001hi everybody welcome I would like to start the program of personnel meeting I call that to order at this time uh if we could please stand for the pledge of allegiance of the United States of America to the for stand Nation indivisible andice okay first item on the agenda is an invitation for public comments uh Marne you have signed in Mar Navaro good evening I am Mar Navaro lifelong Libertyville resident and proud District 70 and 128 graduate I speak for myself I note that this committee meeting again unfortunately conflicts with District 70 orientation for incoming sixth graders including for my only child at Thailand as it did for parent orientation in April because of how important these next steps are for our community my daughter Olivia is here with me tonight we have a lot
002of course correction and rebuilding to be done in the short three years before she enters District 128 having committee and board meetings on Monday evenings is unreasonable and a real deterrent to community participation serious consideration should be given to moving meetings to an alternate evening and also significantly shortening the length 3 to 5 Hour bonly meetings are unproductive do not occur in your feeder districts nor in the private sector as our district is coming out of a very costly and tumultuous period still apparently not having reached terms of a separation agreement with former superintendent Herman the community would like to request that the this board and administration's attention be focused on the importance of the future and to do so we need to take a hard look at the past take stock of how we
003got here and not repeat costly mistakes at last last month's board meeting dur during the superintendent report there were repeated citation to 128 strategic plan as some sort of sacrosanct immutable tenant that cannot be altered this is problematic to the community because the Strategic plan was based upon a survey in the fall of 2021 during the middle of covid and school shutdown during the most tense and volatile period of recent history including the George Floyd riots it was derived in large part from a survey of less than 300 then District 128 parents that correlates to less than 10% participation with no feeder School input from that three three tenants were extrapolated as goals for district 128 health and well-being equity and inclusion which was narrowly defined by District by superintendent Herman to equate to only
004select racial minorities and not comporting with Community feedback calling for Equity between campuses in course offerings and resources a call which remains unanswered to this day and three exploring multiple Pathways even the offs sited daring acronym none of the daring tenants nor of District 120 strategic plan even reference education or academics that's a really big problem and a big part of the reason why what happened in the last three years was allowed to happen and have gone on for so long unquestioned none of the four unsupported ideological initiatives should have been permitted to go on so far without critical questions being asked both about why in the first instance including the applicability to our demographics and community and the how including cost District 128 needs to get B Back to Basics you are a school
005you are here to provide a rigorous education to all children in this District that is why we parents myself included moved here and pay astronomical property taxes so that our kids can get top-notch education they deserve and why District 128 has historically delivered for decades three years later after millions of wasted dollars we find ourselves in a costly mess caused by a board allowing a rogue ideologue superintendent with a sorted track record of s six districts 11 years to put ideology before education in an attempt to dismantle our historically High performing curriculum our standardized test scores are down four and a half years post covid we still have not returned to a standardized credible grading system which will prepare our students for the rigors and reality of college in the real world I'm almost done
006no operational mtss is currently in place although we did start planning it in March after the parents and Community called to light we had no plan we submitted a petition to you with over 1100 current parent and taxpayer signatures calling for a return to academic credibility and Common Sense future 128 goals should be based upon our community now not the fall of 2021 including feeder districts and incoming District 128 students the community is watching we want transparency communication collaboration and meaningful engagement in the search for the next superintendent education over ideology thank you thank you is there anybody else who would like to address the you don't have to sign in good evening John hell um I know that uh you have your calendar and you stick to it like you do a lot of
007things you don't pivot ever and you're not real flexible sometimes don't quite understand how you manag to put this meeting on the first day of School obviously there's very few people here that can attend or even probably following because of it most people want to be home with their kids on the first day of school would have been pretty easy and simple also a lot a lot of other districts including the high school districts don't do meetings on Monday so I support pretty much that thought from Marne as well as everything else she said again you need to get back to the academics um a couple years ago I stood up here and pretty much said the same thing in many versions of a similar way as Marne did tonight so I just get a
008little confused why it's pulling teeth with you guys to get flexibility in your ability to make decisions and manage the district um it just doesn't seem right also one last thing I wanted to say tonight was I've called this out before and some other people have and a lot of community members have followed as well doesn't seem like the legal council that you're getting is the best legal council um and how it's set us up a little bit here in this district for some of the problems that have occurred um you also it's a longstanding uh legal counsel if I'm not mistaken highly recommend that you look at alternatives to that many of the community members feel that's necessary and many of the community members that have legal backgrounds also feel that's necessary so I
009just think when you have about 3,000 Community parents that are very much aware and supportive of a lot of the efforts some of these people have been making the last several months it's time to start listening to them thank you is there anybody else would like to address the board going once going twice seeing none all right we're going to move along to and before we start the actual meeting could I nudge in with just a word I know there's been some question about what something um I just wanted to give a quick update on where we stand with the title 9 audit for district 128 for all um all extracurricular activities I want to say that our process is in motion we have received proposals from several law firms who have completed these before
010for other districts we will be reviewing and evaluating these proposals and this will continue our process and will appear on a future agenda so this is well along the way and I just wanted to make that point this is in response to some questions that were raised yes thank you thank you okay uh for discussion item a board policy Updates this is our second reading um do we need an additional overview any qu most of the questions most of the updates are fiveyear reviews some legal references but very short updates on um these and this is our second reading that we've gone through on these and they'll go to the next board meeting for approval and then we had some we had a policy change that occurred August 1st press Center release out about uh
011new law that went into effect August and right now I cannot remember what it was we have another group coming um of press updates so a lot of times uh when law laws change um sometimes press may be behind but we will follow the law and what we do um sometimes laws change and then there is some um you know could be six months time that you put a new you have to have your policy adopted in a certain amount of time but we are on track for are there any comments or questions here okay moving on uh we have a memorandum agreement with the ESP moving to a higher position so um you know last uh Spring end of the school year we um uh the board uh came into agreement with our d120
012educational support professional Union and we agreed on a uh a great collective bargaining for um our ESP however sometimes when you put a new new agreement together we work from scratch so this is not you know has not been in place um at all before we find you know there's some things that we you know want to work together on and so um the ESP Union and um Administration we work together on coming to a solution for ESP currently in uh roles here that want to move to a um different position and in our ESP contract we have um positions that are AIDS it uh office Personnel um so different categories and then different tiers within that category depending on the job this was all determined during um our um negotiations and then our final
013agreement but we found that there was a little quirk in there that if somebody wanted to move to another position but they had been with us for a little bit they might has surpassed that starting rate and so moving someone to a new position that was considered a higher tier we didn't we couldn't put them at the starting rate because then they would take a pay decrease um and so we were trying to come up with a solution we looked at what some other school districts do and we came together for this agreement and so um our recommendation is to approve this U memorandum of agreement at our um board meeting and um again the union um and us work together well on this and so I think this is a great again there's going
014to be it's a three-year agreement there's going to be things along the way that either we can work together on and not have Ana but there may be times in the next couple years that we may have to bring some things back in time so that's a good solution yeah uh are there any other questions there okay moving on to uh item C the US [Music] report okay good evening uh my name is Larry BR and I'm the director of equity and inclusion for the district um tonight we are presenting to you our endof year update from equal opportunity schools which is a part of our partnership um with EOS uh this evening's presentation is slightly delayed but still information uh to know the status of the partnership from the 2003 2004 school year and
015is aligned with our commitment of Student Success in our uh racial diversity equity and inclusion policy um first I want to start off with our district beliefs when it comes to diversity inclusion and representation uh and in our policy uh our our Committee created these beliefs that around our commitment to acknowledging that there are barriers related to opportunities for some groups of students and we take responsibility for addressing that disproportionality um within the data that we have as a district and that we see Nationwide because we in d128 know and uh that access to Equitable educational opportunities can narrow and ultimately eliminate achievement gaps for our students of color and underrepresented students of lwi income and these beliefs are manifested in our racial diversity equity and inclusion policy next slide please um and policy 712
016was written because it really developed our commitment to uh diversity equity and inclusion and we remain committed to to building upon the strengths and assets of every student we hold ourselves as a district accountable for striving towards proportional representation and our more rigorous courses of underrepresented students um and we measur this through one of our metrics um that's actually outlined in the policy um that we want to ensure that we are collecting data and tracking our enrollment in upper level in AP courses for students who we uh consider underrepresented that policy um was uh evolved into our strategic plan um and one of the goal areas of our three strategic plan goal areas is to prioritize equity and inclusion uh where we uh ensure Equitable opportunities and outcomes for all student populations and then that
017further funnels down into our Equity action plan um making sure that we give all students especially underrepresented students access to on grade level and appropriately rigorous education uh is one of our actions in our Equity action plan and that metric was to increase the number of diagonal course placements for students so uh our Dei policy our strategic plan and our uh Equity action plan are all anchored in our daring Mission representation in our accelerated classes symbolizes the global aspect of our mission diversity is multifaceted and must be embodied and embraced in our classes and so we partnered with equal opportunity schools to provide us with tools protocols and recommendations for increasing uh access to underrepresented students and our most rigorous courses our advanced placement courses through EOS d128 worked with our access teams to identify
018recruit and enroll high potential underrepresented students for AP and just to clarify our work with EOS was targeted towards increasing their enrollment of underrepresented students in AP while the Outreach was targeted there were certainly aspects of the protocols that would benefit all student groups but our underrepresented students included our lowincome students of all Races and ethnicities our black African-American students and our Hispanic and Latino students because these are the students who are typically and historically underrepresented in advanced placement courses Nationwide EOS supported us in generating a comprehensive Outreach list which was created using this criteria students who expressed interest in taking an AP class students who had comparable academic achievement uh using their GPA and test scores and had been recommended by a teacher or staff member or demonstrated strong academic self this comprehensive Outreach
019list uh yielded 629 students um who were identified as potential who identified for outreach by EOS for our first attempt at Outreach uh d128 decided to narrow down and make our list more targeted our access teams chose to develop this more targeted Outreach list and make by making a combination of all of eos's criteria plus the additional criteria of not currently being enrolled in an AP class this targeted Outreach list yielded 182 students districtwide who would be targeted to who would be targeted by Outreach through this initiative I just pause one of the things about the Outreach that's important can you go back Eli so when we look at the criteria that we used as we were identifying students um express interest in the subject matter is something that um all all students we believe
020who take an AP class have an interest in that subject um comparable academic achievement is looking at what are the profiles of the students who are successful in these classes and who are students who have similar profiles but have not yet enrolled in those courses we also looked at teacher recommendations which is the similar process for students who are enrolled in AP courses they get teacher recommendations that say you would be successful in this course we looked at students who had not enrolled in AP but we're still getting those teacher recommendations as well as having um students who are confident in their academic skills saying I want to be challenged I want to be part of a very rigorous course environment so the2 students that we have targeted for this program were completely of the
021same profile um of students who would normally be in our AP classes but the one factor that these students have was that they had not yet taken an AP course and so what we wanted to do was really spend some time with those students saying why not you have all the criteria you have the profile of an AP student yet for a variety of reasons maybe you haven't selected that course let's talk about what it would mean for you to take an AP class and what conditions would be in place to help you be successful and so from those 8 182 students we really appreciate our teachers and staff um who were identified ifed as trusted adults by the students on this Outreach list those trusted adults were asked to engage in the student around
022conversations to take an AP class letting the student know that they had been recommended giving the student the criteria of academic identity that the student possessed necessary to do well in an AP class letting them know that they believe in them someone believes in them and that they should be able to transfer those skills into an AP course The Trusted adult became an integral part of this work because this is an individual who the student feels connected to as a part of our organization following those 182 conversations 104 of those students decided to enroll in an AP class it is important to note that these students still had a choice whether or not they wanted to take an AP class and following these conversations they made an uh they made an informed decision around whether
023they wanted to actually enroll in an AP class here's here's the analogy for our EOS work and our trusted adult conversations it's one thing to know that an event is happening and it is open to anyone in anybody can come but when you receive a personal invitation it increases your sense of belonging and it communicates that this is a place for you especially when that encouragement comes from someone who you trust and someone who you have a relationship with that was the work of our trusted adults and we truly appreciate them taking the time to connect with these students on this level of those 104 students here is the racial and ethnic breakdown of who enrolled here's our underrepresented list we see the greatest AP enrollment coming from our Latino student population we are excited
024to have these students of all Races and all ethnicities who represent our underrepresented population taking that invitation and accepting it to become an AP student now we talked about the goal of this partnership being to identify high potential students to take an AP class I'd like to take a moment to talk about the AP student profile of our current AP students from last year 2023 2024 and the targeted students who accepted our invitation and are going into AP this this year last year I average GPA of our AP students who had always been enrolled in an AP class without any initiative was a 3.6 our underrepresented targeted group of students who are going into AP classes have an average GPA of a 3.3 it is comparable to those students who were always taking an AP
025class in our district the range of our AP students last year ranged from a GPA of 1.74 to a 4.0 the range for our targeted Outreach students is between a 2.06 and a 4.0 so it really is the same profile of a student who had always been in our AP class and had found success in our AP class we were intentional about making sure that these were underrepresented students who had high potential to do well in AP then when we look at those students those targeted students test scores 90% of them scored in the top quartile of our current AP student scores that means when we look at our SAT scores for our AP students that were already in AP the students that we targeted outreached and added to AP had a SAT score higher
026than 75% of those students and those not scoring in the top quartile that other 10% had a GPA range of 3.0 to 4.0 and so when we compare our AP enrollment from Fall of last year to fall of this year specifically looking at our targeted students our underrepresented population we have increased by 10% the number of underrepresented students who are enrolled in an AP class and when we compare that by demographic we see that looking at our five-year Trends our work around our policy our strategic plan and our Equity action plan showed data that we remained relatively consistent in our enrollment by race and ethnicity with our work with EOS it allowed us to increase all of our student demographic ECS significantly um for the 2024 2025 school year and this is our 12th through
02710th graders our ninth graders are not included in this um data piece um because they weren't enrolled in our our buildings when we pulled this data and so we would definitely like to thank our access team members from both Libertyville and Vernon Hills High Schools who worked diligently to ensure that our efforts to increase diversity and representation in our AP classes um was successful as we move into 2024 2025 we our goal is to continue to evaluate and monitor the success of these targeted students who were enrolled in the AP classes and we also want to increase the percentage of targeted students enrolling in an advanced level class for this year as we enter into year two as we enter into year two of a two-year partnership with EOS there will be adjustments made to
028the partnership uh these include include on these bullets here where we will maintain some of the student identification processes shared with us by EOS to create that targeted Outreach list uh adapting and personalizing EOS recommendations to fit the context and the culture of d128 um and making sure that our d128 staff are trained to lead all diagonal movement efforts and ensure relevance and impact on our system and then expand the targeted courses to include dual Credit in any college bearing credit course to expand Beyond advanced placement classes I just want to comment one of the um things that we experienced while we liked some of the ideas and uh processes that EOS offered we didn't necessarily like the fact that um in our partnership last year they wanted their staff to deliver the trainings to
029our staff and they were really hyperfocused just on the amount of students enrolled in a p and for us as a district um we were we wanted to have a different type of partnership where um we had an organization like EOS who has um a lot of experience in this work offering us some ideas and giving us some some guidance on strategies that have worked um but we want our people to be able to adapt those things for our context and to lead that work with our staff um and so that was one of the ways that we're going to um sort of uh reduce our partnership with Theos moving forward next year is administratively we'll still be in consult with EOS about some of the programs and the um uh different types of uh
030recommendations they would make for us as we start year two of this but it would be our own staff members who would be leading any work that would be with our staff and we would have full license to adapt and um adjust the EOS work to more directly fit our context so that it doesn't feel like a boilerplate kind of this is a standard model that we're just going to drop in on a school uh we can make a lot more adjustments to it specifically the other piece was we were a little frustrated that EOS was hyperfocused on AP we we value AP and we want students to take AP um we know that there's good research that uh students who take at least one AP class in high school are significantly more likely to
031graduate from a four-year University so we want that opportunity for all of our students who feel that that's an important um experience for them to have but we also believe that there's value in our students taking honors classes and in the Dual credit and specifically next year we want to focus a lot of this work on our dual credit courses because really with our exploring multiple paths what we want is we want more students to have the opportunity to take college credit bearing classes while they're in high school um so reducing our partnership with EOS will allow us to expand the data pools that we look at and the student populations that we're working with um to be a little bit more expansive than what having a tight partnership with EOS would have allowed us
032to do um one example of how d128 will work I think moving forward is what Larry is going to show us next uh one of the ideas that EOS had um was the idea of when you are working with students to help them be successful as they move into AP to offer summer AP um boot camps it's a program that we've seen in other area schools as well um what we did was we took this idea and we had our own people Larry Varn Ben um Rodriguez and a number of AP teachers from District 128 met this summer and they work worked and designed a uh Student Success Workshop that was completely designed by the talented people we have in District 128 to be designed to be given to our students and um this is
033a good example of how we would take ideas that EOS may offer and use our own people to take the ideas that we like and design them in ways that we know will be successful with our students so we're going to transition to a little bit of uh a video on a on the summer the Student Success workshops and then we can have questions on uh this at the end the Student Success Workshop was designed for diagonal movers students who are being introduced to the level of rigor and AP and honest classes for the first time in their High School careers we want to help our diagonal movers we want to help uh help those kids that may need a little bit of a boost in their that are we want to encourage kids to
034be in the most rigorous classes possible and some of them need to feel like they belong there uh and need a little bit of extra help uh and I'm going to be doing that throughout the year but uh I just wanted to help out during the summer the d228 Student Success Workshop was designed by faculty who teach honors and AP classes staff from LHS and vhhs worked collaboratively to create an experience for students that would provide them with skills necessary to handle the increased rigor of honors in AP classes I have to say that this is probably one of the the best collaborative committees that I have been on um because I felt like we all really are we gelled our ideas together and we had a common purpose um everybody felt their voice was
035heard and we got a chance to sort of immediately see the the product of our efforts there so um as a professional working with other professionals the just the opportunity to see something come to fruition I I'm thinking about um a study that I've read a couple times and I've reread recently from M Chicago and it talks about the non-cognitive factors that influence students academic performance and when you look at what interventions can actually uh have been proven to impact um things like academic behavior um academic mindset and learning strategies are proven to be the things that can have the largest effect size um through intervention so I was really excited that our sessions focused on those exact things and gave actionable strategies for students so um I'm really hoping that they put those to
036use and we're going to be surveying them in the future uh to see you know after first semester how did they do what did they find useful so I'm hoping that they put those strategies to use and we can build on it based on their feedback Workshop sessions included mindset and motivation iCal thinking and communication organization and study skills and time management and wellness I think it was well run and I think there was a lot of positive energy uh from all parties involved uh I think uh and I think it would be a a positive impactor on the students especially a lot of the Freshman students coming in just making sure they know that they're valued that we want them to be successful and that uh give them some skills and uh make sure
037they regardless of what skills they got in the workshop just I could sense a feeling of just that belonging and ready to go uh ready to start the first day so felt uh pretty positive there on the skill sets there okay from the uh the student side of things um I think we all did a a really good job of presenting the kids with just a whole variety of tools um I and I told the kids during the day that this was somewhat like a buffet for them we were going to give them a whole bunch of skills that they could use to be successful at school and they have the opportunity now to see which things speak the most to them and then try to apply them so um you know throughout the day
038seeing the kids sort of feverishly jot down things that we were talking about in our sessions that to me was very encouraging because it's saying stuff that I'm saying to you is having that impact in the moment and they're one to actually copy things down to try to remember for later um I thought it was a really good um introductory to high school experience for the for the incoming freshmen um I think the sessions were a pretty good length I think we covered a variety of topics that was good um but there was enough overlap that I feel like the me some messages got reinforced also which uh which I liked um I think there was enough reinforcement without repetitive um the other thing that I was pretty excited about was the number of freshmen
039that we saw um that same U Chicago study talks about how the transition from 8th grade to freshman year is a really vulnerable time for students academically um and so to have have the workshop out front of that and to help them with that transition by reiterating some of the some of the skills that are going to be beneficial to them um I'm really proud that we were able to reach so many freshmen and I hope we can expand on that in the future by the end of the the workshop participants expressed an overwhelming increase in their confidence about taking a more rigorous course total we had about 272 students participate um a good mix from both Schools Vernon Hills and Libertyville High School um and the majority of the participants were incoming freshmen but
040we did have a cohort each day of upper class students sophomores and juniors um who participate we put them in their own groups um and those sessions were taught a little bit differently because they're already familiar with the high school they've already developed some academic strategies um so we kind of had different differentiation for kids who are older versus the incoming freshmen who hadn't ever experienced High School quick question um how many of the 104 students were in the workshops that that were I think you had 182 and from that you came down to 104 or something like that that actually enrolled how many of them were in these workshops so of the 104 students those would have been our upper class students um we had approximately 25 upper class students participate in it the
041majority of the students were nth graders taking their first honors of AP class coming into the ninth grade how many um dual credit courses do we offer now I don't I don't have that info off the top of my head um but we're uh expanding I think we have at least I can think of at least two to three that and then I'll have to get back to you on how many have been approved over the summer um that we're moving forward with I have the list of dual credits um early childhood education workplace internship uh English composition math computer science uh math calculus 3 science Earth uh earth science um German uh for World languages and did I say and then English composition to um eight and then World languages French was that eight
042or nine um different ones and then some of them are offered at you know at both buildings and some offered twice so one two and then we have some CTE classes that may not be dual credit but you get college hours for so just um there's there's a little bit there so there's n 10 well having taught both AP and uh dual credit courses I am a strong proponent of dual credit and I'm glad to see that that's your focus yeah um anytime these kids get an opport opportunity to do college level work it's great for their future yeah so I'm glad to hear that you're doing that right and and we value our AP but AP is not the only game in town and there's some significant drawbacks as you well know to AP
043which is the pace and the narrowness of the curriculum which in some dual credit opportunities um gives the instructor more freedom to explore broader aspects um so that's why we are putting our energy around all of those and not limiting ourselves great does limiting the scope of our partnership with EOS reduce our cost no um we entered into a two-year contract with EOS that um is fully executed um so the cost of EOS Remains the Same as when we um initiated the contract so Dr Vern can I you kind of got when I was reading through the um presentation my questions were what worked what didn't and what would you recommend to change so thank you for giving some color I I think I have a better understanding that but one of my other was
044Lisa what you said so how do we maximize our partnership with the OS so that we're getting the full value of what we contracted for B under your parameters like how are we because we want to get the value of our money right and we're going to Pivot to what you have as a committee decided is important importance but they still have an obligation to us so how are we going to maximize our relationship with them to get our benefit yeah I think um the key thing for our partnership with EOS is really building the capacity of our own staff um and and having that ability to take tools and resources from EOS and then make them our own um so that we can phase out the partnership with EOS but continue to take on
045the the work um of increasing and supporting our underrepresented students in accelerated courses so what does that look like they're it looks like they training us so rather than EOS like like Dr clinta said rather than EOS coming in and providing professional development they come in and they train us on the professional development and now we're building the capacity of our own staff to continue to to to to to lead and facilitate those sessions um when their partnership has has Sunset so instead of EOS doing the training are you saying that EOS is doing train the training with our staff so that our staff can adapt and deliver great they they'll they'll work with us Larry and I and committees on teaching and learning team the leadership teams and we'll decide what pieces of it
046we think are valuable for our system one of the big changes that we made with them was they would allow for a train the trainer model with us that was not something that was available the first year and so um we feel that is a much more um beneficial model for us because as Mr Varn said then our staff are able to acquire the skills and understandings of what these programs and uh guidelines could be once implemented and make them our own and kind of design them in the way that we know works for our system rather than have somebody come in from the outside do something with us one time that doesn't really stick and doesn't stay with us so we'll continue having frequent meetings with EOS but all the work would happen sort
047of behind the scenes and our staff would only get the benefits of the programs that we create and make our own that we know are going to have value to our teachers and a positive impact on our students wasn't another prong of our partnership with them was their algorithm in identifying those students and that we wanted to take that over so is that another part of our you know what we're going to be focusing on this year so that we are ready to take whatever yes so the the the student survey and that is where a very important part of how we start to identify those targeted students so we will give that survey again this year for our students pieces knowing that this is the last year we give it EOS that's a proprietary
048survey so we won't be able to take their survey and use it on our own but we'll be able to develop some of the ideas and the questions and the characteristics that EOS would be looking for um in subsequent types of screeners that we would do with students in the future without I'm assuming that's the important part in the selfa you know the self-recognition of the student and that they have the interest and they see themselves as this kind of student right so yeah we are able to make that in because that was always the plan from our conversation is that that work was going to be done done in house so my question I was still back on the 25% of the students um actually took the workshop so I'd like to kind of
049as you go forward look at how did the 25% who took the workshop versus the 75% who did not take the workshop was there any difference in their in their outcomes because we I know while we talk a lot about enrolling students what really matters is that they actually make it through the class and and exit the class successfully right so I'm I'm more worried about the other part yes that's a part of our track in um for our students um although um some students were not able to attend in person we also made the workshop available asynchronous so uh it was sent out to those families to go on at their own pace or Leisure um for those students to to still get the same information that was there it was also shared out
050with our staff um so that they could uh be aware of the strategies that were shared with the students who attended and could also use it as a reference point for um students in their classes uh but yes um we will be um I think um Miss Phillips and the video mentioned that we were going to continue to monitor the data and see how our students using these strategies and seeing how how successful and supports are um being used not just this particular uh support for students but the other supports that were part of the uh student support plan for diagonal movers we'll be evaluating all of those to see how effective they have been in supporting students so when we don't have to do this today but in a future I would like to
051see in general what are the specific metrics we are capturing for not just these but really all students especially diagonal movers and the heterogenous all the all the students we accelerated for under various programs what other the specific metrics we are looking at to make sure that they're on track or if they need help that we are identifying them before before they get in trouble from in a class standpoint I guess what you're looking at is what does evaluate and monitor look like right like I want a picture of when evaluate and monitor I yeah and how often because that ties in with do we have the right support available and do we have enough people do we not have enough people and it should also inform whether what we are doing now should actually
052be done next year because I saw that one of our goals here is to expand access I wouldn't quite go there yet till we know that what we've done so far is actually what we expected the goal was to increase students accepting it um we do we do absolutely want more underrepresented students to accept the invitation we want to provide that support to them um but when we talk about expanding we had 57% say yes we want to know what were the barriers that made the students who said no say no how can we address those barriers um so that they feel more connected um to AP that they feel more prepared for AP or um a dual credit as well to see if AP is not the right for you you have demonstrated a
053high potential how can we tap into that potential and get you to actually um enroll in in a more rigorous course are there any other questions okay I think this goes to you Tom again Educational Tours uh yes there are Educational Tours for your approval I don't know if I need to speak to any of them um I we've read through them IU I think I had a couple of questions that I emailed you so if you have that information you can share tonight if not we can discuss it at the regular board meeting before we take action yeah I think in terms of the you asked about the volley or excuse me the um the cross country from Vernon Hills they take the white District buses so smaller white buses so there's no costs
054associated with we don't factor in the cost into the proposal for them taking the the white buses which is why that information wasn't on the proposal um and then for the volleyball the but for cross country I think um there was I would have to look it up but yeah the question was why there was no Transportation included in the proposal thank you and the answer is they take the small white buses so those are district Vehicles we don't we historically haven't put that in the those proposals because they're an in-house resource that we use understood thank you and then the other one was for um volleyball and for LHS girls volleyball right so for volleyball LHS that's a competition during the season so the costs associated with the tournament fees are part of the
055athletic Department's budget so they're not something that the the team has to fundraise for separately um that's where those costs would come from okay typically when that's the case um it's still listed on the expense spreadsheet um it just does not show coming from the district it shows coming uh from a budgeted expense okay so that's why I was that's why you question after them so right got it and Dan this is more of a question for you just so that so when we see that it's a district Student Activity budget item that is money that they have that comes either from their fundraising or from the fees for that club or that activity right uh I don't necessarily have much to do with those budget sheets that's really under Tom's area but in general
056like if it says District budget um like Athletics that's part of the what we budget for under Athletics and activities also has a budget for competition it's primarily competition travel uh that we pay for a good portion of is there anything else all right thank you uh moving on to employment of employees so we do have a an extensive list for this one um which would include um some um people being hired uh Replacements also some people that have announced um retirements in the next few years is for ESP and then this will go on to the consent agenda for the board meeting and just a shout out to Pam vukov viix who I taught with Once Upon a Time many years ago who's joining our science department yeah okay uh future agenda items are
057listed um is there anything that anybody else would like to place or discuss as an agenda item for the future I we haven't really talked about doing the board retreat is that something that we want to get back on and discuss let me talk to Becky they have some ideas for us all right very good I'm going to adjourn the P&P meeting at this time and turn it over to uh president hessle who's being sitting in for Jim Batson who with us tonight not quite as capable or handsome as Jim Batson but I will do my best um so I'm calling the FF meeting to order we have already done the pledge and this at this time uh would like to extend an invitation for public comment for anybody who would like to address us
058now for fnf okay seeing none we are going to move into our items for discussion the first one is an update on our Equity action plan commitment for Equitable resources good evening again um one of the things that we are looking at doing as it relates to the reporting out of our um metrics in the racio diversity equity and inclusion policy is making sure that the reports that I give are align to um some of the annual things that that will come before the board um this particular presentation on Equitable resources moving forward will be coming to you at the same time when Dan proposes the budget so that you can see how those two things work together and Dan has worked with the business and finance office to ensure that Equity is infused within
059that um so you will you will hear an update on this particular commitment again in June or July whenever Dan does that and so we want to make sure that we are aligning uh our commitments with the work of the organization so you can see how these are are working collectively so this evening um we're talking about Equitable resources uh and our update for for things that we are doing this year uh uh as it relates to Equitable resources again it comes from our policy uh commitment four and our metric is identifying and Reporting on District budget and how funds are alloc all are allocated equitably uh that also drills down into our strategic plan goal area of equity and inclusion which finds itself embedded with our Equity action plan with a metric of publishing
060Equitable funding process used by all account managers uh this is an ongoing process uh and so as as Dan and his team continues to evaluate Equitable allocation uh we will we will look at various areas last year when when I when I reported to you on this um I shared with you some of the wonderful things that Dan's office had done um with equitably providing resources for our capital projects and priori prioritization list and how it align with our Equity efforts as well as our um professional learning process so that our staff are participating in professional learning opportunities that are aligned with our strategic our strategic plan um and so when we talk about resources here are uh the overall categories for schools and and school resources the work for this year um looks at
061our building budget and our building budget um primarily the portion of it that is non-personnel related um so as how how we are allocating funds for services supplies and equipment not how we are allocating funds for Staffing in this particular way and so Equitable resourcing is an ongoing process um we've looked at several other areas this year and uh in in the budget that Dan uh presented to you in the summer they really focused on some of the efforts um around the development of creating a funding formula that would be Equitable as it related to the allocation of funds to our buildings so let's start let's start by looking at some of our past practice what we have been doing in the past as a district is is Si very similar to a zerob based
062budgeting process not exactly um zerob based budgeting budgeting but very very closely related to it and we were asking individual departments to request uh funds for their budget and those individual departments The English Department social studies math so on and so on would come together uh and to and would generate the building's budget um and that request would go over to the business office and then funds would be allocated in that way that process though um was creating per people allocation Trends as such and we began looking at this um looking at fiscal year 2021 and we can see the in Equity um between how how each School LHS is in Orange Veron Hills is in blue how much each school was being uh awarded or allocated um based on that that model now uh
063we begin in 2023 um putting in in place some intentionality and looking at how can we narrow the gap between uh um allocations between Veron Hills and Libertyville uh and and so you'll see that the the Gap does narrow in in the last two fiscal years um in 2024 we got really close to making sure that both schools were getting a a equal allocation per pupil the important thing though to remember is that equal isn't always Equitable um and so giving each each School the same amount per student may not meet the needs of Veron Hills or may not meet the needs of Libertyville um student population and so uh we began looking at various models and we landed on this new model um which is which is based on splitting how we allocate uh
064resources and that split comes from a base amount that would be awarded to the schools and then a per student amount that's awarded to the schools the base amount means that this is a these are fixed costs that regardless of the size of the school you still have to have a library you still have to have a nurse's office it doesn't matter how many students you have these things still must exist and they have to be have to be paid for um and so that base amount is awarded to each School equally because they have the same cost then there's the per student amount and that amount is allocated per student based on the enrollment this alleviates the schools from feeling the stress of having to meet the base costs um and and subtracting money
065from our taking resources away from the per student amount and so with that new model we determin that by evaluating Dan and his office determined that by evaluating what our current operating costs are for each school that equates to about 57% of of the budget so that is that base amount which would leave 43% for for the student amount um and Dan will explain a little more about how he came to this particular um calculation yeah the the percentage is just the result the end result so really what it was we were looking at it if you consider a lot of just the operational standards so nurse's office security things like that that exist that aren't don't really change when you have more or less students in terms of supplies and services uh that equated
066to about 1.2 million for each building so that's the base amount for each building they get 1.2 million to start uh and then uh the rest was back calculated to produce a per student amount based on the last four or five years of Trends and so that base amount or that per student amount is 590 and so what it does is um if you looked we looked at various models but um what this does is this will smooth out uh whether you have significant uh changes in enrollment and particularly when we're in declining enrollment that it's not going to slash a building uh it's going to hopefully hold them harmless to some extent because there's some costs that they're going to have whether they're if they're going down students they're still going to have a
067library for example they just might have slightly less books that they're buying but they still have um significant costs associated with some of those programs so that's that's where those came from and then going forward the idea would be um what is the change to the base amount each year and then what is the change to per student amount uh based on Trends costs and available resources should I ask questions now that was a question so I'm guessing you can ask questions now um I didn't want to break your flow but I would like to understand how do equivalent schools model their budgets and how does this align with some of the schools we compare ourselves uh many schools um that we compare ourselves to don't necessarily have um a very complex formula for figuring
068how to do that the most common method you will find is what was budgeted last year and then how much more or less do we budget this year based on everyone's best sense or requests there are some districts that just do a flat dollar amount allocation so what you'll find in some of the bigger districts like 214 or something like that that have multiple high schools um they they might just do a flat dollar per student uh per student dollar amount allocation to the buildings and that's how they do that um there's the pros and cons to various models that the con uh to that model is it will it will adjust pretty quickly relative to enrollment which could be good or could be bad depending on I guess the circumstance um and the reality
069is is realizing regardless of enrollment there's still some cost that are going to be the same there's a there's a front office in that building um and those costs really don't change much relative to the number of students if you add add 100 students take away 100 students the front office costs are pretty the same The copier or cop cers have the same amount of cost we don't add or take away copiers uh when we have more or less students necessarily it's not it's not a fast adjustment like that that's more of a longer term change um but this the model that we have is uh was uh inspired by Glen Brook 225 um they have a model similar to this they have uh they have diff their their formula isn't exactly like this but
070the idea that there's a base cost and a per student cost as something they've had in place for a long time and I found that a pretty attractive uh calculation to be able to account for fixed cost that you have in a system plus variable costs that'll change based on students so um this was our our attempt at trying to find a way uh to more equit to be allocate rather than um the methods that we had before that um we it was a it was a fine process uh but when you zoom back and look at the impact of that big picture we started noticing different numbers that we didn't feel comfortable with at a at a super zoomed out level Dan I don't want to steal your thunder because I think you're going
071to get to this but I think one of the pros is that it sort of matches isb's funding model correct oh you have more slides D I forgot about that um yeah it's in it's it it's no it's this one um there you go look at that there's another slide uh yeah it it's it's aligned more with isb's funding model which has a lot of things based on P per pupil allocations isb's funding model is more going to be based on Staffing that's where the biggest calculations come in in terms of isb's funding model because I mean 70% of our budget is Staffing but they also do have things associated with supplies and equipment things like that that are that are based on Research which is based on largely a per student uh allocations so
072it is more aligned with ISB and and and to that point I definitely want to acknowledge and thank Dan and his team for taking on this effort when um it's it's it's not necessary not necessarily uh something that other business officers are doing uh they see the value uh and the and the impact that equitably allocating resources can have on on on organizations and school districts our goals for this year will include making sure that we review the impact of this formula um this is our first year uh that we will have implemented this particular um formula for how we budget it so uh our business office will continue to monitor the impact that it has had on our schools for this school year and determine any adjustments that need to be made for the
073budgeting for fiscal year 26 uh and then as we continue to phase into uh Equitable um budgeting we want to drill down from the building level down into our department level I'm going explore how to develop similar calculations to be more Equitable and how we are um funding each department at the building level and you said that the review of the impact of these formulas will be tied to the 2526 budget that'll be presented in like June July of 2025 yeah we're going to primarily to see how does this happen this fall which is when we incur a lot of the costs because they're buying supplies for the year kind of seeing how that goes at a building level and then trying to look at the department level to see um what we can do
074at that level and then for Capital Improvements will continue to use the model that we've been using that you developed over the last few years that prioritizes Capital Improvements that that is a totally different process totally different part of our budget okay yeah so if you go back to uh earlier he had the in terms of allocation of resources there's a lot of ways that we allocate resources Calio improvements is a is a totally separate one okay any more questions before we move on okay uh moving on to the disposal report for fiscal year 2024 yes so those of us that are newer um we uh board policy 460 requires that if we're going to dispose of uh personal property that's more than diminutive value that the board has to approve that uh that's helpful
075from an accounting endpoint because we have to report on our Capital assets it's part of our financial reporting and it's good for you all to know we spent money on District resources and now we're going we're asking your permission to dispose of it uh dispose doesn't mean that we necessarily throw it away sometimes we scrap it sometimes we donate it sometimes we sell it and what happened uh about a year ago is was we we have these come periodically not necessarily every month but as they come we present them to the board and not every request that comes to us for disposal has to go to the board because a lot of things that we get requests for disposal are diminutive value they don't have much value at all and so we are able to
076quickly process that and approve the disposals the question came was what ha what actually happened we approved the disposal that's great they said they were hoping to donate it what actually happened did they donate it did they scrap it what actually happed happen so that was that was requested of us and last year we hadn't never done that before and what we what the solution we came to was it's too hard to do this on a very regular basis but we thought once a year we can update you on all the disposals that happened over the last fiscal year give you a one once- year report this is our second year now of doing this once a year report so these are the disposals that the board approved in fiscal year 24 and these are
077the these are what happened with those disposals be um they were sold they were donated or they were scrapped great any questions okay thank you for doing that uh moving on to disposal of equipment that we will take action on at our next meeting at the end of the month um looks like there are um warm-ups and pants for the LHS um LS cross country thank you cross country any questions no okay we'll see that uh in two weeks uh moving on to item D the fiscal year 24 year end analysis yes so each year I try to uh provide a quick snapshot of what happened in the fiscal year so primarily looking at how did the budget compare to actuals and so um this fiscal year 24 wrapped up but in July we just
078couldn't quite uh get it all done and buttoned up to have have that in time for our July meeting and so we have it here for the August meeting and so what I have for you is a report that is really at the very top level is the high summary that summarizes Revenue by our three major sources local sources which most of that is property taxes State sources and federal sources uh and then the bottom section is expenditures by our major object C salaries and benefits supplies Services things like that that you would have seen us reference um on the previous presentation with Larry so briefly if I uh just look at revenues for example we budgeted 102.6 million of revenues and we actually received 104.8 million of revenues that's a 2 point roughly $2.2
079million more over budget um if you look down if you further down there's a little bit more detail in terms of breaking out the revenues the majority of that is um interest income that's something that I believe the board has been informed on well throughout the year that uh essentially interest rates when we budget did for fiscal 24 and uh an interesting point to note this is the first budget that we approved in June before the fiscal year began so this is really interesting I think to find out how did that how did that happen how how accurate were we able to be what changed one of those things that wasn't quite as accurate as interest income at that point I feel it was a little bit unpredictable to know that interest rates would stay
080as high as they are for so long our interest income is largely tied to the interest rates out there and so uh that had a significant impact but that's an extremely volatile source of Revenue similarly cppt that I believe the board is also pretty informed on that's an extremely volatile uh we guessed at 2.3 million last year for the budget August is when we get the estimate from the Department of Revenue they said 2.1 okay I let you all know you all had that information we actually received 1.9 so it's going down so that the the fear that I had that this Revenue source that had been rough a million dollars for a very long time skyrocketed to 3 million and I felt this is this cannot be sustainable this doesn't make any sense we
081can't build our operations based on this and it's starting to come back down uh and it's very likely that FY 25 it could be back to 1 million I don't really know um it's it's definitely going to be lower than we had um so on the on the revenue side interest income was significant the other thing was State sources um one of them was special ed private facility if you look at the note the only reason that's over is because we actually received five quarterly payments normally we look to get four but we only received three in the previous year so we got it's just a timing thing uh and the second one was transportation that one we got a lot more reimbursement than we than I had anticipated which is good but that's because
082we had spent more than I anticipated in fiscal year 23 uh so that was over budget then and it resulted in more Revenue so that's what happened on the revenue side um I would say the interest income we knew ahead of time the transportation was not quite as high as I had anticipated when we did our midyear review for example uh but everything else is pretty straightforward in line overall expenditure or revenues at 102% of budget salaries and benefits on the expenditure side I felt salaries coming in at 99.2 was extremely close uh that's where the bulk of our money is um if you look at the detail really the best summary the short summary I could give you is it's it's um we had some leave of absences that happen um and some unfilled
083positions meaning not all of our positions that we budgeted for were filled for the full 12 months right say we approve a position and or someone leaves and you have that maybe sometimes a month gap between refilling that position well that's a month of expenditure we didn't have but I budget for the full position so that happens every year it's a little bit difficult to predict where that's going to happen um but those are really what I saw there and you'll see there is a line there for 182,000 under other that was not budgeted as a reminder that was part of the ESP Union agreement because we knew some expenditures were trending under and we knew we had more interest income part of our agreement with settling that contract was to pay out $22,000 to
084all the members for the ESP Union so that's where that money is um but overall expenditures on the salaries at 99.2 I feel that's extremely close uh and benefits uh in my opinion were pretty pretty incredible we used our Skyward system to calculate benefits a lot of times you'll find schools use spreadsheets and spreadsheets are fine they're great uh but you need to make sure you have double checks in your calculations because they're formulas and anytime you involve humans you've got a good chance for making mistakes we utilized our our Erp system to do these calculations and we also had our double checks to make sure we thought they were correct and it turns out they were extremely accurate a lot of the benefits are based on salaries so meaning if you pay a dollar
085that means you have to pay x amount of TRS so if those are if you have salaries that are down your benefits that are tied to salaries are going to be down so if you spend less on salaries you might SP spend less on Medicare because it's directly tied the one thing that I truly believe is astounding is medical insurance for years I've been trying to get this as close to 100 as I can uh because my my whole goal is I want the budget to be accurate I want it to be a good predictor of what we're going to spend for planning purposes um it it hit at 100% uh which is extremely accurate some of that is when we hire people we don't exactly know what insurance they're going to take whether they're
086going to take single or family so we do an estimate um and people can change mid year they could have life life circumstances change and might need to take on Family Insurance or life circum has changed they may need to drop or change to an HMO or something like that uh so those things are a little bit difficult to predict but that's truly astounding overall benefits at 99.8 that's probably the closest that I've ever seen uh tuition reimbursement was a lot higher than we anticipated we we've had more teachers utilize this and so that's something we need to watch for in terms of Are We alloc what are we allocating in the future the rest of the budget um is smaller than uh what we spend on salaries and benefits but the Highlight I would
087say under purchase Services there's a lot of detail to each of them uh but the Highlight I would say to purchase Services is transportation in particular for special education sorry Kelly uh special education and Athletics was much higher than what we estimated and budgeted for so these are two things that we're going to need to take a look at this fall um to get a sense of what we're doing what changes can we do to make that better aligned with what we're expecting um so stay tuned for that we're going to be meeting with the Departments and working on those things uh but those were not at all what we what I was expecting to see uh supplies there's details there really electricity over natural gas under but supplies ending at 100% of budget uh
088is pretty close Capital outlay again 99.7 pretty close um other uh the thing on other is that includes tuition so that's students that are outplaced uh if you recall we had a mid midyear report that I mentioned that we're having less expenditure than what we were trending for on tuition and part of that was because we had we were bringing students back we were we were bringing students back into our schools which we thought was a wonderful thing and a wonderful thing to celebrate um at the end of the day we looked at this again mid spring and realized we actually have the same number of students outplaced than what we had budgeted just they weren't necessarily outplaced for the full year right that like students came they left and there might have been a
089month or two gap between the total number of changes so that's why uh we up under in terms of uh tuition and then uh non-cap equipment was extremely close and yeah so overall on expenditures 99.7 so if you zoom out on expenditures we came in under budget by 266,000 uh and on revenues we were we received more Revenue than was budgeted by 2.1 million so on an operating budget instead of a def or a surplus of 680,000 we actually had a surplus of 3.1 million that mathematically is the 680,000 surplus built into the budget plus being under budget by expenditures by 260,000 and then being uh revenues more by the 2.2 million uh on there so that's a brief big picture of what what what happened in fiscal year 24 um the good thing is
090none of the things that are contained in this very helpful year end analysis are a surprise so thank you for keeping us AB breast throughout the year um I thought it was very informative and very detailed but there wasn't any um any surprises so thank you for that any questions okay moving on to item e the summer 2024 capital projects update and LHS cafeteria update yeah so we had Mark been working pretty very diligently on a lot of summer projects uh and then also there was the request for update on where we're at with the LHS cafeteria bids so Mark put together the report that's attached for you um to walk you through those are our summer projects but also some of the stuff that's happening with the cafeteria as well um I maybe I
091first asked Mark is there anything that's changed since we submitted this report last week it was a full weekend so uh we did fall short on the opening of the washrooms for the cafeteria um we have Roe inspection tomorrow afternoon and we're hoping to open them by the end of the day tomorrow um but Crews were in over the weekend working on them um there are a couple items we were missing but we should get occupancy uh I said tomorrow afternoon then the only other thing I think that is worth noting unless there was something else you wanted to bring to our attention the um Fern and Hills High School roof replacement project um was not completed by the school opening so what is the entrance what's what is the impact right now the the
092roof is uh totally waterproof so the only thing that needs to go now is all the capping and the flashing the face of pieces and the Caps over the top of the wall um but I just mean what's the impact on operations with the parking lot or any impact on everything's been removed from the parking lot um and the contractor will be working weekends and after hours um to come so there'll be no disruption to education during the day so thank you any other questions okay thank you Dan and Mark um cafeteria oh the cafeteria I sorry yes please please do update us on the cafeteria bids oh we are alha Bid presently for the cafeteria um this Friday uh we will be opening bids Friday the 16th on 15 trades um we extended uh
093a bid opening to Thursday the 22nd uh for four trades the critical ones uh that needed longer time to uh work under bids would be the structural steel the roofing components uh Plumbing and Electric so those will be opened on the on the 22nd then we should get a full analysis um from gilbane it'll take them a week or so they'll start vetting the first bids right away and then um hopefully uh have a report to you uh as quickly as possible definitely by enough um and you might ask to get uh some things ordered to stay on budget uh possibly for a special board meeting to approve some of the traits um critical things are HVAC equipment being ordered and uh kitchen equipment long lead times as we saw with um you we purchased
094the HVAC equipment uh you the board approved it in February and they were telling me I had to find a place to store it in May and it didn't come to the middle of July so um that's Troublesome so that we want to make sure that we're able to stay on schedule and be able to have the kitchen completed um by spring break so we can have for the last six weeks six or eight weeks of school we can be working out a new kitchen and start the demolition of the old kitchen so okay so that's special meeting might occur in in September in September okay yes all right thank you but once we know more we'll um you know inform the board great thank you questions okay um the uh item F Athletico agreement
095for the athletic training services at Vernon Hills High School uh yeah we uh had an agreement uh before with Athletico and so that agreement's up so now it's time to reup uh this is what we have is a two-year agreement uh it is a 14% increase uh from what we paid last year but we still felt the rate was uh comparable uh because we actually have a different provider for LHS uh so it's still within still We Believe reasonable within market and the the agreement that the arrangement they've had with ATO Atletico has worked really well uh and even though 14% for the first year 3% for a year two uh we felt were reasonable okay questions I mean is there a benefit to just having one provider I know we've talked about LHS and
096Vernon Hills having own provider but at this point if we're looking at 14% increases is there a thought of would we get a better pricing if we were to have one provider for both buildings uh we tried that several years ago um and um essentially when we when we bid out the services we did not find a cheaper price if we had one provider for the both and to be honest the industry has changed since we've done that many districts are being faced with no provider providers dropping them uh because athletic training the market for athletic training has declined significantly so to be honest to be even to be able to have um an athletic Training Services provide quality athletic trainers is a little bit of anomaly right now in the market the industry has
097suffered since Co it hasn't really quite bounced back um when we looked at this before um we had uh really successful athletic trainers at Vernon Hills and um it Athletico was still the best price but Athletico at that time wasn't really able to provide a similar experience for LHS and so we went with a different provider for LHS at that time um so and it seems to be working really well the arrangement right now so we're at Illinois bow and joint for L for LHS and Athletico for ferin Hills and that seems to be working pretty well and I can report anecdotally that the Vernon Hills Athletics is um supported it's fabulous support that they get from Athletico I know that the um athletes and parents have been very pleased with the services that have
098been provided from Athletico for whatever that's worth okay um moving on to Future agenda items um they're the same ones that are listed any other um future agenda items that we'd like to discuss um that do not appear on this list okay seeing none uh we will Jin the meeting thank you everyone