001for the meeting roll call please Mike Davenport here Mr Espinoza here that's it we have a quorum so let's all stand for the Pledge of Allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands one nation under God indivisible with liberty and justice for all all right and I think the first item on our agenda tonight is the best item on our address student perspectives so invite our one up foreign [Music] good evening um thank you for letting me celebrate South High students tonight so we have chosen our royalty step team to speak tonight um couple things I'm really proud of about the step team but I'm just going to speak briefly so not to steal their Thunder um but they are the number one crowd favorite
002at every assembly we have and you know we have a phenomenal dance team a phenomenal cheers team and all of those get amazing responses too but our step team is is really our fan favorite from every single one of our students and our group of students representing the team tonight have been competing all over the area they've been doing really well at competitions just show it up for second place um in the last one um and they do fall under the realm of Student Activities um versus Athletics and the neat thing about that is they have the opportunity to kind of decide how much they want to compete and what they want to do and they just say yes to every competition that comes their way they are continuing to gain a really strong reputation
003in our community so we have many of our feeder schools reach out and they say please can a step team come perform for our school and they always say yes we always say yes so you're just recently at Lakeview and we're just so proud so I'm excited to turn it over to them and let their share um their strengths of South High and you are a really nice model for our message of you belong here in helping everyone shine is who they are in our school so I'm going to start by introducing coach Alice freelon good evening everyone my name is Alice Freeland and she said I'm coach of the royalty steppers I have been coaching the team for the last five years I think what makes our team so amazing is students come looking
004for a community and although we are inclusive to all our team usually is my door um majority African-American so step goes back all the way back to the 1500s and it was used for coding in languages and it was also used for entertainment as well nowadays you'll see it more so with African-American sororities and fraternities and our girls use it as well just for entertainment um I will bring up my step cabinet and they will explain more [Applause] hello I'm Johnny Solis chalivo I'm a 10th grader here at Downers Grove South I'm a step Master on the royalty step team cabinet and this is my second year on the team royalty step is a very competitive sport we um we go we go all over to perform we take a lot of time and dedication
005when it comes to um stepping um like my coach said step was used for entertainment but there's more two-step we use it as like we use our body as an instrument to produce like different rhythms through hand claps spoken word and footsteps but we as a team we see some misconceptions when we're here as a team um oh we feel as though people like here don't like realize like the work that we put in like even though we do get all these opportunities uh when we do perform they say oh the steppers They Don't Really call us the royalty steppers but we still um enjoy performing for everybody and I'm gonna pass it on to my manager [Applause] hi my name is Moya sorry ashalu I'm a 12th grader at Downers Grove South I'm the
006manager of the step team and although we do have a coach our team is mostly student-led we have the uh the managers I'm one of them and Naya right here she's also a manager and is the captain of the team Bree and then we have step Masters which is Jade and also KP was not here today and the role of the stepmasters is to like make the steps they major they make the steps and like they're responsible for like teaching it to the other teammates and they're like they really keep our routine together and everything and the captain she's the team like she's a team leader obviously like she's on inspiration to all the other um team members she is in charge of like keeping everybody going and like keeping the team together and everything
007and they're she's really age inspiration to all the team members on and off the floor and then the manager our role is to like keep the routines together put the music together making sure we're on top of everything and we you practice all year round we practice on Tuesdays and Wednesdays like on the regular days from 3 30 to 6 p.m but like on the weeks where we have competitions we practice every day of the week Monday through Friday because most competitions are on Saturdays and yeah we just keep going every year every year we practice um starting from August and the first competition starts in November and we just keep going till May now I'll pass it on to a capture hi hi I'm Brianna Brown I'm a 10th grader at our school and
008I'm the captain on our step team um I'm going to talk to you all about competitions so our competitions is not like a regular school performance like we put in like harder work because we like get judged more and then like at school performances we use more music and dance but like at step performances we try to step more then more so like dance and then at our first competition at home with Flossmoor we won for fourth place and at Yorkville we won fourth place and at the Kappa League one we won fourth place but at our most recent competition last weekend the um Zeta one we won second place and not only do we have to like step we have to act out our themes because each team has a theme for like our
009eight to ten minute performances and so our theme this year is the Pirates and we just been really like working really hard on like getting our storyline out there so it makes sense to everyone and now pass it down to our other manager Lanaya [Applause] hi I'm Lanaya Huddleston I am a 11th grader at Downers Grove South I'm also a manager of the royalty step team uh I will be talking about school performances okay we as a team have contributed towards the school uh the performances that we do are not like Woodbury said our step competitions they're shortened and there's no there's not a theme that we have like unlike competition We performed at the Girls JV basketball game the pep rally and we are performing at the upcoming orcasus show on March 17th and
01018th uh to give you a little taste of what step looks like us as cabinet members will be showing you a step that's part of our routine yes all right [Applause] oh boy [Laughter] half and half there you go so you want a sister like this yeah vicious business whatever works for you [Applause] all right excellent hey we have any questions questions how many are on the team yeah besides just [Music] um okay oh okay all right cool [Music] Saturday 12 hours a week and then for competitions yeah yes yeah how did you get interested in being involved in Step um my mom actually wanted me to do it because she wanted to be at AKA but she did and so she was like oh my gosh okay you're glad you took your mom's advice
011for me first up um I did try out for the dance team I didn't I decided I was kind of like I tried up in dance even make it and then I saw an old friend at like the professional like orientation and she actually said I want you to do steps so that's how I got into stuff Syria last year because I was an exchange student a transfer student from VHS so the old Captain she actually came up to me with like a little sleep because they were telling everybody about the set team and she gave me so for me I was the last one to joined on my phone I learned well I already knew what the step was you know I watched videos about things online shoes about Alphas like AKs what Bree
012said like about the Divine mind so I didn't know what step was and uh then I saw their amazing performance for homecoming last year and I was like wow like I headed to there I emailed actually coach and I was like um is it too late for me to join she's like no you got ta go and I went to the practice and no just have you ever thought about doing something with younger students to get them interested in it before they come to high school okay okay I had no idea that this went back to the 1500s yeah that's interesting that's so thanks for sharing that yeah yeah so we're learning something every day this was really great any other questions thank you all for coming thank you thank you [Applause] no now we
013gotta and we got to move on to actual business I don't know there's a part where the board works oh we'll get right on that all right so uh minutes January 23rd 2023 business meeting and the February 6 2023 special Workshop meeting with action item at board Workshop second yeah thank you in front of us because aye Victoria hagstrom aye and Mike Davenport aye promotion passes all right next we move on to uh reception of visitors I don't have anything for the first reception I think this second okay so we will move along then yep recommendations and reports of superintendent all right your time here well we'll start out with Jim's time uh we're gonna have facilities and finance tonight mostly so uh we'll turn it over to Jim to talk about uh first our
014Capital Improvement bids and then after that life safety work thanks Hank Mark and I were thinking of line dancing for our two presentations [Music] [Laughter] I should talk to HR about just the liability first yeah 23-24 summer projects this is capital work um we have three projects all at north um and I'll explain the ones for South and what I'm doing with those but these were bid out uh publicly uh two rooftops at North and then the girls softball field upgrades so I explained those back in November and what they were so three of them uh we had 14 bids that came in so fairly decent competition um good pricing uh bitters that we're familiar with those are familiar names for you for you to see as well uh and we're within our budget so
015uh tonight uh we'll ask you to approve these but I just wanted to touch base on the projects at South that I'm gonna uh spec out and publicly bid myself uh and that's the uh the parking lot for staff Up For Students and the music Wing flooring so instead of doing architect and engineering and construction management I'm just going to go ahead and do that myself so those will go out in the next month or so and they'll be bringing those back for approval to you folks so tonight for these three at North uh we'll keep for you to approve an accurate amount of 307 414 dollars just a quick question on the concrete um it's a very round number so is that was that an actual it was an actual bid it was the
016lowest um that is work that's going to be with the landscaping and the Ada getting to the um bleachers over at North so very good it was substantially lower in the eye I trust linblad so that was sure yeah the concrete and excavation costs have been just skyrocketing so all right any other questions on this one all right we'll move over to the pipe project Okay so as I explained in November as well uh this is the galvanized pipe at North that we've seen some issues and we know we wanted to get this done before our next 10-year life safeties up so this is kind of two-fold we're going to do one part this year and then we're going to do two parts next year the one part this year is really the exposed that
017we can see and the two parts next year will be behind walls and you know it could be much more difficult um although uh this year I thought this number would be dramatically higher uh hold that thought because even though it's roughly four hundred thousand dollars lower than what I thought it would come in I truly believe that the second round next year that when we start pulling these walls apart and looking in places that we haven't really looked into and removing those that we might see some unforeseen so it's nice to have that cushion for the second round but I'm very happy on where we thought it was going to be yeah did we have nine uh nine nine people bid on it so uh seven of them were plumbers and a couple General
018trades so happy with the results uh this will be work that's done this summer again and because we'll be shutting off areas of the building as we put in Copper and then we'll be back again next year to complete the project so tonight uh we're looking to approve these contracts an accurate amount of 215 900. I know we've talked about this project many times but any questions from board members on the actual bids surprisingly how yeah good pricing yeah yeah great that we had several people interested too well especially nine nine bidders I mean that's a big deal I was surprised I thought you get three or four but yeah good mine showed up great all right both of those are up for Action later on this evening next item Transportation transportation we have two
019Transportation contracts one that's our general busing and then the other one is in partnership with sassid which is our special ed cooperative for special education boxing so I'll turn it over to mark for you have a memo with the all the details but I'll let Mark talk about the highlights yeah they're very similar in that um we do coordinate our services with other schools with our our daily buses for for student we coordinated with 58 District 58 and and that got off to a rough start a little bit because we had to change some of the routes so that we could work with the with them the times were Clash a little bit um and I guess eventually we got it resolved but we started a little rough and we always start out a little
020rough at at uh for the first student not because of them but just because we never really know the number of kids who are going to come to a spot to a particular place they would sometimes we have 40 kids eligible to come to one location and two show up you know so that it's it's a fluid type of thing and we have to then redo routes and um it's it's always very busy and and um hectic for the start of the school year Sunrise is involves a lot more districts that we're involved with um and uh but it it's again it's inefficiency aspect that they typically have many routes that they run that we would be running alone as well so it's coordinating and working with those schools so they'll have kids from different
021schools on the same route being picked up and the amount of increases is actually better than we had anticipated um for Sunrise they're looking for a six percent increase um it's it's for both of them it's very difficult to get drivers and even throughout the year to get subs or to get you know the depth of divers that they need to really get you know fantastic service and um but there's it's really would be ridiculous to try and go out to a loan and try and get get it on our um without paying a lot more um and and then not having some of the flexibility that this firm gives us like if we need somebody we call them they get it if we turn it off they turn off and we don't have to
022pay anything after that if we were to start our own system we would have to take care of those costs on ourselves and it would be pretty expensive um the first student it was much better by the end of the year and throughout the year they were they they corrected I don't think they had the depth for um Subs that they're supposed to have but I don't think anybody did it was it was hard enough just to get busy drivers and and a six and a half percent increase for first student is is exactly what we had projected in our five year forecast we didn't think it was going to be as high as 10 we've gone through that one before already and but we we knew it wouldn't be three percent or two percent
023so we're recommending the approval of both of these tonight yeah six it's hard to believe I'm sorry this is the approval is at the March meeting is it the March meeting I'm sorry right this is the first view I've ever heard tonight I apologize we're you know we're actually pleased with a six and a half percent increase you know I mean I can't you know it's hard to believe we're saying that but but uh it it well inflation yeah true inflation was somewhere in the six to seven percent range which makes it fit you know so sure it's it's well you made the point too that um other districts are experiencing higher increases than that are small districts that are our partner districts also feel this is reasonable uh the the financial officers yeah um
024and uh yeah well you drive by those that that that's fine uh yeah along 63 I mean you've got I mean there's always advertising for for drivers and we've all read about it in the news this is a great example though where you know six and a half percent but our taxes are capped at the five percent and these are these are we're going to have some challenges going forward you know um but fortunate we're in good shape and we can absorb some of this but uh I mean quite honestly it'd be very difficult to change our first thing we would need yeah and and it isn't available out here and then we'd be competing for those bus drivers so you know I mean it's not impossible but it's probably we have a lot of
025examples where like we are a high school only District but this is where we act in efficiency of scale as like a unit district right so uh this is one of the areas assassin it's many it's 18 school districts Scott I think something like that 18 that are collaborating on bus services there with uh our general busing that's three school districts collaborating so it you know you have to work together for it to work but there's an economy of scale there you might Sunrise contract if you were to compare the contracts side by side there's more penalty for them not being able to secure a rider or a driver okay so um that we didn't have much trouble with that really actually but some of the other districts had had problems so we were getting
026full full service where some of this fence incentives were not got it but that's in there really for those districts that they didn't provide about the transportation so we'll see this again in a few weeks yeah next month for approval but that gives you a month to take it take a look at it and forward me any questions you have and we'll bring back answer very good any other questions what's next all right uh the next one is uh I'm assuming Nancy will send out a request for this but I'll have Scott talk about and I think several board members have sat on this committee over the years but just a refresher of what this is Scott and what you're looking for yeah so our parent-teacher advisory committee meets every year the last few years
027obviously we've been going um online but we'd like to we'd like to bring it back in person this year um I mean the the parents feedback has been amazing usually we talk about providing discipline data Special Education data parents have recommended and the board is supported through a lot of different means but you know increase in Social Work support our you know support of our half program and things like that so we we really do get some excellent feedback from parents in this meeting so we're looking to have it in person on I think it's a Wednesday April 19th we haven't picked the school yet so but we're looking I think we usually have two volunteers from the board to be in person with us so like Hank said Nancy Wilson still send out the
028all call for it but if you're into you could also reach out to Nancy directly and then she'll select two board members that are willing to serve on that committee have you done this before Jen yeah you're great you're a great fit for this that you're since you have a student you're you know you're you have a student in school right now and and so you can see it from the parent perspective parent advisory report itself many years and when is when is that meeting it's April 19th April 19th oh April we'll send a reminder out coordinate with Nancy very good for volunteers all right Freedom of Information employer requests we've had them we continue to fill them uh and they're all public information as well and available if you search our website for foia
029you see a little blue box you can click on and that will show you all of the requests that we have out there in Hatfield all right moving on to our consent agenda and action items to read through this fun stuff that Nancy always takes care of for us so uh we need a motion for the Board of Education to approve the consent agenda as presented which includes Personnel report appointment Administration appointment certified appointment classified leave of absence certified personal report retirement certified resignation certified retirements classified resignations classified Financial Pages student trips and acceptance of donation District 99 Education Foundation which I saw was two thousand two thousand dollars so um so can we have a motion um for this second yeah so we got Terry and Chris thank you aye motion passes and so
030uh once again just thanks to the Education Foundation for all the hard work they do so um action items right so we need a motion for the Board of Education to approve contracts for the summer capital projects to the vendors noted for the aggregate amount of 307 414 dollars Joanna and Chris thank you thank you Joanna Vasquez Drexler aye Mr Espinosa aye Jenny hagstrom aye peppersidge aye passes and finally a motion for the Board of Education to approve contracts for the summer Life Safety work to the vendors noted for the aggregate amount of 215 900 dollars so moved Terry and Joanna thank you thank you aye join uspinosa aye Jenny hagster hi I'm Mike Davenport aye motion passes all right so next we have first first three first version yeah first reading from the policy
031committee and I meant to bring my stack with me because I thought I was going back home after the board q a perspective board here so it will we'll see if if anyone has any questions about um about the uh report could you summarize for me sure um so this is the normal uh couple time of year press update issue in regards to mostly changes in state law some changes in federal law as well as just clean up and policies that are Revisited on a regular basis the majority of these are cleanup uh in the policy or directly direct responses and changes in law there's really nothing that stood out is really groundbreaking in the group that we're looking at this time so nothing to really pull out and focus on as always the board
032has a month to review these policies before we come back uh all of the the revisions are in there for you um and Julius provided you a summary of what the key changes are in each policy as always if board members have questions over the next month please reach out to me or to shirelle or Mike and we're happy to answer your questions or consider revisions before the next board meeting I this was this this batch I had fewer comments about than I do most so it wasn't just because I'm leaving the board there was a lot of there was a lot of cleanup there's some word smithing things yeah coordination things most of it's and in yeah it's so much of it is just so much of it is is you know a new
033law gets passed I mean we we have to uh we don't have a choice you know we have to reflect on our problems yeah so and so anyhow if there are any uh questions comments about that we'll see that again at the next next month yep and so next we move on to the reception of visitors this is the second reception of visitors which is intended for the audience members to address the board on any topic pertaining to Community High School District 99 comments will be limited to three minutes to provide all visitors an equal opportunity to address the board individuals needing more time should submit their thoughts on writing to the board's secretary visitors addressing the board need to submit a comment slip to the board secretary and will be invited to the microphone
034prior to addressing the board audience members should State their full name the proceedings may be recorded for the purpose of producing accurate meeting minutes the board's presiding officer he reserves the right to modify these protocols if circumstances warrant audience observation of these protocols is appreciated we have one slip Miss cheray and I believe she stepped out and I've worked really hard to get her name correct this time and she must have had to leave so hopefully she'll just follow up with me via email okay all right next communication and announcements then um we report on legislative education network of DuPage known as lend that's me so um Hank sent out the PowerPoint from the meeting which was Friday um there's a lot kind of just kind of a lot um to parse through right now
035the governor's budget was presented this week they're you know there's some initial Cuts they looked at two special education and regular Transportation budgets and they saw they noticed a bump in the early childhood education budget again they're really monitoring like literally hundreds almost literally thousands of bills of bills yeah um so we're just in the last uh or the first review of it um we will have a new State School Board in place soon led by Dr Tony Sanders who I think is coming from Elgin yeah and then yeah they there were several bills presented this past week which addressed teacher tenure the in the teacher review process that lend is keeping an eye on um there are additional bills being submitted relating to retirement plan offerings um and they did also note that retired
036teachers can continue to work as substitutes for 120 days through 2026 now to help with kind of the shortage so do you think that they'll expand that past 26. because I don't think the teacher shortage is going to go anywhere well we'll find out when we get there yeah yeah I mean they've really they keep standing there a lot yeah yeah do they okay all right because I think that's important you know yeah just a lot tomorrow yeah but the bills that we've been very interested in sponsoring in DuPage County are moving forward and look forward which is a good flexibility in bus transportation during the school day and the recalculation of graduation rates so that we aren't penalized for students to continue in our transition Center we just talked about you know both of
037those are being the bus bills being carried by Senator Curran who was you know our senator from our representative from this area and then the graduation rates is uh Representative Costa Howard is carrying that so our direct representatives from District 99 are caring those those bills okay excellent thank you all right um how about uh sacid oh uh Santa's proposed program vision for school year 23 24 as well as the updated referral process were shared with the district special ed administrators on Friday February 17th however only five districts attended therefore the opportunities to discuss and collaborate on the proposed changes will occur via video meeting for district administrators the first week of March the concerns of Transportation distance classroom Logistics and Staffing will be reviewed or considered as part of The Proposal it will obviously
038be important to provide education and explanation to the parents about benefits and concerns of any proposed changes thank you questions all right and uh Terry our Education Foundation yes uh we we did an audit and everything was copacetic on that the grants as you can see we uh we did a grant this evening and uh issued that um we're talking about what we can do for the 100th anniversary it's just some different things so you know I think Dr thiely's going to give us maybe some ideas on what we can do as part of that because that's that's a big deal yeah we've been around 100 years so so that's because I keep telling people only 200 once yeah yeah yeah and I can barely remember that what was your third year on the term
039yeah third term on the board yeah yeah it was just the beginning um and also uh we're um talking about ways that we can raise funds for a scholarship in um Mark McDonald's name and I don't know if you folks remember Mark McDonald but he was a superintendent here before Dr thaley and um he was really a super guy and and um uh gone way too young so um you know if anybody would like to donate into that we will take donations into the scholarship fund for students in his name and we kind of want to tie it to um the um the kids and the younger thing going to the um oh my my mind is attainable Futures yes attainable Futures because that was that was something that was uh pretty near and dear
040to his heart and he uh kind of saved that program so we thought if we could tie in somewhere with that would be a really good thing and um and that and then um as I was talking with uh Dr Thiele earlier the incubator class how we can still support that but maybe not uh financially as much so we're going to be brainstorming on that but that's what we've been doing in the foundation so they work and as always people want to donate just go to the absolutely absolutely it's there and I believe that there's a link um on the District 99 website that goes to to our but their website's super easy it's d99ef.org yeah yeah yeah so it's it's very easy and we do take credit cards and you just you know one
041of the things we approved tonight was a two thousand dollar grant grant that we uh and we do that uh I believe our next uh um teacher Grant application is due uh April 1st I believe and so teachers can be sure and put uh their requests in because um that's the only way you're going to get funds is By Request yeah yeah yeah so thank you Terry we're not going to knock on your door and uh Illinois Association of school boards ISB Chris I think I need a report but we got our new uh 2023 constitutions and positions pretty good take a look at those okay okay and uh we have some upcoming meetings March 6th we have our Workshop meeting at 6 30. we have a business meeting March 20th so can't guarantee they'll
042be as fun uh with this we had the step royalties tonight so but well exactly hey uh entertainment Good Times had by all um we're about to go in a closed session um and uh we're going to need to do so so I'm going to need a motion to go into closed session I will and I'll just say too we don't have any plans to come back out of closed session and take any action so so there's no need to stick around unless you just want to see our smiling faces again see you soon but there will be no action after closed session so we're going to closed session I need a motion to go in for the appointment employment compensation discipline performance or dismissal of specific employees specific individuals who serve as independent contractors
043in a park recreational or educational setting or specific volunteers of the district or a legal counsel for the district including hearing testimony on a complaint lodged against an employee a specific individual who serves as an independent contractor in a park recreational or educational setting or a volunteer of the district or against legal counsel for the district to determine its validity and litigation when inaction against affecting or on behalf of the district has been filed and is pending before a court of administrative Tribunal or when the district finds that an action is profitable or imminent in which case the basis for the findings shall be recorded and entered into the minutes of the closed meeting so moved all right Terry second and Chris thank you hi Mr Chris Drexler aye and Mike Davenport I motion passes
044take a short break and then we'll reconvene reconvene in here got it okay