001uh all right we resume back in open session uh can everyone please stand for the pledge of allegiance nation under god indivisible with liberty and justice for all right does anybody have anything to add to the agenda can i please have a motion to approve the agenda second vivian and lauren peter yes yes uh next item accomplishment recognition mr gold all right we're gonna start with uh we've got a lot of a lot of accomplishments to honor tonight um so thank you all for making uh making a trip here tonight we appreciate it uh we're gonna start with our december student of the month and can i call it braylon evans please raylen can you come on up we're spreading that there he is [Applause] brethren i'm going to have your teacher mrs going to
002come up and talk about you for a second here she nominated you so we nominate students each month getting nominated in the staff votes on a student of the month and in the nomination mrs foseka listed a lot of great things about you uh so i'm going to let her talk to you i didn't have enough room to list everything all right so the reason i picked braelyn for student of the month is because he exhibits what it means to be a star student here at big hollow every single day there's not a day that goes by that he does not exhibit these characteristics he is always respectful to his teachers his classmates he's always helpful he always wants to do his very very best i mean he sees one of his classmates not understand
003what they're supposed to do he quietly walks over and helps him out explains it and he goes right back to his own work he is just an awesome all-around kid and he's just fabulous so that's why i uh that's why i nominated him it doesn't doesn't get any better than that so when i went in bradley's classroom and told him he got through the month this was the expression i got it didn't it didn't change it didn't change let's get a picture with us okay all right thank you braelyn all right we do the same for employees each month and we have people nominate employees and then they vote on who was nominated and this month very very much very well-deserved jackie lasky who is our transportation secretary jackie come on up and mrs arndt
004is going to share a few words about jackie jackie is amazing i wish i could spend an hour and tell you how wonderful she's been she joined the transportation department in a new role this year organized great to work with great was communicating with parents with students with staff with bus drivers you guys don't know what goes on behind the scenes all you know is we get the buses there and try to get the buses there safely and on time every day this woman and also our transportation director mr swederski are miracle workers they work extremely hard to make sure that we have coverage she's not only answering the phone she's driving the bus almost every day helping us out so jackie you are wonderful i am so lucky that i get to work with
005you so congratulations of well deserved okay now we are recognizing and this is why most of you are here recognizing those of you who have put so much time and effort into extracurricular activities whether it be sports fine arts and you're also excelling in the classroom and that's that really is uh you're setting a high standard and we really appreciate that you're representing your school very very well so we want to acknowledge that i'm going to start please forgive me for mispronouncing any names here because i might i'm going to start with cross country and we'll just we'll call you all up and then we'll take a quick picture and then we'll let you go so joshua bowker is joshua here okay tyler tyler walls i think tyler's here i saw him tyler and bobby
006lamatea come on bobby bobby there we go okay awesome okay oh good mom right here all right thank you [Applause] oh okay now we're basketball uh sean ski okay brody lyons [Applause] justin liam morales [Applause] danny patel [Applause] madeleine schneider [Applause] and these students have maintained a 4.0 grade point average catherine danka [Applause] and ryan kedlick [Applause] oh and some of these do have more than one sport so some were involved in multiple sports so we'll take a quick picture here anybody that wants it all right thank you very much [Applause] okay i have one for just soccer andrew wirth it's andrew all right andrew you get a solo picture all right these are just softball emma malik is emma here and caitlin the manson all right okay okay cheerleading and dance cali [Applause] did
007i say that bad not too bad all right [Applause] okay fine arts uh we got a lot here emma corbett emma corbett okay sophie dollinger i don't think sophie's here uh isabella gorski isabella here all right these are fine arts and maintaining a 4.0 great player evelyn vassey [Music] [Applause] isabella ellington [Applause] thank you so much claire herron [Applause] addison smith and cayden zeller [Applause] all right thank you so much [Applause] all right we are also going to honor the grant junior bulldogs uh both cheerleading and football so grant junior bulldog cheerleading uh kaya helbig helbling nope okay kaden zeller uh sabells um slide him sabella slide him uh brianna miyake addison mrwinsky addison all right and hannah jones i saw hannah here quick picture here thank you very much since mr lyons coaches the
008junior bulldogs football i'm gonna let mr lyons announce these guys uh these are for all the kids that got over a 3.5 gpa while participating in football a dakota bar henry quigley [Applause] kaden gulliford [Applause] brody lyons [Applause] colton selders logan sledzik [Applause] ethan justin and connor evans all right congrats boys parents you should all be very proud because they're they're model students and athletes and fine arts performers and we just you know you're you should be very proud that they're able to maintain that type of academic performance while staying involved in in their school so you should be very proud and i hope that you all continue that work as you go on through big hollow and to high school so thank you and and feel free to stay around but you're welcome to
009leave two years not rude don't worry thank you [Applause] thank you correct okay take a picture with them i'm buying pizza for lunch kevin wow all right oh look nobody stayed yeah thank you uh board member code of conduct review mrs plusha i will represent all school district con constituents honestly and equally and refuse to surrender my responsibilities to special interests or partisan political groups thank you anybody have any questions on the consent agenda before kevin i just wanted to mention a couple things on consent before we prove it because i know we talked about uh reviewing the policy or the committee meetings and i want to let you know that we had policy committee met i did not put the press edition on this agenda because there's some follow-up issues i want to have
010with our attorney so i'll bring it to you in february it would have doubled the size of this uh i think it was 350 pages actually on the policy agenda but so it'll be coming in february but i'm getting some clarification on a few things before we take it and then the building grounds transportation committee um we we uh you'll see some notes in there you might want to take a look at we we've got a lot of stuff we talked about but if you have any questions anything just let me know all right anybody have any questions okay please have a motion to approve the consent agenda motion second lauren and vivian yes did we have any public comments superintendents report mr gold all right it's just two items tonight first one is uh
011just to have a covid19 discussion um i want to give you just a cover a few bullet points first is just uh the updated guidance i sent out to all of you on friday parents as well that guidance was sent to us by idph by the health local health department um there are some districts that haven't haven't moved there yet because idph did say there's going to be uh they said this is what the guidance is but they're going to like provide school specific detailed tool kit is what they say so we took the guidance and we just we know it's coming we took it made our own and made our own tool kit i guess because i don't know when they're gonna have that out so we thought it would be over the weekend
012but so we didn't want to be surprised on monday so i know that big hollow i know gavin fox lake i know lake zurich followed suit i know there's some districts uh for sure on the east side of the county that followed suit and went out and sent it out same time i did but there were some districts that did not so just so you know that but um uh we have obviously a current spike going on right now last week we hit highs in the mid 60s for a number of staff and students with that are testing positive it went down a little bit today to 56 but that's you know i'm not going to say we're on a downward trend yet um we have we also went down in the number of people
013who are ice isolated quarantined to 190 under under 200 which have been over 200 for a few days that also is probably uh that might be impacted more by the shortened quarantine time um i can't compliment jen berg and liz villagomas enough and our building principles because they are all trying to solve a puzzle every day filling holes with staff positions that we don't have filled and moving people around and so it's a challenge every night i know that i know that the night before a school day and one of them was last night on a sunday night i know they were all talking because i was in on some of those conversations trying to figure out what to do for the next day so those those people working really hard and also our nurses
014are really uh as well at a time where this has been challenging for them uh more so than any time this year i would say the last two weeks has been tough transportation is the one that uh um we're we're making it and we're doing okay but it's it's one that i you can't just find bus drivers so we start losing bus drivers we're down to where we we we were you know a route short or anything like that but we're making it work so um testing supplies is something i want to bring up we uh we have what we need so far but but we are running short so one one building ran out today so they're using some from the middle school the the supplies that we are strong in are the ones
015that the people that signed up for the weekly tests that one we get we have plenty of those that when they take the tests they take it home with them they take the test that night they bring it back the next day and then we ship it out that the courier comes and picks it up that day and then that night they have results so if you take it one day you get the results the next night so it's a pretty good test we have about a hundred kids that are doing that every week but we also might start using those tests for tests to stay students that are in the test to stay program um as far as mitigation strategies you know we've emphasized the staff in the classrooms to try their best to
016make sure students are three feet apart minimum and that's the you know that's the one area we have some control we don't have a lot of control in the lunchroom we don't have a lot of control at recess we don't have a lot of control in the hallways unless we really want to lock this place down and it things have functioned really well up until this point not that it's not functioning well but just society in general right now it's just all over the place and you know i was confident before christmas that kids weren't getting coveted from each other i can't say i'm that confident now i have no idea because everybody's getting it before school even started everybody was getting it so this is a different variant so i can't say that what
017mitigation strategies are working what or not so we we you know are we are we doing everything we could do there not not at this time i mean we we don't know what to do about breakfast we have kids that come in the morning and get breakfast we're putting out like i think it's like 800 breakfasts every day or something like that it's a large large number of breakfasts and so those kids are taking those breakfast to the classroom which means their masks are off and they're eating uh around other kids so there's you know we are doing that we don't have we don't have any other place to take those kids to have breakfast um so that's a but that's something you know if this doesn't get better soon uh in the in the
018community then you know might have to look at something there but um well if you take breakfast away how would if they're eating breakfast here that means they're not eating at home i know that's why we don't want to take it away right i was thinking that uh we might have to look at like other locations or something how how to spread those kids out i didn't send it home with them the day before you know miss visica had that idea and i haven't checked to make sure that that's doable it might be it might be um the only thing we can't send home with them is the milk yeah uh the uh um the only the one challenge there will be i gotta make we would we could we could overcome it if they
019say it's okay because the state has some they have some regulations we've got to follow on that to because it's all reimbursable um we can get we if they say it's okay then we can do that um with the exception of milk obviously i just got to figure out a way to make sure those kids don't eat those on the bus because the buses will be met trashed but uh what i'd want them to eat it the next morning for breakfast but um janine actually gave me that idea last week and i haven't followed up yet can you buy a different kind of milk like sometimes when i buy like the single serving like the organic milk cause it has a different encasement yeah i have to look and see but anyway that's uh you
020know um you know open to your input on athletics i know that that's we're getting ready to start another season uh there's some i was on some email a superintendent emails today they were asking about that and it's just so that our our conference schools are really all over the map on how they're we're dealing with athletics some of them are forcing all wrestlers wrestling is the one that's been a challenge for some schools some of them are forcing all wrestlers to test weekly we've chosen not to do any force testing on anyone so i would say from the comments i got from the schools that that were the superintendents were talking today it's about half and half half were forcing it half or not um so are they still going to participate yeah with
021well they may that's the thing i think there might be some schools that say since big hollow is not forcing their wrestlers to test they may not wrestle against us that's possible they didn't say it in the email but it's possible so we'll have to see what happens they kind of alluded that's why they're asking so i don't know what your thoughts are it's a board about that but we've we i know we talked this summer about not forcing any family to take the test but making it optional for me it's all about parental permission the parents say yes you can test then you can test i don't think is a yeah school i mean that's just yeah i don't think that that needs to be a school decision it's a parent parent decision parents
022have to realize if they say no and their kid doesn't the other school doesn't let their kid wrestle against them that could be a consequence but that's out of our control that's my thought and i don't think we should cancel sports fine arts anything these kids need something they cannot do what we did last year that can happen yeah no i'm with him they're playing they're figuring out ways to play band they're figuring out ways to do dance competitions they're figuring out ways to do all of this stuff gymnastics there's no reason at schools we shouldn't be doing it or offering it if parents choose not to because of the risks that's fine but i don't think there's any way we shouldn't be offering it i agree i mean that's where i'm at so i
023feel like we just need to keep pushing forward and just start figuring out how to live with this and it's going to get it's going to be worse at some times than others and i i don't have a none of us have this but i'm going to tell you my gut is i feel like if we if we can weather the next two or three weeks i think it's going to have to get better but is the test to stay still the same period of time even though the quarantine is not uh no actually we're doing tests to stay on i think uh i'd have to confirm with dr pittman but i think we're doing it twice instead of three times just doing it twice and i think it's days two and four part of
024that's because of the lower number of tests that we have yeah so we're burning through a lot of tests so that's all i've got we're weathering it right now and i do have i do have some people i will tell you i have some people that are upset that we that we went to the five-day quarantine but i it wasn't a bob gold decision it was it was a uh all levels of government it was the you know cdc idph and we followed the guidance all along and some of the people that are upset are the same people that are happy that we have always tried to follow the guidance just the guidance right now is five days so we we move to it some school districts haven't yet but they will be they're taking
025a more cautious approach in that they are want to see the official like school toolkit but we we i have official i i linked all the documents in that communication i sent to parents it's official idph documents so here's the guidance five days all schools so uh i think we've followed the guidance whether we all individually agreed with it or not and yeah i think that that is the most important position we can take is follow it people aren't going to like it no matter what you do so right right all right that's all i've got on that and then uh dr king is going to kind of lead this discussion but we put a in exhibit eight you have our an update on some of the diversity equity inclusion work we've been doing and
026i'm going to let dr king take it away well yeah i'll mostly just answer any questions that you might have we provided that document for you we're collecting our survey for our diversity equity inclusion and belonging right now our results are if they're slowly coming in they're about as slow as our desa results for it coming in it just takes a little bit longer this year than last year since families are all trying to get caught up on life this year compared to last year but we are collecting those results till the end of the year and that's speaking to the fact that all three of our buildings have that same goal to really address this and take this this work seriously in there you'll also see some of the things that the buildings are
027doing and we didn't highlight input any building in particular because all three of them are doing excellent work um from our building experts we have school psychologists and social workers that are leaving leading groups on with of their teachers on like functions of behavior because sometimes we don't quite understand our children and our students and so understand the function of a behavior why student behaves a certain way there's always a reason behind it so sometimes a student may be acting out and so our goal is to try to figure out the they call it the fancy word is antecedent but what's the underlying uh thing the student is searching for whether it's attention or escape maybe they're afraid of the situation that they're in and so they're going to have a behavior and so we've
028got experts that are training our staff on that because that's about belonging so when students are acting out sometimes there's something they're looking for and so that's one of the things we want to talk about and discuss because that divergent thinkers some of our more intellectually different students that we want to make sure that we're supporting them and creating spaces where they feel safe we also have some of our experts are talking about gender identity or what it's like to be a non-white educator in a predominantly uh white class with a bunch of white teachers and so we've got a variety of options for our staff to be a part of and these are conversations that our classroom teachers have stepped up or our building leaders have stepped up or our social workers and said
029i want to be a part of the conversation and leave this conversation and so they may present their presentation to the principal i know you were as principals talking earlier today the principal is reviewing some of the conversations the powerpoint that the staff are going to be going through that is district or excuse me the teacher-led for their teacher group so that's one of the pieces then you'll also see the work that jessica has been doing with diversity to inclusion she has really been involved pretty regularly on this campus quite often for um some of our our students really need to identify a person of color who supports them and rallies behind them and so she's been meeting in groups with our families and our students on site and now more back on zoom a
030little bit because she lives near cps so it's been more zoom with the kids but on a very regular basis to help them identify some of the ways that they're responding to different search uh situations in ways that will be a catalyst for change and so um they're working very closely with mr shorsh who does our announcements and they've been creating announcements that we see on a regular basis at this you'll start to see teachers and students i'm doing kind of speak outs to a little bit about who i am um to help raise awareness about just the various ways that we're different and the way we want to make sure that we've create spaces of belonging so it's authentic because students are creating it we've got teachers involved in creating trainings and then we
031also have outside experts that are still a part of this work it's it's very much ongoing very good jessica and i have also met about on the human resource side of things i haven't pulled the whole committee together yet but she and i are just talking about how we can be more attractive to a diverse population of of applicants and not even only that but also making sure the applicants we do interview have the mindset of uh that we're looking for uh coming in so yeah that was i guess i saw the thing about the bias training on here and i didn't know if the people that that hire whether not just the principals if they do teachers the teacher level hires like the third grade team gets together and with those dumb candidates are
032these individual teachers and teams getting this training the implicit drug buyers training i would say yeah i would say yes yep this is really good work you guys are doing yeah very good all right thank you very much that's it for me kevin all right thank you mr gold um anybody have a question on the annual review of the closed session meeting minutes okay please have a motion to keep all closed meeting minutes in closed status motion second doug and joe uh all in favor aye aye any oppose eyes have it anybody have any questions on the december employment recommendations there's actually no report there is no report so we have no questions first time that's ever happened yeah we accepted a resignation uh from nicholas wells bus driver effective january 3rd no foia requests
033anybody having a question on the monthly reports and agendas the next regularly scheduled board meeting will take place monday february 14 2022 with closed session beginning at 6 00 p.m can i please have a motion to adjourn motion second joan vivian no delay that time all in favor