2021-11-15 CSD99 School Board Meeting (LIVE)

001nobody needs to be masked if you're going to be in the room please put your mask over your mouth and your nose we will wait for you ma'am could you bring your phone your mask up please for those people who have not yet masked please mask ma'am could you please put on your mask yes thank you okay julie can you go ahead mike davenport here christopher espinoza here jenny hagstrom here terry pavisic here joanna vazquez drexler here nancy kupka here we have a quorum with stanford jade toledo sorry here thank you sorry [Music] give me a moment in there for which it stands one nation under god indivisible with liberty and justice for all all right good evening everyone thank you for coming out this evening we start this evening with recognition of the board

002today is school board member appreciation day in illinois and i'd like to recognize our volunteer board for all of their effort and work that it takes to be a school board member it's a lot of time here with us a lot of time preparing for board meetings and our board is especially good at attending professional development and improving their skills as a result of that our board was recognized by the illinois association of school boards for board governance and this adds to our growing list of recognition for that award and each board member will be awarded a we'll be awarded a pin for the recognition which i'll hand out to board members later tonight we also have a recognition of board member vasquez drexler for [Music] uh for uh let's see master board member for

003this year so thank you uh so much for your service uh all board members and then our partners on the master facility plan white and company uh are here to recognize the board as well thank you so much for having us out this evening on behalf of white and company we'd just like to thank the board of education the administration for all of your support through the master facility planning projects at both north and south high school as a community member and graduate of south high i am very deeply honored to be here and to be a part of this these projects so thank you very much for your support um i can say as well as a graduate of south and both parents went to north this has been a privilege that maybe is

004the best in my career and it shows that when you worry about building and not about blaming you can save about a year and you can save about 20 percent that couldn't have been done without the leadership of this board and we are eternally grateful thank you very much and if we're allowed we have a little thing we'd like to give you so we'd like to present a um to hank and the board yeah absolutely well i just want to make sure everyone can hear us it's a picture of both north and south the final photography of each of the buildings um with a collage of the finished spaces thank you i think we'd be remiss without acknowledging what a wonderful job you guys did our spaces are fabulous thank you so much and i

005would also like to recognize dr feely's leadership in this on behalf of the board thank you all [Applause] okay it's not working you wanna take a second okay our first action tonight is approval of minutes uh for the october 18 2021 business meeting the november 1st 2021 workshop meeting and the november 1st 2021 closed meeting do we have a motion so move one second joanna and chris joanna chris drexler aye christopher espinoza aye shirelle fuller jenny hagstrom aye terry pavisage aye mike davenport aye nancy kupko aye the minutes are approved before we go into the reception of visitors do you have something you want to say dr feely no i heard i have a statement for this second okay so the meeting agenda includes two opportunities for comments from the audience this first reception of

006visitors is intended for audience members to address the board about any agenda item on which the board will vote the second reception of visitors is intended for audience members to address the board and any topic pertaining to community high school district 99 comments are going to be limited to three minutes to provide all visitors an equal opportunity to address the board individuals needing more time should submit their thoughts and writing to the board secretary mrs nydak visitors addressing the board need to submit a comment slipped to the board secretary and will be invited to the microphone prior to addressing the board audience members should state their full name the proceedings are being tape recorded for the purpose of producing accurate meeting minutes and they are being streamed i reserve the right to modify those protocols

007if circumstances warrant and we really do appreciate your observation of these protocols we're just going to go through the slips for a moment foreign forward a bit um yes did you go through the guidelines yeah gina if you could advance to the next slide one one more for me all right the first reception of visitors as doc dr kupka mentioned is for items that are action items this evening action items this evening include the consent agenda items that are listed and the other action items there which are approval of the proposed bell schedule approval of the calendar year insurance premiums the resolution to prevent sexual harassment and the second reading and approval of policies as well we have three comment slips for those items the first person i'd like to invite forward is carol davis

008gina if you could advance the slide once she starts speaking oh you got to go back good evening i'm carol davis and i moved to the district about four years ago my kids attended school in cook and lake counties and they are now grown and i am here to speak in favor of the proposed bell schedule though my kids are grown and attended high school in lake county they both experienced four years of rigorous and intense black scheduling i can speak to both the very real benefits and the very real detriments of black scheduling they also endured procedural changes regarding passing times between classes and lunch periods and that is why my ears perk up at the mention of bells and schedules i think we can all agree that little things can have a big

009impact when it comes to education because of my experience with black scheduling i identify with the concerns of parents who are worried about black scheduling while black scheduling has real advantages mainly that students and teachers have more time for in-depth instructions full black scheduling something this board is not considering also has serious drawbacks for many students particularly those that are in vocational programs like one of my own children was but that's another story for another time as stated previously a longer and structural instructional period can have advantages especially in subjects like music math and science and block scheduling provides this it was pleasing to see a hybrid schedule how i wish my children's high school had come up with that having black scheduling limited to one subject once a week is probably the optimal approach

010for a public high school that must accommodate numerous academic needs and learning styles the approach that the board and the staff have taken is holistic and well thought out when you look through the documentation that accompanies the proposed schedule it is evident that both the board and the faculty have done a thorough job of researching and acknowledging issues and concerns including the reality of a split lunch that black scheduling creates but with the proposed schedule it will only be on two days having one day a week to dig deep into a subject will have a big payoff for the students as stated earlier little changes can have big impact thank you [Applause] next is miss wandee i'm i think the last name is d having a hard time making it out somebody from west looking

011for uh it looks like the first initial is m and then looks like the last name might be d in what it lives in westmont i'm having a hard time reading the name here the subject says education but check first action first perception of visitors all right we'll move to the next one and uh the next person up is uh jim devitt i'm sorry second reception okay nick brownie maybe mcroundy mick roundy or mcbrowndy it's not an action item your item and action item or no okay okay we'll move on to the recommendations and reports of the superintendent returned in person learning all right gina if you'll advance the slides there uh so really there's been no change in guidelines from the state for return to in-person learning at each board meeting we've updated the

012board and the public on the number of close contacts and positive cases that have come our way each month we update the board on the number of staff positive cases as those numbers have been very small we've been reporting data across the district and across all staff so that there's not a chance of identifying who those individuals are as you can see we've remained pretty consistent since this well this is about a month's worth of data i give you there i think the range for positive students has been between one and five a week and the range for close contacts i think our highest number in a week was 23 and i think our lowest was one or two so it's been a pretty pretty consistent range though throughout the the whole year any questions

013on that all right gina if you could advance all right the next topic is the proposed bell schedule uh this is just an overview of kind of the flow of the week just a reminder for the board that tonight this is an action item and what we're asking is the board to authorize the the prototype schedule as it's structured and in doing so is authorizing the administration and staff to invest the hours into it that it's going to take for the solve force and the additional communications throughout the rest of the year as this is a time intensive project we want to make sure that the board is approving of us continuing to advance our time and effort in this as the school year proceeds uh if go to the next slide gina we sent

014out uh information to uh staff to students to families about uh many details around the proposed hybrid block and then ask for feedback on this we use that feedback to go against all of our our known issues that we're already starting to work on and solve for and to identify some concerns and misconceptions in a moment gene is going to share some of those with you and go through [Music] basically some some answers to some of those concerns as well as well as identifying some of the work that we have to do for the rest of the year in the end we believe that this is the right direction to go for our students as it will provide both the instructional opportunities that we need but will allow us to have each student's time more

015directly allocated to where their most essential points of need are or the areas that they want to advance the most in so we've gone back to the benefits many times over the last several months so i'm not going to read those through to the board but i'm going to turn it over to gina now to discuss some of the survey misconceptions and clarifications thank you dr thiele as we comb through the survey responses we identified several misconceptions or items that we wanted to clarify the first one is that many people commented on how a two-day block will lead to a four-day block we are not recommending a four-day block in fact we are advocating for a two-day block we are not considering a four-day block at this time in addition concerns were raised about supervision

016of students before school we currently have supervision of students before school and we will continue to provide supervision we absolutely have to supervise our students in the morning and throughout the day there were a few concerns about whether or not there'd be a sufficient period of time to conduct iep meetings the on the eight period days we are anticipating that the periods will only be a few minutes shorter in fact the block days will be longer so we do not feel that it will adversely impact iep meetings there were some questions about counseling and student support services and how their curriculum could be cut currently many of those lessons occurred during class so during an english class or during a social studies class in fact this schedule allows us the opportunity to incorporate that curriculum

017into our access period which will be on the block days and our resource periods that also will be on the block days so we do not anticipating needing to cut our c triple s curriculum some concerns were raised about split lunches we certainly know that a split lunch is not ideal for some classes and we will definitely take that into consideration as we're planning the schedule concerns were raised about professional development time and how professional development would be structured that is one of our salvors in fact we have a professional development committee that we are forming to work on it however professional development will occur on the block days during periods four five and six because teachers have a lunch period that falls either fourth fifth or sixth period in addition concerns are raised about

018course teams and time and we are we have a committee forming to consider how best to support our teachers our teams our departments on our common experience work so that committee will be working with that the hybrid block schedule will negatively impact certain programs there were specific comments to our cooperative work training course tcd our child development lab and we are working with different departments to consider how they may be impacted and to resolve any potential issues arise another concern that was raised was about the schedule being challenging for some students with executive functioning that they may not be successful under this model and although the schedules appears to be complex and we're looking at many different possibilities each student will have an established weekly schedule and we will be preparing each student on how

019best to navigate that schedule dr thule mentioned one of the salvors and we have created committees to work on these our access and resource period committee will work on structures and processes as well as some of those issues that came up about for example the counseling and student support services curriculum that will all be worked through through that committee which will begin meeting we plan to begin meeting next month part-time in traveling teacher schedules our opposite lunch classes athletics and activities professional development and then course team time so we are forming these committees that will be composed of administrators and teachers and as i said earlier source and resource period planning committee is being formed and will meet soon some of the things that we're working on in that committee or we're planning to work

020on is structure and building more structure at the beginning of the year and skill building we're also working on how to help students to transition and select help self-selected help for students in areas that they may need we're also working on what are the expectations during that time can we get guest speakers in from different groups like colleges and trades and local businesses how best to prepare our students for post-secondary guest speakers in all different areas and professions as well and then there are several yearly events that we participate in now that can be built into that either the access period or that resource period many different recognitions and celebrations that occur throughout the year and then other areas will be built in as well so it's a common misconception with the access and resource

021period because we want to get the board's approval before we spend staff time planning for each and every one of those days throughout the year is that it's going to be totally unstructured time and that's that's not the case you know they'll uh there'll be a lot more structure at the beginning of the years we teach students the skills of how to manage that one resource that one access period once a week where they're going to teachers and getting help or teachers or scheduling them into space but we need to build those skills at the beginning of the year so that students are doing that appropriately and then have supports there for when students don't use that time appropriately but then the other access and resource periods will have programming scheduled into them throughout the

022year so one of those access periods will be totally scheduled every week of the year and then half of the resource period will be scheduled with programming as well so we understand the concern of a full 78 minutes of no structure would be difficult for some if not many high school students to manage that's why you know we'll have alternating programming in that space so some of that time will be structured and some of that time will be there for students to either work on their own or get help from our resource centers during that back half of that time so as the year goes on uh you know we'll continue we're right here at finalizing the version the first version and then seeking approval and then throughout the rest of the year we're going

023to work on those solved floors and almost at every board meeting just as we did with the master facility plan just as we're doing with strategic planning any big change that we make we keep the board up to date as to the progress that we're making we're trying to do this in a very transparent and open fashion so that people are aware of the they get to see the plane as it's built right uh in many school districts that have gone through this change the whole plan is released in the spring of the year before the next fall when it's implemented and we know that that would cause a lot of concerns because it just shows up out of nowhere so part of the idea of planning and building this way is that over the

024course of the year the community gets to learn about it in manageable chunks right this is a lot for anybody to take in we know there's a lot of questions and concerns so we want to work over the whole course of the year kind of just here's the next thing get people's feedback be able to respond to that make it make adaptations in the plan as students and and families and staff raise concerns so that we have the best possible plan in place for next fall the first group that will work is the spot where the biggest concerns are the new thing with the access periods and resource periods that committee begins working i think uh very soon we're forming that committee now and then i think right after thanksgiving that group starts working so

025as soon as we have like a temp uh a tentative schedule together and then we put together rules and processes and all of those those all be coming to the board over the course of the year and to the public so that everybody can see how that's all coming together well in advance and then towards the end of the year we'll give a comprehensive overview of what next fall will look like so i think questions are next from the board any board member questions on what we've presented up to this point do you do you have a sense of how many alternate bell days there are right now right now i i don't i didn't go through and count them we did look at how many weeks have an alternate bell schedule in it and

026it's about half of the weeks and the year have some kind of alternative schedule in them so it's very like today was a monday late start schedule which is a different schedule that also had pbis inside of it so today was an alternate schedule so throughout the entire school year our students are navigating through either calendar changes based on holidays or events or schedule changes based on things like testing and pbis and pep assemblies and any number of things so it's very common for students and staff to have to manage an alternative schedule at various points throughout the week and the year and how long are the access periods uh currently we're looking at a 30-minute access period of course once that committee gets in and starts working and putting in actual ideas and lessons

027that might shorten up a little bit it might extend we also might play with the passing periods in there a little bit so there's some different still moving pieces that might flex as we move along and if we're going to make a recommendation to change that we'll we'll come back to the board with that information we've received some uh some pretty thoughtful emails um on both in both supporting and and concerns about the block schedule um obviously the solve fours is a little bit of a concern right what's our confidence that we can do it although um intuitively we know that we're not reinventing the wheel here and so other schools have have figured out the assault force and we certainly will and i know we have confidence to do that it's important that people

028have time to plan ahead of time for this and so i i really like this really long process we've been going through to get to that point i empathize with some of the concerns we've heard about wanting to hey just have one more year of keep things the same but in in fact this i think this schedule there's three days a week that are the same and um it's just those two days that there's a little bit of a difference in and i think that if we really believe that this is better right that it doesn't make sense for us to wait and i understand you know people have some apprehension over change but i think we've got the capability here to do this the right way and hopefully over the you know between now

029and next fall we can continue to build that trust with people um as they better understand what this involves um there's something else i wanted to say and i forgot oh what what do you how do you how do you speak to so we've gotten some emails about um some concern over actually a reduction in instructional time how do you respond to that yeah so there's a couple of ways of looking at it actual minutes we have to remember when we look at this model that the access periods are not lost minutes the idea is that we build to a spot where during that access period time that it's a restructuring of the minutes so students are moving to the teachers where they need to get help at that time or we're moving them there

030right but in some way it's that time is restructured so right now there's a time in each day where a student is successful in a certain course and they're spending more time in that class than they probably need to because they're doing just fine right but if they could get a little more help from this other class during the day they'd much rather have that time there where they're not as successful or somewhere where they're just like pushing way ahead so what this allows us to do is to individualize and personalize the educational experience for kids which is the direction that education is moving in so that their time is more spent where it's needed kid by kid rather than us just assuming every kid needs the same amount of time in every class each

031week across the board right and of course there's procedures and mechanics and making sure that students are ready for that change and that staff are and will front load that at the beginning of the year so access periods at the beginning of the year are going to look at a look at building a lot of those skills that students are going to need to be successful in this new model and then eventually we'll start transitioning to where students are either being assigned or are choosing as to which teachers that they need to go see and work further thank you you know i wanted to build on something did anybody else want to say something before i go in i wanted to build on something mike said you know i continue to struggle with this and

032i know that professional development are in the cell floors but we have heard from a lot of the community members as mike said on both sides of this and i guess my question is about the timeline and would it be advantageous to go forward with this but try but maybe give another year give you a year and a half to develop it versus half of a year give those juniors that last year of a more normal schedule but what are the disadvantages of doing that so first of all i think that this schedule offers us the the time flexibility and space to meet students needs and by putting that off some of our students that are most impacted especially by the pandemic right now this schedule is not providing that time and space and flexibility

033to to meet their needs and help them so we're saying to a group of students that are coming off of of a pandemic and might need some individual supports that well to just avoid change and to make it easier on on the administration and staff and we're going to put off something that could help you a year i don't like how that looks i think we're very able in the remainder of this school year to work through those solved force the professional development the time is built into the schedule for the professional development it's the actual activities that go inside of there and we right now with monday late starts we have to go through that exercise right now every year to prepare for what goes in the late start time this is just rethinking

034that as to how it fits into the rotating block time so it's not it's not a brand new concept it's not once again as mike said reinventing the wheel it's just planning differently and will that professional development time also include consideration of how you're going to evaluate that once this change is in place that teachers you know some will go to it like fish and water and some will struggle with it how we're going to evaluate that they are in fact using that extra time yeah it's the same it's the same mechanisms we use right now to evaluate teachers and make sure that they're using their time appropriately i would just be using it in this this new model but i i also think over the course of the year the administrative team will not

035think i know that is over the course of the year it's our responsibilities administrative team to bring suggestions to the board to how we monitor the progress of this so some of that is you need to build a little bit before i can come to you and say here are the absolute metrics that i would like to follow but we know that the number of student interactions with support that they use we should be following things like gpa for individual students and especially see students that might start out struggling catch up and advance their gpa because we're providing that individual support and i would think overall we should see the number of failures decrease in this model actually d's or f's decrease in this model because of the individual support that we're providing now it's

036going to be difficult that last metric will be difficult to separate all of the other things that we're doing to support students and the impact of coming off of a pandemic and all of those things to isolate those variables but we could definitely track students over time and see are they making progress if not why and is this model working for them any other questions i have a couple and looking at things like well first of all are you gonna try to restrict those access periods to wednesday and thursday for example like if there's a homecoming thing on a friday is there going to be a modified friday so that's that's the exact kind of things that we need to work through this year once we get this up and going is have the the

037conversation of on the week of an access do we just modify one of those block days so it's just the block days where we're playing with schedules or are we going to modify a friday because that's traditionally where it's fallen but week by week we're going to go through the school year and figure out how those things fall into what's there but as you can imagine it's going to take some time and effort i don't want to pull the administrative effort towards this until we get approval to move forward and then in things like physical education where there's exemptions or things you know that to me i i look at this and i see i see basically a way for a lot of kids to be done at 1 30 on wednesday and thursday and

038on one of those two days both actually because if they have a pe exemption for a semester and then possibly a eighth period study hall or you know some i mean it just it's jenny i did not hear you you can't hear me so the concern is around pe exemptions or study halls and then the amount of free time that students might have around that i think in other schools that we have seen move this way because students have more time during school day they actually see the number of study halls decrease and the number of academic courses increase which is a good thing overall right we want students more engaging in academic opportunities throughout the day so i think we're going to see the same thing happen with p exemptions and we're a lot

039of kids are taking pa exemptions because all of their evenings are full then they need the time during the day to get all of their homework done and those kinds of things between the change that we made in lunch this year next year with access and resource periods it's my belief that over time we're going to see less and less students engaging in in those activities and instead engaging in academic opportunities at the same time it is the time that students are flexing right so instead of doing that work in the evenings they're flexing that time to during the day if we look at how the world of work works for many of us your day is flexed as well you know the time that you're spending on work and on family and on recreation

040is all kind of getting intermingled as the world moves forward so respecting students use of time in this way is part of of this kind of schedule change and teaching them how to manage that appropriately as part of this as well and then what we're voting on is not a block schedule it's not a one the block schedule now it is a hybrid block but i mean that moving toward that has been decided well moving towards that is what we've been working on by voting on this tonight assuming you know there's board approval of this we'll continue to work towards that if it's a no vote today we'll have to figure out what the concerns are and try to address those and come back at a future board meeting but it is the intent of

041the administration to move towards this model because we strongly believe that this is how we can move education forward for students you know i like a lot of the things that you're promising with this schedule um especially for students in terms of the resources that they're going to be able to utilize um but i think the biggest thing that i've heard from students recently has just been especially for students who experienced a normal year and then a covered year in the hybrid year and then this year another year of the schedule that they're not used to seems to be just a bit overwhelming for them i think really what they're looking for is just consistency especially those who are juniors right now are going to be seniors next year i think they're really just they

042just want a normal school year or as close to as we as we can get but i do i like i like the idea of a block schedule in some capacity especially the things that it can provide to the students but i think uh if is there a way to vote on moving forward with coming up with some of the plans sort of fleshing out some of those ideas a little bit more so that we can get a better idea of what this is going to look like in practice because i feel like there's a lot of open-ended things that you're trying to work out right now um so it feels a little premature to vote to approve the schedule for for next fall yeah what you're proving tonight is really the basic structure for

043and for us to work inside of it and authorizing us to do the work right and then over the course of the year we'll continue to bring this to us bring this to you and to fill in the gaps right and if we get closer to the end of the school year and board members are concerned that oh this is too fast we should put this off a year we can make that decision later on in the year but i i need this to continue to move forward and say this is what we we intend on doing so that you know there's there's still a long time between now and next fall to for board members to to make the recommendation to the administration that we slow this down we delay a year it's possible

044that as we do this work with our staff we come with the same recommendation but right now i feel like we can get this work done we just need this this point in time to to move forward and say yep spend the time on this come back to us continue to address our concerns and the communities concerns and work on this over the course of the year and chris to address the concern about it's another year that changes in high school it changes every year for students right they're scheduled sometimes semesters to semester their schedule changes and as we established earlier week to week the schedule is changing the bell schedules are changing the calendar is changing so our students are very adaptable to uh to change right and it's our job to make sure

045that students that are challenged with that kind of change or have difficulties managing that kind of change that we're supporting them and making sure that they're successful inside of it so what would be the last date you'd have to have this solve for is done i mean you have to assign students to courses and juggle their schedules so we're not talking about like this final decision being made in you know august 1st no i mean we'll we'll continue to present over the course of the year i would expect that by the time that people go home in may right at the end of may that they would know pretty close to what their experience is going to be when they return in the fall right now it's nice for people to know what the schedule

046is going to look like it's important as department chairs move in and start scheduling classes and classrooms and teachers to make sure that things flow appropriately and that they know to start building towards that now because that's a long process to work to ultimately the schedule is still an eight period day right there's still three days a week that it's a eight period day so it's very much the schedule is going to be built very similar to how it's been built in the past which with a few caveats knowing that those periods move around a little bit on the block days but even up until may if we decided nope we're gonna just stay with the schedule that we have right now it'd be a very easy thing to just say we're not comfortable with

047this let's just stay with the eight period day because that's what it's structured around right the only thing we're doing fundamentally is just changing the order and the length of periods on tuesday or on wednesday and thursday each week so it's it's a shifting of time in the bell schedule on those two days much like what we did today for a late start monday with a pbis schedule right we changed the bell schedule around on today that's all that is all we're setting up is to do on wednesday and thursday each week throughout the school year if we wanted to go back to what we have now it's a very easy thing to decide later on this year that no we've decided we're not comfortable you administration you've brought us all of these things you've

048solved for all of the we're just not ready to move forward at this point at which point we could just keep doing what we're doing now um without you know forcing kids to choose different courses or you know anything like that but we also think it's important as students go into course scheduling to think about well maybe i will take that extra course because there's enough time in here i don't feel like i need a study hall you know there's certain decisions like that that might play into a student's course selection that we feel it's important that they get an idea of what the schedule might look like when they head into that time ultimately i'll need to see you know these solve force solved right correct but bottom line what this boils down to

049is the goal of this is greater student success there's no reason to do this unless we think that this is going to help the students next year greater more than if we left things as it is and it's the job of our administration right to prove to us that that this is this is going to be the result and so ultimately the burden is is on hank and the staff at this point i think you know i'm supporting what you know going forward with this of course with the reservation i think that everybody has and you've already stated this hank if these softwares can't be solved in a in a in an adequate way that student success will be greater then we back the ship up you know back the truck up and move forward

050next year as we have in the past absolutely tonight's the authorization yeah to task me with bringing you all of those solved force and making sure all of your concerns are answered over the course of this school year so that's what a yes vote is this evening to kind of revisit what nancy brought up in looking at the juniors this year and just what they've already adapted to is there any is there a way that you could begin this with the incoming freshmen no this needs to be a holistic schedule change there's a lot of courses that run with all four grade levels in them so it isn't something where you could just do a school within the school model and isolate it to one grade level it's an all or nothing change it's a

051good question all right any other questions on this one thank you board for your time on this one i know that this is a big change and it's a lot to take in and we'll continue to answer those questions hopefully over the course of the year assuming a positive vote this evening before we move on to insurance plans good uh let's just have a mask check people in the back i'm people in the back let's everybody needs to put their mask on we need to comply ma'am in the red could you put your mask on please these young men up here okay please just just please put on the mask so please put on your mask so we can continue thank you if there are going to be outbursts if there are going to be

052outbursts and i feel or any member of the board or administration feels that the safety of the people in this room are at jeopardy i am going to adjourn the meeting i will call for adjournment so let's be quiet let's put our masks on and let's move on to the exciting discussion of insurance all right the next item gina uh calendar year 2022 insurance premiums i've shared this information with the board previously if you go to the next slide gina uh premiums are increasing and this is done with uh hub who is our uh oh boy mark what's the name of they are our program manager uh so this is based on actual costs in our plan our ppo plans are all self-insured plans so this is based on actual and projected costs in those

053plans you can see a various number of increases for each of those plans across the board that the board will be voting on this evening to take action on this is sets up the opportunity for us to go into open enrollment starting very soon after pending board approval this evening gina if you go to the next slide because we recognize that some of those premium increases might be challenging we're introducing a new plan offering that's a another ppo plan it's a consumer-driven health plan it is a lower premium plan but a higher deductible plan but comes with a health savings account and we're recommending that the board increases contributions to this plan because the premiums are lower so it's a way of saving sharing that savings with the employees and then one more slide i

054think gina nope no that was it so uh it's oh it was on in the text of there so for each of the ppo plans we have a a percentage of covering by employee group and we're recommending that by the board approving these tonight that they would pass on a 5 additional contribution for this ppo plan for each of those groups respectively so the board's been through this as is benefits and i've provided a lot of information are there any outstanding questions on this topic all right i'll invite mark to come up to address the post issuance tax compliance report one of the board's favorite reports of the year well yes it's my responsibility to give a post-issuance text compliance reports so this is for bonds when we issue them after they're out in in

055the communities and in the market we need to monitor them each year to make sure if we have arbitrage report that to irs if we're doing things with the with a private concern which we shouldn't be doing we would need to report that or any changes in our major financial changes in our finances um if we we have to have our kaffir put on the web once a year updated and things like in 2018 we had an upgrade in our status to double a plus and that needed to be reported just so the people that hold the bonds have an idea what's going on in the district and there's a little complex report that's there um along with the memo that i have presented in the board packet that shows we've met all the compliance

056issues that we need to with that and we're in shape for this all year any questions for mark all right thank you nicely done mark thank you all right i'm going to invite jim forward to go through the capital improvement plan for next year okay first slide it's a combo tonight i'm going to bring some esser funding and projects that gina brought to the board in september kind of go through them a little bit just to give you an idea of what they are in a timeline so there's four that are going to go to esser projects one's already completed it's the eating area at south pavers are done uh just need to get furniture we'll be doing that opening up for spring rooftop units so there's three here uh hvac one's a cooling unit

057one's a packaged heating and cooling unit and an air handler so these are three that were due to be done in the near future some of the benefits of why we're doing this through esser greater supply of fresh air instead of the 25 percent they give a hundred percent also the filtration we can bump up to a higher merv rating so particulates will be caught and better fresh air throughout the classroom aztecs exchanges so in the end air quality improvement timeline the date in december i'll bring that to you in january and then construction for this next summer if you remember last year's capital plan we had north chiller replacement on it that was funded by us or two network was completed this past summer we added an additional project if you remember the leak

058here at north in the wood boards warping part of the problem was the drainage and the roof that was not completed through mfp so we're going to finish that project with capital funding from this year hope that's not too confusing so we got rid of north chiller off the list we added north roof on the list again the bid date will be in december i'll bring that to you in january and construction will start the summer next slide you know okay the capital plan most of these you're familiar with large rms maintenance repairs for our schools as the year goes by unexpected annual bleacher repair we do a yearly inside and outside bleacher inspection and then that money is allotted for the repairs of that boiler replacement is for district building at the asc that's

059the original 1993 boiler so useful life out of it and we're going to replace that this coming summer ffa for the buildings you'll see that for both north and south so i'll just go through that that's furniture fixtures and equipment that are needed grouse repair outside work science lab 318 those are floor tiles that are popping up we'll replace that floor with similar floor that we did with the mfp that you're seeing throughout the building grounds mower and tractor it's a combo at north those are old pieces of equipment need to be replaced so we're going to package them together building automated system that's for the main office here at north so upgrades to that physical education office here at north that's a renovation that was done in 1999 so they're going to redo that

060office there's 11 teachers make some space get some new furniture do some work in there again ffa and grounds for south similar to north social studies office renovation at south that'll be similar to what we did with mfps redoing the renovation of the area for the staff that's a bigger one than at north softball field and dugout renovation there'll be new dugouts there's also some drainage issues at home plate so that that work will be done as well and a towel handler which is basically a forklift on wheels you see them a lot of construction sites south never had a forklift so what they use for many things that they're going to need including getting up to 40 feet high on their buildings exchanging filters things like that any questions no no no not for

061me thanks jim thank you thank you update to the resolution to prohibit sexual harassment all right so several years ago schools across illinois were passing these resolutions there's been changes in several of the policies and laws well laws and then policies that impact this resolution what this is is a cleanup of both the resolution and the policies that are that are connected to it to keep up with changes in state and federal law once again the wrong order federal and state law so it's the recommendation of the administration tonight that the board approved this resolution to just be in compliance with with those changes any questions all right here i'm done freedom of information acts yeah requests yep we had them uh this month we've responded to several and the results of those are posted

062on the district website uh gina if you advance uh well i think i'm out of order but later on there's a slide that maybe i didn't even include it but up on the website if you search for foias you can find all of them okay moving on to the consent agenda is there any item any member of the board wishes to remove for further discussion [Music] hearing none i need a motion for the board of education to approve the consent agenda as presented which includes the personnel report transfer of physician classified appointments classified leave of absence classified the personnel report retirement certified retirements classified resignations classified and the financial pages so move second i think it was terry and mike mike thank you very much terry pavisic aye mike davenport aye christopher espinoza hi shirelle

063fuller aye jenny hagstrom aye joanna vazquez drexler aye aye nancy kupka aye the consent agenda passes now we move on to the action items uh first we need a motion for the board of education to approve the bell schedule for the 2022-2023 school year as presented so moved second mike and i didn't hear a second second terry thank you mike davenport aye terry pavich aye joanna vazquez drexler aye christopher espinoza aye shirelle fuller no jenny hagstrom no nancy kupka i it passes next we need a motion for the board of education to approve the calendar year 2022 insurance plans and premiums as presented so move second [Music] district mike timmerman thank you trey pavich aye mike davenport aye christopher espinoza aye cheryl fuller aye jenny hagstrom aye joanna vazquez drexler aye nancy kupka aye the

064motion curies and finally we need a motion for the board of education to adopt a resolution to prohibit sexual harassment as presented so moved exactly mike and terry gary terry thank you mike davenport aye terry pavicich aye joanna vazquez drexler aye christopher espinoza aye cherelle fuller hi jenny hagstrom aye and nancy kupka aye certainly passes okay moving on to old business this is the motion for the board of education to approve the policies as presented [Music] mike and joanna thank you mike davenport aye joanna vazquez drexler aye christopher espinoza aye sharel fuller aye jenny hagstrom aye terry pavicich aye and nancy kupko aye the policy security okay we're going to move into the second reception of visitors prior to today you had a statement you wanted to read first of all just some process and

065protocol we have a large number of people that wish to speak this evening that filled out comment slips i have prioritized them according to board policy to those that are residents in the district 99 attendance area and those that are not i believe that in the time that is allocated we would not be able to get through more than half of the people that wish to speak so my recommendation to you dr kapka is you have the right to set the rules for this evening are that we extend the amount of time that we hear perspectives of our visitors but we also shorten the amount of time that each person speaks to be respectful of the amount of time that this evening takes so i'm i'm recommending two minutes per speaker but extending the amount

066of time to be 40 minutes of total time it works for me does any board member have an issue with that okay so once we i'll start the clock once we start calling people up but before we start that i would i have a statement that i would like to read in anticipation of what i believe some of the speakers are here to speak about tonight so good evening everyone before we begin the reception of visitors i would like to address a few matters in regards to instructional resources including library books and processes around selection and retention of these resources i believe based on what i've seen here that we have several visitors in the room tonight that are here in regards to the book genderqueer public schools are governed by federal and state laws

067along with board policies and administrative regulations the book genderqueer meets the criteria for inclusionary library under the guidelines in our collection development policy this is an optional book and not part of any course or required reading however just as there is a process to determine if a title should be in our library there is a process to determine if the title should remain in our collection board policy 6.260 a establishes the right for a resident to challenge an instructional resource through an objection form we have received two such objection forms for the book genderqueer our established well-defined process which has been used in the past allows residents an opportunity to provide a rationale as to why this title should no longer be in our collection the process is followed to determine the validity of this

068request our administration is dedicated to ensuring this process is followed with fidelity and that everyone's rights are respected ultimately a superintendent my responsibility is to ensure that the laws policies and regulations are followed correctly i will continue to do that properly as we advance through the process the outcome of the process will determine this community's determination if this resource should remain in our collection although we welcome everyone's perspectives this evening the ultimate decision of this book are independent and the process is already underway i ask that this evening as you choose to share your perspectives that you remain respectful of those in the room others watching online at home and those in attendance this evening including your fellow community members students in the room board members administration and our student board members present this evening

069with that we can start the reception of visitors gina i feel a dance [Applause] if you'll advance to the timer that's two minutes and then back up one slide skip past that one [Music] all right i think if you go one more it will start the two minute timer go ahead and then you can back up and then we can advance when the first person comes up to speak thank you all right as i indicated according to our policy i will be calling up people that have attested that they are residents of the district 99 attendance area first this is starting at 7 40 so it will end at 8 20. just before you begin did you include mrs um yes okay all right our first speaker is uh josiah poynter [Applause] [Music] it's a

070press microphone are you comfortable with that then okay wood woodpress okay wgn that is a microphone from wgn what is it okay now well all right before you begin before the clock begins let's be respectful and listen to what people have to say okay everybody who's gonna have a good chance to speak deserves the same respect sir all right hello school board parents and community members my name is josiah poynter and i am an 18 year old senior and i attend downers grove north i play football and write for our school newspaper the omega at north i have found that one of our strength is inclusion at north we have numbers of clubs activities and events for almost anybody including myself i first moved here in 2019 before my sophomore year and i immediately joined

071the football team there i found kindness and brotherly love almost immediately i felt like i finally found a family and a time where i didn't know anyone and felt like an outsider i couldn't imagine my life without those men inclusion matters to young people this is why we must have this book in our school's library inclusion brings an opportunity to grow in a safe environment it brings comfort to people who feel unloved and cast out i understand this novel um this novel has scenes in it that's mature and sexual to say the least that makes people uncomfortable and brings up talking points that are not always easy to talk about with families especially those who are religious which again as a christian i understand that completely is understandable however what is not is taking someone's

072inclusion in taking someone's inclusion in terms of the book even if it makes you uncomfortable and it's not like we haven't been given books with sexting them before books like montana 1948 and it both have graphic rape scenes and sexual group sex with children i just feel that inclusion matters and as a straight man i can never understand what lgbtq members go through but it's important that we include those so they feel nice so your time has expired thank you i'd like i'd like the room to come to order whether you agree with the speaker or not grandstanding and applause during or after each speaker will only cut into the number of speakers that are allowed to speak this evening so please just allow each speaker to speak and we'll move on to the next

073person afterwards the next person up is carl miller just ask you to hold a moment and just want a little quick check among the board members waste time how many board members have difficulty would like to have the wg and michael founder excellent i'm just gonna have a question putting a pause on the clock uh quick check with the other board members how many board members present would like to have the wgn microphone removed this one two [Music] i'm going to ask for silence i'm asking for board member feedback this is somebody else too okay thank you thank you though for expressing your feelings we'll extend the time until 8 22. [Music] thank you i'm sorry about that [Music] good evening ladies and gentlemen of the board my name is carl miller and i am

074a 23 year old lifelong resident of district 99 and the reason i'm here tonight is uh to ask you to drop the mask mandate for the district at this juncture uh there is no scientific or data-driven justification for a policy to force masks on students who by and large are not threatened by this virus and to a great extent are are not even vectors of the virus to others around them so i would just say you know i think that the the upside of masks is you know dubious at best and that there's demonstrable downsides like hypercapnia when students are breathing in their own carbon dioxide and also just the the inability to communicate facial expressions are important for kids they're important for adults um but i think but i think it's important uh that

075we just cut out the face diaper because at this point it's just become political it's become a cult and it isn't scientific anymore so i'm just asking you all to have i'm asking you all to have to have courage i know it's not easy in this environment i know the governor sometimes thinks he's a dictator but many school districts are standing up and having courage in allowing for children and parents to have freedom you know the fact we're debating now whether we can breathe free air i just think is says quite a bit says quite a bit about where we've where we've come to i'm asking you all to have courage and i thank you for your attention this evening yeah thank you the next speaker is mary lomanski [Applause] can you hear me okay

076yeah actually we can hear you okay hi i'm mary lemanski my son is a freshman here at north barron frederick von steuben a prussian military man hired by george washington to whip the continental army into shape during the darkest days of the revolutionary war is known for his bravery and the discipline and the grit he brought to the american troops historians also think he was homosexual and served as an openly gay man in the military at a time when sex between men was punished as a crime though his name is little known among americans today writes eric tricky as for smithsonian every u.s soldier is indebted to von steuben he created america's professional army i wonder what he would have thought of bill clinton's don't ask don't tell we have all heard of the underground

077railroad downers grove itself played a role in the underground railroad we often hear how white people would help and harbor black people to safety but we never ever learn the genius way in which black people community communicated the way to point to the where the meet-up point was and when they had to hide their communication so they did it right out in the open the slaves would often sing in the fields as they worked these work songs and field haulers were used to communicate many things but one was being one where the underground railroad was to meet these field hollers were the precursors to the call and response of the american spirituals and gospel music and to the blues the blues formed the basis of jazz rock and roll r b funk and even hip

078hop and who can even stand country unless it is laced with blues to me as a professional musician singer songwriter and composer american music is black music because it certainly would not be the same without their influence unfortunately that beautiful music was born from pain and suffering and denial of freedom real denial of freedom not asking you to consider the public health and having you wear a piece of cloth on your mouth the most patriotic person i ever knew was my father who served for four years in the united states military and he went he went when the korean war he just voluntarily went when they were drafting people and he taught me that you don't need to wear american flag you need to do what is right for your country and right now that's

079wearing a mask [Applause] next up is julia hansen julia hanson let's keep it down let's be respectful because if there's threatening threatening language or booing i'm going to adjourn you know [Music] okay hi everyone i'm julie hanson a junior at dgn and an editor for the dj and omega yesterday i read the graphic novel slash autobiography genderqueer by maya kobe kobe abuses e m air pronouns i know that's like really weird confusing um but they're pronouns i had heard of but never actually used in this coming-of-age novel kobe was assigned female at birth and realizes he doesn't have any urge to be completely masculine or feminine as a cisgender and straight woman i could not relate to kobe in that way and parts of this book were uncomfortable to read but i was expecting that

080the books in our library are intended to entertain and educate students which for me was accomplished in reading genderqueer nothing about this book was new to me just like nearly every other high school student at dgn i have a cell phone where i'm showing new ideas every day parents i can guarantee your teenagers have seen it all when it whether it is in our phones or discussed among friends nothing is censored somehow among all this corruption i'm still straight and have not fallen victim to homosexual content on my cell phone i know us high school students are not impressionable in the way it is often believed and genderqueer is not a grooming tool for sexual predators we have already been stripped of our innocence completely and one copy of a book in our library makes

081no difference to that after all most kids have never checked out a book from our library yeah it is okay to dislike or disagree with genderqueer the ideas discussed in level in the novel are weird and foreign so conflict is inevitable but it's not okay to diminish the accessibility of new ideas to students someone who picks up this book will either feel like they finally felt been understood or as i did they will learn to put themselves in other shoes as a high school student i ask that we lead with an open mind and keep them keep the line of different perspectives open also nobody has to read it so i'm writing an opinion article on the book so if anyone wants to talk to me after this feel free to approach me and give

082me your opinion [Applause] bruce beckman [Music] yeah the next person that should be in line is hillary denk you guys should put a picture of the picture up there so everyone sees what everyone's talking about mr beckman yes hi my name is bruce beckman i'm a resident of downers grove and i just so happen to be a former member of this board many many many years ago i i i'm here to share a historical perspective and sometimes as a current board member you said that's just what i need as a historical perspective but in fact as board president i ran into a very similar situation and we did have a have a condition where there was a book called the bluest eye and there were members of the community who did object to that book

083it wasn't a very good book we all on the board we all read the book to get a feel for what it is it had a sexual operator but what i found the irony of it is the more controversial we became the more students pick checked out the book to read it because one of our practices was if nobody read the book it circulated off of the library shelves so as well-meaning as these individuals might be here they may be working against their own interests so i highly recommend you keep the book there you exercise the constitutional rights and let it move forward thank you hillary dank is up and after hillary is laura hoist [Music] hi i am a resident of donner's grove i grew up here and my children went to district 99

084schools i want to first thank the school board for their incredible service to our community as volunteer leaders you have been under enormous stress and strain and i thank you so much for your service i also want to ask a question why is diversity equity inclusion so controversial aren't we all opposed to discrimination on the basis of race religion sexual orientation and gender identity shouldn't books that express that information to our children shouldn't they be included as part of our public education diversity inclusion improve teaching and learning people learn and enrich their abilities to think critically and creatively as they engage in conversations across difference especially when all learners abilities and attributes are embraced these activities can help personal development improve social skills build self-confidence develop teamwork and support independence for both the disabled and

085non-disabled in our children this is another part of inclusion that we don't talk nearly enough about there are five great benefits in teaching diversity in education they better prepare our students for a global economy build confidence later in life promote empathy and reduce prejudice improve student achievement and foster creativity i applaud all of you in your good work and the teachers work the principles work the superintendents and continuing to support diversity inclusion and equity thank you after miss voice tabitha irvin will follow laura hoist i'd like to request that the wgn microphone be removed the next speaker is tabitha irvin [Music] following tabitha irving will be i'm sorry i still can't read your handwriting we'll be the next person that i didn't recognize earlier so tabitha's up next that was like the third one so

086hey what's good hello can you all hear me speak a little get a little closer to the microphone there you go tabitha okay um sorry could you restart the timer then [Music] go ahead tabitha thank you okay um so my name is tabitha and i am a junior at downers grove north and please know that while i do have my own political identity i will not allow my beliefs to dictate the contents of this speech because i think that animosity and backlash honestly does nothing but feed the fire so while being a donor's growth taxpayer does entitle you to voice your opinion it does not guarantee that you have a comprehensive understanding of what occurs during each school day at dgn or dgs in fact apart from teachers and some administrators students are the only

087people fully immersed in the school experience for 35 hours a week with the highly controversial nature of america's current political atmosphere the debate found in downers grove is understandable you should all be able to voice your perspective on issues such as critical race theory sex education and coven 19 mitigation protocols and there are many platforms where you can do this school board meetings are not one of them the sole purpose of board meetings is to improve the student experience and who better to advocate for the student experience than the students themselves at the october 18th board meeting of which i attended the intended topic of discussion was the proposed hybrid schedule however it was not discussed by the community at all but rather lee but rather eagerly and immediately abandoned for political crossfire that night

088and still tonight do you know what i'm eager for i'm eager to discuss issues that directly impact me and my peers every day issues like the proposed schedule which will go into effect my senior year of high school a schedule that has elicited a large number of complaints from various members of the school of the student body and a schedule that will impact every moment of each school day having two student board representatives is a great step in the right direction and jaden scarlett are doing an amazing job but no two students can possibly represent the needs and wants of nearly a 5 000 person student body i hope that we can begin to discuss what really matters perspective thank you so the the visitor whose name i couldn't pronounce or read at the beginning

089that's who we i can't remember who we decided that was would be who's up and then after that would be jim devitt [Music] okay do i need to tap it okay you're good uh good evening and thank you for hearing me out um as an owner and a practitioner of a healthcare practice for nearly 30 years my focus every morning when i got up was what is the best focus for me today to have an outcome that is good for my patient you run an institution that where much of a childhood occurs in schools and as for our d99 schools i hope we can all agree that the focus should always be the child under your care how do i personally evaluate that this is actually the case here students here are deserving of an

090honest and accurate education that gives them the freedom to pursue their dreams young people can handle hard truths sometimes better than we do as i can see tonight allow them the freedom to learn from others actions and decisions no matter how painful history is a great teacher preparing each young person with a toolkit which does include accurate and truthful info along with critical thinking skills gives them their new freedom to be the best they can be regardless of where the student lives these skills then enables them to learn from the past the good the bad the ugly all of what we've heard tonight so that they can avoid making past making the same mistakes by learning from the past this leads to more successful life outcomes makes our community and our state and our country

091stronger not doing this will literally your student body i don't know if i'll get through all this but i'm going to do as much as i can i know for myself after my sister was in a terrible head-on car accident it was a horrible experience but i did learn from that to wear a seat belt don't drive on icy snow blown roads at 2 am in the morning and the painful incident that i experienced it's helped me make better decisions i started wearing your time has expired i started wearing a seat belt jim david you're up thank you after jim devitt is linda shrons [Applause] [Music] good evening my name is jim devitt and a lot of what we're talking about tonight [Music] there's a lot of rhetoric going around and and some of the

092other people who spoke in the past have used sources such as tic tac for their talks so what i did was i went to the book illinois criminal code right here this is the law in the state of illinois let me read from it harmful material a person who with knowledge that a person is a child that is a person under 18 years of age or who fails to exercise reasonable care and ascertaining the true age of a child knowingly distributes or sends to or causes to be sent to or exhibits to or offers to distribute or exhibit any harmful material to a child guilty of a misdemeanor material is harmful if to the average person applying contemporary standards its predominant appeal take it as a whole is the puritan interest that is a shameful

093or morbid interest in nudity sex excretion which goes substantially beyond customary limits of candor and description or representation of such manners and the material the redeeming social importance of which is substantially less than its period appeal distribution of harmful material in violation of this section is a class a misdemeanor a second or subsequent offense is a class 4 felony nothing in this section shall prohibit any public library or any higher or any library operative and credit institution of higher educational education from circulating material provided such circulation as an aid in legitimate or scientific educational purpose we have some signs up here pages from that book tell me how these pictures are educational in any purpose this is pornography plain and simple and it does not belong in our schools [Applause] next up is linda schwarz

094followed by lauren parrott linda shawn's followed by lauren pearette my son didn't like that okay let's have quiet for our next speaker please thank you hi linda schranz i'm a 35-year resident of donners grove my daughter went through these hallowed halls and it's kind of fun to be back here looking at the auditorium again we've been through some really trying times these last two years we've all had to make decisions and take actions that we never anticipated we would be in the position of taking and throughout the pandemic the need for leadership has never been more clear and so therefore i'm here tonight to thank the board of education for the leadership that they have demonstrated in spite of the unknown difficulties you are facing you guys have selflessly put yourself in front line and

095not rewarded by fame or fortune in fact many times impugned for your decision-making but throughout this last two years one fact is very very clear to me and that is that the in your leadership the safety well-being and education of the community's children have been your top priority and so it's a lot it's really easy to you know come up here and complain about your grievances and this and that and the other thing a lot of times when people are happy with the way things are going they don't bother to come up here and say anything because you know why should they everything's going well but i want you to know that there are many people in the community who are aware of the pressure that's being born upon you and we are very supportive

096of the board of education and its actions and i thank you very much for your service thank you [Applause] warren carrick is next followed by jim jill bartlemy hello board members parents students district 99 taxpayers and people who don't live in the school district my name is lauren i'm 17 and i'm a senior up until last week i didn't know the book genderqueer existed that's how little the teachers and staff members of dgn encourage students to read it the only way a student would know about it is if they found out about it on their own thought it was something they'd be interested in and checked it out this isn't being forced upon your kids but it gives kids who would be interested in this story a choice to read it i also have a

097question handmaid's tale angela's ashes and it are all books in the school library handmaid's tale has a graphic sex scene between a man and a woman angela's ashes includes multiple graphic scenes that deal with masturbation and it a wildly popular book amongst the school includes a graphic sex scene between a fifth grade girl and five of her male friends but why are these books not being censored let's not present getting rid of gender queers censoring our children from sex it's homophobia it's an outward protest of media for queer students it's telling kids that who they are is wrong every day my parents tell me to listen to all sides of the story and consider all viewpoints before making a decision if we censor this book where does the censorship end as high school students we

098should have the materials to educate ourselves on all topics ideas and ways of life that way we can have a society of people who can understand different viewpoints and can come to compromises with each other genderqueer has some ideas that some people may not agree with but does that mean we should be banned that we should ban it yes how is it different than donald trump's twitter ban if we rob students of all information we'll have a society of people who hate each other and can't come to his decision thank you so much for listening and considering mine a student's ideas thank you [Applause] jill bartlemy is next followed by kylie spahn jill bartlemie followed by kylie spahn [Music] oh hello my name is still bernami and i just found out i'm part of antifa

099anyway first of all i just want to thank each and every one of you for everything that you have put up with this year especially and the past years i am a mother of a student who just recently graduated last year and of a student who will be coming in a couple years because of this i the thought of banning books is very concerning to me especially when it's coming from the freedom fighting group [Music] please [Music] please continue please continue students have a choice whether or not to check out the books in the material materials at a library as parents it's our job to make sure they follow our wishes it's called parenting so if you don't want your child to take a book out of a library perhaps you should have a conversation

100with your children excuse me i'm just trying to interrupt you thank you nancy one more outburst seriously one more out first and we will adjourn into closed session let the speakers speak no matter what side they represent she has one minute on her time or just restarted gina my apologies for interrupting that's fine i support the students they have spoken today and they continue to speak and i give you mad props for being here today they know what's best for them they know what they can figure out that's what high school is for they come here this is that part of their time of their life between being a kid and becoming an adult when they leave here they are expected to become an adult they sure as heck can figure out what books they

101can read and cannot read and it's not for us to decide what is accessible to them just because we find it inappropriate and if you really fear that your children are going to read something and figure something about themselves then that speaks more about you than it does about the book [Applause] kylie spahn followed by marcelo charveaux [Music] good evening kylie spahn district 99 parent firstly i would like to thank the board administrators and teachers for all their hard work and dedication to our students you're doing a tremendous job and i appreciate all that you are doing secondly i would like to address the board regarding the national trend to ban lgbtq books in high school libraries our own district is facing such a challenge from a small group of people who want to ban

102l g b t q books such as genderqueer beyond magenta and fun home this group is targeting and marginalizing our pride community they are not calling for the banning of graphic novel novels that depict hetro sex they are solely targeting books that represent the pride community the role of public schools is to educate everyone regardless of race color sexual identity socioeconomic status and disability banning books and resources that represent a minority group of students is destructive to the trust these students have in their teachers and denigrates the qualifications and experiences of our professional school librarians thirdly students have the intellectual freedom to choose which books they want to read no one is forcing students to read lgbtq books in high school we expect students to be an adult and make adult decisions from driving a

103car and getting a job to make being life-changing college and career decisions yet we have a small group of parents who believe that students are childlike when it comes to selecting literature additionally what may be inappropriate or uncomfortable to one student may be a valuable resource for another student banning books that represent a minority population is taking that choice and intellectual freedom away from all finally i would like to encourage the board to require any parent who wants to challenge these books in our libraries to follow policy and go through a reconsideration process and to refuse to act merely upon someone's complaint at a school board meeting thank you [Applause] [Music] my name is marcella durdrick cheray for the past 22 years i've been involved with numerous organizations at the national state and local levels

104each advocating tirelessly for health freedom and personal choice when it comes to medical decisions the fact that these types of organizations are even necessary in a free society should be appalling to each and every one of you today there are two diametrically opposed perceptions of reality existing at the same time one is influenced by media government and pharmaceutical fear-based propaganda it's group think cult-like behavior and it's jeopardizing our liberties by those who can't comprehend the impact of their short-sighted decisions it's abnormal to think that wearing a mask is required to stay alive the other is driven by rational thought experience observation and intuition this segment of the population are willing to die to preserve and protect our freedom so that we may each live as we see fit i stand by my previous statement that

105covid this manufactured crisis threatens our way of life more than it ever will our health masks are subjugation and submission those of you on the board have had plenty of opportunity to do the right thing to allow parents to make medical choices for their children but you've sold your souls to push a heinous agenda and those of you in the audience who refuse to see past your fear are all too willing to surrender your rights for some illusion of safety as a first generation american whose family actually lived through fascism socialism and communism i perhaps understand better than most that freedom is never to be taken for granted i share this as a cautionary tale tyranny is real and it's taken root you cannot comply your way out of it your blind obedience and your

106abject servitude will not serve any of us well marianne vazquez followed by leslie sadou sadowsky and terry up there [Music] hi i'm marianne vazquez signed from downers grove the discussion tonight is essentially about book censorship which is the suppression of ideas words and images that some people find offensive to them in some way everyone has their own thoughts as to what they consider appropriate for themselves and their children and that is the right and part of freedom as americans however others may have contrary thoughts and they aren't entitled to the same freedom to choose what is right for themselves and their family certain individuals based on their own personal situation they find this book helpful under the book that is under question can be helpful and instructive they should not be denied access based on

107the feelings of others who have no idea what these people are going through i suspect the children of these parents opposing these books likely have no inclination to check these books out of the bible the parents are truly concerned we'll give you 30 seconds please do not interfere with the speakers please refrain the kids are watching why can't you see it isolating your children from the world and opposing beliefs is getting more and more difficult but the larger problem is how we were being divided in this country into opposing camps and media and the internet is poisoning us against one another thank you [Applause] please respect the speaker's personal space the next speaker will be sean piazza thank you for allowing us to speak i'm leslie sadowsky fugit a downers grove resident with a kindergartner

108at fairmount who will eventually go to downers grove south i also volunteer with organizations who engage local teens i want to speak to encourage the board to continue with its dei efforts and expand its lgbtq plus resources lgbtq plus youth are more than twice as likely to report experiencing persistent feelings of sadness or hopelessness that their than their heterosexual peers high school students who identify as lgbtq plus are more than four times as likely to have attempted suicide compared to their heterosexual peers and forty percent of transgender adults have attempted suicide in their lifetime compared to five percent of the general us population it is estimated that lgbtq youth and young adults have a 120 percent higher risk of experiencing homelessness often the result of family rejection or discrimination based on gender identity or sexual

109orientation as you can see this is literally a matter of life and death having talked with local teens i'm sad to say that bullying and lack of support is still an issue in our community so i ask that you not only continue to stock the library with resources but also please make sure there's training for all staff not just teachers to ensure that students are not misgendered and dead names are not used please ensure there are ample non-gendered bathrooms and locker rooms especially given that we have just renovated it isn't that hard to accept human beings for who they are let's make sure that we as adults are setting the example let's work hard to use preferred names pronouns and set consequences for those adults and students who do not comply with this basic act

110of humanity at the 99 schools we need to show our lgbtq plus youth that we love and welcome them for who they are and that we recognize that they contribute meaningfully to the rich diversity of our community so thank you and i'm happy to talk with anyone further to ensure equity for this whole community thank you for what you do sean piazza followed by terry newsome [Applause] please bring your mascot please bring your mask up all right a young providence kept the kid full scholarship for football u of i a senior quarterback star quarterback at glenbrook north high school a young woman at hinzell south an oswego high school student these all have committed suicide within the last four months even more alarming cdc recently asked young adults that they had thoughts about killing themselves

111in the past 30 days one out of four said yes dupage counties reported a 23 percent rise in suicides compared to last year even though suicide rates have fallen globally they have climbed every year in united states since 1999 increasingly 55 percent in the past two decades yet the funding for suicide becomes far behind with the other causes of death even before the pandemic suicide was a second leading cause of death um sorry among young kids young high school kids should have my best friend first time um i asked myself why are so many kids thinking about suicide and unfortunately committing suicide i believe the big part to blame is unwarranted and never-ending lockdowns the children last year lost a year of schooling and social interaction they needed to interact with each other not with

112the phone or computer screen this is essential to their mental development and it is crucial all we've heard for last 18 months was about the virus the vaccine and the mass we have been beaten down our throats 74 million children 18 and younger in this country have died of the virus yet every day in this country 170 children commit suicide have you heard about that i don't think so because you can't make a profit of children dying but you can make millions of profits on mass and vaccines the focus should be on the children and only them if we stop playing the political game maybe we'll be able to stop somebody's suicide before they happen go back to teaching math science and history helping our children to be children sir your time has expired thank

113you next step is after mr newsome is emily hernandez hey uh you and your friends are trying to convince us that genderqueer a child pornographic sketchbook is acceptable in our schools under the pretense of inclusion and comedy additionally you say it's okay because it's not a signed reading it's only in the library none of this justifies offering our children pornography what you're doing to our children the name of politics is criminal instead of wasting our time our money dr a our children with crt equity and disgusting pornographic material you should focus our tax dollars on our children's education teach them reading writing and arithmetic gender queer which is supposed to be a book about coming out if that's all this book was focused on parents wouldn't have an issue with it the problem is as

114described by the author it's a much needed useful touchable guide this is liberal code for teaching children how to perform oral sex anal sex wear strap-on dildos these graphic images are totally unacceptable regardless of their gender or sexuality let me be clear parents don't have an issue with books that help children cope with being gay or how to come out no matter what your liberal clown friends say such a book is called the times i knew i was gay is also in donners grove south these books are empowering children to navigate their sexuality without using graphic child pornography i'd like to understand why this board believes graphic pornographic sketches showing young girls wearing strap-on dildo while other girl performs oral sex is necessary for our children or why young boys tasting bubble gum flavored condom

115before mounting each other before anal sex is beneficial or a sketch of a young girl after fingering herself talks about tasting her vagina slime that's shown in one of these sketches dripping off her fingers how do these images help children cope with their sexuality i suggest d99 removes this pornographic material immediately or at minimum you allow us parents to opt out of this garbage it's not your right to decide if our minor children should have access to pornography any every one of you should resign in disgrace you're a danger to our children in d-99 [Applause] we still have several speakers and we had up and down time please allow us to continue with the meeting or we'll have to end it all right we had uh some delays during reception of visitors with people coming

116up and back we've hit the end of the allotted time i recommend that we extend it to 8 30 to just make up for that lost time that we had between speakers so the next speaker is emily hernandez followed by curtis tate good evening my name is emily hernandez i'm a senior here at downers grove north high school today i would like to give my support to the board i believe that any policy or change brought about into our education is done with our best interest in mind critical race theory and diversity and equity training are topics that have now been made controversial when they should have never become political i realize that now both critical race theory which is not taught at our schools and diversity and equity training which is implemented are not

117the same thing but they do go hand in hand that is why education is absolutely necessary in history classes we learn about a great country's history and we completely understand the importance of it however to be fully educated we need to understand the full spectrum of how our society is undeniably founded on racism accepting this and realizing that we have the power to take action in order to create an exclusive and equitable community through empathy and allyship students are able to take initiative and make our school culture what it is we myself included are involved in clubs and organizations that promote and encourage diversity equity and exclusivity in order to create a welcoming and accepting environment for all which district 99 has been able to do thus far it is necessary to understand that everyone

118comes from all different walks of life diversity and equity is important so we could provide additional resources to those who need it doing so isn't discriminatory or playing favorites it is being aware that not everyone has the same privilege as you do restricting students from these resources would be detrimental and ultimately create an environment in which these students would not thrive in all the students that you see here tonight we we are concerned students and that is not a political statement we will not be intimidated there furthermore we will not spread lies or disinformation about those who oppose us for it is not in our interest to slander those who disagree with us we always have and will continue to fight for our education no lies or political activists will change our perspective whether you

119agree or disagree with us we hope you will be open to hearing what we have to say thank you for your time curtis tate followed by david rose [Applause] good evening i just want to thank the board i want to like to thank the administration as well my name is curtis tate i have two students who have came through donors grove already time to go north i have one current student here who's a junior and i have one coming in the next two years my my my daughter is at west point academy she came through these halls she walked through these halls and she experienced a lot of different things through these halls what i'm scared about what i'm hearing now and as a graduate of 1996 of donners grove south and moving to this

120area in is the removal of equity i've heard tonight people talking who are not from this area does not understand the area when i went to school here back in 1996 and throughout i experienced a lot of things that were from hate i saw bad things happen to me in school in school all the time and i have people make comments all the time but the one thing i learned before living in donna's grove is we overcame as thomas grove people we were the ones that made the decisions we were the ones who made the changes here in this district and we all worked together it wasn't perfect it's still not perfect but it has to be the influences of the parents the students and the people who live in this area it is not

121people from the outside who wants to use a political agenda now whatever you believe in that's what you believe in i get it but if you don't live here and you've never experienced being here why are you here we have to ask ourselves those questions the one thing that i will applaud is these young students because we can tell already from the education they're receiving right now how eloquently they're speaking on topics and doing the research of what's going on in our society these kids know what they need and i just make sure i heard a young lady ask for more student input on the school board and i would encourage the school board to sit down with the students and and have an opportunity for the student to show you the issues they're seeing

122thank you your time has expired thank you we have time for one more speaker david rose david rose [Music] so david are you choosing not to speak okay next would be colleen piercy will be our final speaker colleen's down here david hamm i'd say at this point we only have four slips left so we'll just call up the rest of them no david ham [Music] robin [Music] cedar bread good evening i taught at the other school for 35 years retired now 11. english teacher taught the bluest eye taught montana 1948 taught the blue structure which was written by a young adult author who came to south excuse me i'm getting over sinus infection who came to south and explained the purpose behind his book we had a lot of people come to a board meeting

123who protested that book that was the last board meeting i stood up at in defense of the book we had a group of parents that wanted to go into our library with big black magic markers and cross out the offensive words i stood up and defended that book i defended the fact that we teachers had gone through years of schooling that our board members supported what we taught that we had been evaluated so many times for what we taught and that they trusted us enough to allow us to teach those books then i thank them for their support and today i thank you for yours please stand up for the students rights let them make the choice what they want to read let their parents help them that decision but don't allow people who don't

124live in the district who don't have children in these schools and have no skin in the game make the decision for everybody else i'm going to cough thank you next up is joe amato and then our last speaker will be rich brennan [Music] thank you i'd like to direct your attention to policy number 5.90 second page third paragraph each individual board member must if an allegation is a rise to the member during an open or closed board meeting that a student is an abused child as defined in the act director caused the board to direct the superintendent or each equivalent school administrator to comply with the acts requirements concerning the reporting of child abuse so i think you guys have been put on notice of the abuse of the pornography in the school and you

125need to take action and make a report or we're gonna we're going to uh have talked to the officer over there as it says on this page third page uh first page third paragraph any district employee who discovers child pornography on electric electronic and informational technology equipment which is a book shall immediately report it to local law enforcement so we've reported it to you right now [Music] the national center of missing exploited children's cyber tip line 1-800-843-5678 or on the hotline at www.cybertipline.com the superintendent building principal shall also be properly notified of the discovery and the report has been made so you guys been put on notice that there's pornography in the school and you need to do something about it and uh for everybody that's up about the mass coming off and all that

126that's not going to happen until they stop giving them the user money so everybody coming up here and saying that people that don't live in the district got nothing to say but once you took that esther money you took federal money that paid by the taxpayer throughout the country not just your time has expired rich running europe rich will be our final speaker thank you thank you rich all right that concludes the reception of visitors we still have some business to complete um if you're going to take the rest of the night off of a board meeting please exit quietly so we can continue our business thank you all we'll move on to communications and announcements do we have a report on the legislative education network of dupage yes one second sorry you know what

127i'll come back to you go take your time okay feel free to reach out to me go to the next person and then i'll find out uh joanna do you ever report on the school association can we have some quiet please joanna do you have a report on the school association for special education in dupage county [Music] joanna sassy sorry i didn't hear you guys i'm so sorry sorry um actually i don't really have a report tonight other than we just have continued personnel issues and inability to staff classes that's probably the only thing for right now okay thank you jenny do you want to talk about the legislative education network of dupage the lend meeting for october was held on october 29th to account for the veto session which ended at midnight on thursday

128october 28th the primary topic was house bill 2778 which refers to school employee benefit and wage protection provisions this is a coveted administrative leave bill which did pass the lend members view this as a negative and anticipate that this will contribute to an already existing staff shortage the bill mostly allows for unlimited administrative leave for covid related issues the bill may also impact contractual arrangements that districts have in place with their staff it allows for paid time off for unvaccinated individuals and their children the lend network did push back and the governor intends to veto it the result is likely that the 60 days will pass the governor will veto and then there will be an override vote in january which presently does have the numbers to pass the iasa isb opposed this as there

129is no sunset date among other things and they need a definitive end date from the idph while the bill appears to only apply in pandemic or emergency authorization times it doesn't specifically read that way there's also an e-learning provision that would require further costs to the districts the bill requires districts to return all sick days used for cova during the 2021-2021-2022 school year to employees they next moved to a discussion on snow days becoming remote learning days one of the negatives surrounding that would be that districts would still be required to pay all subcontractors such as bus drivers cafeteria staff etc for those days then they visited house bill 1975 which is faith law which did pass that bill focuses on grooming in schools faith faith law will define a person's sexual conduct with a

130student while holding a position of trust authority or supervision as aggravated sexual abuse there will be an accompanying ib isbe resource guide this bill will prevent someone who is terminated in one state for such reasons from seeking employment in another state this is commonly referred to as passing the trash there is an accompanying trailer bill which provides a student may disclose mitigating factors such as the student's status as a parent expectant parent or victim of domestic or sexual violence in suspension or expulsion hearings they then moved on to a discussion about congressional maps um they noted that sean caston and marie newman are no longer in a consolidated district that district is now marie newman and chewie garcia they also discussed the teacher evaluation flexibility continues for the next school year and then they are

131looking ahead to january again addressing the bus driver shortage which is somewhat frustrating because if they aren't going to address it until january it's probably not going to take effect in a meaningful time we would like to see districts with grades 9 through 12 allow buses or vehicles owned by the district that hold 10 people or less to be driven by staff members with just isbe approval without a cdl license this is something that we could do with isbe approval larger vehicles that hold 11 to 15 people would require a legislative change so um that was most of that meeting and then they announced that their annual breakfast was postponed to november of 2022. and just a note about that last transportation bill london recognized the fact that district 99 is actively working on getting

132legislation adopted and passed senator curran has that legislation written and i've helped him his office and his staff put that together as well as with our administrative team here we're also in conversation with representative stava murray on trying to support that and move it through the house concurrently with the senate once they get back to work in the next legislative session so more to come on that but we're actively working on that and lend is supporting us a great deal on that work thank you both terry the foundation uh yeah really i don't have a whole lot just uh next meeting is going to be wednesday so there'll be more to report after that but um hopefully you all got your fall donation letter and i hope that no you didn't get one it's in

133the mail maybe hopefully if not the website has information we'll get you one i have no doubt but i would like to see um the board support the foundation by even making a small donation um that that tells the community that you're behind the foundation so i will be sure and get you each a letter and um like i said even a small donation just says that you're backing the foundation and then we're also working on an event for the spring at north and i think a lot of it has to do with the north calendar and they're going to get with north to find out when the best date with for that would be and so you'll get more info on that so those are my two things and i'm just pleading please donate

134to the foundation thanks terry i just want to say thank you so much for the nothing but cake it's really a fun eat experience so thank you very much it's a lot of work in exchange for a couple of small cakes yeah it would have been more helpful to have four instead of three though because it's just shelley and i at home now so we'll be fighting over one of them you know you can share right i guess i could do that couldn't we yeah uh chris any update on the report on my association of school boards uh well we've got the conference on this weekend um for the resolutions to come up so those are still uh so we'll be still be voting on those um i did want to go around just one

135more time and get like a quick straw poll from board members to see how we feel about resolution two and fifteen uh that we discussed at the the last meeting um so i don't know if uh if i know nancy you had some comments about those resolutions last time any changes any suggestions um for those the the straw poll i believe at the end at the last board meeting was in support of your recommendation right which was not to support right right but the majority of the board supported 15. right correct yeah we can go back to the minutes and confirm that before uh saturday for you chris and we'll send you the results of the straw poll from last last week last month just so you're you're clear as you go into that meeting

136well i just got an email today um about the conference and i've already downloaded the app it's it's pretty helpful so you might want to do that okay yeah mike i'm sorry i didn't hear a word i'm sorry there's a there's a conference app that i've used it every year that they've had it and it's pretty helpful and and there's a link to it where there's information about it i think on the email we got today but it's all you have to do is go to your google play store and enter in um uh iljoc21 i think um and if you search that it'll come it'll take you right to the link and you download it and you should have got it's got the whole schedule on your phone that way makes it easy you

137should have received an email today with information that's what mike's referencing even if you didn't let us know and i julie or i can forward you that information get you set up okay is that it for reports i believe so my recommendation to the board is that we skip the december 6th workshop meeting december is a month where we have back to back meetings scheduled we don't have agenda items that we feel where we need to put two board meetings in december so we recommend uh narrowing it down to just one board our regular board meeting and skip our board workshop i don't know hank i don't know if i could live with just one i know on december how do you all feel um so we'll we'll update that schedule but then we'll meet

138on december 13th location to be determined uh that might be a challenging meeting to host in a large space as we're in that time of the school year where there is a lot of student events right so we'll we'll have to see where we can host that and how many people we can accommodate at that meeting before we go into closed session i have one more comment to make and that is a thank you to the downers grove police and to our security staff and to our administrative team for ensuring that we had a safe and orderly environment this evening you know i know that things can be contentious but the most important thing is safety and that our our students felt safe and our visitors felt safe here this evening so i greatly appreciate

139the amount of effort and collaboration that the downers grove police offer on all kinds of matters but they really they're really dedicated to making sure that everybody felt comfortable this evening and we appreciate their assistance and dedication to district 99 thank you with that we need to go into closed session okay so we need a motion to go in a closed session for the appointment employment compensation discipline performance or dismissal of specific employees specific individuals who serve as independent contractors in a park recreational or educational setting or specific volunteers of the district or 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

140the district to determine its validity and litigation when an action against [Music] 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 probable or imminent in which case the basis for the finding shall be recorded and entered into the minutes of the closed meeting so moved second mike and chris christopher second chris mike and cruz thank you mike davenport aye christopher espinoza aye shirelle fuller aye jenny hagstrom aye terry pavich aye joanna vazquez drexler aye nancy kupka aye we are going into closed session we will not be taking any action when we come out of closed session so to everyone else we'll say good night we'll just come out to adjourn you