001foreign call to order this special and Committee of the whole meeting for Monday October 17 2022 the time is 801. will the clerk please call the roll Amy paling here chance he's ready here and heart here here Bonnie Kim here Frank panzica here Lisa Schneider fabes here Aaron Stone here I seek a motion to approve the minutes of the September 12 2022 Committee of the whole and executive session meetings I moved to approve the minutes of the September 12 2022 Committee of the whole and executive session meetings may I have a second second motion has been made and seconded board members any comments errors or omissions okay uh will the clerk please call the roll John's he's ready yes and Heart Bonnie Kim yes Frank panzica yes Lisa Schneider faves Aaron Stone yes Amy Palin
002yes motion carries so we will get right started get started right away with facility development committee Mr pantika thank you um there's one item that I wanted to have an update on quickly first was the um construction work at UH McKenzie so I know it's not on the agenda but could we start with that good morning good morning oh we have a revised date again January 20th we received it last week okay so um daikins the manufacturer they're actually one of the manufacturers that quoted the pre-purchase work for 2023 as well I was just talking earlier just goes I mean the manufacturers wraps and I think we touch base on this a little bit last meeting um we have we have projected lead times that we just went through for the 2023 work but as
003we're finding out things change and they change often so um still nice to use what the information that we're Gathering but I think there's some other considerations that should be had when When selecting a manufacturer and the wrap but January 20th is the new date for The Chiller hopefully we won't have too many hot days between now and then hopefully not so other than that it's just um we're in the warranty period and finishing up some punch lists so all in all it's going well now um we'll go back to the uh 2023 summer construction project update of course we want to um Joe can go ahead I each of the board members has a one-page document that I put on the table for them it's just a reference to where we were in the
004spring when we first started considering these projects to where we are at the 60 design there's a couple projects that are pretty noteworthy with the new estimates but I'll let Joe go throw where we're at on a variety of fronts sure we completed the 60 CD assessment end of last month so happy to report we're tracking nicely we've established the uh the most current Baseline was back in May um so that's always sort of what we go back to to see how we're tracking um you know where the check and balances designs progressing we just want to make sure that uh we're staying within that Baseline and if we're not why aren't we and are there adjustments that can be made but um we don't have to go down that road we're in good shape
005again we split it up and we're running budget assessments independently for Central Harper High Crest Ramona um with four ad alternates I think is where we're currently at right Sandra five now okay five seems that yeah as we as we as we progress here if we need to create some additional ad alternates that maybe it's something we just don't want to put up in the base bid that's okay so um we're up to five now and um our 85 CD check um those drawings come out this week uh tomorrow or Wednesday and then we'll turn around that updated budget uh early November so so far so good um questions on overall budget regards to the projects before we touch base on the repurchase component of it are you seeing um prices increasing as go along
006or you know basically it's just snapshot I mean we're still early on in the new bid cycle um we have opened up a couple larger projects they came in where we expected them to I mean our new baselines that we established now you know take that into consideration but since since that change in the way we look at things it seems to be what we expect anybody else have any questions you want to talk about pre-purchase as well yeah okay um so running parallel with this similar like we've done the last couple of years uh we did a pre-purchase just to get the mechanical equipment on order as soon as possible to generate as much lead time capacity [Music] um so right now uh where we're just a quick recap so we have a chiller
007at Harper Chiller at high Crest 32 unit vents at high Crest a chiller at central two chillers at Ramona 21 UVS at Ramona as well that's sort of what makes up the pre-purchase um we reached out to four to five manufacturers in the Reps when we pushed out the design criteria and the information we did get a healthy response um we received anywhere from two to four quotes for every piece of equipment um so just recapping it windy city so they wrap um they wrap obviously chillers and univents uh they're at 821 950 dollars okay that's for all the chillers and all the unit vents and then thermal systems um was second at 968 200. so there's quite a bit of differential there the design team did review all the submittals to make sure that
008they meet the design intent so we're to a point now where we can work with the district and prepare a district letter which will get the order at least in the queue so we will build in the date like we have in previous years so we set up December 13th I believe it is that's the day after the board meeting it'll cancel the order without penalty so that's kind of where we're at any questions thank you lead times if you're if you're wondering I mean yeah um so windy city 39 to 40 weeks is what they're saying right now so that's that's the posted lead time for the chillers that's quantac so if you remember they were they were the manufacturer that we originally uh were planning on using and then when they revise their
009lead time I want to say it was maybe four to six weeks which at the time were like wow that's that's a huge it's a huge difference we need to go to the other Manufacturing look who we're still waiting on so so hopefully that won't happen again but anyways there's 39 to 40 weeks and then un events are nine weeks so so that's all the current information say that again nine nine weeks yeah so we'll take it yeah so the so the chiller if you have it's 40 weeks from what start date it's 40 weeks from the time they release it so um once we turn over the letter they'll uh they'll get it into their system and there's a release that'll take place here within the next couple of weeks and then it's 40
010weeks so right around early August right now 40 weeks should put us it's in the summer I mean that's what they're projecting now right and then we'll just we'll call that Beth's case yes best case so all in all we're we're in a good position here I'm glad we started the process earlier usually we're early the year of when we're getting work and doing all this so I don't think we could have gotten to where we're at much earlier than than now so nice thank you and we have uh yeah so I think I had previously mentioned one of the things that we were going to pursue is a state maintenance Grant application which they allow up to 50 000 per school district and the reason I wanted to mention it today is it's it's
011due early November and before I can submit the board actually has to approve it so next Monday we would be asking the board to approve this application the way the grant works is it's a kind of a matching Grant where the state would contribute 50 000 towards a project the district would then say yes we're going to use 50 000 at least 50 000 of local funds um it'll go in with all the other applications across the state and figures crossed we would get approved for fifty thousand I know the district is done it previously and um so just approval for uh next Monday is just a part of the process um does anybody have any questions about the application like straightforward small projects in what what are the included in it what kind of
012project so the what we're going to do is that the application I'm going to submit really could have picked about any of our projects that we've got going for next summer but we've identified a um Life Safety B item at Central that will be a part of it and then the overall Chiller AC project will be a part of it as well to get us up over that um 100 000 it's easy if you can say yeah we're spending at least a hundred thousand on the project um so Nancy it's for what we're applying for um the application will just be for a building um so that's what we'll be honor we have to identify the building or yeah you have to identify the building the specific work that you're going to do whether it's
013electrical or Renovations or you know some sort of like safety upgrades um yeah you have to be pretty specific and that's when are you turning that paperwork in um we would turn in that application at the beginning early November thank you okay Mr candica are we done yes thank you uh great then we'll turn it to Mr cesaretti for school financing they're failing um and I'm going to turn over to Corey to go over some important things like the tax levy timeline and it looks like there's some progress on understanding when the bills are going to come out thank you for being here to our team yeah thank you thank you bye guys thank you all right so the first item is the kind of the tax levy process for 2022 and the status so
014included is a one-page document for included for the board um I went date kind of by listed out the dates of of key items so as we do our tax Silvy there are a few key things that we've got to do each year we've got to estimate it at a public estimate the the extension at a public board meeting then if we're going to ask for more than five percent we needed to do the truth and Taxation hearing which includes publishing notice in a paper at least seven days and no more than 14 days prior to the hearing the board then needs to hold that hearing and approve it and then the district would need to file that with Cook County by the end of this last Tuesday in December so I put the specific
015dates in here based upon um some meetings that I've joined in late September and then one last week that actually had two employees from the Cook County Clerk's Office and so what I'm and then I also after that meeting um had a conversation with with the district's attorney about you know what would make the most sense based upon what's going on and so what would what we decided was for the November 7th uh finance committee I will you know present all the levy materials ideally we would have at least a draft of the final 2021 tax extension amounts it's possible based upon what the county clerk shared with shared with a group of business officials last week um so at a minimum I will present something even I'll present a draft even if I don't
016have those final amounts but given what they shared I pretty confident that by then the following week on November 14th at our board meeting where where the board would actually hear the estimated Levy and then they would approve the estimated amounts um that we should have at least a draft by that day their their target was to have all the taxing bodies a draft of the tax rate report by the first week of November they thought it might if that doesn't go quite perfectly it may push into around election day on November 8th um and then in talking with our attorney you know we can still even if I didn't have draft or final 2021 amounts for either of those November board meetings I could still estimate the 2022 Levy based upon final 2020 amounts
017now it would make the requests look a lot larger than what is really happening um but that would be a recommendation from our attorney and and talking with him one of the things that he felt like was really important was when we do publish that notice which I've got slated for December 1st was if we have have that final extension amount to have those actual amounts in there in that notice leading into the December 12th Ward meeting and then on December 5th I would firm up and just kind of confirm with the board hey we have received the final tax extension amounts number 12 we would hold that hearing and then ask the board for adoption of the 22 Levy so if you look at the bottom of the handout um things do seem to
018be heading on a good path relatively speaking and also kind of coming into a little bit of a clear Focus so on the weekend of the eighth or 9th Cook County board of review officially closed the 2021 tax year that was kind of the last thing that really needed a few other depart few other agencies for them to be able to start working so from that date I had previously heard and it was kind of shared again last week the only Department of Revenue needs about two weeks to calculate the equalization factor for Cook County um then the county clerk's office um they said they would need roughly two weeks that pushes us to you know roughly November 7th uh the week of that the week of November 7th and then the Cook County Treasurer
019would need another two weeks for them to generate the bills which gets us to the week of Thanksgiving even if some of those uh free agencies needed a few more days um I think they're they're big Push by them is to get the bills out into taxpayers by the end of November so they could have a due date within the calendar year 2022 that seemed to be listening to their presentation that seemed to be a pretty big focus and push um to have a December 30th or earlier due date and so given where we're at now um you know the biggest wild card in the whole equation was the County board of review and when they would close would it be in September would it be in the you know in October sometime I think
020we do have a a good a good path forward like I said relatively speaking um so assuming this holds and and there's no uh you know big hiccups along the way I would expect d39 to start receiving some second installment receipts probably in the last 10 days or so of December um given this timeline so Corey yes I just want to clarify so um this October 8th 9th reference so did that happen the voter review actually closed it out yeah yeah well that's good news yeah yeah when I was on the call last Tuesday um the clerk's office said yes they confirmed that the board of review closed and that's why they were more comfortable I think sharing kind of like what now that was kind of their timeline and it all but at that
021timeline also mirrors what I had heard from some other um people within this industry back in back in September um you know the Cook County Clerk doesn't control how quickly your or lengthy the Department of Revenue might take or the Cook County Treasurer's Office but um I think of the three groups the Cook County clerk's office probably has the biggest amount of work to do and they were the ones that I was listening talking while they didn't say it I had the distinct impression that they would be working very lengthy hours um I think from their own internal perspective there's you know a really big push to make sure that tax bills are due by the end of December so that's really helpful um thank you everybody um on the the tax levy um this
022is like I think this is the first year that the five percent number comes into play um is like new construction on top of the five percent or is five percent the the new constructions outside of that so like we would the district would be allowed to increase the levy by five percent than you would get any new construction on top of that so for us a typical kind of 10-year average of new growth is worth 0.7 to 0.75 percent on top of CPI so if we were to hit kind of our average for the 2022 tax year that would be roughly a like a pipeline 7.75 increase depth with the cap coming into play that that was a question that everything that's important yeah what is the oh I mean I'm trying to scale
023that off the head think what is the um inflation rate then for the prior year of this Gamecast it was the the 2021 calendar year was seven percent so that it's capped at five and then at reference that you made if if the information doesn't come together in time yeah referring to the 2020 yeah so like so if we were to have to estimate because one of the things that our attorney shared with me was you really should be estimating like I shouldn't what he discouraged was taking the 2022 estimate and making that an estimate on the 2021 s like estimate sure because that how do you know you're you're trying to be truthful to your to the to your community and so you take 2020 because it's the last known amounts and so you
024would really be taking what we asked for last fall then adding that on top of an already by the last what 30 years this is the biggest number since the tax caps have come into play and so you would really be inflating and then you know everything gets published in the paper and you're really not asking for that you're doing it because a couple of agencies didn't do their job so if you're not doing that so so I would agree all right thank you yep oh Frank yeah um I guess it's in terms of not for today but for the next meeting um now that we're getting more um detailed estimates on the construction projects and we haven't more a better feel for um where interest rates are going to go um it I think
025next month we need to go through you know what we can't afford you know what's the priority um and let's look at the 2023 construction projects before we lock in you know the the pre-orders foreign so let me ask you okay so here in that question let me ask you this Dr krimaskoli and I were talking last week about so I had been in touch with Liz right like the interest rates every month or every other month they're going up how does that impact um and so she could either come to the finance committee either in November or December or I guess theoretically both um I went back and forth on which would be better I mean if she comes in December we're going to open bids before the December finance committee so we would
026have like known amounts and then it would also you know the expectation is that at the November fed meeting they're going to raise it another probably 0.75 um it would give us another month of information that she could share um what the borrowing might look like or we could have her come next month and kind of update us and say this is where we're at now relative to what some of these projects are um I guess it would import preference we can do either um but I also had planned that like once we get right like in December we do the updated five-year projections we would have known bid amounts and I would have information from from Liz on what borrowing might look like and so it was part of like December finance committee and
027slash facilities like that would all be there for the board to absorb think about and offer some feedback and then you'd like the following Monday on I think it's December 12th is when the board would be asked to vote yes or no on all the individual construction projects so I guess since we're talking about it options yeah what what does the board want to well it sounds to me like the interest rate is probably important issue and more of a wild card so and you get if you're comfortable with Liz's input okay you know early that would be helpful so are you saying have her come in November or December uh I was going to leave it to Corey yeah whatever you think makes sense she thinks she's coming twice that that would work I
028mean if you want I I don't know how much would change a lot in one month I was trying to help to avoid having her come twice but I could talk to her and see if she has an idea or has a feel for which she thinks would be a better presentation for the board so okay yeah the Tony can turn I up with the December is if the numbers right are different than we expect or but discussion goes in a different way that like the next day is when we have to make a decision on the the pre-orders so November gives us two shots at it that if we have a discussion in November we can come back in December and tweak it if we need to yeah that's a good point I can
029certainly I guess what I could do is I I will talk to Liz and see which she thinks is the better meeting to to come present at but I could also have her and her staff run updated numbers that's not that they do that pretty quickly in the past when I've asked for things like that um so I think at a minimum if she were to say you know I think December is a better month for an in-depth discussion I could at least have what the borrowing might look like in a couple of different ways for November at a minimum maybe she will pick November to come but um I think either way we would be covered and then either way even if we had updated like what it would cost to borrow for the
030November uh finance committee and then things change you know in the month you know between November and December we could always have them update them yet again and I know one of the things I every time I either email or talk to her on the phone is okay Liz when do you think in 2023 should we issue this debt right like should I should we try and do it in January February like it's you know like do you think and every time she's like I can't predict the future so um but I do think we're gonna get to the point where we probably need to start thinking about that as well like what time during the year you know it goes I think we've had the conversation in the past where okay if you issue
031it a little bit earlier yeah you're paying a few extra months of Interest costs but what's the expectation over the you know you tried to issue and say January February versus waiting until May June or July you know what what what what's the expectation happen in that window well I'm I'm excited I think that there's only there's a lot of numbers and it'd be nice if we had a discussion in November that would get us a Baseline and then the December we'd have I agree knowledgeable yeah I think that's the plan it sounds like it yeah and I think we're worried about okay you know because we're now competing with everybody for money so so we'd have a internal discussion in November and something yeah we can do that okay and then the the best
032part yeah cash flows yeah all right so the next item that I've included in the for board members we did we did uh Cash Flow by individual fund and then I aggregated it on one page for the board and um so the starting point was where the money that we actually had at the end of September so we're starting with a you know very recent known amount the good news is that given what we've heard from people in the Kirk county clerk's office you know we're I'm projecting that we'll end um the month of December with just over 11 million dollars um so I think where I'm at is given the timelines the expected timelines in what I'm seeing is our cash flow I don't believe we need to pursue short-term borrowing um at this
033point something really extraordinary were to happen in the last few months um in the county and they were to be you know really unexpectedly delayed um you know that may change but from what I'm seeing I don't believe we need to pursue any short-term borrowing we should be we should be good um assuming those collections start to come in late December and then the bulk of it would come in early January right around the new year so um yeah and sorry yeah the only thing I was going to add is going through each individual fund each of the individual funds stayed positive through the end of January I think one fund there's the O M fund would likely go negative the only thing I may do at either the November or December uh board meetings
034is each time you loan money between funds um you need board approval or resolution ahead of time and each year we have historically had the board approved a loan amount from Ed to o m just as our standard operating practice because like o m could be a fund where if we're transferring money to cover construction projects it could go negative um you know temporarily and then at the end of the year it finishes where where we expect it um so the one thing I've been thinking about is if one of these funds were to run negative um talking to our attorney and getting a resolution for working to allow the working cash fund which has I think about a million four in it to loan to temporarily loan money to some of these other funds
035some of the smaller funds on a short-term basis so that might be the only thing but that's purely internal like something that we can control and do entirely on our own um so to me the big takeaway is you know I think we're at a point with our cash flow County's at a point where I I think I think uh short-term borrowing is not in our future this year is there any questions you know I love too good to be true so um I do have a question someone asked me if we have lines of credit that was such a good question and I said yes but I'm pretty sure it was wrong we do not have an official like line of credit um why if we were it would be a similar process to
036issuing like tax anticipation warrants where the board would need to pass a resolution of any kind of debt whether it's short-term or long term would require order involvement would you sleep better if we had one uh I would sleep the same whether we had it or not all right like we're we're in a good spot right now all right well something to think about it yeah um I just wanted to get a few percentages um because I think reserves and percentage more often than I think in terms of dollars the um it looks like from October to January we run through about 23 24 million um September I assume was a little bit higher than that even but so percentage-wise what what is 24 million work is that about just under 40 percent I'm sorry
037yeah my whole partner yeah it's probably 40 or just slightly over so I guess the the point of that is that when we're when I look at reserves and we look at 40 percent this is one case where we used 40 percent so that's part of that is why the 40 number is where it is that was why because dollar numbers and percentages they've they've gained so much you don't get a real feel for that but um so okay thank you Corey yeah thank you are you done thanks important information thank you uh we'll turn to strategy Mrs Schneider Vapes oh we're technical school here we actually have four really exciting presentations that we're eager to share with the board in our community today uh regarding SEL and also fourth to fifth grade transitions the
038board knows that these are important elements of our strategic plan we've been making a focused effort on this and we have Kelly Jackson here with us today to provide the board with a an overview of the work and some of the progress we've made thus far hi everybody I'm going to share my screen here um with you I put together a little presentation just around uh teacher and parent supports and resources our SEL committee has been very busy over the past couple of years and a lot of great work has been implemented this fall and we'll continue to be working throughout the year so um the 2122 action steps so last year's action steps fell in three areas develop and Implement social emotional systems of support using a district-wide framework and an approach plan and
039engage staff and data focused meetings at grade and classroom levels and partner with the CRC to research best practices around communication and a parent partnership in support of SEL programming within our schools and so this will kind of dive into each of those three areas a little bit to show you what we've done um the first action step centered around implementation of the district framework for social emotional competencies at each grade level and supporting our staff and understanding and learning the responsive classroom approach um really is outlined here we adopted the six competencies last year and talked about them a lot with our staff so relationship skills self-management self-awareness social awareness and responsible decision making along with one that was added by the committee around diversity equity and inclusion then over the summer after we
040were confident in the in District 39 staff's understanding of the competency areas the levels of development for students in those areas and their practice using sample lessons to support instruction in those areas the SEL committee undertook two main projects the first one was to develop objectives for each grade level that encompassed the competencies and targeted social emotional skills that were developmentally appropriate for the students and were aligned across the K-8 experience so these were outlined for teachers and also supported a common vocabulary elements were given to teachers that were also aligned across the K-8 experience these objectives and vocabulary were then developed into guidance documents that teachers can use to guide their instruction throughout the year and I'll show you a snippet of those in a minute next we had a team researching the best
041materials for instruction at different levels so last year you might recall that we did an all staff training on responsive classroom um we wanted to build on that and explore additional materials especially at K4 to support the instruction in the classroom so we were looking for flexibility in use alignment with our objectives and competencies and potential resources for tiered instruction that is our project for this year so they looked at a whole bunch of different curriculum we had resources and really fell into the everyday speech SEL curriculum um this was piloted actually at Central last year and so we already had several teachers that were experienced with it um and um really appreciated the the flexibility of use with it to support the different objectives um so that was adopted for our K4 teachers this
042year and based on the resources already in hand and being used at five eight the committee were recommended the continued use of the responsive advisory lesson book that um that has already been in place at five eight as we've entered this school year we've had Institute day trainings in both elements of the responsive classroom approach and everyday speech SEL and we've started a responsive classroom cohort to advise and support greater implementation of responsive classroom practices district-wide foreign so as I mentioned here's a little outline of the guidance for teachers so on the screen you'll see the small pictures but I'm going to go into our website and grab a little bit bigger picture for you um so we have internally uh for our teachers just a whole SEL Resource page but you can see that
043on this page there are just um there's a teacher guidance document for each grade level so if I were to click on one of those it makes it bigger and you can see here with me all teachers have received um links to these they have PDFs of them and what have you but they outline three to five objectives so for this second grade they have five objectives those are listed here and underneath you can see which competencies they address then there's common vocabulary that goes along with those and some look for so second grade students demonstrate these competencies by raising their hand or taking turns the second page for teachers outlines connections to the everyday speech curriculum which lessons they would use to address that objective they may use others or other resources but we
044wanted to Target specific lessons in everyday speech and then below is kind of a Continuum to help them guide how they are what they are seeing in the class and how to plan for that so if they're if all the students are really showing that they're meeting that company potency then they're ready to move on to the next so that's just what the teachers got and those are pretty much the same at every grade level just with different objectives and different lessons tied to them next is the registry a little review of responsive classroom it's an evidence-based approach to teaching and discipline that focuses on engaging academics positive Community effective management and developmental awareness it's not a curriculum per se it's more of an approach to building community in the classroom and then it gives
045teachers the tools with which to support the foundational learnings of social emotional learning so you see the morning meeting book there on the screen morning meeting and responsive advisory are two of the structures that responsive classroom really teaches our staff to put into place there are different elements that they use to really support the social emotional learning objectives the responsive advisory meeting book however has plans outlined for the entire school year so what we've done for fifth through eighth grade is tie those lessons into the objectives at those grade levels and teachers can pull from those and adapt them as needed and we've aligned those so in fifth grade you're not repeating or in sixth grade you're not repeating what you did in fifth grade and so on um you see there refocus and recharge
046and power of our words those are other resources that we have provided for staff Brain Breaks is one approach to getting students moving or getting them to calm down in the middle of instruction and the power of our words talks about proactive teacher language and how we address things that go on in the classroom however we respond to misbehavior and and just again how we can build an active engaged Community that's positive in our classrooms a little bit about everyday speech all of our elementary teachers have access to the everyday speech curriculum SEL curriculum online uh they there are scope and sequences they have access actually to every single grade level so while we've targeted different lessons they can pull from different grade levels as needed to support more um learning in a specific area
047and teachers have been exploring the resources we had a session at our fall Institute day for everyday speech and we have a consultant that is helping us enroll this district-wide um a second Focus area from last year's action steps was on assessment practices so last year we had a subcommittee review our SEL assessment practices recommend and recommend some changes they dug into Dessa from aperture and mesh from Panorama which you guys will recall is what we've used over the past few years we also explored other assessment tools to see about their effectiveness versus the things that we already had in place after examining those tools as well as our current tools recommendation was made that we continue with Dasa but adjust our use it was previously at K2 or K3 no K2 excuse me and
048um we recommended that we go back to using it K4 so for all of our elementary students the Dasa is a teacher administered quick survey just a screener for SEL skills and then um the committee recommended we continue with mesh but take that out of the third and fourth grade and move it just to fifth through eighth grade so um that is where we are at now we realize that also for K4 students we were missing the student perspective so the Dasa is only the teachers filling out a survey we weren't gaining insight into really what the students were feeling so it's just from the adult perspective so we explored a tool called selweb or cell web they have an early Elementary and a late Elementary version they also have a middle school version um
049that we may explore in the future but at the um at the elementary level we decided to adopt selweb it's a student taken assessment and it's all on the computer the students do it with headphones it's narrated so students don't need to read and so some of the elements of cell web are they show a picture of a face and the student says that person's happy or sad or angry um and then they give them some different scenarios we have linked and we sent out to parents just an overview of the different areas so emotion recognition social perspective taking social problem solving those are kind of scenario based and then they pick how did the student feel in this scenario or how did Bobby feel in this scenario and then self-control and those are kind
050of gamified so it's it's getting the rocket to a certain spot and it's picking um uh some of the shapes that are the same or different and then they it may not work exactly the first time so there's a level of frustration that then they tolerate um and so um I'm just going to go back to my presentation so with that we've really found some success the initial feedback has been very positive from teachers at the elementary level they're very excited to see how their students input lines up with how what the teacher input is and to do some more in-depth conversations around the data that we're receiving from that and how we can intervene better at the 5 8 level we only have had the student perspective with mesh for the past couple of
051years and so we've adjusted some of the questions on there to really Target some areas you'll recall a sense of belonging is one that we've been looking at and then we're going to revisit relationship mapping which has is a tool out of the Harvard making care in common project and what it does is we go through every student in the school and talk about Connections to those students adult connections to those students and where we see holes with the kids then we make a plan to help to connect them even and further within the school environment and we are also looking forward to looking at our mesh data so the kid perspective and overlaying that with our relationship mapping work and seeing it making sure that we're kind of catching everybody in the process um
052parent communication was our third area we teamed with a CRC last year and looked at how we could do better at informing parents and also creating that parent partnership with social emotional learning we created a a web page last year just an initial web page it's currently under reconstruction I'm working with Leo on creating a better more user-friendly web page but you can access some of these items there currently um we also um created parent documents that are similar to our teacher documents and included some resources for families part of our web page will also include our family engagement sessions that we've been having um over the years so parents can access those videos really quickly and through multiple venues um and so we're we're continuing that work but I just wanted to show you
053a little bit you can see the parent guidance docs um they're right there they look the same on the front and then on the back there's two different boxes the first one is try this at home so practice using I statements with your child or practice identifying a problem when it occurs and talk to your child about how they might solve a problem so um just giving parents some guidance as to um to how to kind of manage some of those uh social emotional learning items at at home and then also some resources to use some of them are just general and then some of them you can see I pulled this off of first grade so first grade self-management tips first grade relationship skills what you need to know and then some video resources
054also through castle and other resources that we have used regularly um we had we gave every teacher um curriculum night slides so they could introduce the objectives at their grade level and also share with parents how to access these resources some parents printed out PDFs and gave them to their parents or some teachers printed out PDFs I gave them to their parents and then this is just the the website that's currently under the academic section I believe of our district website but you can see there's a brief description of some of our SEL resources and then parent resources all of these docs are listed on that page I'm not gonna wait for it to load it because you've already seen it so um I want to break here before I go into the fourth to
055fifth grade transition to see if you guys have any questions or any thoughts about any of this I was just looking for Clarity on the relationship mapping and flip through eight is that something the teachers provide that information or the teachers complete yes it's a it's through um yeah it's all of the teachers in the school and they go down the whole list of students and and there's kind of a process that they go to to Mark ones that they students that they feel they connect with or don't connect with or that they see on a regular basis that really maybe they're withdrawn or maybe they just um are having some difficulty in the classrooms and there's not that connection there so making more of a pointed effort thanks we did it a few years
056ago and it was really well received by our our teachers especially and it caused some really great conversations on how we can be more effective at um building those connections in our our classroom community so it was it was fantastic it's perfect for me I understood it [Laughter] and um more to say so also it's it's so Brown it's really nice to see you guys revisit fire practices plant new ones adapt it was great thank you William all right I'll move on to my next one um and this one's a lot shorter so no worries um so as you know fourth to fifth grade transition uh happened over the summer and last year one of the goals in our strategic plan under goal four is to strengthen Partnerships by connecting collaborating Community communicating with families
057and one of the strategies under there was to implement strategies to better support successful transitions from fourth to fifth and sixth to seventh grade so last fall we gave a survey to parents and had them into and to students and we had everybody rate their overall transition experience last year and you can see we had a lot in the four column and some in the three and some in the five um and a lot of the feedback that we had in there was too much information in the one webinar we did curriculum night on Zoom was rushed uh there were a lot of lingering questions about the structure and the schedule and students with IEPs and people wanted more information on extracurricular and extracurriculars and then two really resounding pieces of feedback were we want
058to meet our teachers at orientation and we want to have an opportunity to meet kids from other schools so we took all of this information and I worked really closely with Linda and with Tony Linda morich our fifth grade level administrator and came up with some different structures to implement for this year and so what you'll see on the right there is the countdown to HMS and what we did was we had three topic specific webinars we started in February with a transition kickoff kind of went through what the world language selection process was but also gave just a general overview of some of our Hot Topic questions like what are the hours of the school day or how many classes do you have that sort of thing um and then we had one that
059was the overview of just the team in-house structure and these were really like 10 15-minute webinars they were not long but they really were focused on just specifics having to do with these items and then the third one was just the HMS schedule if you have had a child at high Crest you know teams and houses and scheduling can be very confusing especially for a student that's transitioning in from fourth grade and so we wanted to really address those questions head on um we also heard um from families of students with IEPs that it was really difficult to get some of their specific questions answered in just a one meeting kind of um one hit wonder if you will um so offered we offered three different drop-in meeting opportunities for families after they had had
060their Elementary meeting transition meetings so that then they could meet with Linda morich and then uh represented from highcrest special ed Department to really answer and Target some of their concerns and um in a more personal way it was a small group kind of setting um and then we we included um several videos you can see down here at the bottom one two three four those linked to videos one on Creative Arts one on Hawks honest accountable welcoming kind and safe and our SEL at highcrest one about lunch which is a Hot Topic and one about technology so our Tech teachers put together a great kind of overview about the iPad and then over the summer we offered three High Crest Hangouts in high Crest Hangouts we're basically come to the playground hang out with
061a whole bunch of kids that are going from fourth grade to fifth grade and your families we had the PTO there selling spirit wear and then we took uh people on tours of the building so um we'd just call people over they could go through once they could go through twice they could come to all three Hangouts if they wanted to and I would say probably at each one we had about 150 people so they were really well attended we tried to do some at the beginning of the summer on some at the end of the summer um and then we did uh we adjusted our orientation structure so instead of doing having each house come in separately and kind of having the kids run around the school and find spots and not having teachers
062there we decided to do it on one of our opening days and so we scheduled it the morning of the Friday Institute day for just a half hour and the kids came they met their teachers they got their locks so they practiced locks they got to know some of the people in their homeroom and then they went out and they knew where they were going on the first day of school they knew what their teacher looked like and they knew kind of what to expect on that first day our first week really in fifth grade is spent in homerooms they don't change classes for that first week so this was just kind of a precursor to that full week of um transition so we've given another survey right now our parent survey we only have
063about 60 responses so we're hoping to get some more on that and we're going to send a reminder out to our family um but um you'll see I listed our kpi here was to increase the rates of participation and satisfaction with the fourth grade to fifth grade transition um and we have some lofty goals 90 percent will support report they had a highly successful transition so 90 in that five category is pretty high currently we're at about 45 percent parents and 79 students but again with 60 responses that's not even half of our parents um ninety percent of students will participate in at least one new uh one of the new transition experiences we had about 85 percent of students so that's pretty close that's that's positive ninety percent of parents and families will view
064the videos we had about 50 55 percent of parents so far and sixty percent of students say they've viewed the videos so we um that says maybe we'll do a different kind of push with those videos and viewing them together was a big key thing and then staff will report measurable improvements in practices um based on uh their the the Improvement there and uh we we took some feedback at one of our initial grade level meetings and it was overwhelmingly positive just with some logistical considerations but the teachers really liked having that orientation structure adjusted they felt like it kind of gave them a chance to breathe um on that first day of school and gave the kids a chance to really come in and know what they were to expect so um we'll be
065looking at how do we improve that along the way but it was really positive so that's all I've got for that if there's any questions or thoughts I just want to build off of what John said earlier which is just who could ask for a more open and responsive approach I mean you're looking for what people are asking for and putting in different options I just think it's phenomenal um and I can see that this all would be so helpful to people making the transition when I look at this kpi for your lofty goals I wonder if like the people that have already been through high Crest the families they may not be as likely to watch the videos or you know I just if they're already familiar you might not hit that number and
066I did see that in some of the comments oh his brother went so he already shared that there were several of those so it's gonna make a big difference for maybe that's another element we could add if we're surveying parents if they could indicate that great attendance on those orientations just think about anxiety reducing subscribe thank you great thank you okay great well I'm really excited to introduce this action item uh so we are thrilled to seek a motion to approve the ratified SSU contract and the otpt addendum I moved to approve the 2022-2023 contractual agreement between the District 39 Board of Education and support staff Union SSU including the otpt addendum may I have a second second the motion has been moved and seconded would the clerk please call the roll John C's ready
067I board members is there any discussion or comments questions uh briefly um I had the um the honor of being part of the the team and the negotiations and um I think it was a good process a lot of feedback and and bouncing back and forth as you'd expect in a negotiation and I'm glad we were able to reach a an agreement that that everybody is satisfied with thank you on behalf of half of to you and this is Harper representing us I'll add a comment or a couple of comments I think that um overall there were many language updates to the contract as well as some significant um wage increases for our employees in the bargaining unit and I'm really appreciative for everyone's efforts too oh there's my voice everyone's efforts to really come
068together and hear each other's needs and really stay true to the the board's goals as well as our overall mission as a district so we're really proud of the elements provided within this contract as I mentioned we met the goals of the board with regard to providing significant Market adjustments for those in need while also collaboratively discussing and addressing the other elements of language within the contract to ensure that both the board and and our unions priorities were considered and addressed I think this multi-year agreement ensures competitive compensation for our support staff members whose contribute Solutions are essential to delivering an exceptional education to the students of District 39. the final contract represents a fair and Equitable agreement for both the board and SSU and it recognizes the hard work and contributions of our dedicated
069support staff team members while also aligning with the board of education's long-standing commitment to fiscal responsibility so you all should be very proud we certainly are as a district I would like to share my appreciation for both negotiating teams for demonstrating a willingness to truly listen and collaborate as Frank shared around important issues in support of our SSU team and for keeping the shared vision of District 39 Community Learning Community at the Forefront of the work that we do so thank you to everyone involved in this process truly appreciated foreign [Applause] okay will the clerk please call the roll Chauncey's ready yes and heart yes bunny Kim yes Frank van zico yes Lisa Schneider babes yes Aaron Stone yes Amy Paley yes terrific motion carries this is an opportunity for the public to address the
070board are there any community members present we wish to speak you don't see any uh so I will turn to Old business we're gonna I'll turn it to Dr Craig mascoli for a policy discussion yes we have a policy that was pulled by the board from the consent agenda at the September board meeting so this is the board's opportunity to further discuss proposed changes to this policy um Dr gawacki is there additional comments you'd like to add or we open it up to the board does everybody have that operational services board members discussion I think the philosophical question of whether or not we Veer from press's recommendation or you know clearly we had a much more detailed previously I've been thinking about this review you know and what it means and and why we're doing
071it and I and I think we were more or less on the same page about it makes sense to streamline our you know our practices right our policies and base them on the law and press and for this one I I'm I'm good with this one you know fund balances I think we are we follow it closely clarify what you mean you're good with these changes you know shortening it getting rid of a lot of this specificity around funds and how they should be set up and you name it uh and leaving more discretion to the District administrators which I think is what's Happening Here so the the issues that I have the thing that I have issues with are kind of political decisions and I I don't really see that here I think I
072think there's enough oversight thanks can you just uh refresh everybody tell me why this is cool I think there was just a question of whether more should be delineated as had been the case uh and then others who felt like what was recommended makes sense it's a big change you know certainly that this is one that is a bigger shift personally I agree with Mr sus already Yes um thanks I generally speaking I think that I'm comfortable with um pulling the majority of it a lot of it is just definition and if you feel I'm absolutely comfortable pulling it um I guess you know what from what we've seen today with our financials we're in excellent place and it's been incredibly well managed um I do Wonder with the day's cash on hand if that's
073something worth keeping um again I'm not at all uncomfortable with where we are right now I think it's it's excellent but you know who knows what the future will hold and from a guidance standpoint is there any value in keeping that one's lost I think that's an important note to make and and certainly important for the board to discuss it is noteworthy that the rest of the much of the rest of the policy is definitions and so while it looks like there's a significant change um there's so much background to it that I think you've noted one of the the key parts that the board may wish to discuss and provide Direction on Corey may have an opinion about that but it looked like Frank had something to say first so well well that Frank
074the board continues um that was exactly the one that I was going to bring up I mean the board has a responsibility for setting guidelines and the lack of specificity is useful in some cases but in the case of cash on hand I think that's something that the board should be actively involved with and if we can you know identify a number that we're comfortable with that's good if we just leave it totally open it it can change by Boards and by administrations and and you never really know where you hit that guideline I think it's part of what the board's responsibility is to have some some guidelines not opposed to that thoughts Corey in practice how does that work to guide how does that serve to guide the work of our business office whether
075the existing sentence or paragraph related to the 180 days is in there or not nothing I'm going to manage things the same like it's not um where we're at now we're we're above that and there's not really any plans to go below so um whether it's in there or not it's not really going to impact kind of the decision making the you know we have already have more direction to stay at 40 or above in the operating funds and one of the components in our you know financial report that we get to the state there's a there's a page on there that gives our financial profile summary one of the five um items that are scored is days cash on hand so like if we were to in the kind of fund balance stays cashed
076on hand they are not um always the same but they're very closely correlated um so as long as we have all of these other things in there if the board said hey let's pull it out or if they want to keep it um we're going to approach things the same way so you're saying it's sort of redundant yeah yeah yeah I mean um I from my perspective um it is certainly redundant if the board had not had the direction to me to keep the fund balance of 40 or higher than you know it would be I think more important than it is now but yeah they are fairly redone they are different distinctions but um I mean do you see a value um in having this um clause in for future uh Wars or future
077business administrators um yeah there could be some value I mean I think I don't know that our 40 fund balance is in our policy it's more of I think than order directive this is actually in the policy so if something were to happen in the future where the board was presented with a situation where they let's have a change in Direction then it would just take the extra step probably of modifying policy as well but um yeah from my perspective whatever the board wants to do is fine by me foreign strive so and also realistic right yeah yeah it's something we want to do anyway is everybody comfortable with that approach this is not a final reading but it provides this direction for how to draft the next reading yes yes that addresses the main
078issue that I'm bringing up okay do you have the direction that you need yes yes terrific thank you everyone is there any other old business as long as we were talking about policy I think there's another policy that we had sent back um if you give me a minute I would but it was another one the board and employment of family members it's coming back for first reading the first reading okay that's fine just as long as we're talking old business yeah thank you for bringing that out great any other old business any new business hey um then at this point I seek a motion to adjourn this special and Committee of the whole meeting I move to adjourn the special and Committee of the whole meeting May I have a second second uh okay
079uh motion having been made and seconded all those in favor of a German please indicate by saying yay okay if motion carries by General consent and the time is 9 13 A.M thank you everyone