October 2025 Committee Meetings of the D128 School Board w/AD

001>>Good evening, everyone. I'm Doug Fleegle. I am the committee chair for the program and personnel committee meeting, and I wanna call our October 14th 2025 meeting to order our start time 5:30. So, with the call to order, join me in the pledge of allegiance. >>I pledge allegiance to the Flag of the United States of America, and to the Republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. >>Thank you. This evening, the review of the agenda, we're gonna have an invitation for public comment with a three minute time limit. That will be followed by discussion items. The first item will be Title IX audit and update on our action plan. We will also get an update on the District 128 equity and inclusion plan. We will discuss employment of

002employees. The next item is educational tour requests. And then we will review future agenda items. So, with that, let's go back to the invitation for public comment. And I want to remind everyone that we will accept public comment related to current agenda topics. And I do ask respectfully that you abide by the limit of 3 minutes. We have two individuals who have signed in for public comment. The first is Socrates Vila. If you give me a minute to get my stopwatch here. Are you ready, Mr. Vila? >>So I know at Vernon Hills you have the big clock, right? So you don't have that here, right? >>No, but as a courtesy, I will let you know when the 3 minute mark is hit. Okay? >>Okay. Go ahead, Mr. Vila. >>Thank you all right there. What you

003do, it doesn't go unnoticed. I know we're all community members and we're neighbors. Some of us we've known each other for awhile. Is the mic on? >>Let's stop and we will grant you our... >>Check one, two. Do I have to get closer? Okay. That was my fault. >>Okay. We'll start all over. >>Okay. >>You ready, Mr. Vila? Let's go again. >>And so I appreciate that you take the time to listen to what we have to say. I think some of the things I like to share with you is things that maybe you didn't think about, right? You have your blinders just like I have my blinders and just kind of throwing it out there and hopefully we can meet halfway in agreement and disagreements. One thing, the last time I was up here was in August

004and there's been a couple meetings after that and this comment is more for the public. We're not here to try to discriminate against anyone. As far as I know, I've lived in the area since 2020, I'm sorry, 2002. And I am a taxpayer, a parent and a neighbor. We're all neighbors, right? We're not gonna agree on things. But we definitely don't want any child that comes into these buildings to feel discriminated against. So just to clear that out, I think this district's always been very welcoming. I have two older ones that graduated. You know, it's been fine. Like I said, since 2002, we moved into the area because we felt this place was welcoming. So the past five years, things have changed, ever since the pandemic, people have been so divided. So I just wanted

005to let people know that where I stand is I don't think there was a problem before with children feeling unwelcome here. I think adults are, again, involved in causing a big divide. The other thing, there was a comment about comparison of the trans community and the Little Rock Nine. You know, there's a member of the community that said that. I think that's not fair for the Little Rock Nine. It's totally two different topics. But if anyone, the Little Rock Nine, if I remember correctly, they were discriminated against because of their skin, you know, their color of their skin. Definitely, again, back to my original point, if anyone's feeling discriminated against in these buildings, I think the school has history of dealing with those things. So I really don't think we wanna go down that rabbit

006hole of trying to compare what happened in the '60s to what's going on today. This is kind of on a different tangent on what's gonna happen either in this meeting or the next meeting where you're gonna go over the metrics or the survey results, I would ask that everyone in the board, when you look at these people presenting these survey results, the first thing they should always start out with is the participation rate. If only 20% of the student body participated, you know, I think you should cut the meeting short and not even go through the results. I think it's very important that you get at least 45% to 50%, I know 50% is asking a lot, but please keep that in mind when Ms. Ames is sharing... I think I have 15, right? Ms.

007Ames is sharing the results. I want everybody to go back to the issues that we had five years ago, which was the Hispanic students are struggling. That's very important to me. We've spent a lot of money on that, and hopefully the metrics or the data today shows that there's been improvements because... >>Mr. Vila, your time is up. >>Because we've hired a couple people and I would love to see the needle move on that. So thank you for your time. I really appreciate you guys hearing me out. Lastly, I will say for Dr. Batson, I really like at the end of meetings... Or no, I'm sorry. Basically after public comment you still invite people to come in and chime in. Some of the voices are more quiet than others and that's giving me opportunities to come

008up here at the end even though I don't sign up here. So really appreciate that. >>Thank you for your time, Mr. Vila. The next person to sign in is Jake Schulman. Mr. Schulman, you'll have three minutes. >>Is there like a timer or anything or no? If not, that's okay. >>I will use my timer if you want me to raise my hand at the two minute mark. I'll certainly do that as a courtesy. >>That's fine. So my name is Jake Schulman. >>If you, one minute please. >>Cool. >>Okay, are you ready Mr. Schulman? Begin please. >>My name is Jake Schulman. Hope everyone is doing well. There was just a coach fired at Deerfield High School for, quote, inappropriately touching a juvenile student according to the Lake and McHenry County Scanner, Riaz Hoveydai of Vernon Hills has been

009charged by police with aggravated battery in a public space for touching a student in the thighs, buttocks and genitalia. So why is this relevant? Well, he used to work here in this district as a coach when I was a student. The only okay part in the story is that he's no longer here, lucky for D128, he switched to Deerfield so they can carry out his touching the students there instead of here. Or maybe this district knew something was up and they told him to leave, but who knows, that's hypothetical and speculative. So let's keep things real, logical and historic, because again, there was another coach when I was a student for high school, went to prison for statutory rape for having sex with underage students. Yet despite the rapes, the school continues to maximize the

010chances of a sexual assault in their locker room, so the policy of, quote, gender identity inclusion forcing healthy students to refer to those who dissociate from biological reality to do the same by making them think that whatever someone identifies as, which can literally be anything, is valid. These kids do not need to go crazy just because the adults have, just because one person has. And they see through it. Here now today the kids are far more sane and far more mature than the adults. Protect the students. Stop hiring freaks. Stop making the children go insane on behalf of the hallucinatory and deranged who don't know what they are in terms of biological sex. A diagnosis for gender dysphoria is included within the DSM-5 published by the American Psychiatric Association. So it's like what are you

011gonna do? Continue exploiting the empathy and good manners of these young ladies and gentlemen, the students of the HHS and LHS by making them psychologically dissociate from reality, which is the definition of insanity, or solve this simple problem, which is a huge stain on your lives and this district's history? It's time for the community, parents and the teachers who hate this board, and that's a fact based on their no confidence vote in it last year in our communities to rise up to dismantle these delusions and reclaim our schools as places for truth, safety and protection for all children before another innocent life is shattered by the madness we've allowed to grow and fester. Nothing but safety and quality education actually matters. Everything else is covert ideology. Get these obsessive organizations that have nothing to do

012with the school or rather rationalizing identity crisis and sexuality and eroticism out. They serve no purpose but to advance their own agenda through indoctrination, which is opposite to education. Indoctrination shackles the mind's ability to learn and shrouds truth in shadows, bringing sanity into the abyss of delusion and total insanity. (audience applauding) >>Thank you, Mr. Schulman. And that's all of the signatures I have on the sheet. is there anyone else who... (people faintly speaking) >>Is it open now to other people? >>One minute. I just wanna make sure we're fair and consistent through everything. Does the proceeding allow for someone to speak? Okay, we will... >>Can my daughter speak next and have her three minutes as well? >>We will give... Just for clarification, you have three minutes and then do you have someone else speaking? Okay. >>Yeah,

013someone else. >>Okay. And... >>My name is... >>Can you share your name? >>Oh yeah. Hi, my name is Kristen Christiansen. I have four kids, two that went through LHS and two that currently are in LHS. There is absolute truth that cannot be changed. For example, I could say I'm a 25 year old Hispanic male. But as you can see, I'm an old white female. I could tan cut my hair and dress to look like a male. I could remove my breasts and buy a penis. But when I die, my autopsy would read female. To the absolute truth that I am a female. Crazy I even have to explain this simple fact tonight. As I tell my kids, you cannot be anything you wanna be. That is the truth as well. If you aren't tall enough or

014athletic enough, you can't get a D1 scholarship to play basketball, just because you wanna play D1 basketball. To tell children they can be whatever they want is completely ridiculous. If you are born a male, you cannot have a baby. This is a fact. No matter how you dress, every cell in your body is coded at birth. LHS policy states that a male can go into a female bathrooms, locker rooms, just that they feel like it basically. Just because you feel a certain way doesn't make it the truth or mean you have the right to violate people who don't feel the same way. There is a transgender bathroom slash locker room that was built for these individuals. They have a safe space. They should have a safe space. Just like my daughter should have had a

015safe space. But unfortunately last year the school allowed a male who looked like a male, who identified as a female sometimes and as a male other times. Conveniently he identified as a female when it was time to change and he had the opportunity to view other girls changing in the locker room including my daughter. Just like they have their safe space, their transgender bathroom changing area, my daughter's safe space should have been the female locker room. However, LHS is so concerned about denying the truth they allow this to happen repeatedly. What is next? Can a 40 year old male enroll at LHS as a 15 year old girl? I mean, if he feels like one. If this same 40 year old started to date another child who is 15, is he no longer a pedophile

016because he identifies as a 15 year old? Is there no truth that exists? Then this example is very real and very scary. Your policies pervert it and taking away my daughter's rights to a safe space. No one is taking away their rights to choose whatever identity they want. But the truth will always exist, no matter how you distort it. You can't change the biological fact of who you are. Thank you. (audience applauding) My daughter is gonna speak next. >>Thank you. Before you begin, will you be kind enough to identify yourself? And then I'll have you begin, you'll be granted three minutes, okay? >>Okay. I'm Kelsey Christensen. >>I'm Josie Wolford. I have a question. We're both... We both had different parts in this, but they go together. Do you think she could have three and I

017could have three to speak both of our parts? >>As a courtesy, we will extend for you to have three minutes and you to have three minutes, but then we'll do our best to stay consistent and fair for everyone. Okay? One minute, please. Go ahead. Begin. >>I do believe God made us all equal, I do believe that each individual has rights, but some rights aren't as justifying to others. If born a male feels like they should be a woman, that is not my business, nor will I shame them and they should feel safe in their own skin. But what about the people who no longer feel safe showing their skin? I understand that some transgender people truly believe that it's necessary, but in this world at the same time there are predators, rapists and cruel people.

018Many cases of women being raped are real and exist. I'm not calling out a certain group, a group of people, but people do tend to be ignorant to real problems and not want to accept how sick people can be, turning a blind eye wanting to believe that horrible things aren't as common as they are... Around 1,870 women and 250 men are sexually assaulted each day in this country alone. So let me ask again, is it unlikely? My brain isn't fully developed. Neither are the students I'm surrounded by. How can you make a life-changing decision being this young? Not just children though, even adults that just proves how much worse a kid's going to construct ideas. It's no longer being equal, it's injecting fear into people's minds. The majority of students I personally speak to didn't

019even know this was allowed or a rule. Last year I was a sophomore at LHS. I walked into the girls' locker room to change for gym class. I was astonished. This male was coming to change in the locker room. I was not told by anyone that works at the school that this was happening. Later, me and a few girls went to talk to the school and was told that this male was in a comfortable spot for him to change. And that we girls were allowed to change locker rooms because we felt uncomfortable. I was unaware this was allowed. Seeing a male where my body goes exposed, where I'm vulnerable, scared me. As well as other females that had to go through it. >>If the population of transgender people is growing in size and being more

020acknowledged, why can't we give them something of their own? Their own space. This keeps everyone safe, and if the rule is so protected, why not put in extra work to make it even better and give each gender their own space if you believe that other genders should have their own areas? If I walked down the hall into the boys' bathroom, would you look at me weird? Would you say to yourself, I'm not a boy? I want you to honestly answer that question to yourself. I'd assume in this room there are yeses and there are also a few noes. And why is that? Am I not allowed to throw around my identity? It seems pretty easy to people walk around like they have a sticker slapped on their forehead that says something that they aren't or

021they are. It magically grants them all they need. And the request that get approved also can be used as a jump ahead to be more dangerous and harmful if it's granted to the wrong person. But it's so easy to make the switch gender claim. How are we supposed to see real versus fake? How do we know who's being serious? Majority of the time we don't. Because who's gonna say, no you're not. This isn't your identity. You just have to wait and see. It wouldn't be right to have suspicion because where's the fairness in that? You don't know what is premeditated in someone's mind before it's too late and the damage is done. The chances are never zero. While it might not happen as often, it is possible. Rape is real. Rape will ruin you. Rape

022will change who you are. I would rather have these people have their own space than risk any of my peers experiencing these possibilities. This isn't the only place assault happens, but why not subtract one of the many places it does? I was taught over and over as long as I can remember school is a safe place. But in full honesty, I'm not convinced because of these things that happen because of these possibilities that the school gives people. Does my opinion matter though? Will the things change for the group of people that agree with me or are we not deserving of that? Thank you. (audience applauding) >>Thank you for your comments. And as a point of record and as the committee chair, I do want you to know that we wanna be as consistent, as fair

023as possible for all voices to be heard equally. We'll take one more public comment and then we'll move forward with the rest of the agenda. >>Thank you very much. >>Will you be kind enough to introduce yourself and give me a minute? You will have three minutes to share your comments. >>Thank you. >>And you are? >>Suzanne Newman. >>Thank you, Ms. Newman. >>Thanks. >>Go ahead. Begin. >>So hi, I'm Sue, a district 128 resident and taxpayer for over 30 years. I just wanted to relate an anecdote. Two weeks ago I met three people who had recently moved to our community. There was a married couple from Tulsa, Oklahoma and a single mom from Bloomington-Normal area. I hardly need to say that they did not move here to get a lower cost of living. All three told me that

024they left their hometowns because they were afraid of the white Christian nationalist attitudes taking over their areas. Though all three are white heterosexual church goers, they did not want to live in a place where only people who looked like them, loved like them and worshiped like them would be afforded full human rights. I believe these newcomers reflect the attitude of the majority of district 128 residents. Voters expressed similar tolerant values in this April's local election and last November's national election. As you consider a candidate to fill the open board seat, please choose a person who will work with you to uphold the welcoming and open minded character of our community. Thank you for listening and thank you very much for your service in these challenging times. >>Thank you for your comments. >>You're welcome. (audience applauding)

025>>Okay, that is going to conclude our public comment period. And again, thank you for all the participants and thank you for helping us to be as consistent, fair, and welcoming through that time. The next item on the agenda for discussion, we are going to have an update to the action plan of our Title IX audit. And that will be presented by Mr. Briant Kelly and Ms. Elizabeth Kelly. >>And I'd like to welcome Elizabeth Kelly from Kriha Boucek. She is one of the attorneys at their firm and worked on the audit from the beginning for us. So I wanna provide a update on the action plan. And again, the action plan was attached to the board agenda and the public should have been able to see that ahead of time. And same with the board. And

026so just real quickly, again, we reviewed the action plan starting back in January of 2025. We presented an update to the final action plan on March of 2025. Then we presented an update to this board. So there is a little bit of change of a board during that time, but to this board on June 9th of 2025. And now we're presenting another update to our action plan to you this evening. So some of the things, this action plan update really focuses on the booster clubs at Libertyville High School. Currently at Libertyville High School, there are eight separate parent booster organizations. There are also coach-led fundraisers in our athletic programs, which is very also similar to, Vernon Hills has some coach-led fundraisers at their school also. So during the last kind of the update, what we

027did over the summer is we collected bylaws from the parent booster clubs and financials from their booster clubs. In our audit of this information, there is some missing information, complete information from the bylaws. And so one of the things that we want to look ahead, and that was something that's presented in our action plan, is that we want our booster club, parent booster clubs at Libertyville High School to make sure that they have updated bylaws and submit standardized financial reports. So part of our oversight of these organizations is that, much like what we do with our coach-led fundraisers, if I am a head coach here at Libertyville High School and I wanna do a fundraiser, I submit our fundraising activity to, in this case would be our athletic director, that's reviewed and processed and approved.

028So moving forward, we need to have a little bit more oversight over our parent booster clubs, in particular into some of the fundraising and the spending. So if a parent booster club right now is doing fundraising, they will have to submit the fundraising activities for approval, much like a coach would through that process that would get approved and then they can go ahead with their fundraising. And that also the organizations would meet yearly with our principal, our athletic director, and kind of review the processes of the fundraising, making sure their bylaws are up to date, and following some of the oversight on spending. So that's what we wanna give an update on our action plan. And I know, this time I'm gonna turn it over to Elizabeth. >>Yeah, so I've worked with Bryant, I guess

029for over a year now on the Title IX audits things. Most recently it was reviewing the bylaws that were submitted and the financials from the different booster clubs at LHS. Overall, I would just use the word fairly unremarkable and I mean that as a compliment and there was nothing that stood out to be a big concern. I'll echo Bryant's comments. Maybe some of the bylaws were outdated or could have been a little better, some of the financials maybe could have been kept in a way that was easier to follow, but by no means is that a violation or an issue. So I think as a starting point as far as wanting to have some more oversight over how the booster clubs are operating, that's probably a good option. It also is more consistent with your

030Board Policy 890, which talks about booster clubs and things that should be in their bylaws. And so it operates as a really good foundation for the oversight that we provided. I think also one thing we've talked a lot about is just like the financial piece and booster contributions. And in preparation for today, I went back and looked through the audit and then I also took a look at the regulations for Title IX again just to feel sharp. And the one that keeps coming back to me is one that we focus on a lot when it comes to financials. And in summary, what it says is basically nothing. It doesn't give us a lot of guidance on what it means to have equal spending or how money should be spent in athletics. And so we're forced

031to look at our best options and hope for equality, mostly equity, I would say. We're not looking for dollar for dollar spending. We're looking for, are the opportunities for kids substantially similar? Are the facilities that they're participating in? Are the equipment that are being provided the experience overall? And at times, booster clubs can impact that, right? But I would also say that there's elements of booster clubs that go beyond athletics. Sometimes the booster funds are going towards things that make the experience better for fans or for parents who want to go cheer on their kids. And so I think we also have to be able to parse through some of that when we're looking at the finances. But overall, that's all just to say that I think Briant and I know he's worked with Mark

032and they have a good plan for what oversight will look like from the district level. And that is having a better idea of what money booster clubs are spending and where it's being spent. And that allows you guys to be more accountable for making sure that the programs, not just, you know, men's basketball versus girls basketball, boys' soccer versus girls' soccer, but generally boys' sports versus girls' sports holistically, and that the opportunities are substantially similar. You know, a couple questions that I had had to do with is it better to have one booster club versus multiple? And I can say that there's not a better option versus a more preferred option. It's really just is the oversight being provided adequate? And I think that you guys have a great plan moving forward for that. I

033can answer any questions you guys have, but I guess to wrap up, I think the plan moving forward seems really sound and you guys are in a good place. >>By the way, do you mind if I call you Elizabeth? >>Oh, no, please. >>Committee, are there any questions or matters for discussion? Go ahead, Wes. >>Go ahead, Wes. >>Who's ultimately responsible for overseeing all of this and for the oversight? >>Yeah, absolutely. So I guess like legally speaking, the school district overall should have an idea of how much money booster clubs are pumping into programs just for sake of ensuring they're like not behind your backs if you are, without you guys knowing that certain funds are being spent. You're not required to know how much they spend on everything or to independently audit their finances, but for

034purposes of making sure your own, for your own, I don't know, comfort level as a district that you're complying with Title IX, having some district understanding what funds are being spent on, I mean, I know some examples that were given is like they're providing equipment for the team. So, you know, to use a hypothetical, if a booster club for a basketball team was providing some type of equipment that allowed students to shoot a basketball and it passes it back to you, it's like a shot return. You would probably want to know as a district that that money is being spent and what it's going towards. But by no means are you required to independently audit every penny that's being spent by the booster clubs. It's just more for understanding where it's going and contributing to

035your programs. >>Okay, I, just another quick question. So we're one district with two high schools. What is our responsibility to make sure that we're looking at both schools? I mean, ultimately our students are D128 students. >>Sure. >>First and foremost. >>No, absolutely. I mean, it is... If someone were to look at District 128 overall, they would ask, they would look at every student, whether they're Vernon Hills or Libertyville, but they should, you should also... So I guess the answer to the question, it's both. You should look at each individual school as an entity, because that's where the services are being provided to the students and how they can relate to one to one. But holistically, it's important to be mindful that the experiences at Vernon Hills are, you know, for females versus males are similar to

036those for Libertyville. I would just say that probably financially it's going to look more at a school level than at a district level. But it also probably depends on if a complaint is filed, what they're alleging the violation is, if they think that female sports at Vernon Hills are not being adequately funded as compared to male sports at Libertyville, I would say that, I don't know that that's an easy comparison, but OCR might take a look at that, but I think they will look at it more of a school level than a district wide level. >>Thank you. >>Yeah, absolutely. >>Rahul. >>So these booster clubs, I understand many of them, especially the parent run one, they're basically independently run as of now. Right? And our oversight is relatively limited at this point on those booster clubs.

037And the one in Hillside has their own booster clubs. The Libertyville has their own booster clubs. They're raising their own funds that they deem appropriate. So my question is, obviously, both the schools have similar types of sports activities. Let's just go with volleyball or basketball or something. And there would be a desire to ensure that both the schools' branches have same access to equipment and facilities at its face value. So how do we ensure in this plan that we make that happen? We don't have, we should think about it. And my bigger question is, you mentioned, Elizabeth, that maybe they should be one booster club versus multiple and there's no right to be. But is there an opportunity where all the booster clubs fall under an umbrella of oversight by the parents who are coming

038from these different booster clubs and providing them the board an opportunity to directly communicate with them to say, okay, tell us about the booster club activities compiled into one. So we are not asking individual booster clubs, but we have an umbrella booster club oversight that the board can communicate with to get a better picture of how things are and that will also provide an opportunity, I think, for those booster clubs to come together and see what is going on with each of them and provide a better mechanism of how funds are used, how funds are distributed and so on. So that could be something worthwhile exploring. >>Yeah, I can just say that if that's something that the board is interested in, I think by all means, like that's something that's possible if you wanna create

039some type of committee that was like overseeing the booster clubs independently. You know, like, you know, like the booster clubs are independent entities. They have no technical affiliation with the school. And that's for your own sake, positive. Right? They're their own 501(c)(3)s. And so, I mean, it wouldn't be a independent booster club that would be created to oversee them because you would wanna have some type of school tie. But by all means, like you guys could create some type of committee that brings everyone together to discuss things, and I think that would be doable. >>Thank you. >>I have two questions. The first is, Elizabeth, I believe you used the term unremarkable in your findings. >>Yeah. >>Does that mean that overall we should feel comfortable in being compliant or is there a fringe area of noncompliance

040where we may be exposed to risk or liability? >>Yeah, so I would say for the most part, you know, there was nothing that was, that stood out to me is concerning. I mean, if you were to look at almost every sport across the board, the amount of dollars being spent was pretty similar. Obviously, there's always gonna be discrepancies in that some sports have more athletes that are on them, so they're gonna have more costs. Some sports require more equipment, so that equipment is more expensive. But just kind of taking, you know, a wide lens view of things, not much stood out. I mean, I don't think it's any secret that the football team has more funding here from private donors, if you will, the booster club. That is true in, I'm gonna guess, 90% or

041more high schools across the country that offer the sport of football. In part, it's just because it has more student athletes. In part, it's because it is the most popular sport in America. And I think, I don't have data to back that up personally, but I think just by turning on your TV on Thursday through Sunday, you can probably see that as the NFL and college football dominates TV. So, yeah, there is more money being spent on football-related things. The difficult thing in analyzing whether that's a, quote, unquote, Title IX violation is that we don't really know. There's no law that says one sport can't just spend more money. We just know that we have some guidance that says schools need to be mindful that the money that's being spent on certain sports doesn't then

042elevate that experience or their equipment or things so it's far superior than others. The other thing that I think is difficult, especially when we talk about football, is that the difference in funding has to be based on sex. And I don't know that people can articulate that the fact that more people are donating money or contributing private funds to things related to the football program is because it's a male sport. I think part of it has to do with popularity. So I don't wanna sit here and tell you that I think that you have no violations at all because I don't have a magic crystal ball. I can tell you that the most recent guidance from the federal government suggests that they're not too worried about federal dollars being spent. Sorry, I said federal. I

043meant private dollars being spent on athletics and that I think it was late January, if not early February, they basically rescinded earlier Department of Education guidance that said, I'm gonna quote myself here, "If money from private sources ends up creating a disparity in an athletic program, the outside money could trigger a school's Title IX obligations." And the current administration said, no, that's rescinded. We don't agree with that. >>So what I hear you saying then as a board member concerned about being compliant is in our current state, we are, from a visual standpoint, compliant in our booster activities. >>I think more likely than not, yes. I can't promise you that because OCR and the Department of Veterans and independent entities and they might come in and say that there's too much money being spent in one

044place than another. But my gut feeling is that I don't see anything that clearly screams off the page that you have an issue. >>And the question is being posed from a risk or liability perspective. So thank you. One other question and then we'll, unless there's other comment. You mentioned the term donor or contributor, and this may bleed over into IRS regulations and so forth. But if a donor restricts funds for a particular purpose, do we have the arbitrary right to move those funds elsewhere? >>Yeah, that's a great question. And I think that the answer, and I don't have the entirety of your board policy in front of me, but I do believe there is board policy that actually addresses this a little bit. And I apologize. I don't have the number right in front of

045me, but it would be under Article 8, if you will, or Section 8. And if... You can say, we... Let me back up. Let's say someone says this has to go to the girls volleyball program. If you realize that in doing so it's going to create a Title IX issue, you can say, I'm sorry, we actually can't accept that for those things. Or can we work with you to find it, a different place to put it? It's a little bit different in that you're not a 501(c)(3). And there are, like you said, IRS regulations that have to do with, you know, when a private donor says this is what I'm giving money to and how you can manage their money. But as a, you know, a public entity, you have a little bit more say

046in where that money goes and you can work with the donors. >>Thank you. Anyone else have any comments or questions? >>I just have one clarifying question. And I think I heard the answer to this. It's possible that there could be a Title IX violation if, in fact, some booster organization or some independent donor decides to give a tremendous amount of funding to one program over another that puts disparity between those programs. And so it would be our obligation then to try to fix that disparity in some way? >>Yeah, I think that's a great way of putting it. And I can give kind of an example that is very vivid and isn't something that's actually going on here, but just makes it more clear. If a private group of citizens said that they were going to

047donate a brand new, you know, turf baseball field and they were going to fund a baseball field and they were only going to allow the baseball team to use it, the school would have some pressure then to analyze your softball field and determine whether or not it is adequate based on the facilities that were gonna be provided for your baseball team. Does that automatically mean that you'd have to go fund a new turf softball field? Not necessarily. It would depend on the quality of the field that you have in place. But potentially that would be you as the public school looking to see how you have to elevate another program because the private funds had been accepted to elevate a male program. >>But we also have control over accepting those gifts as well? >>Absolutely. >>So

048if there's a situation, using that as an example, and there was an extreme discrepancy, somebody was going to give a tremendous amount of money to one and not the other, we could go back and negotiate and say, we're really grateful that you decide you wanna offer this funding for this program, but is there a way we could spread that and make this more equitable? >>Yeah, no, I absolutely think so. You can say, why don't you donate too? Or you can talk to them about how we had to disperse that. Yeah. >>So that's within our, you know, we can accept or not accept? >>Absolutely. Yes. >>Thank you. >>Okay. Anyone else? Thank you, Elizabeth. Thank you. >>Thank you, guys. >>Thank you, Elizabeth. >>We will move on to the next agenda item. That's District 128 Student Life Skills

049and Well-being Survey Report and our presenter will be Ms. Charlotte Eames. Am I saying that correctly? Now he's logging her slides in. >>All right. As we hand off the clicker there, I think that's the technical term, just wanna introduce Ms. Charlotte Eames. She's our director of data and assessment for District 128. Board, as you are aware, part of our DARING mission is to not just educate our students for grades and test scores, but to also make sure that our students are healthy and happy and high performing in all aspects of their life. So student health and well-being and resilience are built in and very important parts of our DARING mission and our strategic plan. So as such each year we measure our student health and well-being in a number of different ways. One of the

050primary ways that we do that is with our student life skills and well-being measure. This is a survey that we've given over the past couple years. Charlotte and the data team for District 128 help coordinate this and she is here tonight to share the most recent updates with us. So, Charlotte. >>Yes, thank you. Good evening. Thank you for having me. I want to first address the name of the survey because if you've seen this presentation before, we used to call this SEL survey. So I want to just note that the organization that we work with to administer this, which is called Panorama Education, they changed the name of the survey this year. But this is a survey we have been consistently giving each fall for the past four years and so it's basically the same

051survey with a new name. That said, there were a few changes to the survey this year, which we'll talk about on the next slide. The board packet contained a full report. So I'm not gonna go into as much detail on everything, but to hit some of the highlights with the presentation. So we gave the survey on August 21st. That was the ninth day of school. And we like to give this early because we use it partially as a screening measure to find any students who need support. So we give it as early as we can. This year we had an 89% response rate between the two schools. So really good response rates. Thank you. So this slide... Nope. Could be me. Okay. Okay. I'm gonna hold it right here. That seems to work. Thank you.

052So this year there were a couple of changes made to the survey and every year it's part of our practice to look at the survey and understand is this measuring what we want it to measure. So there were some things that changed. This slide goes over that very briefly. Okay. All right. We're just gonna leave that up there. So there were 10 topics and no changes to half of them and changes to the other half. Some of those changes were Panorama's changes. That's one reason we hired them, they are researchers and they, as part of what they do, they re-norm and relook at their questions every few years. So some changes were made by them and some changes were made by our team in looking at what is it that we want to measure and

053making sure that we are asking the most relevant and the most actionable questions that we can. So there's a lot more detail about those changes in the written report. This chart shows the percentage of students who answered favorably. So you're seeing three colors per bar. The green represents what Panorama designates as favorable responses. The yellow are approaching favorable. So generally that's going to be like a five choice Likert scale question that's going to generally be the middle response. And then the pink is the not favorable responses. So you can see that there for the 10 topics that were given on this survey. We are keeping our eye on growth mindset. Growth mindset kind of sticks out on this slide. It's the third bar over. One thing that happened with this topic this year is Panorama

054changed the questions quite a bit. And from the conversations we've had with teachers and students, we don't believe our students interpreted those questions the same way they have interpreted past versions of the questions. So certainly, and again, the report goes much deeper into this with examples. But certainly we want to keep our eye on growth mindset. It's certainly something we want to make sure we are instilling in our students. And so we are aware of that topic being as low as it is. But we also don't, we aren't confident that that really reflects our students' perceptions of their own growth mindset as the questions changed so drastically. This chart shows the national percentile rankings of eight of the survey topics. These were the eight we were able to get this data for. Again, the growth

055mindset is sticking out. But this, and this is based only on percent favorable. So if you're thinking about the previous slide, only what we saw in the green portions of the bars. The national percentile rankings help us to put the topics in, and their percent favorability in context. So a great example here is emotion regulation. It had a percent favorable of 68%. That doesn't seem all that high. But when we look at it here, we see that that is in the 99th percentile for how those questions in that topic are answered by students who take this survey throughout the nation. So it gives us a little bit more context for what is expected in a certain topic. And then as we have now given this for four years, very consistently, we have our change over

056time data for four years. So this is showing for the topics on this survey as well as some topics that we have changed a little bit. So we mostly see some positive growth here. It's really exciting to have done this consistently for a number of years and be able to see how things have changed over time. The learning strategies and perseverance topics where you only see blue bars, those were new topics this year. So we don't have change over time data for those yet. And then at the far right side of the chart, the support and well-being topic is new and it replaced the supportive relationship topic. So you see that doesn't have a blue bar. They are not similar enough that we want to really compare them to each other, but I wanted to

057show both because that was a change that we made on the survey this year. So the big question is what are we doing with all this information that we have? What now? What's next? We have all of this data on our students and now what are we doing with it? And this year we have grown and enhanced many of the things we are doing. But we have a protocol for this survey that we conduct immediately after it is administered. And the very first step is that our learning support teams receive the raw data and they are able to review it at the student level. This is an open survey. It is not anonymous. We can connect student responses directly to those students. And so the LSTs review student data, both the Likert scale questions and

058the free response questions. They're looking for students who need support, whose responses indicate that they need support and they begin meeting with those students almost immediately after the survey is given. Panorama gives us this lovely color coded help. So for the Likert scale questions it helps us to identify students who need the most support. So we use that as a bit of a way to kind of triage what students need from us and our LSTs dig into that data and start working with students immediately. From there the data team does an analysis of the survey data on an aggregate level. And we do data presentations for our teachers to go over the results. We also then connect results to numerous teams. So that is everything from our district and building leadership teams, our health and

059well being, a strategic planning team and our MTSS teams are a few examples of teams who then review the aggregate data and they're looking for different things depending on what that team's goal is. Data specific to their work and data that informs the work they're doing. And then finally our principals meet with student focus groups. And this helps us to gain some insight beyond the numbers. So when we give data presentations we're often asked, well, what were the students thinking? What does that mean? And we don't know unless we ask them. So our principals meet with student groups and this year's focus groups gave us some really impactful insights. We certainly asked the students about those growth mindset questions and how they interpreted them. We asked them about what they think of the survey and

060whether they think it's relevant to them. They give us honest, open and very, very good feedback that helps us to continuously improve this survey and to make sure that we understand the data we're getting back. So some of the things students talked about in these groups this year, their life outside of school, the balance in their classes between spending time on academics and building relationships, classroom environment and their engagement, perceptions of and attitudes toward the survey itself. Students were very honest with us. And suggestions for survey improvement, how we can continue making it more relevant for them. So that's our basic protocol for after this survey has been administered. And I want to, we're taking that a couple of steps further this year, which I'm really excited about. I wanna point out a couple of

061important data points from this year's survey. So one of the things that we are focused on this year is our ready to learn initiatives and there's a data point from the survey that points directly to that work. So there's a question on the survey you can see here during the past two weeks, how often did you pay attention in class? So on last year's survey, 72% of our students responded almost all the time or a lot of the time, 72%. That's pretty good. Well, this year it was 89%. So we saw a 17% increase in this question pointing to our ready to learn initiatives of doing something. So this is just one data point. We have a lot more to look at in regard to that, but this is a promising data point for those

062particular initiatives. And then something we added to the survey this year that has been really impactful data for us is this question to our students. Do you have at least one trusted adult at school? And the students said, 86%, yes. And 14% said no. So really good, those 86%. What's going on with those noes? So we're digging into that and there's more to come. I do want to note that 43% of those noes are ninth graders and this was given on the ninth day of school. So our hope is they didn't have a trusted adult yet. So there will be more to come on this. We're discussing ways that we can continue monitoring this and we're doing a lot with this data. I'm going to go into that a little bit more on the next

063slide. So some further analysis that is ongoing and as we continue to improve our survey processes and as each year we do this and know kind of what to look for and what we want to get from it, we're expanding how we can analyze this and how we can use it. So the trusted adult question has been one of the most insightful questions this year. And so a couple of things are happening with that data. First of all, teachers, students were asked after do you have one, who is it? If they said yes, who is it? Who is your trusted adult? Many of our students gave a categorical answer. All my teachers, my counselors, but some students named names. So those teachers, those counselors, those coaches, whoever those people were, they are being made aware

064that a particular student or students named them as a trusted adult so that they can continue building that relationship and making that connection. And then on the other side of that the noes. So we were able to analyze all of the students who said no to that question and we have informed their coaches, their counselors, their teachers, any academic club sponsors that they have in hopes that one of those people will be able to make that connection and be that trusted adult for those students. So we have more work to do here. We hope to monitor this and continue to analyze it so we may ask this question again as the year goes on. But that's been a really exciting development and we've learned a lot about our system from asking that question. A couple

065other quick areas. We are also further analyzing DARING attributes and employability skills. So we want to be producing graduates who are DARING. That's our mission. But we've never had a great way to measure whether we are meeting that. So this year we did a study and were able to determine a number of questions on the survey that were already part of the survey that can connect to those DARING attributes. And so we're currently undergoing that analysis to try to determine how our students are doing on being dreamers and doers, on being aware, et cetera. So that's a really exciting new step for us to analyze beyond the survey itself. And the exact same thing is happening for employability skills. So ISBE has employability competencies, many of which match directly to topics on this survey. And

066so again we are doing some further analysis to look at those topics in relation to employability skills. And this especially for our Explore Multiple Paths Strategic Plan team, we are looking at this data to help us prioritize what benchmarks and activities we need to develop as we continue to develop our DARING journey and our career pathway development for our students in that Explore Multiple Paths band. So this, all of the things you see here, this analysis is ongoing. We are continuing to dig in and to learn more. And often the more we dig in, the more we want to know, so there may be more to come. But that is where we are right now. So thank you. Are there any questions? >>Thank you, Charlotte. Committee members, do we have any questions or comments? >>So

067this is done annually and there's no follow-up to that? >>Correct. Right now we are doing this once per year in the fall. We have talked about doing a second one, maybe right before winter break. We also hear from our students that they feel over-surveyed. So it's balancing. We want that information, but it's balancing their feeling of not wanting to take so many surveys. And this is a pretty long one. So it's balancing that with getting the information we need. So it is something we've talked about. It's not completely off the table, but we will only do it once this year. >>I have a question. Again, very useful data. Two things though, that over-survey that you brought up, and I think it's a very important thing for us to be aware of that once surveys keep

068coming, the timing of the surveys will dictate how students actually just put responses. I do that many times myself, put four or five out without even reading the question. So we have to be very careful. However, my point was this survey is administered on the ninth day. Did I hear that right? >>Yes. >>I think there might be an opportunity for us to explore it a little further down. I understand the intervention is a goal here, but giving it for incoming students just out of their summer break... They're excited, they're ready for the things and willing to take the challenge, and the survey may not necessarily reflect the true challenges the students may encounter. So personally, I think this October time window, when among two months have passed by, will give you a more realistic picture

069of what is going to happen and how students are now feeling the stress, feeling the joys and the sorrows that come with high school education. So timing, I think, may be changed. >>Yes. Thank you. And those are conversations that we continue to have. But thank you. I appreciate that perspective very much. >>I would think maybe even just the incoming freshman class may be delayed. I know it'd be tough to do surveys in two different days, but I would think there'd be a lot different feeling for them, if, you know- >>Yes. >>I have one other question, too. Could you talk a little bit about this growth mindset? What exactly is that? And what are the questions kind of? >>Yes. So, again, this was a Panorama change, and that's part of what they do. But the way

070that the questions were worded really felt different. So in the past, the questions were worded as, how much control do you have over, and then there's numerous things, how well you behave in school, whether you can become more intelligent. So it asked that, how much control do you have? And on this year's survey, the questions were simplified to say something like, how much can you improve your behavior in school? And so even mid-survey, we had students who raised their hands and said, well, I can't improve my behavior. I am behaving the absolute best I can, so I can't improve my behavior. And so that told us right away that at least some of our students were not interpreting the question to be asking them about what control they had over their behavior, but whether they

071had room to improve their behavior. So that felt very much like two very different lines of questioning, and we did follow up with more teachers and with students, and that seems to be the way that a lot of them leaned. And so while it's valuable information, it's not quite measuring what it has measured in the past. And so we just wanna be cautious about, it looks like we dipped a lot, but our students have interpreted those questions differently. And there are more examples in the report as well, if you wanna look at that in more detail. >>Yeah, I would just like to echo Rahul and Nina shared is the timing of that survey. That's a daunting ask of freshmen coming into high school. And also one other thing that caught, obviously we wanna glean as

072much data as possible, but if the timing coupled with a lengthy survey, really what is the credibility of the responses if it is a survey of significant length? So those are my two suggestions. >>Thank you. >>Okay, the other piece I just would like to highlight for the board that I think is important is this is one piece of a larger MTSS system that has been built throughout our school districts. So when we think sometimes of MTSS, we think just of academics, but when you're truly working as an MTSS system, you're integrating your students' social emotional health and behavior, as well as your academics. And what we've got here is a kind of process where our system is assessing behaviors and characteristics that we've identified as being very important to our students' outcomes. And we're seeing

073then each year we review this data and we look and say, what does this mean for our students and how do we as a system need to respond to get better outcomes? And one of the things that I think is important for the board to recognize is when we look at change over time, these are the same groups of students... We're losing the seniors each year, but we're cycling in the freshmen. So unlike test data, where you're looking at a distinct group of juniors from one year to the next, with test fluctuations that may go up and down because they're different groups of kids, these are largely the same students. So when we see getting healthier and getting more positive in terms of outcomes, we can also see that the students that we're working with

074are responding to the initiatives and the efforts that our staff is making in better and more positive ways. >>Thank you. >>I just have a quick comment. I do wanna say on a positive note, the trusted adult data is trending in the right direction because it looks like the longer that our students are in the building, the more connection they've made with a trusted adult, which I like. Have you been able, like with the 12th graders, only 49 students, so it's a smaller set... Have you looked at those numbers? Is there a mobility issue or are they maybe students who have moved in the district? Because obviously we'd like to get that number as close to zero as possible. So have you looked at that yet? >>That is ongoing. Yes, we're doing a lot of analysis

075with this. So the first step was trying to reach out to adults who those students are connected to. That was the first step. And yes, we have talked about further analysis. Transfer students, that's a big question that we have. And what else might we see as a trend when we dig into who those students are? So yes, that is ongoing. >>Okay, anyone else? Thank you, Charlotte. Thank you, Tom. >>Thank you. >>We will move on to the next item on the agenda, and that is an update on the District 128 Equity and Inclusion Policy. Mr. Larry Varn. >>And I think Charlotte's gonna stay as well for this one, because of some of the data that we have. So, we're gonna switch over our slides. >>Should have brought our elevator music. >>Thank you so much, Eli. Okay,

076so when we talk about equity and inclusion in District 128, it's important for the board to understand what that work looks like in our district because that is a topic of discussion around the country. And when we talk about it here, though, we're really talking about the idea of do all of our students believe that they can be successful and that we believe in their ability to achieve at high levels. We also talk about do each and every one of our students at our school truly feel they belong with us in our school. We then talk about identifying what are the barriers that might be holding some of our students back that are within our control. And when we identify those barriers, how can we eliminate them from our system so that more students can

077have access and be successful in our classes. And then finally, we talk about building our school and our school culture around student voice and experience. So while those topics of equity and inclusion are being discussed nationwide, in District 128, it's about belief, belonging, removing and breaking down barriers and building around student voice. And this is not just words for us, this is actions. And so our board historically through the policies that we have asks us each year to measure the efforts that we're making as a staff to live that work and to ensure that all students believe, belong and that barriers are removed. So we do that in a number of ways and we measure different demographics throughout the year. We measure things like gender, we measure things like students with IEPs, students who are

078EL and speak a different language. And tonight... And also of course, income levels of students. And we look and disaggregate performance similar to the way you talked about with the survey. You have a piece of data, you say 49 senior students are not connected to an adult or reporting they're not connected to adult. Who are those students? What are their characteristics? What do we know about them? Tonight, what Larry and Charlotte are gonna report out on is our equity and inclusion policy update, where we as a district take a moment to look at how just some of our students' racial demographics impact different outcomes across our system. And this is something that our policy asks us to update the board annually about. And Larry and Charlotte are updating the board on four of the commitments

079that District 128 makes to this work. And so with that, I'm gonna turn it over to Mr. Varn and Ms. Eames. >>Thank you, Dr. Calintas. Good evening board and community. Again, my name is Larry Varn and I'm the director of equity and inclusion. And the office of equity and inclusion really doesn't work in a silo. It is embedded in the work of all of our organization. And so I work in partnership with every department within D128 to ensure that we have equitable outcomes for students. As Dr. Calintas stated, this evening we'll be providing an update on some of the commitments within our policy, the equity, diversity and inclusion policy 712. And this policy is specific to racial diversity, equity and inclusion. So we'll be looking at it from that particular lens tonight, and how we

080are, as Dr. Calintas said, demonstrating belief in all students, creating a sense of belonging for all students, breaking down barriers and ensuring that we are creating and building opportunities through student voice. That is in fact the work of equity. And what I'm going to present to you today is not a reflection of necessarily any work that I have done as the director, but it is the outcomes of our faculty and staff working together to ensure that all students have opportunities towards success, of our HR department, ensuring that we are prioritizing diversity and our hiring and recruiting and retention practices, and our data and assessment team for ensuring that we have metrics that we can use. So let's dive right into it. Some of the policies that we're going to look at begins with our commitment

081for diverse staffing. And one of the metrics that we are looking for that the board requested in this policy is that we report on our outcomes of providing recruitment efforts. And so in this year, last year, our hiring season, we did some targeted initiatives to ensure that we were recruiting and building our pool of diverse candidates. As it relates to racial diversity, we did a number of things that included targeted recruitment, that included social media outreach, reaching out to our professional networks and ensuring that our staff reached out to their personal contacts to make sure that they knew how warm and welcoming a place D128 is. And those efforts resulted in an increase or we maintained our applicant pool demographics from 2024 to 2025. So we're really pleased with the increase in diverse applicants as

082we look at who is looking to come to our wonderful district. And then from the applicant pool, we have to make selections. It is a priority for D128 always to hire the highest quality and the highest caliber of candidate. While diversity is important to us, we want to ensure that we are bringing in the very best and brightest. And so once we went through those applicants and that strenuous hiring process, here's the outcomes of the percentage of hires that we had. So we, and we maintained the diversity here from years past. So what does that look like in terms of numbers? One thing we wanna highlight here is in previous reports around this particular metric, we only looked at certified staff and we heard from our educational support professionals that they felt left out. And

083so we certainly wanna make sure that we are inclusive of all of our staff members and representing this data. So this year we were sure to include both certified positions and ESP positions as we're looking. And one thing that is interesting to note as we look at this is, of the 52 positions that we looked at from our hiring season up to August, that when we think about diversity in our workforce, we really see that that diversity shows up more in our ESP pool than it does in our certified pool. 40% of our ESP new hires represent people who identify as people of color, while 11% of our certified new staff identify as BIPOC. So we're really glad that we have included this data because it gives us a more well-rounded picture of our diversity

084in our staff. And then we're looking at retention. How are we doing in recruiting? How are we doing in hiring? And then how are we doing in retaining our staff of color when we bring them on board? And when we look at our Asian and Hispanic staff population, we are maintaining and even growing our numbers of staff members that identify in that racial or ethnicity identity. However, one thing that we continue to note is that our Black or African-American staff, we're having a challenging time retaining African-American staff and hiring African-American staff in the district. The second commitment that we're going to look at tonight is around professional learning. I work very closely with the teaching and learning department to ensure that equity is a part of how we are developing our staff to grow and

085build their capacity to ensure equitable outcomes for students. And so we continue to support a variety of professional learning opportunities for our staff. This year, though, what I would like to highlight is a new addition to our professional learning work. And this is our Speak Up series. It is professional development that is targeted to our student body. And we have not done this in the past. The reason why we decided to do this is because we've gotten data from our survey last year from Panorama, the equity and inclusion survey, where nearly 50% of students acknowledged that they have witnessed discrimination in our schools. But though they recognize that they see it, only 43% of students responded favorably when they were asked how often do they know how to respond. And so with that, we decided

086that we need to do some development with our students to give them the skills and build their capacity in how to respond. And of course, if they don't know how to respond, they're unlikely to actually do something to intervene. And so only 35% said that they do something. So while 50% acknowledged, yes, we see it and we acknowledge that it happens, less than half of them know how to, or actually do intervene. And so that Speak Up series is designed to give students the support, the skills and strategies to intervene. And then third, we're looking at student success. When we look at our policy, the student success piece really highlights representation in our advanced placement and upper level classes. That was something that was important to the board and the district at the time of

087creation. And then last year we did a lot of efforts to increase underrepresented students' enrollment in AP and honors courses. Tonight, we wanna report about some success that we've had with the AP work. >>So the slide you're seeing here is talking about all students. It's not disaggregated. We will see some disaggregated data on the next couple of slides. But this is just showing the percentage of our students who are enrolled in an AP class over the years. So this counts each student once. So a student who is enrolled in multiple AP classes is just counted once here. But this is essentially for each year, how many of our students have enrolled in at least one AP course. So as you can see, that is growing year by year. And that's exciting to see more and

088more students going into those higher level college level classes. >>And so with that growth in AP enrollment, we wanna look at it by our underrepresented students, our Hispanic or Latino students, and our African American students. And what the goal of the district has been was to have proportional representation, meaning that the representation in our AP courses should be proportional to the overall enrollment of that particular demographic. So if we look at this chart beginning on the left-hand side, in 2022, you'll see that overall enrollment, we had just under about 14% of our overall population identifying as Hispanic or Latino and Black or African American. But then 11.8% of that were Hispanic, while 2% of that were Black or African American. And then the bar next to that is the AP enrollment. What we wanna see

089is those bars equalized. So the same percentage of students who represent our overall population should also be represented in the AP course. So you'll see how that progresses from 2022 up to 2025. And while that demographic is growing, we see that there's also been some growth in enrollment specifically for our Hispanic students. We do see that in 2025, we are at about 9% of our Hispanic students. 9% of our AP enrollment is represented by Hispanic students. And so that's growth there. And we've also saw some increase in our African American student enrollment in an AP course. >>This slide shows our AP exam passing data. There's a lot of different ways to show AP pass rates. So again, this slide is showing each student only once. So out of all the students who took AP exams,

090how many of them passed at least one? That's what this slide shows. So again, you can see that as we have been increasing our enrollment in those classes, we're actually increasing slightly our pass rate as well. So this is really, really exciting data to see that our success continues. >>And with our efforts to increase underrepresented enrollment in the AP course, while we did see an increase in African American, Latino, and low income students enrolling in our AP class, it had no negative impact on our pass or success rates on the AP exam. So in your package, you have a more detailed report, but those were some of the highlights that we wanted to bring to the forefront of the work on those four commitments in equity and inclusion policy 7-12. Any questions? >>Thank you, Larry

091and Charlotte. Committee members, any questions or comments? >>I have one >>Wes? >>So when looking at the AP exam pass rates by the demographic group, the English learners and the students with IEPs, that's the lowest pass rate. And then with the third one being the students with the fee waivers. What supports have you been looking at to try to bring those numbers up to the district average? >>The students enrolled in the AP course, they have the same supports across the board. So that really has been around one of the things that we would consider to be equal across. They have the same access. When we look at the pass rate for EL students and students of color, while that pass rate may be lower, our work around enrollment in the AP and honors class was really

092about having them exposed to that level of rigor and the impact that it has on their future post-secondary endeavors. That students who are enrolled in the course regardless of AP exam score are more likely to sustain in their post-secondary or college or university courses. So we do see that as well. That disparity is also not germane to D128, but we see that disparity nationwide. So we do see those gaps in place there. >>Sorry to interrupt you, Mr. Varn. >>No, go ahead. >>I do think that is something that we're excited to present to you at another time is we've been building out a large number of academic interventions and support. One, to help students who are in classes like honors AP and dual credit be successful, but two, to help students who are freshmen and sophomore

093and who with some support and skill development can change trajectory to enter those courses as juniors and seniors. So a large number of our teaching/learning work has been on developing both classroom strategies for teachers and the out of classroom interventions to support student skill development to try to change those rates and get them into more proportionality. >>Thank you. Yeah, I just don't want the students to get discouraged so then they're not signing up to take these advanced level courses because I do think it's important for all students to have access to increase rigor, but I wanna make sure that they're staying there so that they remain exposed. >>Exactly. Yes. And that is a big focus of ours. And when we start to report out later this fall on our school report card data and some

094of our standardized test data, part of what you'll hear from us are the work that we're doing for both of those, kind of, as Larry said, the persistence of students staying in an upper level class and not having that melt, but then also the idea of encouraging students to develop their skills and to kind of stretch themselves to take an AP or honors course before they graduate. >>Thank you. >>I have maybe a question or a comment if I may say. So one of the intents of these AP courses and trying to increase the enrollment of the students is not only to help them with college credit or whatever that comes with it depends on where the students go, but is the intent also to expose them to courses that are rigorous? Is that... Because I

095think that's one thing that I'm seeing missing in the conversation that if that is a goal, which is a very noble goal to have, because me as an educator, when I see students and some of them may not be adequately prepared for college level education, but I think that also needs to be communicated and discussed within the administration to say that one of our goals could be to expose students to challenging courses, make them aware what's gonna be in front of them in the years ahead, and help them obviously prepare, that's the end point, but that could be something in terms of messaging. >>Okay. Rahul, anything else? >>No, thank you so much. >>Any other committee members? Okay. Thank you, Larry, Charlotte, Tom. We will move on to the next item on our agenda and that

096is employment of employees, the personnel report and Briant, will you come to that for me please? >>These are our employment items that we're bringing to you that then will be presented through the consent vote agenda at the board meeting on October 27th. >>Any committee members have anything they want to discuss in that agenda item? If not, we will move forward to the next item and that is educational tour requests, and Tom, will you walk us through these requests please? >>We have some educational tours. These are all fairly straightforward. You have Snow Cats to Wisconsin for their annual overnight ski trip. You have LHS stage players to Bloomington, Illinois for the Theater Fest, the annual kind of state convention for student thespians. You have baseball, Vernon Hills baseball to Murfreesboro, Tennessee so that they can get

097some games in while the weather is a little warmer down there over spring break. And then Vernon Hills girls basketball to University of Wisconsin for a summer camp type clinic. And a Vernon Hills varsity softball trip over spring break to Gulf Shores. So the Vernon Hills baseball team will be in Tennessee. The Vernon Hills softball team with your approval will be in Alabama. Both kind of getting in some spring games hopefully before because there's snow on the ground up here at that time. So, any questions I can answer? Otherwise, just your approval. >>Thank you, Tom. I don't hear any questions or requests for comments so we will continue. The next item, future agenda items at the October, 27th 2025 board meeting. We will have the 2025 tax levy review. We will also include the school

098report cards and student support slash MTSS and also the IASB 2025 resolutions committee report. At the November, 3rd 2025 program and personnel committee meeting, we will review 2026-27 course proposals, 2026-27 school calendar review and 2027-28 proposal. There will also be an annual review of the District 128 student handbook and a report the village of Libertyville IGA. So with that, are there any other items the committee wishes to discuss at this time? If not, I'll call this meeting adjourned. Thank you. >>Does anyone need a break before we start? We're good? Okay. All right. Good evening. I'm gonna call to order the facilities and finance committee meeting of Community High School District 128. This evening it's October the 14th and we'll begin the meeting at 7 PM. All right. I'm gonna review the agenda before we begin.

099We will start our committee with invitation for public comments. Moving on for items of discussion. We have the 2025 estimated levy. We have fiscal year 2025 budget performance, summer 2026 capital projects, disposal of district property, donation acknowledgements. And before we adjourn, we will go over the future agenda items. Now, back to the invitation for public comments. Is there anyone in the audience this evening who would like to give a public comment? All right. >>Let me know when I can start. >>One minute please. Mr. Vila, you may begin. You have three minutes. >>Okay. Thank you again for letting me speak. I wanted to build upon a little bit about what I had said in my previous public comment. And it was around the Little Rock Nine and comparing trans rights, comparing to what they went to.

100I just wanted to add to that that all we want as parents is we don't want males in female spaces. We don't want males in sports playing against our girls. You know, it's a tough one, right? Because if you, you know, please me, then how do you avoid hurting someone else's feelings? But that's something that you have to figure out. I think as parents, that's our main concern. We don't wanna hurt anyone. We don't wanna bring pain to any children. I believe some of these children are already suffering from a lot. And I just wanted to be clear that, again, don't wanna discriminate against anyone. Just don't want males in locker rooms and bathrooms and sports. Very happy to hear some of the comments that board members did here in the past hour, hour and

101a half on surveys. I have brought this up in the past with Carmichael, coining the phrase survey fatigue. So, really appreciate it, Wes, thank you so much for pointing that out. No more surveys. Surveys have a cost behind it. To me, surveys is also kind of a security blanket for people to hide behind it. I would recommend that adults get into the classroom and meet the children. I have two kids that graduated from here. One, if I asked him who Dr. Varn was, he would not know who it is. So, instead of doing surveys and paying money for surveys, get in the classroom, get out of the district building and go and get and meet with the kids. In the bar chart, as board members, I would look into, you know, it was nice to

102see that including children of underserved populations did not affect the AP outcome as far as it being a detriment. But my curiosity is, because only because you take AP doesn't mean you have to take the AP test. I would like to know how many of those that took the AP were Hispanic. It is something that I think the questions that the board members had were great, but I feel that that one would have been interesting to see how many actually signed up because they cost money. And I wonder if there is some kind of funds that could fund those exams for those children, would they participate more? Just throwing it out there, not sure, you know, we didn't see that metric on the bar chart. So, thank you for your time and have a good

103night. >>Thank you. Is there anyone else? All right, seeing as there are none, we will move on for our items for discussion, with the first one being the 2025 estimated levy. Mr. Stanley? >>All right, get our screen going here. All right, so we are coming to the period of time in our year where we are looking at the levy. We are gonna spend some time on this. This is one of the most consequential decisions the board will make that has an impact on the district's finances. And so, what we usually have done is a two-year cycle, the cycle in which we get usually new board members. In the even, or in the odd number of years we do a more detailed explanation of the levy to help you understand what is happening and what our

104role is in that process. The next one, the off-year cycle is more brief in terms of just reviewing some key concepts and then reviewing the numbers. So, we are gonna go through the more detailed one tonight with our newer board and we will go through that. I am gonna go over six different areas. We are gonna talk about funding sources briefly, how schools are funded. We will look at the property tax cycle. We will talk through CPI, PTELL, EAV and levy, a bunch of letters. We will walk through all of these and hopefully you will walk away knowing what each of these mean. So, we will start with funding sources. So, the ways school districts are funded in Illinois, primarily are through local funds. So, the most significant source of local funds is gonna be

105property taxes. Next is CPPRT, which is a replacement tax that we get from the state from something that we used to get into the '70s, but it is a replacement tax that we get from the Illinois Department of Revenue, essentially. School fees is another local source of revenue that the district receives, as well as interest income. So, money that is invested, the Money Comes Back Act, that is considered local revenues. The next source is state sources and there is a few bigger buckets for this. The biggest bucket is the evidence-based funding or EBF. That is the primary way the state funds schools. So, we get about 2.3 million, or 2.1 million from EBF every year and that is the primary way they fund schools. Transportation reimbursement, so we get refunded a portion, a smaller and

106smaller portion of our transportation expenses from the prior year. And then we get refunded a portion of our students, the tuition from our students that are placed in private facilities outside of the district. From the federal, that is the third main way we get funds. One is through the title grants. So, if you think of Title I or you have heard of Title II low income or Title I low income, Title II teacher quality, Title III, those are the grants that we get from the federal government and then the other biggest source from the federal government is the IDEA, so Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, special education funding that again helps offset a portion of the costs of our special ed program. Now, in the United States on average, what you see when you look

107at the data across the United States is that the state and local roughly share about the same portion and then the federal government kicks in a portion. This is what you see on average across the United States. Illinois is a bit different. There's more of a burden on funding for education on the local level than you see on average in the United States, and because of how the State of Illinois has decided to set that up, that's where you can see funding disparities between districts like ours and then you drive a few miles away and you go to North Chicago, they're very, very different funding because of that, because of the system that's created. So, you can see, in Illinois more is on the local community, and in District 128, we're even very different from

108Illinois. So, the vast majority of our funding comes from our local community. A key figure to think about is 88 to 89 percent of our funding comes from property taxes. We're a district that is heavily reliant on property taxes and the levy is all about property taxes. So, that's a broad view of just where districts get funding from, okay? Now, we're gonna talk about the property tax cycle which is the cycle that we're in right now. There's really two different processes that happen. There's the assessment process and then there is the levy process. These are two independent processes that happen. The assessment process is trying to determine what is the tax base, what are the values, what are the taxable values in your district. Whereas the levy process then tries to take that value and

109convert it into revenue. So, again, the assessment process is what is the values and then the levy process is how do we convert then that value into revenue. So, to walk through the assessment process, the outcome we're looking for the values is called is a figure called EAV which stands for equalized assessed value. All of those words matter and I'll explain that in a second. And the key here is on your taxable properties. Now, if we say taxable, because the reality is not every property in our district is taxable, right? You have government buildings, right? We have Libertyville High School, we don't pay taxes for Libertyville High School. You have places of worship, hospitals, TIF districts, those are, different levels of them are exempt to some level or another. So, we're talking about the value

110of the taxable properties in the districts. Now, you think of equalized assessed value. What they do is they assess at a third of the fair market value. So the general rule is that we wanna assess at a third of the fair market value. So if the fair market value for a house is $300,000, the assessed value would be $100,000. All right? So you were taking the value, it's assessing at a third of the value. And so let's walk through this process. So the first step in the assessment process is the assessment. Then it goes to appeal. And then it gets equalized. And then the equalization factor gets applied. So let's talk about each step. So the assessment process is done by the township assessors. They are asking the question, what is the value of the

111properties in their township as of January 1st of whatever year? So we are in 2025 right now. The levy we're doing right now is 2025. And it's asking the question, what were the values of all of the taxable properties in our district as of January 1st? The township assessors are the ones trying to figure that out. And then they submit that to the county. And then there's an appeal process that happens. And the Board of Review is a county level board. And they hear appeals of assessed values. So if people think their value is too high, they can appeal and say, hi, nice try, but I think my value is too high. Or consequently, if it's too low. I don't think a lot of people will try to appeal if it's too low. But the

112point is the assessed value is trying to help figure out what is everybody's fair share. And the decision is based on, the system is based on your fair share is based on the assessed value of the properties that you own. And so after they hear those appeals, then it's equalized. And so the point of the equalization comes from the state. And the state then applies an equalization rate across the entire county. The nice part is that very often in Lake County, our county, our equalization factor is 1. 1.0. So whatever the assessed value is times 1 equals the equalized value. But other counties are different. For example, Cook County has a very different assessment process. They assess residential at 10 percent, 10 percent of the assessed value, they assess at 10 percent of the fair

113market value versus a third. The general rule is a third. And so other counties will have different equalization factors. Illinois often gives Lake County a factor of 1.0. So then you take that factor and you apply it to the equalized values. The county clerk does that on our behalf. They do those calculations. And then after that process is done, we know the equalized assessed value. So all those words matter, right? The fair market value that has been assessed at a third and then it's been equalized. That's the goal of the assessment process. Now the levy process, again, that's to convert the EAV into revenue. So how does that happen? It happens in a few steps. Planning, adopting, extending the levy, collecting the dollars and then distributing back to taxing districts. So let's talk about planning.

114That's where we're analyzing and estimating. And that's what we do in the administration side right now. And so we'll look at all the data available to us and try to analyze, get a sense of what's happening and do our estimations of what we think is likely to occur. Then what happens is the property tax in the property tax cycle is that the levy has to be adopted. And that is something only the board can do. And so that's a critical function of the board is the adoption of the annual levy. After that, that gets filed with the county clerk and the county clerk will calculate the approved taxes. That's what the extension is. I'll get back to that word in a minute. And then after that process is done, then the county treasurer will then

115issue all the tax bills, they collect the taxes and then the county treasurer again will then distribute those taxes back to all the taxing districts. So in a nutshell, that's what the levy process is. That's how it converts from the EAV into revenue. Now a huge thing to understand is that the levies have to be filed at the county clerk by the last Tuesday in December. By the last Tuesday in December. By the last Tuesday in December. By law it has to be. If you try to go on Wednesday, the last Wednesday in December, that won't work because it has to be by the last Tuesday in December. So then we work backwards from there. So we'll come back to that. Now, the words are important here. The words levy and extension are important. When

116we're talking about the word levy, that stands for an amount of tax revenue that we are requesting. We don't request a tax rate. We don't request anything else other than a bucket of money. You're asking for a dollar amount. The extension that happens at the county level, that's the amount of taxes you're approved to get. Now notice the word approved is there. That's not actually the amount of money we're going to get. Why? Because not everybody pays their taxes. Almost everybody does and we are very thankful for that. Please pay your taxes. But not everybody does for a variety of reasons. And so the extension is the dollars we are approved to get. The levy is what we are asking for. Again, dollar numbers. Now, when we say the word levy, we'll say the word

117levy many, many times. Technically what's happening is there are actually several different levies, but we just kind of combine them and mush them together. But when you see them on a list, they're individualized. And so the most common levies are gonna be educational levy, operations and maintenance, transportation, IMRF, Social Security. You'll notice this also follows a similar pattern of the different funds that we have in our financials. That's no coincidence. It's designed that way. The other thing is we're gonna talk about capped and non-capped. We'll come back to this in a second, but there are some portions of our levy or the extension that is gonna be capped, restricted the amount you can get and then there are some that are not. SEDOL IMRF, debt service, PTAB Recapture. We'll come back to those in a

118minute. That stuff is non-capped, but most of the stuff we're talking about is capped. And so most of the process I'm talking about is about our capped levy. And I'll explain what that cap is and where that comes from. Another important law that we have to follow is called truth in taxation. So that's a law that says at least 20 days before adopting the levy, the board must estimate the levy. That's what we're doing tonight. If the estimate of what we're gonna levy is more than 105% of last year's extension, so if we're gonna ask for more than a 5% increase, then you have to have a public hearing. You have to by law. If you ask for less than a 5% increase, your hearing is optional. You can still have a hearing, you can

119have a hearing about anything you want, but the law wouldn't require you to have it. And not only is it required to have it, but you have to put it in the paper. It has a very, very specific form that it has to follow, very, very specific words you have to use. It gets very technical. But that truth in taxation is huge and that's something we have to always comply with. So again, the property tax cycle is two processes that happen, the assessment process and the levy process. Now notice in the assessment process, when did I mention the school district or the board? I didn't. We don't have anything to do with it. That is done at the township and the county level, but it's important for us to understand where that process is happening

120because the control the board has is on the levy. So here is kind of a mapped out version of this process. So the blue is the assessment process. And so that assessment process takes about a year and a half to complete. So the assessment starts on January 1st, they will value the properties through roughly the first half of the year, goes to the board of review, those get heard through the second half of the year and then those get published, then people can appeal, then it goes to state equalization... We find out the final EAV in spring of the following year. So we will find out our EAVs in spring of 2026. But when did I tell you the levy is due? By the last Tuesday in December. Our levy has to be filed. So

121that's an important mismatch of data here. The other thing is actually PTAB or appeals that can go to the state. So if it goes to the board of review and the owner is not happy with the finding of the board of review, they can appeal to the state. But the state takes a long time to process those. They are a few years behind still. So that can take a long time. All right? So that's a brief overview of what the property tax cycle is. Now we're gonna talk about CPI. So CPI is another acronym that stands for Consumer Price Index. That comes from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, which is the Federal Bureau of Labor Statistics. And here is the definition. It's the measure of the average change over time in prices paid by urban

122consumers for a market basket of consumer goods and services. Easy, right? Let's take a look at what this means. So a market basket of consumer goods and services. So the Bureau of Labor Statistics will look at these things that are listed, figure out those costs. So they put a basket together of food, beverages, housing, all these things together in a market basket of goods and services. And then they're asking for what are the prices paid by urban consumers. So what happens is, is the Bureau of Labor Statistics literally sends people out. They go to businesses, they call them, they go on their website, and they find out the prices that people actually pay for all of these items. It's a really fascinating process. They figure out those prices. And then what they try to figure

123out is this basket of goods, how did those prices change over time? All right? So that basket of goods costs a certain amount. And particularly what we're looking for in the levy process is how did it change from last December to this December? Or last December to the December before? That's really the measure we're talking about. So does that make sense? Measure of the change over time, prices paid by urban consumers for a market basket of goods and services. Here is the index. Now this is, it's an index, consumer price index. It's similar if you think of like the S&P 500 index like that you might hear about on the radio. What that is, is that is all of the prices for the top 500 companies multiplied by some number that we don't know and

124then they get an index. And then how that index changes, it goes up five points, it goes down X number of points. That's the index. That's what CPI is, is an index. And so you can see how that index has changed over time. But really what matters is the percentage change in that index. So take for example, in December of '23, this is the data that will matter for our levy right here. In December of '23, that index was 306.746. Okay? The following December, that index was 315.605. The percentage change between those numbers is 2.9%. That is, that's what people mostly call CPI. So it's actually, when we say CPI, we actually really mean the average change in CPI from last December to the December before. And so you can see here a number of,

125several years of history of the December to December changes in CPI. This is the thing that affects our levy more than anything else. And I'll explain how that does. But if you try to look at an average, you can see there's an average roughly somewhere between, you know, two and a half and three if you kind of try to draw an average line over there over the last several years. And so 2025 is not there because 2025 is not over yet. And we don't know. But we can see it's come down over the last several years. Essentially, CPI is the rate of inflation, the change in costs of goods and services, prices paid. The 10-year average is about 3%. So it's a benchmark that I update every year to kind of see... We've been seeing

126this average increase over the last few years. This is the change, the annual change in CPI month by month over the last several months and a few years. And you can see inflation has really come down since the height of the before times that I'm not gonna mention. But we've seen it really smooth out. But it's still hovering somewhere between, you know, 2% and 3%. And the question is what is gonna happen? We don't know. But that's where we can see. But the only thing that really matters for the levy is that December timeline. What is it in December? That's the only thing that matters in terms of the levy. So that's what CPI is. Consumer Price Index, rate of inflation based on December. Now, we'll talk about how does CPI actually limit it with

127PTELL. So PTELL is a law. And this is also something called the tax cap. So if you've ever heard something called tax cap or if you remember I said capped earlier in the presentation, this is what I'm talking about. So it's a law and all those numbers matter. There's a property tax extension limitation law. Right? So remember what did I say the extension was, that's the amount of money we're approved to get. So this is a law that limits the amount of property taxes you're approved to get. It limits the amount of taxes you're approved to get. How does it limit it? It limits by and says your increase is limited by CPI or 5%, whichever is less. That's how it works. Now before the last few years no one ever really cared about the

128or 5% whichever is less because it was never above 5% up until a few years ago. So the CPI that we're talking about is gonna be 2.9. That's the one that affects this levy. So what does that mean? This is where we get into some math and don't worry this is about as fancy math as I get. This is some algebra. So it's a formula. You don't have to do this. This is something we do but I'm just telling you how it happens. It looks at the prior extension multiplied by 1 plus CPI or 5% whichever is less and then it divides your current EAV and takes out new property, because new property wasn't here last year. And so that's outside of the increase because it wasn't here. They paid $0 last year and so

1290 times anything would be 0. So they just remove it from the equation. So what this means is that your extension for this year is based on your extension for last year. What you ask for this year is based on what you got last year. Then new properties added on top of that. New property could be improvements. So people renovating their homes, improving their homes, adding on additions. This could be new construction. There's always a lot of activity that happens. But the key idea is PTELL allows you to maintain buying power in terms of the increased costs up to 5%. It won't go beyond that. So the periods of 6.5 CPI or 7 CPI, it's gonna cap it at 5 and that's something that we've lived through already. So because this is a formula, there

130are four variables in this formula. There are two we know about and then there are gonna be two we don't know. So the two we know is we know what CPI is. It's 2.9. We knew that back in January. We also know what our extension was last year because that happened in the spring. But what we don't know yet is what the EAV will be because we won't know that until next spring and we won't know what new property is until next spring either. So we have to guess, and we try to make educated guesses based on information from the county and talking to the assessors and things like that. Now, going back to the non-capped. So we were talking about how it is capped. There are three different parts of an extension that are

131not capped. SEDOL IMRF, debt service and PTAB Recapture. So SEDOL IMRF is special education district of Lake County. So that's the special education, pool is the wrong word, cooperative that we're part of, the special ed cooperative that we're part of in Lake County. And the IMRF payment which is the pension payment for their support staff is part of our levy and they have a special carve out in the law that is not capped. Meaning if it was a $100 million, we can levy a $100 million, and we will get extended $100 million. Thankfully it's only like $30,000. So it's pretty small, but it is outside of the cap. The other thing is debt service is outside of the cap. That happens, that auto gets levied when the debt is issued and then all the levies

132get filed with the county when that debt is issued. And so they have the schedules all online ready to go. PTAB, remember I told you PTAB is when people appeal to the state. Because it takes so long, they take the money out as we get it but then it's allowed to get, it auto gets re-extended to us. And that's not anything you do. The county automatically does that for you. So when, if you look at the details, you'll see a PTAB Recapture automatically gets extended. They levy and extend it for us. There's nothing we do for that. That's based in the law. So that's PTELL. That's the thing that caps our extension at what we got last year plus CPI or 5% whichever is less. So now let's look at real data from our district

133in terms of EAV. So here is a chart over the last several years of our equalized assessed values in the district. And it's broken up by different components of the type of it. Very common in most districts that residential is the most common type of value in your district. We have a healthy balance also of industrial and commercial EAV. And as you can see in aggregate, it doesn't always go up. Right? There was some fluctuation. If you look at the period between 2009 and 2019, that's what some people call the lost decade because it took them a decade for the values to recover from where they were. But you can see over the last couple of years, we've had some substantial growth in our values. And, you know, a lot of you can hear about

134it, you can see about it in terms of people selling homes and thinking like, wow, is the home really worth that much? Well, if people are paying for it, then it's worth that much. So we've seen a substantial increase over the last couple of years in terms of values. So what does that mean? That means that the values that we've seen have been a little bit higher than average. I'm gonna skip to new property. So the EAV of new property. So that is things in our district that have new construction or new on the tax rolls or additions or things like that. Our average is about 13 million over the last several years. We have a spike here that happened in 2022-ish. That's when the Libertyville TIF downtown expired and came back on the tax

135rolls. So we had a pretty huge increase in new property then because that was the first time that has been able to been taxed since like 35 years. And so that got back on the tax rolls. And then last year we were down to our normal amount. But this year we're up to like 28 million in new property, which is higher than normal. That doesn't mean you get $28 million. It's just the value is 28 million. So, we're a little bit higher than average EAV data. When we look at the new property, how does that broken out? I've got a few years here to see like where is it coming from? Where is the new property coming from? The most common is gonna be people just improving their homes. These are people renovating their basements

136and pulling the permits, you know, doing all that stuff, adding on a deck, adding on portions of their house, and that value getting added on. What we have here is a pretty significant change in industrial. And I'll look, I'll show you that in a second here. And then a slightly bigger in commercial that we had is at least from the year before. One of the things I like to do is try to look at the specifics of the data and just give you a sense of what's happening in our district to show you what's coming on. And the biggest one that is considered in the industrial section, I believe, is Canlan Sports. That's the old Libertyville Sports Complex. So, that used to be owned by the Village. And when it's owned by the Village for

137a tax-exempt purpose, it is not taxable. But now that it is owned by a private entity, it is taxable. And so that is now coming on the rolls as taxable value of $8.5 million. That's pretty substantial. We do not have something like that happen every year. That's a pretty substantial add-on. The other one is Children's Land in Vernon Hills, $1.9 million. I think that's the one on Town Line Road, just a little bit west of here. A little bit west of here on Townline Road. Heathrow Scientific, that's right down the street from district office in that little corporate park. There's a new building there, Heathrow Scientific. They do like medical, I think, medical supply things. So, $2.7 million. And then the Springs at Mundelein, that's that apartment complex that's right on Butterfield. A portion of

138that is in our district. And so that's coming on too. So those are some of the bigger things that are happening in our district. And so that's what's happening on the value. So the values we're seeing going up around 6.5% for next year. So now let's talk about the levy, our real dollars for our levy. Here is the history of our extension. Again, the dollars were approved to get over the last several, several years. And you can see there's two kinds, non-capped and capped. Non-capped is very, very small from what it used to be. And I'll explain what that means in a second. But you can see the capped levy too has increased pretty steadily. But if you look closely, it doesn't always increase. Something happened in 2014 that I'm gonna talk about in a

139second. One thing that if you remember from non-capped is debt service extension. We have no debt service extension because we have no debt. We have had no debt for nearly a decade at this point. Which is not entirely that common amongst districts. Most districts have some form of debt. But we have been debt free for about the last ten years. And so there is no debt service extension on our tax bills. It's not there in our tax rate sheets. So that has been zero for several years. And you can see a little... Can't think of the right word. Volatility in a few of those years. That's when the board decided to abate some of those taxes. So they had fund balance. They decided rather than have the tax go, we're gonna say, hey, don't tax

140quite as much and we're just gonna pay that debt payment through our existing fund balance. And so they did that for a few years. They had zero and then they had just the rest for the following year. And then there's been nothing since because we've been debt free for about a decade. The other thing that happened in 2014, if you looked at that little dip, is the board made the decision to reduce their levy in 2014. And if you remember, the way the law works is what you can get this year is based on what you got last year. So the 2014 decision was made to lower their levy, lower their levy by about, not quite two and a half million from what they could have done at the time. So that is a one

141year savings. But then you're allowed to kind of catch up a little bit for the next year. But you're always gonna be lagged because of the one year decision. And so that one time decision in 2014 has a lasting impact here. So what I'm saying is our property taxes are 1.5 million dollars less than they would have otherwise been had that not happened in 2014. So a one time decision has a lasting impact. That's why I say this is one of the most critical and impactful decision the board makes in terms of what the levy is because it has a forever impact. Each year does. So back to the real numbers. So we know CPI is 2.9. We know our prior year extension, 99 million. But what we don't know is EAV. The best data

142I have from the county says the existing EAV is going up about 6.5%, which is a pretty big increase still. And then 28.9 million in new property. I looked at those numbers. Those numbers look legit to me because I've looked at each of the properties that are listed. So in terms of the estimate, when we run it through that calculation, we're estimating that the capped portion of our levy, of our extension is gonna be 102 million. That means an average increase of 2.9% for, excuse me, for existing homeowners. Now, that doesn't mean everybody's taxes go up by 2.9. It means everybody's taxes go up by 2.9 relative to their own change in value. So let's say the average increase on values is 6.5%. So I think everybody got their assessment sheets. Right? Right? Everyone get

143them? Get the assessment sheets? What color are they? Blue. All right. You got your blue sheets. If you look at your value, if your value went up by more than 6.5%, then the taxes might go up by more than 2.9. If the value went up by less than 6.5%, the increase for that individual owner might be less than 2.9. If your value went up by 6.5%, then the math says your taxes would go up by 2.9%. That's what it means. So it doesn't mean each individual owner goes. It depends on their individual assessment. But on average, existing owners, 2.9. That's what that means. But the total increase from the prior year is 3.7. Why would we have a higher increase than CPI? Dan, you just said it was limited by CPI. Because of that new

144property has a pretty significant impact in terms of it brings it up to 3.7 for those properties that are coming online. So, based on the estimation of 102, I'm recommending we levy at 103 on the cap side. 103,127. So what does that mean? That leaves a $300,000 cushion between what we're asking for and what we're estimating we're gonna get based on the law and all the numbers. Now why, why do we have a cushion? It's because in that formula there are two estimates. The question is what happens if those estimates are wrong? So let's say in our original estimation there, right, existing values going up 6.5% and new property at 28 million, 28.9 million. But what happens if instead of going up to 6.5 million it only goes up 2%? And let's say the county

145made a mistake and they gave me wrong data and whoops we're sorry actually instead of new property at 28.9 million you're actually, your new property is 40 million. What happens? If we levied what we estimated, you would lose $33,000. And so my goal is to never let the district accidentally leave money like that. And so we put in a cushion there because we know we're getting estimates and the estimates are, we're humans and people make mistakes and so it's try to cover if we're wrong. So the question is we've had the $300,000 for several years. What's actually happened? I'll get to that in a second. So we have the capped levy of the 103,127. And then the other thing that we actually have to levy is SEDOL IMRF and so that's the 30,000. So SEDOL

146tells us what to levy. So that's 30,000. So then the documents you'll see as a total levy of 103,157,298 based on the levy with the cushion plus SEDOL IMRF which is still something we have to levy. Now that means that's still a $300,000 cushion. Total increase of 3.92 is the levy. You're not gonna get that because we've already estimated the most you're gonna get is 3.7 based on the math. 3.92 is what you're asking for and so that 3.92 means the hearing is optional. That's the truth in taxation coming back in and saying as long as you're not asking for more than a 5% increase your hearing is optional. That's what that means. And so what I have here is a chart over the last several years of what was our cushion in the levy

147and what did we actually use. So you can see we've never really ever used the whole cushion. A couple years ago we got pretty close, closer than I feel comfortable with. But that's why the cushion is there, because we're doing our best with the best information we have but it could be wrong. And so as a reminder too when we looked at projections back in February which I understand was before several of y'all weren't on the board yet. These were our assumptions built in. So we had built in, we knew 2.9 at that time, and so we built that into the assumption of our projections. And then we assumed 13 million on new property which is what we historically would typically get but we're higher than that now. So that's now 29 million we'll call

148it. So that's quite a bit better than what we anticipated back in February of 2025. And as a reminder, this was our forecast for our annual surplus or deficit for the next five years back in 2025. It's heading in not a good direction. We don't want that number to keep going down. But that is old data. A lot has happened since February 2025. And so when we get near that time I will update with that data. But just showing you that's the outcome of the projections we had with those assumptions in there. So then what's the next steps? So the next steps is that the next meeting we'll review the, we're not gonna review this process again. We're gonna review just the final numbers and just to kind of talk about that you'll have a

149chance to see the numbers again. At the November meeting we'll do a final review that includes all the final documents that will be there. And then at the November 17th we will have the vote for the adoption of the levy and the very next day assuming it passes we will file it with the county. And the reason we do this in November is because, just in case something happens and we can't get a quorum in November, we still have December to approve it. And this has happened to me before in my previous district, we could not get a quorum in November. And thank God we had December to fall back on because it is due by the last Tuesday in December. No exceptions. So that is, that's the process. So hopefully you get a better

150understanding of where districts get funding from and it's particularly where does District 128 get its funding from. Understanding the property tax cycle. CPI, inflation, 2.9, PTELL, caps are increased at CPI, EAV data, our values are going up, the levy, the levy at 3.7 is our expected increase based on the outcome and so that's the numbers we're looking at. So thank you. That's the long version of this. Hopefully you have a better understanding at this point, any questions? >>Remind me again when is it due? >>Last Tuesday in December. (person faintly speaking) Yeah, yeah. >>When is the levy due? >>Thank you for that wonderful presentation. And I must say I was here last year and a lot went over my head that this was a lot better. Every year I get a little better. Thank you much.

151Appreciate it. Makes more sense. >>Dan, if you'll go to slide 63 with the February 2025 projection assumptions, looking out five years... >>Which one? >>The one with the green bars. >>I don't have the same page number. >>Second to last slide. >>Second to last. >>This one? >>The one. >>Yeah. >>Looking out three, four, five years, where are you coming up with those deficits? How is that being calculated out? >>So, in order to answer that, I'd have to give you my report from February 2025 that walks through all of those. So that is built on a lot of assumptions and projections based on historical trends, kind of where we're heading, things like that. So to really answer that question, there's a significant amount of information that goes into that that I couldn't distill for you, other than to say

152the trend is our expenditures are trending to increase faster than our revenues can keep up with it. And eventually you run into a problem. And so that is what the projection showed at February 2025. It will look different now when I redo this next February, for sure. We've made a lot of positive strides in that. And so the goal is to not let those negative things happen. That's what we're trying to avoid. So... >>I thought that's what you were gonna say, but I wanted to make sure my assumption was correct. >>Yeah. >>I just wanna share this with the board and the administration. And using your your terms that obviously we're heavily reliant on property taxes. And that's primarily residentially driven. Correct? >>It is. So if you look at the EAV in terms of that chart

153that EAV residential is our biggest chunk, which is very typical in most districts. >>And obviously a brunt of our responsibility is fiduciary and that we need to be good stewards. And I recognize we've come out of COVID and we've also had recent interim leadership. But I would challenge the board and administration that we look at normalizing our operations to create greater efficiencies throughout the whole school district. And to make sure that that unintentional creep that has happened for a lot of organizations over the past three, five years, that we were to stop that as much as possible to help from the expense side, not only for the sake of taxpayers, but also for the sake of bringing a more efficient school district for District 128. That's my challenge to all of us. >>Yeah. And that

154is gonna be... A lot of the focus of the projection data that when we do this in February of '26 is to show that because this is really about the money coming in. The next question is then there's a lot of discretion on... There's very little discretion the board has on money coming in. There's very a lot of discretion on the terms on the terms of money going out. And so it'll be important to understand what money is there that goes out. You know, what are the types of money that goes out? What some things are already set in terms of contracts that we have in place that are already gonna be set that will dictate where a lot of this money is already gonna be going. But that that's part of the conversation of

155the financial projections. >>I just close by saying I challenge all of us to strive for that operational efficiency. We have a new leader in place. We have new board, good people all around. And for the sake of the taxpayers, let's do what we need to do. >>And I agree with the other very important points. And I think, but again, I had the same part, that revenues will keep coming, and as you noted, that there's a belief that our expenses will exceed our revenues. So every time we talk about seeking more revenue, we should also try to complement that with seeing how we can get more efficient, either to offset the increase in revenue, or to make the whole organization a little bit more efficient. And the reason I say that is in your projections, the

156slide before this, we are making a projection that there will be 13% more construction revenue or new, what was the word? >>New property revenue that would come up. And that may or may not pan out. So this year based on the projections, we are lucky that we are looking at what 40 million in new, not revenue, in new taxable revenue, taxable properties. So again, we have to be aware that God forbid that there's no construction, it's a freeze or something that happens in the next two years or three years. How are we going to manage those? So again, food for thought for all of us, not just you. >>All right, anyone else? All right, thank you. Moving on to Fiscal Year 2025 budget performance. >>Sorry, one second. All right... Yeah, so there's no slides, but

157just a report for you on the budget performance. So this we like to do once we close the books. Our books were a little bit later in closing this year because we upgraded our financial software to the newer version of the software we had. And so that is not a great time of year to do that, close to the end of the year, but there's never a good time to do it because there's always something. And so I just wanted to give you a brief report. Overall, we feel pretty good about what's happening. So if I just zoom out, there's a report that gives a little bit more detail, but if I do a zoom out report, zoom out perspective, on the revenue side, if you think of those three sources, local, state and federal,

158we're pretty darn close. Overall revenue is coming in at 101% of budget. And so we came in over budget by 1.2 million. The biggest chunk of that is gonna be interest income was a lot higher. And so really what that boils down to is interest rates. Short term interest rates were a lot higher for a lot longer than what we anticipated. And so you got to remember when we're budgeting, we're doing this in the spring. And we're trying to predict what our rate's gonna be 15 months from now. It's really hard to do. It's hard to predict anything right now. And so I didn't wanna assume that our revenues would stay that high, that interest rates would go down. We start to see them come down a little bit. The question is, is what's gonna

159happen in the future? We still don't know. But that's what happened on the revenue side. On the expenditure side, you'll see some things were extremely close. Salaries, we were at 100.1% of budget. Benefits at 100.3% of budget, those are extremely close. And those are great. My goal is to try to get as close to 100 as possible because those are built from the ground up with real people. So that's not saying, oh, I'm guessing 10 million for these people... It's every single person listed, every single benefit listed, everything priced out from the bottom up. And you can see there's other areas of our system that are higher or lower depending on various things. But overall, we came in at 99.9% on expenditures, which is as close as I have ever been. And that is closer

160than I feel comfortable going. Because there's a lot of things in there that were a little tricky. Like, for example, you know, we had the interim superintendents last year. I only budgeted for one superintendent, not three. And so that was something that ate into the contingency. You know, we've seen, we've got some transportation things we need to look at, on athletics and special ed in terms of matching the budget. Because the point is, the point of the budget is to be an approximation of what we think we're gonna spend. And so the closer we are I think the more accurate is. And so then the more confidence we can have, it's saying, like, when we say it's gonna cost this much, it's actually gonna cost that much. And so we're encouraged by that data. And

161so because of revenues going over by 1.2 and expenditures under by 150,000, the budgeted operating surplus of 870,000 turned into a surplus of 2.3 million. And so what that looks like. And so that money goes into your fund balance at the end of the year. And essentially that's what, that's essentially what helps pay for the cafeteria project that we're doing. Because this would not include the cafeteria project. This is about our operations. And so there's more detail there if you have questions. But overall, we're pretty pleased. But it was pretty close, closer than I feel comfortable with. >>All right. Any questions? Comments? All right. Moving on. Summer 2026, capital projects. >>All right. This is culmination of work with Mark and his team and other people in our system looking over our various systems in terms

162of our long-term plan and other needs that have come up since then, looking at our capital needs throughout the district. So what we have here is our first shot at a plan of estimates of numbers in here for different projects. So there's a list there that shows you all the projects that are listed. There is another document that shows you pictures. Because sometimes pictures really can help flesh out what we're talking about in terms of conditions. There's a lot of things on this list. Probably the big takeaway is that the numbers on this list in total are too high right now. 8 million is what we have on this list. We will have closer available to us. 5 million is closer what we're gonna be able to afford, in my opinion. And so between now

163and over the next couple months as we get a little bit more clearly defined, we get some better numbers, we bid out some things, we'll get a better idea and we'll see this list evolve over the next several months as we get closer and closer to summer of 2026. So these are the things that are listed with a variety of pieces of information related to it. >>I have one real quick question. In regard to capital projects, do we just go out the one year or do we have a five year capital plan? >>We have a plan that goes out to 2050. But it's system level plan and it's got round numbers in it. So one of the things that we have discussed with the board as the board but not necessarily with you all as

164the board is our current plan is a little bit more on the basic side. And what I would like to do is get something a little bit more comprehensive because we're trying to leave this place better than we found it. So for example, part of the reason we go out to 2050 is not to be like, hey, we know what's gonna happen for the next 30 years. It's really, all right, we replaced this parking lot and we know this parking lot should last 25 years. So 25 years from now there's a placeholder for this parking lot in the year, whatever 25 years is from now, 2050. We put a placeholder there to have that information there. And so this is just the... This is the summer. This is a culmination of not only that long

165term list of things that are there but also other things that have kind of come up that weren't necessarily on that list or kind of got moved. And even that list, it evolves because sometimes the placeholder is, hey, this is when we would replace it. Do you need to replace it now or should it move up a year early or can it wait a year? Things like that happen. And that's kind of the art of putting together a plan like this is looking at all of that data. So we do have a plan that goes out to 2050. But really the next five years are more reliable than, you know, obviously something 10 years from now is gonna be way less reliable in terms of data. But it's still a pretty basic plan. >>My only

166suggestion would be to give consideration to a three to five year intensive review, realizing there's fluidity in everything, sort of like strategic planning and strategic thinking, taking that to the capital project perspective, and that, tying that collectively with our desire to become more efficient operationally, that would be my suggestion. >>Yes, that's a goal of ours as well. And I will say, you know, when we've looked at these numbers even over the last few years, there's more work to do than there is money to do them. No matter how efficient you want to get, you will not be able to do all the things on the list. And this is the list of just replacing the stuff that needs to get replaced. This is roofs. This is parking lots. This is not, hey, we wanna renovate

167the library. That's not what this is. This is replacing things, asset preservation, replacing things on a maintenance schedule, not, hey, we wanna build a new facility, that is not on this list. That have to come above and beyond. And that's really the last of the bucket of money that we're using to renovate the cafeteria over here, that money is running out as soon as we're gonna be done with that project. And so this is really about maintaining what we have. So, yeah, we agree, and that's an important goal of ours is to have a more fleshed out plan and system for it. >>Maybe my financial illiteracy, but why do we classify that as CAPEX versus OPEX? Because maintaining the asphalt on the road and coating and all that would be more like an operational expenditure.

168Is that- >>So these things are... So there's two different things we're talking about. So we're talking about operating funds, which are like our Ed Fund, O&M Fund, Transportation, IMRF, Social Security Fund, working cash. Those are our funds, those are our operating funds, money year in, year out. These projects are operating fund projects. They are part of our annual thing. So they are part of our OPEX funds, as that phrase would use. CAPEX would be more like the cafeteria. That is one time big, huge, $10 million projects that we do not do normally. However, all of these things are considered capital projects because they're over our capitalization threshold, meaning our capitalization threshold is $10,000. And so anything above $10,000, we basically have to classify it as a fixed asset. We have to do a bunch of

169accounting stuff. And so no matter where you pay for it, just the nature of it adding to our fixed assets and then it has to get depreciated and it gets into honestly annoying accounting stuff, that is required of us by the state to do that. So that's why this is called a capital project because it's over $10,000 and we have to treat it special on accounting wise. But this is all still within our OPEX operations. >>That's what, that was the two words confusing. >>Yes. Yeah. It's a little bit different. Great question. >>Any other questions? Comments? I just have a quick question. When it comes to our athletic facilities at both of our buildings, I'll use Vernon Hills High School, for example. And this is just for my own understanding of, you know, trying to figure

170out how things work. So football field is part of the high school property. Now, but it's not actually in the building. So then is it the principal who's overseeing it? Is it Mark? Are you overseeing it? Like who's in charge of determining what needs to be done? When? Where? >>So I would say, so in terms of who is in charge of deciding this is a project to do? I would say that's largely between Mark and the building administration. So Mark, so the capital plan we have is really a plan for both buildings. Like, because that's the stuff we own. The district office, even transition pathways, those are, we don't own those. We lease those places. So the buildings we're talking about are the facilities here. Both, there's a component that's building based, there's site based,

171which would include like the stadium, the turf, all those kinds of things. Those have schedules based on the capital plan. And then Mark, based on the actual conditions and what's happening that year, will kind of look at, like, all right, all right, it's time to look at this. Is this something we need to do now? Or can it wait for a year? Or wait for two years? Or does something need to move up? So he will look at that and then coordinate with the building principal to kind of do a check and kind of see what else, what else is there or what else might be missing. >>Okay. Thank you. >>Mm-hm. And if, when it comes to athletics, the athletic director would be involved too. >>Sure. Anyone else? All right, moving on to our disposal

172reports. >>Yeah. So we have a board policy that requires the board to approve disposals of anything that's above a diminutive value. And so we periodically will have things to dispose of. There's a semi-annual IT disposal there. So there's a whole bunch of stuff that's listed there, that they dispose. And then we have acquired it that are also there that that'll go for, that'll be on the consent agenda at the October 27th board meeting. >>All right. Any questions, concerns, comments? Okay. Moving on. Donation acknowledgments. >>Yeah. From time to time we receive donations. And so what, when we get them, we try to bring those to the board level for just a simple acknowledgement and like a thank you. And so you'll see these at the board meeting. It's not like you're voting to accept it necessarily.

173It's just a public acknowledgement usually is sometimes handled with the board president or the superintendent that just acknowledges the donation, so we have the copies of the letters in there as well to share. So that's, just so you know that's what's coming up at the October 27th meeting. >>All right. Any questions, concerns, comments? All right. Future agenda items. Coming up in October 27th, 2025 board meeting. We have got the 2025 tax levy review. School report cards and student support MTSS and the IASB 2025 resolutions committee reports. And for the November 3rd, 2025 FNF meeting, we have the 2025 tax levy. And with that, I adjourn the meeting at 8:01 PM. >>Do we need a quick break or can we? >>Five minutes? >>Well, do we wanna call to order? Are we gonna, where are we going

174for a meeting? Are we going, are we going... >>We're going to a classroom, right, kind of adjacent to this. >>Okay. We'll come back here to begin the meeting and then we'll get to there. >>Okay. >>So call it 8:10 we'll return here for the special board meeting. >>Currently on break. Currently on break. >>We're live? Okay. All right. I'd like to call this special board meeting to order October 14th, 2025. It is 8:10 PM. Can we have a roll call, please, Carol? >>Nina Austin. >>Here. >>Jim Batson. >>Here. >>Rahul Deshmukh. >>Here. >>Doug Fleegle. >>Here. >>Mithilesh Kotwal. Wes Polen. >>Here. >>Okay. I'm gonna review the agenda. We have an invitation for public comment. We have an executive session. And when we return, we will not be taking any action or anything. So let's start with an invitation for public

175comment. There's nobody here, so I guess there's no need for an invitation for public comment. So I need a motion to convene in closed session to discuss the selection of a person to fill a vacancy for the school board, 5ILCS120-2C3, and the placement of individual students in special education programs and other matters relating to individual students, 5ILCS120-2C10. >>Polen, so moved. >>Deshmukh, second. >>Okay. Any questions, comments? Roll call, please. >>Batson. >>Aye. >>Deshmukh. >>Aye. >>Fleegle. >>Aye. >>Polen. >>Aye. >>Austin. >>Aye. >>Okay. A motion passes. We will move into executive session in a different room.