001can everyone please stand for the pledge of allegiance i pledge for which allegiance stands one nation under god indivisible with liberty and justice for all all right with all the new people here i just would like to take a moment to thank you for coming we haven't seen anybody in this building for a really long time besides our poor administrators which gets stuck coming to these meetings every month um but if we could just take a moment if you want to stand up and introduce yourself so everyone on the school board and the superintendent and our secretary can know who we know who you are and we could try to put names to faces it would be very helpful you want to start here man you could just right there whatever's easiest yeah just yell
002we can hear you we need it for that we need it for the stream if they could come to the mic please oh okay thank you man is that on yes okay i'm jessica oladapo i own diversity to inclusion and i've been consulting with the school district this year and last year okay thank you yeah that'd be great thank you dr king that's a good idea you know me hi i'm kim frazier and i am the speech language pathologist over at the primary okay hi i'm chloe cody i'm the seventh grade teacher here at the middle school building uh blue house i'm stephanie flayed i teach preschool in kindergarten at the primary building hello my name is sophia madzukis and i am the bilingual teacher from kinder all the way to fourth hi i'm thalma
003allen i am the bilingual teacher from fifth grade to eighth grade here at the middle school hi i'm ashley wonsell and i am a middle school el teacher here at the middle school hello heather kolaski i'm a fifth grade ela teacher hi i'm bradley doherty and i'm the new sixth grade social studies teacher here at the middle school hi i'm nicole bucheck and i'm the new 6th grade ela teacher hi i'm jody rudin i am the new 6th grade science teacher here at the middle school hi i'm mike garwick i'm the 8th grade science teacher hi i'm tom shoresh i'm the new 8th grade uh ela teacher hello my name is simon vasey i'm a parent of evelyn and oliver who are in seventh grade and third grade i'm sure they'll say hi too yes
004hi i'm evelyn and i'm going to be reading my email regarding stuff i don't know what to say cause i didn't have this planned out all right um hello and i'm angie faisy they're mom hi i'm barb gomez wreath i am the new primary music teacher hi i'm missy carr from greenville south carolina and i teach second grade at the elementary school hi i'm sabrina fortuneski and i am a third grade teacher hi i'm vicki stewart and i'm a third grade teacher all right thank you guys that was very nice now let's move on to the budget hearing does anybody have any or mr gold yeah i'll go through a couple of the exhibits real quick um you have exhibit one two and three are part of the budget hearing tonight the uh these are
005exhibits that i've shared in prior years when doing the budget i will just go through a couple things for you in regards to this one if you look at exhibit one is the operating funds and you'll see the revenue expenditures over history for each of the funds you'll see that our totals um i'm gonna i'm gonna jump to exhibit two though to talk about interviewer fund balance and you will see uh the end of the year fund balance um again that when we do the budgeting here we we tend to i try i overestimate the expenses a little bit just to make sure that we have room in case of emergencies so you're going to see a significant drop in the education fund when you look at the end of year fund balance report the
006other funds are pretty stable if you look at the if you go to exhibit three on the budget on the second page of that exhibit um it shows that the expenses the estimated revenue for the education fund is 17 million 370 thousand the estimated expenditures 19 million 261 000 with a that'd be a deficit of deficit of 1 million 890 000 again that would be going to be a worst case scenario um i would i would be lying to you if i didn't think it's going to be tight this year the goal the direction that you've given me when we you know as we've gone through the last six years initially we needed to have a surplus in order to get ourselves out of the hole we were in and now at this point the
007last few years our goal is to make sure that we are not going backwards and so we haven't if you go back to the end of year fund balance report the exhibit 2 and look at the fund balances over the last few years and they they've gone up at a slow pace they've gone up so we haven't gone backwards you can look at the estimate this year is to go backwards but again that's uh again that's worst case scenario and i don't think that's going to happen but we're going to be really close just want you to know that it's going to be it's going to be really close so part of the reason for the for the increased spending this year is the is the grant money that's come through so we've had a
008lot of expenditures for grants and so that all had about a million dollars of that has come out of this year for expenditures and we hope to get that in revenue as well but we may not get all that by the end of the year back so we might spend some that we don't get back so i guess i just just just to summarize you've had this budget in your hands uh this is a little different than last month not much but the difference is that we now have a better an accurate idea of where the benefits fell uh last month i didn't know at that time but now we do so that's why you see different numbers but we're we're pretty good i i would say uh this is pretty solid but it i
009i want you to know it is going to be tight at the end as far as not tight where where we're in trouble tight in the fact that we uh we don't want to see a slip backwards at all so but i think we'll be within two to three hundred thousand dollars either way is my guess if everything goes well just from finance committee something i thought was helpful that i learned from it is that we need roughly half of our operating budget in our end of year fund balance report because of the way the tax is coming yeah yeah so that 12 million may look like a lot but it's really not it's two yeah because we get a big chunk of our taxes right in the end of june so when the year
010is almost over with so then you could see those years all of those years that we needed to borrow money we were at the 8.8 and the 6.8 because we were down under that 10 million dollar threshold so that is it for all right anybody have any questions can i please have a motion to enter the budget hearing motion second ashton warren uh all in favor of the motion hi any opposed ice habit all right anybody have anything to add nope can't please have a motion to close the budget hearing motion second doug and vivian all in favor any opposed eyes have it but do we have anything to add to the agenda no can i please have a motion to approve the agenda passion gary all in favor aye any oppose i said board
011member code of conduct review uh vivian do you want to try sure 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 all right thank you uh anybody have any questions on the consent agenda now just so make a note in the minutes that based on the comprehensive salary study that was done by a big hollow we are including a dollar an hour raise for um all paraprofessionals and building secretaries in this consent agenda can i please have a motion to prove the consent agenda second lauren and gary yes ballinger yes yes bennett yes peter yes yes all right nine public comments we do have uh some here um it looks like miss meek you were first
012the following are the words of students in our community who felt compelled to share them after their teacher's pride wall was removed the teacher has since been informed that she can display her pride flag these letters were unsolicited and highlight the importance of our district-wide equity work i will share portions of a few with student permission people of color and lgbt lgbtq plus community are getting hate from the world so if those kinds of people go to this school and are worried about their safety isn't the best way to help them by show that they are safe and part of our community by using representation sure there is pride month in black history month but every other month is white and straight month so why can't all people be represented just like white and straight
013people school is where all young people visit every single day should we and we should be able to show that this is a new generation and that we can all be treated as equals as part of the lgbtq plus community i personally did not expect to see a pride wall in any classroom and it has made my day every day that i laid eyes on it my teacher has made me feel safe i value her for it i value her strength her kindness and her courage i don't understand why the school's website says inspiring a diverse community to be passionate and empathetic learners diverse means variety or very different if the school were diverse it would be accepting of all including people of color or people who are a part of the lgbtqia plus community
014wouldn't you want a place where you are accepted and welcomed for who you are without any sort of judgment whatsoever when have you ever seen a classroom that represented that because in this school i have never encountered that once by keeping the american flags up but having us take down the pride flag in the black lives matter sign this is saying that you have more pride about living on stolen land with a history of concentration camps and slavery you also kept up a picture of george washington who had slaves so this makes me wonder if you like a man who had slaves and and keep a flag that represents slavery but can't keep up a sign that says black lives matter do you care about black people think about all of the students that were
015hurt by taking down just one sign thank you our next one is from evelyn bassey okay the lgbtqia plus flags are down from the wall in my coders classroom during class on tuesday this was the first thing i noticed i feel so unrepresented and disrespected these flags were forcefully taken down the students were not considered when we had when this decision was made on tuesday we had a class discussion about this many of us felt that we were unwelcome in the school when they were removed for example some of the students some of the emotions that other students described they felt were disappointed disrespected unheard unwelcome upset and angry big hollow's mission statement is that you will inspire inspire a diverse school community to be passionate and empathetic learners how can you help inspire a
016diverse school community if diverse people feel like they are being pushed to back down and shoved in a corner these flags have not made any negative influence on our learning as a class they didn't affect how well we focused we have spent the expected amount of time on effort and curriculum it was more comfortable for some students like me to focus on work knowing that they are represented and respected if some students non-allied straights feel like they were not included in these flags miss codib could add a plain straight flag they still feel like they're not unrepresented maybe they can suggest other ways to miss code if then other than taking down all the prod flags just because they feel like they're not represented doesn't mean that nobody should be that's like giving a bunch
017of hungry people meals but then there isn't enough for everyone to take all the meals back that doesn't that doesn't change the fact that people are still hungry i recognize that you don't have the power to put those wax back up i was writing this to miss meek um but you know what you do have the ability to do address people above you about this issue you are not past you are not powerless in this and you can make a difference in how and heavy color treated students the main reason i don't have a backstory to share is that i haven't come out yet i've been too terrified to come out to my parents and fear what they would think i was slowly building up the courage to tell them but now that i realize
018this is what some adults do to shut down the idea of pride has made me go back to where i started i want them to know that they haven't done anything wrong as parents it's mainly because of all the hate currently going on the wrong in the world that made me the most scared mom dad i'm bisexual i love you guys so [Applause] thank you for sharing your opinions superintendents report mr gold that's a tough one to follow so i want to start by welcoming um our new teachers the big hollow we had many of you stand up and introduce yourselves already and i'm going to have you do that again but give us a little bit about yourself where you came from just so our board can put a name a face to a
019name that uh they've every you've all been approved at this board of education for employment here and i want them to be able to see who they hired and so this is your chance just to give us give us your name a little bit about your background where you came from and uh we appreciate you spending the evening tonight with us and then when you're done with this i promise you can go ahead and go so totally fine you don't need to hang around so i would say in any order just pop on up all of our new teachers first just pop on up and introduce yourselves and thanks in chicago is i'm mrs allen thelma allen i am cuban i was born in chicago i'm a teacher who believes that children should all have
020voices that was such a beautiful display i have to say that beautifully done um and then i wish all my students could have the courage to speak up um i'm ashley wensel i am teaching el here fifth through eighth grade um i grew up in gridslake and taught in gurnee for six years before coming here i was in elementary so now i'm in middle school and yeah thank you [Music] hi my name is chloe kotib my heart is feeding so fast right now um i'm a seventh grade teacher here um at big hollow i'm really happy to be here and what i'm really happy to be doing here is inspiring change and inspiring my students to um to speak their truth every day and i am i believe that as a teacher you're not only
021a teacher but you are responsible for activism in your classroom thank you hi uh sorry my name is bradley doherty again i am the new sixth grade social studies teacher here in the middle school my dad is originally from the south side but i grew up a hoosier so southern indiana guy spent my first several years teaching on the south side of indianapolis and i met my wife at my first job it's worked out thus far so she wanted to move back around her family in this area so we moved up here and i decided i wanted to work in a different school from her so uh even though i still love her so tenth year teaching first year here at big hollow and just very passionate and excited to be here and it's been
022a great community uh teachers have been fantastic to work with the students have been a joy and i'm just thrilled to be here so thank you thank you hi my name is jody rudin so i'm the new sixth grade science teacher and this is my seventh year teaching i taught in california um i'm a big advocate on 504s and ieps because i'm on that side with my daughter my daughter has mild cerebral palsy so i get to deal with um ieps in the schools and advocating for my own child so i love advocating for my own students as well um my name is uh barbara gomez wreath i'm the new big hello primary music teacher i grew up on the northwest side of chicago my family is from cuba i am also bilingual i have
023been a teacher in chicago public schools cicero and at woodland i've taught music for over 10 years and i'm very excited to teach the little ones about the world of music and its benefits hi i'm nicole bucheck i'm the new 6th grade ela teacher i grew i live in island lake and grew up in the wakonda school district right down the road and i just graduated from trinity international university in may this is my first year teaching and i'm super excited to start my career here at big hollow so thank you for letting me do that hi i'm missy carr and i already told you that i'm from greenville south carolina i got married in june so i moved up here today's my son's birthday and he's 19. he's in college first birthday he's never
024had with his mom so there's that but um so i live in gurney my husband teaches at zion benton high school so we met in nashville and we kind of decided that i would move up here and it worked out well so thank you um so again i'm sabrina fortuneski a third grade teacher um this is my fourth year teaching my first year big hollow obviously um i taught three years at woodland and i heard a lot of great things about big hollow so i chose to come here um and my fiance is mr summers and i think that's it hi everyone i'm vicki stewart i'm a third grade teacher here at big hollow this is my first year teaching i was so cute i was a student teacher here last year in fourth grade
025with mrs strickler and i loved big hollow so i was super excited when i was offered a position here so thank you to everyone that was involved in that decision i was born and raised in chicago i went to school through the chicago public school system i am bilingual english is my second language my parents were immigrants from greece and they still don't speak english very well so there's that but um i'm happy to be here thank you so much for having me thank you hi there my name is heather kolaski i'm the new fifth grade ela teacher um i have this i think this is my 16th year as a teacher i've taught in lots of different places evanston we'll met grove glenview and i really decided to make a change and i wanted
026to come out into this area this year i have four kids they are 21 20 18 and and between all of their football games and their activities i enjoy um just spending time with my family and reading and doing artwork so i'm excited to be here at big hollow the teachers have been great administration has been great and i love the students as well thank you hi again i'm tom shorsh mr shorsh eighth grade ela teacher i'm really really excited uh to be a part of uh the big hollow community this year um i'm very excited to be uh teaching our new accelerated curriculum um and i'm from the city of chicago as well i come from a family of teachers and musicians and intellectuals and i'm just so happy to be here today thank
027you so much all right we welcome all of you it's been a great start to the year and we just thank you for giving big hollow a chance so we appreciate that you're welcome to stay for as long as you'd like but i am going to our next thing i'm going to honor our certified teachers who have gained tenure this year so uh i'll read off the names and i know we don't have everybody here but i'm just going to read them off and if you hear please come up and i'll give you a certificate hannah ball doug erickson heather fisher kim frazier i did see kim kristen glover mike gorlick [Applause] tracy who's christina lancaster sarah lessel sophia mansooka [Applause] saranetis aaron pesca christina vanderworth and bonnie walters so that's our group of 10-year
028teachers for this year a great group of teachers thank you and again you're all welcome to stay as long as you'd like but so my next item return to school discussion i'll keep this brief i want to give the board a chance to ask questions but if i can just a few talking points to start with i cannot say enough about our students and staff they've done just a fabulous job students are are getting acclimated back to school the staff is working probably as hard or harder than they've ever had to work and that includes the administrative staff as well i think everybody every day we walk in and you wonder what's going to hit us today so people are working extremely hard and i can't i can't thank them enough the uh it has
029been an adjustment for kids and staff but uh it's definitely been an adjustment so we're seeing some some some issues social emotional behavior those kind of adjustments that we're working through uh but you know probably a little more than a typical year but you know we've had a spike in cases in the area but we're still handling it well on campus it does it does cause some anxiety with parents with staff with you know our support staff and our nurses and administrators trying to keep up the office staff trying to keep up with the number of quarantine situations the test to stay program i think we have 40 students right as of i looked late today we had about 40 students on test to stay and that might have increased uh with some things that
030happened today so there's a lot going on um but it's manageable right now so we're we have kids here and that's a good thing so uh testing update i want to give you a quick you know i mentioned to you the shield test that we were we've been trying to get this going dr pittman's been doing a great job with it melissa has been helping do a do get us signed up for this as well and uh the shield program honestly they're just been hard to work with and uh so we would hope to have it going right after labor day that didn't happen so we are still still working with shield but we've shifted gears a bit and we have another program ready to go possibly actually tomorrow we're going to get some of
031their supplies and maybe it'll be a take-home test that these fans because we have three to 400 families right now that want to be part of this program and we haven't been able to provide it yet so um we have a we have an alternative we're looking into to get this this roll in because shield has not been very responsive to us they don't answer our emails phone calls we're kind of just waiting right now so i plan on sending an update to parents tomorrow on that because you have some parents wondering about the weekly testing as far as staff we're we're short on peras we're short on subs those are two big areas that we just have kind of urgent needs um there are other areas as well but those are two areas that
032significantly impact kids right off the bat um you know masks was a big issue coming into the year and i will say for the most part at least what i'm hearing is it's really been a non-issue for kids uh there's gonna be some cake there's situations where uh you know that we're dealing with but overall the masks have been a non-issue and been really good to see the kids just adjusting to the environment lunch and breakfast our numbers are increased significantly a lot of kids are eating breakfast that didn't eat breakfast before but they walk in the door and they get a breakfast if they want it they take it to class so uh i had a complaint an interesting complaint last week i didn't think about um apparently it was a valid complaint was
033that my kid's eating too much food and how do we limit that because we're handing out food so it's a good point so we had to kind of problem solve that transportation has been a a tough one and they've been doing a great job we are bare bones on our staff and and so every person is just working really hard in transportation being flexible um covering routes that they don't usually drive and they don't know the kids so there's a lot to that and i would say today i felt like today was maybe our best day yet when i was both pick up and drop off and pick up so middle school is really not an issue they get in and out here pretty quickly primary in elementary there's more kids and they're younger kids
034so they don't always know where their buses are at those kind of things so it takes a little longer but all in all it's gone really well and i commend the uh the leadership staff for trying to organize everything and many many many parents have been so uh patient with us and trying to help us work through this i'm hearing horror stories from other places about transportation and ours is not near you know the issues that we face are not near that bad and really once we get uh past this shortage of drivers that we have right now which we have some people in the in the pipeline so once we get past that it's going to get a lot better so but all in all i think that's going well so i want to
035give you a chance that we've been in school for a few weeks now if you've got any questions anything you want to throw at me fire away can you clarify on the food consumption it's too much it's because kids are eating at home and then when they come to school they grab a breakfast too before they bring their own lunch and they take one of our lunches i can confirm that's happening so parents give them lunch to take and say this is lunch i want you to eat and then they grab one of ours for free so that's that's that's one i didn't think about happening but it's happening so but i would say this um as a community and this our community is no different than any other community but people are just on
036edge right now about life in general and so little issues that uh happen we're dealing with a lot of uh our staff has to deal with a lot of anger sometimes from people and they're not necessarily angry at us they're just angry at the situation and uh um when we have to fight when we find out there's a there's a group of close contacts that have to be called you know and i see our staff taking those and splitting those up and going to the phones they're going to the phones knowing that they're not going to be pleasant calls but they're doing it and and many many people are very understanding but but we also understand when people are angry because they're just angry about the whole situation and uh so i wish i could
037protect our staff from that a little more than i am able to but uh they're doing a wonderful job with it and it's all of them everybody is digging in and doing what they need to do how's drop-off and pickup going uh much better much better it's uh i would say today at 3 45 the place was empty so when the buses or the belt rings at 3 30 and we're we're we have a thousand kids in that building or and we're dismissing in 15 minutes that's a pretty good day so i think we're in pretty good shape again there's going to be some traffic issues from time time to time but uh uh overall i you know i'll apologize to people sometimes when the line's long and they'll say hey don't worry about it
038you know because they know it's but more people want to pick up their kids because they don't want to want to on a bus that's full of kids so we're seeing that's why we have more traffic a little bit but uh once we get more drivers we'll be able to maybe add a bus and that'll lower some of the bus sizes maybe but won't be many though so it's going better though anything else with that all right i'm going to open the floor up to our diversity equity inclusion updates uh miss jessica olidapo and dr vicki king so i'll let you guys take the floor here we have the slide on the wall it's also part of the ford packets jessica has worked with us just to give you a little background um we started
039the african-american parent advisory council about two to three years ago and we started meeting and i think last year and i'm gonna i want to give dr king some credit because last year i felt like we made more uh we made more progress because we got to a point where prior to that we were meeting and talking and we were working through issues but last year we kind of said all right we're going to go with this committee and uh it was it was a suggestion of you know one of the committee members was you know providing our staff with some training and i always felt like a one day sit and get's not going to be what we need we need we need consistent uh training that's ongoing and and jessica was recommended to
040us by one of our parents and we've been partners ever since and it's gone really well she's worked with every area of our staff so i'm going to let you give her i want to give you an update of the work she's been doing perfect thank you mr gold um thank you all for having me i'm so sad that he left because i wanted to also say that i'm from chicago a family of teachers and musicians and intellectuals but he left so i couldn't make that connection um this meeting has been so moving for me so far especially considering the work that i do also i should say i am so unaccustomed to speaking for like 15 minutes so i'm going to keep looking at the clock i'm a professor of sociology and psychology and
041we tend to be quite verbose so my bio is on the on the slide there and also you should have it in on the slides in the packet my pronouns are she and her i am a sociologist by trade but also with a great deal of education in psychology i'm finishing up a degree currently in counseling psychology to be able to provide therapeutic services around issues of equity and inclusion and belonging my focus really is how do we create spaces of belonging for all and so the work that we have been doing and the goals that we have are here um the first goal is to ensure a space of belonging for all within the big hollow school district considering all partners in education i call partners and educ i call everyone who takes part
042in the educational experience of students partners in education so this includes the families this includes the students themselves this includes the school boards the teachers support staff everyone who takes part in the educational experience for that student is a partner in education so the goal is to create a place of belonging for everyone who is a partner in in the educational experience another goal that we have is to review the practices to ensure that we are meeting the unique needs of each student so it's not just that we are providing trainings to teachers and support staff and administrators but instead that we are actually looking at policy and procedure and also practice making sure that those things are in alignment um initially when we were brought on we were just doing some training then we
043were like wait a minute there's some other stuff that needs to happen as well in conjunction with we're also expanding the definition of diversity to include multiple levels of multiple levels and identities so i should also say that frequently when we talk about diversity and what diversity means frequently the conversation shifts to a conversation about race and then it shifts to a conversation about how do black folk feel but really we're thinking about how everyone experiences their identities what is marginalization look like kind of across the board right um so we're expanding the definition of diversity for everyone so that we all understand how we contribute to a diverse school community and community at large we're also hoping to empower and encourage teachers and administrators to see the value of inclusion and belonging and effectively
044model um the model belonging for students and families i was just saying to dr king that it is our job you know even in those moments where we feel um overwhelmed by the task it is our job to model what that looks like for our students and for the families because again we're all partners in education and then finally to empower students and families to engage in and see their agency in the co-creation of spaces of belonging for all in the vic hollow school district and i say co-creation because students and families also have agency in power and it is our job to recognize and see the agency and the power that they have and so students our students are actually co-creating their educational experience which is a little bit of a shift from the
045way that we have traditionally thought of education right the traditional model is the teacher is the person with all the knowledge and they pour into when we think about what does creating a space of belonging look like it also means that students have power and agency to co-create that experience and so what does the path forward look like and this is actually a model that i share with teachers and support staff and administrators during the professional development training so this is the traditional model of education and the traditional model of education begins with the teacher who is the green square and the students come in and the students are the pink triangles and so the truth again the traditional model of education looks like everyone in the classroom is the same or at least they
046appear to be the same because they're all students right and the teacher again is the picture that pours into what we know is that um this model as this is the model of education that we tend to be comfortable with we also know that the model of education that is that works fastest is this where the teacher is the green square and the students are also green squares but that's not really what happens and so even if we have this model we spend a great deal of time trying to make the pink triangles into green squares right and so then it looks like this there's the pink triangles and we try to turn them into green squares right what this means then is that students are coming into our classrooms and trying to fit into
047a model that doesn't actually work for them or they are putting on a costume temporarily that they then take off and so that is not a space of belonging right that is only comfortable for the teacher what we know about this model though is that that allows for work to get done very quickly and efficiently and so if our goal in education is to get things done quickly and efficiently this works well this however is not the best model because students are not pink triangles nor are they green squares students come in with all sorts of different shapes and sizes and colors and textures and they float in and they twirl in and they slide in and they glide in and they said sometimes you just show up and they write this all of this
048different diversity that exists in the classroom diversely diversity along racial lines along gender identity lines gendered lines um immigrant status linguistic ability all sorts of things and so the goal is to ensure that in the classrooms and in this in the school space in general that we are recognizing and appreciating all of the different shapes and sizes and textures and the way that students come in and the things that they bring into the classroom because what we know is that with this model the green square is just like every other shape in that classroom that the green square is also learning because they are engaging this is what co-creation looks like in education this is what creating a space of belonging and education looks like as well now there are pros and cons to everything
049the con is things don't get done always so quickly right and that's fine because the learning and the interaction is more meaningful and more long-lasting than the other model the traditional model of education and so this has really been our our goal so making meaning of it what does it mean and um it's incredibly important to see our students and to see our families seeing them has a positive impact on self-efficacy seeing them has a positive impact on academic achievement when we see our students for who and what they are then that increases academic achievement students will rise to the occasion right it increases and improves relational interactions and it has positive outcomes for the community at large students will want to get their education here go away to college and come back and be
050celebrated for the unique diversity that they bring to the community and so long term from a from a business standpoint from a financial standpoint from a social standpoint there are positive outcomes short term there are also so many positive outcomes and so questions to consider what might this focus mean for individual students what might a focus on belonging mean or have an an impact on classroom learning or how might it have an impact on classroom learning what impact might it have on recruitment and and retention for um for talent of talent at big hollow school district in terms of staff teachers administrators families right as a i'm a mom of four and one of the things that i'm always concerned with if i move which i never hope to move again but when i did
051move one of the biggest concerns for me was what does the school look like and not so much what those test scores look like right but really is this school going to meet the needs of my unique students who have different neurodiversity needs and all sorts of different needs right so what does this mean for recruitment and retention across the board and then finally what impact might it have on relationship building what are some of the greatest strengths that the big hollow school district has as it relates to relationship building with families and community partners and then also considering what might be some barriers and so one of the questions that we are consistently having conversations about we just had a conversation last week about respect right and and in the room of i don't
052know 30 people there were like 10 different definitions of respect well if we're not speaking the same language then that might pose a barrier to how we are interacting with our students if we say to our students you have to respect people in the classroom what does that even mean right so coming to an agreement on the language of diversity equity inclusion and belonging it could pose a barrier but also as we are doing this work we are kind of normalizing language such that we are creating these spaces of belonging and then the last question that we can ask is how might a focus on belonging impact and mitigate the barriers that we see including again the barrier of rather of kind of speaking different languages or barriers of implicit bias barriers of preconceived notions
053about someone based on the language that they speak or don't speak etc right so again the focus really is on how do i think about myself and my own identity within this space and then how do i create a space of belonging for for all or rather co-create a space of belonging for all and then there are some additional layers that we are tapping into including classroom management and self-management because there's a relationship we're tapping into relationship building and strategies including things like vulnerability empathy courage compassion and more we're also talking about self-care both engaging in self-care and then modeling it for our students knowing when to like you know what this is let's take a break right yes the curriculum is there but let's actually take a break such that we can tap into
054our humanity um and then finally unpacking and uncovering our own biases through a lens of social and cognitive psychology is an additional layer that we are tapping into so it's all interwoven into every aspect both in in teaching and also looking at the policies and procedures because those things should be in alignment and dr king really quickly just to show where this work is also showing up across the district so all three of our school improvement plans we have the same two goals one of them one of the goals is around the idea and the work related to the diversity inclusion i would say and also belonging and so there'll be a survey that goes out and our goal is to really create a space in our district where all families feel like they can
055belong and then we also started work on task force work and we paused it until we had this conversation so you'll see more information eventually come out but if you remember at the end of last year talked a little bit about some of the work that we're going to be doing um there was quite a bit of interest when we initially launched this out where i have a lot of families uh community members excuse me interested in being on various task force as they align to some of how we're recruiting and retaining i think um diverse staff but creating a place where people feel they belong and they want to stay that's a big deal for i would say the principles and now sitting in that role as well it's it's imperative that we do
056what we need to do to keep the staff we have because the pipeline is so small and i can't over exaggerate that also our curriculum resources we've already started looking at that but we've got some awesome accelerated work that mr schwartz kind of talked about that dr hetchevitz has been working on community engagement pieces a lot of the stuff that dr biancolana and miss janus and then they're not here anymore but we had a number of staff who are working on our um just our hispanic heritage month all of those pieces that we're seeing is a way of reciprocal sharing and getting our community involved and then finally looking at our discipline and that idea of respect and what does that look like so we're looking at some of those pieces and then finally our
057assessment but that is our current and future work thank you that's good thank you so much any questions from the board that was a lot of information uh jessica thank you so much for the work you're doing and uh does anybody have any questions i think this is great man this is something that we've asked for for i don't know how many years i think it's thank you so much um i just have one question is how are we going to get updated on this goal that's all i want to know because i mean i see a lot of these things we've talked about at plenty of board meetings in the past probably everything on here regardless besides discipline yeah but i know human resources was a big push anything related to our school improvement
058plan we'll give you updates on that once we release those plans to you and then through at the end of the year we'll give you updates on that but the um the the apac the african-american parent advisory council some of these goals are tied to work we're doing there and we are giving them updates as well on this work so um but i'll definitely be passing along the information to the board don't agree anything else that you think of however you want us to get to that we can we would happily provide you feedback because i know some of those pieces that we're doing for like the re like the principles that we're working on to retain our staff and some of this work with um jessica like those those are big pieces that we're
059we'd happy to be talking about and then i know dr hechowitz could probably write up on the curriculum there's a we could present that if you ask any time we have training built throughout the year this is ongoing throughout the year it's already built in the schedule so for all staff would this be part of our like what a buy yearly goal update that you give us yeah if you can make it part of that i think that would be helpful yep i can do that all right thank you very much thank you thank you okay a couple more items uh item 13 or exhibit 13 is an item e approved the recent board policy updates on the second reading that's uh the press plus exhibit 13. i pulled out the one policy that we
060talked about quite a bit last month that's going to be the next one so if you just look at exhibit 13 it's pretty pretty standard i don't think we had any questions last month so we just need to if you don't have any questions again we just need a motion to approve that one all right anybody have any questions no okay please have a motion to approve on second reading uh the board policy number 107 motion warren and doug now all in favor's emotion is red hi any opposed eyes have it all right so then item f is the policy we spent quite a bit of time talking on and i spoke with our attorney i don't know if you had a chance to read this in the packet or not but i said we
061worked on this together and uh we once we tried to write this policy so that no one can use use our identity our trademarks our graphics uh for personal gain without our approval so is that did that read better now the way you see it just one question bob who would be the person that they would go to for approval without you i think so yeah any questions on that well we inc what we include that in the policy like who to yeah i can add that good idea that's it for that item then so we would if you want to set that for approval kevin we can do that all right anybody have anything else okay please have a motion uh to approve policy to call two two seven zero motion gary and lauren
062all in favor of the most red say aye aye any oppose eyes have it right my last item is the analysis of enrollment i do this each year in september for you um we did bounce a little bit from last year's low we're up to 1716. you see on exhibit 15 kind of the history over since 2006 7. so last year we dipped low with the covid situation but we did see a bounce i will say that i was i thought we'd have a i would have predicted a larger kindergarten class if you go to exhibit i would have predicted a larger kindergarten class this year but it didn't happen so we are at you can see the class sizes for the total class size for each class kindergarten 162 first grade 174 second grade
063176 uh third grade 169 fourth grade 195. on the prior exhibit you see the middle school numbers but this this exhibit on executive 16 lists the class sizes which i think is the first time i can say i feel really good about our class sizes at k4 we are we're closer to our target of 20. so that has taken an investment in more staff to do that but especially in this year we don't want crowded classes this was a year to make that adjustment so um we couldn't make that decision until we knew how many kids were coming back so that's why we had some teachers hired in the middle of summer that's it for my report all right does anybody have questions on the august employment report can i please have a motion to
064approve the august employment report motion second ashton gary bennett yes challenger yes peter yes lions yes ederson yes uh anybody have any questions on the mou between the board and the big hollow federation of teachers for clothing 19 related issues for the school year no no no can i please have a motion to approve the memorandum of understanding between the board of education big house school district and the big hollow federation of teachers for the 19 related issues for the 2021-2022 school year motion second doug and lauren patterson yes yes bennett yes ballinger yes peter yes lions yes anybody have any questions on the budget that we went over earlier no uh can i please have a motion to adopt the 2021-2022 budget promotion [Music] yes peter yes lions yes edison yes question yes uh
065anybody have any questions on the leasing of the additional school bus this was a need that we didn't realize we had with the handicapped uh transportation until august so that's why it was a last minute purchase do we currently have any handicap accessible buses is this in addition to this this is the only one that's the only one we do hire out sometimes we have to hire it out so this will be an opportunity to in the future to not have to do that too anybody else have questions can i please have a motion to approve the lease of an additional school bus for the purpose of transportation of students requiring handicapped accessibility motion second ash and vivian bennett yes peter yes lions yes edison yes yes ballinger yes uh resignation is accepted we accepted
066a resignation from tad gravnick middle school graphic arts teacher effective august 10th we accepted a resignation from amanda masini elementary para effective august 11th we accepted a resignation from carrie miller boys soccer coach effective august 17th we accepted a resignation from renee link transportation and lunch monitor effective august 27th we accepted a resignation from mary lavin holy lunch monitor effective august 23rd we accepted a resignation from gail peterson middle school apparel effective august 23rd and we accepted a resignation from anna marie houghton food service worker effective august 23rd no for your request anybody have any questions on the monthly reports for the board no no the next regularly scheduled board meeting will take place on tuesday october 12 2021 with closed session beginning at 6 p.m an open session beginning immediately following closed session can
067i please have a motion to adjourn gary and lauren all in favor aye aye any oppose eyes have it both meanings adjourn thank you all