001[Music] Oh, oh [Music] [Applause] [Music] the oh [Music] Heat. Heat. [Music] [Applause] [Music] Heat. Heat. [Music] Oh, [Applause] [Music] oh, oh. [Music] Heat. [Music] Heat. [Music] [Applause] [Music] Heat. Heat. [Music] Oh. [Music] [Applause] [Music] Oh, [Music] heat, heat. [Music] Heat. Heat. [Music] Heat up [Music] Heat. Heat. [Music] Heat. Heat. Heat. [Music] [Applause] [Music] Heat. [Music] Heat. Heat. [Music] Oh, all the [Applause] [Music] Lord. [Music] Heat. [Music] Heat. Heat. Heat. [Music] [Applause] [Music] Heat. Heat. [Music] Oh. [Applause] [Music] Oh. [Music] Oh. [Music] Heat. [Music] Heat. Heat. Heat. [Music] Oh, oh, [Applause] [Music] Heat. [Music] Heat. Heat. Heat. [Music] [Applause] [Music] Oh. [Music] [Applause] [Music] Oh, [Music] heat, heat. [Music] Heat up [Music] here. [Music] Heat. Heat. [Music] Heat. [Music] Heat. Heat. Heat. [Music] [Applause] [Music] Heat. Heat. [Music] Oh. [Music] Oh. [Music] [Applause] [Music] Oh. Heat.
002[Music] Heat. Heat. Heat. [Applause] [Music] Oh, all the Heat. [Applause] [Music] Heat. Heat. [Music] [Applause] [Music] Heat. [Music] Heat. Heat. [Music] Oh, [Applause] [Music] oh, oh. [Music] Heat. Heat. [Music] [Applause] [Music] Heat. Heat. [Music] Oh, all [Applause] [Music] Heat. Heat. [Music] Heat. [Music] Heat up here. [Music] Heat. Heat. [Music] Heat. [Applause] [Music] Heat. Heat. [Music] Oh, the Lord. [Applause] [Music] Heat. Heat. [Music] [Applause] [Music] Heat. [Music] Oh, [Applause] [Music] Heat. Heat. [Music] [Applause] [Music] Heat. Heat. Heat. [Music] Oh. [Music] [Applause] [Music] Oh. Oh. [Music] Heat. [Music] Heat. Heat. [Music] [Applause] [Music] Heat. [Music] Heat. Heat. [Music] Oh, [Applause] [Music] oh, [Music] oh. [Music] Heat. [Music] Heat. [Music] Heat up here. [Music] Heat. Heat. [Music] [Applause] [Music] Heat. Heat. Heat. Heat. [Music] Oh, all [Applause] [Music] the Oh. [Music] Heat. Heat. [Music] [Applause] [Music] Heat. Heat.
003[Music] Oh, all the Heat. [Applause] [Music] Heat. [Music] Heat. [Applause] Heat. [Music] Heat. Heat. [Music] Oh. [Applause] [Music] Oh. [Music] Heat. [Music] Heat. [Music] [Applause] [Music] Heat. Heat. [Music] Oh the heart. [Music] [Applause] [Music] Oh, heat, [Music] heat. Heat [Music] up [Music] Heat. [Music] Heat. [Music] Heat. Heat. [Music] Heat. Hey. Hey. Hey. [Music] Heat. [Applause] [Music] Heat. Heat. Heat. [Music] Oh, [Applause] [Music] oh, oh. [Music] Heat. [Music] [Applause] [Music] Heat. Heat. [Music] Oh, oh, [Applause] [Music] Oh, heat Heat. [Music] [Applause] [Music] Heat. [Music] Heat. Heat. [Music] Oh, the heart. [Applause] [Music] Oh, heat. [Music] Heat. [Music] Heat. [Music] Heat. Heat. [Music] Oh, [Applause] [Music] oh, [Music] Heat. [Music] Heat. [Music] Heat. Heat. [Music] Heat. Heat. [Music] Oh. [Music] Hey, we're returning from close session um to our open session of our um board meeting and
004we'll continue with the agenda. Um we'll go um to approval of minutes. The chair will entertain a motion to approve the minutes of the March 18th, 2025 regular meeting of the board of education as presented. So move. Second. All those in favor? I. Any opposed? Okay. Motion carries. Now, the chair will entertain a motion to approve the minutes of the close session of the March 18th, 2025 regular meeting of the board of education as presented. So move second. All those in favor? I. Any opposed? Okay. Motion carries. Um we will now move to our public comment. Public comment. I have a um just guidelines to present. Public comment is a time for the community to address the board with comments and questions. Each community member addressing the board has five minutes. Once you have been
005notified of your time uh that your time is up, kindly step away from the podium. Public comment will be for 30 minutes and no more um than each subject lasting 20 minutes. Please understand this is not an engagement time. The board will consider your comments and its decisions. For those comments or questions requiring a follow-up response, the board president or superintendent will follow up. And first we have Dan Charleston board. Uh Superintendent Balderman, Madame President, thank you for your time. Um I also uh I'm here specifically to say thank you. uh and and as I say, thank you. It's for bringing the the the two question the referendum question both in November and in April. Recognizing that it's on the uh agenda this tonight for discussion, I thought I'd share my perspective recognizing that there
006are people um really fine people of fine character who in good faith will disagree with me here and and that's fine. And so, but I wanted to share this uh because it I I felt deeply about it. First, thank you for bringing it. There were 6,700 votes in in November, and as you guys know, the referendum lost by one. Actually, it as a friend of mine pointed out, we lost by two, but but um um it was about 65% turnout, plus or minus in that election cycle. Last Tuesday, there were about 3,600 votes, which is about 35% turnout. And I know that there will be people who will say that that was the voice of the community. I understand that. Um but it's half the number of people. Just as importantly, there was an election
007and three incumbents won. Additionally, the other person who won was somebody who was actively engaged on the yes side. What was the voice of the community? What was it? Um, I think uh for me having served on the board and and very often when people run for the board they they use rhetoric like fight for the kids. It's good rhetoric. It's really good rhetoric and I think you guys have done a fine job of fighting for the kids. Um, on the other side we heard things like we need better alternatives. And so I'm going to encourage you as you think about your going forward stuff. One of the things I'm in a coffee clutch Saturday mornings here in here in Westmont. And one of the things that an old-timer told me is uh he wondered
008about mismanagement of resources. And I know nothing could be further from the truth. And somehow this board and this district has to address itself to how the finances of the district work and why you can't simply plow good money after bad into these into these buildings. um and why it's not in the tax base today. The other question I'm going to ask though is as as you think about what fighting for the community, what fighting for kids means? Um if you were to bring the question again, and I hope you do, what do you have to lose? If you're fighting for kids, what's your legacy? Is it that you want to be liked and you don't want to bring the question? Or is it that you're willing to fight some more? We all know that
009those buildings are untenable. Utterly and completely untenable as environments. And so I hope if you believed that it was the right thing in November, if you believed it was the right thing in April, it's still the right thing. I'm going to encourage you to view it that way. From my perspective, I would suggest that November of 26 when you can um you have a bond issue that's coming up in 27 as well and you can kind of piggyback that bond issue to find financing in a way that you can say that the school board is minimizing the tax impact of the next question. It's just just a thought. But the other the other thoughts I'm going to give you are these. This is a really fine space that you have your meetings in. And so
010when people in the community come here, they get to experience a really fine space. Move your board meetings to the dungeon at Manning. When it's hot, have the community experience what the kids experience every day. Move your board meetings occasionally to the gym at Manning when it's cold. Have the community experience what the kids experience every day. Reach out to your friends in district 181 and have a board meeting in a brand new school in a brand new grade school building and have the community see what a first rate school building actually looks like. Don't be afraid to step away from this space. Do that. In my opinion, have at least one educational thing where you talk about 2011 finance in detail in full. Allocate several hours, talk about it, right? And the last thing
011I'll ask is what will be your legacy? Will you be a board and board members who fought for the kids or will you be satisfied with being reelected a few times? Um, so I want to thank each of you for doing a thankless job and I want to congratulate those who won and in particular right now tonight I want to thank Angela who I know Tuesday was disappointing for her personally as well. The work that you've done has been meaningful and it's um I hope that you'll consider running again at some point. And so with that, thank you all. I appreciate you. Um, and that's all I have to say. Thank you. Thank you. Next we have Leah Conover. Good evening. Um, so to just kick it off tonight, I want to be clear. I'm
012speaking as a rep I am not speaking as a representative of the board, but as a resident. um a parent of two in CUSD 2011, a frequent volunteer, um and one member of this school board. Uh my comments tonight in no way a representative of this board um and they are for this community. Since last Tuesday, uh there have been more than a few uh persistent thoughts and feelings floating through my brain. um frustration, sadness, anger, fear, disappointment, so many um but one continues to stand out. Um loss of momentum. I worry that this district, this community will lose momentum, passion, and an interest in being involved. Families and individuals move into and out of villages every single year. Uh people are always going to be moving in and out. that that that just is
013right. In my experience, in the last 5 or 10 years, this school community um has seen a number of devoted families join the district. Uh I watched this first as a parent and I saw these motivated families join and these young excited teachers come in and it emboldened me to join the board in 2020 um and then run for election in 2021. and I've watched this community grow and evolve um as a parent and a board member since then. And in the last year or so, um I've seen so many dedicate countless hours to this most recent referendum process. And I want to thank you for that dedication. Thank you for showing up to committee meetings, sharing information, and being a part of the process. momentum does not just happen. Um, it's built by the
014families, the teachers, and the community members that are invested in this district. I've seen it firsthand over the past decade, and I'm asking you to not give up on it yet. Don't give up on us yet. Losing stings. Losing hurts. Um, and losing makes quitting super tempting. Stepping back, stepping away, quitting will not fix our challenges. Stepping forward will. The leaky roofs, the outdated infrastructure, the crumbling parking lots did not just appear last year, and they aren't going to disappear on their own, and they certainly will not disappear because of an election. They still must be solved. Yes and no. Be the voices that shape our future. Help decide the budget cuts for repairs and the finance committee. Bring your expertise and solutions to the facilities committee. Join us and the public relations committee, which
015just so happens to have a meeting right here before our next board meeting at 5:30 on April 22nd. You have solutions. bring them to us and help vet them. It is so easy to say someone else will step up. It is easy to sit behind a computer screen and support something. Heck, it's easier than ever to give money to something. What isn't easy is showing up, joining a committee, joining a club, helping the PTO, volunteering at the concession stand for the band boosters, knocking on doors, talking to strangers. terrifying. Retaining a community is not easy. I see you. I have been working on this in some form or another for 5 years since joining the board. I've questioned continually. I've questioned continuing every single day since winning what might be the saddest re-election bid ever.
016Um, and I get wanting to quit. And I certainly have thought of a million different ways that my life would be better. It would be less stressful and generally more positive if I did quit. But if I quit, I wouldn't get to meet and work with the wonderful, dedicated members of this community, the families, administrators, teachers, and support staff. I wouldn't get to see something come to fruition years in the making. and all things school are measured in years, not months. If I quit, I wouldn't get to help shape the future of this district. I'm not going to let all of the reasons to quit outweigh the reasons to stay. This work and the work of the community around us matters and it needs dedicated, motivated people to do it. This last year was the
017beginning of your service. The coming years will be determined by those who stick around and actually engage. I cannot make a promise that it will be easy. I cannot I can't do it. I can promise you that you won't regret it. This work matters. This work impacts us every day. It should not be easy. It should challenge us. It should stretch us. I refuse to believe that this district is defined by its setbacks. We are defined by the work we choose to do next. So take a deep breath, take a break, recharge. We all need it. And then come back. This district, this community needs you. And when we all come back for the taste, I will see you on wristband night. I'm going to be hanging out on the corner. It's over there somewhere.
018And I'm going to be gearing up for another year. So, come on over. Let's talk about the future and let's take the next step together. Thank you. Thank you. And at this time, I don't have any other cards for public comment. Are there any other speakers? Okay. We'll proceed with our agenda with the um consent agenda. The chair entertain a motion to approve the consent agenda as presented. Personnel recommendations Dr. Kevin Ryan Manning principal leave of absence retirements and resignations to approval of Daoes representative for a motion. So moved. Second roll call. Mr. Marin, yes. Miss Decerty, yes. Miss Conover, yes. Miss Hoover, yes. Miss Rodono, yes. Miss Rogers, yes. Mr. Aia, yes. Motion carries. Welcome. You're speaking? Yeah. Yeah. But Kevin, I think the Kevin and the team from the high school. Yeah. Yeah.
019Because it'll be under uh action items. I'll speak about Dr. Ryan. Does that make sense? Yes. All right. So um next we have our discussion but before we um go into that I have an addendum to ask u the board for approval. Um we have Dr. Gibson here who uh has a financial report that um was not placed on the um agenda earlier but I want to add that um so we have a financial report given I will do that after um the Westma High School presentation if that's um okay with the board to clarify no action is being taken. It's just discuss. So this is just discussion. So no action item is being placed on the agenda at this time. But I'm just going to ask for if there are any um instead of
020a straw pose or any um um nays to that at all. Sounds good. So we'll we'll have you Dr. Gson after our presentation. So we'll move to the 2526 proposed schedule change for the Westmont High School. Good evening everyone. I'm Dr. Kevin W and I'm the principal of Westmont High School. I'd first like to start off by saying thank you to Mr. Balderman and our school board for being so supportive and willing to consider uh this schedule change which we think is in the best interest of our students for next year. Uh and then also I'd like to say thank you an for your many years of service to our community, to our school district. You've been an outstanding teammate, citizen, and supporter of everything we've done. So, just want to say thank you so
021much from all of us at the high school and school district. I'll be at the finance meetings. I'll be busting up the boosters. Not going anywhere. We got that. Okay. So, tonight we're here with our building leaders. We have Miss Jackabowski who is our English department coordinator and instructional coach. She's here to help us with some of the uh insights that she has in terms of what this means for our students. We also have Mr. Mark Dile, who is our department coordinator for math and also just another building leader who their insights are invaluable in terms of what we're trying to do for our students because they've been a part of our school district for so many years and they know because they look at our data and our students and they really care about
022what's best for them and our building. They represent our building as well. So, just to kind of open up things tonight, I wanted to in this schedule change we were hoping to put in place for next year for our students and our staff. uh just to give you a little context 13 years ago is really when we implemented PLC's and the foundation of PLC's is really the four critical questions you know what do we want students to learn how are we going to know whether or not they learn that what are we going to do if they don't learn that and then what do we do if they have learned that and those questions really drive our work and that's why our PLC's have been so effective is because of some of the leaders who
023have really embraced this thought process and really take data seriously and trying to use that to determine what's best for our students moving forward forward and creating strategic plans for each individual students to help them close the learning gaps early and often so that they can be successful when it comes to state testing AP just their curriculum classes that they're involved in to also build the critical thinking skills that they need to be successful after high school. And I think that's why we've been so successful under Jack's leadership, but then also with our strong teammates who have embraced this and they have felt empowered and they've taken the lead when it comes to this kind of work. So what we started 13 years ago was great. And we built in this time 13 years ago
024in the weekly schedule on Wednesdays where at 1:46 we wanted our teams to get together to look at student performance data to really figure out what they needed to do to make adjustments to help our students quickly and timely so that that gap doesn't get bigger. So that time from 1:46 to 2:46 originally was for our PLC teams to get together to look at this information. We also kept many of our students who were struggling academically to work on some of the skills that they needed to get their grades up to C's, B's, and A's. We said Fs and D's were not good enough. So we held a high standard when it came to that. We've been doing that for 13 years, but we've evolved and I think that we've come to the conclusion that
025we can do things better. So, as a team, we got together to start to talk about what that really looks like. Uh, and some of that we started last year in terms of creating a flex schedule where on Thursdays in the middle of the day, we had basically um an opportunity for enhancement, enrichment with our students. And that's a 100% of our students because they weren't able to leave early. They weren't excused. They had to be there and they had to get this individual attention that's been helping them. So we tried this out last year and some of the common plan periods that we had for departments to meet in PLC's we created within the master schedule where the English department didn't need to have 146 to 246 to meet with their team. the math
026department didn't need it because in their schedule when with one within one of the plan periods they were able to meet during the regular school day which gave them the opportunity to start to create an ACT intervention system which is invaluable. It's been specifically geared towards helping our students be more successful when it comes to the state testing. And this is support that they get that most families have to pay for. And anywhere from a,000 to 2,000 or $3,000 families will pay for this type of support where they don't necessarily have the relationship piece. We do that at Westmont High School within the school day with teachers that understand exactly where they're at and exactly what they need. So it's even more specific than what you can get if you go to a private company
027outside of that. We also use that time for seal remediation, enrichment, uh group work. So we were creative in terms of how we use this flex schedule to best to meet the needs of our students in a very specific manner. Uh but then it comes back to the ACT prep. It's helped us be more specific with that and helping all of our students where some students from 146 to 246 want to just leave and parents are saying, "Oh, no, you know, it's okay for them to leave because they have to go to a doctor's appointment. They have to leave and go start working." Things of that nature that we had no control over. Uh but then also AP assistance and then academic intervention. So it was this idea that students who are struggling, we help
028them get to the point where they're more successful and confident. But those students who are doing really well, we then enrich that opportunity, take them to the next level so that they can continue pursuing the dreams that they have when it comes to academic performance. Here are some of the current challenges that we have with that time from 146 to 246. And this is why we believe it's in our best interest to change this schedule so that all students are there every single day Monday through Friday until 2:46. The majority of our students are dismissed right now at 146. We're keeping students who are juniors who need additional help on the ACT. We're keeping the students who are getting D's and Fs, but to keep the other students, it's been very difficult because they're used
029to getting out at 146 because they have A's, B's, and C's, and it's difficult to keep them all managed within the building at that time. Uh, several students would benefit from additional academic support. The idea of having this new flex schedule means that all students are getting this type of support, intervention, enrichment opportunities, and that nobody's missing out on that. If we're keeping just a quarter of the students from 146 to 246, that means 75% of them are going off and doing things that are not act actually academically based at that time. Uh, and many students choose to leave, which creates a diff a difficult dynamic. We're keeping some students back while others are leaving. When they see that, it makes it makes it even more difficult to keep them on Wednesdays when they don't
030want to necessarily be there for the extra help. uh parent permission. We've seen an increase in that where parents understand at 1:46 on Wednesdays, they have an opportunity to have their child go and do something else. And that could be the doctor's appointments. It could be that they're going to leave town that, you know, they could be going, you know, to start their work, things of that nature where we have a difficult time convincing them to stay when that's in the their own best interest. And then we also have parent uh extension enrichment opportunities are not always taken. You know, if you allow a student to take the easy way out, sometimes they'll do that. And the ones who we really need to stay are the ones who are going to fight and say try
031to sneak out. And we see them sneak out the side doors. So, we're trying to curb that by saying, "Hey, let's be consistent. Let's keep all of our students here until 246, we'll be creative with the timing. And when we have this enrichment enhancement opportunity, we'll do it in the middle of the day. That way, no one feels like they're being kept back for as punishment. everyone views it as an opportunity for each of them to pursue uh extra help wherever that is that they need that. And now I want to turn it over to the experts here who have firsthand knowledge of working with many of these students and this experience that we've had over the last 13 years. Go ahead. Thank you. So thank you for listening to this uh opportunity for Westmont
032High School. Um, so one of the things that I have looked at as a teacher is I have tried to keep these kids and one of the things we do at Westmont High School is we ask kids to do extraordinary things. We ask kids who probably would not take an AP class in other high schools. We encourage them and push them into these classes. Because of that, they may need some extra time to work. So that 50 minutes is not enough for them because we're asking them to do extraordinary things. And we the reason why we get kids to do that is because we build great relationship with kids. Asking them to stay after school when they're in an AP class and all of their friends are going home, that's that's a strain to that
033relationship. And when you look in their eyes when they come in at 1:46 and they can look out my window and they see all their friends leaving and going to Wendy's, it's difficult and you know it's going to be a grind to work them for another 45 minutes while they're thinking about their friends at Wendy's. Um it also gives an opportunity for during the school day if it's built in the school day every student is there. they have that pair mediation that they can work with. So, it's not just us teachers holding them back. They can then work if they're in an AP kelk class, they can get together with five of their friends and start working on their homework at night. It also allows the teachers to have um their data team meetings during
034the day if they do not have common plan. Um, it gives us some consistency for Monday through Friday that they know they're just going to be leaving at 2:46. There's no variation in that. So, they know if they're going to make a doctor's appointment at 146. Every doctor must be booked solid in West because this stack of my my daughter, my son has a doctor's appointment at 2:00 is amazing. So, this gives us some consistency. It's always going to be at 2:46 Monday through Friday. This flex period would be on Tuesday and Thursday. Um, so we're holding it two days a week. So, sometimes it'll be remediation for students, but it also give them a chance for enrichment. Um, if they're struggling in both English and math or history or art, it allow it gives
035them the two days to be flexible. Hello, I'm Anna. Nice to see all of you. Thank you for listening to this riveting presentation. Um, I echo a lot of Mark's statements about students, you know, leaving early and thinking that like it's their right to leave early. I'm like, "Yeah, but you have enough. Can you stay?" You know, like these kind of conversations we're having. And we're really lucky cuz we have excellent kids. So, it's easy for the for us to talk to them and explain, you know, with our relationship why they they should stay. Um, but there are times where, you know, I have to use some of my time to be calling them on their phones and, "Hey, I need you back here right now." And then they're like, "Oh, okay. I'm coming." You
036know, so we're trying to curb that. And and since we've practiced some of the flex time already, uh, we've seen a change in their demeanor with the flex period that's embedded into the day instead of at the end of the day. So, everyone's staying. So, it's not like anyone's being punished and they're going to their flex period and they're and there's no like disdain like they're okay to go there. You know, one thing that is great is we've changed the culture for trying to increase test scores and increase proficiency um by having this time period for them. So, the culture has changed. The kids are not pushing back. It's been 12 or 13 years of PLC schedule and trying to um help them during that time period. So, our juniors, they know it's like their
037time to shine and and after practice tests, they come and tell us like, "Oh, look how good I did or whatever." So, they get very into it. So, we like that, but we don't want them to feel like it's a punishment. Um so some benefits that we expect are increased student engagement and academic support, a greater schedule consistency, um and enhanced teacher collaboration by embedding that common plan time and the flex time to make students a priority and make the looking at the data a priority. Um one thing that we've noticed is kids will kind of follow up with us to ask to be put into a specific flex activity so that they're kind of taking a little more ownership of getting themselves out of an F hole. you know, I have a D or
038an F and instead of I'm staying on Wednesday and I hate this, you know, this is a way for us to kind of attack that right then and there. So, we've seen a little bit of a change in the F list too. I've seen a little bit I've had less kids failing for a longer period of time because of the flex schedule. Um, and then the implementation next steps. So, communicating it with students, parents, and staff. Um, and making sure everyone understands that we are simply just switching to a Monday through Friday normal sort of 246 dismissal. And then what we do in that time um doesn't affect us as much because we are there regardless of the time period but it does help the students and it gives them a chance to increase some
039of their scores too. I mean we have students now who wouldn't normally stay on a Wednesday because their scores are pretty high but maybe they want them higher and so we can provide enrichment and extension activities too. Teacher support providing guidance and support to ensure there's a smooth transition. Uh Mark and Kevin and I as a team and most of our building have done a lot of uh background work trying to make sure that this flex schedule works and that everybody's able to use it. It's been getting easier. Um and then aligning with our mission to provide the best possible learning environment. The number one reason we do things is for kids. So it's if we continued with the same schedule, you know, to make sure our teams can meet and all that stuff, we
040found ways around that now and this is what's best for kids. So we're going to end there. If you guys have questions, please feel free to ask. Will ju and just to clarify, it's Tuesdays and Thursdays for about 40 minutes. Yeah. Right. It's after lunch those two days and we would have just a regular school day on Wednesdays. Okay. Okay. Will all the teachers have PLC time? Will they all make it in? Yeah. So, we will build in in the master schedule common plan. And if there's a if there's a department that can't have common plan for whatever reason that might be, they'll be able to meet on those one of the two flex days because we're going to have two adults supervising groups of students. So they'll be flexible in terms of being one
041person can leave to go do a a PLC meeting. Great. We're really good at PLC's. We just won the ambassador award. I had the same question as Kevin because I was just like, "Oh, I wouldn't want to be the department that doesn't have common plan time and then is losing that PLC time." But it sounds like you guys figured that out. Yeah, that's the reason for the two days and two people in a home room. Yeah. So, it gives you flexibility. I love it. I mean, I love this. I in the year 2025, there are enough obstacles to student attendance and keeping kids in the building. So, love it. It just it it removes one of those obstacles that we have right now working with students who struggle or you know that should stay because
042it's in their best interest. You know, now we're instead of hitting 25 to 35% of our students, we're going to be able to get 100% of them this extra help that they can all use. Yeah. And we know this time is valuable and we've seen the changes that occur. I mean, last year, for instance, our SAT scores, like we started at like 28% proficient for English and we ended at 58. like we wouldn't be able to do that if we didn't have that time and the state hovers around 30. So we have to have the time you know sheltered which I think Jack has done such a great job at showing us how to do that and creating this vision for us so we know how important it is but we have to also do
043now is take it to the next level like we've you know been able to um work with this schedule but this is what's best for kids. I think that the other thing it does is it gives the kid the choice of what they need to work on and they advocate for themselves. So it, you know, their schedule's pretty laid out. You know, they it's a bell rings and they know where they have to go. This gives them 40 minutes of opportunities that they get to choose what they need to work on during that time. Mhm. and and we spent the last year and a half or so trying to work through some of the kinks before we brought it to your attention just to make sure that we knew exactly what was going to work
044best for us and to try to make sure that we have a very consistent practice that we wanted to lay out here today. So So okay, go ahead please. I I kind of have to hope I remember. So as far as that where you had kids that um and I have a high with two high schoolers so a little bit familiar don't have the schedule down but this part where you have like enhancement or for say for the ACT now you had a limited number of students that were attending those enrichment like do you have will you have the staff to necessarily increase that amount cuz that amount will go up cuz all the kids are staying now. Yes. Um yeah so that that's what we're trying to do. We're trying to create more opportunities
045for the enrichment and extension. Um, we know now that we've been doing PLC work for so long. That fourth question like that's where we live now or we're living there. We're always in two and three. We're always doing the work, but we need to be getting better at creating opportunities for students who are already high performing. You know, we're really lucky in this district that we have that, but we have to make sure that we're challenging them, too. So, as it stands, it's been like, here's that some extra ACT work that you could always pull if you want. We'll keep it in classrooms. You can work on on your own. Whatever you want to do, whatever works for you. They're also free to attend any ACT intervention. They if they feel like they're struggling with
046sentence structure, they know they can come to me or, you know, to Mr. Palmer. They know they can go, you know, to a room to get help. But when it's embedded in the day, they're going to do that without like, oh, I should probably stay for an hour and like that, you know, I'm not sure if I want to stay, that kind of thing. um math and English and science for this year for ACT. We've pulled in many, many students, even our students kind of in that lower green area because we don't want their scores to slide back. Red, yellow, we bring in all of our students on the continuum because we want to make sure that we're targeting intervention like our our targeted interventions are for those specific needs that they have. So all
047of our groups are made by the question types that they miss. So that's still by performing. Well, you may have 30 students now that it will be 60 coming in for this now or 80. Yeah. And so we do have the staff for that. Like we can, you know, split up our kids into different teams and different groups. And we consider pacing, too. Some of our students who need a lot more help. We're working more on skills and less on test prep. That might be less students than some of the higher performing groups. So, for example, Anna and I share the same home room. If it's an English day and they're going to do a big intervention, all the English teachers don't have a home room to watch. they they go into a separate classroom
048and they pull all the juniors. So, they can have five of their teachers for all of the juniors and then I'm back at the home room supervising, but I can still pull like if I have a kid struggling in pre-calc, I can still pull that kid and have him report to Anna's classroom where our home room is at. So, I can work with them while supervising them. So we have we we have about 20 activities 20 to 24 activities a week that kids can choose from. ACT we have an intervention schedule. So we have uh ACT kind of takes precedence. AP anybody failing a class automatically that takes precedence and we can we prioritize those activities. So there's if you're failing a class that's the top priority. You have to go and get that done.
049And then my other part of it, uh, another question I have is for students that I don't know how they, again, I don't have the schedules down. I don't know how they use their time, but the students that are going to TCD, for example, or does this affect them and how they So, this is going to happen after lunch every day. So, the kids from TCD will be back prior to lunch. Okay. So, they'll still be able to participate uh and pick and choose which classroom they'd like to go to. And the schedules, like it's kind of hard. It's a little abstract to think about, but Flex has like an online app and the kids have been using it and they're so much better at technology than most of us, so they've really figured it
050out. And they might say like, I, you know, I I need help with this or that. Can you show me how to get in there? And then we just make sure we have an activity where we can invite those students. So all that's getting easier. Sorry. No, it was my question was answered. I have a question kind of along the same lines. So for like students um since it is freshman through senior year, what does that look like for our freshman and sophomores? Um and maybe not even so much the sophomores and juniors since it's like a lot of um ACT prep, AP intervention, things like that. What does it look like for our freshman? And then what does it look like for our seniors because they are in graduation mode? And what does it
051look like for those who are not pursuing any type of academic um you know activity like college or anything like that? If they're pursuing a trade or going into the military or the work industry for these periods, what activities does that look like for those students? So there's a there's a lot of autonomy here for student choice. Okay. and they get a chance to as freshman and sophomores as you might have mentioned they they're going to have a case or a course load of you know five six seven classes that they're going to have where they can go and work with their teachers where they might be getting a C in their class or they might be having a project come up so they can go and pick and choose on a weekly basis where
052they want to go to get the extra help to enhance you know if they're struggling in terms of finishing up a project and they just want to have a conversation with the teacher in terms of what the expectations are a one-on-one one conversation they can choose to go and do that at that time. Uh so that's for our freshman and sophomores. But you know with our seniors there's also flexibility when it comes to social emotional where you know they can meet with counselors, they can meet with um you know the media center, social workers, any of this stuff that might be beneficial for them during that time. Uh but we are going to look at using our data team to be able to identify the students who are struggling and trying to pinpoint exactly where
053they need to go prior to Tuesdays and Thursdays. flex time. And then for college, for our seniors, that's really where we want to make sure that they have a very specific um itinerary when it comes to the Tuesdays and Thursdays with flex so that they're on track for graduation, that they are finishing up their college apps, that they are doing FAFSA and things like that where they have to do this work that right now they don't have that extra time. So, we have to constantly remind them that they have to turn it in by a certain date. Uh so, this time is really student driven. It's student centered. It's student driven and sometimes there has to be some oversight by the adults in the building to make sure that students aren't choosing to just go
054to a teacher that they really connect with when they might be getting a C, D, or an F. So, we want to make sure that we're balancing giving autonomy but with some oversight if needed. And just one quick thing I wanted to address, I have had students recently who are in the TCD programs. I know you were talking about um the trades and we were we were kind of trying to talk about how to make the ACT meaningful since a lot of them are like I'm not going to college but we did have a conversation I've had this with a couple kids HVAC electricians there's still going to be a test that they need to take to be certified so they're seeing a lot of um you know they're seeing the productivity of like okay
055I'm going to come to this ACT session maybe not so that I'm doing so amazing in the ACT but because the test I have to take to become an electrician is going to be a lot of these same things a lot of those kinds of tests are still common core driven So, we're trying to make that meaningful for them and not just, oh, here we're gonna make you do this because we want you to do well on a test, you know. So, I heard what you were saying and that's been kind of a conversation I've been having with some of our juniors lately. Okay. Can I can I add to that cuz Anna, I was thinking the exact same thing. NAS has been in ACT school for several years and we use the ACT college
056and career readiness standards. And I think it's important to just understand that wherever a student goes after high school, those skills, if you look at them, like not that I'm suggesting everybody read the ACT College Career Red, they're they're I think they're riveting. Um, but if you read them, you'll see how like that skill right there will help you if you go into the military and have to do XYZ. This skill right here will definitely help you if you go into the trades. And so they're they're fundamental basic reading, writing, math skills that you need wherever you're going to go. And so, um, I I just think that that flex time is going to help every student no matter what their path is. And I love the piece as well, um, the college prep piece.
057So, it just it's about educating all of our students wherever they're at. It it really is going to help them build their confidence, you know, in terms of staying on track for the things that they need to stay on track with. they don't become overwhelmed when it gets to the end of the semester and they really build a strong uh relationship with their teachers in terms of the classes that they need the most help in. Yeah. Because sometimes if they miss the Wednesdays right now, then I'm going to get them at lunch. So, this will make that a little easier, too. You know, oh, let's go do, you know, ACT prep at lunch because you missed yesterday. So, can you guys talk a little bit about the impact on families that's expected? This is a
058change, right? And these are our oldest students in the district, many of them maybe helping out at home for their youngers, right? Can you guys just talk about that a little bit? And then also on the communication side of it, like um if there are any plans to connect with our families that have IEPs and 504s to like those families are going to need a little bit more specific direction probably, right? like well I've so I've been doing this for the last 12 years and I've worked with all the students who have uh needed to leave or wanted to leave for various reasons and that has not necessarily been the case in terms of hey I have to go home and uh take care of my younger sibling. It's happened but it's not the one
059that's most consistent. The one that's most consistent are the doctor's notes where we've heard that doctor's appointments are scheduled at the 2:00 time every Wednesday. Uh but part of the communication is we want to get ahead of it. So you know after the board makes a decision that's when we want to get together to figure out how we can best communicate this with our community and at that point we'd like to you know invite them to call us to meet with us if they have any concerns and what kind of supports that they need for themselves as well as for their child who's at the high school. Um, but you know, this will be a little bit of a change, but I also think that this is very student centered and it's student driven to
060help our students be more successful and to gain the confidence that they need to have those skills that we were talking about to be critical thinkers and to be determined to be successful and finish what they start. And as for our special education students, I hear what you're saying, but they are a huge part of this, too. And this is going to benefit them with the extra time that's not as structured, so there's not as much pressure and they get a little more of their extended time, too. Sometimes right now when we give a practice ACT test, our special education students can't even finish because they have extended time and we don't want them to miss class. So then we don't get enough information. This will also help us give them that time that they
061need and they deserve to finish a test and get uh the data that you know we need to have to help them and and they'll also have the opportunity to meet with the resource teachers. So for special ed, it gives an additional opportunity on Tuesdays and Thursdays to specifically meet with whether it's a social worker, a counselor, or their case manager to get the extra support that they need. Cool. Thank you. Mhm. Thank you. Right. There are no other questions or comments. Hey, thank you. One last comment. This did this was generated by our teachers, not by myself or by Kevin. So, it came from the teachers who have the highest trust rating, student teacher trust rating in the state of Illinois and that says something. Um, and so I'm very proud of it and
062uh, you know, one of the most overachieving schools in the state, but that's the thing I really love. They're not resting on their laurels. They're looking at ways to get better. And they'll track the data as we always do to see the impact it has. And if it's not working, we'll fine-tune. They will fine-tune until it's excellent. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Second. Bless you. So yeah, our um we will be voting. So we'll have a chance to discuss this more at our next meeting, but um in the April 22nd meeting, we'll be voting on this. Great. We'll move to our financial presentation. Stand up, please. You can stand if you wish or you can go prefer. either way. Yes. Take the easy route if I could. You should. Yes. Um, Dr. John, I
063am um working here for a period of time since January uh as an interim business manager. I'm retired about this is my second year of retirement. After 25 years of the chief school business officials, another 15 years in the private sector as an accountant in um primarily manufacturing areas. I'll just take me a second to get to my presentation. I did want to give you guys something to look at cuz go ahead numbers and numbers are boring enough to hear something to see or put you to sleep. Um I do want to uh with apologies to the gentleman who just stepped out. This will not be uh two hours. Um but certainly this is information I think is worthwhile. Um I do have a fairly brief presentation um because I don't know exactly what you
064have tonight. The academic information is significantly important. So um I'll have the opportunities to come out and talk to you more, give you more uh details if you like and also uh if you got finance committee meetings, we can get more into the weeds uh than I am going to do tonight. Uh just want to start uh this is just a monthly financial review. I know you get these at least since October. I think you you got them pretty regularly before then. So, I'm going to just attempt to give you an update um on it. You can ask questions as I go through if you like. Um I'll answer what I can. I know I can't answer a lot because again, my time has been limited. Uh there's a lot that I uh wish I
065knew about the school district. Um but I think hopefully enough uh I know that I can get you through uh good answers to the uh through the questions that you would have tonight. Uh first of all, I want to start out again. This is um the uh monthly presentation. Oh, you missed your homage. I gave you homage to your desire to have two hour presentation. You're not getting that tonight. But but but it's worthwhile to have that sort of information. I think you're right about that. I agree with you. I'm not speaking for the board. I agree with that. More financial information. Um let us talk all the time. Um anyway, I want to start out by talking about revenues. Um this is for through the month of March um 2025. So uh through this
066time period um revenues have been running slightly behind projections. What we try to do um because in funded accounting you don't necessarily have monthly revenue on a monthly come revenue coming in on a monthly basis consistently. So we kind of kind of estimate when money is going to are going to come in. So we project each month what we think the revenue are going to be for the month and also for uh year to date. So our projections we have the revenues running slightly behind where we thought they might be. But again that's just our best guess. Um but we also anticipate um uh the way and you'll see in the couple slides from here uh the cycle of uh property taxes as they're received kind of drive um the way that we go in
067terms of having uh money in the bank spend spend spend and then get some more money in the bank. But we'll see that slide in a minute. Um state and federal revenues have been on target. Um I do want to point you to these dials that you're used to seeing at the top. There's the red, green, red, yellow, green, and blue dial. This give you an idea of um on a percentage basis where you are. Uh this is revenues like I said. So just skipping to the yellow dial. That's the actual year-to- date revenues received. So you can see that dials like above 50%. So we've received about 50% of revenues at this time in the um year. We'd like to see that a little bit higher. Um but for now, that's where we are
068on an actual basis. Uh the next two dials, the green and the blue, kind of split it up between the state and the uh local revenues. Local sources of property taxes, uh fees, um uh cafeteria services, uh revenues for that and other miscellaneous revenues. Um and your state sources and also federal going to be your grants, basically money coming from the state and federal for um for grant funding. Um but you can see that the green and the yellow are pretty much halfway. As I said, they're about the same. Uh, and then the um state sources, state federal sources are almost a quart threequarters received so far. And and that's pretty good. That's good. They're they're they're just a little bit above projections, which which we like to see. Uh I'm not going to go
069through the other the other um graphs unless you like to. I know you see those. Um but I want you to focus just on uh the revenue coming in. And also just to mention um I think it's a good piece of information that the primary source of revenue primary sources of revenue school districts local property taxes um state funding and federal grants. In this school district believe you're primarily focusing on your uh property taxes. Uh you do see receive some federal and state funding um but not as significantly as some other school districts with a lower level of property taxes. All right, moving on. Uh we're going to talk about the expenditures now and um obviously this is money going out and so through the same time period they're running slightly behind as well which
070you say well that's better. Well not necessarily um because uh we want to make sure we're keeping up with all the expenditures that we have that we were expecting because we had a budget uh we expected to have our spending to be a certain area. That just means our guess is a little bit off. Um and um we will see um as you as you can I'll break out the dials here. The yellow, the green, and the blue. You can see the the the one on the far right, the the blue is almost fully spent. It's almost at 90% spent. Um but then the green is only at about 65 I think 64%. And then your yellow uh all of them year to date is 70% spent. So again, it's just a little bit behind,
071but you can see the variations in what we called uh other objects, which is the blue, and then um our salaries and benefits. There's a big difference in the spending, the timing of them. So that's something that uh I'm just evaluating to make sure that we're on top of any things that we need to make you aware of, uh any adjustments that we need to make. And again, being new, I'm I'm seeing some things I'm starting to dive into. um nothing nothing bad, but things that I just want to make sure we can explain to you as a board to say um you know, we're right on time with spending as we expect or we're behind and to give you an idea of what the end of year is going to look like. And I'll
072have that for you uh in a couple slides after this. Um but basically um our spending um for the year typically we stop spending we cut off our our our non salary non-benefit spending and non uh grant spending as well uh earlier in the year and that limits the amount of spending that we're going to have. So that's one of the reasons that we'll be behind projections but also um we'll continue our grant spending because grants are allocated uh obligated I should say through all the school year and also maintenance has to continue. We got to continue maintaining the building. uh my salaries and benefits just for information to know this uh are 85% of all our expenditures. So salaries and benefits as you can imagine we need teachers to teach students uh and it's
073really a peopledriven uh outfit. Um next slide I'll go to is about the uh fund balance again. Um this is one of the areas that the school board will typically try to uh and I think should should key on uh from my experience as a school business official in other school districts. Uh this gives you the higher level picture of what is going on of the health of the school district. So um this is a graph. I know I don't think you were getting this one before. This might be a new one to you. Don't. No. Okay. So this is a new one. I thought this was a good one to pull out. I used to show this one. It gives you um a visual a really really quick snapshot of the uh trends of
074the fund balances. Um there's two lines. One is for last year, one is for um the the the the red dotted line is last year, the blue solid line is for this year. Um but you can see kind of how they parallel each other uh for the most part and um you can see that they are in fact um you know showing that uh big uptick of in September you can see that big uptick there and then it money gets spent down gets spent down and then by the end of the year in May late May and June you get your property taxes again. So those are your property taxes when they come in. They come in in big chunks. You also receive during the each month some revenue from state and federal monies, but
075those don't have as big of an impact on your bottom line. So you don't see those um jumping up as much. So over the two years that you're seeing here, um you know, we started out back in um 2023, June of 2023, July 2023, uh with about 12.8 million and by the end of this fiscal year, we'll be at 13.8 million. So just kind of looking at it over a two-year stretch um you can see that um you know you can see that uh increase over time despite the you know up and down that you see um from the property taxes and the spending. Again this is a brief presentation not giving you a lot of detail on that. Um but I do want to mention that uh monitoring each uh on a monthly basis
076which is what we do is essential for understanding our cash flow management uh keeping track of uh the district operations financially and also um estimating for the year end as well. So that's something again coming up in the next slide we're going to um this month ending fund balance as of March. So just for the month of March uh our beginning balance as of February 28th you can see in the chart and I hope that's not too small. I couldn't make these that much bigger. Um was uh beginning fund balance was 11.6 million at the beginning of March and we're ending at 9.3 million. Again, you're not going to see a ton of revenue coming in. We're mostly spending it down until we get to property taxes. Um the um fund balance is uh as
077I said 9.3 and um our monthly expenditures were 2.77 million. And if you extrapolate that out for the rest of the year, that'll get you to about $9 million cuz that's almost $3 million per month. So that's pretty tight if you if we were not getting any more funds in. But we expect that we're going to get another million dollar of grant revenues in and we're also going to get more than $10 million coming in from our property taxes. The second installment that'll come in before um that money runs out. So that's not a concern that we have. It's something that we expect. Again, we have projections on what this should look like and those are pretty much coming to fruition except like I said the revenue is running a little behind uh not significantly
078and uh expenditures are also running behind. Finally, in our last slide, we've got the year-to- date fund balance which is now July 1 through March 31st. So, the beginning at the the start of this fiscal year, July 1, 2024 was at 14.8 8 million and now we're going to be uh we are rather at the end of March down to 9.3 and that's the same you can see that as well on that graph when you looked at that chart I didn't stop to show you the numbers but it's the same number on the way so it's on the way to the path going to the end of the fiscal year um so um we are um expecting that again the property taxes and revenues will increase um this operating fund balance over the next few
079months uh and one thing I didn't mention you can see at the top of this particular chart um operating funds only. So what we're only what we're working with on these charts are only those five funds that you see on the left. The education fund, the operation maintenance fund, transportation fund, IMRF fund, and tort fund. So um they each have specific purposes. Those monies are designed for to be used within those funds. If you move them around, you have to have the board give um approval to it as be board action. Uh and then moving forward from there. Um before I move on from the numbers, well, I'll go ahead and finish and then if you have any questions, um just generally speaking, and I know you know you're aware of this, that the school
080board typically um more school boards look at 25% uh of of um annual expenditures as a level of fund balances that they like to maintain. Um and so that helps to um allow any unanticipated expenditures. You can't run with a zero fund balance. Uh, and you've got to have um the ability to provide services without financial strain. Finally, um, recommendations, and this is what we do, but um, honestly, I did this I I had this help me put this together in the AI with a um, an AI thing. So, I said, well, this is pretty good that it wrote at the end, so I'm going to going to I'll keep this one on here. So it says uh to finance um to enhance financial health, it's recommended to regularly review expenditure patterns, which is what
081again we do as school business officials and as a school board. Uh we identify potential savings so we can find ways to be efficient about how we use the money and then we can adjust our revenue forecast as we see how money's coming in. We can adjust that. Uh so you know uh one of the things I would love to do and haven't because of my time here been able to move around and see if the revenue pattern has changed but I'll be looking at that over the next couple months. Uh and as well as expenditures. Um and then also we want to be able to support long-term objectives by knowing what money we have coming. Um another thing I'm sure we'll talk about eventually uh the next I don't know short period of time
082is projections as well. So uh you may have had those uh in progress. Um I have uh done those with the same organization that helped me that worked on the slide that produced the program to produce those slides that you look at. Uh I've worked with them together and put together a few projection as well. So at some point at the finance committee meeting we can go through that. Um that's all I have in the slides. I know may have gone through kind of quickly but if you have any questions I'll do what I can with those. I have a quick question that I have a feeling is going to be better for a finance committee meeting. Um but just wondering if there's been any communication to the district or discussion about the potential impact
083of federal grant funding in the future and um if we see any of that going away are we able to absorb what what we're getting like if that if that happens just a big if right now but I think a question that's weighing on a lot of school districts minds. Yeah and that's a great question. Um I had a conversation with someone um recently uh one of my other clients and um there's some money that um uh her organization her nonprofit is experiencing. There's a grant that's administered through uh Lur Lury Children's Hospital and they work through them as a contractor. But those funds uh there was a request from the feds to pull back these these were based on the co funds the eries the funies from CO and they wanted to pull back
084some of these funds at the federal level. So, uh, her grant could be impacted by that. I haven't heard of that happening with any of the grants that that we are dealing with. And our ESSER money has been as of, um, September 30th, uh, unless you had an extension that you went through is um, most grants are done. Most of us are done with those. Um, there may be a few though that haven't spent those funds down. It could be a risk. Um, specifically here, um, uh, what I don't know, and I would love to know, I should know, but I don't know right now because I haven't done the work, uh, is what your percentage is of federal grants. Uh, typically, um, it's about 10% or less for schools that are not, uh, heavily
085relying on federal grants. So, I would I would I would guess that it's not going to be as significant of an impact to you as if you were to lose like general state, some evidence based funding or something like that. State grants. State grants are more important to you, okay? I think at this time than the feds again I need to do more analysis to give you a more concrete answer on and um you had a slide I think one back that says what is a healthy uh fund balance goals um and just want to ask and reiterate this is not something we just hold ourselves to the state looks at that's also as a criteria for um financially sound district and even to the point that they become involved if it's not if there's
086not a healthy fund balance. Is that correct? Absolutely. And the state actually um they measure you at 33% um for um I think it's part of your budgeting process. Uh and yeah, they'll you'll have to do a um but but you won't be penalized for it at that point in time. You have to do a deficit reduction plan um or some other plan that they they they would Yeah. if you were especially if you're running deficits but yeah if you're not going to be you have to meet the certain measure in oh I can't remember the name of it but there's a formula that's um uh there's four categories that the state looks at uh and they're about um your whether you have a deficit or surplus uh the amount of debt that you had
087two different measures for that and also the amount of cash that you hand have on hand the closer you are to 100% of cash the better or um 180 days the better so um it's those four categories. Yeah. Financial profile ranking. So that's that. Yeah. If you're not um healthy with regards to that and you're not joining a significant fund balances um showing significant fund balances. Yeah. State oversight panels. But that's not in your So it's not just something we hold ourselves to like we since I've been a board member there are always questions run two campaigns and people ask like oh how's your financial um status or what are your are you a healthy are you doing this well so the state is looking at you the audit is looking at us but it's
088something that um will we've um held ourselves to and the state has looked at us and determined that we have a healthy from balance at this at this time. That's correct. Yes. Is that effectively a low balance target? Sorry, we can't it's not an open meeting, but yes, I did have a question that was similar to that. Um, so our per our board policies, um, we have an unrestricted fund balance at 40% um of the operating reserves. So which means that we have to hold 40%. Is that correct? Per board policy. I know it's 25% is our is the expectation but our board policy calls out 40%. Oh yes. Okay. So that's 40% of our yearly operating revenue. Um which is about where we're at roughly. Um so what happens if we go below that
089and what happens like what's the impact if we spend down our fund balance? significantly. Interesting question. So, if you have a board policy and I allow your board the the fund balances to go below um the board policy, then you have an issue with me. Okay? So, um that's a very straightforward answer. I appreciate it. And I'm to be honest with you, if I were physically your employee on payroll payroll, I would tell you the same thing. It's my responsibility to uh maintain board policy. Um if a school district runs out of money, again uh the aim of the state is to avoid that. Um and they would have an oversight panel. Um uh they would first have someone come to talk to you uh from um the uh uh uh school fin I forget
090the name of school finance department of uh state uh state board of education would have someone reach out to you and they would help you to work on your financial projections and look at your budget and you know give you some support um and uh and to avoid that situation. Um there's very few school districts I haven't heard of any that have you know gone bankrupt. I mean I haven't heard of zero. Um but certainly there have been plenty of schools I shouldn't say plenty there have been some schools that have been on uh uh state um watch state oversight uh where they actually had an oversight panel of people uh I was actually asked to be on one before um which I I I couldn't do um for rather large school district I mean
091significantly larger than this one but they were having manage financial management problems um so like an oversight panel like like folks not in the community. Yeah that's correct. Yeah, the state would um uh state board of education um I think it's school finance, I forget the exact name. The department would assign some people from outside the school district. Uh people like myself, business officials working typically um maybe retired. I think there was a township treasure. We have township treasure. Well, we have active township treasures in Cook County um that that uh that the school districts work with. So, yeah, they bring in people from that were not employees. You could you might live in the in the district area, but you wouldn't be employees or have a tie to the school district, but they would
092be making more financial decisions about the district. Yeah, it's u I I haven't seen one work. I I I could say that uh yeah, they do. They're basically all all spending has to be approved by that oversight panel. I mean, still has everything all the processes still work. The board is still active and you still vote on everything, but it has to go through that oversight panel for approval first. Yeah. Yeah. And and there's schools that have come out of it. It's it's done a good job of helping schools turn around. Um yeah. Cool. Thank you. You're welcome. Any other questions? That was kind of a hard one cuz I have respect on that one. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you so much. So just we we thank Mr. Gibson for this because we are
093um at a state that you are interim. So, you're helping our district out while we have um someone that's on leave that's not um able to be present. So, um I thank you for putting this time in, putting in time to find answers to our questions and enable our district to continue to do business. So, absolutely, my pleasure. Thank you, John. You you have been such an asset during this time, and the staff that works with you admires you deeply, as do I, and your expertise and your knowledge is very valuable to our district. So, thank you. Thank you for the opportunity. Because this was added, can it be retroactively added onto the agenda in board docs? No. Okay. So, but we will have updated the presentations will be added. Um, so that will be
094the presentations can be in will be in board docs. No. Oh, sorry. Okay. We cannot add the there's nowhere to add it in board docs now because it wasn't part of the meeting. Okay. There's no agenda item for it. We'll put it on the website on our board page. I'll make a link tomorrow and put it on there of his presentation and the slides. Okay. Thank you. Normally that is where it would be. So thank you for asking that question. I want to say that. So next our discussion will um go to the referendum. Um discussion next steps. Where do we go from here? So one of our before we get into details I don't know if you have this but one of the mentioned first steps is our committee meeting where um it is
095not as formal um as this one that our community that we invite over and over um and continue to invite to be a part of that process and discussion about um uh next steps and recommendations of where we go um where does the districts go from here and even more than that discussing the um needs that didn't disappear with a vote or no vote um that are still present that we have to decide how do we move these projects. The needs of the districts are still is still here and this board and the district have to decide how do we um how do we answer that and find solutions? um be it alternative or whatever you want to put adjective you want to put in front of that but we need the solutions and we
096need the um plan. So um so you said PR is on the 22nd. When's the next uh finance facilities? I'm sorry. is that those um that we are planning that is the next finance one the um uh so we would have to go look we would have to look back at our board calendar because we did set up our st so you've got the different committees right you've got the finance committee which would typically meet four times a year the standard finance committee that would typically meet four times a year the standard standing facilities committee that would combine with the finance committee a couple times a Um, and those were already scheduled and we're in budget review time. Um, but then the ad hoc committee, so the ad hoc committee of like the facilities work
097for all the for all the town halls and all of all of that stuff, that stuff was not scheduled out for the year because that was a a temporary board committee. So if we go back Yeah. So, if we go back and look at our we should go back and look at our board calendar for where the original finance facility finance meetings because those were all scheduled for the year. So, do we want to keep combining them? I think we should financing facilities. They're handinand they go hand in hand and they but they are they are two separate committees and they do two like the finance committee does a different thing during budget season. Mhm. So the challenge with combining them is they get Yeah. If we're if we want to if we want to
098like try to continue to have our committee meetings at 5:30 before our board meetings like we have been doing which personally I think has been pretty successful this year um more successful than it than previous years. So winning. Um if we want to continue doing that then it's probably um it's probably a better move to have the meetings more often as opposed to combining them because they can get because combining the finance and facilities then turns into a meeting that is longer than we're capable of having prior to our board meeting. So potentially and before this year we did have some longer finance facility meetings that were longer but again trying to juggle the calendar um you know just honoring the time that you know board members are present for meetings and then committee meetings
099and then again and then also letting our community know and to have that involvement kind of considering all that. A lot of this was that ad hoc committee that was taking part of that facilities uh committee meeting place. So um when do we create our calendar for next year again for that is also next next then next week next two weeks. Okay. Um so all of this as we're changing cuz it we're setting meeting times a meeting schedule for next year. Um so it ends right now our schedule if you look at it for the board members board meetings themselves ends in June. Um so we set those meetings also and then start to sit. I think that's worth a fuller conversation just about like our format for committee meetings and how we can integrate
100some more of those fuller ones that will combine that might be longer. Um and looking at what kinds of plans we we need to put in place for next year. Um, so yeah, that's all I just think a fuller account instead of like kind of just mirroring what we did last year and doing the same thing. We need to grow. We've grown every year. We've adjusted. We've learned something every year and we need to keep we need to keep tweaking and adjusting so that it works for as many as possible. And you know, we need to also um Yeah. And so getting back to the referendum, just with every other election, um I think when it's still when we have them and if we look it up as it reads, it says unofficial. Um so
101do just stating what usually happens the time when they do make it official, it's usually 3 weeks after the um election. So that'll be the day of our next board meeting. Yeah. So we should have that. And is it usually by is before our board meeting usually? So usually about noon one we have fingers crossed. Yes. Um all elections certified and made official and they'll sign to us. But as it stands right now as as far as the refendum is concerned is that we have um uh majority um of no votes. So um officially unofficially the referendum did not pass. So again, speaking to our board and then our community and uh committees to start to um devise a plan and speaking candidly of what we need to do to solve these problems again. So
102this is all coming around the same time as our budget, what we can do with our budget, reiterating that our budget does not allow for new construction or capital um um projects. that is for um as we've seen before usually for um um running our districts with salaries is the highest um expenditure that we have for our teachers and um our administrators. So, um money we have in a budget doesn't um will not fund new construction. So what or even or even massive um a say that word capital improvements capital improvements like yes I'm so what I'm hearing is what I'm like have been thinking since all of this happened is that um like we need a referendum to pass no matter what at some point because we quite literally can't afford even if we
103stay in our exact locations like we know that we need to continue to educate people on that. Um, so to me it's just like what's the next step to figure out how we're going to use referendum money because John just uh Dr. Gibson just explained that you know that's where we get our money from. But Jack, I think the district is already looking at some of the things like because I also want to reassure people who might be feeling afraid that we are taking some steps to take care of some immediate facilities concerns. Can you talk a little bit about that? We have we are holding a meeting this Friday with our construction manager, with board members, with Dr. Gibson, with Joe, and prioritizing the things that are most uh important to address. We're going
104to look at life uh safety monies to possibly address those. So, we're in process. Okay. We do need a finance facility committee to get direction on what the next steps will be, but we are already preemptively taking a look at what are the most important things that can no longer wait. Um, and it would not have been appropriate to take any action on those until we had an outcome from the referendum. Uh, the second thing is where can we use life safety money that is available to address those priorities? and we're we're holding that meeting so we can present something to the board and to the finance and facilities committee. I think also finding a way for the PR committee to work more in um more closely with finance and facilities because I think that
105there are some areas like clearly there's from my perspective a lot of misinformation and misunderstanding about certain things and so um I think we can do better about making those connections. um because it's not enough I think to just do those immediate we have to fix like that's great that's not enough and so um but we need to get more people to understand that and I think you know with this we have uh gathered attention from our community about getting information there's something we talked about in a lot of these committee meetings and the um town halls is that There's always education to be done to combat that misinformation. I've seen that there's a community member things that have been stated about how a budget works and what can be done. Um and so I
106kind of take that on. Is there still an opportunity to um inform and educate? Agreed. Um because again to find answers or so-called better solutions, we have to be educated on um what can be done and how things are done in our state. You just can't throw it out there and hope it's true. There are things that are facts and there are things that we have to work and constraints that we have. Um but we still have to you know gather that up and all the people who have great expertise and and time and willingness to find those answers. So well and to the point on constraints right we can't there are things we cannot we cannot do quickly right we can't just we can't just hold a board meeting overnight we're not allowed to
107do that right like um for a lot of reasons um but I think one thing that I learned in the last you know year or so on this is the town hall process right even though it I don't know if this district held town halls before us um but just That process of having a town hall I think is something that we should look at doing yearly regardless of whatever's going on is just having a regularly scheduled town hall meeting where and and and we found out that you know two board members are allowed to speak at a town hall meeting. It can't be more than two board members but um so just knowing that that those details right feels like we're constantly learning new things. Um but that piece and then and then I
108think also you know to the piece of the financial piece something separate from that that is also a this is our regularly scheduled you know situation and I know we've all been very like focused on on getting the job done and doing doing care of our kids and making sure that they're that they're growing and the PLC work and all and I know we've been super focused on that in the last couple of years. Um, I do feel like our focus has fallen off of the regular job of communicating what a school district does for the community, right? What this school district does for um this area, what the tax dollars go to. Um, I do think we have fallen off on that messaging and and I think there's there's we need to think about
109like if there's anything that we've learned in the last couple years from scheduling committee meetings and just getting them on the calendar, it's just that if you just plan it right, if you put it on the calendar, it's going to happen. But if you don't put it on the calendar, there will always be something in the way of it. There will always be something that will fall in the way of it. though, just getting to the point of here's our yearly calendar, here's our board meetings, here's when we have whatever town hall we want to do here, here's when we have our state of the district, right? and like they just live there and and it becomes this legacy, right, that can live on that we just this is something that the school district does
110and here's when our yearly um you know flyer goes out and here's when our three times a year postcards reminding people to you know come out to committee meeting whatever that may be, right? Reminding people that it's football season and seniors get in free, right? like um just just having that schedule. It comes back to PR, right? Like I think totally um gets measured gets managed. Yeah. And and I think um like transparency, we're transparent. We things are available every but like board docs is not awesome. Does anybody love boards interfere? I don't personally, but like could we can we do like you know what else could we do? So, I like your idea of, you know, sending things out and making things more user friendly and accessible and Yeah. So, and it just has
111to brainstorming for PR. It's got to start with like a schedule, right? Yeah. It just has to start with like I'm putting it on paper that this is when this thing has to go out. Mhm. And I think like we, you know, definitely, you know, with this and referendum and trying to reach we we've been doing this since we sat down in these chairs and that's been our goal is how to reach our community. Um, you know, we've said it over again like we hear many attacks and critiques. It's not, you know, for not trying. So, I want to give us grace there that we have moved the needle on how much we've communicated, but we're not also at the same time not saying that we have it down pat and have the best. There
112are so many areas that we want to improve. Again, it comes back to communication and PR for anything that we do. you know, the the big um ticket item this time was the referendum is huge. It's not going away. I know that, but there are so many other things that we want to we want to do and get out to our community and even get involvement. And that means having a better website or having, you know, and so many things and we are going to continue to work at them and find ways to fund that cuz that's not easy. Sending out a mailer or sending out a flyer. So, um, you know, we still have those goals and trying to figure that out at the same time. Um, so, thank you for saying that, though,
113cuz I feel like every board member probably feels a little beat up right now and we've done a really good job of of making like if we like everybody who's been here since 2020, like looking back, it's we've done a ton. Um, and we're always listening and we're always growing and um, yeah, and I think we'll continue to. So thank you for reminding us to show ourselves some grace. I think out of out of that one big question well one thing that is happening and hasn't stopped it never stops um is that that we are the administrative team um and board members are meeting to get facts to present um at our next finance and facility meeting that will be joined. The next one will be um and we have to get that that time
114and date out and have that advertised. so uh we can be continue our great work. So that's um so we kind of need to think about timeline for that when because I I I mean I do think I do think we need to take more than seven days to just get our heads on straight of this right like to just rewrap our heads. um which I think is that's I was saying that that work hasn't stopped because it's getting our head straight but also getting facts again and presenting things that are already starting to um we we're laying that work so that it is presented so we can't have it even before we announced the meeting that that information is there for people to look at um our capital projects plan we have to look
115at it again we've all looked at it many times but we have to put it back out there but gathering those facts so that meeting is productive and maybe that information is out. But well, and to that I don't want to I don't think we should rush it. Okay. I don't think we should be like, "Holy crap, we have to have a meeting, right?" Like, um I don't think that we should rush it. I do think that we should take some time to actually, you know, just take some time to gather the information, to let it sit, to think about a number of things, and I don't want to take a boatload of time. So I don't know what the board appetite is for like when you know we schedule another finance meeting finance facilities
116or whenever we were calling the special ad hoc committee it's all I think this one will be a finance and facilities meeting and call it what it is and I'm my thought I think it's time enough but I think you know give ourselves at least or with the goal of having it in a month that's it could be before that but I'm just saying at least to take that time and get and it's time to get give people a time to make plans to attend that. So, if we have that date out, I'd have to allow that like you said that breath and and can we well advertise that meeting? You know, can we send out emails? How we send out for the school board meeting? Can we send out for a committee meeting? You
117know, can we advertise? Yeah, I do think like I've seen advertise it more social media and in this process I've seen a bunch of school boards that utilize board docks that put their committee meetings on board docs. Oh, and just and we just we just post all of our all of our committee meetings like it just it can't hurt, right? I think we started that, but it's just we still have other emailing them. No, not emailing. But I mean, we haven't started what not we don't email out our committee meetings. Yeah, we've never done that that I remember at least not as part of the standard meetings. I mean, I know we've had some special meeting, special committee meetings that have been advertised via email. Um, advertised, communicated via email, but I don't remember there
118being an email to the district that said there's a finance committee meeting next Tuesday. I don't remember ever seeing that. They are posted, but posted, but not we could do more in terms of communicating, right? So, just one one quick question about about that. I know we had we had I don't remember how long ago it was but I do remember that we had said okay here are the meet the committee meetings for the for the for the calendar excuse me for the school year not the calendar year for the school year 2425 are have we got run the course of finance committee meetings of the ones that were originally scheduled I don't think so no there should have been something scheduled about this time because it's budget review time, right? It would probably have
119been next week or May 13th meeting. Yeah, I don't decided to move it before the meetings, but since Anony's out, we haven't had it. But I think it's something because we had the ad hoc, we didn't having those meetings plus the other meetings we didn't want to do. So, I think Okay. So, we have another board meeting in two weeks that has a PR committee in front of it, committee meeting in front of it. Then we have another board meeting on May 13th that has no committee meeting in front of it. Right. Right. Can we should that shouldn't that be the date? Absolutely. It's got to be time. I think so because we won't have another one for a month. And honestly, I think an hour is all we need right now to just hear
120some different right now. like I think that's a good starting point um to just dialogue about ideas of brainstorming. So projectedly May 13th facilities and finance meeting 5:30 5:30 on May 13th to be confirmed if we have and where to be confirmed where yeah here oh yeah that's right that's right before this I'm going to be brief about the referendum. I just want to say this. I didn't know Mr. Dan Charleston was coming tonight but I'm so glad he did. That's beautiful what he had to say. I think these seven people who serve on this board are unbelievably compassionate human beings, very intelligent, thoughtful people who give selflessly to this community and came up with the best vision they could for dealing with a problem that's persisted in this community for decades. I I so
121I they're amazing people. The community needs to know that. They really are. I see him in and out and uh it's a it's a selfless, thankless job and Dan did a beautiful job of outlining that. So, I really appreciate you coming forward and saying that and these seven people deserve that and I've worked with boards for over 30 years so I know what I'm talking about. Second thing, I'd be remiss not to thank the so many citizens who really put their heart and soul into trying to support the district in this initiative. uh Boyer Zakiri, Dana Ajac, and so many other thoughtful people who really uh fought for what they believed in, and they gave so many hours of their time because they wanted to better our community. And I'm very grateful to them. And
122I I'd be remissed not to say that. People who vote against the referendum, I you could never find one moment where I said they didn't care about our kids. I don't believe that. What really happened here is a difference in vision. What we presented, I think, was outstanding. I hold to that. But it doesn't matter what I think. The community gets to decide. That's what democracy is all about. And what we presented, I think, was a very wellthoughtout plan. I thought we were completely transparent. Uh people said we had a location, we gave a location. They wanted more information and details, we did that. They wanted more time, we did that. We reduced the cost. At the end of the day, it was a difference of vision. Some people in this community want something different
123and that's okay. That doesn't mean they don't love kids. Never ever would say that. Uh but there were things that were said that were blatantly untrue. And if anybody wants to have people say that the buildings are half empty, that's just not accurate. Walk our buildings. Make a appointment with me and I'll walk the building, any building. There are a couple classrooms that are not utilized in this district, but that's just not accurate. Um, and if people say, you know what, we want neighborhood schools. That's fair. That's a difference in vision. It doesn't mean those people are wrong or they don't love kids. I know they do. Or we don't want to spend that much money. I respect that. That is the, you know, a community's decision. or other reasons that are valid that we
124want to renovate and not build a new building. Even though that's not what the majority of the community said originally, there are a lot of valid reasons that people could come up with to not support this ballot initiative. Where the school is located, wanting neighborhood schools, wanting to renovate, can't bear any more tax burden. Those are very real valid arguments against the referendum we put forward. But what's not healthy is to like, you know, engage in the bashing of our own school district and that is going to harm our kids that we all love together. So, um, this board is incredible human beings, thoughtful, intelligent, caring. We have a community that I know loves our kids. I appreciate those who fought for what they believed in on either side, but I think really for the
125sake of the kids that we all love, we got to be very careful about how we communicate with each other because I'll tell you what, we have an incredible school district. People can think I'm exaggerating. The the evidence is plentiful if you want to really be honest and assess it. This is an outstanding school district. People want to come and work here. People recognize us for that all the time. So, and we'll go forward. We'll find a way. We're all too good. We'll find a solution. But like Jess said earlier, something needs to happen cuz we have to do something with these buildings. They need repair. Now, what the vision is, we need to go forward on. But at the end of the day, it's just a difference in vision. And that is how I
126feel about what transpired here. And and if the community doesn't want the vision we presented, that's their right. I don't have to I don't get a vote in this district on that. But I'll tell you, every decision that's made here is out of love for kids. And if you disagree with the vision, that is democracy. So, but we'll find a way going forward and because these kids are too valuable and we have too great of a school district. Any other comments, questions? Okay, we're going to move to our action items. The chair entertain a motion to approve the continued employment of non-tenure teachers and tenure recommendations as presented. So moved. Second. Roll call. Miss Steady. Yes. Miss Conover. Yes. Miss Miss Hoover. Yes. Mr. Dono? Yes. Miss Rogers? Yes. Mr. Aia? Yes. Mr. Marin? Yes.
127Okay. Motion carries. Number two. The chair will entertain a motion to approve the resolution to dismiss the following custodial employee for reasons other than our other than Riff Christopher Bastiac. So Banak so moved. Second. Roll call. Miss Conover. Yes. Dr. Hoover. Yes. Miss Rodono. Yes. Miss Rogers. Yes. Mr. Aia. Yes. Mr. Marin. Yes. Miss Steady. Yes. Motion carries. The chair will entertain a motion to approve the multi-year contracts for the high school principal Dr. Kevin Wet and Manning Elementary principal Dr. Kevin Ryan as presented. So move second. Before you vote, could we please have Dr. Ryan introduce himself to our community and then I have a few quick comments and then this is Dr. Kevin Ryan, everybody. He currently, he may tell you this, he currently serves as the assistant superintendent for teaching and learning
128in Northshore District 112. Uh he has a distinguished career. I'll have more to say about that in a moment, but uh I could not be happier for our students and our staff and CUSD 2011 school community. We have an exceptional individual who we're recommending for the principal ship at Manning. Dr. Ryan. Well, thank thank you very much. So, I I just wanted to reiterate something that Superintendent Balderman said earlier, which was this district is phenomenal and it does attract highquality candidates and people do want to come work here, you know, and and I think there are two instances today within this board meeting itself that really made me excited about joining the team, you know. One was the the the way you are all modeling what a professional learning community is at the highest level,
129right? because those things trickle down. And so, you know, it's not very often at board levels do you see people discussing, you know, having these great conversations, learning from each other, reflecting upon, you know, missteps or things that went well and really having those deep, thoughtful conversations. And two was the great presentation by your high school, you know, really thinking about like, wow, your teachers got together and put together a plan and put kids first. And you don't always see that, right? I mean, there are a lot of things that always get in the way, but they they put all that aside and really put kids first, which is is truly amazing. And the fact that, you know, they came here with the administration and collaborated, you know, how cool is that? So, it just
130is another reason that I'm excited to be a part of this school district. So, with that, I just wanted to say uh thank you to the board, you know, thank you to Superintendent Baldererman, thank you to the interview committee, uh for allowing me to be a part of this amazing district. Um, you know, I am going to bring a passion and a laser-like focus uh on student growth, you know, not just academically, but also growth from a social emotional standpoint, from just a human being standpoint for our students. Uh, I'm really excited about working with the phenomenal staff at Manning, you know, and and really working with them to uh continue to develop a culture um, you know, where we put kids first. um where we um provide an environment where uh teachers, staff and
131students all feel safe and they feel supported and they feel empowered to collaborate with each other. Um so um sorry with that said I I just wanted once again wanted to say you know thank you. I'm super excited about being a part of this district and looking at continuing the great growth that Manning has made over the last several years. Um so so thank you for that opportunity. Thank you Dr. Ryan. So Dr. Ryan currently serves as the assistant superintendent for teaching and learning in Northshore School District 112. He has over 20 years experience as an educational leader. We had nearly 50 applicants for the Manning principal ship. Uh we went through a rigorous screening process. Then we involved uh about a dozen parents, a dozen staff members, most of our administrative team, uh board
132members, and second grade students from Miss Bartos's class. That was an interesting component of the interview process where the principal candidates had to sit down with the second graders and interact. And under the watchful eye of Miss Bartos and Miss Dispensza and Miss uh uh Corrington, uh we saw how the principal candidates interacted with uh the young people because that's the job. Now on paper, you're not, you know, Dr. Ryan's quite frankly overqualified. He's got amazing expertise in teaching and learning process and he's led principles at a high performing district for years. So for us to have him as the principal of Manning is spectacular. The question I had is how does somebody with this deep background in leadership interact with second graders and he excelled there? Uh he he there's a famous story that
133people in grammar schools know. It's a book called No David where a young kid keeps getting in trouble over and over again. And Dr. Orion talked about how he acts out that part in front of students to teach them uh in a fun way how to act appropriately. We're getting a superstar. This is one of the most important decisions we have to make. Uh I know the principal ship. I've been a principal for 30 years. I've trained principles all over the country. Um and we are getting more than I even hope for. And that is an amazing individual and Dr. Kevin Ryan with a wealth of experience, a tremendous heart, and uh I hope I may overshare, but I want to say this. When we I called Kevin and I said, Kevin, you know, we
134didn't pass this referendum. Are you still interested in being this district? He did not flinch. He wants to make a powerful difference. And uh that just impresses the heck out of me. And his commitment to learning is primary. and he has the people skills and the relationship skills and most importantly the heart to make a powerful difference for students and support his teachers because he knows the only way you get students to the next level is if you develop your team and the team at Manning is excellent. They deserve and need a skilled leader, somebody with Kevin's expertise and knowledge to continue us on this journey of excellence. They're exemplary. We're super proud of them. Lindsay and Jada have been great leaders in that building, but we're going to continue that journey. And Kevin is
135an outstanding candidate for this. Any other questions or comments before we vote? Okay. Roll call. Miss Fredonio, yes. Miss Rogers, yes. Mr. Aia, yes. Mr. Marin, yes. Miss Steady, yes. Miss Conover, yes. Dr. Hoover. Yes. Motion carries. Congratulations. Right. We have our superintendence report. I've said a lot to not 60 seconds. Carlos is looking at you, right? Put me on the clock, Carlos. 60 seconds. He's already down. I just am so proud of our This is a testing week for our younger kids. The teachers and kids are on point walking the buildings. Everybody has worked so hard. I'm so proud of our kids and our teachers for all they do on a daily basis. It's really impressive. And so, uh, all we ask them to do is do their best and it'll be good enough.
136And the teachers have done really great work preparing our kids and growing their learning. That's the test scores are secondary to the learning growth. And it is evident that's happening because our teachers and support staff work their tails off and the kids are very diligent and focused. I couldn't be prouder of them. Any questions for Jack? Right. We're moving to our board reports. I'll start us off um with um just my um um sense of awe. I did uh attend um with the high school um team, well not team but a group of high schoolers and um a few administrators a trip to Japan um and led by um Mr. Landrith and uh Coach Dunn who um I am more um in awe of how they interact with their students, the trust and that the
137students give to them and the respect that the students give to them. They um ran a very very um impactful um trip that the students were awesome with great representatives of our school and people asked uh even me on a plane like who are these group of students? Oh my gosh, you know attending I think one of the one of the things I was most scared of is meditation. like, "Oh gosh, these kids are not going to sit through a meditation um series." But they were great. They were great learners and asked great questions. So, um I know they've they've done this for a while and you can tell Mr. Dunn and Mr. Landress that they have a system, but they were great. Um there are 47 in the group and we were on planes,
138we took bullet trains, we were taking a tram within a crowded city. Um and everyone's back. Um it's something that's costly, but if it's something that you know these kids get to do, I would recommend it. um great experience and again for these high schoolers to um get that opportunity um is great. So great job to that team. Mr. Dr. Wack was also there again the time he took sitting with kids talking with them getting their real um feedback um and I got to witness that and that was great. So you have anything else? No. Um, so we don't have any other public comment. Is that right? Or do we? Oh, yeah. Thank you. We have Dana Hijack. Hi guys. I'm Dana Hjac. I'm a community member. I have a high schooler, junior high student,
139and a student over at Manning as well. I wanted to start uh my public comment by um repeating sentiment that's been said by a few people up here and thank an SEI for her service to our community. Um, it's been a while since we were sitting on your back patio convincing each other that this was a good idea. And I'm so glad that we did. And I'm proud of you. And I'm proud for of you for always standing up for what you believe in, even if it's not what I believe in or somebody else believes in. But we always knew where you stood on everything and you were just very bold in your your vision of what you thought was possible and I'm grateful for you. Um, secondarily, I'm really glad we keep talking about
140committees. Um, I sent an email to the board and Mr. Balderman this week asking for um, more accessibility of that information for the public. Um, I've attended several committee meetings and at times it's like a where's Waldo situation to like figure out when the meeting is, where the meeting is. Um, I do I am signed up for the emails from the district. So, I will get an alert. That one's coming up, but that's usually a few days before to a week before the event. And I know that that can sometimes be difficult for people who are trying to secure child care, who are trying to um you know work around schedules and stuff like that. Um, I like the idea of setting at least those standing committee dates and having those out there so that
141people can plan so that um, our communication as a community about our vision and what we want to see and our questions and our solutions and our answers are being held in a commu a committee setting and less of a online setting. Um, I don't think I I'm personally not on Facebook. I don't think it's a very good forum to have these sort of conversations and I'm really hopeful that we can bring those more um those conversations more to these committee meetings and I think accessibility is one way that we can at least make it more possible for people to have that forum. I'm also talking to the community and saying, "Show up. Show up to those meetings." Um, I I've been off and on a a few different committees. I'll show up to this
142one for a few times and then I'll go bump over to that one. PR is one that I've never shown up to. I like how it's um kind of been pushed more to the front in recent years of this is something we need to focus on. Um, I will be attending the meeting coming up. Um, but we all have a lot going on. I work a full-time job. My husband works a full-time job. We got three kids. We're shuffling everything all around. We can always find an excuse to not. And what we need to start telling ourselves is, I don't need to do all the things. I need to do something and I need to do it well. Okay. So, if that finance talk, grateful for you, love that you're all that's not something I'm
143going to be good at. Okay. I I would have to sit down with you and you'd have to dumb it down to like my level for me, right? But other things I can do and I can do those things well. And there's people in this community that can fill the gap of where I'm not well. And if we start working together in that way and filling those gaps and showing up to the to the places where the change can happen and where the solutions can be figured out, that's when we're going to start t making jumps. I have been a Westmont resident for over 35 years. I'm a product of these schools. I graduated from the high school and I came back not expecting what I got. To be completely honest, this district has done
144some outstanding things for our kids in the recent decade and it can do even more. But we as a community at some point have to step in and say, "I'm in. How can I help?" And that's our role as community members. My dad's a retired fireman. I dragged him to a town hall. I made him be involved in the situation. I made people that I care about, who I know have a vested interest in this community, see where they could figure out how they could be part of this. We don't all need to do all the things, but we all need to do something. And I just really ask the community that that something be productive in a way that we're not blaming teachers and we're not blaming staff and we're not saying well this
145person this person should do this. What should you do? What can you do? That's what we should be asking ourselves. And it was really hard for a lot of our staff members to live through this referendum season because and this isn't just our community. It happens a lot where the finger gets pointed at them. Well, why don't you do this and why don't you do that? Why don't you take a pay cut? Why don't you retire early? Why don't you do all of these things? Spoiler alert, the only thing that I got from that finance 85% of our expenditure is their salary. Yes, it is. And without them, we don't have a school district. We don't have schools. We don't have those things. So the investment in our staff both financially and with how we
146communicate and we speak about them is important and I just hope moving forward that we can remember like Jack had said it's important to our kids too to see how this conversation is being had and there are times in the last year that I don't know that we would want our kids to have seen what was said. And that's what I walk away from this experience being a little regretful about is how this all kind of blew up in a situation that we started attacking each other instead of talking to each other. Right? And I encourage everybody to take it offline and take it to a committee room and that's how we're going to better this district. Thank you. Any other speakers? Okay, we're going to move to our future meetings and events. We have
147the Westmont Junior High School talent show April 11, 6 PM. Westmont High School. I just thought it's like, oh, we're not going to see a um there's no school attendance. April 18th and the 21st. Our next CUSD 2201 regular meeting of the board of education will be April 22nd, 6:30 p.m. Village Hall with a prior committee meeting for PR at 5:30. Um, and with that, we're not uh attending close session. Um, so the chair will entertain a motion to adjourn the April 8th, 2025 regular meeting of the board of education. So moved. Second. All those in favor? I. Any oppose? Thanks for being here. Meeting adjourned.