001good evening uh we're going to call to order can we have the roll call please mike davidport here christopher espinosa here jenny hagstrom here terry patrick's here drexler here nancy kupko here scarlett o'hara here and jade caledonia here the stanford pledge i pledge allegiance to the flag of the united states of america and to the republic for which it stands one nation under god indivisible with liberty and justice for all um we're going to start with student perspectives okay so many things have been happening around south in the past few weeks our winter sports teams have wrapped up their seasons which were very successful our gymnastics team which is co-op with north went to state some of the gymnasts placed that was awesome some of our wrestlers qualified for state including two girls who qualified
002for our first ever female state competition and then our senior jimmy nugent he placed third in the state and then both both basketball teams had a player advance to sectionals for the three-point contest and freddie coleman who is our boys representative will be shooting this friday to advance our speech team also went to state which was a very successful event for them with many of the individuals placing senior swimmer bobby sire also earned all-state honors in both the 50-meter freestyle and 100 meter freestyle this weekend spring sports are now starting with tryouts beginning today and running for the next few weeks depending on what sport it will be for and we cannot wait to see all that those teams accomplish during their seasons switching over our fine arts department is working hard to make our
003spring musical high school musical perfect this year the spring musical will be a little bit different and will include guest appearances from groups around south including our phillies dance team and the step team along with some different teachers something else exciting happening at south this week is our respect week during this week we focus on inclusion and learning to appreciate the differences between each of us each day has a theme to address to today was tie-dye and a fun activity that has been planned by our unified and friendship clubs one more event that i want to highlight quickly is our pause and relax event that our change makers club sponsored twice during the month of february change makers brought in comfort dogs which students could visit in the library during their lunch and take a
004few minutes to de-stress with the help of some fluffy friends along with the dogs there are also other relaxing activities to participate in such as making stress toys this event was a huge hit among both the students and teachers i myself went both days it was a lot of fun to play with dogs oh yeah and as a school community we are very excited to see what the next few months bring scarlet okay okay hi i feel like mine's gonna sound like a repeat from scarlett's but it's fine also our winter sports teams have been wrapping up our season i am so proud of all the accomplishments that they have made this season they put in a lot of effort and it truly has shown with the results that they've shown this season some of
005the teams that i'd like to highlight is our girls basketball team they won their regionals which is so exciting for wrestling three of our students uh qualified for state and two-placed for swim the state swimming was this past weekend and we had four swimmers and one diver qualify and one of our swimmers didn't end up placing and like scarlett said our combined dj and dgs gymnastics teams also plays in the state competition so i am so so proud of everything they accomplished this season and i know that like scarlett said we will be starting our spring season starting today it's very exciting i'm not the most athletic person in the room which is fine but i know that they are going to put in a tremendous amount of effort for this upcoming season as spring
006starts and going back to my last board report i mentioned how north gets to host our scholastic awards every year they have so for the last couple decades and i'm proud to say that we had an enormous amount of students get these awards from north for writing we had five students get these writing awards and it included a gold key which is the highest accomplishment you can receive uh seven silver keys and six honorable mentions and for visual arts i am so proud of this number we had a total of 99 awards awarded to our visual artists at north and included 27 gold keys 27 silver keys and 43 honorable mentions and i am so proud of the environment that north has created to help these artists their writers and further enrich their opportunities because
007getting to be able to be to be part of this is so amazing and i'm so proud of them um howie said march is starting tomorrow i can't believe it time is flying but with that in our fine arts department we have music in our schools a month starting tomorrow i know we have a chapter of triad music honor society at north and they have been working very hard to make sure that we can spread music and the meaning of music to everybody at north and i walked in today through maine and everything is like chalked up with music music symbols and it's really bringing the energy to spring so far and i'm really excited also with that we have our spring musical goal coming up next week mary poppins a lot of people i
008know have been involved with this play and i am so excited to go and watch it they're going to do amazing um so i do encourage you guys to go and watch it if you guys want um and for speech we had the state speech tournament and we did have a qualifier from north and they did amazing and we are so proud of their accomplishments and everything that they have been given and the opportunities that they have been given back in november the board recognized the semi finalists for the national merit and the commended students and i am very proud to announce that from north we have eight finalists for the national merit which is so exciting and i'm so proud of them to call them my friends my peers to learn from them and
009grow with them so that is amazing to me and finally i'm almost done i promise um i thought i would bring up how did mask optional go today day one very fun very on on trent um i think it's hard to say if it went just right or it went wrong i think that the last month had been a very trying time for everybody i think we can all say that at north i can't speak for south but at north there was a very tense social climate in the last month and today when we went mask optional i think the first thing i realized when i walked in and i saw one of my friends not wearing a mask was i haven't seen you actually smile in so long like i can see it in
010your eyes every day but seeing you smile it's just like wow it's been something i've missed a lot so although things are changing with change anxiety can also come in so i do want to encourage any student that is that needs some additional support with this transition to reach out to anybody on their alpha teams because all students have their alpha teams both at north and south amazing counselors psychologists social workers and our cpos department chairs and our principals so finally to highlight today dr dement made an amazing announcement in the morning about the emphasis of showing kindness and respect um i think that's something that we need to focus on moving forward uh we had a pbis lesson a positively north lesson about this today and i think it's oh it's kindness something so
011that we learn from being little but i think it's something that we always need to remember to show to everybody along with respect they go hand in hand yes so with that i'm done thank you lovely report thank you ladies thank you okay next on the agenda is the approval of minutes we need a motion for the board of education to approve the minutes of the january 24th 2022 business meeting the january 24th 2022 closed meeting and the february 14 2022 special special meeting with action item so moved second terry and joanna thank you terry pavisic aye joanna vazquez drexler aye mike the minutes are approved okay next we will move on to the first reception of visitors i have none that are for action items okay then we'll move on to the recommendations and
012reports of the superintendent returning for some learning all right so as we have for the last couple of years uh metrics over the last month you can see we've continued to drop off of that spike that we experienced over winter break and coming back from it we're down to numbers as low or lower than what we saw in in first semester which just tracks with all of society as the board is aware and our community is aware from communications that went out over the weekend there's new cdc guidelines in effect that use new metrics to determine transmission level by county under those new metrics the dupage county's level is low and they changed the recommendations of mitigations around each of those transmission levels as well so these were all communicated out in uh yesterday oh
013and there was a change in uh buses as well that masks are no longer required on on school buses or school transportation so this is the summary of what went out last night uh to everybody after we had the weekend to work through everything that was in there and how it impacts us so really you know the as we've been saying since the beginning of this individuals that are sick should stay home and the recommendation still remains to wear a mask after returning for five days individuals need to isolate and quarantine when they're sick or you know if they've been in close contact with someone they should consider that as well people have the choice to mask at all times we respect that choice um we talked about the buses uh we're still requiring masks
014and health offices it's it's you know likely to assume that people in the health offices could be sick so it's uh just a good practice there we'll increa we'll maintain the increased uh airflow throughout the building we have twice as much as the recommended amount so we have a 20 percent air exchange throughout the buildings that will continue as well as our increased cleaning and sanitation throughout the building there's no longer a recommendation for additional physical distancing and those that are immunocompromised they provide recommendations that those individuals should consider so that's the information that went out that's kind of our updated plan right now we'll see if anything changes over the next month or so in those recommendations from everyone if numbers should start to climb we'll come back to the board in consultation with
015the dupage county health department as we said we would when we met the last time so that's pretty much it any questions on any of that all right i'm going to turn it over to gina now do you want the clicker yes that would be great thank you so we updated our srarp return to in-person instruction plan even though we provide an update all the time we actually have a return to in-person instruction plan that we need to update when we make changes and so i put the changes in red just to try and make it easier um the changes basically with the masking as hank just explained the other things are still taking place supports and interventions we did institute one slight change since what i reported earlier which is we did increase our
016bilingual spanish-speaking liaison support as needed primarily at south high school we saw a need and so our spanish-speaking person was able to provide assistance not just at north but also at south high so that's another supporter intervention change and then there is a public comment document that go to it's on our website to provide comments i also updated as required our sr3 use of funds plan which is also on the website changes are in red but as you can see we really don't have changes but again these are some of the things that we're using the sr3 or arp funds4 board has heard about these before but certainly we are supporting a lot of personnel new positions we have various resources again no changes still the same supports in fact our sr3 grant was just
017approved last month and again no changes and we have a form for that as well online that you can go in and put in comments any questions on those that's you well that's the same question i appreciated the bread makes it easy all right hybrid block schedule update uh we've been very busy since the last update just a reminder this is the kind of the overall sketch of what the hybrid block schedule will look like for next year featuring monday tuesday friday eight periods day eight period days with an 8 20 am start wednesday and thursday also an 8 20 a.m start but those are block days where the extended periods also feature an access period in there and you're going to be hearing more about that access period over the next couple of board
018meetings so uh this month february 9th and 11th during lunch hours i held student to ask me anything where students could drop in during lunch hours and ask me anything the focus was on the hybrid block schedule however there was a variety of questions that were asked uh while i was there um really focusing in on the hybrid block schedule questions the key topics that we discussed was student input and what it looks like now and into the future really now obviously we're developing an instructional model that we as educators believe is the right direction to go in however after students live this for a little while it will be totally appropriate to gather their feedback and i'm going to share in a little bit we're going to start gathering feedback this spring about the
019change in the lunch schedule right that was a change this year to go from the half period lunch to the full period lunch which is kind of the first step in the schedule changes so we're going to gather some feedback on that this spring and then as we go through the future we'll continue to gather feedback from students and use that to determine if things should need to change and if we decide to make changes then there will definitely be more surveys of students and their opinions of those things a lot of conversations about the benefits the why are we doing this with students you know the idea of the restructuring of time so that's more personal to each individual student a lot of conversations around that diving into access as we will with the
020board over the next couple of weeks the idea of how stress levels can be positively impacted through the schedule change of course the later start and what we know what that means for increased learning of teens and the idea of building a more consistent schedule right now as our students experience today today was a different monday schedule than there normally is to get our positively north and mustang y schedule and so an idea where students can expect a more consistent schedule on a week to week basis and then there was a lot of questions and conversations around how block days would work you know just reestablishing that those are two days a week not like when we were working through covid and there was more of them and just the focus of how the work
021balance and instructional balance would work over a longer class period explaining how the lunch periods work with the a b and c lunch period and making sure that a lot of questions that students had as to how that would look and work once again access on those days and resource a lot of questions about how eighth period would eighth period release for athletics would work which is pretty similar to how it's been in the past and then some discussions around uh students with late arrival and early release some of these are topics that gina is going to cover here in a little bit so really good conversations i would say that the majority of students left those conversations feeling a little more confident about that this is a positive change that they were able to
022get their questions answered a lot of the concerns emanate from the experience in the longer class periods during hybrid you know when teachers were planning to teach the majority of their students remotely rather than in person once we kind of worked through kind of how the structure of a lesson would work in person differently than when it was over a computer screen that brought some of the anxiety levels down quite a bit you know students wanted to make sure that we were going to be talking to teachers about strategies in a longer class period which obviously we will but they just wanted to hear that right and that teachers would you know take into consideration that it's a longer time to be in class right so that lessons needed to be varied and nobody wants
023to be talked to for right you know a long period of time so you know after talking through how teachers plan and design things even at a 50-minute class period yes very few class periods as a teacher lecturing for 50 minutes right so just talking through how lesson design might work in that lowered a lot of the anxiety around that topic so it was good time to talk once we get out more information about access periods and some of this information over the next month we'll send out a summary of that information to the student body and ask what concerns that they have that remain um so we can find out do we need to just like it's already been solved for it just hasn't been communicated well enough or is it something that's still
024hanging out there that we haven't yet addressed so that'll be coming kind of later next month all right i'm going to turn this over to gina who's been working with oh god i just want to ask how did the students generally find out about the ask me anything sessions our principals communicated them out there are student board members do you do you feel like the students really are aware of it i personally receive emails all the time about it and they make announcements every day like when dr feli's coming they'll be like he's in this room today during these periods go visit him okay so i mean i i feel like at south i don't know about north i feel like it's very well communicated excellent yeah i think it's the same for north i
025know you were supposed to come i think in january and then you didn't and then everyone [Laughter] i also had teachers bring down whole like representatives from their classes with lists of questions to then report back to their class so it was a excellent mix yeah and that was good yeah what a great opportunity for the students i think to have such a direct line to you yeah and i've answered a lot of questions via email and sure those kinds of things as well so all right gina has been leading a lot of the committees but she's going to report out even on the one she hasn't been leading that's true so just a quick committee update um our part-time and traveling teacher schedule committee um i know i updated board already on this but
026we met in december gathered some feedback by now teachers who were interested in part-time already put in requests for that and we will be working on scheduling very soon for next year professional development certainly we have a team working on that working on what that'll look like next year as you may recall we're not you heard we're not doing the monday late starts right so that pd will be factored into the day and so again revising that redesigning that for this new model department course team time a great committee that i led with one of our department chairs we met in december and talked through a lot of different options on how we could potentially carve out some time for departments or course teams to meet we actually just met with our our small subcommittee
027a few hours ago and are meeting again on wednesday to talk through some of those options athletics and activities i was not on that one i was on that one all right don't don't let me talk to you uh so really it looks very similar it's three days a week monday monday tuesday friday just like it was in the past on thursdays that eighth period falls during the day and then our coaches will have that time with their athletes in the middle of the day if on wednesday and thursday teams need to leave for a competition early because we have a later start in the day it'll work just like in other schools around us that have a later start and some kids might need to leave a little early on those days but it
028shouldn't be as impactful as they're leaving a block class right so they'll have a good amount of time to get established in that class figure out what they might be missing in that last you know 10 or 15 minutes before they head out to a competition all right okay thank you and then in terms of late arrival or early release we have moved towards an option for juniors and seniors that are in good standing meaning they're on track to graduate on time in four years that have six or more classes with parent permission if they have basically if on the three days first period or eighth period they can elect to either come in late or go home early if it's eighth period or on the black days depending which periods and the way that
029it falls so that'll be an option we've done some of that already and have been doing that of course with parent permission but we just solidified it on what the expectations would be for the hybrid block for next year for just juniors and seniors again we're not providing extra bus runs they'd have to have their own transportation they certainly can't stay they do not have to leave but they can elect to do that with parent permission and next slide i lost it okay um so the access thank you i thought i still had it my apologies um our access resource committee is is one that now small groups are meeting all the time i think i have three or four meetings this week alone about access so we're we're focusing on access right now and
030then we'll focus on resource remember access is basically half an hour on the two block days so half an hour on wednesday half an hour on thursday we've had several full committee meetings and that's a committee of about 50 people a little bit over 50 people so it's a huge committee and even some of the individuals i've been working and meeting with are not necessarily even on that committee some are some are not so a lot of people have their hands in the planning for this and currently working with primarily our instructional coordinators as they're working with our instructional coaches to plan what we're calling executive functioning lessons um i'm working with basically our department chairs for counseling and student support services on how to revise their lessons that they currently do they basically push
031into classes so for example global connections or english class or something like that to redesign those to fit as much as possible within those access periods so as to protect time from those other classes and then of course meeting with various other subgroups individually that will factor into into the planning of what we'll do next year in access we've worked on calendars related to it we've worked on different ways of organizing it and we're getting now to more of the planning some of it's revising or redesigning and some of it is starting really from scratch so very exciting work with a lot of individuals having input and next week we'll start bringing you some of the topics what you're going to start to see though is uh in jill's presentation later this evening about strategic
032plan you're going to start to see an overlap occurring between the themes we're hearing in strategic planning and the topics that are showing up in our access periods so watch for that over the next month as the two kind of come together something else that i'm uh pleased to announce to the board is that uh we're entering into this with a third-party program evaluation of the hybrid block as i said we'll start with some focus groups this spring around you know what happened with lunch this year but also students uh perceptions of the schedule heading into next year so we have some baseline kind of just ideas of what students concerns or questions are so that we can find out are those are we solving for those concerns next year when students return are they
033still hanging out there and we haven't done anything with them um so we're bringing in actually white and company our partner on our construction is funding this study for us so district 99 will have a third party independent consultant providing the program evaluation of the schedule change white is covering all of the costs of that and they have agreed to a two-year case study so it'll be this spring all through next year and all through the next school year on what our students experiences are and achievements related to this schedule change meg ormison is a highly regarded educational researcher and well known in the chicagoland area for a variety of of her work so she's also familiar with district 99 she's worked with some of our teachers over the years in some of the books
034that she has authored she's brought in some of our teachers as co-authors on some of her books so she's familiar with district 99 as well i in this case study she has met with the administration uh to understand kind of the changes leading up to the schedule obviously the physical structure of our building has had a major impact on our ability to move in this direction starting with the full period lunches but then as well the hybrid block which is why white's interested in this right they would love to see that those changes led to uh student success right which we believe it will um but they're they're willing to bring in a third party independent expert to see if that's the case i of course like this because what measure what's measured gets done
035so of course it's nice to go to our staff and say we're going to be measuring the success of these changes and here are the metrics that we'll be using to determine if we are making making gains obviously feedback will be sought from all of those involved students teacher staff and of course from data sources uh you can see some of the concerns that the board has raised over the last year about the schedule are addressed already in some of these themes here are some of the measurables that have been put together to look at as we move forward as i said data is a piece there and student student staff feedback so you can see some of these things we're already tracking some of these will have to start tracking next year but really
036looking forward to having meg come in and meet with our students and our staff and to really dig into this and you know to some extent hold us accountable for this change so you'll be hearing from meg you'll meet meg over the next couple of years and you'll you'll see her reports coming in so this is planned for just two years so it's the spring plus the next two school years okay yep yeah all right i'll turn it back over to gina to talk through the timeline here so the timeline essentially is as we demonstrated last month we're just continuing to work in the committees and work on those salfords that that most of the committees have met and worked out most of those i'm still working on access committee which is huge and resource
037and we'll continue to give updates and then of course new schedule will start in august wow all right so this is kind of where we're at right now so we'll be back next week with uh some updates on access and some other key pieces of this in the meantime board members if there's something that you'd like us after you have some time you know absorb this over the next couple of days if there's something specific you would like gnri to address next week please let us know and we'll make sure that we include that in next week's presentation as well any other general questions just to reiterate go ahead let's say there will be a final board decision yeah about going forward just you probably answered this as our long-range plan to go to a
038full block schedule i'm not not entering into it but that would be something we would evaluate as we went forward uh we particularly prefer the hybrid block because teachers still see students four days a week where when you go into a full block it's two or three days a week that you see plus it gets into this wonky rotating schedule yeah you get an a week and a b week and we like the consistency of of just getting used to monday is this tuesday you know and just falling into a rhythm that way however and and there's also a lot of like you can see the the work that gene is doing to plan with the team for access and resource and that instructional changes that we're going to have to put in place it's
039a lot to just change for those two days to layer in another two days of planning would be twice as much right of what's already a lot so our our long term right now we believe is to remain on the hybrid block however we continue to evaluate and and look at what we're doing and if overall it looks like wow we could benefit from making that next move to two more block days um we could have that discussion have students give us their feedback everything else but going into this this isn't like a step here to move to there to there no that's not the the plan at all i was going to ask just there's there's a lot of history on this out there in terms of other districts that if they're full block
040hybrid after looking at all that this is what we chose as you know are there many examples of schools that have been in hybrid and gone to a full bla block or vice versa yeah there's with schedule changes there it varies all over as to uh success in moving to one and then to another or transitioning back there there's and any number of variables that play into the success of one versus the other so there's really no um like true game plan of you do this then you do that it's very individual to each school district and a lot of the factors that we've been talking about like what the board's goals are and strategic plans and the physical layout of the buildings and all of those things transportation and busing all of those things
041play into your ability to make changes in schedules short term or long term i would think this third party evaluation we're going to be doing and then just all the feedback we're seeking and continue to seek will help inform us how to how to make this even better um all right the goal is obviously at the end that we were successful right and getting feedback uh along the way especially from somebody outside of the organization uh definitely will help us make tweaks and changes along the way and get real-time feedback that we can use to adapt and improve as we go other questions all right strategic plan update jill's going to come forward and give us an update here you can tell me one day i'll reveal my name oh there you go it's a
042great reveal here how's everybody doing it's good to see you um as you all know we're in the middle of creating our strategic plan for the next five years and we just wanted to provide you with an update of where we are today and where we're headed in the next couple of months um just to recap as you'll recall you approved moving forward with creating a strategic plan back in august and all of you spent some time with the consultant and shared your vision and views and perspectives thank you very much for taking time to do that hank was interviewed as well and we interviewed a lot of people a lot of students staff and community members over the past few months and i'm going to just give a recap of what that feedback entailed
043and we also had an online forum so everybody had access to provide some feedback there too so moving along the central question that all of the groups were asked was what do district 99 students need to feel prepared for their next step and hopeful for their future so the first group we'll cover is um the students and maybe scarlett and jade participated in um a lunchtime exercise or you were part of the focus groups too maybe i think so okay so we had focus groups um about 15 students participated total and those were dedicated sessions to get more in depth about what their perspectives were but we also had open forums during the lunch periods at both north high and south high and it was just great to just grab students and and bring them
044up and have them respond to these open-ended questions and some wrote like a paper about what they were feeling and some just wrote a few poignant words so it was it was fun to read those but um they were prompted to feel prepared for my future i need and then teachers adults can help me feel hopeful and prepared by so kind of echoing back to that main central question so kind of the themes of those wants and desires students would like more academic offerings that prepare them for the real world they're also seeking more time and attention and personalized instruction from their teachers they do need help with mental health issues and finding that balance in their life and they want more input into school decisions as we we know you know just as looking
045at this hybrid schedule right now so we want to hear those voices they want to express them staff we also held a few staff engagement sessions both in person and virtual back in november and december didn't have a huge turnout but a lot of these themes also echo what the students said they they know the importance of good relationships with themselves and students and families they want to provide those experiential type of learning and personalized instruction for students they want to also provide life skills and help them plan for after high school and give them that emotional support that they need and just they know the importance of student voice again it's kind of like copy and paste and finally community and family sessions we had a few evening sessions with families and over 50
046people participated we also had smaller focus groups and again they would like to see more personalized instruction for their students they want their students to have more support in their planning for their future including more access to the counselors a chance to develop leadership skills a lot of people repeated that pe leadership class and would like to see that replicated in other areas of the school they want to also have life skills experience again interviewing resume creation and those types of things so all of this feedback was provided to the core planning team and this is a new team that was formed and it's part of the process that we're following back in october we invited um everybody to participate and um we sent out you know thousands of emails to to you all and
047to our alumni and to our community and ask people who were really interested in being part of this process to participate and again it was open to everyone we had 42 people who applied and after reviewing the candidates we made a balanced decisions of who who to invite and 11 accepted our invitation so we had three students four current parents two future parents and one of whom is an alum so that was very fun and the rest of the group of the 42 were invited to be part of the focus groups correct so everybody who stepped forward was allowed to be part of it in a smaller setting so that team met a couple weeks ago for a two-day workshop and their focus question was how can district 99 best leverage internal and external resources
048to better prepare students for college career and life and they created and maybe you have seen it already we've posted it to our website their report and it's sort of a draft roadmap of broad strategic directions and so we've gone out now to the community to ask them to go online and to respond to that to post their ideas and their questions about it so i'm hoping that a lot of people will participate in that process too so where we are today tomorrow we're going to have an administrator meeting to review the core team's work and to provide input for them again gathering that community input on the draft road map which is due on friday and then the core team planning team will meet again on march 10th to refine the plan based on
049all the feedback that it receives and then we'll present a draft plan and hopefully include some of those core team planning members here at the presentation on march 21st and then we'll continue to refine it and then present it we hope april 18th and then we'll from there develop implementation deadlines and so forth so kind of roles and responsibilities but it's very exciting to be part of this process it's been very positive and it's fun to talk about the future instead of the present right amen absolutely so that's a brief report so i just had a question when not i understand we have an alarm on the core committee but when we were talking with the community members were we fortunate enough did we snag any recent grads like within the last five years or
050less do you know i'd have to go review who the the people were but um as far as coming into the open session since they were recent grads to give us subject i mean if you don't know it's right i don't know off the top of my head but um yeah okay thank you yeah we'll send them another email though we have an alumni list so participants and if you receive a yellow card respond to it yeah yeah other questions for jill thank you like to recognize that jill has done a ton of work and you know making sure that all these meetings go off and in communicating everything and through a variety of physical in-person and virtual settings throughout the year so uh she's been doing great work on this leading yeah thank you
051jill thank you thank you all right uh jury proposed student fees for 22.23 well we are proposing no increases in the curricular and extracurricular fees for next school year thank you we are however recommending one change in the district's uh school fee schedule for next school year over the past couple of years we've experienced an increase in the number of families who have qualified for reduced price school meals so therefore we'd like to be able to offer these families a reduction in the cost of their school fees the change we are proposing is to implement a fee schedule that reduces curricular and extracurricular fees by 50 for the families that qualify for reduced price school meals and this is an action item this evening so questions for jury on this just why weren't we doing
052it before do you do you know i mean this seems like such a logical thing and it's just one of those things that we just never did just never did so i i support this thank this question i i believe that if you get reduced lunch i thought you can apply to have your fees totally um removed is that not true i i don't know no it's not been it's only been for those who probably qualify for the free meals gotcha yeah thank you all right because there's a different tier yes there is for each thing so federal income guidelines yes but now with all of that they would they would qualify for the half price yes for student fees that's what you're saying okay and just making sure yeah thank you all right the
053next item is sticking in the finance realm 22 sports camp fees okay the athletic directors at both schools would like to increase the summer sports camp fees by ten dollars for this summer the last time we increased the fees was back in 2019 the proposed summer camp fees range from eighty dollars to 150 dollars depending on the duration of the camp this increase will just simply help offset the the operating cost of the camps and we support this requested increase in camp fees now would this include some of those students who are on free and reduced lunch that participate in the summer camps most of the high school students who are in that category are their campees are waved through the boosters okay okay all right okay good it's a great program yeah my kids
054took advantage of it it's the best deal going yeah so high level instruction it's a lot of fun especially for those uh incoming freshmen they feel more part of the of the school community by being able to take care of these camps and that and they feel like they get to know other kids and and also a lot of our um teachers and staff participate in those camps so it's just a win-win it really is terry so i think that's really important yeah and less expensive than most of your you know club offerings so if any parents out there that have to pay for that like i did right we'll appreciate this so i think the ten dollars is fine it's still a bargain at any price yeah and three years in the making since
055we've had the race so very good all right this is up as an action item this evening as well and our final financial one for the evening transportation contract this one's frightening we have a common number there 10 but the 10 is not nearly the same no it's a 10 increase so first student is requesting a 10 increase in all route rates for the 22-23 school year this increase mainly relates to the bus driver's wages and the guarantee of a five-hour workday for the drivers both of these will hopefully help with shortage of drivers that we've experienced this year i think as you know we we coordinate our bus routes with districts 58 and 68 to reduce the overall cost to all three districts since 2014 this coordinator effort has saved all three districts a
056lot of money hundreds of thousands of dollars and so although the proposed increase seems high it is actually at or below what other busing companies are proposing to other nearby school districts so we support this increase and hope that the board will too yeah yeah i must say i have seen signs lately for the foss for the salary for bus drivers and i recall my daughter um being in grade school and riding the bus and knowing kind of what the fee the salaries were in there has been quite an increase so i i understand i mean this is kind of where we are yeah i think we're going to have to do it i mean wages are going up everywhere so we've got a if we want to get good quality people we have to
057pay the price when's the contract up this is an extension this is an extension and in the packet i was just thinking i don't know if you've noticed that let's see um right now a paired route in the morning is a paragraph means we share a bus with 68 or 58. for next year we'll pay 93.90 if we had an unpaired route it'd be 154.99 that's substantial it's a big savings of what we do right well in saving to districts 58 and 68 too which helps helps them out as well well and when we hear about consolidation of school districts you hear about the kind of savings that you could have right in cooperating we do that even though we're separate school districts we get that same kind of savings yeah fiscal leverage by working
058together with our partner elementaries yeah all right so this is one year at a time i mean it looks like we've extended no we usually do a multi-year contract it's just right that they're asking to extend that yeah it would be very difficult to go out to bed right now right now so given the current situation so we're anticipating next year that we would yes we would go out to bid next year oh okay yeah we generally do but this would not be a a good time to do that with economic time for us to try to go out and openly compete in a very tough market right now the ball's in their court right now yes yeah it's going to be ugly thank you all right next one is board representation on the current
059teacher advisory committee this is scots each year yeah we're looking wednesday uh may 4th oh i didn't update the slides so x slash xx is wednesday may 4th yeah there you go all right wednesday may 4th um we usually have two board members i think yes volunteered at the time and it's usually at six o'clock we are looking to be in person this year um gina actually attends and we go over the consolidated district plan uh we talk about special education issues things and then to spawn data so i nominate jenny [Laughter] i accept she's a parent yes jenny yeah and did you learn perfect we will get you more information as we get close anybody else unless somebody else wants to battle it out you know oh accept your volunteer wednesday may 4th we'll
060get you more information in advance of that thank you both thank you thanks all right freedom of information requests we've had them we filled them and they're available and listed on our website all right okay moving on to the consent agenda is there um any item that any member of the board wishes to remove from the concentration [Music] and i just before we say i'd just like to um acknowledge once again the education foundation is four grants yeah totaling almost five thousand dollars cool stuff you killing that very cool stuff thank you foundation okay we need a motion for the board of education to approve the consent agenda as presented which includes the personnel report appointments administrator appointment certified appointments classified the personnel reports retirement certified retirements classified resignation certified resignations classified the financial pages
061the educational tour and the acceptance of the donation from district 99 education foundation so moved second tyrion mike thank you very much for me aye mike davenport aye christopher espinoza aye shirelle fuller hi jenny hagstrom aye joanna vazquez drexler aye and nancy kupko aye the consent agenda carries thank you we'll now move on to the recommendations for action we need the action items we need a motion for the board of education to approve the student fees for 2022 2023 as presented so moved second trail thank you very much choose a little louder mike davenport hi sheryl fuller aye the motion carries next we need a motion for the board of education to approve the summer 2022 sports camp fees as presented secondary thank you mike davenport hi trey pavisic aye joanna vazquez drexler aye christopher
062espinoza aye gerald fuller hi jenny heggstrom aye and nancy kupka aye the motion carries and lastly meaning a motion for the board of education to approve the amendment to extension of pupil services agreement proposed by first student incorporated for the 2022-2023 school year and authorized the administration to execute all necessary documents to continue the contract so move second one gotcha shirelle mike she was i was first off wow thank you she's getting feisty back there okay cheryl fuller hi mike davenport i'm mr crespinosa hi jenny hagstrom aye terry pavisage aye do i know drugstore aye and nancy kupko aye the motion curies we'll now move to the reception of visitors and public comment this is the second reception of visitors which is intended for audience members to address the board on any topic pertaining to
063community 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 in writing to the board secretary mrs nydiak visitors addressing the board need to submit a comment slip to mrs nydek and will be invited to the microphone prior to addressing the board audience members should state their full name the proceeds are being tape recorded and live stream okay so is there something wrong okay the proceedings are being tape recorded and live streamed for the produ for the purpose of producing accurate meeting minutes i reserve the right to modify these protocols of circumstances warrant and your observation of these protocols is appreciated all right we have seven uh visitors wishing to address the board this evening
064as usual i'll call you up um and i'll let you know who the next person is so you can kind of prepare your thoughts for for the next group so first person up uh this evening is carrie swenson followed by noel manley you got to kind of stay there because you're wired down there you go um i actually don't start my timer yet i'm passing out your board ethics for you to don't go through it now you all have it on your computer but i'd like it in front of you and there's some past emails that i've sent out to the board um way before you were here christopher um i'll get you one to share and i might run out that's all right we'll make sure that they get to the board um but
065my name is carrie swenson and i'm here to address the board the admins that are here the building administration administrators that were here um my comments today come out of a place of love for district 99 i've been up here complaining you all have gotten my emails i've also been very positive with my children with other parents when things are going well the past three years through coven i've been up here and and have had negative things to say because of the way it was handled but i've also been at these board meetings before covet and there is a consistent pattern that i've seen at these board meetings there are different personalities there are different ways that are that we are voting that we are deciding and mike board member davenport really brought it home
066to me at your last meeting on the 14th when he brought those shirts out okay and and what kind of school we used to have so i thought about this as a parent as a taxpayer that was a message of unity that was a message of positivity the leadership on this board with president nancy kupka has been one of divide and of negativity and i have multiple examples of that of her breaking this oath that i brought here consistently starting with my very first interaction with you where i sat down after speaking and you proceeded off the mic to yell at me and say you gave your opinion now it's your my turn to get mine that is a violation of to represent all school district constituents honestly and equally and refuse to surrender responsibilities
067to special interests or partisan political groups you didn't have that i was off the mic it was out of order and you never apologize and you did it again another meeting a month later where you said you don't speak for my people that was your exact quote you don't speak for my people exactly which people are those nancy because these are your people sitting right here as well i can tell you it's also not the majority of the community right here in front of you and we have been here all along yours we don't you don't speak for my people another example of a clear violation to stay abreast of important educational issues at the local state and national levels you're not staying abreast of these you asked dr thiel in november 2020 when our
068students were getting vaccinated or how many of our students were vaccinated it wasn't even available yet for students that was national news all over any news thing when are the students testing is starting here why would you ask our superintendent what the vaccination rate is for students when it wasn't even available you were not paying attention to things you needed to to govern this board effectively how can someone who humbly brags about being a phd in nursing a lead clinical researcher at walgreens not even know when student vaccinations were available it's blatant disregard for community for the community you serve furthermore you offer once and your time has expired can somebody give me their minutes no no that's not part of the board protocols the next speaker is noel manley thank you is that somewhere
069in writing you get three minutes noel manley is the next speaker the speaker after that will be uh marcella ciro good evening my name is noel manley and i'm a resident of darien illinois i want to congratulate the board on its 5-1 vote on february 14th to have the district go mask optional effective today february 28th i also want to thank the d99 students who advocated on behalf of themselves they could not have made a clear case to end the sad chapter in our two-year covet ordeal i also understand that the attendance rules have changed so now that masking has been addressed the board needs to move the meetings back to a larger venue covered mitigation and alleged threats were used as justifications for the former attendance policy which limited attendance to 20 attendees now
070the masking issue has been addressed we need to look at these alleged threats to be clear any elected official or public employee should never ever be threatened they are elected to do a job and whether you agree or disagree with their performance of that job a threat should never be issued illinois state law is very clear on this point threatening public officials a person commits threatening a public official when that person knowingly delivers or conveys directly or indirectly to a public official by any means a communication containing a threat that would place the public official or a member of his or her immediate family in reasonable apprehension of immediate bodily future or bodily harm threatening a public official is a class three felony for a first offense and is a class two felony for any
071subsequent offense on february 14th board member pevisit paz referenced in her public comments threats that have been made and her comments were also quoted in the suburban life newspaper this is true board member passage you need to be clear about the following who made these threats when was the threat made how were the threats communicated what started what was stated in the threat and were these threats reported to law enforcement again to be clear foias have been sent to both district 99 and the downers grove police department regarding these serious issues however responses show that no threats have been reported so is there information that you're not sharing with law enforcement or the public on this most serious threat serious matter as an aside i have a certification in cyber security from the illinois institute
072of technology and i can assure you that law enforcement can access or has access to very sophisticated tools they can track the electronic fingerprint of most posts emails or texts and quite frankly people making such threats are not generally very sophisticated and to be clear one more time when someone disagrees with you that is not a threat it's just a difference of opinion thank you miss shirelle followed by carrich genoak good evening my name is march hello dirty cherry there's a societal revolution by government edict that's taking place right now in this country and it's one in which parents are being told they have no right to interfere with a public education the contempt and arrogance of the political elite has grown to the point that even our school boards act above us and look
073down on the citizenry maybe if americans were being taught reading writing and arithmetic instead of identity politics crt and the feel good disguise of being good global citizens they'd be literate enough to fully comprehend the dangers of what's currently taking place in the world today you have waged a war against families and parental authority so forgive me if i have zero sympathy for how frustrated you are school officials have betrayed our trust by unapologetically working against community values you have acted as if our rights were privileges to be granted your frustrations pale in comparison to what parents and students have had to endure for far too long and while most though not all of you voted to finally go mask optional i will not extend any gratitude victims don't thank their abusers for the return
074of their freedom you only change your position because your feet were held to the fire as i've said here before our children are not wards of the state we don't relinquish our parental authority when our children step onto school grounds by tradition and by law parents have the primary responsibility for their children's care their health their nurture their morals and values and yes for the content and the quality of their education mr noah followed by kevin custer cara yep kevin custer is next followed by beth bakken backer thank you my name is kevin custer on august at the board meeting nancy you publicly stated that crt would never be taught on january 31st the face of downers grove north video was played to my son it's talking about intersectionality my son asked me to watch
075the video and ask me what i thought i want to teach my son how to think not what to think and i asked him what did he think what the video talks about is greta greta doesn't have to think about her identity both of her parents are educated her father was owns a successful business because of this she doesn't need to think about her identity greta thinks of herself as someone who will go to college and get a good job when she graduates greta can ignore her intersectionality the video goes on to say fatima and jerry are part of a marginalized group so they don't get to choose if they have to think about their identity the implicit message of this video is saying that in order for someone to be oppressed there has to
076be an oppressor i asked my son what did he think about this he's very smart he said what if the white girl was jewish would she be oppressed then or not my family is a multi-racial family no one should ever tell me my wife my son or my stepson that they are oppressed or they are an oppressor because of the bill of rights and the constitution this is the greatest country in the world it doesn't matter what your race your skin tone is i travel all around the world teaching financial literacy and empowerment to the poorest people in the world intersectionality does not factor into the people that we serve my son has decided to serve in the army 30 days after he graduates dgn north rather than your teachers telling my son he is
077an oppressor i would just ask that they thank him for his future service [Applause] laura hoist is the final speaker after beth good evening my name is beth bacher i have a sophomore at downers grove north and a college junior who went through north for the past six or so years i volunteered with teens from high schools throughout dupage county last night some of my students who attend district 99 schools told me they were afraid to come to school today because it was mass optional they had no problem with the virus but they were afraid that other students and teachers were going to come at them and that brings me for my to my purpose first talking tonight sorry i'm very nervous i'm asking the board please reach out to the students that lawfully chose
078to go mask optional the week of february 7th listen to their stories and invis investigate their claims of mistreatment i emailed the board members outlining the mistreatment that my son was put through and i feel like my concerns were blown off i was told to go to something on the website to report something but here's the problem i have no faith and no trust in district 99 so instead i reported my concerns to the department of children and family services and it's my understanding that other parents did as well at the last meeting mr davenport thank you you raised concerns about maybe looking into some of these claims for about mistreatment and they were blown off too i hope you all noticed the chorus of objections coming from the students and parents sitting here the
079objections to the blow-off the teachers are not all the teachers but some of the teachers and staff at district 99 have not done anything to protect the harassment of these unmasked students and what's worse is some has joined in the bullying and the intimidation i'm flabbergasted in how adults have treated children in these past couple weeks now it's not all of them my son has wonderful teachers and wonderful staff that have been great but the fact of the matter is there are staff teaching at our high schools that don't belong teaching kids or just can't do it now due to some emotional damage from covid i don't know and i'm concerned about the teachers as well because i know some of them have to have been bullied and intimidated too and i know that because
080that whole week i heard i'm just trying to do keep my job i'm just trying to make it through the day we are they meaning the upper levels are making us do this this is not right i wonder how many other parents and students had the very same things that they heard so i'm begging you as board members investigate this this behavior and treatment of our students was unconscionable at my son's school there has not been a lot of positively north going on for a good chunk of the students but i am concerned that district 99 has some positively toxic your time has expired thank you good evening can you hear me my name is laura hoyce i thank you for changing the rules around the meeting tonight i want to speak on three items
081first the masks off second oma violations open meetings act violations and third the survey for strategic plan i agree with the last speaker that there has been irreparable harm done to our students by the masking that was done for not the purpose of health and safety in my view but done for control purposes and it should have ended two years ago so i do appreciate mike davenport's comments at the last meeting and i've said so i think that the way the message came across today it was a day for us of celebration february 28th masks off the message that came from downers grove north was masks respectfully recommended and from the district people can choose to mask at any time which from my reading and my perspective sounded kind of a definite bias toward keep
082your masks on we prefer masking i would have said hey you don't have to wear your mask today it's a time to celebrate this is a wonderful thing the open meetings act for the last talk talk about irreparable harm for the december and the january meetings when the protocols were set in place in my view illegally and in violation of the open meetings act to limit public attendance to only 20 individuals and choose the smallest meeting venue where many people were turned away in the cold my son was one of them and my son was one of the mass plaintiffs in the suit against the governor and i'm sure that you're you're aware of that but he wanted to speak and he couldn't get in and he was so cold he had to go home
083so this was irreparable harm those two meetings will never get those back he'll never have an opportunity to address the board again but i do appreciate and i from what i've heard that some changes have been made that there's no longer a 20 person limit and i'd like to know more about how that came about there are 4 930 students enrolled and that means double that number of parents that haven't had an opportunity to address the board because they've been discouraged from doing so next the survey for strategic plan there's a request for input outstanding and i read the the attachment i read the summary and the strategic plans has a lot of words but they they don't mean anything to me examples validate change through data and regular feedback well i want to know
084what kind of change are we validating are we validating not teaching true american history or the 1619 project are we validating more equity programs that we think are toxic to our students and not helpful increase student voice we want our students challenged we want our students highly educated we don't want them sent to safe spaces because they won't be able to make it in the world thank you [Applause] that concludes public comment okay communication's an announcement jenny hank anything on london yeah we had a meeting on friday yeah we actually had two meetings since we um last met in january a lot of it's probably taking care of itself we looked at the covert related pto bill they were waiting on additional information which would offer more protection for fully vaccinated employees and unvaccinated employees
085would have an opportunity to get vaccinated within the first five weeks once the bill takes effect in order to receive the same protections um there was still concern as to the sunset of the bill whether it was the end of the school year or the end of the executive order or only when an executive order or emergency authorization was in place we were still waiting on a ruling in the lawsuit relating to the coven mitigations the illinois house voted to extend their remote participation for six additional months the substitute teacher shortage was also discussed at that time retired teachers are now allowed to substitute teach for up to 120 days without jeopardizing their retirement status and then there was a quick discussion as to whether high schools withhold diplomas if fees are not paid most
086school districts don't do this and we don't do this so that was the gist of the january meeting and then as hank said we just had a meeting on friday that administrative leave bill has been amended it no longer contains any double pay language for staff meaning that you don't have to pay them for the emergency non-attendance day and then also pay them for the makeup day it does contain a sunset provision for teachers being tied to the executive order but it does not contain a sunset provision for staff so that would remain in effect in perpetuity while that is kind of a sticking point lend anticipates that the bill is going to pass as written there was some discussion on the sexual misconduct bill relating to educators trying to ensure that employee an employee
087in one district who has been convicted or accused of sexual misconduct would be prevented from seeking employment in another district without disclosure there's still debating this uh the the issue one of the issues is that this would likely slow the hiring process because you'd have to do a little bit more digging and a background check um let's see there was a brief discussion about a bill related to transfer alternate school and they were going to meet that day to discuss that there was discussion as to the mental health days that were approved it was confirmed that the five mental health days are within the total of 10 sick days and not in addition to and lend is in favor of that they are working on a performance evaluation advisory council bill that would help in
088the evaluation of teachers they're still watching that then we had a breakout room session and i chose to attend the open meetings act group this legislation would originated in the illinois municipal league so it applies to city council type meetings as well as school board meetings school boards would be able to conduct meetings virtually the requirement would not be tied to an emergency situation any longer there would be need to be public prior notice as to how to access the audio and video how the public can comment and the board would need to follow its established practice as to public comment not make any changes to it this bill would give boards the flexibility outside of a disaster proclamation you know to hold a virtual meeting if necessary if there was inappropriate use of the
089power to hold a virtual meeting the attorney general's office would step in to review so you know this the pros and cons include that this would move the decision away from just covid mitigations a virtual meeting can also reduce the strain on resources to the local law enforcement community and the open meetings act is meant to provide transparency into the board's work and not provide a forum for comment on such work so this is something that's also still in the works still being reviewed and um we will the other two breakout rooms related to teacher tenure and career and technical education and we will they were also going to meet that day to re-evaluate that and so we'll hear more at the next meeting in march thank you sasha julian um yeah i'll take this
090off um we approved sopas for district 99 and that is a student online personnel protection act this that means that student data pro it's regular it means that student data privacy law regulates students privacy with online things changes this will make changes for parents in schools as well i can't even read my writing we also approved a tuition increase for about three and a half percent there will be no increase for the summer program we approved a return to learn for students and staff and mass will be strongly recommended kn 9-5 and n95 will be given upon request we are strongly encouraging mass because of the fragility of a lot of the students during close contact situation if one does have some symptoms they are to monitor and test regardless of their vaccination status however
091when they're at a different location you know where different programs are they are to or where the practices there may differ staff and students must follow that district's procedures well um tonight we approve the grants and um so those were really neat and cool i can hardly wait to see what what comes of all of that and we're also working on providing some webinars for our parents and students on specific topics that will come about and that will probably be into the fall but uh we're working on that right now so those are our two big things thanks to her uh i asked v anything chris talking to report it's pretty quiet when it's not there yeah you mentioned yeah okay all right we have uh two upcoming board meetings we have one on march
0927th at 6 30 here in the asc and then again our that will be our workshop march 21st will be a business meeting 6 30 here at the asc um i need an uh motion to adjourn so moved second chris and sherelle all those in favor all right all those opposed we are returned thank you everybody have a good evening you