001Good evening everyone. Um, I'm Doug Flegel. I am the committee chair for the program and personnel committee meeting and I want to call our October 14th, meeting to order. Our start time 5:30. Uh, so with the call to order, will we join me in the pledge of allegiance? I pledge algiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands one nation indivisible with liberty and justice for all. >> Thank you. uh this evening uh the review of the Gen agenda. We're going to have an invitation for public comment with a threeminut time limit. That will be followed by discussion items. Um the first item will be title 9 audit, an update on our action plan. We will also get an update on the district 128 equity and
002inclusion plan. We will discuss employment of employees. 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 uh the limit of three minutes. We have two individuals who have signed in for public comment. The first is Socrates VA. If you'll give me a minute to get my stopwatch here. Are you ready, Mr. VA? >> Almost. >> So, I know at Burner Hills you have the the big clock, >> right? >> So, you don't have that here, right? >> No, but as a courtesy, I will let you know when the three minute mark
003is hit. Okay. >> Okay. Go ahead, Mr. Bumo. >> Thank you all. Right. what you do. Um, it doesn't go unnoticed. Um, I know we're all community members and we're neighbors. Some of us, we've known each other for a while. Is the mic on? >> Let's stop and we will grant you start over of >> check. One, two. >> Do I have to get closer? Okay, >> that was my fault. Um, >> okay. We'll we'll start all over. Okay, you ready, Mr. VA? You can begin. >> And so I appreciate that you take the time to listen to what we have to say. Um, 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
004and just kind of throwing it out there and hopefully uh we can meet halfway in in agreements and disagreements. Uh, one thing I the last time I was up here was in August and there's been a couple meetings after that and this comment is more for the public. We're we're not here to try to discriminate discriminate uh discriminate against anyone. Uh, 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? um we we're not going to agree on things, but uh we definitely don't want any child that comes into these buildings to feel discriminated against. Um so just just to clear that out. I think this district's always been very welcoming. I have two two older
005ones that graduated. Um you know, it's been fine. Like I said, since 2002, we moved into the area because we felt this place was welcoming. Uh so the past five years, things have changed. Ever since the pandemic, people have been so divided. Um, so I just want to 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 and causing a big divide. Um, the other thing there was a comment about comparison of the trans community and and the Little Rock Nine. You know, there's a um member of the community that that that said that. Um, I think that's not fair for the Little Rock Nine. Um it's a totally two different topics, but if anyone the litter
006rock knife, if I remember correctly, they were discriminated against because of the skin, you know, their color of their skin. Um definitely again back to my original point, if anyone's feeling discriminated against in this bu in these buildings, I think the the school has history of having deal dealing with those things. So I really don't think we we want to go down that rabbit hole of trying to compare what happened in the 60s to what's going on today. Um this this is a kind of on a different tangent on what's going to happen or either in this meeting or next meeting where you're going to go over the metrics or the survey results. I would ask that everyone in the board when you look at these uh people presenting these survey results, first thing they
007should always start out with is the participation rate. If only 20% of the student body participated, you know, I don't think 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%. And I know 50% is asking a lot, but please keep that in mind when when um Miss Ames is sharing um I think I have 15, right? Miss Ames is sharing um the results. I 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 the the data today shows that that there's been improvements because >> Mr.
008Vila, 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 you guys hearing me out. Lastly, I will say for Dr. Batson, um 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 given me opportunities to come up 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 Showman. Mr. Showman, you'll have three minutes. >> Is there like a timer or anything or No. >> If not, that's
009what 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 That's fine. >> Um, 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's doing well. There was just a coach fired at Deerfield High School for quote inappropriately touching a juvenile student, according to the Lake and Mckenry County scanner. Riaz Hubbedai of Vernon Hills has been charged 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.
010The only okay part in the story is that he's no longer here. Lucky for D128, he switched to Deerfield so that he can carry out his touching of 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 at Vern Hills High School who went to prison for statutory rape for having sex with underage students. Yet, despite the rapes, the school continues to maximize the chances of a sexual assault in their locker rooms to 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
011whatever 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 DSM5 published by the American Psychiatric Association. So it's like what are you going to do? continue exploiting the empathy and good manners of these young ladies and gentlemen, the students of VHS and LHS by making them psychologically dissociate from reality, which is the definition of insanity, or solve this
012simple problem, which is a huge stain on your lives and this district's history. It's time for the community, the parents, and the teachers who hate this board, and that's a fact based on their no confidence vote in it last year, and 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 with the school, but 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
013and shrouds truth in shadows, bringing sanity into the abyss of delusion and total insanity. [Applause] Thank you, Mr. Shman. And that's all of the signatures I have on the sheet. Um, is there anyone else who >> I kind of speaking? >> Is it open now to other people? >> One minute. I just want to make sure we're fair and consistent through everything. Does the proceeding allow for someone to speak? Okay. >> We will 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, someone else. >> Okay. >> And >> my name is >> Would you share your name, please? >> Oh, yeah. Hi, my name is Kristen Christensen. I have four kids, two that
014went 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. Do you 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 want to be. That is the truth as well. If you aren't tall enough or athletic enough, you can't get a D1 scholarship to play basketball just because you want to play D1 basketball. To tell children they can be whatever
015they 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 is coded at birth. LHS policy states that a male can go into a female bathrooms, locker rooms, just if 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/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 safe space. But unfortunately last year the school had a male who looked like a male who identified as a female sometimes and as a male
016other times. Conveniently, he identified as a female when it was time to change. And he had the opportunity to view other girls changing in my in the locker room, including my daughter, just like they have their safe spa 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 allowed 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 because he identifies as a 15-year-old? Is there no truth that exists? Then this example is very real and very scary. Your policy is perverted and taking away my
017daughter'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. My daughter is going to 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 Wolfford. 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 could have three to speak both of our parts? As a courtesy, um we will extend for you to have three minutes and you to have three minutes, but
018then we'll um 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. Many cases of women being raped are real and exist. I'm not calling out a certain group um a group of people,
019but 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 going to things aren't as common as they are as they are. Around 8 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 other 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 kids 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 even know this was allowed or a rule. Last year, I was
020in I was a sophomore at LHS. I walked into the girls locker room to change for gym class. I was astonished. this mail 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 am 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 acknowledged, why can't we give them something of
021their 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 boy's 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 nos. 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 they are. They magic it magically grants them
022all they need. And the requests that get approved also is 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 going to 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 will choose change who
023you 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 happened 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. Thank you for your comments. [Applause] >> And as a point of record and as the committee chair, I do want you to know that we want to be as consistent as fair as possible
024for 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, Miss Newman. >> Thanks. >> Go ahead. Begin. >> So, hi, I'm Sue. Um, 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
025lower cost of living. All three told me that they left their hometowns because they were afraid of the white Christian nationalist attitudes taking over their areas. Though all three are white heterosexual churchgoers, 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 lo local election and last November's national election. As you consider a candidate to feel 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.
026>> Thank you for your comments. You're welcome. >> 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 as consistent, fair and welcoming uh through that time. The next um item on the agenda for discussion, we are going to have an update to the action plan of our Title 9 audit. And that will be presented by Mr. Brian Kelly and Miss Elizabeth Kelly. >> And I'd like to um welcome Elizabeth Kelly from uh Ka Bochek. um she uh is one of the um attorneys at their firm and worked on the uh audit uh from the beginning uh for us. So I want to provide a update on um the action plan and again the um action plan was
027uh attached to the board agenda and the public should have been able to see that ahead of time and same with the board. And so just um real quickly again, we reviewed the action plan starting back in January of 2025. Um we presented an update to the final action plan on March of 2025. Um 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. um to uh to you this evening. Um so some of the things this uh action plan update really focuses on the booster clubs at Libertyville High School. Um currently at Libertyville High School, there are um eight separate um parent booster
028organizations. There are also coachled fundraisers um at our in our athletic programs which is very also similar to Vernon Hills has some coachled fundraisers uh at uh their school also. So during the uh last uh kind of the update what we did over the summer is we collected bylaws um from the parent booster clubs and financials from their uh booster clubs. Um, in our audit of this information, there is some missing information, complete information from the bylaws. Um, 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 um of these organizations
029is that um much like what we do with our coachled fundraisers. Uh if I am a head um coach here at Libertyville High School and I want to do a fundraiser, I submit our fundraising um activity to um in this case would be our athletic director that's reviewed and processed and approved. So, moving forward, um we need uh to have a little bit more oversight over our parent booster clubs. Um in particular into some of the fundraising and the spending. So, if a parent booster club um right now is doing um fundraising, they will have to submit um that fundraising activities for approval much like a coach would uh through that process. uh that would get approved and then they can go ahead with their fundraising. And that um also they organizations would meet uh
030yearly with our principal um our athletic director and kind of review the processes of the fundraising um making sure their bylaws are up to date and following um some of the oversight on spending. So that's the what we want to give an update on our action plan. And I know this time I'm going to turn it over to Elizabeth. >> Yeah. So I've worked with uh Bryant I guess for over a year now on the Title 9 audits things. Uh 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 Brian's comments that like um maybe
031some 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 um easier to follow, but by no means is that a violation or an issue. Um 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 board policy 890, which talks about booster clubs and things that should be in the um their bylaws. And so that 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 you know I in preparation for today I went
032back and looked through the audit and then I also um took a look at the regulations for title 9 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 this in summary what it says is like basically nothing. it doesn't give us a lot of guidance on what it means to have equal um spending or how how money should be spent in athletics and so we're forced to look at like our best options and hope for equality mostly equity I would say we're not looking for dollar fordollar spending we're looking for you know are the opportunities for kids substantially similar are the facilities that they're participating in the equipment they're being provided the experience overall and at
033times booster clubs can impact that right Um, but I would also say that there's elements of booster clubs that go beyond athletics. It's 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 Bryant and I know he's worked with Mark and they have a good plan for what oversight will look like from the district level. and that is um 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 um for making sure that
034the programs, not just, you know, men's basketball versus girls basketball, uh boys soccer versus girls soccer, but generally boys sports versus girls sports that holistically um and that the the opportunities are substantially similar. Um, 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 can answer any questions you guys have, but you know, just to to wrap up, I think the the plan moving forward seems really sound and um you guys are in a good place. >> By the way, do you mind if I
035call you Elizabeth? >> Oh, no, please. >> Thank you. Um committee, are there any questions or matters for discussion? >> 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 that like not behind your backs, if you will, or 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 purposes of making sure like your own for your own um I don't know comfort level as a district that you're complying with title N having some district understanding of what funds
036are being spent on. I mean I know some examples that were given is like they're providing equipment for the for 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 then it passes it back to you, it's like a shot return, um, you would probably want to know as a district that that money is being spent and what it's going towards. Uh, but by no means are you required to independently uh, audit every penny that's being spent by the booster clubs. It's just more for understanding um, where it's going and contributing to your programs. >> Okay. Um, and I just another quick question. So, we're one district with two high schools. >> What is our
037responsibility to make sure that we're looking at both schools? Because I mean, ultimately our students are D128 students first and foremost. >> No, absolutely. Uh, 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 at Vernon Hills or Libertyville. Um but they should you should also so I guess to answer your 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 onetoone but holistically it's important to be mindful that the experiences at Vernon Hills are you know for females versus males are similar to those for uh Libertyville. I would just say that probably financially it's going to look more at a
038school 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 um 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 would look at it more of a school level than a district-wide level. >> Okay. Thank you. Yeah, absolutely. >> Ro. >> Yeah. So, uh, 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 and the War and Hill side has their own booster clubs.
039The Liberty will has their own booster clubs. They are 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 uh branches have same access to equipment and facilities at its face value. So how do we ensure uh in this plan that we make that happen? If we don't have we should think about it. And my bigger question is uh you mentioned Elizabeth that maybe there should be one booster club versus multiple and there's no right way. But is there an opportunity where all the booster clubs fall under an umbrella of oversight by the parents who are coming from these different booster clubs
040and providing then 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 I can just say that like if that's something that the board is interested in, I think by all means like that's something that's possible if you wanted to create some
041type of committee that was like over overseeing the the um the the booster clubs independently. You know, the 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? um they're their own 501c3s and so I mean it wouldn't be a independent booster club that would be created to oversee them because that you would want to 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 I have two questions. Um the first is um Elizabeth I believe you used the term unremarkable in your findings. >> Yeah. Does that mean that um overall um
042we should feel comfortable in comp being compliant or is there an a a fringe area of non-compliance where we may be exposed to risk or liability? >> Yeah. So I would say for the most part you know I there was nothing that was that stood out to me as 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 going to be discrepancies in that. Some sports have more athletes that are on them, so they they're going to have more costs. Some sports require more equipment, so that equipment is more expensive. Um, but just kind of taking like, you know, a wide lens view of things. Not much stood out. I mean, I don't think it's any secret that
043the football team has more funding here from private um donors, if you will, the booster club. That is true. And I'm going to guess 90% or more high schools across the country that offer the sport of football. Um, 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 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. And so, yeah, there is more money being spent on um football related things. The difficult thing in analyzing whether that's a quote unquote title 9 violation is that like we don't really know. There's no law that says
044one sport can't just spend more money. Um 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 um elevate 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 want to sit here and tell you that I think that you have no violations at all because
045I 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 um uh sorry I said federal I meant private dollars being spent on athletics and that I think it was in late January if not early February they basically rescended earlier um department of education guidance that said I'm going to quote myself here um if money from private sources ends up creating a disparity in an athletic program the outside money could trigger a school's Title 9 obligations and the current administration said, "No, that's rescended. We don't agree with that." >> So, what I hear you saying then as a board member who's concerned about being compliant is in our current state, we are from a visual
046standpoint compliant in our booster activities. >> I think more likely than not, yes. I can't promise you that because OCR and the Department of Vet are independent entities and they might come in and say like there's too much money being spent in one place and another, but my gut feeling is that I don't see anything that like clearly screams off the page that you have an issue >> and the question is being posed from a list uh 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? >>
047Yeah, 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 me, but it would be under Article 8, if you will, or section 8. And if you can say like we, let me back up. Let's say someone says this has to go to the girls volleyball program. Um, if you realize like in doing so, it's going to create a title N 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
048that you're not a 501c3 and there, 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 um, you know, a public entity, you have a little bit more say in and where that money goes and you can work with the donors. >> Thank you. Anyone else have any comments or questions? >> I just have one one clarifying question and I and I think I know I heard the answer to this. It's possible that there could be a Title 9 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 uh those programs and so
049that it would be our obligation then to try to fix that disparity in some way. Yeah, I think that's a great a great way of putting it. And like I can give kind of a 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 um donate a brand new, you know, um turf baseball field and they were going to fund a baseball field and they were only going to allow baseball 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 going to be provided for your baseball team. Does that automatically mean
050that 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 the public school looking to see if 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. Absolutely. So if it >> if there's a a situ using that as an example, we and there was an extreme discrepancy. Somebody was going to give 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 want to offer this funding for this program, but is there a way we could spread that and
051and make this more equitable? >> Yeah. No, I I absolutely think so. You can say why don't you donate too or you can Yeah. talk to them about how we had to disperse that. Yeah. >> Yeah. So that's within our you know we can accept or not accept. >> Absolutely. >> Yes. >> Thank you. >> Yeah. >> 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 and well-being survey report. And our presenter will be Miss Charlotte Ens. Am I saying that correctly? >> Mhm. Now he's logging her slides in. All right, as we hand off the um the clicker there, I think that is the technical term. Just want to introduce
052um Miss Charladim. She's our director of data and assessment for district 128. um board, as you are aware, part of our daring mission is to um not just uh educate our students for uh 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. Um 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 um health and well-being in a number of different ways. One of the primary ways that we do that is with our student life skills and well-being measure. Um this is a survey that we've given over the past couple years. Um Charlotte and the data team for
053district 128 helped 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. Um I want to first uh address the name of the survey because uh if you've seen this presentation before we used to call this SEAL survey. So um I want to just note that the organization that um we work with to administer this which is called Panorama Education. They changed the name of the survey this year. Um so this is but this is a survey we have been consistently giving each fall uh for the past four years. And so it's it's basically the the same survey with a new name. Um that said, there there were a few changes to the survey uh this year,
054which we'll talk about on the next slide. Um the the board packet contained a uh full report. Uh so I'm not going to go into as much detail on everything, but to hit some of the highlights uh with the presentation. Uh so we gave the survey on August 21st. That was the ninth day of school. Um, and we like to give this early because we use it partially as a screening measure to uh find any students who need support. Uh, so we give it as early as we can. Uh, this year we had an 89% response rate between the two schools. So a really really good response rate. Thank you. So this slide. No, it could be me. Okay. It's been doing okay. Okay. I'm going to hold it right here. That seems to work.
055Thank you. So, 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 going to leave that up there. Uh, so there were uh 10 topics and uh no changes to half of them and changes to the other half. Some of those changes were Panorama's changes. That's that's one reason we hire them. They are researchers and they they as part of what they do, they reorm and and reook at their questions every few years. So, so some changes were made by them and some changes were made by our team in looking
056at what is it that we want to measure and making 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. Uh so you're seeing three uh colors per bar. The green represents uh what Panorama designates as favorable responses. The yellow are approaching favorable. So generally that's going to be like on a on a fivechoice liker 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 uh were given on this survey. We are keeping our eye on growth mindset. Growth mindset kind of sticks out on this slide.
057It's the third bar over. Uh one thing that happened with this topic this year is Panorama changed 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. Uh so certainly um and again the the report goes much deeper into this with examples. Um but certainly we want to keep our our eye on growth mindset. It's certainly something we want to make sure we are instilling in our students. And so we are are aware of that topic being as low as it is, but we also don't we we aren't confident that that really reflects uh our students perceptions of their own growth mindset as the questions changed so drastically. This chart shows
058the national percentile rankings of eight of the survey topics. the these were the eight we were uh able to get this data for. Again, the growth mindset is sticking out. Um 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 the topics in and and their 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 uh by students who take this survey throughout the nation. So it gives
059us a little bit more context for what is expected in a certain topic. And then as we have now given this uh for um four years con very consistently we have our change overtime data for four years. Uh so this is showing uh for the topics uh on this survey as well as um some topics that we have changed a little bit. Uh so we mostly see some positive growth here. Uh 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 uh topics where you only see blue bars, those were new topics this year. So we don't have change overtime data for those yet. And then at the uh far right side of the chart, the
060support 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 show 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? Uh we have all of this data on our students and um and and now what are we doing with it? And this year we have uh have grown and enhanced uh many of of the things we are doing. Um but we have a protocol for this survey that we conduct immediately after it is administered and the very first step is that
061our 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 liyker scale questions and the free response questions. They're looking for students who need support, whose 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 uh color-coded uh help. So for the liyker scale questions, it helps us to identify students uh who need the most support. So we use that as a a bit of a way to kind of triage what students need from us and our LSTs dig into that data and start working
062with students immediately. From there, the data team does an analysis of the survey data on a on an aggregate level. Okay. and um 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 well-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 principles meet with student focus groups. And uh this helps us to gain some insight beyond the numbers. Uh so when when we give data presentations, we're often asked, well,
063what what were the students thinking? What what does that mean? And we don't know unless we ask them. So our principles meet with with student groups and uh this year's focus groups gave us some really uh impactful insights. We we we certainly asked the students about those growth mindset questions and how they interpreted them. We ask them um about what they think of the survey and whether they think it 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, uh, their the balance in their classes between spending time on academics and building relationships,
064classroom 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 uh for them. So those are that's our our basic protocol for uh the the for this sur for after this survey has been administered and um I want to we're taking that a couple of steps further this year which I'm really excited about. But I want to point out a couple of important data points from this year's survey. So one of the things that we are focused on this year is our ready tolearn initiatives. And there's a data point from the survey that points directly to that work. Uh so there's a question on the survey you can see here. During the past two
065weeks, 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 tolearn in initiatives u doing something. Uh so this is just one data point. we have a have a lot more to look at in regard to that, but this is a promising uh data point for for those particular initiatives. And then something we added to the survey this year that has been 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
066good those 86% what's going on with those nos. Um so we're digging into that and there's more to come. I do want to note that 43% of those nos are 9th graders and this was given on the ninth day of school. So our 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 uh we're we're doing a lot with this data. I'm going to go into that a little bit more on the next slide. So, some further analysis that is ongoing uh and and as we continue to improve our survey processes and as each year we do this and and know kind of what to look for and and what we want to get from it
067um we're 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 uh this year and so a couple of things are happening with that data. Uh first of all teachers uh 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 teach my 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 that a particular student or students named them as a trusted adult uh so that they can continue building that relationship and making that connection. And then on the other side of that,
068the nos. 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 uh continue to analyze it. So, we may ask this question again as the year goes on. Uh, but that's been a really exciting development and we've learned a lot about our system from asking that question. A couple other quick areas. Um, we are also further analyzing uh daring attributes and employability skills. So, dare we want uh to be producing graduates who are daring. That's our mission.
069But 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 we're currently undergoing that analysis to try to determine how our students are doing on being dreamers and doers on being aware etc. So that's a really exciting new step for us to uh analyze beyond uh the survey itself and the exact same thing is happening for employability skills. So, uh, Isby has employability competencies, many of which match directly to topics on this survey. And so, again, we are doing some further analysis to look at those topics in relation to employability skills. And this especially for our
070explore multiple paths strategic plan um team we are are looking at this data to help us prioritize what benchmarks uh and activities we need to develop as we continue to to uh develop our daring journey and our career pathway development for our students in that explore multiple paths band. Uh so th this all all of the things you see here this analysis is ongoing. We are continuing to dig in and to learn more and and often the more we dig in the more we want to know. So there may be more to come. Uh but that is where we are right now. Uh so thank you. Uh are there any questions? >> Thank you Charlotte. Um committee members do we have any questions or comments? So this is done annually and that it there's no
071followup to that. >> Correct. Right now we are doing this once per year uh in the fall. We have talked about doing a a second one um maybe right before winter break. We also hear from our students that they feel over surveyed. So it's it's balancing we want that information but it's balancing their feeling of of not wanting to take so many surveys. and this is a pretty long one. So, it's balancing that with with getting the information we need. So, it is something we've talked about. It's it's not completely off the table. Um but we we will only do it once this year. >> I have a question again a very useful data. Uh uh two things though. uh that over survey that you brought up and I think it's it's a very important
072thing for us to be aware of that once surveys keep coming the timing of the surveys will dictate how students actually just put responses I do that many times myself put four or five or without even reading the question so we have to be very careful however my point was uh this survey is administered on the ninth day did I hear that right >> and 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 uh 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
073when a month two months have passed by will give you a more realistic picture of 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 uh changed. >> Yes. Thank thank you and those are conversations that that we continue to have but but thank you. I I appreciate that perspective very much. I would think maybe even just the incoming freshman class may be delayed. You know, I know it'd be tough to do surveys on two different days, but I would think that'd be a lot different um feeling for them if you, you know, two down the road. >> I have one other question, too. Could you talk a little bit about this growth mindset?
074What exactly is that and what are the questions kind of >> Yes. So, um so again, this was a a panorama change and that's part of what they do. uh but the way that the questions were worded really felt different. So in the past the questions were worded um as how much control do you have over and then there's numerous things um 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 beh behaving the absolute best I can. So, I
075can't improve my behavior. And so, that told us right away that um 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 had room to improve their behavior. Uh so, that felt very much like two very different lines of questioning. uh 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 it's valuable information, it's not quite measuring what it has measured in the past. And so we just want to be cautious about it looks like we dipped a lot. Um but our our students have interpreted that those questions differently. >> Thank you. And there are more examples in in the report
076as well if you want to look at that in more detail. >> Yeah, I would just like to echo what Rahul and uh Nina shared is the timing of that survey. That's that's a daunting ask of freshman coming into high school. And also one other thing that caught uh obviously we want to glean as much data as possible but um if the timing coupled with a lengthy survey um really what um is the credibility of the responses um if it is a survey of sign 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 um one piece of a larger MTSS system that has been built throughout our school district. So when
077we think sometimes of MTSS, we think just of academics, but when you're truly working as an MTS system, you're integrating your students social emotional health and behavior as well as your academics. And what we've got here is a um kind of process where our system is assessing uh behaviors and characteristics that we've identified as being very important to our students outcomes and we're seeing then 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 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
078in 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 are 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. Um, I do want to say on a positive note, uh, 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,
079which I like. Um, have you been able um, like with the 12th graders, there's only 49 students, so it's a smaller set. Um, have you looked at those numbers? You know, is there like a mobility issue or they maybe students who have moved in the district? Um because obviously we'd like to get that number as close to zero as possible. Um so have you looked at that yet? >> That that is ongoing. Okay. Yes, we're doing a lot of analysis with this. Um so the first step was was trying to reach out to to to adults who those students are connected to. That was the first step. And yes, we have talked about further analysis. Um transfer students, that's a a big question. um that that we have and and what else is what else
080might 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. >> Um we will move on to the next item on the agenda and that is an update on the District 128 equity and inclusion um policy. Um Mr. Larry Vaughn >> and I think Charlotte's going to stay as well for this one um because of some of the data that we have. So, we're going to switch over our slides. Should have brought our elevator music. Thank you so much, Eli. >> Okay. Um so when we talk about um equity and inclusion um in district 128, it's important for the board um to understand what that work looks like in our district because that
081is a topic of discussion around um the country. And when we talk about it here though, we're really talking about um 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 um 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 have access and be successful in our classes. And then finally, we talk about building our school and our school culture around student voice and
082experience. So while those, you know, topics of uh 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 um 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 EL and speak a different language and tonight and and also of course income levels of students. And we look and
083disagregate performance similar to the way you talked about with the survey. You have a piece of data. You say 49 senior students are um 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 going to 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 um 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 that District 128 makes to this work. Um, and so with that, I'm going to turn it
084over to Mr. Varn and Miss Emmes. >> Thank you, Dr. Kentus. Good evening, board and community. Again, my name is Larry Vaughn, 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. Um and so I work in partnership with um every department within D128 to ensure that we have equitable outcomes for students. Um as as Dr. Kenta stated uh this evening we'll be providing an update on some of the commitments within our policy, our equity, diversity and inclusion policy 712. Uh and this policy is specific to racial diversity, equity, and inclusion. Um so we'll be looking at it from that particular lens tonight. um and how we are as Dr. Clinton said, demonstrating
085belief in all students, um creating a sense of belonging for all students, uh breaking down barriers and ensuring that we are creating and building opportunities through student voice. um 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 uh success of our HR department ensuring that we are um prioritizing diversity and our hiring and recruiting and retention practices uh 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 uh policies that we're going to look at begins with uh
086our commitment for diverse staffing and one of the metrics that we are looking for um that the board requested in this policy is that we report on our outcomes of proactive recruitment efforts. Um and so in this year uh last year our hiring um season uh we did some targeted uh in some targeted initiatives to ensure that we were recruiting and building our pool of diverse candidates as it relates to uh racial diversity. Um we did a number of things that included targeted recruitment. Uh that included social media outreach, reaching out to our uh professional networks and ensuring that our uh staff reached out to their personal contacts to make sure that they knew how warm and welcoming a place D128 is. And those those efforts resulted in uh an increase or we maintained our
087applicant pool demographics from 2024 to 2025. So, we're really pleased with the increase in diverse applicants as we uh look at who is looking to come to our wonderful district. And then from the applicant pool, we have to uh make selections. Uh it is a priority for D128 always to hire the highest quality and the highest caliber of of candidate. While diversity is important to us, we want to ensure that we are bringing in the very best and brightest. Um 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. Um so we uh and we maintained uh the diversity here from years past. So what does that look like in terms of numbers? One thing we want to highlight here is
088in 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. Um, and so we certainly want to make sure that we are inclusive of all of our uh staff members in 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 uh interesting to note as we look at this is of the 52 positions that we looked at from uh our hiring season up to August that when we think about diversity in our our workforce, we really see that that diversity um shows up more in our ESP pool than it does in our certified pool. 40% of our ESP new hires represent uh people who identify
089uh of as uh people of color while 11% of our certified new new staff um identify as BIPOP. Um so we're really glad that we have included this data because it gives us a more well-rounded picture of our diversity in our in our staff. And then we're looking at retention. How are we doing in um recruiting? um how are we doing in hiring and then how are we doing in retaining our staff of color when we bring them on board. Um and when we look at our Asian and Hispanic uh staff population, we are maintaining and even growing uh our numbers of uh staff members that identify in that racial or ethnicity identity. Um, however, one thing that we continue to note is that our black or African-American staff were having a challenging time retaining
090African-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. Um I work very closely with the teaching and learning department um to ensure that equity is a a part of how we are developing our staff uh to grow and build their capacity to ensure equitable outcomes for for students. And so we 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. uh it is professional development that is targeted to our student body and we've not done this in the past. The reason why we do why we decided to do this is because we've gotten
091data from our survey last year from Panorama uh the equity and inclusion survey uh where nearly 50% of students acknowledge that they have witnessed discrimination in our schools. Um but uh though they recognized that they see it, only 43% of students responded favorably when they were asked uh how often do they know how to respond. Um and so with that, we decided that we need to do some uh development with our students to give them the skills and build their capacity and 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 would that they do something. So, while 50% acknowledge, yes, we see it and we acknowledge that it happens, um, uh, less than half of them
092know how to or actually do intervene. Um, and so that speak up series, uh, is designed to give students the support, um, the skills and strategies to intervene. And then third, we're looking at student success. uh when we uh look at our uh policy uh the student success piece really highlights uh 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 creation. Um and then last year we did a lot of efforts to increase our students our underrepresented students enrollment in AP and honors courses. Uh tonight we want to report about some success uh that we've had with the AP work. >> So the slide you're seeing here is talking about all students. It's not disagregated. We will see some
093disagregated data on uh the next couple of slides. Uh 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. Um but this is essentially uh for each year how many of our students have enrolled um in at least one AP course. So as you can see that is growing uh year by year and um and and that that's exciting to see more and more students uh going into those higher level college uh level classes. >> And so with that growth in AP enrollment um we want to look at it by our underrepresented students, our um Hispanic or Latino students and our African-American students. And
094what the goal of the district has been was to have proportional representation meaning that the uh representation in our AP courses should be proportional to the overall enrollment of that particular demographic. So if we look at this chart um beginning uh at the um on the left hand side in 2022 you'll see that overall enrollment um we had just under 15 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 want to see is those bars equalized. So the same percentage of students who represent our overall population should also be represented in the AP course. Um so you'll see how that progresses
095from 2022 up to 2025. Um and while that demographic is growing, um we see that there's also been some growth in enrollment specifically for our Hispanic students. Um we do see that uh in 2020 uh 2025 we are at about 9% of our Hispanic students. 9% of our AP enrollment um is represented by Hispanic students. And so that's growth there. Um and we are incre we've also saw some increase in our African-American student enrollment in an AP course. This slide shows our uh AP exam passing data. There's a lot of different ways to to show AP pass rates. Um so again, this slide is show is is showing each student only once. So out of all the students who took AP exams, how many of them passed at least one? That's what this what this
096slide shows. Uh so again you can see that as we have been increasing our enrollment in those classes we're actually increasing slightly uh our pass rate as well. So this is really a 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 uh African-American, Latino, and uh low-income students enrolling in our AP class, it had no negative impact on our pass or success rates on the AP exam. So, uh in your package, you have a more detailed uh report, but those were some of the highlights that we wanted to um bring to the forefront of the work um on those four commitments in equity and inclusion policy 712. Any questions? >> Thank you, Larry and Charlotte.
097Committee members, any questions or comments? >> I have less. >> Um, so when looking at the the AP exam pass rates by the demographic group, um, the English learners and the students with IEPs, um, that's the lowest pass rate. And then with the third one being the students with the fee waiverss, um what supports um have you been looking at to try to bring those numbers up to the district average? [Music] >> Um the students enrolled in the AP course, they have the same supports uh across the board. So that really is has been around um one of the things that has we would consider to be uh equal across um they have the same access. When we look at the pass rate for EL students and um uh students of color, while that pass
098rate may be lower, uh our work around enrollment in the AP and honors class is really about having them exposed to that level of rigor. Um and that and the impact that it has on their future post-secary uh endeavors. um that students who are enrolled in the course regardless of AP exam score are more likely to uh sustain in their post-secary college or um uh college or university courses. Um so we do see that as well that disparity is also uh uh not germanine to D128. Um but we see that disparity nationwide. So we do see those those gaps in place there. >> But I sorry to interrupt you Mr. V. No, go ahead. So, I do think that is um something that we're excited to present to you at another time is we've been
099building out a large number of academic interventions and support um one to help students who are in classes like honors, AP, and dual credit be successful, but two to help students who are freshman and sophomore um and who with some support and skill development can change trajectory to enter those courses as juniors and seniors. So a large number of our uh teaching and learning work has been on developing both classroom strategies for teachers and the outofclassroom uh interventions to support students skill development um to try to change those rates and get them into more proportionality. >> Thank you. Um, yeah, I just, uh, I don't want, you know, 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
100have access to increased rigor. >> Um, but I want to 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 um this fall on our school report card data and some of our standardized test data, part of what you'll hear from us are the work that we're doing for both of those. um kind of as Larry said, the persistence of students staying in in an an upper level class um and not having that melt, but then also the idea of encouraging students to uh develop their skills and to re kind of stress um stretch themselves to take an AP or honors course before they graduate. >> Right. Thank you. >> Um I have a maybe
101a 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 think 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 a 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
102courses make them aware what's in going to 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. Rojo, anything else? >> No. Thank you so much. >> Any any other committee members? >> Okay. Thank you, Larry, Charlotte, Tom. We will move on to the next item on our agenda and that is employment of employees. the personnel report and Brian, will you cover that for me, please? >> These are our employment items that we're bringing to you that um then will be presented through the consent vote agenda um 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
103next 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. Um, you have snowcats to uh Wisconsin for their annual uh overnight ski trip. You have uh LHS stage players to Bloomington, Illinois for the um theater fest, the annual kind of state convention for uh student thesbians. You have uh baseball, Vernon Hills baseball to uh Murreey'sboro, Tennessee, so that they can get some 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
104team with your approval will be in Alabama. Both kind of getting in some spring games hopefully before um the you know because there's snow on the ground up here at that time. So any questions I can answer otherwise need your approval. Thank you, Tom. I don't hear any questions or requests for comments, so we will continue. Um the next item, um future agenda items at the October 27th, 2025 board meeting. Uh we will have the 2025 tax levy review. We will also include the school report cards and student supports um and also the IASB 2025 resolutions committee report. At the November 3rd, program and personnel committee meeting, um we will review 2026 27 course proposals, 2026 27 school calendar review and 202728 proposal. There will also be an annual review of the district 128 student
105handbook and uh 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? I'm >> just going to grab water. >> We're good. Okay. All right. Good evening. I'm going to 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 700 p.m. Right. I'm going to review the agenda um before we begin. Uh we will start our committee meeting this evening with the invitation for public comment. Moving on for items of discussion, we have the 2025 estimated levy. We have fiscal year 2025 budget performance, summer 2026 capital projects,
106disposal of district property, donation acknowledgements, and before we adjourn, we will go over the future agenda items. Now, uh back to the invitation for public comment. Is there anyone in the e or in the audience this evening who would like to give a public comment? All right. Let me know when I'm when I can start. >> One minute, please. >> Mr. Vila, you may begin. You have three minutes. Thank you. >> Okay. Thank you again for letting me speak. Um, 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 to what what they went to. I just wanted to add to that that all we want as parents is we don't want males
107in female spaces. We don't want males in sports playing against our girls. Um, you know, it's it's it's it's a tough one, right? because you if you you know please me then h how how do you avoid hurting someone else's feeling but um that's something that that you you have to figure out I think as as parents is that's that's our main concern we don't want to hurt anyone we don't want to bring pain to any uh any children I believe some of these children already suffering from a lot and I just wanted to be clear that again don't want to discriminate against anyone just don't want male in in in locker rooms and bathrooms and sports. Um very happy to hear some some of the comments the board members did here in the past
108hour and a half on surveys. I have brought this up in the past with with Carmichael uh you know coining the phrase uh survey fatigue. So really appreciate it Wes. Thank you so much for point pointing that out. Um no more survey surveys have a cost behind it. To me, surveys is also kind of a security blanket for people to hide be hide behind it. I would recommend that adults get into the classroom and meet the children. Um, I have two kids that graduated from here. One, if I asked him who Dr. Vaughn was, he he would not know who it is. So, instead of doing surveys and and paying money for surveys, get in the classroom, get get out of the the district building and go and get and meet with the kids. um
109in the bar chart as board members I would look into uh you know it was nice to see that including children of underserved served 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'd like to know how many of those that took the AP were Hispanic. Um, it's something that I think uh the questions that the board members had were were great, but I feel that that that one would have been interesting to see how many actually signed up because there they cost money and I wonder if if if if there is some kind of funds that could fund those uh exams for those children, would they participate more? Uh just
110throwing it out there. I'm not sure, you know, we didn't see that metric on the bar chart. So, thank you for your time and have a good night. >> 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, let's get our screen going here. All right. Um so we um we're coming to the period of time in our year where we're looking at the levy. Um we're going to spend some time on this. uh this this is one of the most consequential decisions the board will make uh that has an impact on the district's finances. And so uh what we usually have done is a two-year cycle. Um the
111cycle in which we get uh usually new board members um in the even or in the odd number of years uh we do a more detailed explanation of the levy to help you understand what's happening and what your what our role is in that process. The next one, um, the off-year cycle is a more more brief in terms of just reviewing some key concepts and then reviewing the numbers. So, we're going to go through the more detailed one tonight, um, with our newer board and we'll go through that. Um, I'm going to go over six different areas. We're going to talk about funding sources briefly, how schools are funded. We'll look at the property tax cycle. Uh, we'll talk through CPI, PTEL, EAV, and levy, bunch of letters. Uh we'll walk through all of these
112and hopefully you'll walk away knowing what each of these mean. Um so we'll start with funding sources. So the ways school districts are funded uh uh in Illinois uh primarily are through local funds. So the the most significant source of local funds is going to be property taxes. Next is CPPRT which is a replacement tax that we get from the state from something that used to get in we used to get into the 70s. Uh but it's a replacement tax that we get from the Illinois Department of Revenue essentially. Um school fees is another local source of revenue uh that are that it that the district receives as well as interest income. So money that's invested uh the money comes back that's considered local revenues. The next source is state sources and there's a few
113bigger buckets for this. The biggest bucket is the evidence-based funding or EBF. Um that is the primary way the state funds schools. Um and so we get about 2.3 million um or 2.1 million from EBF uh every year and that's the primary way they fund schools. Transportation reimbursement. So we get refunded a portion uh a smaller and smaller portion of our transportation expenses uh from the prior year. Um and then we get uh refunded a portion of our um students the tuition from our students that are placed in private facilities outside of the district. from the federal. That's the third main way we get uh funds. One is through the title grants. Um so if you think of title one or you've heard of title two uh low income or title one low income, title
114two teacher quality uh title three um th those are the grants that we get um from the federal government. And then the the other biggest source from the federal government is the idea. So, Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, um, special ed education funding that again helps offset a portion of the costs of our special ed program. Now, in the United States on average, um, what you see when you look at 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 uh than you see on average in the United States.
115Um and be because of the how the state of Illinois has decided to set that up. That's where you can see funding disparities uh between districts like ours and then you drive a few miles away and you go to North Chicago. The very very different funding um because of that because of the system that's created. So you can see um in Illinois more is on the local community and in district 128 we're even very different from Illinois. So the vast majority of our funding comes from our local community. Think uh a key figure to think about is 88 to 89% 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
116funding from. Okay. Now, we're going to talk about the property tax cycle, which is the cycle that we're 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. Um the assessment process uh is trying to determine what is 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 convert it into revenue. Um 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. Um so to walk through the assessment process the outcome we're looking for the values is called is a figure called EAV which
117stands 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, we say taxable because the reality is is not every 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. Um you have places of worship, hospitals, tiff districts. Those are um different levels of them are exempt to some level or another. So, we're talking about the value of the taxable properties in the district. 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 want to assess at the a third of the fair market value.
118So if the fair market value for a house is $300,000, the assessed value would be $100,000. All right. So you we're taking the value, it's assessing at a third of the value. Um 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. Um they're asking the question what is the value of the properties in their township as of January 1st of whatever year. So we are in 2025 right now. The the levy we're doing right now is 2025. and it's asking the question, what is what were the values of all of the taxable properties
119in our district as of January 1st? So, 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 the board of review is a county level board and they hear appeals of assessed values. Um, 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 try to appeal if it's too low. Uh but they the the point is the assessed value is trying to help figure out what is everybody's fair share and the decision is based on and the system is based on your fair share is based on the assessed
120value of the properties that you own. And so after th they hear those appeals um 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 one 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% 10% of the assessed value. They assess at 10% of the fair market 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
121you 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. Um planning, adopting, extending the levy, collectioning, collecting the dollars, and then distributing back to taxing districts. So let's talk about planning. That's where we're analyzing and estimating and that's what we do in the administration side um right now. And so we'll look at all the data uh available to us and try to analyze
122get 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. Um and so that's a critical function of the board is the adoption of the annual levy. After that, um, that gets filed with the county clerk, and the county clerk, um, will calculate the approved taxes. That's what the extension is. I'll get back to that word in a minute. Um, and then after that process is done, then the county treasurer will then issue all the tax bills. They collect the taxes, and then the county treasur again will then distribute those taxes back to all the taxing districts. So, in
123a nutshell, that's what the levy process is. um it's that's how it converts from the EAV into revenue. Now, a huge thing to understand is that the 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 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. And so then we work backwards from there. Um so we'll come back to that. Now there the words are important here. The words levy and extension um are important when we're talking about the word levy. That stands for an amount of tax revenue that we are requesting. We don't
124request a tax rate. We don't request anything else other than what a 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. Um 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 we we say we'll say the word levy many many times. Technically, what's happening is there are there actually several
125different 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 going to 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. Um, that's no coincidence. It's designed that way. Um the other thing is we're going to talk about capped and non-capped. We'll come back to this in a second, but there are there are some portions of our levy or the extension that is going to be capped restricted the amount you can get and then there are some that are not seed IMRF debt service PTAB recapture. We'll come back to those in a minute. Um that stuff is
126non-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 capp 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 and 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 going to levy is more than 105% of last year's le extension. So, if we're going to ask for more than a 5% increase, then you have to have a public hearing. You have to by law. Um, if you ask for less than a 5% increase, your hearing is optional. You can still have a hearing. You can
127have 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 and 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
128because 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 take 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 our EAVs in spring of 2026. But when did I tell you the levy is due? By the last Tuesday in December. That levy has to be
129filed. So that's an important uh mismatch of data here. Um the other thing is what actually Pabs are are appeals that can go to the state. So if it goes to the board of review and the 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're a few years behind still, so that can take a long time. All right, so that's a brief overview of what's what the property tax cycle is. Now, we're going to talk about CPI. So CPI is another acronym that stands for consumer price index. That comes from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, which is a Federal Bureau of Labor Statistics. And here is the definition. It's the measure of the average
130change over time in a price in prices paid by urban consumers for a market basket of consumer goods and services. Easy, right? Let's take what this means. So, a market basket of consumer goods and services. So, um the Bureau of Labor Statistics will look at these things that are listed, figure out those costs. So they put a basket together of of food, beverages, housing, all these things together um 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
131figure out those prices and then what they try to figure out is this basket of goods, how did the how did those prices change over time. All right, so that basket of goods cost 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 the mark 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
132of the prices for the five top 500 companies multiplied by some number that we don't know and then 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 um the percentage change in that index. So let's 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 spot 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
133mean the average change in CPI from last December to the December before. And so you can see here uh a number of his uh several years of history of the December to December changes in CPI. This is the thing that affects our levy more than anything else. uh and I'll explain what how that does but if you try to look at an average you can see there's an average uh 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 um 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
134costs of goods and services prices paid the 10-year average is about 3%. So, it's a benchmark that I'll I update every year to kind of see we've been seeing this average increase over the last few years. Um, this is the change the annual change in CPI month by month over the last uh several months and a few years. And you can see um inflation has really come down since the height of the um the before times that I'm not going to mention, but we've seen it really smooth out. uh but but it's still hovering somewhere between you know two and 3% and the question is what is going to happen we don't know um but that's where we can see but the only thing that really matters for the levy is that is that December
135timeline what is it in December that's the 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 PEL so PEL is a law and this is also something called the tax cap. So if you've ever heard of think something called tax cap or if you remember I said capped earlier in the presentation um 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 if remember what did I say the extension was? It'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.
136It 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 or 5% whichever is less because it was never 5% up until a few years. It was never above 5% up until a few years ago. Um, so the CPI that we're talking about is going to 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. Don't worry, you don't have to do this. This is something we do,
137but I'm just telling you how how it happens. It looks at the prior year extension multiplied by 1 plus CPI or 5% whichever is less, and then it divides your current EAV and takes out new property. uh because new property wasn't here last year and so they don't that's that's outside of the increase because it wasn't here. They paid zero dollars last year and so 0 time anything would be zero. 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 then new new property is added on top of that. New property could be improvements. So, people renovating their homes, uh, improving their homes,
138adding on additions. This could be new construction. Uh, there's always a lot of activity that happens. Um, but the the key idea is is PTEL allows you to maintain buying power in terms of the increased costs up to 5%. It won't it won't go beyond that. So, the periods of 6.5 CPI or 7 CPI, it's going to cap it at five. And that's something that we've lived through already. So because this is a formula, there are four variables in this formula. There are two we know about and then there are going to 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
139know 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 kept. There are three different parts of a of a of an extension that are not capped. Cedal IMRF debt service and PTAB recapture. So Cedal IMRF is um special education district of Lake County. So, that's the the special education um 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
140pension payment for their support staff, uh is part of our levy and they have a special carve out in the law that is not capped. Meaning, if it was $100 million, we can levy $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 not is outside of the cap. Um that happens that auto gets levied when the debt is issued and then the all the levy all the all the levies get 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 Pabs is when people appeal to the state. um because it takes so long, they take the money
141out of the money out as as we get it, but then it's allowed to get re it auto gets re-extended to us and that's something not anything you do. The county automatically does that for you. So when if you look at the details, you will see a PTAB recapture automatically gets extended. They levy and extend it for us. Uh there's nothing we do for that. That's based in the law. So that's PEL. 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 in terms of EAV. So here is a chart over the last several years of our equalized assessed values in the district and the it's broken up by different components of the type of
142it. Uh it's very common in most districts that um 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 um it doesn't always go up right there was some fluctuation if you look at the period between 200 2008 or 2009 and 2019 that's what some people call the lost decade um because val it took it took them a decade for the the values to recover from where they were uh but you can see over the last couple years we've had some substantial growth in our values And you know, a lot of you can hear about it. You can see about it in terms of people selling homes and thinking like, "Wow, is the home really worth
143that much?" Well, if they're pay people are paying for it, then it's worth that much. So, we've seen a substantial increase over the last couple years in terms of values. So, what does that mean? That means that um the the values that we've seen have been a little bit higher than average. Um I'm going to skip to new property. So, the EAV of new property. So that that is val that is things in our district that have uh new construction or new on the tax rules or additions or things like that. Um our average is about 13 million over the last several years. We have a spike here that happened in 2022ish. That's when the Libertyville tiff downtown expired and came back on the tax rules. So we had we had a pretty huge increase
144in 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 roles and then last year we down to our normal amount but this year we're up to like 28 million in new property which is higher than normal. Um that doesn't mean you get $28 million. It's just the value is 28 million. Uh so we're a little bit higher than average EAV data. Um when we look at the new property, how does that broken out? Um, I've got a few years here to see like where is the where is it coming from? Where is the new property coming from? Um, the most common is going to be people just improving their homes. These are people renovating their basements
145and pulling the permits, you know, doing all that stuff, adding on a deck, adding on um portions of their house, and that value getting added on. What we have here is a pretty significant change in industrial, and I'll I'll look I'll show you that in a in a second here. Um, and then a slightly bigger incommercial that we had is at least from the year before. Um, one things I 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 Canland Sports. That's the old Libertyville Sports Complex. So, that used to be owned by the village.
146And when it's owned by the village for a taxexempt 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 that we do not have something like that happen every year. That's a pretty substantial add-on. Uh the other one is children's land in Vernon Hills. Um 1.9 million. Um I think that's the one uh on uh Townline Road. Uh just a little bit west of here or uh yeah, a little bit west of here on Townline Road. Heathro Scientific. That's right down the street from uh district office in that little corporate park. There's a new building there, Heathro Scientific. They do like medical I think medical supply things. Um
147so 2.7 million. And then the Springs at Mundine. Um that's that um apartment complex that's right on Butterfield. Portion of that is in our district. And so that that's coming on too. So those are some of the bigger things that are happening in our district. Um and so that's what's happening on the values. 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 capp levy too has
148increases pretty steadily. But if you look closely, it doesn't always increase. something happened in 2014 um that I'm going to talk about in a second. One thing that if you remember from non-cap is debt service extension um we have no debt service extension because we have no debt. We have had no debt for nearly a decade at this point um which is not all entirely that common amongst districts. most districts have some form of debt, but we have been debtree for about the last 10 years. And so there is no debt service extension on our tax bills. Um it's not there in our tax rate sheet. So that has been zero for some for several years. And you can see a little volat some um some uh can't think of the right word, volatility. Uh
149in 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 going to say, "Hey, don't tax quite as much and we're just going to pay that debt payment through our existing fund balance." And so they did that for a few years. They 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 tax we've been debtree uh for about a decade. The other thing that happened in 2014, if you looked at that little dip is the board made the decision uh to reduce their levy in 2014. And if you remember, the way the law works is what you can get this year is
150based on what you got last year. So the 2014 decision was made to lower their levy um lower their levy by um by about a little not quite 2.5 million from what they could have done at the time. So that has a one-year savings, but then you're allowed to kind of catch up a little bit from the for the next year, but you're always going to 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 less than they would have otherwise been um 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 um most critical and impactful decision the board makes in
151terms 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 I have from the county says the existing EAV is going up about 6 and a half%. Which is a pretty big increase still. Um, and then 28.9 million in new property. Those 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 capp portion of our levy of our extension uh is going to be 102 million. That means an average increase of 2.9%. Um
152for 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 and a half%. So, I think everybody got their assessment sheets, right? Right. Did everyone get them? Get those 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 and a half%, 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 this the math says your taxes would go
153up 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 owner is 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 property has a pretty significant impact in terms of it brings it up to 3.7 um for those properties that are coming online. So based on the based on the estimation of 1.2 102, I'm I'm I'm recommending we levy at 103 on the cap side. 103127. So what does that mean? That leaves a $300,000 cushion between what we're asking for and what we're estimating we're going to get based on the law and all
154the numbers. Now, why why do we have a cushion? It's because in that in that formula there are two estimates. The question is what happens if those estimates are wrong? So, let's say in on our original estimation there, right? um existing values going up 6 and a.5% and new property at 28 million 28.9 million. But what happens if instead of going up 26.5 million, it only goes up 2%. And let's say the county made a mistake and they gave me wrong data and whoops, we're 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 my goal is to never let the district accidentally leave money like that. And so we we put
155in a cushion there because we know we're getting estimates. Um 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? Oh, I'll get to that in a second. So we have the capped levy of the 103127. And then the other thing that we actually have to levy is Cedal IMRF. And so that's the 30,000. So see all tells us what to levy. So that's 30,000. So then the documents you will see as a total levy of 103 157 298 based on the the levy with the cushion plus IMRF which is still something we have to levy. Now that means uh that's a still a $300,000 cushion total increase of 3.92 um is
156the levy. then that you're not going to get that because we've already estimated the most you're going to get is 3.7 based on the math. 3.92 is what you're asking for. And so that 3.2 mean 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 is a is a chart over the last several years of what is what was our cushion in the levy and 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. Um but that's why the cushion is
157there 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, um 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, um we assumed 13 million on new property, which is what we historically would typically get, but we're higher than that now. So, we're that's 20 that's now 29 million, call it. So, that's quite a bit better than what we anticipated um back in February of 2025. And as a reminder, this was our this was our forecast for our annual surplus or deficit
158for the next 5 years back in 2025. It's heading in not a good direction. We don't want that number to keep going down. But that that that is old data. A lot has happened since February 2025. And so when we get when we get near that time, I will update with that data. But just showing you that was that's the outcome of the projections we had with those assumptions in there. Um so then what are the next steps? So the next steps is at the next meeting we'll review uh the we we're not going to review this process again. We're going to review just the final numbers and just to kind of talk about that you'll have a chance to see the numbers again. Um, at the November meeting, we'll do a final review that
159includes 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 uh to fall back on because it is due by the last Tuesday in December. No exceptions. Um so that is that's the process. Um so hopefully you get a better understanding of the where districts get funding from and is particularly where does
160district 128 get its funding from understanding the property tax cycle. CPI inflation 2.9 pel caps our increase at CPI. the EAV data, our values are going up. The levy um the levy at three 3.7 is our expected increase based on the on on the outcome. And so that's the numbers we're looking at. Um so thank you. That's that's the long version of this, but hopefully you have a better understanding and at this point um any questions? >> Remind me again when is it due? >> Last Tuesday in December. >> I pass now. >> Yeah. Yeah. When is the levy due? >> Thank you um for that wonderful presentation and I must say I was here last year and a lot went over my head but this was a lot better. Every year I get a
161little better. Thank you much. Appreciate it. >> Makes more sense. Stan, if you >> Dan, if you'll go to slide 63 with the February 2025 projection assumptions looking out five years. >> Which one? Which one? >> The one with the green bars. Uh >> is I don't have I don't have the same page number. The >> second to last slide. >> Second to last. >> This one there. there one. >> Yeah. >> Um looking out three, four, five years, where are you coming up with um those deficits? How is that being calculated out? >> So, uh 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
162we're heading, things like that. So to really answer that question, there's a there's a significant amount of information that goes into that that I I couldn't distill for you other than to say the 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 we that is the that is what the projections showed at February 2025. It will look different now when I redo this next February for sure. um 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, >> and I thought that's what you were going to say, but I wanted to make sure my assumption was correct. Yeah. >> And
163I just I just want to share this with the board and the administration and using your your terms that obviously we're heavily relying on property taxes and that's primarily residentially driven. Correct. >> It is. So if you look at the EAV in terms of the that that chart that had EAV residential is our biggest chunk which is very typical in most districts >> and obviously a brunt of our responsibility is fiduciary and that um 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 normally izing our operations to create greater efficiencies throughout the whole school district. Um, and to make sure that that unintentional creep that has happened for a lot
164of organizations over the past three, five years that we we 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 uh for district 128. That's my challenge to all of us. >> Yeah. And that that is going to be uh a lot of the focus of the projection data that we 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 discussion the board has on money coming in. there's very a lot of discussion on the terms of the board on the terms of money going out. Uh and so it'll
165be important to understand what money is there that goes out. You know, what are the types of money that goes out? What are what some things are already set in terms of contracts that we have in place that are already going to be set that'll dictate where a lot of this money is already going to be going. But that that's part of the conversation of of the 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 there uh very important points and I think uh but again I had the same thought that
166revenues will keep coming and as you noted that there was a there's a belief that our expenses will exceed our revenues so every time we talk about seeking more revenue we should also So 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 bit little bit more efficient and the reason I say that is uh in your projections the slide before this we are making a projection that there will be 13% more uh construction revenue or new new uh 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 uh
167not revenue and new >> taxable revenue or taxable properties. Uh 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 3 years uh how are we going to manage those? So again food for thought for all of us not just you. Mhm. >> All right. Anyone else? All right. Thank you. Um, moving on to fiscal year 2025 budget performance. >> Sorry. One second. All right. I think we're here. >> Yeah. So, um, there's no slides, but just a report for you on the budget performance. So, this, uh, we like to do, uh, once we close the books. our books were a little bit later in closing this year uh because we we upgraded our financial software to the
168newer version of the software we had and so that is not a great time of year to do that uh close to the end of the year but there's never a good time to do it because there's always something uh 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 uh a zoom out perspective on the revenue side if you think of those three sources local, state, and federal. Um, we were pretty darn close. Overall revenues coming in at 101% of budget. And so we came in over budget by 1.2 million. The biggest chunk of that is going to be interest income
169was 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 are rates going to be 15 months from now. It's really hard to do. Um it's hard to predict anything right now. And so I didn't want to 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 going to happen in the future? We still don't know, but that's what happened on the revenue side. Um on the expenditure side, um you'll see some things were extremely close. Salaries,
170we were at 100.1% of budget. benefits at 100.3% of budget. Those are extremely close and those are great. Uh my goal is to try to get as close to 100 as possible because like those are all those are built from the ground up with real people. So that's not saying, oh, I'm guessing 10 million for these people. Like it's every single person listed, every single benefit listed, everything priced out from the bottom up. Uh, 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 than I feel comfortable going. Um, because there's a lot of things in there uh that were a little tricky. Like
171for example, you know, we had the intram superintendents last year. I only budgeted for one superintendent, not three. And so that was something that ate into the contingency. uh you know, we've seen we've got some transportation things we need to look at uh on athletics and special ed in terms of matching the budget because the point is the point the point of the budget is to be an approximation of what we think we're going to spend. And so the closer we are, I think the more accurate is and so then the more confidence we can have that say like when we say it's going to cost this much, it's actually going to cost that much. And so we're we're encouraged by that data. And so because of revenues going over by 1.2 two and expenditures
172under by 150,000. The budgeted operating surplus of 870,000 turned into a surplus of 2.3 million. Um, and so what that looks 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. Uh, 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 uh culmination of work with uh Mark uh and his team uh and other people in our system looking over um looking over our various systems in terms of our
173long-term plan and other needs that have come up since then. Looking at our our um our capital needs throughout the district. So, what we have here is our first shot at a plan of estimates of numbers in here uh 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 some because sometimes pictures really can help flesh out what we're talking about in terms of conditions. Um, there's a lot of things on this list. Uh, the probably the big takeaway is that the numbers on this list in total are too high right now. Uh, 8 million is what we have on this list. We will have closer available to us. Five million is closer to what we're going to be able
174to afford in my opinion. And so between now and over the next couple months as we get a little bit more clearly defined, we get some better numbers, we uh bid out some 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 uh summer of 2026. So these are the things that are listed um with a variety of uh pieces of information related to it. I have uh one real quick question. Um in regard to capital projects, do we just go out the oneyear or do we have a five-year uh capital plan? >> We have a we have a we have a plan that goes out to 2050. >> Okay. >> Um but it it's it's um it's
175system level plan and it's got round numbers in it. So, um, one of the things that we have discussed with the board as the board, but not necessarily with y'all as the board, um, is our current plan is is is, um, a little bit more on the basic side. And what I would like to do is get something a little bit more comprehensive, uh, because, you know, we're 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 going to happen for the next 30 years. It's really all right, we replace this parking lot and we know this parking lot should last 25 years. So 25 years from now, there's a placeholder for this
176parking lot in the year 20 whatever 25 years is from now, 2050. Uh we put a placeholder there to have that in have that information there. And so this is just the this is a this is the summer this is a culmination of not only that pro that long-term uh list of things that are there but also other things that have kind of come up um that weren't necessarily on that list or kind of got moved and e even that list it evolves because the sometimes the placeholder is hey this is when we would replace it. Do you need to replace it now or should it need should it move up a year early or can it wait a year? things like that happen. That's kind of the the art of putting together a plan
177like this is looking at all of that data. Uh so we do have a plan that goes out to 2050. Um but really the next five years are more reliable than you know obviously something 10 years from now is going to be way less reliable in terms of data. Uh but it's still a pretty basic plan. >> My only suggestion would be to give consideration to a 3 to five year intensive review. Um realizing there's fluidity in everything. um sort of like strategic planning and strategic thinking. Taking that to the capital uh project perspective and that tying that collectively with our desire to become more efficient operationally. That would be my suggestion. >> Yes, that's a that's a goal of ours as well. Uh and I will say, you know, when we've looked at these
178numbers even over the last few years, um 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 to do all the things on the list. And this is 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 want to renovate the library. That's not what this is. This is replacing things, asset preservation, replacing things on a maintenance schedule, not hey, we want to build a new facility. That is not on this list. That have to come above and beyond. That's really the last of the bucket of money that we're using to renovate the cafeteria over here. That money is is running out as
179soon as we're going to be done with that project. And so this is really about um maintaining what we have. So yeah, we we agree and that's an important goal of ours is to have a a more fleshed out uh 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. Is that >> the these things are operate? So um we're there's two different things we're talking about. So we're talking about operating funds which are like our ED fund on&m fund transportation IMRF social security fund working cash. Those are our funds operating funds money year in year out. These projects are operating fund projects. They are
180part of our annual things. So they are part of our opex funds as that that phrase would use. Capex would be more like the cafeteria that is one time big huge $10 million projects that we would 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 accounting 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. Um that was required of us by the state to do that. So that's why this is called
181a 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. >> Yeah, that's what that was the two words confusing. >> Yeah, it's a Yeah, a little bit different. Great question. >> Um, any other questions, comments? Um, I just have a quick question. Um, when it comes to our athletic facilities at both of our buildings. Um, I'll use Vernon Hills High School for example. Um, and this is just for my own understanding of, you know, trying to figure out how things work. Um, so the 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? Like who's in
182charge of determining what needs to be done, when, where? >> So I would say, so in terms of who who is in charge of like deciding this is a project to do, I would say that's largely between Mark and the building administration. >> Okay. Okay. So Mark, so the capital pro the capital plan we have is really a a plan for both buildings like because that's that's the 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 are there's a component that's building based there's sitebased which would include like the stadium the turf all those kinds of things those those are those have schedules based on the capital plan and then mark
183based on the actual conditions and what's happening that year we'll kind of look at like all right does this 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 uh and then coordinate with the billing principal to kind of do a check and kind of see what else what else is there or what else might be missing. Is that a fair >> Yeah. >> Okay. Thank you. >> Mhm. >> And if when it comes to athletics, the athletic director would be involved too. >> Sure. >> Yep. >> Um anyone else? All right, moving on to our disposal reports. >> Yeah. So um uh we
184have a board policy that requires the board to approve disposals of anything that's above a dimminionive value. And so we periodically will have things to dispose of. There's a semi semianual IT disposal there. So there's a whole bunch of stuff that's listed there that they dispose. And then uh we have acquire robes that are also there uh that that'll go for that'll be on the consent agenda at the October 27th uh board meeting. >> All right. Any questions, concerns, comments? Okay, moving on. Donation acknowledgements. >> Yeah. Um, from time to time we receive donations and so, uh, what, um, when we get them, uh, 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
185you're voting to accept it necessarily. You're it's just a public acknowledgement. Usually is sometimes handled with the board president or the superintendent. um that just acknowledges the donation. So, we have the copies of the letters in there as well um to share. So, that's so just so you know, that's what's coming up at the at the October 27th meeting. >> All right. Any questions, concerns, comments? Right. Future agenda items. Uh coming up on the 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 uh for the November 3rd, 2025 FNF meeting, we have the 2025 tax levy. And with that, I adjourn the meeting at 8:01 p.m. Do we need a quick break or can we >>
186five minutes? >> Well, do we want to call to order? Are we going to Where are we going for a meeting? >> Are we going Are we going >> to a classroom right kind of adjacent to this? >> Okay. But we'll come back here to begin the meeting and then we'll exit to there. Okay. >> So, let's call it um 8:10. We'll return here for the special board meeting. Currently on break. Currently on break. Currently on break. Currently on break. Currently on break. Currently on break. Currently on break. Currently on break. Currently on break. Currently on break. Currently on break. Currently on break. Currently on break. Currently on break. Currently on break. Currently on break. Currently on break. Currently on break. Currently on break. Currently on break. Currently on break. Currently on break. Currently on
187break. Currently on break. Currently on break. Currently on break. Currently on break. Currently on break. Currently on break. >> We're live. Okay. All right. Uh I'd like to call this uh special board meeting uh to order. October 14th, 2025. Uh it is 8:10 p.m. Um can we have a roll call, please? Carol >> Nina Austin here. >> Jim Batson >> here. Raul Deshmuk >> here. >> Doug Flegal >> here. >> Middleish Cotwall. >> Wes Poland >> here. >> Okay. Uh going to review the agenda. We have an invitation for public comment. We have an executive session. Um and when we return, we will not be taking any action or anything. So uh let's start with an invitation for public comment. There's nobody here. So, I guess um there's no need for a invitation for a
188public comment. So, um I need a motion to convene in close session to discuss the selection of a person to fill a vacancy for the school board 5CS120/2C3 and the placement of individual students in special education programs and other matters relating to individual students 5CS120C10. >> Poland so moved. Second. >> Okay. Uh, any questions, comments? Roll call, please. >> Batson, >> I. >> Dashmuk, >> I. >> Legal. >> I. >> Poland. >> I. >> Austin. >> I. >> Okay. A motion passes. We will move into executive session in a different room.