance committee check me if i'm wrong cause you saw the numbers but i'm between 60 and 100. roughly depending on how expensive the officer is for a full-year officer in the buildings um so i guess what i'm asking for the board from the borders if you want me to go ahead and push forward with negotiating that with them and working out an agreement and if we do i might want to include kevin since he's got the law enforcement background he might know what some questions to ask that i would not be aware of how many days a week would they be here full time so five days a week full time we
026you know we haven't gone there yet but i would i would anticipate we have an office the middle school for sure and then probably something an office over because i want them to have presence in all three buildings but probably most presidents will be over here but um i definitely want them to have space at each building i think ron lake did one at one time i don't think they have for a few years they used to do the program dr king was telling us about it there was somebody that was volunteering some time yes i don't know a lot about it though i don't think he's they're doing it again though there was somebody who had some interaction with students last year and then decided to come back and volunteer to try to help
027them i mean a big part of it is getting somebody that will build connection with kids and and build some trust with kids and i don't want to be viewed as a punitive they will not be wearing my preference would be that they would be in soft clothes still carrying but in soft like you know khakis and a pullover or something but that's my preference i don't know if round lake's even okay with that but we have to talk through that so really i'm just looking for like guidance from the board is you're okay with me just continuing discussion we'd still have to bring it to the full board to prove it but anybody have any big issues that you don't want i would be all right with moving forward yeah move forward yeah youtube
028okay all right so i when i when i do bring it to the full board i'll have clear job descriptions and everything so you'll kind of know what it'll look like so all right item f is uh just analysis of enrollment and you'll see we are we're back up a little bit to 1737. um our and you'll you'll also notice that our number of outsourced students students receiving services off campus has increased too and that's uh we've we've uh we've had a lot of students i'll be honest we've had a lot of students move in this year with with some out placements that we weren't prepared for so that's actually uh gary to go back to your question that was some negative impact on the budget since the last time i forgot about that but
029overall our class sizes are solid happy where those are at if you look on it exhibit 14 yeah how are we at the middle school with 213 kids i don't think we've had a class that big in a while yeah eighth grade that's our that's our biggest class and then um uh josh do you off hand know what class size averages be in middle school when you have 213 it's gonna they're gonna get you're gonna have some classes close to 30. because there's eight eight sections if they're equally balanced to be about 27 28 and they'll be so the eighth grade is going to be large you can see that's going to be our last big class coming through uh we've had smaller enrollments coming in our kindergarten is at 175 which is a better
030number than we had uh the last two years but the second grade was small in kindergarten as well but that was that has since bounced back so like to see us over 180 but we are able to maintain solid class sizes so and kevin the challenge with middle school is that our schedule is really works well with a teachers so to even add a ninth teacher would be difficult and throw things out of whack a little bit but it's hard to explain but it really would be tough to do any questions on enrollment that's it for me all right anybody have any questions on the employment report with the additions nope okay please have a motion approve the august employment report motion second vivian and jerry yes all right what about the anybody have questions
031on the return to school learning plan it's just something i need to have the board approved and i gotta post on the website per is the standard so all right can i please have a motion to approve the 2022-2023 big hall school district 38 return to school learning plan motion second board and jury yes natural gas pricing okay so exhibit 17 if you've had a chance to read it um we currently have a natural gas price that locked in at 0.2881 per therm and that contract is through ends in november of next year so we're good until then the question is and i didn't want to say anything on this without really talking to the whole board because it's kind of a gamble right now i've got our consultant that we've used is recommending that
032we sign a new agreement now that will start november of next year because he's afraid prices are going to continue to get worse and this consultant has been good for us in the past so i don't have any reason to doubt him but it's a tough one to swallow because if we sign it now we're signing a four-year agreement at over double what we're paying so i just didn't feel comfortable myself just doing that without letting you know that's what's going on so i can do it if i don't do it then we risk waiting i have to sign something before november of next year and if they go higher then we just you know it's like again it's gambling that's what we're doing that's what we're doing are you able to secure annual contracts
033yeah i can go i can do a shorter term so what is his rationale for locking in at the absolute highest rates right now he thinks they're going to go higher i think they will by november maybe next year too but i mean but then we're locking in for four years at the highest rates there are yeah if i if i lock in a shorter window that rate is not going to be as the rate i'm giving you is for a four-year lock if it's a one-year or two-year lock it's gonna be higher how much though because i mean if we wait one year and it goes the rates yeah yeah potentially true yeah is this through the same provider no he puts it out to bid so he he put it out to bid
034to several providers already and he got this was the lowest rate you could get on a four-year lock i do have a chart in my office that it does very this the lower the number of years the higher the rate goes he wants us to lock in the absolute i know even if they are going to go up for a year yeah yeah i don't know why we're doing it right now and it gets geopolitical climates for high gas prices i mean between now and november next year we've got 14 months a lot of things can change if it gets much worse we have a lot bigger issues and gas prices going on yeah i'm fine waiting because my gut was if we're gonna if we're going to i mean my initial was i didn't
035want to do it and i was thinking you know i've talked to him more and he gave me some rationale um so my you know if my recommendation in here was that we go with his four-year but um there is reservation that's why i'm bringing it to you because i just it's a gamble i feel like after this winter when people start getting their gas bills there's gonna be more yeah so here's what i'll do i'll i'll have him because the problem is like if i call him tomorrow and say get new quotes those quotes are only good for like two days because that's how fast the market's changing and uh maybe what i will do is i'll have him give me some quotes within a few days of the next board meeting and then
036i'll bring something to you all and we'll just vote on it because it's a big it's a big gamble and i don't want to unless you just trust me with it i don't want to to be honest with you this is i mean i would honestly like to not even consider it until after this winter i mean okay because i agree anything locked in right just wait wait yeah and the next time you bring this in just say hey you guys if you would have signed this last year you're paying 61 cents now you're paying 85 yeah um so let's not wait any longer just so we know okay i have done i i've done a little of my own research and it's the opinions on both sides yeah like i mean does he have
037is there any way for him to give us a quote of what this would have looked like last year i can find out yeah because that would have been a more of a like normalized quote i guess what's the point of even looking month to month we know the next three months as we're going deeper and deeper into winter it's just gonna look worse and worse for now that's what i mean like if he were to bring us a quote next month for one year i would say well why are we signing one year right now when it that's yeah yeah like if we have all the way until 2023 to sign november of 2012 and worst cases if we don't sign anything we just go with what the rates that are coming from you
038know that we that we're all paying and are these influx inflated more than current rates or what now is this price and do you know what the current rate is oh i didn't check no uh hope you're a nightcore bill yeah i did i did not i mean i don't even know he didn't tell me because the i have not asked him that question what the current rates are for just the market if i was just going to not have a provider and just go with cameron you know i don't know or nikkor um i haven't checked what that would be so bob we know that the rates are going to go higher obviously when we sign this again probably are we doing anything can we look at anything to like monitor our usage like
039what we can turn down thermostat or any of that kind of stuff practice for next year yes i mean we we've gone through all the sys that's what all that recommissioning was and yeah we've really got everything running as efficiently as we can so and really to be honest with you our natural gas costs are i don't have in front of me but they're not terrible they're not like the electric costs and which those have gotten better too but i would say they're probably a third of our energy bill not a half so you don't you don't have an estimate what our annual gas cost is i should have that for you i can get it right after the meeting it's in my it's my budget we're not using we don't use them yes but
040if we don't sign this agreement it will we will use nicor we do have a bill that goes to nicore i believe yeah yeah but we use a provider uh i looked up the numbers right now just for nightcore this is residential so i can't find the commercial but right now it's a 124 cents per therm so a little over double what they're quoting here but last year was 53 cents yeah okay so even if it were to normalize yeah it's kind of out of my area of expertise so i mean commodities are always it's like you luck it fluctuates so much i mean who knows what happens right i have to imagine though if we're all paying more for gas in a year than we are now that there's going to be yeah so
041i'm going to wait and i'll let them know we're going to wait and i'll stay in touch with those consultants thank you for thinking ahead though we appreciate that okay good all right anybody have any questions on the budget nope can i please have a motion to approve the 2022-2023 budget motion zacky ash and gary yes all right we accepted resignation from gene lasalle transportation driver we accepted resignation from sarah chad chatter yeah chatterjee chatterjee title one para and we accepted a resignation from angelica salto the leches food service worker no foia requests anybody have any questions on the monthly reports for the board uh the next regularly scheduled board meeting will take place on tuesday october 11 2022 full session beginning at 6 00 pm an open session beginning immediately following closed session now
042just i just have one question before we adjourn are we gonna when do we start doing like the student presentation next month next month yep all right cool anybody have anything else what was that student students minds yeah all right can please have a motion to adjourn motion second lauren and vivian the quickest one all day all in favor aye aye aye opposed thank you all for coming hello