001I hereby call to order this committee of the whole meeting for Monday, December 8th, 2025. The time is 8:08 a.m. Will the clerk please call the role? >> Ann Hart >> here. >> Kristen Dcastro >> here. >> Allison Pathless. Amy Paling >> here. >> Katie Hilton >> here. >> Judy Berlin >> here. Erin Stone >> here. >> Thank you. Do I seek a motion to approve the minutes of the November 10th, 2025 committee of the whole and executive session meetings? >> I move to approve the minutes of the November 10th, 2025 committee of the whole and executive session meetings. >> The motion uh may I have a second? >> Second. >> Motion has been made and seconded. Board members, are there any comments, errors, or omissions to the minutes? All right. Thank you. Then uh
002may I please have a roll call vote? >> Annne Hart, >> yes. >> Kristen Dcastro, >> yes. >> Aaron Stone, >> yes. >> Katie Hilton, >> yes. >> Judy Berlin, >> yes. >> Amy Peeling, >> yes. >> Thank you. All right, we will start this morning facility development committee. Mrs. Diccastro, it looks like there are no items this morning for discussion. All right, moving on then to school finance. Mrs. Paling. Yes, we do have two items today for finance and I will turn it over to Mr. Okay. All right. So the first item is each year the board reviews and approves various fees to students um for the ne for the next fiscal year. Today we're taking a look at um the instructional material fees only. Um we will look at many of the other
003fees in in another couple of months when we have a little more data um that might be relevant for comparison sake. But one of the reasons we wanted to uh address the instructional materials fees today was as we head into with with the way our meetings are structured in the month of January and and that is typically when registration's open um we're working towards trying to make it an option to include this in the in the registration um process. Um something that we haven't necessarily done in the past but it's something that we're we're trying to work towards. So the last few years for the instructional material fee, a fee that applies to all our students, um we we've taken the approach of increasing it by the applicable inflationary factor. Uh for the for the
0042627 school year, that'd be 2.9%. I have here on this slide um what we have in the current year for fees at each grade level. Then what the 2.9 would would would uh take it to in 2627. you see that that uh ranges from anywhere from seven to $11 per student. And then one alternate cons one other consideration uh just kind of talking with our staff that something we felt like would be really useful um behind the scenes uh administratively but also um we think some of the families might uh prefer this is at the upper grade levels fifth and sixth we've had the uh the roller skating fee and historically we've we've you know in the fall late summer fall we've assigned the instructional material fee. Families go in and pay it. Then we
005get into the school year, the roller skating module comes along and we're like, "Hey, here's an please go in and pay another $20." Um, and so at the fifth and from what I've been told, fifth and sixth grade, that happens every year. So, what we would propose is just consolidating that into the instructional material fee instead of having to go back and track and and ask people to to pay twice. Um, they'd really be paying the same as what they have been doing. We're just trying to combine it. So, fifth and sixth grade, we would add another $20 to the instructional material fee. And then for seventh and eighth, um, I've been told that it rotates. And so, one year they offer it or they do the the module, then the next year they don't.
006And so for the seventh and eighth graders, we're just kind of splitting the $20 over both years and then adding $10 per year um to capture that. So that was one of the other um recommendations for the for the instructional material fee. One other thing before I'll be happy to answer any board questions is I switch documents. So this is like kind of our master document that lists all the fees and then we go back 10 years as a kind of reference points. One thing I wanted to just kind of get some feedback is um historically when we've assessed this fee, I think maybe like March, April is usually when we've put that into P school for families to pay or give them giving them the option to pay. Uh we've had kind of a
007$25 discount applied in the system. um if they paid by the end of the school year, which is what the June 7th, it's roughly the weekend after school's out. Um just kind of getting feedback from my staff and and how to go about it and knowing what I've seen at other districts. There's a lot of different uh setups and way districts go about having tiered pricing, um incentivizing people. Um, I think kind of the feeling was that we're not sure that the $25 is accomplishing what we would intend. Um, so I guess my from my perspective, I'd look for curious if the board was open to um adjusting the discount to possibly up to $50. Um, and you know, how does the board feel about that? Also, I've seen other places where they've um, you
008know, had a discount if you paid really early, then they kind of have like the base fee that covers, you know, kind of the middle of the end of the school year through the summer and then like the beginning part of the school year and then if you don't pay by a date into the school year, usually what I've seen is, you know, October, November, assessing some sort of um additional like late fee. Um you like I said the the creativity around like how districts structure it is is is pretty limitless. So I'm just curious if the board has any feelings. Um you know one of the things that would be different is we are like I said we're trying to make this fee open and available um to people at registration where we've always
009had kind of I'd say like a two to three month lag between when families register and then when we assess it in powers school. happy to answer any questions on this topic. >> So, um, first of all, I love the roller skating fee. As a parent, it always it was easy. It's not a big deal, but it just it makes a lot of sense to have it rolled in. I don't assume a lot of people opt out. I don't even know if it's optional. So, I I just think it makes a lot of sense. That is great. As for the um incentive, I guess I would want to know how problematic it is on your end as it is. Like how much do we struggle to get people to pay their fees by school? You
010know, how can we help solve the problem that may or may not be there? If it's working, I'd say leave it. I I don't know enough. >> Yeah. Um, I think I think whether you had a bit of a discount upfront, um, whether it was 25,50 or 100, um, I like there's always going to be some there's always going to be some level that it struggles on into this into the school year. Um, and it's been that way everywhere I've been. Um, I think for us, I think the the reason I was bringing it here was kind of the feedback and the conversation internally was we weren't sure that having the discount or the incentive be at $25 was really incentivizing people. So, we were that's where we were wondering if if it was different
011or if we had a different overall structure. Um, would that make a difference to people? and maybe it wouldn't. And if that's the case, then, you know, perhaps we we don't do much different. Um, but knowing that, you know, our board our board, you know, has had students go through, that's where I think that's where we were leaning. >> I would just personally bet that having this available when you register is going to have a big impact regardless of the fee. Like as a parent, when you are asked to take action, the more you can get done in that one action the better right because so I don't have a strong opinion um just a followup to what Amy was asking how beneficial is it to the district to get those payments in right away
012I mean obviously it's great to have the money you know in the system and the less reminders that we have to send over time is is a benefit I'm just trying to weigh, you know, the benefit to the district relative to taking it from, for example, 25 to 40 or 50. Um I mean it is like for this for my staff it is um it does take up a good bit of time. Um, >> but I mean that's that's why we have them because this is one of the one of the things that they do annually. So, >> um, >> yeah, >> I think it would certainly be helpful if we were able to have a much smaller amount of >> accounts that haven't haven't paid their fees once once school is in session in
013like, you know, August, September. >> Sure. >> Um. >> Sure. >> So, >> all right. I mean, I um Sorry. >> Well, I was I was just gonna suggest it seems there's a couple of different options right now with um getting the fees approved early enough. It to Amy's point could be that it gets all rolled in and that may in and of itself create some change in a positive direction for us. Um so we could keep the fee the same. The alternative would be we could increase the fee to or the reduction the discount um to to $50 and see how much of a a change that creates. It really is just how many levers do we want to pull, >> right? >> From our perspective, it is, excuse me, advantageous if we can
014um collect those fees before school starts so that um our staff aren't having to run down those fees later. And quite frankly for families, too, once it gets into October, you're still >> Yeah, I I agree. >> Um >> just one lever or two levers do we want to collect? >> Sure. board members. Any thoughts of Judy? >> Would there be an advantage to extending the discount until shortly before school starts since that is the goal is to get the money before school starts rather than in June? I would think people would be much more incentivized in August when they're figuring out everything else they have to do about school to also pay their fee if there was a deadline that said and you're going to have to pay more once school starts than you're
015going to pay more after June 7th. I could be wrong. I was just going to say, you know, when I look at the fees, a $50 discount, like I don't know the impact of that. That seems like if lots of people took advantage of that, that's a financial for us. I mean, I I think based on, you know, recent history as a parent, those fees are, you know, you you want them done by the end of the school year or early in the summer. I think occasionally with transportation, there's a big fee that is due in the summer. Um, but other than that, at that point, you know, you're set for the school year ahead. So, I think getting them paid um prior to the end of the school year would be in line with,
016you know, the other fees and the registrations and the processes that you go through. Um, you know, I wonder if we and and I think the offering the $25 discount, I'm very glad we do that and it makes a difference. It pays for, you know, a few years of increases if if you look at it that way per per child. Um, you know, maybe we try this year with the, you know, when you go through registration, you can pay your fees then and keep it at 25 and then if that doesn't work, add the additional layer next year with taking it to 50. But I I do think to Amy's point that when you're in that email, you just want to check everything off and not have to flag let's come back and pay the
017So um so is one option. I think that that would be a decent um test this year. >> Thank you. >> One more question. Um, so the additional fees you said a January or February for review. >> Yeah. Um, I, you know, in some of the like when I think about the other fees, it's like it's the fees that cover, you know, band um, you know, music, uh, lunch, transportation, certainly our athletics. um you know in for those that have been on the board for multiple years like we've we've you know made adjustments you know for several years in a row. One of the things at least from my perspective as I think about like having the best information available for the board I'm thinking either February or March. Um sure we we could have
018done all of them right now. One of the things I like certainly as for some of those fees is getting good information of like what the other feeders and you know even nutri are doing and so I think as I shared with Dr. Creole is like I could have brought all this last month or this month and said hey let's you know let's go into the registration everybody knows what everything is but when we think of it in context of like what are our peer districts or neighboring districts doing if I reach out they're going to be like I don't know because if someone reached out to me right now I'd be like well I have maybe an idea but I don't know for sure. It's just that like it doesn't maybe necessarily change our
019ultimate decision but it is a good reference point. Um, so that's kind of what I was thinking is bringing all of those together at the same time in probably February or March. Also knowing that that's still whatever uh none of those fees are really needed any earlier than that. >> Okay, thank you. That's helpful. All right. So, the other item we have today is our uh annual five-year financial projection. So, now that we're in fiscal year 26, we're looking for uh what do those projections look like for 27 through31. Um so, the first several pages in the document I'm going to walk walk the board through are just our our biggest assumptions. I'll talk about even within these assumptions. I'll I'll primarily talk about the ones that have the most impact on the revenue side.
020All right. So, the biggest revenue area as we all know is our property taxes. Um, one of the things that we do or one of the things that can have a great impact is what is the annual CPI over the the life of this projections. we reach out to one of our um banks to help give us some Bloomberg inflation estimates um a process that we've done here predating even myself. So I should I see here we have a range anywhere from a low of 2% up to 2.9. when you look at these, these feel more level or ordinary in the in the grand scheme of when we look back 25, 30 years. Um, particularly going back to like the recession that happened late 2000s into the early 201s, you know, in that last 15
02116 years, we've had periods where inflation was nearly nothing. We had, you know, lots of years well below 2%. And then more recently, we've had, you know, several years that were very high go, you know, the highest we've seen since the, I think, the 80s. So, you know, having this in here, this feels very, to me, this feels like things are leveling out. These are a little more uh like expected um CPI amounts. As I said, they have a big impact because they not only impact our revenue side, but they also many times impact um what happens with our salary increases on our with our uh collective bargaining agreements. So, in the property taxes, another big assumption is what do we have for the new property growth? Uh that's a extremely valuable component to the
022property tax process. Our 10ear average is just over 16 million. um you know what when I look at what our rates are like uh property tax rates are likely to be that looks like about just shy of 400,000 in the assumptions we have uh set the rate at about the collection rate at about 98.6. Um, it's worth noting that for every change in the net collection rate of about half percent, it's worth about $350,000. So, that is something that can vary from year to year. Um, interest revenue. Um, you know, we are coming off what I what I view as kind of a historical high water mark. Um, and so I've kind of tiered or stepped down throughout this projections um, that interest revenue, bringing it back to pretty close to our our 20-year average
023of about 580,000. Then when we get into like our state revenue line items and our our federal line item revenue line items, um while those are smaller in comparison to the impact on our financials, um those are relatively level, we don't really have any information that would indicate like, you know, anything other than pretty level. We don't large increases or large decreases. One item that we have seen some fairly large swings in in the time I've been here is our replacement tax line item. We've got that set at about 625,000 throughout the projections. Um that mirrors the most recent Illinois Department of Revenue projections. Um you know it wasn't but a couple of years ago that line item was up over a million and a half. So, um, you know, that's a we don't control
024it. What happens in Springfield and what happens with the the economy in the state of Illinois impacts this greatly. Um, so for my, you know, long term, if anything, um, feels like we're at a little bit of a low point um, for this revenue item, maybe there's some opportunity long term for that for that to go up. Um, as we've talked before on the expenditure side, uh, salary and benefits are always going to, um, encompass the largest percentage of our our expenditures. So in the what I've incorporated in these projections in the in years where we know what the the increases are for our WA and SSU members, I've incorporated that in the years where it's subject to future negotiations. We've inserted assumptions that uh you know mirror what we've typically seen. So, you could
025see some fluctuations. As we know, we're we're getting ready to um negotiate um a new contract with with SSU as theirs runs out at the end of this year. Health insurance is another uh big one. We've assumed 5% per year over the assumptions. Um we see that go sometimes a little bit above, sometimes it's come in below, but that's what we've got in there. I am a ref. Uh it's something that applies to our non-certified staff. That's actuarily set. We we don't have any control, but we've tied that to the um to the salaries of those those employees. And then on the non- salary and benefit side the last three items number seven, eight and nine we have um made some assumptions related to what the range of expenses certainly I think of when I
026think of purchase services and capital outlay and uh supplies and materials the insurance expenses that we incur for liability and workers comp those tend to run in the 5 to 8% range. Um I did recently find out that Our liability insurance renewal for which runs calendar year um is at just over 4% for for next calendar year. And then we just have smaller increases related to um supplies and materials, utilities, some of our uh tuition special ed costs. While that one can be a particularly large line item, um the fluctuations there really are dependent upon what the student population is and where those outplacements occur. As we know, not not all outplacements are are equal in terms of what what the costs are. >> All right. So, those are like the like the really big
027assumptions and there's really when I think back to like prior years, there's really nothing that I don't think is um drastically different than than what we've seen in prior years. All right. So that takes us to our operating funds which is our primary focus. Even though we have nine separate funds that were required to keep uh per ESB regulations, six of those comprise the operating funds. Here's what the fund balances look like visually. Um you can see we're above 40% for all years. All right. So if there were one slide that I gravitate or one page that I always gravitate towards, it's this one. Certainly as like, you know, we have the board target of staying above 40%. That's the bottom row. Like that's where I think where most people look to. One of the
028things that I probably maybe even more so look to is in the middle of the page you have the I think it's maybe a light yellow um surplus deficit row. Um to me that's you know an indicator of like what is the health or where where are we heading? Um, and so when I see that we have, you know, healthy positive amounts each year, um, that's where I, you know, I I feel good about where we're at. One thing to keep in mind is typically when you put together these projections, you a more common so like when we see for 2027, the surplus is about 2.7 and then when we get out to 2031, it's it's down to 1.3. um that is fairly common that like the longer you go your assumptions are you know
029fairly conservative in nature. You're making some assumptions applying them to all years and it it it tends to look like that. Um, that said, I I am still happy with what with what I'm seeing um, you know, both in the both in that that surplus deficit line item, but also in the in the fund balances, knowing that there there's a really good chance that when fiscal year 26 ends, um, we'll be at a number higher than 43%. You know, will it be 45 or 48 or or possibly even, you know, approaching 50? Yeah, maybe. But we still have a little over half of this fiscal year to let things play out. That would give us a new starting point for the for the following year. Um on the revenue side, here's the operating funds. Digging
030in a little more with the revenue, it gives you um you know on the local revenue side as I've talked uh you know that puts us up around 90% when we look at uh you know fees and interest revenue um that are collected. You know we're up over 90 90%. So you can kind of see that breakdown heavily locally dependent. Then for the operating funds we have the expenditures u the the categories you see here we refer to those as kind of object category salary benefits um at the top and then all the non all the non-personnel costs below um you know the I think what we see here is pretty typical you know costs are going to grow over time um you know primarily due to inflation and things of that nature, but it
031gives a good breakdown sense along there. One last thing, there's more pages beyond this page, but those um are each of the individual funds not necessarily the focus of our conversation at the board, but they can be useful to look at on an individual level. Um, this last thing that I'm going to hit on is we take a look at what are our projected uh, revenues um, from 26 through 31. It's always really good to see visually that each year your revenues are exceeding your expenditures, but also taking a look back um, the the the top rectangle there uh, fiscal years 21 through 25 are actual amounts. fiscal year 26 is the budget. Um so to be able to look back and see hey we we we were in good position revenues are exceeding expenditures
032but then also looking forward and seeing the same thing like I said all the rest of the um pages after that are the individual funds um which is just you know part of the requirements of of all the different funds that we keep track of. Overall, I'm I'm satisfied where we're at. Um, you know, I think we're we're still in a strong position to do, you know, do the things that we need to do and we want to do. So, with that, I'm happy to answer any questions or anything along those lines related to the projections. Well, I really appreciate this in-depth presentation and we know how much work goes into keeping us as forward thinking are. So, thank you very much. Thank you. I just had um one one question as it relates to
033local revenue. Y >> um I was just looking at the projections in the out years and specifically seeing where it drops in um 2030 fiscal year 2030 it goes you know 29 is 3.4% 4% um and then it drops to the 1.9. And I'm just wondering if there's anything specific there or it's just um again with a conservative assumption going forward, >> which are you on the you on the one that says revenue summary? >> Yes, the top of the slide says projection summary and then I'm looking specifically at the local revenue line item. >> Okay. and just seeing that, you know, it dips a little bit in 2030. Um, and is that just based on seeing some, you know, fluctu historical fluctuations over time? >> The Yeah, like of the lo other local revenue
034um line item, the biggest drop like um if we're looking at the revenue summary for the operating funds is the interest revenue kind of tearing it down. Um, >> okay. >> So, just to give a reference point. So in fiscal year 26, which is our budget, we have in the operating funds about 1.38 million budgeted for interest revenue. Um last year we actually saw 2.28 million. Um so part of nearly a million dollar drop for this current budget year is the decrease in rates. Mhm. >> However, about half of that drop was the fact that we knew the property taxes were going to be late. I mean, there's no way of sugar coating it. It's probably like a $400 or $500,000 hit to our interest revenue just by that process being so far behind. Um
035but then the future years like I each year so like then um in the assumptions I think it's page two into page three you know by fiscal year 2031 I've stepped down interest revenue down to only 586,000. So that is that is probably the biggest driver for like local like dragging down like those percentages for local revenue. Um, but just based upon the information I've I've gotten from some of our our partner groups, uh, that like longterm that is probably the best thing to assume for us. >> Thank you. >> All right. Thank you again. Um, so let me see. No further items for school finance. We will move to strategy. Miss Stone, looks like no items this morning. >> There are no items this morning. Okay. And we will keep moving to public comment.
036This is an opportunity for the public to address the board on any topic. Are there any audience members that like would like to speak at this time? Seeing none, um we will continue with our agenda this morning. Um going on to old business. Is there any old business? New business. Any new business? >> We do have some new business. Um, we have uh the proposed uh review of the updated intergovernmental agreement with the village of Wilmet. So, I'll let Tony speak to this. >> As you recall, about a year ago, uh, we entered into an intergovernmental agreement with the village of Wultt as well as the village of Glen View. And sure enough, uh, there was a change in the law that requires us to now update it. Uh luckily we had the foundation in
037place so it was just a matter of adding some additional language. So that's good. We were a little ahead of the game. Um but as a result of a new public act, uh the Illinois school code now explicitly targets the practice of local law enforcement issuing tickets and fines um for municipal violations for school-based misconduct on school grounds during school days, school hours. So, this is the result as of from a ProPublica investigation in 2022 and then there was a follow-up investigation in 2024. Um, we have not had the ability to find students. Um, nor would we. Uh, but it was found across Illinois that some school districts were by um referring to law enforcement that then would issue a ticket. um that could range anything from small amounts of tobacco to a truency ticket.
038Um so public act went into effect as of August 20th of this year where that practice is no longer in place. In addition, they put some new um language around the use of school resource officers SRO. As you know, uh officer Val Davis uh acts as our SRO really for all the schools in Wilmet. She's not just district 39's but uh we share her with um all the parochials, the independent uh and our other public school district here in town. So as of uh so some of that language we had to include or make sure it was there is uh defining the role duties and responsibilities of an SRO that was um now needed to be defined. And then uh some language about ensuring that the SRO has had uh training in regards to uh
039working with students with disabilities um or a waiver of that case of which our current SRO does. um we have to specify that the SRO is prohibited from issuing tickets and citations as per what I talked about. Um in addition there's some data uh collection practices now that they've put in there. So a process for data collections and reporting in accordance with the the public act. So, um, some of this is begins in a couple of years where, uh, we're going to report to ISBY, uh, any law enforcement referrals, um, aggregated by race, age, gender, disability, e status, those kind of pieces. So, that's beginning in 2027, 2028. And then also uh because some communities were sensitive to having a a school resource officer or officer on campus uh providing for a regular review and
040evaluation of the SRO program. Um including community and stakeholder input. So no longer could it just be a district decision. Um we need to elicit uh community members and parents in determining whether that's something we want to tweak, adjust, continue. So all of these things are effective as of I think July of next year, but we might as well just get it done. We had a great foundation. Let's just update it. It only impacts our uh intergovernmental agreement with the village of WMED because that's who we receive our school resource officer services through. Um village of Glen View has a school resource resource officer, but um that's not who we formally uh elicit services through. So we don't need to touch that. We just need to update this one. So, included in your packet is
041the updated language uh in the agreement uh which was already pretty thorough. Uh so, we worked with uh village council uh Jeff Stein as well as our attorneys to to put that in place. There's really nothing controversial in there. Basically, what I said was just added in there. So, this is your opportunity to ask questions. Otherwise, um we will put it in front of you at the board meeting for approval and then it would go in front of the uh village trustees for approval at their next meeting in December. >> Are there any questions? Any questions? Great. >> Thank you for the update. Sure. >> All right. Any other new business? Okay. Great. And at this time, we will adjourn to executive session to discuss to discuss special education, individual student matters, specific personnel, and
042collective negotiations. May I have a motion to adjourn to executive session? >> I move to adjourn to executive session to discuss collective negotiations, specific personnel, and special education in individual student matters. >> Thank you. May I have a second? >> Second. Motion having been made and seconded, will the clerk please call the role? >> Amy Paling, >> yes. >> Katie Hilton, >> yes. >> Katie Berlin, >> yes. >> And Hurt, yes. >> Kristen Dcastro, Erin Stone, >> yes. >> Motion carried. We are now adjourned to executive session and the time is 8:45