001[Music] good evening let's call to order mike davenport here christopher espinoza here terry pavising here joanna vazquez drexler here nancy kupka here zoe boyd sam vol thank you we have a quorum let's stand for the pledge all right i pledge allegiance to the flag of the united states of america and to the republic for which it stands one nation under god indivisible with liberty and justice for all ah when i sit i go shooting back good evening um we'll start with the uh we need a um motion to approve the minutes for the may 3rd 2021 workshop meeting the excuse me the may 3rd 2021 reorganization workshop meeting the may 12 2021 parent-teacher advisory committee meeting so moved second terry and joanna thank you trey pavich aye joanna vazquez drexler aye mike davenport aye christopher
002espinoza hi and nancy kupka aye the minutes are approved moving now to the first reception of visitors for public comment the meeting agenda includes two opportunities for comments from the audience the first reception of visitors 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 on any topic pertaining to community high school district 99 comments are limited to three minutes to provide all visitors an equal opportunity to address the board individuals needing more time should submit their thoughts in writing to the board secretary mrs nydek visitors addressing the board need to come to the microphone and state their full name the proceedings are being tape recorded and are being streamed i reserve
003the right to modify these protocols of circumstances warrant audience observation of these protocols is appreciated do we have anybody who wishes to address the board on something they will be voting on tonight hearing none uh there's uh there are no online comments i was just gonna ask okay no online comments at this time okay now we'll move on to the recommendations and reports of the superintendent all right we're going to start out by recognizing our outgoing student board members uh sam first because you're on the edge there thank you both for all of your service this year i have a little uh token of our appreciation you guys have done a wonderful job this year and a very challenging year representing the student perspective uh as is our tradition at this point uh we ask
004each of the student board members to share what your plans are for after this year and what your takeaways were from being student board members so sam you're up first all right um well uh as i think most of you know i will be attending northwestern university next year and majoring in political science and potentially journalism as well [Music] and you know i think my biggest takeaways from this year has just been to keep an open mind because i think i speak for every board member when i say that i have personal opinions about pretty much everything that we discuss as long as i'm informed enough but i think it's more about doing what you think is best for the community rather than what you think would be best for yourself which oftentimes can conflict
005but i think you know it's re i think being on the board and representing the student body and for you guys who vote i think it's it's being it's just basically about being bigger than yourself and so i applaud all of you for taking on those roles um and then you know for zoe and i just to represent the students it's been a real pleasure um and yeah i would just say my biggest takeaway is is learning how to represent something more than just yourself so that's impressive hello next year i will be attending the university of wisconsin at stevens point and i'll be double majoring in political science and environmental science and one of my biggest takeaways from this year was probably just how important it is to actively like engage with the community
006because i went from a person that didn't even know that our school had a board you know that this was an entire body of government to like having some of the most important conversations i ever have with people that i know well and some people that i didn't know very well before so yeah i really appreciate the opportunity and i hope i can continue to engage with people i don't know you know i would just like to say thank you we have had student board members for just a few years now and it seems to me that every year our student board members have grown the role for us and this past year you had no choice but to grow the wrong so i can only say thank you from the bottom of my heart
007i think your contribution has been invaluable i'm i'm glad you got something out of this and i expect to hear see big things from both of you and uh it warms the little cockles of my heart that you're both going going to study political science and environmental science and journalism this is like fabulous so thank you so much absolutely absolutely yeah thank you very much i mean this this year especially so important for us to have students on the board give us insights and reflection just a little pulse of what's going on and you two i think thus far have done i hate to say better than but as you said growing you know each year seems to grow in the role and maybe this year was just the circumstances were such that it was
008you know something that was really demanded of you i mean something we really needed and you delivered so thank you and i hope that you can take this experience on into college the rest of your life and and and learn from it and apply it and have great success thank you thank you i'd like to express my gratitude for what you've contributed on the board you've both been very insightful i find you mature behind your ears and i'm expecting to see on cnn in a few years a little something just a little a little something huh now welcome ed up to introduce uh south high's representative for next year well i get the privilege of introducing scarlett o'hara but i'm going to let her explain some of the things she's involved with because it would
009be far easier for me to tell you what she's not involved with interviews thank you mr sports uh hello my name is charlotte o'hara i go to south and i play basketball in the cross i'm in the mustang wave so i'm a leader for mustang way i am a blue crew leader so i'm one of the leaders for our freshman orientation i am an officer for nhs i'll be the parliamentarian this year i am a leader for our mustang aware and there's a lot of other clubs that i'm blanking on right now but thank you and i look forward to this opportunity i can't wait to be a voice for the students and i've learned a lot from zoe and all the emails she's been sending to get our opinions so thank you excellent welcome
010scarlett and janice will introduce the north high representative hey everyone so this is jade lodano and um dr kappa's comment about our board members i 100 echo and i just want to let you know that there has been an increased interest in students applying and we had several really strong applicants who applied this year as we did when sam applied but jade emerged as the top person and i will let her explain some of the things that she's interested in and what she's involved in and you'll see why she emerged as the top person okay good evening uh like ms schwartz said i'm jade i'm from north and it's an honor for me to be here tonight i'm really excited for this position it's an honor for me to be here representing my school and
011even better i'll be representing us for the rest of my high school experience uh to name off some of the things that i'm involved in i'm gonna forget some like scarlett did but we have orchestra vice president for student council editor-in-chief of the northwind literary magazine leader for erica's lighthouse empowerment club orchestra national honor society trying our musical honor society french national honor society and i'm blanking on a few but it's on there and i'm really grateful for this opportunity to be able to give you the insight needed for the decisions taken for our students i hope we can work together to make sure that our voices are heard north has created this amazing environment where i've never felt excluded my voice was also listened to always and now being able to stand here before
012you today and knowing that i'll be that person to voice others opinions is something i'm really grateful for and i'm looking forward to working with you in the future so to a long year we have ahead of us but i think we can do it all right thank you for coming tonight thank you thank you thank you thank you okay school your updated survey results all right um i'll share where what we're working on for the end of this school year here obviously we're finalizing the end of the year our seniors have already hit their last day last friday in anticipation of graduation this coming friday hopefully the weather holds and it happens on friday we continue to advocate at all levels for changes in the quarantine rules we had a long conversation with the
013dupage county health department today we're still frustrated that there's been no movement in those however it's not something that that we can control we can only apply pressure as we have on a variety of topics all year long we have vaccination clinics organized for our communities we've partnered together with district 86 in hinsdale the first one is at hinsdale central on the 20th downers grove south here on the 26th and then three weeks later we're back so that'd be the 10th and the 16th this is open to anybody over the age of 12. so 12 and older can attend these so we reached out to our community partners today to send this out to all of our citizens around us and just trying to get the word out that there are doses available for anybody
014that would like would like to get vaccinated uh we're still planning for an eight period traditional schedule when we returned last fall we're still waiting on that is being idph guidance you may have seen the cdc recently updated guidance for the general public just a reminder the cdc guidance is that general guidance that then the states especially related to schools have to then process and then issue guidance on so illinois has not updated uh any of any of this uh the relevant language that corresponds with this cdc update as i understand that the first change that would have to be made for this to go into effect would be a change in the governor's executive order and then illinois department of public health would have to issue new guidance as well what the cdc has
015said and everybody else has said is that for illinois schools that there should be no changes put into place yet so make it through the remainder of the school year under the current guidelines isbe is signaling the direction that we were hoping that they would move for next school year they have a resolution proposed for their wednesday board meeting which essentially encourages resuming full in-person attack attendance for all students and removing the mandated remote option that was in place for this school year we'll see how that progresses and then how that meshes with the illinois department of public health and their guidelines we've been asking to get this information sooner than later however we keep being told from all levels that we will receive something over the summer so as soon as we get information
016we'll we'll process that but no in absence of that information we are planning for as close to a pre-pandemic return as possible so that's kind of where we're at now any questions on any of that information [Music] all right i'm going to bring up gina and jill now we recently did our survey to the different stakeholders in our community and jean and jill are going to provide kind of the big overarching overview board members have all been provided the forced choice response and free choice responses for free responses hi everybody at the end of april so the end of last month we issued our final survey of the school year we issued three this year and the response rates were not as robust as previous um that's right which is pretty good i don't know
017if you guys participated but um try to send out lots of reminders to get as many as we could as hank said as we've done in previous surveys as we've done for previous surveys all the forced choice reports are available on board docs and all of the board members also have access to the hundreds of comments that people made they took the time to make and we're reading them the administrative team is reading them and that's really important so we just wanted to share some highlights of those responses and what we've learned and what our next steps are going to be there there was a slide with how many people responded so what we heard from students and all other groups um who responded in our community was that their preference is to be back
018in person all day full day without the quarantine rules i don't know if you've heard this but we've heard this loud and clear throughout all of the surveys we also learned that the majority of students well the majority of students who responded to the survey were learning in person and they are more engaged so compared to the surveys in november we saw a big jump in engagement in particular with peer relationships so obviously when you're in person around your peers you're going to have an improved experience that way and our students also expressed that they wanted to talk openly about mental health problems and kind of remove that stigma that was heard again and again in comments and also we included questions about school climate and cultural awareness this time and students did report that
019many reported that they'd like to talk about these issues and topics shared lots of ideas such as including more cultural lessons and clubs and so forth so finally we asked about paper the online tutoring 45 said that they have used it um they really value it in terms of essay review versus other topics but they say that nothing can replace the help of their teacher so that's from students and gina is going to share other audiences so as jill said a lot of the same information came through from each group and from teachers and staff basically again wanting to be back in person as a as dr lee said we are planning to come back in person next year in-person learners more engaged and teachers and and staff support that as well we have seen
020students not necessarily using other resources jill spoke about paper and while we're really excited to see so many students using paper students are not necessarily taking advantage of office hours or some of our virtual support hours and again teachers and staff really want to talk openly about equity inclusion which was certainly part of our professional development this year certainly want to see that continue and talk about specific strategies in terms of equity and inclusion for families again want school to be back in person again every group came back the same the quarantine rules finding them challenging with students three feet apart and yet contact racing six feet apart many thank teachers for all that they have done and staff members for all that they have done through the pandemic some parents commented that they wanted
021more communication from teachers especially when it's not just communication when a student is struggling but also with positive things as well many many families are concerned about the toll that this has put on our students as are we concerned about that and believe that all students should be treated equally so in terms of next steps with the feedback we certainly know that all groups want to be in person we're planning for a regular return to school as much as possible certainly waiting as dr thiele said guidance from the state this is the first time we've gathered questions and we used panoramas questions that's the product that we are using for these surveys their questions and we plan to continue using the data and sharing that with others so we can identify areas of improvement any
022questions about the survey no and just a reminder thank you just a reminder next year we plan on a full strategic plan process that would involve gathering similar type of data from all of these groups as well i believe i have a question oh sorry i'm sorry that's okay just about the way that you guys take your survey have you considered ever like blocking out class time for students or i know you guys send plenty of emails but it still seems like uh student survey like turnout answering is pretty low yeah we absolutely have considered using class time for surveys and we have in the past for example five essential survey oftentimes you may recall taking that during school hours our challenge this year one of the challenges is we're really trying to protect instructional
023time as well and and especially when it's in person time and so that was one of the the factors that we considered but absolutely that is definitely something we've been talking about great good great question thank you all right thank you i just remind everybody that uh if you haven't done it already all of the responses the um open narrative responses have been distributed to the board in the last friday package all right thank you thank you thank you excuse me we'll leave gene up here for the next topic educational tours in the revised travel agreement as the board knows we have not brought any tours to the board since the pandemic and certainly that's been intentional as the board knows we had several tours that were either cancelled right as school closed in march
024of 2020 or that were postponed and then ultimately canceled because pricing went up dates changed and families decided not to send their students or postponed and we still have our costa rica tour that the board voted to postpone hank if you can thank you so much um so we have not brought any to the board um but we did work with um we saw legal assistance we've been talking to many people and we revised the travel agreement that families are required to sign so that the language is clear and so everyone knows going in what the expectations are and we are recommending that change to the board tonight the revised travel agreement this is just part of it right so when it's saying we it's the parents are signing parents are the we here one
025of the things that came up as tours were canceled or scheduled postponed all of those was about the financial loss that families might incur and while we certainly had language in the previous travel agreement regarding that we wanted it to be extremely clear for families so you can see the entire uh quote or the entire quote from the document but i think the part that's most important is the second sentence where it says we understand any financial loss that we incur due to cancellation by us or by the district is the sole responsibility of the family and that was something that was in our previous agreement but without quite a strong language so we wanted to solidify that in addition we want to certainly protect families and so on the next slide we added language
026regarding travel insurance basically canceled for any reason travel insurance what we saw with the tours that were canceled were those families that took insurance lost a lot less money or in some cases i mean really very little in some cases and so we believe that moving forward it is in the best interest of families and the district to take that travel insurance if if there's one thing that we've learned from this experience when we had several tours that were canceled right in march is that that travel insurance really did help families to recover most of what they had already spent and so the language here basically is that we're requiring families to purchase travel insurance that covers cancellation for any reason and that the will be required to show proof that they have purchased that
027insurance so those are the two key changes in the travel agreement so moving forward on a very much a case-by-case basis we would like to go back to bringing to the board recommendations for educational tours and those tours those educational tours that are directly linked to curriculum directly linked to a course or a program activity we of course will continue to monitor health and safety conditions for educational tours as we always have but on a case by cases and we're bringing you one tonight we would like the board to consider with the new travel language approving this tour so we're asking the board to vote tonight on approving an educational tour and i want to make it really clear the change in what we're asking board action for in the past the board approved a
028tour with tentative dates attentive number students tentative dates but certainly the location and we would further develop the tour after that point usually giving families it varied by tour but approximately a year usually a little bit over a year to pay for the tour and to plan for the tour and then when covet hit the board may recall that i brought several tours back asking the board for permission for the administration to postpone the tour and while that definitely worked sometimes it was a little difficult in terms of timing because the tour company set very specific dates and while we worked with the tour companies and we were able to make it work we're asking the board when we're bringing tours like the tour that i'm bringing tonight to really approve two things to approve
029the educational tour that will continue to develop in the board has pretty much always been that action item to approve the tour but also in the end is key there to approve the administration in adjusting canceling postponing an educational tour if the administration believes that the health safety and our welfare of our students and staff could be compromised so giving sort of advanced permission that if we need to if there's a health or safety issue we can make a change to that tour the tour that i'm bringing forward tonight is a tour to germany this is a long-standing tour and it would be our 11th going to germany it's an exchange and it's an every four year rotation that our students from our orchestra district 99 orchestra travel to germany and the next window after
030this would be 2026. so we really want to send our students in 2022 of course if the health and safety conditions allow for that this would enable families to start planning financially so they could extend those payments over a longer period of time it would enable our staff members to continue the planning to ensure that the tour has all the benefits that it would of any cultural exchange program so we want to start that planning now realizing the tour is not until the summer of 2022 and also then our tour directors our district 99 tour directors can work with concert organizers and promoters to secure those performance venues so the tour we're bringing tonight is to germany for summer 2022 asking the board to vote to approve the tour and to allow the administration if
031needed to change a tour postpone typically cancel alter substantially if needed for health or safety reasons questions for gina questions yes gina is it possible for the district to purchase the travel insurance on behalf of the students and if so um why wouldn't we do that since that's something that we're we're essentially requiring them to do typically that is done individually by families from the tour companies currently the district does not support tours financially so we do not families paid the cost for the entire tour so that would certainly be in a change in in how we do it and most the tour companies have it set up directly with the families so the payments go directly to to the tour company and every tour company has different companies that they use for insurance or
032if they have their own it varies from company to company so it would be the obligation of each family to contact follow up with that travel insurance company so there's meetings that take place and our tour directors are really good about sharing information and many of the tour companies offer their own insurance so you go with this company that works with this tour company there have been in couple cases where they might have more than one company that you can purchase insurance from too though and the company that this tour is from i should have said this i apologize uh we have worked with this one before too so most the companies that are our music um tours have this you want to avoid the circumstance where you have that one family that just doesn't
033do it for whatever reason um this i suppose there's nothing we can do about that that doesn't purchase the insurance well that's why we had put the language in that they need to show proof so that's something that the tour directors would have to monitor okay just like they monitor passports right and they monitor the students have everything that they need it would be one more uh thing that they would need on their checklist to monitor that students um have right and this particular tour to germany breir is one of the tour directors and obviously he's done many many tours i feel confident uh that this changed that the tour directors will definitely be checking it's something that's fairly affordable yeah i'm sorry is it fairly affordable it varies from company to company but it
034will add in some cases a substantial amount i've seen some that are 200 but i've seen some that are substantially higher as we went through the fine print from the tours from last summer and there's different kinds of insurance right there's insurance that covers this it's just like any kind of insurance right there's insurance that covers at different levels we're looking for that level where families can cancel pretty much for any reason so we'll be real clear when we're presenting to parents that the the cost of it you know will will show that cost in in what to expect and it will depend on the tour company that we use if the tour company doesn't offer it then we'll have to give alternatives to the families all right just like you can go online and
035purchase from a separate company tour insurance if you plan a vacation for your family or something like that [Music] any other questions if it's required you're going to require everyone to purchase the same level of coverage or are you going to give options so it would be the coverage that would allow canceling for a situation like we're we're in right now which for the most part is going to be canceled for any reason some of the insurance options will cover if it's this or that but very quite a few of them did not cover for the pandemic they would cover in terms of postponing but then if the entire group could not postpone we ran into some issues with that as well so do you think that will change i mean if you know if
036someone's a senior or not able to then go on a postponed trip i mean it's so i guess i'm well i mean if you were looking at the insurance products that were provided and you're finding that not all of them gave the full refund back for a situation like this are you skeptical that right we're certainly going to guide families absolutely guide families as much as possible a lot of the policies that were offered pre-pandemic didn't cover things like a pandemic so part of this is making sure that the policies match what what gina's outlined here that it'd be cancellation at any time for any reason and that those were some of the gaps we were seeing in some of the travel insurance policies that were offered prior to this and that gap was only
037exposed because of the pandemic so we're trying to close that in this proposal that no matter who they're selecting for their insurance provider that level of coverage would be required to protect people we in fact do have students who are not going to be going on those phone trips is that nancy i guess did you send nancy nancy i think we do have paid we do have students who are not going on postponed strips we have trips that aren't happening as a result of the panthers the students aren't going on yes we had several uh tours educational tours that were either cancelled right as the pandemic back in march of 2020 we had several that i had brought into the board to postpone and yet not all students could postpone and then in some cases
038the prices went up because the smaller number of students and then families declined so some of those ended up canceling simply because students were pulling out of the tours so we yes we had a lot of situations like that the only ones that we have left are that are postponed from covid are the north and south costa rica at this point in time all right any other questions thank you gina thank you thank you all right our next topic is uh parent feedback offered at the parent teacher advisory committee meeting and scott is going to come up and present on this i'll remind all board members please speak closely to the microphone so that folks in the back can hear us all right good evening so we had our annual parent-teacher advisory committee on wednesday
039the 12th joanna and terrell were representing the board it was exciting we had 33 participants and we did it virtually and that's a good number for us and we gina presented the consolidated district plan and then karen taylor and kelly zerner reviewed some discipline data that looked at our disproportionate data looked at the path program and interventions that we're looking at to support students so after the event i sent out a google form so we will provide information to you from that we're still gathering some data but i i will say that we always get really good feedback that really helps guide us as a district with this event so any questions i don't know if uh joanna if you have any comments or no comments other than i thought it was really an excellent
040compared from the last time we had where there wasn't anyone this was really good there was good feedback people really participated thank you scott thank you good numbers all right we're going to invite rod up to present about changes in student data privacy that go into effect due to a new law that he'll explain to you and he'll go through the details on this here all right thank you everyone for giving me a few minutes to talk about data privacy tonight there's been um a tremendous amount of activity in the state this is really something that's impacted dramatically every state every district within the state and data privacies always matter to us in the 25 years that i've been here we've always applied due care to our the security and the privacy of our information
041and the the world that we're in now we we still have the same sensitive information that we've always had the digital world that we're in now you can see it on the news you can read it in your news feeds just the the data breaches that occur and the the significance of them and virtually any size organization even organizations that can spend millions and millions of dollars more than than we do on security and keeping their data secure has that that occur and looking back to again many years ago if a teacher was interested in a new piece of software typically there'd be a server that we'd have to purchase or someone from i.t would have to go and install that piece of software now all of us really have access to an endless virtual
042world of software tools we can hop online and pretty instantly access just an incredible array of free tools and who are often just very willing to accept data that we share so so many of the decisions that we make make today really have a significant impact and as i said we do we we always have um maintained a tremendous amount of of personal sensitive information and the the difference today again as we move into the digital world is the number of applications that we have the number of data integration and sharing points that we have our data just doesn't stay in file cabinets and offices anymore it's it's uh freely floating around or it can can be and that's one of the things that we're trying trying to do is make sure that that does
043not happen thanks hank so the nuts and bolts of what i'm going to talk to you about tonight is the student online personal protection act or sopa and this is something that's been around not that long really since 17 and it was brought into legislation then again due to this digital evolution and the sharing of data with vendors that we're providing software that we use and what brought it about then was just kind of kind of a almost like a gentlemanly agreement there really wasn't much teeth in sopa back then it really asked the school districts hey school district we know you're potentially sharing data before you share it with a vendor check their privacy policies make sure they're going to exercise do care and they have security practices in place so it was just
044kind of an awareness and a couple years ago privacy advocacy advocacy groups and legislators got involved and said you know what this whole data sharing thing is getting out of control there's just more and more data flying and we need to put something in place to really lock this down and i was fortunate enough about a year and a half ago almost two years ago to be in some of the early conversations with actually some legislators and other people around the state and i can tell you at that time some of the proposals were draconian i mean they were just the the penalties the restrictions were we would have been like locked locked in this this type i'm happy to say that it evolved and it didn't end up that that way what it really
045addresses i think in my opinion is two things accountability and transparency and uh okay hank so what i what i'd like to do is not to bore you in too many of the details but i want to help you understand just some of the nuts and bolts and the salient points of what this new legislation to sopa actually entails the linchpin of all of this is really the data privacy agreement or the dpa any vendor software vendor that we share what they call covered information which is basically just identifi uh information that identifies a student in virtually any way anybody that we're sharing that information with we have to have a data privacy agreement in place signed between us both doesn't matter if this is a google extension that somebody just installed themselves into chrome
046that happens to share or if it's our student information system and everything in between so that it requires us to have that agreement in place and signed technically july 1st of this year is when this goes into effect if we're sharing covered information and we don't have an agreement in place by then we're technically not supposed to use that product until until we do i'll talk a little bit more about that at the end our data privacy agreement that we're using over the past six months things have really evolved in the state where us districts are now using a statewide agreement each district still administers that but it really helped it was it's just been so difficult to go out to vendors and get them to even understand what this is and sign them and
047now that there's this movement where we're all kind of using a common instrument it's making that all a lot easier our agreement is 25 paid pages long so there's a lot to it and it covers things such as what what kind of data are we sharing who are we sharing it with why are we sharing it if we're sharing it with company a is company a sharing it with others to achieve certain goals and a host of other things and some of the other things that we need to do besides that data privacy agreement is have a policy which the board actually did approve these changes to policy in the last month or two to indicate who in the district can sign contracts for for those tools it also requires us to implement reasonable security
048procedures and actually isbee was tasked with telling us what reasonable meant last summer we still haven't gotten official directive on that yet but i was in a call a couple weeks ago with a state rep and there's a pretty good rumor now that we know what those are and they're actually procedures that we've been following for years so i i feel really good about about that um that's that's that's the one piece of this that i think we've we've addressed well that said again i i mention this to anybody anytime i speak speak about this that again watch watch the news read your news feeds no organization is immune from an attack or from a breach i i know that we're employing reasonable security procedures where we evaluate risk we manage risk and that's what
049it's all about it's all about kind of keeping yourself in that place and finally is kind of interesting the legislation says that a district may appoint a data privacy officer but basically every district in the state has has one and the nature of that job although no job description was provided or anything it just kind of said well the district can appoint one would be the underlying assumption for all of us is that the the purpose for that is that this person will will kind of manage this process and everything that goes along okay so that that was kind of the accountability piece of these changes in the law this is the transparency piece and what it basically requires is that again we're very transparent we're very public about the data that we we are
050sharing you know what what elements are we sharing with whom are we sharing it here here's a copy of the data privacy agreement that we have in place with with them here's here's a list of anybody that that company uses that potentially the data is being shared shared with so this is a big part of that transparency piece and another part of the transparency piece and this type of thing has been in place with the ferpa federal legislation since the 60s when records were all printed um you know parents today have the right to go in and ask for copies of data and inspect the same type of principles are restated here for sopa but specifically geared toward that electronic data that we're storing not necessarily in a file cabinet in the in the office
051but in the cloud you know with someone else and finally again in the world that we live in breaches are something that does happen and again part of the transparency piece is that we're required to publicly post and notify if we do have a breach and there's a threshold in terms of how many students that it affects but if we exceed that threshold then we need to be very transparent about this is this is what happened and and and when and what yikes um it's it's a lot um we we have some software tools in place that you know through part of our internet filtering and and virus protection and such really do a good job of analyzing and assessing different applications that people are going different websites that are being used that potentially involve
052logins and involve data being shared and there's hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of those such sites and we we've been evaluating those but we've been doing it kind of in a systematic way so um i think so i wanted to just finish up really just by giving you an idea of here's where we're at we started out like a lot of districts that i've talked with in the state have by identifying you know let's let's grab the big big rocks first what are those applications that we pay for that you know this is something we have a student information system we use hapara we use a variety of tools and let's let's get those taken care of first and we're we have over 75 of those that we were well on the way of getting
053agreements in place for those we've already created the data privacy role so we're we're good there part of the transparency part of what we're doing is we've created a website jill and kristen created a template site for me and i've built built it out with with pretty much all and maybe even a little more of the requirements that the sopa sets forth so that we're we're covered on that transparency piece and we've also reached out to district and building administrators department chairs and teachers in a way to start to collect from them what are those applications that you use every day and rely on that you're potentially sharing data with others that we might not know about because they're they're not ones that maybe i pay pay for and um so we've got about 350
054plus of those that that we're looking at as well now so as we look moving forward from from here we we've begun to retool our application request process we had a an electronic forum and a process in place in years past when a teacher would be interested in a new piece of software or a new tool to request that in a formal way so we could you know vet the privacy policy and make sure there's not a another option that's already used that process obviously with these requirements will will change so we're adapting the process so that it accounts accounts for those and there'll be an ongoing need just for sharing this like i'm sharing it with you tonight and training really people on on this process and information security and privacy is largely a
055human problem i know it's seen oftentimes as a technical one but when it comes to phishing emails and ransomware and data that's potentially mis mis-shared there are so many human elements to it that just the ongoing awareness and training is is really really key i asked nikki our attorney that i worked with quite a lot on this and someone from the state a few weeks ago i said what what happens july 2nd if if we don't have all of our applications in line am i going to sopa jail and they said well rod number one there's not a super jail and number two they realize that every district in the state is in the same place this is an immense task where we're working on a process it's a good process and that's really what
056they want to see it's just just that we're we've got a process in place we're moving in the right direction so that's it questions comments i had a question is there any um exposure with student applications that a student might put on their or access via chromebook well you know we we would see those actually in our in our um as we have those electronic tools that are going out to look for applications those will show up on our list so as we get to those we also know because the students are running on a chrome chromebook and they're pretty tightly locked into our google ecosystem we actually have some insights into that system that give us a pretty detailed accounting of what what they have access to what they've shared credentials with in order
057to vlog do teachers have uh i'm over here teachers i know it's yeah um teachers uh and other staff members using personal devices is that somehow impacted you know mike we we uh we we have some visibility into that but not not too much i mean if i'm on my iphone and i'm doing something kind of outside of my district login and that activity we we might not be able to see that and that's that's that's where the education and awareness will come in as well i heard you uh so in your presentation i heard arduous time-consuming huge um sorry i'm not complaining it's not it's just been a lot of work for all of us across the state certainly but so i mean the thing that i i always wonder about when when we
058have these sort of uh mandates right uh is is how it's impacting our budgets and what you're not doing because you're having to spend so much time doing this um do you have some some feel for how it's impacting us from a budgetary standpoint yeah you know i i don't know from a budgetary i mean it certainly is one of those unfair unfunded mandates for sure you know we have a lot of extra work to do and really no extra resources i'm i'm fortunate where i i have just a phenomenal team and there we've we've all just kind of pitched in and and done the things that we we have to do so nothing came off the plate this just went on right yeah yeah no no there's okay yeah there were no other tasks
059lost yeah okay i would be remiss if i didn't point out that rod is amongst the national leaders on this topic it serves uh our whole entire profession well and our district is well served by rod's work on this so i thought it was important with these big changes coming that the board and the public was aware of what was was headed our way come july 1st and we'll try to keep rod out of soap at jail i was going to say that it would be a national headline then yeah thank you rod thank you thank you thank you before we move on to our next item can i just ask the audience members to do a mask check because i see a couple of masks have slipped down thank you all right the next
060topic is english department novels and i'll turn this one over to mark um there's a memo that i'll just go through some of the highlights in your packet in the agenda um we have a large market to get close to the mic large amount of information that doesn't go through the elec electronic and that's getting the electronic agent it's the novels that we purchase and we part of the program for that is the kids have that they can make markups in it these are given away through the english department and there's something that we've been doing for several years now is going out to bid for this because there is some competitive action for this so we had seven bidders that came in that was published in the local newspapers and but also we sent
061out requests to vendors that we work with or we knew about seven requests came in the lowest is book pal who we used two years ago um i spoke to the president of the company and i i said welcome back we had really good relationship with him he did they did a very good job and he says yeah i was he was upset last year that he didn't get it so he really sharpened his pencil so uh this used to cost an area about 140 and that was in you know maybe eight or nine years ago dollars so um sending it out this way really has helped to curb our costs in this and this way we don't have to charge as much to kids or build into the fees anything for the kids that
062pertain to this more than what we already have so the recommendation is to approve book pail for 111 526.92 um and they'll have all the books to us by july 30th wow very good any questions for mark mark and jury have really turned this process around for us and saving saving us money as a result all right master facility plan update just a few things as we head into the last few months of this not many of these reports left where we currently sit with the master facility plan is a remaining contingency of about 333 thousand dollars remember that built in also already are allowances that add up to about a half a million dollars between that and other spots that we have uh made sure that we're protected through the bidding process so uh
063we're we're in aggregate contingency in all forms is sitting at a little over eight hundred thousand dollars so uh we were feel very comfortable with this heading in uh to the summer to get the all of the work done that we have anticipated so any questions on the budget on time on budget where we hope to be yeah a few images here for you south high auditorium is pretty impressive hopefully everybody gets a chance to get into there soon their board members or the public will be able to get in there next fall but what a great space that's going on there the learning commons coming along it's kind of fun when we went on a tour with jenny and joanna they actually dropped a piece of the plywood so you could actually see the
064existing space starting to connect with the learning commons which was a new feel that we hadn't experienced before and as students come down that main hallway they can kind of peek in and see what's what's happening there north high learning commons really coming along the tile work is there you can really feel that that space uh really coming into form now even to the point where we had our first celebration in the learning commons last week the north high students and staff celebrated the fact that janus is retiring this year and did a little impromptu celebration including the band in that space so that's the official first event in either of the commons so well deserved and well recognized for janus that's kind of my report on the master facility plan but joanna and jenny
065actually went on a tour i don't know if there's anything else you wanted to call out from your experience i think sorry gotta pull it in close i thought it was spectacular it the combination of you know creating a flow and especially at north capturing the history of the building and keeping it intact and then also having some outside spaces for the kids to go and a little bit more bandwidth in their lunch hour so that they can enjoy it more so just yeah i i was impressed beyond belief i thought at the north campus i think it's very harmonious the way the old and the new complement each other i was totally impressed with culinary arts section the state of the art equipment over at south that auditorium is cali i just envy those
066theater students so much that is just fabulous i think i can hardly wait till the public comes to see it so that they know what they're getting you know this is was money well spent thank you joanna so any questions from board members all right very soon we'll be in all of those spaces all right foia requests we received some and we filled some and they're always listed on our website okay okay we'll move on to the consent agenda before we do so i'd just like to take a moment to uh recognize where is it h the acceptance of donation again from district 99 education foundation they provided a i'm not going to pronounce this right cry cut cricket qriket machine to our transition 99 students for their business thank you thank you to the
067foundation is there any um element that the that any of the board members would like to pull out of the consent agenda for further discussion hearing none i need a motion for the board of education to approve the consent agenda as presented which includes a the personnel report appointment certified leave of absence classified appointments classified b the personnel report retirements classified resignations classified see the personnel report termination classified d the personnel report salary benefits wages wage increase classified e the financial pages after 2020 2021 final school calendar g the 20 20 22 20 20 23 recommended school calendar age the acceptance of the donation from the district 99 education foundation and i the resolution authorizing depositories so mike and um terry thank you mike davenport aye terry pavich aye joanna vazquez drexler aye christopher espinoza
068aye jenny hagstrom aye and nancy kupka aye the consent agenda curies next we'll move on to the action items we need a motion for the board of education to approve the orchestra tour to germany and austria june 9th through 22nd 2022 and allow administration to adjust cancel or postpone this educational tour if the administration believes that the health safety and or welfare of our students and staff could be compromised second joanna and mike thank you joanna vazquez drexler aye mike davenport aye christopher espinoza aye jenny heggstrom aye trey pavich aye and nancy kupka aye the motion carries next i need a motion for the board of education to accept the lowest responsible bid of one hundred eleven thousand five hundred twenty six dollars and ninety two cents from book pail to provide novels in accordance
069with the specifications instructions and requirements provided in the april 23rd 2021 request for proposals for community high school district 99 english department novels so moved second i didn't hear it i'm sorry oh joanna vazquez drexler aye mike davenport aye christopher espinoza aye jenny hagstrom aye and nancy kupko aye the motion carries uh under old business we have appointment of board committee liaisons everybody got their uh request so we have shirelle and mike on the policy committee chris is going to take over as representative to the iasb governing board and delegate assembly as and the national assembly as well sas and joanna will remain on sased jenny is going to take over as a representative to lend and terry will remain on the 99 foundation this is you know this is above and beyond this is
070additional hours of out of every month and we really do appreciate your representation of the board at these events okay now we're going to move to the next reception of visitors guidelines are posted on the monitors this is the second reception of visitors which is intended for audience members to address the board on any topic pertaining to community high school district 99 comments are limited to three minutes to provide all visitors an equal opportunity to address the board and i'm going to ask dr thiele to be our time keeper individuals needing more time should submit their thoughts in writing to our board secretary who is mrs nydek visitors addressing the board need to come to the microphone state your full name the proceedings are being tape recorded and they're being streamed live as we speak
071um i reserve the right to modify these protocols if circumstances warrant and we appreciate your observation of these protocols we'd like to address the board come on forward good evening my name is noel manley and i'm a resident of deering illinois and i'm also resident of district 86 and i thought i would share with you some of the happenings of what's going on with district 86 and how they may impact district 99. on january 4th and 5th of this year a special seminar was held for our faculty and staff the title of the seminar was introduction to race and training it was conducted by a consultant called saxophone consulting llc one would think the seminar would present materials on how to bring people together over issues of race instead it was the exact opposite it
072was filled with racial invective divisiveness and among the topics that were discussed was this academic construct of white privilege i'm going to read to you a section from the presentation entitled some aspects and assumptions of white culture in the united states the nuclear family is an aspect of white culture aggressiveness in extraversion our example or our aspects of white culture emphasis on the scientific method is an aspect of white culture planning for the future is an aspect of white culture and anything other than judeo-christian tradition is foreign and therefore an aspect of white culture so according to this consultant paid for with public funds these are the underpinnings of white culture in america one would think these are universal values i'm sure that many people who have immigrated to our nation from africa latin america
073and asia have embraced these values according to this consultant they do not the seminar went on to discuss what does it mean to be white and outline four items segregation individualism focused on intentions or impact and white fragility members of the board this is repugnant it flies in the face of everything that i've been taught about race tolerance and the golden rule instead of teaching respect for differences district 86 paid 49 000 to this consultant to advance victimhood divisiveness vengeance and retribution be warned if it hasn't already happened here these hucksters are coming that soon unfortunately this is part of a greater trend in public education that moves away from education and towards indoctrination asserting the legitimacy of the perception of white privilege and white culture and the promotion of equity as the means to
074correct these flaws runs counter to the mission of public education public education is meant to teach in life sorry sir your time has expired okay uh to enlighten and allow critical thinking and weighing the value of concepts and ideas so thank you but thank you thank [Applause] you [Applause] good evening my name is laura hoyce i live in downers grove and our son reed is a junior at downers grove north it's good to see you all again i speak for parents and community members we are fighting for the students and for the teachers who can't speak up to say how they feel the far left has been working to indoctrinate rather than educate our young people our schools are on a fast train heading in the wrong direction towards socialism radical marxist leftism openly rejects
075america's values we must act to counter that with unwavering optimistic messages of freedom opportunity and patriotism let me give you three examples of how we can put this fast moving train back on the right track number one defeat illinois house bill 2789 which is legislation backed by the illinois education association and teachers unions that would require the idph the illinois department of public health to regulate in-person instruction at public and private schools state control would replace local control teachers unions have amassed all the power house bill 2789 passed the house in april i believe it's now in committee and is heading toward the senate soon so i'm asking all of those who are aware to call your senator and ask the senator please oppose this house bill 2789 so that we can keep local control
076of our schools critically important to us democratic-led unions have taken full advantage of covid and they want to give idph enforcement powers the idph public health does not want this people don't want this teachers even don't like that unions are taking such a strong stance the reality is parents and students and teachers have no voice in the political process all last year teachers unions opposed school reopenings over parents objections and over their pleas to please open in-person learning again i'm pleased to hear tonight that the plan is to reopen the schools in the fall that is what we want let me reiterate we want our schools to open full-time full schedule in person learning with sports activities and no masks so let's hope that happens number two reject the culturally responsible teaching and leading standards
077which a lot of people don't know about i know about them and it was hard for me to find a copy of them but what are they they are standards that were introduced you're out of time i'm sorry time has expired okay thank you thank you [Applause] somebody's coming from the back you can be next sir good evening my name is jim wool i'm here to discuss a survey that is given every two years to the students in the introduction says the questions ask you about a number of different things including health and social indicators such as substance use and prescriptions bullying violence and other information about your school and your family this is really none of the business okay this survey the questions that they ask and the answers that they want the survey
078is sponsored by the university of illinois school of social work the first set of questions are you male female transgender do not identify as male or female as true or transgender really again what business is it of the school to know this what is your race who do you live with that most of the time at school are you eligible for receiving free lunch reduced price lunch or neither really again whose business is this other questions okay ask students to answer how wrong do your parents feel it would be for you to drink beer or wine have one or two drinks of alcoholic beverages nearly every day very wrong wrong a little bit wrong or not wrong at all again what is the reason for these questions they're not for educational purposes these questions do
079not help teachers design math curriculum science reading arts foreign language there's no purpose for these questions another question during the past 12 months did you ever feel so sad or hopeless almost every day for two weeks or more in a row that you stop doing some usual activities another question during the past seven days and how many days did you eat dinner at home was at least one of your parents or guardians i really think that this survey serves to remind some students how lonely and dysfunctional their family life can be now again at the beginning of the survey it tells the students who are filling this out you will remain private none of this will be known this is almost child abuse in other words you have a student fill this out but yet
080no action will be taken who does this benefit is this benefit the u of i graduate student who's working on a dissertation a phd again why is this necessary why are our students filling these surveys out there's then other questions about alcohol drug use and then finally it asks questions about the family too and i think we know these answers i'm sorry mr wool you're out of time thank you that we know these answers we've known for 50 years yet every two years we give this survey [Applause] good evening my name is art ellingson and i am a vietnam veteran of the navy and i was sent to vietnam to battle against the spread of communism that's why we went to vietnam because the north and the chinese the russians wanted to take over south
081vietnam we went there to give them freedom and now those very same freedoms are being taken away from us by people who call themselves leftists call themselves democrats but are in fact communists critical race theory is one of these ideas that they have come up with and in my opinion those who have come up with this critical race theory are in fact the racist themselves a very popular video describing critical race theory goes like this you are a shopkeeper and two people walk into your store at the same time a black guy and a white guy if you wait on the white guy first it's because you want to give privilege to the white guy now if you which means you're a racist if you waited a black person first it's because you don't trust
082the black guy and you want to get him out of the store before he steals something no matter what you do you're a racist if you have white skin this is anathema to how our country was founded and raised we are the least racist country in the world [Applause] 12 years ago or maybe 13 years ago now we elected a black president for the first time if the white supremacist ideas were true that never would have happened yeah there are a few white racists in our midst a few white supremacists but they are slim and far between the vast majority are not i was raised to be colorblind i was raised that some people have a permanent suntan and i don't and that's about the the limit of it but this critical critical race theory
083stuff this 16 19 project is harmful to our children harmful to our country and it should be resisted completely i'm going to hold up my cell phone briefly not doing anything with it just want you to see how big it is how small it is when my kids were in high school in eighth grade there was a page in their history books that was had a box in it small enough to be covered up by my cell phone everything in those history books about the vietnam war was in that little box so on a totally different topic i'm going to let you know that there are vietnam veterans such as myself who travel around to schools to teach the vietnam war i took 640 color slides and i don't want to brag but i actually
084knew how to work a camera back when i was in vietnam and i have beautiful color slides of what going on over there i've got caller i'm sorry sir your time is expired but i do recommend to dr akapka that we spend his time 30 seconds because of the interruptions during his presentation that's fine by me and i just want to interrupt and say thank you for your service but please go ahead including movies of downtown hiroshima japan how many people have been to downtown hiroshima and see what it looks like but i encourage you to invite some vietnam veterans to come to your history classes and teach the vietnam war as it happened and i'm willing to be one of those people to do it and i'm an officer in three different veterans groups
085an american legion post a vfw opposed to vietnam veterans of war post and i can help facilitate for you the connection with these different organizations so you can get the perspective from the army guys from the marine corps and from the naval people as well thank you thank you hello i'm christine martin i am a resident of district 99. christine could you bring your your mascot please over your nose thank you i'm here this evening to state unequivocally that i oppose the implementation of the critical race theory curriculum as dangerous as crt is the second scariest problem with crt is that the large majority of parents aren't paying attention because if they were the curriculum of rape critical race theory would never have made it this far i am one of those parents that does
086pay attention along with many people here tonight i have been a thorn in the side of many school administrators due to what my children have been taught and not taught i've witnessed the anti-american anti-religion anti-man and now anti-caucasian indoctrination of all our children that includes your children as well we as a family are no longer part of the public school system because we had had enough of a large number of teachers and administrators teaching kids to hate their country some berating and embarrassing students if they had opposing views i also had zero tolerance left for the mindset set forth subliminally to students by both downers grove high school principals and hank thiel that weakness of character is actually a positive attribute and now critical race theory to sum up for those who are just learning
087now as simply and briefly as i can state critical race theory is built on the intellectual framework of identity specifically when it comes to our public schools it is changing how teachers teach and how students learn they are wanting to divide and punish students by color of their skin and grade of behavior on political viewpoints academic achievements to hard work critical thinking are no longer part of the equation crt is not only in our schools to name just a few it is in our government agencies our human resource departments corporate america i.e cancel culture crt is a dangerous dangerous growth the agenda with race is dividing people i object to the view that any of us should be judged by color of our skin by viewing every element of education history and every facet of
088society through the lens of skin color and race we are desecrating the legacy of dr martin luther king jr and ultimately violating the movement for which such civil rights leaders believed fought and died sierra teaches that our black fellow americans are unable to succeed in the country without aid from government adapting critical race theory is attempting to push the viewpoints that black americans should be regarded as helpless victims and aren't capable of successful regardless of their skills their talents and their hard work what crt strives for like a wolf in sheep's clothing our children black white brown will be taught very true and correct definition of racism crt critical race theory is racism your time has expired i'm almost through your time has expired thank you significantly more important as parents yourself your children are
089part of this too not just ours ma'am i'm sorry but we have other people please think seriously about what you are supporting please don't lean on the excuse that you must follow state and regular federal guidelines this is our district and with one district stands up to what is right other school districts will follow there is power in numbers i please we're going to tonight we're going to ask you to sit down please we're going to conclude the open discussion equation thank you my name is michael hahn i'm a resident of donors grove i do not currently have any kids or grandkids in the school district however i have neighbors and i've seen some of the effects that the social programs have had on them and they have been pretty much devastating wearing these stupid
090masks is just ridiculous i've seen several of you reach under your mask scratch your nose and then touch the desk or the wall belt or the chair every single one of you or most of you anyway when you leave here we'll remove this mask and it won't be on again until you come back here i see no reason why we should have mass policy in the school i'd like you to consider totally removing it as soon as possible thank you very much is there anybody else who'd like to address the board i can you see i can't see past the is there anybody else coming okay we did receive one online comment uh mr rose resubmitted from last month and felt like i did not reflect his comment as we summarize online comments so i
091will encourage the i'm not going to attempt and fail at it again as a point of record all of the comments submitted online become part of the board record i highly encourage all of the board members to read mr rose's comment in full so that you're aware of his full perspective rather than my summary of it other than that we have received no other comments thank you oh yes you did mister i i thought it was all mr rose but you are correct uh we received another comment from mr ellingson as well and i will make sure that that it reflects his comments this evening and i will make sure that that is part of the record and sent to the board as well thank you thank you for correcting me okay if there's no
092one else who wants us to address the board we'll move on to communications and announcements do we have an update well jenny you're you you haven't been to a meeting yet but do you have any updates from ellen we have a meeting friday i'll make sure that jenny gets the invite for that now that she's on the committee um sasa joanna anything uh just that sasa district administrators will continue to meet on a weekly basis through the end of the school year these meetings have morphed in short into structured gatherings where they exchange ideas suggestions and help each other problem solve current issues that they are experiencing saset administration provides updates to programming information legal updates and support for any upcoming needs and registration for the next school year in the next two weeks registration
093packets first asset programs for the 2021-22 school year will be mailed home to families based on many requests thank you joanna okay uh terry the foundation uh we're meeting this week so i don't have anything said no report okay illinois association of school boards i don't know if you all saw in your emails today but they're going to try to do the uh annual meeting uh in person this year so november 19th through the 21st i think that's fabulous yeah we'll be sending out more information on that and i'm sure julie will be reaching out to to arrange for those that wish to go highly recommend it and there is a usually there is a day day and a half for new board members for some intensive training if you're interested in going uh upcoming
094board meetings we'll have the june 2nd workshop at 6 30 p.m the june's and all these are here correct uh the june 2nd is the iasb workforce that's right we need to see what the ruling will be from isb on physical distancing if we can hold it at the district office and i'll fit in that space according to the idph rules it's much easier for us to manage that back at our offices but if we need to spread out to a larger location we'll we'll let you know where that's at we will open in in public session reception of visitors and go directly into uh close-ups there will be no action taken no action to yeah it's closed session for iasb and for personnel and then june 7th we'll have a workshop meeting at 6
09530 and then june 21st our business meeting at 6 30. not to mention the fact we hopefully have graduation is friday graduation on friday hopefully we'll see you all there if not saturday or sunday depending on the weather and board members please on the way out uh in the culinary arts lab are your caps and gowns since we're traveling roadshow this week please take that with you so that you're prepared and we can take a few minutes just to tell you what to expect on the day of with that we'll ask for a motion to adjourn terry and mike all those in favor aye aye all those opposed we are adjourned thank you