June 2025 Committee Meetings and Special Meeting of the D128 School Board with audio descriptions

001>>Hello, everyone, it's 5... 05:30 on Monday, June 9th. I'm Doug Fleegle. I'm the chair of the Program and Personnel Committee and I'm gonna call the meeting to order. And we are gonna begin with the Pledge of Allegiance. (chairs knocking and scratching) >>I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands. One nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. (chairs knocking and scratching) >>Thank you, the agenda items that we are going to cover this evening, we're gonna start out with public comment and then we'll move into discussion. We'll be reviewing the fiscal year 2026 IASB member dues. Then we'll move on to the 2024/25 Strategic Plan End of Year Report, move forward with the D128 Educational Tour Report. That'll be followed by Title

002IX audit update. We'll move from there to board policies for a first reading. Next will be employment of employees and then educational tour requests and board member learning opportunities. After that, we'll see if there are any future agenda items and then we'll move forward with an adjournment of the meeting. So with that, we are going to begin with the public comment period. And is there anyone who is with us who wishes to offer their comments? Okay, there being none, we'll move forward into the discussion items and we will begin with the fiscal year 2026 IASB member dues. And Briant, you are going to give us some background on, this information, correct? >>So just the IASB member dues that we will pay- >>Hey, BK? >>Yeah? >>Microphone. >>Sorry. (mic scratching and knocking) Our membership dues, our yearly

003thing, and the board will need to approve that at the board meeting. And our member dues include, is based off of our school and the size of our school. >>Thank you, Briant. Moving forward, we are going to discuss the 2024-25 Strategic Plan End of Year Report. This was prepared by Tom and it's gonna give us an update on the progress district staff have made implementing the District 128 strategic plan during the 2024-25 school year. >>Yes, thank you. We're very excited to be here this evening. As you know, we have our DARING mission that we're very proud of in District 128. And the strategic plan is the plan that we use to help coordinate the actions that we take to help live that mission. And what we wanted to do this evening was bring up three

004of the leaders in our district. Our three directors, Dr. Jessica Hermann, who is our director of student services, Ben Rodriguez, who is our director of college and career readiness, and Mr. Larry Varn, who is our director of equity and inclusion. Each of them leads one of the areas of focus on the strategic plan and they will talk and share with you some of the updates of the work that has been conducted this year. Before they begin though, we do want to recognize that while we are tonight the voices and the faces of the strategic plan, one thing we're very proud of is that there are a lot of staff members representing all three of our buildings and all different levels of our system who collaborate throughout the year to help shepherd and steward the strategic

005plan and develop the actions that we're gonna speak to tonight. So while we're here doing the speaking, we are speaking on behalf of many staff members who have done a lot of work helping us move this plan forward. So with that, I'll turn it over to the team. >>Okay. Thank you. (Jessica speaking indistinctly) Okay. >>Don't know if the remote is working. >>Okay. Yes, thank you. Okay, so as Tom shared, this is our strategic plan. We have these three areas, and we'll speak briefly to each of our areas of our strategic plan. So our first one, health and wellbeing. These are our committee members. And we've broken down into three different strands, and I'll talk very briefly about those three. Yeah, next slide, please. Yes, please. Thank you. So we broke down our work into three

006different strands within the health and wellbeing area: digital citizenship and wellbeing, which as you know, we shared in April. We spent the year exploring the topic of student cell phone use in schools and developed recommendations which we shared in April related to enhancing our procedures related to our policy next school year. And so we're hard at work developing the supports and the procedures related to all classes having cell hotels in them and kind of what we'll do and how we'll respond to students that need more support with that. Oh, thank you. Our next, we also have one of our groups is, so student social emotional learning strand. And that group is hard at work looking at what are our, what is kind of our continuum of student social emotional learning and mental health supports district-wide.

007And this year we took our, we broke down our DARING, all the goals within our DARING mission and did a crosswalk of those with the Illinois Social Emotional Learning Standards. And we found that really when we're talking about DARING, we are talking about what Illinois is defining as social emotional learning and all the characteristics within that in interpersonal relationships and problem solving and decision making. That's all really encompassed within DARING. And so knowing that, we were really excited to look at our kind of really sophisticated way of exemplifying or kind of modeling SEL in our district, is through DARING. And so we started that inventory of where are we showing up with DARING, where are we really enhancing the Tier I experience for students. Next year, we'll look even further at the Tier II and

008Tier III levels. And then finally our staff wellness group really looked at, we do a lot for our staff wellness and staff appreciation and did an inventory of, and a timeline of when are the events that we're doing and what groups are we appreciating and when just kind of step back and do that kind of assessment and audit to determine where we need to go next year. So those were our health and wellbeing groups. >>I'm really pleased to lead a very talented and committed group of educators on the Equity and Inclusion Committee. And these are the members for the 2024-25 school year. And so we truly appreciate all of their time and commitment to the work in D128 to make sure that all truly means all and increasing opportunities for access and inclusion for all

009students, staff, and our community. There are five strands within the equity and inclusion work, and we really wanna highlight some of the new things that took off this year that demonstrates the success of D128. In our systems, we know that we implemented the Accelerated Placement Act procedure this year as well as increased our students of color and underrepresented students in our advanced placement courses. And we also, at the ninth grade level, implemented heterogeneous classes. The systems strand was really influential in ensuring that we reviewed our Tier II academic intervention model and we appreciate the board's support in the adjustments that were made for 2025-2026 as we continue to support that work and ensure that all students are receiving Tier II interventions that meet their individual needs. And in teaching and learning, we really had a

010focus all year and organizationally-wide on promoting belief and belonging and making sure that our classrooms are spaces where students feel like they belong and they can see themselves as teachers did a phenomenal job of implementing those strategies, which resulted in students demonstrating higher responses in their surveys this year as it related to their sense of connectedness in the classroom. Along those lines, we also made sure that we provided professional learning to our staff that was aligned to equity-focused professional learning, specifically increase in belief and belonging in the classroom. So really having that alignment between the initiatives that we were rolling out, providing support for our staff, and then measuring with our students to see the impact of that implementation. We also worked with our students to continue to gather information through focus groups and for

011the first time this year, to have some regular student check-ins as we asked students to give us feedback on how those implementation initiatives were going in their experiences. And then finally we're continuing to engage our families and communities. And one of the new things that we held this year, specifically for our underrepresented families, was the bus stop meet-and-greets. Going out into our community and having coffee and hot chocolate at the bus stops in areas that were heavily concentrated with some of our underrepresented population and giving families a chance to meet us at the bus stop with their children for any questions and to let them know what support was available to them from our district. So we're really pleased with the work that has happened this year with equity and inclusion >>And just as we

012transition, one other thing that we wanna mention in the work of both student voice and in family and community as agency, one of the things that we discovered was for our low-income students to participate summer school that oftentimes there were challenges with breakfast and lunch because our summer school is a four-hour program. And so through kind of raising that issue and understanding that issue, Larry and Ben worked with our summer school team and our district food provider to arrange for there to be healthy snacks available for our low-income students. All students can participate and obtain the snacks, but our low-income students, it is provided for through district funds. So that was a significant impact. We noticed that kids were struggling with some of their summer school attendance and when we dug into that, it was,

013some of our students from lower income backgrounds who were trying to find food and leaving school to go obtain food and not getting back on time for their secondary classes. So this was something that was important to us and we think it'll make an impact on the amount of students who successfully moved through summer school this year. >>Thank you for that, Tom, and I really wanna acknowledge Board Member Hessel who raised the question a couple years ago about meals in the summer. So thank you, Ms. Hessel, for bringing that to our attention. >>Agreed, and one last point on that is that I'd like to thank Amy Wiggins. She really helped spearhead a lot of that work at the building level. Awesome, I'd like to thank everyone who was participated in our Explore Multiple Paths Committees.

014These committees did a lot of work in supporting all students to be prepared, informed and empowered to pursue any post-secondary goal that they'd wanna pursue after graduating our district. So our work was divided into three different areas. The first was planning systems. We implemented, for the first time, a Tier I, which means a universal curriculum for college and career readiness called the DARING Journey. This supports students to identify their first career goals, what their post-secondary plans are to achieve those goals, and how are they going to pay for that training, right? (chuckles) To support their post-secondary vision. That means that now 95% of our students have career goals set up in SchooLinks, our new system for college and career readiness. Additionally, we're moving more of our college planning services and college application services to that

015system. Vernon Hills launched that this past year. Libertyville will be moving towards that system in the next year. The second strand of our work has been the exploration opportunities. We've piloted and expanded new exploration services for students, which includes career speaker series across our campuses, career tracks, which involves taking students to professional workplaces and helping them engage with employers, learning about opportunities, what might make sense for them in their future. We've also expanded the internship program for students to get hands-on work experience in a variety of environments. And we've also expanded in onsite career exploration opportunities such as Butler Lake Day, the D128 Food Science Day, D128 ST3AM Showcase. All of these experiences together, we've impacted about 1,500 students in these optional opportunities. Again, this was the first year we've done these activities. We've scaled

016them out across our campuses, so we're really excited that that work is moving forward for our students. A couple of quick stories of success for our internship students was that we had a student who interned with Rosati's, their corporate office. They were hired after their internship in their accounting department. We also had a student who interned with the GLMV Chamber of Commerce, saw some of the business needs, started a business in collaboration with the GLMV Chamber of Commerce to help support those business needs as well. And there's a few other things that I've mentioned in the report, but wanna give a shout-out to our awesome students who are doing excellent things in these programs. The final area was Diploma+, which in involves how do we help give students that competitive edge as they graduate into

017their post-secondary journeys? So we've expanded college and career pathway endorsements. We have started the year with two, and we've had the first students receive these state-level awards on their diploma and transcript to show that they have distinctive skills and experience in specific career pathways. So those two, early childhood education and information technology, we've had students earn those for the first time ever this year. Next year we've added five more pathways for students to earn additional endorsements in. And finally, the team worked to expand dual credit. If you remember, last school year to this school year, we doubled the amount of offerings from 5 to 10. This means that we had about a 200% increase in enrollment. From credits, we tripled the amount of credit students are earning in terms of their college journeys. We've over-tripled

018the amount of money students are saving on their college degrees through these programs. So I wanna just give a quick shout-out again to all the wonderful committee members, teachers, staff members who are making these opportunities happen for our students. And also to thank our business community as well who are helping and working with us to provide these opportunities for our students. We wanted to close with a final quick look at some of the coming actions that these committees and groups are looking to do for next school year. We won't go through every one of them, but we do wanna kind of showcase that the work will continue in each of these strategic areas. Thank you so much. >>Thank you, Tom, anything else to add? >>Nothing to add. Just to answer any potential questions that the

019board may have. >>I had a quick question. I'm interested to hear if it's possible that somebody could share an example of something that took place in the classroom to promote belief and longing. >>I think one of the major things that coming into this year staff truly demonstrated concern about was our presidential election and some other global issues happening around the world and really being able to support students as these things transitioned around them, as they were hearing about things in the news and interacting with one another in class. So our staff, our social studies department, our equity and inclusion team, our instructional coaches and the teaching and learning team came together and designed a professional learning workshop around addressing... >>Challenging conversations. And so teachers who went through that were equipped with stems that they could

020utilize. They were given strategies that they could use in their classes to have those conversations with students. We also worked with our principals to make sure that they had a message that went out to our students even before the election and returning from election. And from that we had a smooth transition going into the election cycle and afterwards. >>Yeah, and before we started school in the fall, Larry and Ben worked with our teachers and we coordinated a Summer Success Academy workshop, which was for all, it was for incoming freshmen and for current students who are gonna be diagonal movers or new to an AP and honors class experience. And so what that was focused on was it was a half-day workshop where the students learned a number of different skills and mindsets that would help

021prepare them to be successful in AP or honors courses. And it was a way to help prepare them, so when they entered those spaces, they didn't feel as if that was a space that was completely foreign to them where they didn't know how to function and didn't have some of the tools in order to be successful. And our instructional coaches at both building also designed a series of lunch-and-learn workshops, or excuse me, actually on our October Institute Day, we dedicated the entire October Institute, all staff attended the full institute day and it was all geared towards belief and belonging and the things that staff could do in their classrooms as well as in the school environment. >>Thank you. Those are great examples. And the common thread there is the commitment from administrators and for teachers

022to dedicating themselves to building their skills so that they could support students. So thank you to the administrators and the teachers who put in that extra time to make sure that could happen. >>I have a question. First of all, thank you to all of you, all three of you for spearheading these initiatives as part of our strategic plan. I personally think that in addition to the academic success of our students, these type of initiatives really help them become the whole individual that we want them to be before they head out into their personal endeavors in college, so thank you for that. My question, however, though, is this is part of our strategic initiative strategic plans and we have started the implementation and it looks like it's working well. What are we going to be doing

023collectively to monitor the progress of this and what kind of benchmarks do we want to put to track where we are and where we want to be? So any thoughts on that and how we are thinking about it? >>Yeah, so some of the metrics come from the strategic plan themselves. For example, in the explore multiple paths area, there are benchmarks for certain programs that we want to develop for families and students. One of those was pathway endorsements, was just do we need to develop systems and courses to align to those endorsements to ensure they exist? Another metric was developing just dual credit opportunities. Now whether we would wanna start adding numbers and saying, well, how many dual credit opportunities do we wanna offer? That would be a great point of discussion. >>Yeah, I think part

024of the measures are built in because there are some state mandates around some of these efforts and then some of them are our own. And one of the actions that we as a district team have been talking about next year is what are the specific measures and outcomes that we as a community want to track and follow so that we can show progress over time and so we can also kind of measure the impact that this work is having in a more precise way? >>I think that's an important aspect and collectively we should start thinking about it sooner than later. >>I think I also wanna thank these folks for the efforts and spearheading these great programs. I just wanted to make the comment and sort of piggybacking on that a little bit, as we go

025into next year, that will be, as I recall, the final year of our current strategic plan sort of timeframe. And so I think the good news in my mind is this board will now be able to participate during next year in sort of developing the next iteration of where we go with our strategic plan and our mission and vision for the future. So I think it's perfect timing. We have a new superintendent coming in with some fresh ideas. We have a lot of new board members, so I think this is a good opportunity to sort of look to the future and use next year as, you know, for us to help understand and to also move forward with, you know, whatever that next iteration of the strategic plan is. >>Okay. Any further comments? >>I do,

026I really appreciate the work that's being done with advancing our dual credit opportunities and options. I know that District 128's kind of behind compared to our surrounding districts, so I really, really appreciate all the work that's being done to increase those opportunities for our students, especially with the costs of education, secondary education increasing. This is, you know, one way we can truly help our students. So thank you for that. Regarding the Summer Success Workshop, did you survey the students who attended? >>Yes. >>And did you have, like, did they enjoy it? Did they find it helpful? Have you surveyed them again after, at the end of this year? >>We surveyed students twice. We surveyed students at the end of the actual workshop and we collected data on the strategies that were presented to them, which did

027they think would be most helpful, useful, beneficial to them. Then the students actually enrolled and began the school year in their new honors or AP court. At the end of semester one, we surveyed those same students who participated to ask them now, which of those strategies did you actually use in your classes and which of them were most impactful in helping you be successful in AP class or honors class? Then we also asked them what would they have needed or would they have liked to have included that would've helped them that we didn't include? So that as we began to plan for this year's workshop, it could be more tailored to the feedback that we received from the students. >>Oh, okay. Great. And then one more. Regarding the bus stop meet-and-greets, were the families notified

028in advance that you were gonna be at the bus stops? >>Yes. >>How did that work? Okay. I'm just, I'm asking because I think my daughter would probably kill me if I walked to the bus stop with her. So (chuckles) I just, you know, I, you know, when we do these initiatives, I think it's, you know, really helpful because I, you know, I appreciate that you're going out and meeting our families where they are 'cause that's really important to the work that's being done. But that's, I was just wondering how successful that was, 'cause like I said, my daughter would be like, no. >>Yes, and that is a good, good point. Yes. We found that, and this was something that we were trying for the first time. It was new, it was one of the initiatives

029that we were rolling out. And we reflected and decided that we would need to make an adjustment. So we did not have high participation, and maybe for that very reason, but we also realized that our population is high school students and so their parents don't necessarily walk with them to the bus stop. This year we coordinated, we're coordinating with District 73 so that we can be there at the elementary school pickup time, pickup time with buses because it's more likely that a family would be walking their elementary age child to the bus stop rather than a high school child. So we're making that adjustment for this year. >>Great. Thank you. >>Okay, any further questions or comments? Okay, I wanna thank the presenters. Very nice presentation. Good discussion, and we will move on in the agenda.

030The next item to be discussed is the District 128 Educational Tour Report. And, Tom, you're gonna provide us with information about the educational tour procedures. >>Yes, and this is really a continuation in many ways of the discussion we were having around the strategic plan. As the educational tours that we offer in District 128 are really designed to meet the needs of students exploring multiple paths, we wanna make sure that the policies, the procedures, the guidelines, the opportunities are equitable and inclusive of all students, and we think that these trips play a significant role in student health and wellness. And so kind of through that lens, the board asked us back in the fall to review our ed tours specifically in terms of financial need. So our, the question that was posed to us is these

031trips are excellent opportunities for students. Are these trips affordable and are they accessible to all District 128 students? And how might we as a district take steps to make the trips more affordable and more accessible? So we took that charge and we took that question from the board very seriously and we formed a committee. Ben and Larry led that committee, and they'll speak to that. But we invited several staff members from our district. All of the staff members that were invited play a significant role in either organizing the ed tours or leading the ed tours. And some of them are here this evening in Madame Guiard just back from France from an ed tour. And Adam Gohr, I thought I saw back over there. Sarah Gorley is also a frequent ed tour chaperone. So we've

032got some experts in the house. But I'll let Ben and Larry kind of talk about the work that we did. We wound up just kind of dismantling our ed tours and looking at the entire thing. So beyond just financial affordability, we just said, let's take a look at the entire process from soup to nuts, everything we do with ed tours, and let's make sure that it's fully aligned with the values and the mission of District 128. So I'll turn it back to Larry and Ben. >>Thank you, and we wanna thank everyone who served on this committee to make recommendations, look at these processes and bring this report forward to you today. So the first thing that the committee did was really try to work to develop our understanding of the purpose of ed tours, really

033making sure we've centralized our foundation on a clear statement. So we've, as a committee have focused on this statement to guide our work, making sure that we were staying true to the values of District 128. >>And as Tom mentioned, this opportunity really provided access for us to really evaluate how we approach ed tours holistically. And so our bigger committee broke up into four subcommittees that really drilled down into making sure that we streamline the ed tour process. And so those four committees are listed there. >>Well, now move into considerations and alignment. One of the major changes we wanted to highlight was organizing ed tours a little differently than previously done. So the first one, the first change is organizing ed tours into two categories. Category 1 being domestic travel and Category 2 being international travel.

034This would help our systems and processes support these travel experiences differently because they are different experiences. One final note we did wanna mention on this particular slide is that trips that are connected to an IHSA-sponsored competition or routine travel for clubs, fine arts, and athletics would no longer be considered ed tours and therefore would not be required to utilize the ed tour process and approval forms. >>Yeah, and I just wanna highlight this. So many of you are new board members. In the past, if our girls basketball team wins their super sectional, then they're gonna go downstate and they're gonna stay overnight. And we would have traditionally in our district treated that as an ed tour and the coach would've been scrambling to fill out all the forms. We then as a district would've been scrambling

035to get it to you as a board for it to be approved, and it created a lot of stress and a lot of turmoil. And we said, "Wait a second. Do we need to go through that for these routine, we know the board is never gonna say no to our girls basketball team going to Peoria or to Champaign to compete in the state tournament." So what we did was we worked with Briant, the athletic directors, the activity directors, and we believe that as a board, you each year say we agree to be in the IHSA, we agree to be part of that organization, and we support our students participating in their events, so we are gonna move to an implied consent for these types of experiences where you as a board will no longer need

036to approve state tournament travel and we can then do all of the important kind of travel logistics at the building level. But we can take a burden off of our staff and take a burden off of you by just saying any of those trips that fall into that bucket, we have implied consent and approval from the board. And we'll notify you that it's happening of course, but you won't have to spend the time on the approval process for those. >>And that's... I'm sorry. Could you go back just to clarify, that's IHS, does that change only apply to IHSA events? >>Yes. >>Thank you. >>Yeah and non-IHSA events would be Category 1 where it's domestic. It might be overnight, but it might be more than 200 miles away. So for example, if we had like our DECA

037trip to California for nationals, that would still be something that would be discussed at the board level. >>Okay, we wanna walk you through this diagram that really depicts the work from the finance committee in terms of how do we make these opportunities more accessible and affordable and then what level of impact does it have? So as we move down the diagram, you'll see it begins to narrow or funnel and that really depicts the level of impact of each individual student that it will have. So at the very top, one of the things that we talked about was extending the payment period. We could do this if we had a calendar that we approved ed tours years in advance. So two to three to four years in advance would allow our families coming in to know

038what trips are coming up and in what years, and if that is a trip that their child or student is interested in and participating in, rather that would give them that entire runway to begin making payments. It doesn't change the cost of the trip, but it allows, it increases the accessibility because each individual monthly payment is significantly lower over three years versus a few months in order to pay that. Second, we looked at reduced costs and there were a couple of things that the committee looked at in order to reduce costs for each student. One is addressing some of the price-reducing add-ons. Right now we require insurance that would allow students to cancel for any reason. That insurance requirement adds on to the overall cost of the trip, which makes it more expensive for our

039families. So we were looking at if we eliminated that, it would've offset some of the cost of it. We also looked at covering the cost of the chaperone. In most of our agencies that we work with, the chaperone, the cost for the chaperone is free or complimentary. We would, as a district, pay for the chaperone and then take that complimentary cost and distribute those funds across the students who are participating, which would offset the cost for everyone. And depending on how many spots we're talking and how many students are participating, it could have some or it just all depends on how much impact that would have on bringing down the overall cost for that trip. Then we also looked at in terms of affordability and accessibility, just identifying or creating a D128 DARING trip. So

040rather than trying to make every trip accessible and affordable for all students, that we identified a specific trip that happened annually that as a district we were committed to ensuring that students of all backgrounds, social economic statuses had the opportunity to participate in. And then we looked at the ed tour scholarship fund, making one fund that would raise and distribute support through, students applying through a scholarship. Again, that would limit the number of scholarships that would be available or reduce the amount that each scholarship could cover depending on how many students we were trying to impact. And then we also looked at individual fundraising, which would be on the students who would have to, and their families who would have to raise money through fundraising efforts and that would offset the cost of that particular

041student's trip. And then finally is the full scholarship, our limitations that we have with our funds that are available to us would really mean that it could only be a finite number of full scholarships that we could offer to students. So this is the spectrum in terms of all of the things that we discussed and talked about of how to make our ed tours more accessible and affordable for students who are going to participate. >>We're now gonna share a couple of areas that we'd like to check whether we're in alignment with the board on, on three specific questions. So the first one is should D128 make Cancel for Any Reason insurance optional for students to purchase? If this were to be removed, the obvious benefit is that that would make the trip more affordable. The

042concern is though is that if, for whatever reason, that experience no longer runs, then the families would be responsible for the entire cost of the trip, even though it didn't happen. The district's recommendation is to maintain mandatory insurance for international trips and domestic trips over $1,000. So that way there's a an estimate of where the district's comfort is in terms of that insurance. >>Yeah, and we're just kinda seeking a little bit of guidance from the board if you agree with our recommendation because if the value of making the trip more affordable is so significant, we could make it optional. And for some international trips, that would save a family 200 to $250. They would still have the option of purchasing it, but it wouldn't be mandatory. And that would be allowing us to meet that

043need of kind of making trips more affordable. Our recommendation though as a district would be that we have many reasons why trips sometimes have to get canceled. And having that protection built in for international trips or trips over a thousand dollars that are domestic where families are putting up some significant funds, we think may still be prudent and would continue to operate that way unless we felt we were out of alignment with what you as a board would want. >>I have a question. So is it possible for you to say it's not mandatory, so, but the parents would have the option to go ahead and do it on their own? >>That is possible, yes. >>My initial thought on this was, thinking back to April, March-April of 2020, where we ran into some significant issues, especially

044with some of the trips that got canceled because of the global pandemic, but we struggled to try to get funding back from those for our families and we spent a significant amount of time doing that. So sort of PTSD from that point in our... But personally, you know, I've taken many trips where sometimes I buy the insurance and sometimes I don't. And it's a risk, you know, decision that I make based on where and when and what I think might happen that might cause me to need to cancel it. But I guess if we took this approach, I just wanna make sure that the families completely understood they're taking this risk. And the other thought that was in my mind is the people that would not take the insurance because of the cost are the

045least likely people to wanna give up that money if for some reason they have to cancel the trip and maybe cancel the trip for not, you know, for some obvious reason. But nevertheless, that, that would be a hardship as well. So just trying to think through how, what makes sense. >>We discussed that, and I think the thing that for you as a board to think about there would be obvious reasons to cancel a trip like a global pandemic or a significant war that breaks out. However, we as a school district may need to cancel a trip for a reason that a parent by themselves disagrees with. We may just have an issue happen where we say we're not comfortable sending our students there and, you know, people from the United States continue to travel to

046that location. But for us as a school district responsible for children, we may say we're not comfortable, and that's where we could potentially get into a difficulty with a family, is the family says, "We didn't buy the CAFR, you're canceling this trip for a reason we disagree with, and now we're eating $4,000 because of a decision you made when kids from Deerfield or kids from New Trier or kids from U of I are flying to Rome right now, why are you saying that my family can't?" Yeah, the CFAR allows, because it's for any reason, it allows you as a board to have a little bit of protection from that. Now certainly we can say to parents, look, the board retains the right to cancel for any reason, but it just makes that conversation a more

047challenging one in situations that we may decide we need to cancel, that a family may struggle to understand. >>Yeah, and I guess that's sort of my point is if we chose to go this way, that they need to completely understand that they're at risk for whatever the cost of that trip is if they decide not to take the insurance. And, I mean, in some ways, they're at risk anyway because to your point, if we cancel it for some other reason that's not covered by the insurance, they might not get the money back anyway. And then we'd have another conversation on, you know, how can we help out in that kind of situation? But I just wanna make sure that we don't get into another situation where there's a surprise and somebody loses a bunch of

048money on a trip that they have every intent to go, but for some reason, maybe beyond their control, it gets canceled. And I just wouldn't want to put any of our families in that situation. >>Yeah, I understand what you're saying. I think that the district recommendation is a good one because it navigates the line based on both where the trip is going and how much the trip costs so that it still would maintain the Cancel for Any Reason policy or overseas as well as expensive trips, but make it optional for the less. I share your very difficult memories of the conversations that were had about the, we definitely had families that wanted the district to cover the lost costs during the pandemic. And I remember that there were several administrators who spent many, many, many

049hours working with the travel companies who really, in their literature, had made it clear that they were not gonna be responsible in the event of cancellation. And our administrators did phenomenal work sort of negotiating some compensation for families, but there were many families that were still disappointed that the district didn't make them whole. So I share concerns that we need to be really, really clear with families that these trips are not district trips and that the district is not responsible in the event that they do not purchase the insurance and the trip gets canceled. But I definitely could support the district's recommendation to maintain the mandatory CFAR insurance for international trips as well as any domestic trips over a thousand. >>Do you have a ballpark figure on how much it costs for each family for

050insurance? >>Yeah, it tends to be a percentage of the total cost of the trip. So when you're looking at a trip to Europe, it's usually, you know, if the trip's about $4,000, it's usually 200 to $250 range. And that's because we demand, or we mandate the maximum insurance, which is up to 48 hours in advance. And that's still doesn't necessarily give the family 100% refund, but it's usually between 75 to 90% of the costs. There are different levels of course, but we kind of hold to the maximum. I don't know if you have that number right off the top of your head, but am in the ballpark, yeah. So Adam says it's usually about 7% of the total costs. >>Oh, 7%? Okay. Okay, and I do echo James and Lisa's viewpoint on this. However, one

051question I had was insurance, again for multiple reasons, and as you noted that sometimes the school district may want to make that decision, and that puts the burden on the families. Could we consider an option where we offer an opt-out option so the insurance will be required, but you can always opt out and that makes that communication a bit more clear that this is what our recommendation is? But if you feel that there is a financial burden, which is 7% of that trip coming through insurance, you can make that decision to opt out. In that way, we achieve the dual endpoint that families who want the comfort of insurance and can afford it, they will get it. Families who don't want it, they have a choice to opt out, and balances everything that we are

052trying to discuss here. >>Yeah, I like that. It's a slightly different lens, but I like the optics of that, you know. >>That's certainly something we can take back and think through. So I appreciate your feedback on that topic. We have two other ones that I think are fairly quick. This is along the same lines. So for an alignment check, one of the discussions that came up in the committee was we could save money, sometimes 20 to 30% of the cost of a specific event by not working with a travel agent, and just having our teachers be the travel agents themselves and kind of book the experience and organize the experience. The benefit is, again, affordability for families. Those savings would be passed on to the students. The concern is that then we as a district

053have our employee responsible for any problems that occur during the trip, and we don't have a professional that we can call to just say, "There's a mess, you need to fix this for us." So our district recommendation, our administrative recommendation was to maintain the mandatory use of a travel agent for any international trip and any domestic trips involving air travel, 'cause if any of you have traveled via air recently, it is becoming increasingly complex with more and more frequent delays, cancellations. And the concern we have on air travel is if I'm a teacher and I booked the tickets, I've got 20 students with me, and now there's a cancellation, I am responsible for getting all 20 students re-booked and to the destination instead of calling a travel agent and saying, "Fix this for us, and

054don't put two of my students on a flight to Albuquerque and two of my students on a flight to Seattle. Like, we need to stay together." So it provides a level of protection that the district administration feels is important when we're traveling, again, with young people and students. We just again wanna make sure we're aligned with you as a board on that. >>Would there be an option for using a travel agent even if it doesn't meet these criteria? Like maybe it's a complicated trip? >>Yes. >>So this doesn't preclude us from using a travel agent on those other trips? It just- >>What it does, right now, the standard is use a travel agent. What it would do is it would allow us some flexibility. Like let's say we wanna do a college tour to University of

055Michigan, Michigan State and Ohio State. Do we need to call a travel agent to do that or could our staff member, our college, and our guidance counselors kinda organize that on their own, working with the universities that would save us and our students some money then if we went with a private travel company to organize that for us? So it allows that flexibility. But anytime we're gonna fly somewhere, we think travel agent is necessarily, at least for the air tickets. And then for international trip, we see it as a must. >>So just to clarify, the system would be then if it's an international trip or it involves domestic air travel, we would require a travel agent to be used, which makes perfect sense to me. >>Yep. >>There could also be a circumstance with a complicated

056trip where an advisor or a teacher could say, "I'm not comfortable doing this." Would they need to get their department chair, someone from administration to sign off and agree, "Yes, go ahead and use a travel agent." Or are we just sort of leaving the discretion? >>It would be the opposite. The travel agent would be the default and they would be saying, "I'm comfortable doing this on my own. I don't need to use a travel agent." And then that would get approved by department chairs and building and district admin. >>That makes sense. Thank you. >>Yeah, I agree with the mandatory use of a travel agent as well as the travel guides. I was the chaperone on, or a chaperone on the spring break trip, orchestra trip to Spain. And the guides that were with us were

057phenomenal. Anything that happened, we had, you know, kids had to go to the hospital, unfortunately they got sick, they knew where to go. They, you know, we had one group had to stay back. They were able to get transportation to our next location because, you know, the entire group couldn't stay back. And it was thanks to these, you know, our guys in the travel agency making it happen so. >>Yep. >>That's a really good idea. >>And it goes, like, affordability is an important point, but we're traveling with children and it's other people's children. And so that's the struggle that we have, is we do wanna make these affordable, but things go wrong on these trips, and the added expense of a travel agent and the insurance kind of help ensure that children are protected and cared

058for in ways that we would want, right? So that's why we're doing this alignment check with you as a board because we think that's where we need to be as a district and just wanting to verify that as we move forward. >>For sure. And we don't wanna put any undue burdens. I feel so grateful that these enhanced educational opportunities are available to District 128 students. And the last thing I wanna do is put a teacher or an advisor in a position where they've got a terrible mess now that's their responsibility to fix and they're responsible for our students. So I appreciate having to balance the affordability with making a travel agent and the guides who can be just instrumental in navigating problems. So thank you. >>And we have one final one, Ben, Larry, you want

059to take this one? >>Yeah, so earlier we looked at the impact and we wanna make sure that the initiatives that we put in place are having the greatest maximum impact on the maximum amount of students possible. So our focus, what our recommendation is is that we focus on extending the payment period for our families, allowing them to make their monthly payments over a longer period of time, that we reduce the overall cost of the trip by some of the things that we talked about earlier. And we thank you for your feedback on that. And what would be new to us is that in order to ensure or promote accessibility for students who wish to participate in ed tours, is really allowing the district to develop this D128 DARING trip that we would put efforts towards

060making sure that this particular experience is one that any student who wishes to participate, that may have some challenges, that they are supported in participation. >>I have a question on that. I made a note of it. Can you explain what kind of a trip that would look like? I'm just curious. >>No, good question. So different options that we've looked at with different agencies and different school districts who run these kind of trips are they're pretty flexible and can reflect our DARING mission. So some of our options that we've looked at could include service trips, perhaps to a country in need. It could include career pathway trips where we're taking students on a robotics tour of Japan or an automakers tour of Germany, those kind of things. Or also there's these student leadership summits that are

061available in conjunction with the Nobel Prize Society that are available to students. So there's all sorts of options that we could look at in terms of this D128 DARING trip. >>And one of the things Ben and Larry and I did was we contacted other schools that have students, larger numbers of students who come from lower income backgrounds but still offer student travel experiences. We did not find any school that provided all students 100% scholarships, but we did find schools that students paid a small amount, like $500, and they had three years kind of notice to prepare for that. And then through the school's planning, they were offered trips. Maybe they weren't international trips, but they were really like trips to New York or trips to New Orleans or trips to San Francisco domestically, places that

062kids really wanted to go to and experience and have some of the quality types of things, whether it was a career focus tour or a Broadway kind of theater tour in New York or a service trip to parts of the United States, is something that different schools were doing to create a range of options. One, for all student interest and, two, for families of different means. >>You've probably already either done this or thought of this, but the District 128 Foundation for Learning is a valuable partner and has funded a lot of wonderful things for both our students and our teachers. I know that in the recent past when I was a board member, we were discussing, as part of the strategic plan for the foundation, ways to use some of the endowment. I don't know

063if that's something that the foundation is still discussing or if this, the ed tours would be one idea of something that they would wanna consider partnering with the district on, but I think it's worth reaching out. >>Yes, they're aware, their leadership's aware we're having this conversation and we've reached out to say as we get clarity, we would like to engage in them in discussions of maybe not ways that they're funding the entire cost of as an individual student, but maybe ways that we're working together to help and where they're helping to offset the cost of some of the trips that align with their mission as well. >>So are there any full scholarships right now that are getting utilized? >>It's pro- >>And if so, how many? >>Yeah, it's very rare and it depends on the type

064of program. So some of our programs would have significant scholarship money available through the fundraising they do and through the student activities accounts that they've had. And then others are more partial scholarships. So there are very, very few full scholarships for the international ed tours. When a team travels, that's where we will have funding available to support those costs for an athlete or a performer. But when we have these sort of enrichment tours that are overseas and are several thousand dollars, their different groups, like the French club had some scholarship money that they could use to support students who were in financial need, but they would not have enough money to have a consistent scholarship, full scholarship for multiple students over many years, yeah. >>Yeah, I don't want to belabor this more, but one thing

065that would be worthwhile, since we are talking finances here, is to look at the past trips, in general what was the average cost for each of those trips, how many students attended over the years, so that way it gives a better idea of the costs that could be involved, and more importantly, it can help then define what would be an ideal, what was the word here? One big trip would look like? So it would provide, and then, okay, okay, $500 or 600, whatever would be the amount is a good amount that most people should be able to afford, and it can still be a very inclusive experience for all. So you may want to look at that data. >>Okay. >>I'm sorry, one last thing. >>Sure. >>This is an excellent presentation but it's not in the

066board packet and I would love for this to be available for anybody who would wanna see it. So if we could just add it for future reference, that would be great, thank you. >>Just one point on the alignment check on the finance, I just wanna be clear that I think we all understand what they're asking about is when they're talking about chaperone costs covering and making one trip that's financially accessible to all students or subsidizing, that that's asking, I believe that's asking the district's budget to pay for those. So meaning it's not necessarily there's a outside scholarship. These would be district funds that would be using to fund those things. I think that's what the, one of component of the alignment question is. >>I guess that the follow up to that is is that a

067realistic addition to our budget? 'Cause I don't have a sense of what the costs throughout the district for an entire school year are for chaperones. >>Right, I think- >>So I would be, I would hesitate to just give a blanket statement and say, yeah, just add it to the budget. I don't know how big of a number that would be. >>Yeah, so for the chaperone piece, a lot of times what some districts do is they'll pay for that out of their professional development funds. So they will count what the teacher is doing leading a trip. So someone like a Laura Guiard, who's a French teacher leading students in France, she's developing her skills as a French teacher. And so the district will count that as professional learning and they will allocate a certain amount of funds

068each year to say, we'll support staff professional learning through these trips. That's how we'll pay for our staff members to go. And then we'll pass the chaperone savings on to the students. So that's one creative way. And what we would need to do administratively is look at our budget and say, can we support that or not? And would our professional learning funds allow us to do the things we want to do with professional learning while still allocating some resources for this purpose? >>Then I would say that there's probably just a little asterisk next to that one to make sure that we understand the costs before we just say yeah, go ahead and add it to the budget because that's a commitment that I wouldn't want to make without understanding what we're committing to. >>How many

069overseas trips were there this past school year, total? >>I believe three. I'd have to double check, but if we're including the summer, we just had one to Italy and Greece. We just had one to France over spring break. Did we have two or one? We had one to Sicily one. Just that one, right? Were there three? (member speaking indistinctly) Yep, so five international trips total this year. >>There was also the theater trip too. The fine arts one from Vernon Hills. >>Was that overseas or where is- >>Yeah. >>Okay. >>Yeah, so I'd have to look at my notes on that, but there are several, a handful each year, and the theater or fine arts trips tend to be cyclical. So every other year students have usually an opportunity to go once or twice over four years. >>Okay.

070Any further questions or comments from the board? Committee members? Okay, thank you, Tom. >>Thank you. >>And Ben and Larry. Very nice presentation. It's my understanding you'll follow up on recommendation number one and make the addition to recommendation number three. >>Yes. >>Okay. Moving forward in the agenda, our next item to be discussed is the Title IX audit update. And this is to provide an update on that work. Briant, you're gonna share background on this one? >>Yeah, so we shared an update in the board packet on the Title IX audit update and the action plan. So you can see that we are working through the locker room accessibility and equity. Our team met, the Athletic Directors Mark Koopman, our Director of Buildings and Grounds Dan Stanley and myself looking at our survey. So we are working through

071the locker rooms. The other piece is the LHS focused on the private funding and booster club disparities that was mentioned in the audit. And so we are collecting all the information from the teams that have booster clubs here at Libertyville. And financial summaries are due at the end of June. We have some of those in already and then we will be going through those and reviewing those with our legal counsel. >>Can I ask, when do you expect another update to the board once you've reviewed those financials? >>With, you know, looking at, I know they're due at the end of June. I would say, you know, with the summer and then the start of school year, probably fall for update then. >>If we could just add that to the list of future agenda items. >>Yep. >>Thank

072you. >>Any other questions or comments from committee members? Okay, thank you, Briant. We're gonna move forward again and we're gonna review board policies, a first reading, as recommended by press, the policy reference education subscription service and from their regular reviews and updated Illinois public acts, Briant again. >>Sure, so this is your first time going through updating, this team, going through board policy updates. So IASB, we work with Illinois Association of School Boards and press to review our board policies that we have. And so they do a regular review of the board policies. They also do updates as public acts change. So these are their recommendations that we are bringing to you. The way it works here at District 128, we do two readings. And so the first reading is tonight at our P&P. Then you'll

073have a reading at the June board meeting, regular board of education meeting and your second reading will be at the P&P in July. And then you would approve them at the second reading of the July board meeting for approval. >>And just to be clear, when we talk about reading, we're not gonna read all of these? >>We're not gonna read all of 'em. >>Just so- >>Our expectation is that you as a board are reading through and reviewing these. >>I heard there's a district in the area that actually does that, so just to be clear. >>I Have a- >>I appreciate that clarification. (group laughing) >>I have a suggestion here, as a new board member, obviously these are massive documents to read and even understand because there are a lot of legal and technical components to it. Is

074there any way for maybe press or whatever agency that they basically show what is the difference between the update of what they originally had and what is the big theme of that change? Because that would be more helpful in terms of understanding, is there a big difference in the policy? >>Yeah, so what I tried to do is there is a cover sheet that has the board policy update. So it just outlines just a short synopsis of what the update is for each of those. And then if you click on any of the board policies, you'll see changes that are highlighted. It might be highlighted in green or there might be some red lines in it. And so those will be the changes. So if nothing is highlighted or there isn't anything crossed out, that's the

075current language that is in there and then the other updates are in there. >>I saw that and that's why I said it could be one single document where you are able to directly compare and contrast, makes it a little easier to understand. >>Yeah, so each board policy will be one full document, 'cause they are, some of them are longer than others. >>And I think what you'll find is most of the changes are minor and it's changing things like a reference to some law that has been updated or, you know, some reference number or things like that. There's not a significant number where the actual language or the intent of the policy really changes. So I think if you glance there, you'll see some of the highlighted things, it's just pretty simple things >>And this, and

076part of the reason for a larger update on this one was the 2024 Title IX sex discrimination regulations were struck down. And so we're kind of going back to the language that was in place in our board policies before those regulations were in effect. So because that is mentioned in a lot of the board policies, that's why this is a larger group than normal for the updates on the board policies. >>What I found most helpful is that IASB always is, they have a webinar for each press issue and they try to keep it around an hour. Sometimes if it's a really big issue, it might be, you know, like 80 minutes or something, but they really try to keep it around an hour. And it goes through all of the changes and there's attorneys from

077IASB on there and they're explaining the changes. And it's really helpful because sometimes if, you know, I know I've read through a policy and I'm like, what is this, you know? Okay, so what's, you know, what's the point? >>Yeah. >>So being able to tune into the webinars, it's been helpful, you know, for me to get an understanding and you don't have to necessarily sign up 'cause you can go and view it at any time. >>And one of the benefits over the last, I think it was about a year ago, we subscribed to PressPlus specifically to save our administrators some time because maintaining all of our policies in the cycle that we do it to review them all within two years is a heavier lift than you might expect. And so subscribing to PressPlus took some

078of the burden and the hours off of Briant specifically. So I would be reluctant to ask him to produce an additional document that would almost negate the benefit that we're enjoying for both Briant and Carol to have the subscription so that these updates, especially as Illinois or the Fed codifies new laws, kind of can be more automatic. >>That's why I think the webinar is helpful because it discusses the changes. >>Yeah, it does that for you. >>Where do you- >>Yeah, and they're on demand. >>IASB website. >>Yeah. >>We're all members, so we'll have access to it, and all you have to do is just go in and search press and it'll pull it up. >>Okay, anyone else have any questions or comments regarding board policies? If not, we'll move on to employment of employees, Briant? >>These are

079regular employment of employees items that will move to the consent vote agenda at the June board meeting. >>I object to the first one. >>Yeah. (chuckles) >>Just kidding. >>He's not paying attention. >>I have no- >>It doesn't matter if I object anyway. >>Okay, anyone else have any comments for employment of employees? If not, let's move to educational tour requests. And, Tom, you'll cover that for us. >>Yeah, these are two, but they're actually kinda one because they're going to the same place. It is our annual journalism trip. This is pretty much a standard trip here. Nothing extraordinary about this. It's a great opportunity. Our student journalists travel to a conference of student journalists where they learn and interact with students from around the country to develop their journalism skills. So pretty straightforward on our end and excited that

080our students continue to have the opportunity to participate in this. >>Any questions or comments? Thank you, Tom. And the final item on our discussion on the agenda is board member learning opportunities and Jim's gonna cover that for us. >>Sure, there's a couple here, actually one was already mentioned. Sorry, I turned my microphone off. One was already mentioned that I thought was a good one that wasn't listed here. The resources on the IASB website. But there's two events coming up that, IASB Super Saturday, which is a new event that they're trying out. It's sort of a mini conference if you will. You have options to hear a primary speaker and then some breakout sessions on various topics that, it's taking place on September 13th. So if you're so inclined, this, you know, I almost believe this

081is a TRIPLE i lite, if you will, so that those that don't have the opportunity to attend in November for the next one that I'll be discussing, it gives them still an opportunity to do some professional training. It's located in three locations across the state. So the one in the Chicagoland area, I believe is in Naperville. So if you want to attend this, you know, just contact Carol, contact, you know, send us an email, and we'll get you signed up. The next one is one that we typically try to have pretty good representation. It's the, affectionately known as the TRIPLE I, it's the Illinois Association of School Boards, Illinois Association of School Administrators and the Illinois Association... How... Dan, they say this differently. I always said it, Illinois Association of School Business Officials, but it's

082Illinois ASBO is what they normally, so I just wanted to make sure that it was right. It's a phenomenal conference if you've attended conferences before and even compared to the National School Board Association conferences, it's really a very nice conference. It gives all of us an opportunity for some really good professional development. It's the one real opportunity for us to attend sessions and network with other board members from other districts across the state and some really great keynote speakers. They have three nationally, you know, national type keynote speakers. It's, you know, go to Chicago and hang out with thousands of your closest school board friends. It's, I wanna say there's, I dunno, 8,000, 9,000 people. It's a really large conference. There's a exhibition floor where you can see some of the latest and greatest products

083that, you know, we may be talking about here or within the district. I highly recommend it and it also gives us some opportunity for some social team building kind of opportunities as well as a board that's not related to board business, the school business. So, you know, keep that in mind. It's the weekend always. It's the weekend before Thanksgiving. So we'll probably be talking about that more as we get to it, but I know Carol would like to get those that are interested to sign up as soon as possible so that we can get the best opportunities and get the early bird rates and things like that. So take a look at that and let us know what you think. >>Okay, thank you Jim. >>Thank you. >>Carol will send out the form and we'll hear

084more about that at future meetings. So that concludes our discussion items for the Program and Personnel Committee this evening. We have shared with you future agenda items that are listed in your committee materials. Are there any questions or comments regarding those future agenda items? If not, I'm going to adjourn the meeting at 06:46 PM Thank you all for your participation. >>Thank you. >>Nicely done. >>All right, does anyone need a break before we start or can we keep going? >>Go. >>We're good? All right, I call the Facilities and Finance Committee meeting to order at 06:46 PM. On tonight's agenda, we will start with public comment, then we will move on, items for discussion. We have the June 30th bills payable. We have the fiscal year 2025 audit engagement, student activity transfers, and our final discussion item

085is Summer 2025 Capital Projects update. Then we'll move on to review the future agenda items and then we will adjourn. So now I'm gonna open it up for public comment. Anyone? All right. Seeing as there's none, we will move on to our items for discussion. And my favorite part is I'm gonna turn it over to our expert, Mr. Dan Stanley. (chuckles) >>The first one is June 30th bills payable. So our fiscal year ends in June. So our fiscal year runs from July to June 30th. And so our normal practice is, we bring all the bills before the board. They approve them, we pay them. Our June meeting is the 23rd which is a little earlier in the month. And so we will have more bills that come in after that period of time that we

086really wanna get paid into this fiscal year. So our standard practice is as those come in, we will pay those. And then in July we'll give you a report on what bills actually were there and then you'll approve 'em kind of retroactively there. So it's regular practice for us to do, but it's something that we just constantly remind of every year. >>I have one quick question. Are we ever asked to approve accrued expenses or are they all actual account payable processings? >>The checks that are before you are actual accounts payable checks that payments, yeah. The approval of the budget and the contracts that are connected with those is what allows us to pay the salaries, the taxes, and things like that. The second one... >>Go. >>The second one is the FY 25 audit engagement. So

087we have our annual audit. As a district, you're required to have an audit. So this is a company we've worked with for a long time. There's a few different components that, you know, in terms of audit requirements that have kinda added on to our plate over the years that we're required to do, which includes a single audit based on the amount of federal revenues we get and some other federal reporting that we have to do that the audit helps us do that. So that's there for you as well. Pretty standard. We've got information in terms of the cost there as well. >>Forgive me, one more question. Is the audit formally presented to the board and if so, at what meeting? >>It is formally presented. It's usually presented right after we get it completed or we

088get it back from the auditors completed. For us, it's historically been probably the January-February board meeting, but we're trying to get it earlier, but it's harder. We're a larger organization so it takes a little bit longer than some other districts, so. >>Thank you. >>Yeah, the board will receive it and vote on it as well. Student activity transfers is the next one. So this one might feel a little odd, but the administrative code, it says what it says, and it says that the board actually has to authorize the transfer basically from old activity accounts into new accounts. And so what we have here is just some background information and a list of the actual accounts and the amounts that we're looking to move. That's something the board would've to take action on to allow us to

089move those. Some of these have been sitting there for quite some time and we're really getting around to cleaning that up a bit. And then the last one is just Mark's June update on our Summer Capital Projects with pictures. >>Thank you. >>Yep. there's a lot going on in the district. And actually, I mean if you could tell walking, trying to get to this room, you'll notice there's a lot happening in this building. Yeah, so you're seeing all of the planning that has been happening over the last 10 months really start to shape up in terms of stuff actually happening this time. And so not too many months from now, a few months from now, we'll start that process again for next summer. And so we'll have another update in July in terms of the status

090of each project. >>Quick question, are we moving- and I should know this- are we doing our July board meeting in the district office? We used to do that and given the. >>The July meetings, P&P- >>it's actually combined, right? >>Four are all combined and they'll be at Vernon Hills. >>Vernon Hills, yeah. Okay. So this won't be, we can stay outta their way, thank you. >>All the others. >>All right, thank you. Any questions, comments before we move on? Okay, now for the future agenda items, the items listed will be on the June board agenda and next month's Facilities and Finance Committee agenda. Does anyone have any items to add? Any questions? Okay, then with that, I adjourn the meeting at 06:52 PM. >>Okay, we have one more meeting to go. Are we good moving on? Anyone need

091a break? All right, I would like to call to order the Special Board Meeting, June 9th, 2025. It is 06:52 PM Carol, can we have a roll call please? >>Okay, Nina Austin. >>Here. >>Jim Batson. >>Here. >>Rahul Deshmukh? >>Here. >>Doug Fleegle? >>Here. >>Lisa Hessel? >>Here. >>Mithilesh Kotwal? Wes Polen? >>Here. >>Okay, review the agenda. We have a, we'll start with a invitation for public comment, which I think we know how that's gonna go. Move to convene in a closed session. We have two items here listed. Collective negotiating matters 5 ILCS 120/2C2 and probable litigation matters. 5 ILCS 120/2C11. After that we'll come back into open session, reconvene into open session. We'll take action on a revised teacher contract. We'll have a hearing for the FY 26 budget. Declaring that open, presenting the tentative budget. We'll ask for

092public comment for that. And then a hearing closed, and then that will be all. So we actually have the two items, the teacher contract that we'll be voting on and the hearing for the budget. So that being said, any invitation for public comment? Anyone wising to speak? Nobody wishing to speak. Okay, so I would like to have a motion to convene in a closed session to discuss collective negotiating matters 5 ILCS 120/2C2 and probable litigation matters 5 ILCS 120/2C11. >>Rahul Deshmukh, so move. >>Polen second. >>Okay, we have motion and a second. Can we have a roll call, please? >>Batson? >>Aye. >>Deshmukh? >>Aye. >>Fleegle? >>Aye. >>Hessel? >>Aye. >>Polen? >>Aye >>Austin? >>Aye. >>Okay. Motion passes. I understand we're just gonna go into the library classroom right over here. Shouldn't take long. We will be back. >>Board is

093currently in closed session. Board is currently in closed session. >>All set. >>Ready? Okay. I need a motion and a second to return to open session at 07:24 PM? >>Hessel, I move to resume open session. >>Fleegle, second. >>All in favor? >>Aye. >>Any opposed? Okay. We have returned to open session and we have an action item here. I need a motion and a second to approve the revised agreement between the Board of Education Community High School District 128, Lake County, Illinois and the Libertyville High School/Vernon Hills High School Federation of Teachers Local 504, IFT-AFT / AFL-CIO for July 1st, 2025 through June 30th, 2030. >>Hessel, so moved. >>Fleegle, second. >>Okay. Any questions, comments? Excited to take this vote. Carol, roll call please. >>Deshmukh? >>Aye. >>Fleegle? >>Aye. >>Hessel? >>Aye. >>Polen? >>Aye. >>Austin? >>Aye. >>Batson? >>Aye. Motion passes within

094a unanimous decision. (board applauding) That's great, okay, we have one more item on our agenda here and that is a public hearing for the FY 26 budget. I want to declare the hearing open at 7:25 PM. Dan, what do you wanna tell us about the tentative budget? >>Yeah, so state law requires that you have to have a budget hearing before you adopt your final budget. And so we've scheduled it for tonight in anticipation of adopting a final budget at our board meeting in June. And so I've got just a couple slides. Guys, you have any that you could throw 'em up on there? No. Yeah, lemme do that real quick. (keyboard typing) Sure. I can connect. (items rattling and knocking) (paper crackling) All right, so bear with me here. So just broad speaking, there's a

095report with a lot more detail in there, but when you zoom out, the major key numbers that drive the numbers in this budget is on the revenue side, the CPI is 3.4% based on the levy that was approved last fall. We've increased our interest income budget based on our actuals. The question will just be how long do rates stay high? Do they start to go down? How fast do they go down? We don't know. CBPRT, which there's a thing that explains what that is, but that we're projecting to decrease. That's been very volatile over the last few years. And it's on its way back down. On the expenditure side, really what funds that is, or what tells you how you're spending your money there is how many people are we employing and what are we

096paying them all? And thanks to the action you just took, I know what we're paying a whole bunch of people. And so we have those numbers in there. And then on the medical insurance side, it's up about 2.8% of medical insurance. But part of this is the ESP moving per their contract to the 750 PPO for next year. And so those are the major rocks that make up the bulk of the costs in the budget. And so then the total impact for that, there's a lot of reports with a lot of information, but when you really zoom out, on the revenue side, you're talking an increase of 3.19% on the revenues. That's again mostly driven by CPI. And on the expenditure side we're at about 2.37. The biggest reason for that is gonna be on

097the staffing side, if you haven't noticed, there's a lot of retirees this year. That's not normal. We have a number that are coming over the next couple years. And then a significant one was our out-of-district placed students. That has been increasing in that we're actually having a slight decrease there, which it's a very, very large line item for us. And so for that to decrease is pretty astounding. That said, it's all based on the students that show up, so it's an estimate based on our best understanding of the students that we're anticipating for next year. But you could have students show up on day one that significantly can change that. But we feel pretty comfortable with that so far. So the net effect of that, when you're talking about 111 million on the revenue side,

098109 million on the expenditure side, you've got a surplus of 1.7 million. And so that's where we're at tentatively right now. It'll change as we get to final because, you know, in my notes, there's some things, some revenues we need to adjust, there's some expenditures we need to add in and to account for. But that's roughly where we're at right now, which that's a really good place to be in. You know, when we've talked about projections and before, our surplus really needs to be above a million for us to maintain our financial strength. And so this is great and this will, you know, this potentially could actually help us build back some fund balance that eventually is what we use to pay for our capital projects that we're doing. And so that's a brief summary

099in terms of what is in the tentative budget. >>I just wanna make one comment and for, especially for the newer board members, how unusual this is that this process is happening now. Many districts don't approve their budget until well into the year after they've already spent a good portion of that budget. And Dan has worked over a period of years to bring us to this point where we actually will have an approved budget for next year at the beginning of the fiscal year. So I applaud him and the whole team 'cause there's a lot of work that goes into building this budget. So it's just a good place to be 'cause we have much more realistic information as we go into the year, so I appreciate that. Questions, comments from the board on this? This

100is one point in time and we'll see this plenty of times. >>I have one comment, one question. The comment is, it appears that we're in a very good position. So thank you for your hard work. Appreciate that. It's nice to see 1.7 million at the bottom. As far as interest revenue, how is that used as a direct operating fund? Is that because that has the ability to sway? Is that directly a part of the operations or is that an indirect component? >>It's part of our operating revenues. So that's why I'm a little bit hesitant on that. I'm a little more conservative on estimating that number because the volatility is too risky. So for example, I'm just gonna play with a number. Let's say I set it at 3 million and we don't get it and

101we built our expenditures assuming that we're getting that 3 million, that can be really dangerous, 'cause for us to cut a million dollars worth of expenditures in our system would be painful. It's not something you could just easily do and no one would notice. You know, so I, for the sake of our health, but also our ability to withstand the volatility of an item like that, I'm inching it closer, and knowing that this can't last forever, I just don't know when it's going to change, which was the same with CPPRT, when it doubled one year and then doubled the next year, I said like, this doesn't make any sense. This can't last. So we have to be really careful assuming that we're gonna keep having this interest income as the same. >>And what conservative calculation

102did you use? >>It really based on actuals from the prior year and the budget. So I'll look at what we budgeted this year, what we actually are spending, and then kind of guess on where rates might be a year from now. So we have a few financial advisors and talking with them about, 'cause our interest income is gonna be largely based on wherever the fed rates are. And so trying to project where are they gonna be 12 months from now. And you could google it yourself and see there's a wide range of opinions. No one I've seen assumes it's going up or that it's staying flat. It's just a matter of how far does it go down and how fast. So I've got it up from where we budgeted last year. I don't have it

103quite as much as what we've received this year because we just don't know. But it's something that's in my monthly reports. I always update on where interest income is because it's such a volatile, it's such a volatile revenue. >>And because of that volatility and the subjectiveness, that's the reason for my question. >>Yeah. >>Then a second one that's not necessarily direct to the budget, but, and very briefly, do you use a forecasting measure through the months given the volatility of that number that we're able to adjust accordingly? >>Can you say your question again? >>Do you have a system to forecast in the event that that interest income fluctuates to the negative that we're able to make necessary corrections in advance? >>We wouldn't have anything that would affect operations. So basically what this budget would do is

104set our plan for our operations and then we would reflect. So if we were trending, say we were trending low on revenues, I would let you know that. But it's just one of our revenue sources and so you might have another one that's trending high, and so I try to give us a full picture on where are things overall heading. Mid-year I'll give a very detailed report on here's where all these things are and where they're heading, but we usually would not make adjustments to our operations mid-year. We would be planning for what might be changes for the next year. So let's say, worst case scenario, rates tank and we know we're gonna get a million and a half, two million less than what we even got this year, then we would need to build

105that into projection and knowing like, okay, now this is where we're projecting. This is what then will inform how much staff can we have? What can our department budgets do and things like that. So again, rarely would we adjust mid-year because we really set those expenditures with the budget. So to answer your question, I don't have a calculation that just automatically does it, but I do have, a lot of our investments are fixed and so I know exactly how much revenue we're going to get. The question is the other chunk is dependent on what the fund balance is, which is fairly predictable, but then whatever those rates might be. And so I can project that, but it hasn't been something that we need to be that sensitive to. It's more about on a year at

106a time rather than on a month at a time or quarter at a time that we need to be able to react to. >>Thank you. >>Just again comments from my end. You brought the word sensitive and I think it would help just from a projection perspective to do some kind of sensitivity analysis. What if kind of scenarios if the interest rate is going to be 2% to whatever, I don't know its rate, 3.5, 4% right now? I have no idea. Somewhere in that. So what would be the range of income that we can look at increased or decreased? So, and I'm guessing, projecting forward, we know it's going to decrease for sure. >>Yeah. >>So there's no question about that, so I think that that would help. And the second comment I had was we also

107know that our salaries and benefits and how exactly they're going to increase for five years at least, but these other areas come to about 30 million in costs. So I would encourage the administration to look for opportunities to see, not necessarily reducing the cost here, but basically using the same dollar amount in the future to achieve more, basically being more efficient. So there could be opportunities, and I understand that we don't want to cut down something here and there, but can we maintain our costs at the same level despite inflation and all those things, but, and basically get more bang for the buck kind of an attitude. So I think that would help. >>Any other comments, questions? Okay, I'm gonna open it up one more time for public comment. Nobody wants to talk about the

108budget. Dan, are you disappointed? (group chattering) Okay, so I will declare the hearing closed at 07:37 and a half? That being said, can I have a motion to adjourn motion? >>Deshmukh motion to adjourn. >>Hessel, second. >>All in favor? >>Aye. >>Any opposed? Okay, meeting adjourned. Thank you.