00123rd 2024 can I have a roll call please Mr G present M Johnson pres Dr Mario present Mr fer present Miss Simon present present please stand for I'm sorry here oh sorry sorry please stand for the Pledge of Allegiance I pledge alance to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands one nation under God indivisible with liy and justice for all okay tonight I have the pleasure of introducing to you the newest faces and very important voices at at our board table our student board members through an application and interview process we have selected a member and an alternate representing each High School these students have shown tremendous dedication and commitment to their school and a willingness to contribute to the board refle to our board reflecting
002the values we hold dear we are eager to see how your insights and perspectives will enrich our conversations and decisionmaking processes we welcome student board member for ASO East High School senior hope rier joined by alternate senior sahana [Applause] muin representing asgo high school we welcome student board member kie Parnell joined by alternate senior Trey [Applause] Williams okay I'm going to ask all four of you if you could come to the center and face out to the audience and we will all ask our board members to join for a photo you thought there was going to be some big question thing did I say what did I say call Ky I think you should be in the center let's give one more [Applause] round very cool okay we're going to ask Hope and Callie to
003please take their seats at the board [Music] [Applause] [Music] table and now we're going to ask you to give a speech no speech prepared just all right good evening board um and Community it is uh great to be here this evening I want to invite next Dr zmy to introduce to us uh take us through a nextg residency announcement and update I do want to say that this is really becoming the shining star of the Innovative and Leadership work that's happening in our district and I want to thank uh Dr zonki for your leadership in this regard good evening board thank you Dr kelati uh tonight is a a great night to celebrate our inaugural residence um and we're very excited to have them here they look great tonight everybody's got great swag on really
004excited for that and I want to introduce um uh Miss anamarie candelario who's really been the architect of our Residency program and in addition to that um we have had a wonderful partnership with our oea and oesp partners and we have an OA member who is a teacher on special assignment Reagan sth who is also helping with The Residency program and mentoring so I will turn it over to them thank you um good evening um it has been five months since NextGen began we are so excited to share this moment with you on September 23rd where we are here to celebrate sd308 inaugural cohort of teacher and leader residents and mentors so first we want to thank our partners um and we have some special Partners in the audience so we have a university present
005at Dr Gant and Dr Barnwell if you could say [Music] hi um I can't highlight the meaningful collaboration between Aurora University and 308 uh together we co-created our mission and vision during our work with the national Center of teacher residency I can not stress enough the shared commitment around engagement and breaking down barriers for our Educators so for our residency we do have three goals we go there they are okay uh number one is we want to increase our certified teachers in the high needs subject areas such as special education and our dual language within those High needs areas we want to make sure that we are increasing our retention and engagement of those highly effective staff members lastly we want to increase our student performance and we are planning to do that through u
006means of our residency we're building our teachers and our leaders in District in hopes that um our our students will see the benefit of that as well we are proud to welcome a cohort that reflects the cultural and academic needs of our district our cohort represents um 48% % uh educators of color compared to traditional programming of 20% um our 24% of our educators are uh bilingual compared to a national average of 9% in traditional programming and we are really close to achieving that same level of mentors of color as well um when we're looking at 21% but nationally it's 29 and so just looking at the data right now um our our mission of creating a culturally diverse um cohort is on its way with the first group so we've added some key metrics
007on which we are measuring our success so far we have 21 residents most of them sitting behind us um which of those 21 60 of them want to be special education teachers 60% uh we have 24 of those 24 % of those teachers who want to be in dual language are an English language learner teacher so when we're looking at those spots that we need to fill in the future we got a couple behind us um when we ask their satisfaction about the program so far 90% of them said that they were satisfied with our program well 95% of their wonderful mentors are satisfied with the program as well and as of right now we set an interest format at the end of last year we have 52 individuals interested in the next cohort for
008teachers we want to send that out again um to see if we can recruit more additionally we have 10 individuals in our leadership pathway many of them are back in the back over there as well um these individuals are completing Au while getting leadership training from the district and 94% of those leadership residents expressed that they were satisfied with the district supports and so now we would like to introduce you to the 2024 teacher residents um we would like to take this moment to celebrate them so if you are a resident please stand up thank you um at the very end we're going to take a nice really large picture because you know I love social media um so you guys could take a seat thank you it's been wonderful being a part of each
009one of these residents Journeys we've got to know them personally and professionally um and they are already leading this work with passion Innovation and purpose and we would like to introduce to you um the first uh one of the first residents to speak um for a testimonial Isabelle Garcia if you can come up um she is a sixth grade dual language teacher on an emergency licensure track she works at plank Junior High and she's been in the district for 2 years thank you good evening um as an introduced me I am in Plant unor High and the way I started is I was over a teaching position I was working as a long-term stop at Plank and I accepted the challenge without fully knowing what I was stepping [Laughter] into my motivation was personal as
010I was worried about the future of the Dual language program um one of the students was my own son a sixth grader then now he's a freshman here at OE uh what I didn't expect was how quickly I will fall in love with teaching these kids I um despite the challenges which were many challenges uh my passion for dual language education grew stronger and I knew I had to stay how I fa the LMA I am teaching with the transitional bilingual educator license and because I decided that this is my path and I will finally give in um to teaching because it was always something that was after me and I was saying no but finally I gave in I like teaching so I looked into several options including Aurora University which is uh where
011I got my bachelor from and they have an accelerated program a master's program and I also looked into an online Master's curriculum at and bilingual cultural studies at the University of Illinois but neither uh path with my niece because one required leing my position as it was a full-time teach um student um I had to be a full-time student there and the other was in a licensure program so that's when xgen came into the picture so I was like what is this so it offered me the opportunity to pursue an education I need while continuing to teach a plank where I have built meaningful connections and I mean like family connections it feels like family to me I mean their family as I attended classes and professional development sessions through next gen everything in my
012classroom is started to to click it was that aha moment it was like the light bulb I was like oh that's why and the program has been very instrumental in my growth as a dual language teacher and I expect to learn even more and I'm very thankful for this opportunity and I continue to doing what I love at vening in my career thank you thank you um we would now like to we would like to invite um John Borman um he is a teacher resident he wants to be a special education teacher he's first year in our district and he currently is a co-teacher of record in Long Beach evening everyone good evening I wrote a few words here so you know bear with me I've wanted to be a teacher since I was a
013kid honestly I can't imagine pursuing another profession I started taking courses um in college to become a teacher and then my son was born uh life shifted and I had to change my priorities I began working full-time at a job that I was work I I a job I held since I was 16 for seven years I worked long hours missed basically every holiday every weekend um eventually I moved to a different company with a better balance but the work there it felt purposeless I I started exploring new career paths but I kept coming back to teaching then my friend Aaron who's over there I think hey Aaron Gleason she introduced me to Anna Marie no it was over then wasn't it and then that's where everything started to go downhill you were recruited instantly
014so I I learned about the nextg residency for career Changers uh after interviewing I accept it I think in 24 hours um it's funny cuz uh when I told my kids I was going to be a teacher they kind of looked at me like I I remember my dad uh my my oldest saying dad you a teacher and then my daughter was like Dad can you even read I I can um but in just over four uh four months I've grad I've completed one course I'm in the middle of another uh I've been co- teing with my incredible Mentor Andrea Mrs deidon back here somewhere where you at um but but honestly this program's really truly changed my life um it's granting me the opportunity to fulfill my childhood dream uh of becoming a teacher
015um um as I transition into the classroom I've been Guided by zaretta Hammond's ideas from culturally responsive teaching and the Brain which Anna Marie made me read but she writes the brain is wired to make sense of the world through story especially stories that carry deep emotional meaning um this resonates with me because when I think about my own path into teaching I realized that these deeply emotional experiences both profession and personal they have they have shaped me whether it was missing holidays family gatherings during my old career or the joy of working with students now uh each moment is a is a part of the story that I can bring into the classro and I want to help my students see the value in their own stories and help them connect learning in their
016lives so I want to thank the Board of Education District 308 and everyone involved in the nextg residency uh for your support of this incredible program you've given me a second chance that most people never get um I found a community of wonderful classmates co-workers and friends and most importantly for me I found purpose again I'm excited about the future uh to make a lasting impact on my students and their families and the school Community here at 308 thank you [Applause] now we want to take a minute to recognize our um resident mentors so if you're a resident Mentor please stand up so these individuals have an average of 17 years in education an average we're luy to have these open-minded indiv Innovative individuals guiding our residents one of our resident mentors is going to
017speak for us today Mary where you there she is Mary is a fourth grade teacher at Hunt Club she's been in the district for 16 of her 25 years of teaching and we are lucky to have her Mary shw fourth grade teacher at Hunt Club Elementary um thank you for having me and thank you for having me part be part of this program you two are truly amazing and your passion um is just contagious so thank you um almost every teacher you meet will share that they had a dream to be a teacher when they were younger like me most teachers were inspired by a teacher who instilled a love of learning confidence and belief that they can change the world teaching is my passion I have dedicated my entire adult life to teaching and
018learning alongside my students after 24 years of teaching when I sat in the first residency program meeting in May I was very tired but I was also inspired empowered and led to remember my why each year with our students is a gift we are provided with the opportunity to change students lives and now with this Residency program we can Inspire support and learn alongside future teachers as well in our classroom we are Scholars Scholars push them M themselves outside their comfort zone set goals and know that they always have more to learn through this program we are modeling that for our students every day my am amazing co- teer Krishna kambi and I are able to build rapport with students provide small group instruction and share our experiences about learning in this program with them
019when Mrs cambia is not present the students immediately asked where she is and look forward to her return we are a team in the classroom The Residency program provides opportunities for residents to learn about new Innovative tools which are then shared with us at school planning with my co- teer has provided me with new ideas approaches to instruction and excitement for trying new things this is what learning is truly all about this is such an amazing one-of-a-kind program and I am excited to be part of it and I look forward to seeing it evolve and grow in the future um we would now like to highlight our leader residents um these 10 Brave individuals um embarked on a new type of leadership endorsement it's the new alternative principal lure and so we'd like to celebrate
020uh these wonderful individuals that have persevered um through this program thus far um so if you could please stand if you are a leader resident so we would now like one of our uh leader residents to speak this is Ellie wooden she is a leader resident an instructional coach at Boulder Hill she's been in the district for 20 years and she is also a resident mentor good evening and thank you for giving me an opportunity to share my experience with the leader um leadership Residency program here in 38 my name is Ally wooden I am celebrating my 20th year here in sd38 I have spent that my entire educational career at um Boulder Hill Elementary School which I love um during my tenure I have always been incredibly dedicated to the Youth of our school
021district and I highly value continued education through my work on committee mentorship from amazing 308 leaders and my role as instructional coach I started to feel a pull towards adding leadership to my certification mid last year I began to hear about this new and Innovative Residency program 308 was embarking on I attended a number of informational sessions and found that the leadership Residency program was not only incredibly timely for me on my next Journey but I could not think of a better outline for a program it was truly meant to be this program has afforded me the opportunity to achieve my goal of obtaining a leadership certificate alongside a group of amazing colleagues and at a very little cost to me there was not a single reason for me to let this opportunity pass me
022by while being the pioneers of new and unchartered territory we have endured some challenges along the way but with the unwavering support of amazing colleagues and mentors I continue to feel assured and excited for what's to come I am confident the program is only going to continue to grow and flourish with each coming year that brings me to the next and likely not my final invaluable opportunity and that was learning under the leadership of anamarie Kario I practiced your name like a million times CU to me she's AMC so Anna Marie brought the resident leaders together and created an unexpected community in my life inside this community of amazing Educators we have grown laugh and began creating bonds that I can only imagine will be longlasting I am deeply grateful for this opportunity and excited
023for what lies ahead so last but not least we're at our moment of gratitude but I would love for our site School principles to take a stand if you could stand up [Music] so they are super brave for taking on this program and continue to do it with a smile so we are so appreciative of them um and so for our moment of gratitude um we would like to thank the board of education for um believing in the power of education and the impact that it touches um the cabinet and the human resources department are Union Partners our building administrators our mentors our teacher leaders and of course the community um we are so grateful for this opportunity and a way just to build community so thank you so we would like to um call
024the groups up for photos with the board um first we'd like to start with the teacher residence if the teacher residents could come up and take a photo um if our Au partners and our principles could also be part of this photo as well it's going to be a big photo [Music] I'm good just so you feel like somebody is appreciative of everything say you got squeeze in there [Laughter] [Music] we can have our mentors Now teacher res out and then ment [Applause] should we put you right up front we'll hold you this yes for a second jemy maybe May [Music] [Applause] did you try itar look goodar tried something some Seas [Applause] or thank you for coming that was so kind of you so we appreciate you being here where's the thing so make
025sure she's set up oh yeah I think Jared Jared did you like the squash did you like the squash I didn't try it we were we were just discussing it was sometimes [Music] got find a gr Ulta I'm looking to Ulta let's do it I [Laughter] don't got money what Amy ursul wants to know if you're mad at me no not about this about everything else she said just everything else so I'm okay it's Monday we lose she's talking to Tuesday Wednesday THS that's the white even though everybody left can I just say one thing about NextGen um I remember when I was in college and was getting a really good grade in my uh my English class and I did the extra and my teacher wrote back to me my professor wrote back to
026me why did you do extra credit you're already getting AA in this class and I said well I'm going to take every opportunity and I looked out at all of them and they are some amazing human beings that are doing the extra credit they're already amazing and then they're doing the extra credit and it's just and all have their own life stories of what they're going through and it's just really powerful the testimonials that we heard so I'm grateful to have it in our district yes indeed Amy I think yeah um I just want to say you know I'm so disappointed to not be there in person tonight to see this presentation and see um you know everyone's faces and hear you know see the faces with the testimonials and all that I just can't
027say enough about um how quickly and how how great how much great progress there's been in such a small amount of time um so kudos to to everyone involved so well aligned with our needs so well done um you know for the beginning phases of a program like this uh I want to thank everyone involved um you know teacher residencies are really as I think a lot of you know are gaining ground in in the in the field and this is such a great case study for what can really the power of them and districts um you know a lot of those residents without a Residency program would never have stepped into a career in teaching um that's my impression thus far and that's what programs like this can really do so I look forward
028to them really having a long and fruitful career uh here at at uh School District 308 um I wanted to say too there was a graphic on there about our residents of color I think it was 48 % of our our our residents are our teacher residents of color uh and the graphic was compared to national Center for Teacher residencies as well as um I think um Nationwide but really when you think about we what we want as a board of education I believe is a representation of our students in our in our teachers and so what we're looking for is parody and if our I think our students are around 51 or 52% students of color and 48% of our teacher residents our residents of color that's the exact type of you know numbers
029I think that we're looking for um are we taking questions or is this more of like a presentation you welcome to bring questions and then we can um I can follow up yeah so um I just have a couple questions um I know that there was another Grant out there so I would just like to hear about when uh eventually when we would hear about that I think that will impact likely how many of those interested candidates we can support in the future uh I saw like 52 C or 52 potential um interested uh teacher residents um and then um what else the site schools who are the site what are the sites that those residencies are are at I heard Boulder Hill I think plank was another one um I would just like to
030know what those site schools are um and then you know we need to tell people about this so I'm hoping I think the Board of Education would support us sharing this with others um you know I've often been asked how do you know when something is successful and it's when other people are knocking on your door asking what are you guys doing over there with your teacher Residency program and so um those are just a couple of my questions uh but kudos to to all thank you so much so uh great questions and feedback um I will say that in terms of the um there was a teacher quality grant that we were pursuing a Federal grant we did not get that um but the good news is that we got really helpful feedback we
031were the really one of the I think one of the only non-university Le grants that applied for it and so we can say when we say we were a small fish in a big p we were really a small fish however we did get feedback and it's going to be a good opportunity for us as we think about the future um we are also Pro pursuing private grants one of the highlights of tonight's presentation and you saw it really evidence we had representation from Aurora University here so they've been extremely generous in in both their time but also in their contributions to this effort in terms of the kind of scholarships and additional funds that they've provided I don't have those exact numbers but we can bring that to the next meeting they have been
032ex when I say extremely extremely and we're really thankful for that partnership um Dr zmy do you want to add anything and then whatever we want to wait till next time we can yeah absolutely uh good questions Dr Mario um I know we'll be partnering with the Communications Department to get uh some further information out to celebrate uh through stories and through social media uh you had asked about the five site skills there Long Beach uh Hunt Club Fox Chase southberry and plank um and we have been very fortunate uh to have uh our site uh site building principles really Embrace um this the type of support and then our our relationship with Aurora University has just been barn on um we meet with them we've met with the provos the provos came out to
033our office learn more about our school we were just at uh an evening on the state of Aurora with mayor Richard Irving last week where we're highlighting the great things that are occurring the last weo for a variety of issues so our partnership with with Aurora University is is going to take us a really really long way um I I've I've mentioned before in a few different ways I think we've we've we essentially have taken the teacher shortage away with our residents we would we would be um very almost perfectly staffed right now with our residents uh where we will be a year from now doesn't mean the work's done we got to continue our work uh we we recognize that there's areas within our system also like our related Services psychologist social workers OTS
034pts we're going to have to continue to to be creative with University Partnerships um like we are right now with special education and multilingual but we're in good shape so more information to come more updates to come and uh success is very very bright as Dr katti would say thank you so much you're welcome thank you okay we're moving on to 5 point1 public comment so we're going to start with our public hearing on update e-learning plan so we will have two opportunities for public comment tonight the first opportunity will be during the public hearing on the updated e-learning plan which we are about to convene if you wish to make a comment about the e-learning plan please make it during the public comment portion of that hearing which we will convene next on the
035agenda if you wish to make a comment about some other matter unrelated to the public hearing you may do so during the second opportunity for public comment agenda item 7.1 so we will now hold a public hearing on the updated e-learning plan this is a public hearing convened by the Board of Education of community Unit School District 308 regarding the updated e-learning plan at this time I would like to ask Dr K to give any additional information updates on the e-learning plan so um as we spoke at the last board meeting um our up dates include changes to the junior high and high school time to be in alignment with a 5H hour school day um where our Junior High and high school will both have student support time available to them at the junior
036high level it will be a 20 minute class period and at the high school a 25 minute class period there is no recommendations for change at the Early Childhood or Elementary level okay thank you very much are there any public comments there are not okay so if there are no public comments um I would like to ask our board members if they have any comments at this time no okay nothing additional so at this time we will close the public hearing on the updated e-learning plan did you have a comment okay wait did you say introduce yourself I'm hope freier um I was gonna ask did you say you changed it to a 5H hour day so currently our e-learning plan is that our remote day matches the school day like period by period minute
037by minute just like if you're VI are in person so what we're shifting to is a modified day for our e-learning day so it will be more in alignment with a 5H hour school day so it would be a shorter um remote period for the junior high and high school yes so these are just in place if we were instead of taking an emergency like a snow day when we're doing e-learning across the district so this would be in placement or in place of a e-learning emergency day okay at this time we will close the public hearing on the updated e-learning plan 6 7.1 6.11 oh 7.1 that was the answer your question all these numbers it's bound to get confused so now we want to welcome this evening we have a board we have
038a aark presentation uh we want to invite then uh thank you for joining us this evening Mr obafemi Miss satar U introduced the group from arar and speak to why they're here tonight thank you um arar is here to speak to you about the updated food service plan and some new initiatives that they have planned to enhance the program even further we have today Megan Patty and executive chef Natalia I know just to before they we we heard the community we heard board member before we did the RP and uh after the selection process aramac won the RFP but there was a recognition that there's some work that needs to be done to get us to where we need to be and one of the process that we're using is requesting that aramac comes to
039the board quarterly to provide an update about food service and to also afford the board an opportunity to ask questions related to aramax Performance so this is the first of the quality meeting for this uh school year thank you all right thank you good evening um thank you for allowing us to join tonight and we look forward to these um these quarterly meetings to come in here and present to you and share the exciting things that we're we're doing within the community um so tonight we're we're excited to tell you about our participation and some things that we have started already through the year um we're going to step through our participation and what we're driving to increase that participation we're going to talk about our communication strategies that we've already started and then we're
040going to talk about um kind of what we've done differently compared to last year so I'll hand it over to Patty can talk through your participation hi I'm Patty alexakos and I am the general manager for um the asgo account thank you very much Dr katti similton and um board members um wanted to step through our participation um comparison from school year 24 and current school year 25 um the metrics we have up here are from the end of August um breakfast um the end of August 20 uh school year 24 we saw about a 4.1% participation at the start of the school year and for the beginning of this school year end of August we landed at about 5.4% which was an increase um about midt about a week and a half ago um
041we're already sitting at about 7.8% um at all levels we've seen an increase elementary junior high and high school um participation numbers going from August to September almost doubling in participation there um for lunch um our participation metric at the end of August for school year 24 was at about 26.7% and for school year uh 25 end of August is 33.8% um August um mid-september is trending at about 40.2% in climbing um I do want to make a note the difference with our service days for school year 25 we had the heat advisory day um so the El Elementary was in service however Junior High and high school were considered we're having remote day that day but since elementary was in service that is considered a service day so it is skewing the numbers a
042little bit so we actually would have been at higher participation had um Junior High and high school been in um the last box is our equivalent meals and what that means is all of our allart snacks when a student buys um a second entree or if they get like a milk or if they want any of the snacks that are afforded to them under the um snacks um that is considered an equivalent um meal the participation in 24 at the end of August is about 4.7% and um this school year at the end of August we were sitting at about 5.6% um September's is climbing to about 7. three but what we've really been focusing on with our staff is making sure that the students are getting a complete meal making sure they're getting all
043of the different components that they can take are they taking multiple fruits and vegetables rather than just taking an entree and a milk that's not going to qualify nor will it qualify for reimbursements for the district so we're really trying to make sure that they're well-rounded and getting a whole full meal with that um next slide what we're doing to um our strategy for increasing participation for the school year um at the end of last year um isby um set forth they had a grant that was available and we worked with the district um to apply for that Grant and at the beginning of this school year uh we uh were one of the school districts that did receive the expansion BR grant for um breakfast and there's 10 locations where that is going to
044um Target and it's based on the participation of breakfast versus lunch like how many students are taking lunch versus what we're getting the participation rate at breakfast so the targeted um schools for those are Boulder Hill uh Fox Chase Hunt Club Lakewood Creek Long Beach Old Post plank the wheatlands Thompson and East viiew Academy so um the process is starting right now at the end of September and we're starting with um surveys with the students as to what their current level um and participation is on the current breakfast program and kind of getting the metric and ideas of what the students are wanting um we're to submit those every month and come up with a new um menu plan starting in February and March um where the grant is actually going to start so what
045it's going to be doing is we're going to be focusing on different healthier um options since uh the USDA is going to be lowering the added sugar requirements next school year so we're already working towards increasing we have um added uh smoothies twice a month to our breakfast menus um blender smoothies at all levels that students are really liking pairing with like a grain option and some healthier um sandwich and hot breakfast options so increasing the protein decreasing the sugars and things like that um we're trying to work with the different School locations um to increase participation for our most vulnerable students we have um the free and reduced populations at each location we want to make sure that we are feeding those students so that they are um able to focus in class make
046sure that they give the teachers the attention um so that they can take get the best out of their education each day so what we're doing right now is we're trying to establish some principal meetings um with all of the buildings to kind of touch base and see what we can do in each location um to kind of tailor a program and see what we can do to help drive that participation um we've been working with um Miss meritz over at Churchill Elementary currently and we're going to be piloting um a second chance breakfast program starting October 1st um so students that come in sometimes they're rushed coming in parents are getting you know dropping them off right at the Bell um high school students might be coming in it's really early in the morning
047you guys are like getting out of bed and you're just like oh God just let me get to first period um you don't have time to stop for a breakfast so we're trying to Target and see what we can do about getting a specific time to do like a second chance breakfast where we would have students who may have eaten at home and if you're a free or reduced kid maybe you still need a snack or something for the rest of the day you're entitled to get that and so we'd like to put out a breakfast cart give you the option to come out and allow them to have a healthy nutritious complete meal rather than oh no going to the nurse and saying I'm hungry just because they didn't have a breakfast with them
048or a snack um can I can I sure comment um so I I've seen issues with our free reduced and with our students that are coming from outside of their boundaries to go to special programs um where the bus is always late correct and they're on free and reduced correct and they're not getting breakfast correct [Music] so push this I don't know how else to say it and ab that's the that's the you you laid out two examples that's the those the example that I just gave that's the ones those are the ones that I'm concerned about the most absolutely so we do have in of the um School locations we've been talking with the offices as far as when students are late arrival send them down to the um cafeteria let them know they
049need a breakfast we're more than happy to give them a breakfast all the leads know that um if a nurse we've been trying uh we've been working with health services to let the nurses know if kids are coming down because they're hungry please bring them down for um a breakfast they don't need to just get a cracker for them if they need the food yeah and and and and and that kind of want everybody to know the students to know not have to say that I'm hungry correct um right that's a great you know so um I don't know it's just something that I've always absolutely cared about perfect and that's what we want to do we want to get them fed okay um so I'm sorry was there a question H oh yeah thanks
050do introduce myself again yeah you you that on oh my name is uh you said it for your second chance I think that's what you called it um when parents drop off students late however my question would be is how would this interview interfere with a schedule uh say you know I know Juniors and seniors have an opportunity to arrive late to school uh so they would have that opportunity to maybe stay and eat for that first um period however students who do have a full schedule um how would they be able to get that time to sit down and eat or would it be that they would go to class with the food that they would get at the second chance so they could take the food with them depending upon when they arrive
051so um most of it at the elementary levels we're trying to work out a plan and we're going to P like we said pilot it at Church Hill and kind of see what works best so we're working out the logistics this week with Miss meritz and um figure out is it going to be like a bag where you have like some of the cold components that you can take and you can take it to class with you and you'll be allowed to eat there or if you're going to stay in the cafeteria and eat eat and then just go back to your class so logistically we're going to just see how that works and um hopefully it works well with Churchill and then we can lay out the plan for the other schools as well
052will it work into the high school yes okay yeah yep yeah that's good I'll just elaborate actually most of the time that we do a second chance breakfast is typically more at a high school middle school level it's actually not seen or as in common as in an elementary level so um we definitely will be working with the building principls and the administration to kind of go that Avenue as well and then what does the communication around that look like so we're for the pilot one that we're doing we're going to be doing a family letter to go out to the families at Churchill so that they're aware of what's going on and how their child can participate and if they need that and what we're going to be doing with that um if that
053works well we want to expand that to all of the other locations and then we can we'll be sending out like Peach jar notifications um we've started with um the Communications Department a little snippet called did you know so we did our first um social media post about our limited time offers that we do monthly and it was kind of sent out to the community like did you know we um offered this limited time offer special at the junior highs and high school and we can do the same thing with like pertinent information there so we're really going to try to utilize more of the communication pieces and partner with the district more to get that message out to families especially at the high school level find a way to communicate directly to the students
054so that they know their parents might not tell them so there's an opportunity there What's the timing around once you figure out like how long is it going to be at Churchill and then how will it roll out to the other so we'd like to do it for a month at Churchill and see how that works and then um the beginning of November try to expand that and move that out to the other other schools and they get the feedback from her staff and you know kind of touch base with her on a weekly basis and see what's going on there so um the other thing we're doing is like like I said the social media post um also working with um sending out Peach darar flyers and trying to be more communicative that way
055with menus the specials information on Free and reduced applications things that um they need to know around Food Services um the other items that we're doing in order to increase participation is kind of let students know what we're offering by having display plates at all locations we used to do that more so at high school and Junior High but at the elementary level that really wasn't um done this year all of the levels are doing it and it's really made an impact especially at the elementary so they could see what the food item is and see what the offerings are and how they can make their meal so I think they've really been liking that they've been coming up and they've been pointing to it saying how great it looks and really been excited about
056the looks of the food um the other thing that we're going to be doing is continuing last at the end of the last school year in April and May we did a lot of student tasting um taste testing in the district um we did a lot of that with our some of our new products we're going to be continuing that starting in October and November and we're also going to be partnering with some of our vendors to come out and do student samplings and tastings as well for like items that they have um we want to talk about maybe some allart items at the junior high and High School so working with like student groups to kind of do some taste testings to see are there different items that we can expand the options to
057that you guys want to see and just kind of get the direct feedback that way so we can tailor the program a little bit more to what you're wanting to see can I ask a quick question yes so most of the participation uh that the increase that you have seen in participation is prior to many of the initiatives that you're launching do you know root cause or the reason why the particip is uptake thus far so historically August everybody's kind of like Tippy toeing into seeing what it is we're still trying to train staff and get them accustomed to it I think as now they're seeing more items the staff is having a little bit more time to engage with the students and talk to them um they're able to bring out the different items
058and kind of show them what we're offering so I think just word of mouth and just seeing the food that's coming across is helping the partip participation that way and then we're really going to start driving you know communicating it more to families um we want to um we've been invited to participate at the Fall Fest at Church Hill um in November um the end of last school year Boulder Hill invited us to their Spring Fair we were there to do some samplings the chefs and I we were there um so we can sample to the parents about all of the different items that we have in the program that they might not be aware of so that they can taste it themselves so we want to bring that um to everyone okay you guys
059have any other questions regarding that well okay yes I I was G to have the same but I was actually gonna ask um our administrators if they're here is does that sound oh what are you saying I'm sorry I didn't hear you the reason for the increase you know you gave us some reasons I'm wondering if we're hearing kind of the same thing from the building level you know from nothing yet that's fine and more to come we're actually going to talk about some things that we have are that we're doing this year versus prior year and I think some of that will be a piece of why we' seeing this increase in participation as well I mean anol we're hearing about better offering uh M selection uh uh renew excitement for the offerings that
060we have those are some of the I fig it would be anecdotal but at this point yeah we don't have much to measure it by okay we'll continue to focus and get you guys results so we can compare year-over-year as well thank you um so our next piece of this is our communication strategy so part of all the things that we're doing within your District it doesn't do any of us any good if we don't share the things that we're doing and talk about it um so part of our student nutrition 360 that we talked about during our whole bid process was a part of engaging with your students and your community and your families and so um a couple weeks ago our aark team met with Michelle early and we got some great feedback
061on um who we can collaborate with to understand the student advisory groups that we can connect with the parent groups in the community that we can connect with we would love to connect with the student ambassadors yes um we we want to get that direct feedback from your community so then the next time that we're up here presenting we can tell you what we heard and we can tell you the actions that we put into place based off of that that feedback um we are part of the parent University catering so not only are we catering the food during those events quarterly um we're opening our kitchens we're inviting people in to see what the lines look like what the setup looks like if they have any questions we're there to answer any questions and
062engage with the families um we are Patty mentioned it a little bit but we're working with the communication department and we're trying to you know start the did you know social media post and it can be highlighting as she said our our limited time offer it could be highlighting hey there's a fun holiday coming up here's a fun and healthy recipe that you can try with your kids at home um maybe a recipe that we have data that we can pull and say your kids love this in this community here's your recipe and you can make it at home too with your families so um we're just doing some fun little social media posts and then the next step to elevate that piece is our um executive chef Natalya here is going to be working
063with Jessica and we are actually going to do some videos um the videos will stem from having our full line set up and Chef Natalia walking through and say Here's what we're offering within your community here's what makes a reimbursable meal it might be something um as easy as it's summer here's how you properly cut a watermelon um it just ways to highlight the resources that you have within your community to connect with your community um and then the other part that we are working on is by monthly we're holding meetings to with our health services department um it's imperative that we understand the dietary needs and the allergies of this of this District so um the aark team has been working closely with them to keep that open line of communication and develop a
064good strategy that we can ensure that as your nurses get the information it's passed down to our staff and we can keep all of your kids safe based off of the needs that they need um so overall we just want to expand and make sure that we're connecting on all levels um Patty did mention we are focusing on doing a principal meeting monthly um again just ways of opening that line of communication if there is an issue um we can address it and have that that communication or it's just a matter of hey we want to do something really fun in your building Chef Natalia is going to come to an action station and we're going to sauté for your elementary kids those are the things that we're going to see down the road this
065year so I will hand that off um next to Chef Natalia to review some of the things that we're doing versus prior year perfect um good evening everybody yes now is the fun stuff right um so comparing from um last year to this year so we do serve at all levels um all white chicken mitt uh that's a product that it's in the chicken patty chicken tenders boneless chicken wings and uh when I say that think about Chick-fil-A at all levels right so I think that's the great and and that has been going great like when we sample last year it went really good and kids were just excited to have it and now I think this is the um the most uh the favorite item on the grill station um so also we've uh
066focused a lot on the on how do we present how do we customize um the menu offerings for all levels so at Junior High and high schools um you would like this year we'd have multiple um selection from fruits and vegetables and those would be like the fresh watermelons fresh grapes um red peppers cucumber zucchini grape tomatoes so the selection is so much wider um if last year we would like you know preop everything or bagged everything this year is like for junior high and high school is it's like a cold bar where they can see the rainbow and it's so much more appealing versus seeing a piece of plastic and that your food is wrapped in right um also for I think the great hit is that at the junior high school we did
067open that section of the cold bar where we have the toppings of the fresh lettuce uh pickles uh fresh tomatoes and onions and it's been going crazy speci special pickles I think like pickles goes with everything for them which is is great um as far as sauces is another thing like we would have last year the prepacked packages of you know standard ketchup Mayo wrench and things like that this year we Implement having the made from scratch sauces that are rotating on weekly basis such as sriracha sauce Atomic sauce or boom boom sauce like it's just crazy names that they are like what is that but they when they try it it's just like you literally they'll come with a little cup and just squeeze as much as they can in it but again this
068is just gives them a little bit of the customizable item and they coming back again and again and they're like you know and share with friends and that's I think mouth to mouth that word is going out and kids are coming more to have lunch with us um so the we we also expanded the main options because we've heard a lot uh last year with the vegetarian options being something that we need to have and um I think that's what we focused this year with Elementary level Junior High in high schools where we have um for the hot lunches we have every day a vegetarian option available at elementary level Junior High we have multiple as we do have grab and go items and we have several salads and Bento boxes and sandwiches that are
069rotated on a weekly basis um on our cycle which is five weeks and then the of course the the high school is my favorite because they like we can play with multiple recipes and we have multiple versions of um vegan uh vegetarian and um Regular um option gluten-free so we can actually enh any um dietary needs uh for students so I I said that this this year is really like um labor involving for all of us but this is also great opportunity for for us to show kids that you know there is multiple choices for you to to choose from yes just wanted to add on the vegetarian and vegan options I know that the students were having a hard time kind of seeing all of the different options that we had and I'm sure
070you guys can attest to it so if you walk into the cafeteria and on the menus now we've highlighted the vegetarian and vegan options in green and also done the menu identifiers in green so and the labels on the Bento boxes and things like that so kids can easily identify that when they walk in um and they can ask the servers and everything at the station identifiers as well for if they need something else where else can they access this information is there an app can you do do we have it on our apps or we have a neutr slice app and it is directly linked to the school menu and it's customized by school so you can go to neutral slice.com and it's on the school district's uh website there's a hyperlink on there
071and it takes you to the um menu page you just type the name of your school um because as we know vendors sometimes depending upon when the delivery came in they might have substituted an item so each School while the menu might be the same they might have been substituted let's say a friend toast bite versus a french toast stick so they'll go in and they'll update that information so it's accurate for the nurse for their location um parents and students are able to actually go ahead and sort um and if they are vegetarian or vegan they can sort by that if they're allergic to Soy they can SL um take that out so it um will tell them all of the menu options that are available to them to eat okay so let me
072ask my student amb our student members board members do you would you want to see the um items for the day or for the week or for the month and if you do is neutral slice a place or an app that you would use or you would go to or where would you want what's where would be the most convenient place for you to access this information do you even look at it do you want to look at it help me I to introduce myself still I'm sorry hi okay hi I'm C Parell um for me I don't really find the need for me to see what the menu is I feel like it's more fun just walking to the lunchroom and see like okay what's the menu for today but I feel for people
073who are vegetarian who are vegan who like non gluten and stuff I feel like it'll be a great opport opportunity to see what's coming up next week and what they can do to either pack a lunch different customizable things that they can use absolutely we can use that for like the Dig you NOS like what's coming this week know if were we can use that as the post to kind of get that message out there so great Fe thank you um for me I would say I use a lot of emails so sending out emails I feel like would be a little bit more uh profound way to gather students to see the menu for the week um an app might be a little bit tedious only because um say a student doesn't download the
074app or doesn't know how to work an app versus seeing something on an email which is just a click and you see a chart or implementing a chart in the as you walk into the lunchroom could also be a really good idea to pull students in but I do like the app idea it's just like students being able to work an app especially like depending on because I know I know students that don't have phones it's kind of crazy but I know students who like don't have phones so um I like the idea that would be my only like regard like the little offset to it but emails would be like perfect I think for students so you would rather have it going to your student emails versus your parent yeah of i as a
075high school for high school I say cuz sometimes our parents forget look at this I'm sahana I speak louder sorry I'm sahana I go to OE one recommendation I have is I don't know how it is at OHS but we have weekly student announcements that we as club like as board members we can slides to that display in the comments on the TV is right down there so I think it would be really cool if you guys could put out the menus for lunch there because they just play every single day on repeat on a weekly yeah on a weekly basis so it's perfect love that idea yeah I I know that there's a lot of new options this year it's a little bit intimidating when you walk in there which is all good things
076but I think it' be really great if kid students could see before they enter the L that's [Laughter] they don't need us one other one other question um for the for the neutral slice app is is there is it advertised in the cafeteria and is there a QR code for them just to download okay per right on the um menu and it's also on the menu board as they walk in there's a giant QR code there as well that's great and would it be in the OR suggestion is to also put it on the slide that will be in the hallway proba perfect we can do that so here you guys have a built-in focus group yes and that's amazing BR samples next time one of the things I would strongly suggest and urge is
077that um these four also have a backup of like a entire committee absolutely and I would urge you to like um Dr Waller email Dr Waller and see if you can get on an agenda and have them you know give have opportunities for feedback and I would also maybe encourage you to talk to them about looking at our demographic breakdown and I think it could be very positive and um um as someone who formerly worked for Google food we really believed that food is community and using um maybe an ethnic breakdown of our students and being able to feature food that students wouldn't normally see in the their food District or in their school district that could also make them feel like they see themselves in the food and then to um the holidays and
078and stuff two of the holidays that were the biggest deal for us at Google food were Star Wars day we did like all menus around Star Wars day and um then Believe It or Not Martin Luther King day they did we did menus around Martin Luther King and those are like our two most popular holidays for Google food that they we really dove in and built um really great experiences around the food so and then one last thing is that um just giving you a little feedback from the seventh graders um that the e in last period their sandwiches are soggy and I promised I would let you know that all right so um just couple pictures as we we talked about uh what we've done differently this year versus last year so um that
079how would look our chicken sandwich right last year versus this year the breakfast pizzas we do the made from scratch real uh slice of pizza versus pre-made one uh sandwich is not is wrong with biscuit but I think everybody kind of like get tired of that so now you have a breakfast sandwich on a cross sand B so that has been a part of our um um of our sampling during the beat and we said like I think this is a heat and it has to go through all of the kids and this is how like our cold bar would look for uh junior high school and you see the sauces there and the toppings and I think that's uh that's a big hit right there um yes and here's just several display places p
080mentioned earlier about elementary schools um so you see the first three pictures would be from our uh last two weeks Elementary uh display plates with a refried Bri rice and a veget uh vegetable and chicken dumplings uh we had a turkey bacon uh cheeseburger there we have a um old-fashioned patty melt and um the other one is just a chicken uh cayi Bowl that's the uh new recipe for this this year for the junior high school and it went really really good some of the items you already been seeing but I also wanted to highlight the grab and go items the wraps and the Bento boxes that has been a huge head for uh junior high and high schools as sometimes it's just like as everybody knows they're rushing into the cafeteria grabbing a meal
081and they are ready to go and most of the time those wraps and the banto boxes already complete reimbursable meal um another thing I wanted really to highlight and um I think that's a great uh Test Kitchen version of um all the can eat at different uh dietary needs because we can have their are vegan you can have their are vegetarian option you can have a gluten-free option so it was just um well last year we just start this test kitchen it's a grain Bowl right so instead of like you know just rice you have rice quinoa lentils in there and um last year when we started was just the end of um school year and kids didn't really care about it but this year as we put a lot of other toppings so I
082guess the Toppings is the secret for any dish it became so popular so it's really really um nice think and I really want to have that as a picture there so you guys can see it's a healthy trendy grain Bowl so thank you thank you all right I'll just wrap it up I think one thing that we can all agree on is the state of Illinois finally did something right and they made us so we were no longer a low bit State and what that does is that allows us to do these items for you um versus kind of what you've seen in the past for the race to the bottom in our contracts um so I'm thankful that you guys gave us the opportunity to talk about our participation a little bit our our
083goals for communication and really kind of the some some of the changes that we've made within your community and within your district and we look forward to um engaging with the students and focus groups and and getting the feedback thank you thank you thank you very much see you all next quarter okay so you guys I'm going to ask if we could um move 10.1 which is the approval of 10.1 is it wait 10.1 the action item for the district administrator contracts if we could move that up we have Ashley Richardson here today and she has her family and there's a little baby and we want to get them home and so we're gonna if if you guys do I need to make a motion or I make a motion to move um action item
084.1 to um 1.5 what 6 point 6.2 two second all in favor oh that's not good job go on Miss samon hi Miss venm hi Mr oer hi Dr Mario hi M Johnson hi mrone hi Mr Gatewood hi so okay we got we got vote on it good evening board we vote first vote well don't we we moved it now we got to get a motion vote first and then you speak we're just going to make the Motions we got make a motion for make the motion for I did no that was to move it that was to move it you want me to make the motion now to yes okay to approve it make a motion to approve the district administrator contract as discussed and presented second Mr Gatewood hi Dr Mario hi Miss
085Johnson hi Mr Cerone hi Miss similon hi Mr ploger hi Miss vend hi motion passes 70 I want to invite Dr Paul with uh introducing uh Mr Richardson we're so excited that Ashley has said yes to being our College and Career Readiness coordinator uh Ashley is currently a site director and educational consultant for amplify Ashley began her career as an English and reading instructor at Thorton Township District in Dolton Illinois through the interview process Ashley strings became readily apparent for the College and Career Readiness coordinator including her ability to collaboratively problem solve and make data informed decisions that positively impact students and staff her experience in educational leadership working with with diverse stakeholder groups and Student Center decision making will be a great asset to the learning Innovation team welcome Ashley thank you okay next
086we want to Mr Obi we have a presentation from PMA Securities we want to welcome Bob Lewis uh thank you for joining us this evening Mr Lewis comes to us with PMA and um Mr Lewis actually presented to the the uh finance and facility committee uh last month and actually it's this month just earlier this month and the topic of Mr Lewis presentation is the refunding of outstanding uh uh go Bond General oblation Bond we have an opportunity to refund and to save the taxpayers some money and uh Mr Ls I'm going to hand it over to you thank you very much for having me here tonight so just uh to summarize currently the district has eight Bond issues outstanding which is you know the lowest number you've had in a long time because the
087district's done a lot to uh pay down its debt uh this principal page you see at the bottom used to be two pages to cover it all so so this is a celebration this is yeah this is good news yeah getting close good good close not yet okay okay uh so you have uh two bond series that are callable in the next uh couple years here the one that's callable uh in the not too distant future that we talked about the fin finance committee meeting was is the 2015 bonds which have a 4% interest rate on them currently there's about 11.8 million that are callable um just as a reminder municipal bonds you can't refinance them anytime you want like a home mortgage you have to wait to get to the call date and then
088the so the call date on this bond issue is February 1st of 25 which you can close on any financing to re to refund it as early as November 1st so that's why we're talking here now is because uh that's in the present and this the 16 bonds would callable one year later so hopefully at this time next year we'll be talking about 16 bonds as a potential refunding opportunity It's a larger financing with a higher interest rate so I anticipate that that one will be a viable candidate a year from now so this is the updated savings analysis uh this is better than what the finance committee saw because interest rates have come down a bit here recently uh the estimated save savings are in the far right column the total reduction in tax
089levies would be about $360,000 I believe the finance committee when they met uh determined that it would like to see a minimum of $300,000 of savings in order to proceed so when I was at the finance committee meeting we were below that on the estimate and now we're uh a bit above it at the bottom are two more yellow lines one of that is the present value of that savings because it is over a period of time it's not all upfront so the present value is over 300,000 to at 307,000 So currently this is not locked in this is the estimate based off uh the recent market and this Matrix is just a sensitivity Matrix it shows you how the savings can fluctuate as interest rates change so the current market is the 360,000 if
090interest rates were to increase by a quarter per that would fall to 192 and conversely if interest rates were to fall another quarter per it could increase up to 528,000 so the only thing I'd ask here is do you do you is it pretty much is the next uh rate cut pretty much baked in yeah so the rate cuts are baked in and the expectation of actually every rate cut after that baked in par another one December yeah yeah um I think they meet next in no November November November nov and then again in December yeah and the Market's already factored in rate cuts of a quarter per each of those meetings and additionally the next meeting but remember when the Federal Reserve Cuts rates they're cutting the short-term rates the medium long-term rates are
091sort of baked in that those cuts were already going to happen so in fact even at since the FED actually cut uh the short-term rate 50 basis points last week medium long-term rates have actually ticked up a little bit so you know medium long-term rates don't necessarily follow current fed action so this would be the the time timeline of events um if the board decides to proceed so we're presenting tonight to the full board October 7th is when the board would have the opportunity to consider resolution and the the main parameter of that resolution would be to set a minimum Savings of $300,000 and then the earliest then we could sell after that would be approximately October 21st that's what we set up for the timeline and then if if the market is favorable at
092that time to lock in 300,000 or more and the bonds would be sold lock and the rate would be locked in then and then they would close on November 4th in that window of time that they can be refinanced so that's the uh presentation anything else to add yeah just a couple of things just to be clear the district doesn't realize personally any savings there's no proceed to the district from this refunded the benefit is strictly to the taxpayer so this amount of interest rate that we will have paid uh 3 close to 370 we will pay this in interest payment to the bond holders from taxpayers um uh contribution this will result in a savings to them so I think that's important to point out thank you very important yeah one other point I
093would make that I made at the finance committee it's oftentimes a question that's asked is is there any change in the repayment term you know you know sometimes people will get a reduction in their mortgage payment well they did it because because they extended the payment and that's not the case here the the bonds are currently scheduled to mature in 2030 the refunding bonds would also mature in 2030 any other questions okay well thank you very much for your time tonight so are we basically giving direction that if if there's a $300,000 savings then we will proceed so what we essentially asking the board is to uh to give us the go ahead to follow the proposed schedule by P May to do this particular refunding because we believe it's in the best interest of
094taxpayers of this community yeah we agree is it going to be an action item next meeting yes next uh next uh aard meeting yes okay okay thank you Mr Lewis thank you thank you thank you I I want to thank uh the finance committee and Mr Bei and his team for tracking this carefully we know timing matters in this bu business and so we know you'll continue to watch that uh judiciously I know last year we we gain we realized some additional savings by pausing when we did so I'm sure you'll continue that um and bring that update to the board if needed so um next we W to next are we doing the um oh 6.2 we want to invite um we have 6.3 now 6.3 now thank you for the correction uh we
095have our Master facility presentation um part of the charge in last week we had the the we were invited to join the village uh trustees uh with an open session presentation um to discuss our strategic plan more importantly really to talk about a lot of the developments happening in our area and so board during that presentation one of the things that I highlighted was the importance of a master facility plan anytime we start to think about Student Assignment planning um this has been a priority I want to thank um Mr befi um Mr Queen Amanda satar uh Dr Kade um Andre and uh the team for really organizing this and tonight we have uh the the presentation and Mr will open for us then welcome G thank you Dr kadi as part of what we
096know should be a school district uh way of of doing businesses periodically we have a master facility plan that looks at the state of our Master facility which would be the assessment and then we have conversation with our community members our students our Educators and board members to dream about what we anticipate I need will be be like 5 10 20 years from now and come up with a design frame for that and once we finish that part of it then we have to think about how much is it going to cost us for those things to happen and once we get that part of it then the final part would be where we get the money to pay for and this is something the school district should do periodically I will I will I
097I'll venture to say probably every 10 years to do a master facility plan and as far as we know we've never done this before so this is an attempt for us to do what we believe is absolutely necessary for us to do so as part of the process we did uh request for proposal from qualified firms who have the ability the experience to be able to do this work we had some wonderful submission and uh from those submission we invited the top rated based on the rubric that we use five firms to come in and actually present to us in person and we asked them questions and uh from that list of five we ask the three finalist to then come back again and answer some more questions and provid us some more information from
098that uh from that assessment process where recommending uh White and Company to be approved by the board to do the master facility planning as part of the uh the process with asked our white and McKenry do a presentation and also uh allow the board the opportunity to ask questions and to provide answers to the board I'm going to hand it over to uh Brad pson from White and Company sitting next to him is store and next to him is Tim yeah thank you very much uh again my name is Brad Paulson with whiten company I am the uh K12 education practice leader senior vice president with the company I've been doing education uh school facilities my entire career going going back a few years just leave it at that Stuart Brodsky you want to introduce
099yourself sure steuart Brodsky I'm I'm an architect and also been doing educational facility design and planning for longer than I want to admit and decades in in fact and excited to be here one of my favorite parts of the process is Master planning and I think dreaming is a is a great way to put it that we look forward to the opportunity to work with you on that and I'm Tim McAvoy I'm an engineer with mckinstry we are supporting uh Whit and Company on the facility assessment portion and I'm very passionate I have three young children as well in the school age so very passionate about helping the K through2 uh environment oh sure uh yeah so McKenry uh we are a national uh engineering and consulting firm uh we have Midwest uh offices in
100Chicago Madison Minneapolis uh we do a lot of things but uh most specific for today is H strategic facility planning uh energy optimization uh Renewables uh we also help with uh you know smart and connected buildings building controls as well as funding and and uh Grant solutions to help to pay for some of those projects and a little bit about white and Company um we are based in Darian Illinois so not too far from here uh actually just celebrated our 85th Anniversary over the weekend um third generation ownership still going strong it's actually a little bit of a homecoming for our firm I we were going through this process and we actually did a lot of work for District 308 back as as long far back as the 80s and early '90s so we have
101some good familiarity and some information on some of your older buildings um one of the things that is on the screen there is we've done some pretty major facility Master plans and building improvements for similar District as you large unit district elur school district 205 been working with them for about 25 years and just finishing uh a six-year building uh program at following the implementation of a facility master plan naville School District 203 we've worked with as well and just most recently completed Indian Prairie School District 204 right next door a facility master plan for those for that District as well and we're excited to be partnered with mckinstry we've done some work together uh uh recently for some other building assessments and planning efforts so we think we have a good proposal a good
102team together when we start this process we always like to start with the end what's what are we going to get in the end what is a long range facility master plan supposed to do what is it going to give you and really what it is is a comprehensive road map for your District that touches on a lot of different issues it touches on the impact on students it touches on it provides a uh a fac an actionable facility plan using data to make annual facility investments in the infrastructure and the conditions You're Building most importantly it's aligned with your strategic plan your vision your goals it it has individual building Sol Solutions but also Al a overarching solution for the entire district and then of course it gets into what are the funding needs
103and what's the best strategy to implement those so that entire package comes together and all school districts want to know how those impacts and how those costs get broken out so there's a lot of different categories that can be created to kind of articulate your story and and kind of plan your individual Investments over a period of time the process we use to do that in a very simple uh simple diagram uh it doesn't look simple but it actually is um and we'll go through this in detail for you but essentially at the beginning we want to assemble all the information assess your buildings figure out what the needs are talk to teams talk to uh the individual schools engage students engage staff along the way using that information we want to begin developing facility
104plans laying out road maps engage the community through that process to evaluate that all all the while through going engaging with a steering committee which would be designed and selected and and kind of navigating through this whole process and in the end the board would have a and the district would have a long range facility master plan which would enable you to figure out and a begin to answer a lot of questions what what action do you want to take with it how are you going to deliver it how would you go ahead and pay for it and in the end hopefully youve built a lot of Engagement and trust with your community and with your staff to have everybody on board with uh the direction you want to head over anywhere from who knows
10515 to 20 years so that's kind of a big picture I'm going to turn it over to Stuart now who we're going to and Stuart and Tim we're going to get into some of the details about what's in our proposal I know our proposal is actually attached to your board memo so yeah and we'll try we'll try to keep this at an overview level even though you see a lot of detail on the slides but I think the main point of this slide is that your um request for letter of interest had six primary objectives so the point here is that our proposal includes all of them if I were to look at any successful master plan they include all six of these ingredients or objectives the first three are really going to happen in
106the first half of the process we'll talk about the schedule in a moment and then um the next three although I would say engagement of some type happens throughout the the next three uh really happen at the back half of it say um you know in from the summer onward and again we'll we'll hit the schedule in a moment so on the next slide thank you um we believe in tailoring every master plan to meet the district's needs and um the unique needs of the facilities so we've studied uh your facilities the 22 uh buildings 3.3 million square fet and I think there's there's two um good news pieces or unique opportunities here uh one of which is you have some protype buildings and they come into groups so there's an opportunity for us to
107um I would say streamline but Focus the master planning process on the quality of the solutions without having to uh cover so many unique buildings a lot of prototypes we can really organize ourselves it creates an opportunity to really focus on Equity as a result of the master plan and then finally um your you're going to see in your schedule your your strategic planning process is happening at the same time as we are going to be developing the master plan particularly the first two phases and that will provide an opportunity to coordinate so the master plan really results out of your your goals and your vision educationally and operationally and the next phase we've been uh yes we have the first two phases are really the needs assessment uh phase one is the facility conditions
108assessment Tim we'll talk about that in much more detail but in some Simplicity that's where we're really looking at materials and systems and um your facilities team uh under bills leadership need this information it's critical for their operation whereas phase two is really educational alignment that's where we're going to look at modern learning environments we're going to help build some programming and we'll call it a rubric or an assessment methodology we'll go in we'll look at your buildings and and evaluate them based on that and identify the needs these this aspect is critical for your students and your teachers and your administrators it's what they experience daily and then finally in phase three is really where we develop and evaluate options that come out of the master plan it's where it all comes together we
109establish a long range plan and it becomes the integrated plan for the future with all the aspects so um we really believe in the the old adage uh start with end in mind um so the first thing the first series of things we're going to be doing is about setting in place a process that's going to be successful and enduring throughout so it means we're going to work closely with you to confirm the schedule Who's participating in the process to make sure it's full fully engaged involves both um within the district and your community um whereas phases one and two I talked about will be a little bit more focused of involvement with the district and and selective community and whereas phase three that's where we're really going to engage in Earnest more broadly with
110the community uh we need to dig in hard and make sure we have really good floor plan accurate floor plan documents to do the study efforts so we're going to be doing that and then we're going to um be aligning it with your the schedule of your strategic plan I've explained a lot of this in the schedule already but let's flip to the schedule slide so that green bar at the top represents the timeline of your strategic planning process it's started it concludes in the spring and if you'll notice uh phase one which is the conditions assessment really operates underneath that and the truth is phase two even though it's a phase two there are many simultaneous activities phase one starts as soon as you approve our um our proposal and we'll go through February
111of 25 where we will produce the initial initial report and then we'll continue and refine it and complete that by the end of the school year phase two overlaps with that it's a staggered start we'll kick into that in November um we're going to need to make sure the majority of that happens while everybody is still in school because we need to engage with you on that quite a bit and that will complete in lock step with phase one at the end of the school year what that'll allow us to do is have all the needs assessment ready um and it's important that we do that first then we'll start planning over the summer we can take a step back create planning Solutions and options uh develop them and then come present ideas to you
112in the fall we'll start developing conceptual costing so you'll begin to understand the magnitude of that but that's really when the community engagement more broadly will begin where we'll engage um and we're going to organize that um Community engagement effort more broadly with two communities that feed into each high school so we can make it um relevant to the needs of those neighborhoods and those schools in a unique way so we're going to um focus in a little bit more detailed on the phases Tim's going to talk about one I'll talk about phase two and three in more detail as um particularly as time allows um and I'll allow Tim to talk all right thank you uh yeah so phase one is the phase that we'll be leading it is the facility conditions assessment phase
113uh otherwise known as FCA uh it is uh the FCA is a process of uh categor cataloging all the assets and systems that are in your school facilities uh so anything from the interior floor to the roofs to the uh windows to the heating and cooling equipment uh we want to see what kind of condition that're they're in and then we want to assign a estimated cost of replacement and with those uh two pieces of information you can start to make uh investment uh smart investment decisions for next year as well as uh the long range facility uh master plan so it's a four-step process uh we start with the planning phase where we take all the existing information like the life safety reports uh all the information that the facilities team that are there
114in the building every day uh can can uh give to us and then we ourselves go out there and assess uh collect the uh data the asset uh data and then we Analyze That data and then we reveal and show uh the asset workbook in a easy uh cap capital planning dashboard so yeah thanks just want to highlight a couple differences in the traditional or typical FCA approach and our FCA approach uh so on the left uh you'll see it's a 400 plus uh static written building system report um it's uh not you know real easy to digest uh whereas our approach we're we're actually adding more information and more data but we can do that because we have an easily digestible uh dashboard um to work through that data so uh you can see
115uh in that heat map there with the red orange and yellow you know red is is bad it's more critical uh yellow is less critical you can click into those boxes and it's got all the additional information it's it's quite small here but uh it's got a lot of information when you do click into those boxes we're not just giving each asset one score we're giving it multiple scores and that allows us a lot more ability uh through the planning process so uh we're not just giving you the condition but we're also how critical is that asset if it does fail how much of the school you know will go down uh if there's Energy savings involved and if there's Energy savings that's operational savings that's greenhouse gas reductions that also opens up nikore and
116comad utility incentives inflation reduction act possibly uh money uh State grant money um we'll also look at uh the observe remaining life so not just the book value um not just saying your rooftop unit is 15 years old it should be replaced because ashray who's the expert says 15 years but the operating conditions that really impacts how long something does last um how many hours does it run a year how well has it been maintained we want to capture that information and not just tell you how old uh something is um and once we do that uh we you know we don't just assign a year that it's going to be replaced uh Capital plan this this planning process is going to be very Dynamic there's going to be a lot of different ways to
117fund these capital projects and we want to have a tool that can easily uh analyze all of those different solutions so that we can create the best pathway forward for you okay as we uh launch into phase two we're really looking at the learning environment um the site and Safety and Security those are kind of the well really the four things also the occupancy and the capacity of a building which really has a lot to do with how you use it educationally and one of the things we like about the facility conditions assessment being in an indexing format is that we're going to be looking at different types of categories of improvements that are going to be needed in different places and we want to make sure they overlap in the right way and are
118coordinated with the facility conditions improvements so that we aren't um putting a master plan in place that requires you to do anything more than once over the life of a building so those are there's a unique opportunity there um but phase two is really as Architects and educational planners where our heart lies because um this is where you really get to we We're translating your uh strategic educational needs into a program or an evaluation process we can then look at the facilities and come up eventually uh with Solutions or at least identify the needs then Solutions so that's all brought together along with facility conditions assessment in phase three and this is where we be we begin to develop um Solutions uh we look at them um area by area school by School uh type
119of building by type of building uh we haven't mentioned this uh yet but we will be developing with you both a steering committee and academic advisory committees that we will meet with periodically through both phase two and three and that we will then come back to in phase phase I'm sorry one and two and then in phase three we'll come back and really engage around the solutions um we'll be honing the schedule we'll be developing conceptual cost estimating so you'll understand the order magnitude costs associated with improvements and this is where we really launch community engagement I already mentioned the fact that we found the most successful way to do that is um have separate meetings for each of the feeder patterns for each High School school that involves all the schools where um your
120students families have sort of lived it for um all 12 years of their academic career with you and by bringing them together we can hear collectively hear the needs of the challenges of both of those communities uh we'll bring that process together work through Solutions hear the feedback and then um by the end of the year in 25 we will uh have a master plan that then can be uh ready for adoption by the board so that after that you can begin looking at opportunities to fund different ways to do that and how the project breaks down into um buckets of cost and and types and schedules and all those details so that concludes our presentation do you want to say anything Brad so we will we're here to entertain any questions you have and
121be happy to answer that now now I I have a question but it's actually for you Mr Queen how does this plant this new plan how does that fall in with the uh master plan that you've been working on I mean is it is yours more immediate or yes this is more detailed more in depth with with the information that we are documenting yeah okay so yours is more um dayto day at this point in time dayto day the best that I could do with with my team this is on a rander scale got it by far thank you it's been stated but I just wanted to the steering committee I think is a wonderful idea and I know that you said that the team will be created with us um but I just want
122to make sure that students are part of that team we I I think we envision making sure that our students our staff and community members that we've talked to some of them actually volunteer will be doing Outreach to make this is uh a process for the community for everyone who has an a stake in the school district they should have a voice to be able to make a determination the next 5 10 15 years our resources are allocated for the upkeep and the maintenance of the facility this is their facility they paid for it and they should have a voice in it I I also liked it was a unique perspective when you said the uh talk to the high school the where the families that have been a part of the high school I
123think the families that have been there all 12 years will have a unique perspective including inclusive not just different perspective because they've been through it and as well as the students and the families that are currently in it I think that it would just add value for those who already went through it too so I I I like that you said that part of the unique opportunity that in engaging in this process that is we'll be very strategic about ensuring that we get all voices not just the squeaky wheel um I think that can be a mistake um in let's say in traditional development or planning you you try to just go out there and say okay here's a flyer who's coming and and you you just count on who shows up um we're going
124to be really intentional and so I appreciate the comments um overall EV every part of this and so one of the things that was important when we looked at the white group's experience in kind of organizing that was definitely a prominent feature in their ability to engage community and um have some experience in doing that so maybe you want to speak to that a little bit about how you've engaged Community stakeholders in some of your recent projects well I would say every every school district every Community has a different path so I I can talk about Indian Prairie School District 204 maybe because that's most recent maybe the most relevant too um we went through a similar process um we had uh Community open houses organized by each of their three high schools uh a
125lot of direct engagement engagement with them we had it was activity based it wasn't just Architects and Engineers or School administrators presenting to the group we had specific targeted questions and activities that we proposed at times we've actually followed that up with a broader survey an electronic survey that's another valuable tool the reality is as much as you would love to have the community open houses and and have people come and engage with you the way we are the way things are in communities right now it's not as you can't rely upon that so you need to touch and and reach out to people to get as much information you can in multi multiple ways great much probably like you're going to go through with your strategic planning process so that's why these two process
126could really be like 1 plus 1 equals 3 you're going to be able to create a lot of value and engagement through the two processes I I'll add that as part of the superintendent Advisory Group that we launched last year there's a lot of interest um both around the Strategic um planning that we're going to be doing and that we have been doing through our strategic road map and now moving to our strategic plan number one number two that I would say energy of folks who were part of that are really excited to participate and also get rallied support for the other work and so both through engaging our departments like learning Innovation and um diverse learners but also in terms of getting support there are a number of folks said you know I didn't
127participate in The superint advis Advisory Group but I really want to participate in the master facility planning so you you definitely have quite a few people I've already spoken with lots of people who said well please sign me up for that and in some cases we're saying we need you in that and actually at the Village meeting last week we talked and we invited members of the village board to come and join us as well in that process yeah one one thing I'll add that in addition to the work that white and Company's done I'm actually work I I'm a school board member on another Luda District that's been through this process so I've been in all of your seat before navigated through all these issues we talked about so whatever little lens I can
128bring and add to the mix for consideration I I'm excited about that I love helping school districts and I get to see it from two sides thank you I'd like to ask question sure uh just a quick clarification um I'm I I think you're saying that the master facility plan also includes outdoor space of the facilities as well including Does it include the athletic spaces at the high school that are Outdoors or is that something that's separate from the work that you will do that would be included okay thank you I have a question and then just well voice a concern but I think that you've already kind of addressed you brought in our diverse Learners so that's that's the part that I want to make sure that we get consistency and um um that
129they're able to follow their peers into the next grade level and things along those lines so our special education Community our communities things like that so um but then the question I had was we're looking at potential capacity limitations relatively soon I see that the phases bring us to December of next year is that going to be enough time to kind of make some adjustments um or we going to have to kind of go forward before we get that I guess the part that we didn't mention exclusively is that with the master facility planning there's going to be some connection with with our demographer yes so they will inevitably have to work with a demographer Irish speak Mak and the demographic figure will figure into the uh the education designed that'll be part of the
130phase two and phase three so that that will make sure that uh where our facility is right now where faciliity is going to be in the future is going to take into consideration where population going yeah I just want to make sure that we're not looking at any over capacity you know issues Dr K while we going through this process do you want to speak a little bit to kind of what we brought up last week around the capacity issues and how we may in the short term think about some of those versus long term I think those were very relevant and important yep so we had the opportunity last week to uh speak at the Village of us we go meeting um in conjunction with RSP who conducted our enrollment analysis um right now
131we're looking at um with the growth along uh wolf crossing um in terms of subdivision additions um some capacity issues for uh southberry and then potentially Long Beach in terms of where we would have to potentially look at some Student Assignment um changes so along with that um we're also um very committed to our dual language and SEI programs and our special ed programming so under the direction of Dr dubio we've been doing some analysis about the location of our programs um within the district um also in conjunction with our transportation department um with Mr Oba so those are just some of the things on our Horizons as we look forward um into this winter um re-engaging some additional conversations along those lines thank you go ahead um other questions joh go ahead please I
132insist um I have a couple of different questions for different uh people um what what Raphael do you see the benefit of the $100,000 more that this vendor brings um and and how do we justify spending that kind of money so that's an excellent question when it comes to this type of work we take cost into consideration but I think a bigger uh consideration is the expertise that it bring now if we look at the uh the facility assessment software that McKenry bring is is industry breaking you see people what they do when they do a facility assessment they walk around your building they measure how many square footage you are they measure how many classrooms they have and that's the extent of the uh the facility assessment what they offer to do is much
133more detail layer detail of information that we will use into the future as it stands right now for example when we determine what we fix what we don't fix in a district we don't have a a good true system that we use to determine it their system provides us that as uh Tim mentioned earlier the opportunities for us to be able to look at funding sources for example when it comes to uh uh electricity lowering the cost of electricity lowering the heting cost they have the ability provide us the the tools and the data that we can use to do that where your regular facility assessment doesn't provide you that so those are the value ad that we're looking at we just don't look at uh we don't look at just the dollar we look
134at the the uh the unique experience and the core competency that they bring to to the engagement and when it comes to that they head over shoulder above anybody else this was something we spend a lot of time deliberating on we have two rounds of interview and after each interview they came out better than everybody else so over the roughly 12 months that that we spend with this um or however many months it is um the total that we will see is $380,000 we will not incur any other fees for what they're bringing to the table not for the master facility planning okay and then how often will we will the board how how does reporting back to the board work like how do we know what's happening when it's happening so forth what you
135ordinarily do is you have it in phases after phase one is complete there'll be a report that will be presented to the board just like this we'll provide it ahead of time before this meeting you have an opportunity to look at it and then we'll have them come in and do a presentation just like uh they're doing tonight you have an opportunity to ask them questions about it then we'll move on to phase two same thing and then phase three same thing and then the other part that we're now talking about here which we didn't ask for in the RP but which we believe is an important part is the support that we need to then say we have all this cost all these things that we need to do how do we pay for
136and that is something that this group when we talk to everybody else they actually have done better than everyone else they're currently providing support with 204 Indian Prairie doing exactly that right now and none of the submission that we received had that component as part of because at the end of the day if we did all this and we don't have the money to pay for or ideas of how we get the resources to make the changes that we need it's just an exercise in fut I mean there's no doubt I think in anyone's mind that we need this I mean I don't think that's the question where my concern comes in is making this decision is really going to mostly affect a new board and so ask and obviously a few of our current
137members but asking I mean do we make this decision and and this is something that they are then you know in charge of and stewarding is just something that's in the back of my head who takes on in our district like the workload of of this like who is like really working with these guys dayt day and um day to day will be a facil bill and him and I'll be providing support to him the way I always do and so then what does he do what about his day job like no so that's I mean that's part of the investment is that you actually have a project manager I mean I think we have a individual in the back you want to come up and speak to your role in this which I think
138part of the investment is really recognizing that this is not a a task that's uh a small task and the amount of work it requires is pretty significant that responsibility does not fall on Bill the he's the liaison but really the the firm is who we're really hiring to take the lead I'm guess I'm getting at is you know how are there going to be disruptions to the um academic setting are we going to be asking principles to answer stuff are we going to add I guess I'm looking at what the load is on our current you know employees and what that looks like also knowing that at least for 1 2 3 four roughly four or five months they are all working towards a strategic plan all these folks have a role in building
139a strategic plan and so I just want to make sure that we're considering workloads and uh balancing that yeah that is very that is also the reason why we've first of all the timeline can be expanded right so there are there is flexibility in that this is a proposed one if we see that one requires a little bit more time our commitment is to get strategic plan by February does that mean we can equally do the same amount of work around the master facility plan engagement that may be after right so there is there is flexibility in that that we will be paying attention to and that's really important to know um we want to do this well we don't want to do this rushed right and I don't want so there is no there's
140no goal for that so I want to invite you to speak to the project management a little bit work that you've described in the um I'm n sha I'm the project manager at White company so I will be um kind of working with you day-to-day organizing scheduling be the main client contact kind of making sure we're moving forward in the way you guys want to and you know a lot of that you know that work falls on our end to make sure we're getting the information we need from you and we're moving forward you know we're we're not looking to do any cumbersome work for you guys we're really here to do that for you to make sure you're getting this plan and getting all the information we need um but yeah and I can
141just say based on experience I've had I've done a number of this in order to district is never been something that added work to other folks uh job it's supposed to be a blueprint that help us uh determine how we manage our facility I don't really I can Envision how a district our size can operate with uh facility management maintenance without a master facility plan I I don't disag I mean I the fact that we have never really engaged in this is kind kind of surprising and also shocking and also why we find our self in some of the situations we do I'm just going to go back to the calendar like I just have a concern about like space programming and needs assessment going on at the same time that our strategic planning is
142going on when that is where we are going to learn from the community what they are what they want and so I just I I want to make I just I don't know it just feels like a lot right now and um not that we don't need it not that I don't think we've picked the right part partner I just feel like it's a lot on top of each other absolutely and we will that that feedback is really helpful and something that we want to make sure we're always paying attention to so we'll definitely take that under review and as we begin to build our project plan make sure that all parties are really understanding the load one of the things that um acvr consultant often reminds us even at as District leadership team is
143that at the end of the day our Educators and our school leaders face multiple competing demands and we do not want to put more on them to take them away and our students from the most important work which is supporting our students so definitely your your instincts are important and we'll be paying attention to that so thank you for that um mine's more geared towards you I I I'm always cognizant of some of the narratives that we've battled in the past and when I hear them I'm quick to say oh well I am l listening and I will absolutely bring this and and we we know like we know um I think going into this some of our trouble spots and anybody who's walked out on our football fields we we understand like the challenge
144um but to demonstrate that I am listening and listening doesn't necessarily mean always that you're going to hear what you want to hear but um of course there's The Narrative of well if we spend money from the Personnel side on the facility side and I I asking you to again you know clarify to people we're talking about two very different sets of of buckets and if if um it's not that simple right and you'll explain that better than me absolutely for for example we have funds that we Levy off of and those funds can exclusively be used for those functions for example we have a n fund which is fund 10 we Levy from that we have uh um omm operations and maintenance fund 20 those funds when we receive those Levy can only be
145used for the facility maintenance we can't use it for anything else and even with our ebf that we get from the state there allocations of those funds some of those funds are actually designated for us to use for operations and maintenance we have to use those funds for our facilities and to maybe connect what you just said with what board member um Johnson is saying part of the problem has having sat here through massive Cuts part of the problem is we went into complete reactive mode in which we had no plan and we just started uh and I said at the time like we're in this for the sake of saving money we're costing ourselves money right and so without those Personnel available to have these kind of plans long term um we'll find ourselves
146in the same boat so it might not be a football field it might be you know an haac system or whatever the case may be um and so I know it's hard for people to hear that because their kid is where their kid is right now but um in order to get where we need to right we have to be able to have those long-term planning pieces and so absolutely absolutely and most of our buildings were build around the same time a chunk of them now and around the 20e Mark is when things start fall in aart and if we don't have a plan for it then all we're doing is doing the waca mhm when you do that over time you spend more money you impacct in the health and safety of our students
147and our staff and it's not really a good way for an organization an institution decides to operate we're not a mom and pops operation we are $300 million a year entity in any any version of the story we're a large business M and a large business will not operate without a plan to his facility yeah Mr speaking of State oh one quick question speaking of safety do you want to add to that Mr Bill um the only I would say is through this process of firms and things um whing company was one of the only ones that requested to speak to us in particular and the student services department around Safety and Security um I think that speaks to them trying to be as comprehensive as possible um and so we welcom that conversation in
148reference to kind of the work that you talked about it's just necessary work we there things that we may have to consider what we prioritize through this process um but the Safety and Security is significantly impacted by facilities the Aging facilities the infrastructure in our facilities and so um I don't know how we'll do it or when we'll do it but we'll do it because we have we have to yeah um and I think that's going to be critical in helping to develop those uh strategic planning pieces um and so we need some of this data um and this information quickly in order to be able to kind continue to respond to the needs that exist um and the things that we're we're seeing coming at least from the Safety and Security side yeah we
149understand that um we've been asking for something like this for like three years so we get the importance of it more importantly when our community comes to us and they ask us for turf fields or they ask us for parking lots and the question was always well where is this on our list of priorities and so I'm looking forward to the opportunity to see reports where we can gauge how important is this where is it in our list of priorities and we don't have you know we don't have to guess about it we can say to our community this is where this is on our list of priorities because of we got to put boilers and chillers and all these other things Windows yes um in our building so I'm I'm looking forward to um
150this type of data so that we can make really good decisions I really appreciate you saying that I think the other component to that is is that we have often um you know I don't know if the word subjectivity is the right word here but depending on who you're talking to they prior prioritize things differently and I think it is important to have someone outside telling us that because we did a facilities plan but it was done internally and I think that we need someone from the outside saying here's really what your priorities are so that we don't create the friction in our community that was created before so again I'm just reiterating I'm not saying we don't need this I just want to make sure the timing is the best for our our staff
151so thank you very much for coming tonight thank you thank you so much thank you thank you so I'm very cognizant that we have students in the house and I'm going to let you guys go in just a minute I want you to participate in something um so we're going to move on to 8.1 our superintendent report but before 71 I'm sorry 8.1 yeah I would do that oh I'm sorry Y is any is there any public comment oh okay's 7.1 we're moving on no public comment okay so before Dr katti gives his superintendent report um I would just like to have us pause and take a few moments to honor the profound loss our community has faced recently as We Gather here today our hearts are heavy with sorrow three lives still with so
152much ahead of them were taken too soon each of these individuals brought light and with so much I'm sorry brought light and joy to those around them and their absence leaves a profound void that we all feel deeply in times like these it is important that we come together as a community supporting one another and honoring the memories of those we've lost let us take a moment to reflect on their lives and the impact they had on our school and our hearts so tonight the board and the district honor remember as Wego High School senior sha fader as Wego East East High School alum Javon McGee and Murphy teacher and Coach Mr Aaron Dudley so please join me in a moment of silence thank you we know that as a district we unite we lift
153up and we carry on but forever we will remember these three who were part of our SD 308 family okay you are I appreciate that but can I can I I listen I hope we never have to do this again but just a request we had like a lot of people here earlier and I just think like if we can do it earlier next time that would just be a little bit more impactful nobody did anything wrong just just observation and hopefully we never have to worry about doing that again and I know a lot of people were affected yeah thank you um we can we put that statement on on our website or something so that our so those who weren't here today can see that all right thank you so much today to
154all of our student board members you guys have um contributed greatly to our discussion today and we really appreciate it and that's what you're here for so thank you so much um have a good night have a good night thank you thank you thanks thank you again uh thank you president samilton for sharing those words and also uh Mr ploger for highlighting uh the timing but I would underscore that um we the timing is now there is always this is the time and so it was important for us to make make that time right now and and uh I want to invite our community as well to uh Hudson Park Crossing this coming Wednesday evening um we've been not notified that there will be an Interfaith Gathering um to honor the lives that we've lost
155of sha Javon and Aaron and uh this Interfaith Gathering will be a a powerful there will be a service as a symbol of our community's unity and grief but also in strength and we appreciate the faith community leaders who came to together to offer this unique this Interfaith Gathering to offer this unique opportunity for our community I also want to really given a special appreciation to our district uh crisis team um under the leadership of Mr Bell and Dr KC who really rallied in a time when uh what people need is support not figuring out who's going to give the support and often um it is it is the on song Heroes behind a lot of the planning and organization that can make it more palatable for our friends in our community even um our
156dear colleague and coach for life Mr Dudley I know that in the weeks prior the the team were were thinking about how can we prepare to support that family and the school U because he and the and the district because ultimately Mr Deli did have an impact throughout our district and has really been a beacon um so again um want to thank your team and thank your teams and all our schools and staff and everybody um everywhere has really rallied to support these families so thank you all over the past week we've had um along U many school districts board um I was on actually on a call with superintendent and the superintendent from out west near De Mo Iowa actually said if it hasn't come to you prepare for a huge uh struggle around
157threats um in social media and so there was about 40 superintends on the call and he kind of and only two or three raised his hand and that was only two weeks ago and sure enough um our community has uh really had to struggle the last couple last week or so especially about threats through social media in many cases these messages originate from outside of our district but through social media channels they end up in our community while we take every single report very seriously and is investigated uh we want to acknowledge that this type of behavior reposting information like this is very disruptive and frightening and costly both in times and resources I want to take a moment again to last week we sent out a message board to the whole Community reminding everybody
158about the social media and we are continuing a campaign to really remind folks about this um I want to thank students parents staff community members for their vigilance in reporting anything concerning using the see something say something adage as a reminder it's not a funny joke it's not funny to joke about school violence and it's not okay to spread rumors photos videos or content that suggest such violence in any way the safety of our students and our staff is always our highest priority and we will take such matters very seriously I want to thank our police Partners who have invested their time in assistance and partnering with us to really um make sure that every investigation is followed up when we receive these reports I'm going to shift gears now uh September 15th marked the
159start of Hispanic Heritage Month uh it was a great celebration got to join BAC uh for their their launch of uh Hispanic Heritage Month and I want to this is Hispanic Heritage Month is a time where throughout there is a are latinx communities um their communities have left an indelible Mark of art music literature science politics and education and countless other domains their enduring Legacy is not only a source of Pride for those who share this Heritage but also a source of inspiration for all of us who recognize the power of diversion in acknowledgement and celebration of Hispanic Heritage Month we are grateful for and encourage learning and celebrations across the district and I want to thank all our partners um next year I'll be ready to say this in Spanish so gracias and and
160just remember all of the bees wanted to were at events because they wanted to be part of bpack yes they wanted to be part as we were told by a student yes uh I want to now invite board Partners uh board members to share any additional celebrations or news of coming up from the Z coming sure I'll start us off I sgo High School won the the T-Mobile Friday night 5G lights 5K sweep sticks say that fast three times with your help this is the this is only the beginning future winnings could include outdoor lighting sound system upgrades and even Turf help us reach our next Milestone at the as a top 16 finalist by sharing on Instagram and using at TMobile # FN 5gl # sweepstakes and Ohs 308 and at ohos Athletics thank
161you for all for being a part of this journey this month nominations are also open for Long Beach Old Post Boulder Hill and broa schools to recognize their amazing teachers and employees through the district's Pride program the winning individuals will be recognized at the October 21st board meeting the Board of Education meeting please visit the Board of Education page on the district's website and nominate a teacher or a staff member to be considered for this prestigious award the nomination period will close on Thursday September 26th thank you moving on we are excited to invite all families to attend the second session of sd308 parent University to learn ower Advocate and find Community as parents in our district enjoy learning about topics parents choose and participate in and support your students educational Journey join us on
162Saturday October 26th from 9:00 a.m. to 1:00 p.m. at plank Junior High and child care will be provided um and just as an aside I did go to the first parent University I think that if anyone has the least bit of Interest which you all should it is definitely well worth attending so um we do hope to see lots of parents there on the uh on October 26th OS Jr Emily chette is one of 38 poets honored at the eth annual gendin Brooks youth poetry Awards Emily was named as an honorable mention in her grade group for her poem X over 988 entries were received congratulations to Emily on this special recognition of your creativity and talents y yay congratulations to Stephanie San Roman rohs band director She was recently attended the award ceremony in
163Nashville and received an award as music teacher of Excellence presented by the CMA Foundation thank you Stephanie for your hard work and dedication to students this award is welld deserved Y and they keep giving me these that are like so apropo for me um the asigo East I'm very thankful very thankful for this one the asigo East High School social studies department is partnering with Disabled American Veterans feeli the flags uh from now until October 25th anyone in our community can donate and for every $250 raise the school will receive 24 Flags to be placed along the school's main entrance and Wolf's crossing the week of Veterans Day uh visit the oeh Facebook page for the link to read more and donate and it's definitely a personal piece at this point um you know my
164own uh father-in-law he's looking at six weeks of radiation now um and the doctors are very confident this is left over from agent orange he's a Vietnam vet and um unfortunately um he lost U his ability to talk um they had to take take that out um very large cancerous tumor and so um for those of us who have loved ones who are still um giving back if you will to our country uh things like this are appreciated so thank you to the social studies Department yes very ate yeah the 11th annual food drive the 11th annual food drive begins on October 15th and will culminate at the cross town game on Friday October 25th at asgo East High School we look forward to this time of year as our district collaborates to work towards
165such an incredible cause our district continues to be the largest donation the kendle County Community Food Pantry receives stay tuned for more information coming soon thank you board and as you hear there is just so much uh uh good news even in these difficult difficult times that we have to take a moment to be grateful for each other and for our shared uh commitment to our students so uh to those listening uh please share any good news you think should we need to highlight in these monthly reports so uh again send them in uh what you do matters to all of us thank you Dr kale Gotti All Right Moving to 8.2 board member comments any board member comments I do I do okay okay I just would like to give a h special shout
166out and thank you on behalf of community cares to senior celebration 24 um those would be the students that just graduated this past spring uh senior celebration presented us with the check for $1,000 um which will be used toward um uh toward personal items that we have um in conjunction with the um food pantry at Old Trower um we have had this past food pantry was visit well let me see let me say this in English the most people visited our portion of the food pantry than had ever in the past um which is good news bad news it's good to it's good that we have um the ability to provide for all these people it's you know not necessarily such um a wonderful thing that there are so many people in need um but
167regardless we are happy and proud to be able to provide so again senior celebration 24 thank you yes thank you Dr you have any um I prepared my comment so not to um kind of go astray over the past week or so um I've spent a lot of time in conversations with students parents educ Educators and community members discussing the safety and well-being of our students we are facing a pressing concern that weighs heavily both on our hearts and our minds and that's the threat of school violence on the sidelines of my son's football game yesterday I had families tell me that their children are facing anxiety and worry about going to school and feeling safe that they are not okay these recent events in our district highlight the vulnerabilities of our students our Educators
168and our families the fear of violence overshadows the joy of learning and we know our students must feel safe and supported in their educational environments to explore create and grow so last night when I was sitting thinking about my comments I had to really reframe what's been going on and here's the good news we can and we will address threats of school threats and school violence together with everyone doing their part we will not tolerate anyone who wants to breach the emotional physical or psychological safety of our staff and students like Dr Gatti said parents and teachers please continue to reinforce see something say something and I think it's also really important to remind our students that they don't have to evaluate the threat to determine whether it's real or not or worry about letting
169someone think that they turned it in it will remain confidential they just need to say something to their teacher safe adult student services or principal I personally saw it work last week I watched our administrators take very seriously every threat brought to their attention and keep our students sa safe to the adults in our communities who want answers real time I beg you please allow our Administration the opportunity to safely work through the Safety and Security protocols that keep our students and staff safe I know they will communicate with with us as soon as possible when it's safe and feasible to do so I'm so proud of our OE students who heard something and said something I heard from the Fox Chase Administration that the staff worked together to keep students and staff safe when
170facing an intruder I said my heartfelt gratitude to Stephanie passarelli Kim adorjan Amy battle and Karen kala for your strength and calm in the face of the unknown as we move forward let's remember that the strength of our community lies in our Unity by standing together we create an environment where every student feels secure we will turn our fears into proactive measures and show everyone that you cannot mess with as Wego together we will be safe and we will ensure that our schools remain places of learning growth and joy thank you thank you just just real quick I wanted to thank um the village of asigo um talk about a different tone walking in there um obviously president simult and um board members Sone were there as well um I wasn't there alone um but
171uh it was it was great to see a constructive tone um I think there's a way for us to model speaking kind of to your point how did some of these things happen and some of the discussions I've had with students is like there's not a sense of belonging all the time and I think sometimes as adults we forget that we model that and we model um the strength of the community so I I Echo your words and and uh I applaud uh the village for uh asking good questions right that that should happen absolutely um and and challenging challenging each other we'll challenge each other um uh but it was it was great to see that kind of tone yes it was so and look how much we've accomplished working together since you've come
172Dr katti it's it's been um remarkable that we've moved some things forward that we needed to do when we've worked together and I also want to give a shout out to our police chief who was also on site last week with Mr Bell um really working again once together with our intergovernmental Partners um we're in we're in good hands so yeah thank you and also we we were at Beek so thanks thanks to them I know that was mentioned uh thank you for inviting us they sent me home with a lot of food and it's a good thing because if I did not come home with uh Lily Lil tamali I don't know that my family would let me back in the house so um thank to thank you to them got dozens out a
173time did we talk about how we're gonna think we're gonna look into oh did we talk about um just how we're going to uh have a presentation on our safety can you just speak to that yeah great uh question Madam president uh on October 8th is that correct 7th um we're going to invite Mr Bell to join us for our saf annual safety presentation um during our time we will in addition to just some important uh foundational practices and protocols that we follow um we'll have an opportunity to hear about some after Action Report Reflections do you want to add to that Mr Bell just I know your team's been working very hard already um we take every speak to a little bit of what you do with every incident and what we do in
174terms of process uh one of the things we we've incorporated into our practice um is that after Action Report um and it's kind of looking at um what are the things that we feel like when well what are the things that we feel like we maybe uh had some gaps um what are those things in which we can better the system as we go forward and then what are those action steps that are coming out of that whether it's by a department or something specific I want to highlight some of the things that we had a really rough week last week um it's putting it lightly um you know might department is kind of uh we have we we span a spectrum of of services and supports to the district but we're typically the ones
175that get called on the bad days um and so our department with the help of Dr concade was able to uh endure quite a bit of of trauma of tragedy and support for all of our buildings for our kids for our families for our staff for our administrators um there's a number of us sitting around these tables that all contributed to that uh it wasn't it wasn't student services alone but I can also tell you that some of the things that we've been working so hard to put in place were effective um we had some really good successes that I don't know are highlighted with all of the the the information that's out there is that we stopped an intruder from getting access to our kids in a building we endured supporting crises in three
176different locations at the same time um those aren't things that I'm confident we could have done 18 months ago in the way in which we did them this last week I hope as Jared said we never have to do this again ever um but I want to highlight the there is there is a celebration there even in in the face of tragedy is that our buildings did what they were supposed to do how they were supposed to do it um and it wasn't n just a a district level response it was our building level response um that kept our kids safe we just came in on the back end um and and helped to support kind of the process procedures um and practices as we go um but it's been it's been a a lot
177of work to get to that place we're not done um we're going to learn some things we have learned some things we're going to report out at that October 7th annual safety kind of update as well as Identify some of those things that we're continuing to work on and some of those recommendations that we have um going forward um in order to continue to make this a place where we keep all kids safe we are committed to continuously learning boards and I want to say that I want to thank what you just echoed and spoke to is exactly that is that commitment and that that in every moment so there is no bad feedback is what I would say um any feedback uh to the community who may be listening please share that with your
178principles with us um it can only help us be stronger for our students thank you thank you thank you ad one thing to Mr Bell like I I last week you really were the face of kind of Safety and Security in this district and you did a phenomenal job of keeping calm and moving things along I also want to just give a little shout out to Administration I'm not going to say who because I want to keep the privacy and confidentiality of the part of their reflection is asking the students how they felt and what works and doesn't work that's very crit to see that live and to see that happen is really critical to know that they also is what the adults chose to do and how they handled it did it make you
179feel safe and secure was just really powerful to see real time so thank you to your team and everything that that that happened yes thank you yes yes thank you it has not gone unnoticed and we appreciate it very much okay we're moving on to 9.1 our consent agenda can I have a motion to approve the consent agenda please make a motion to approve all items under consent including 9.1 minutes from the Board of Education meeting on September 9th 2024 9.2 to acknowledge a foyer request received by the district 9.3 to approve the field trips for overnight and or more than 200 miles and 9.4 to acknowledge the administrator and teacher salary and benefit report for fiscal year 24 second are there any questions on the consent agenda Mr Gatewood I Dr Mario hi Miss
180Johnson hi Mr Cerone hi Miss Simon hi Mr hi Miss vmou I motion passes 70 action item 10.1 district oh wait we did that one already 10.2 action item Personnel report can I have a motion please make a motion to approve the Personnel report report as discussed and presented second Mr Gatewood hi Miss Johnson hi Dr Mario hi Miss Simon hi Mr hi Mr hi missen I passes [Applause] okay good evening board um Mr obafemi we have a financial statements investment schedule right so we've uh shared the financial statement and investment schedule for the uh the month of uh August in there now the financial statement as you will see there when this is generated we had uh $ 78.2 million in Investments on and at uh on September uh 4th when this was created
181any uh any questions and we just to we also are working on the uh end of the year Financial uh audit with vtil audit firm and we are committed to making sure that's concluded in November and we should have a presentation to un for the first time can you repeat that because I think you you say it was on schedule that on schedule for the first time in 10 years by Statute to be complet by December and we will have that done this will be the first time in at least 10 years okay thank you okay thank you thank you okay uh next uh 11.2 we have a update on the RFP and I want to thank the building and the business office and finance and buildings and grounds office for really engaging in this
182RFP process around a number of items so this is just one of the that are coming forward that are really thinking about how we coordinate our services our purchasing services and across the system this is a first for the first time in a long time um and speaking with oea I have to give this context um oea has been asking for this kind of coordination of purchasing support um our our Union Partners recognize the opportunity there um not just from OA from all of our unions the opportunity for coordination of our purchase and our how we think about our contracts and our service I want to thank your departments for that Mr Queen so this is part of if you look at our strategic uh goals that was presented to the board back in March
183yeah one of uh uh uh number eight goal was to uh to try to to achieve operational efficiency and one of the ways that we do that is to coordinate our we spend money as a as a Luda District a l unit district we spend a lot of money key things and one of those those key things that we spend money on our custodial Supply and the way we currently do it now is it's kind of like we we buy retail whatever is convenient whatever is easier instead of uh coordinating so this is an attempt to coordinate that and I'm going to end it over to uh Mr Quinn to uh kind of talk to The Bu a bit so I believe there was 117 items ranging anywhere from paper towels all the way down
184to wax for the custodial floors um and just a ditto off of katti and Dr katti and Raphael this this is how we justify how we spend the community's money properly right we want to get the best deal but we also want to get the best product possible um so we were working with uh four of these vendors already the other F four or five were are new that we are working with um are there any questions regarding the scope of work that we displayed for you guys before go Miss satar did you want to add this is nothing new we've done this for a while um I think the process of my predecessor before me had went out to RFP we utilize the um co-ops but when we bought the trucks we realized that
185the co-op wasn't always the best deal so this is our due diligence to uh get that best guaranteed price and I and I see you smiling over there Jen and if you check back on that board dock I was surprised as well so the co-ops not always the best option this is this is just us doing our work and homework and making sure we were spending that dollar correctly and and at the best price you thank you okay thank you baring any other questions um next I want to invite Dr can uh really just to give the board a a quick update on our strategic road map y so um I just wanted to provide a brief update of some of the work that the team has been conducting regarding our strategic road map um
186we are moving into that Precision phase of our strategic plan so we're looking at both monitoring implementation and then seeking feedback so in terms of monitoring implementation we're monitoring across um all of our Departments of our eight priorities what we've done is we've integrated our success Matrix so that we can look collaboratively as our departments are working together um through our teams so we have um really look to assist in the transition could you just bring close my close thank you so we are um working on that transition between our strategic road map and our strategic plan so our school Improvement plans are underway at our buildings um focused on our three foundational practices that we've discussed previously with our equity and rightful presence our effective systems and teams and our highquality instruction um as
187we move into our feedback phases uh which we'll focus in our in the late fall and winter um we're relaunching the superintendent Advisory Group um we will also then in conjunction with um ANS come and bogans work with our staff students and Community to seek feedback um we are drawing Upon Our organizational and curriculum audit and then really just the progress of our strategic Road mapap um so as Dr katti has previously mentioned our intended completion date of the Strategic plan to bring um to all of you is March 17th so well happy St pck it must be in green print it must be in green print was a from R Jo I will make sure that that happens excent Dr King can you speak to a little bit about some of the metrics we'll
188be sharing with the board um and some of the updates that we'll be bringing to the board around how we are measuring our progress and what the board is asked for in terms of some specifics absolutely so um our first update will come later this week um so we have included um updates in all three of those foundational practices so we will um include information from our human resources department about our current uh vacancies um through the um priority um for five thank you uh Dr Zumi um and addition um we will be including uh metrics around our uh student achievement data our um athletic participation um around the pathways chosen both um in high quality instruction and equity and rifle presence um from our school Improvement plans in conjunction with both um Dr Paul
189and Dr Waller um so we're trying to include both information directly related to our buildings um so you can see the connection between our strategic plan and our school Improvement plans um but then also uh data focus on our students um so you will receive um some of the suspension data from um August and then also our staff data from Dr zumy so we're trying to give a cross-sectional uh representation over all three areas of um our plan will the August data give a comparison to last year so um we are currently working on that um we will do our our best so right now um we're trying to recreate some of the um charts and graphs um so it will include not only overall but then also um different subgroups data so you can
190see um that across uh the month also thank you absolutely okay okay good Madam pres all right action thank you Dr K thank you action item 12.1 make motion oh sorry go ahead updated e-learning plan you want me I make a motion to sorry I make a motion no it's my fault I make a motion to approve the updated e-learning plan as presented second Miss mm hi Dr Maria hi M hi s iate i i Mr I motion passes 70 action item 12.2 approval of four new bus leases can I have a motion please motion to approve a three-year lease through Midwest Transit equipment Inc with an annual payment of $89,300 for four buses second Dr Maria hi Miss Johnson hi Mr ploger hi Mr I Mr Gatewood i i i motion passes 70 action
191item 12.3 approval of policies can I have a motion please make a motion to approve the following board policies section 4 colon operation Services 4 colon 704 colon 80 Section 5 General Personnel 5 col 1305 col 2000 section 6 instruction 6 col 140 second Miss menm hi Dr Mario hi Mr Cerone hi Miss Simon hi Mr Gatewood I I Mr I motion passes 70 13.1 can I have a motion to adjourn make a motion to adjourn second all in favor I I I any opposed