001please stand for the St here present thank you please stand for the Pledge of Allegiance I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands one nation under God indivisible with liy and justice for all okay well this month we've got some exciting things we're going to begin our evening with a pride recognition I'm going to invite the board to the the center and invite Teresa Kamas to lead us through honoring um our staff who really represent the best values in our district and we want to thank you all and your families for joining us this evening okay tonight the Board of Education acknowledges our pride winners for the month of April Pride stands for proudly recognizing individuals demonstrating Excellence the Board of Education implemented
002this program in the fall of 2015 to recognize promote and celebrate the many contributions made by teachers and employees across our district we thank our generous District Partners serve Bank Huntington Learning Center Chick-fil-A and Culver who helped make this program a success we would also like to thank all of those who nominate individuals for consideration of the awards awardees after your name is called and we share your nomination please come forward to be congratulated by the board and Dr katti we'll start with our April teachers of the month Rachel Barry Prairie Point Elementary school psychologist Rachel's dedication and commitment to supporting students colleagues and families at Prairie Point as well as her proactive approach to learning about the deaf and heart of hearing community and students is commendable Rachel creates a supportive environment for both
003students and colleagues through her calm collected and caring demeanor ensuring every student's needs are met with empathy and understanding congratulations Rachel [Applause] next we welcome Mary iner Thompson Jr High Avid teacher Mary is a highly committed educator who consistently goes the extra mile to support students not only in the classroom but also Beyond in her multiple roles as teacher Avid adviser yearbook editor active member of schooles she demonstrates an unwavering dedication to her Student Success Mary's dedication to enriching the overall student experim experience demonstrates her commitment to promoting a positive and engaging School environment as well as setting a commendable example for Future Leaders in education congratulations [Applause] Mary Carrie sumar fax Chase fourth grade [Music] teacher car definition of a phenomenal teacher going above and beyond on for her students fellow teammates and other
004staff MERS in the building she is always welcoming understanding and willing to help through constructive feedback policy she is a lifelong learner that models the importance of this mindset for fellow staff and students te she teaches her students the emotional social and academic skills they need to be successful in their future careers she builds relationships and connections with her students and creates a sense of community in her classroom that is truly remarkable congratulations Carrie [Applause] istrators here this evening froms to join us for the picture Bill where's your spotting [Applause] next we will award our amazing support staff winners awardees again as your name is called please come forward so we can congratulate you for support staff Priscilla guis werh Hill Elementary crossing [Applause] guard Priscilla has helped Boulder Hill in so many ways she
005generously gives of herself and is always there to lend a hand to both students and staff with smile and joy while her primary responsibilities this year are cross Guard Office support and monitoring lunches and recesses there really isn't an area of Boulder Hill where she doesn't help support her good nature and her spirit are invaluable to Boulder Hill she represents her school in an awesome way and is a true example of a team player [Applause] congratulations Patricia Luna De pasas transportation bus driver [Applause] Patricia is positive inclusive and goes beyond to make the trip to and from school enjoyable and safe for all of her students when children are anxious and scared to ride the bus she helps make children feel safe when stepping on she is an All-Star and the transportation department is so
006lucky to have her she truly cares about all the students congratulations [Applause] Patricia next up Martin pindo transportation bus [Applause] dri Martin demonstrates the highest quality of Integrity he is reliable in servicing students both during pickup and drop off he is kind to students and teaches them lessons in integrity and respect by holding them accountable for their actions takes it upon himself to learn about the kids about their families and their interests by introducing himself and having meaningful conversations with kids and their parents [Laughter] parents are grateful and feel their kids are safe and secure in the hands of Martin and we congratulate you okay so if we have any of our administrators for these winners if you could come up for a photo please congratulations everyone okay and next up we have special recognition
007for our Fox Valley Therapy Dog Club if we could have the members of the club come up forward [Applause] please so tonight we are on behalf of the asgo community Unit School District 308 Board of Education we're thanking you for your service to our students and staff your volunteer service through Kan therapy has made a positive difference in countless lives of many students and staff and we want to thank you so congratulations for being recognize and thank you so very much for all you [Applause] do and stay up there when you're done so we can do a photo please B's ready for her moment we have dog treats for all of our furry [Music] friends Miss Bella if we could do one photo please kind of come in front there you go oh Bella what
008a good girl there we go you got to make kissy noises that's okay she looks pretty yeah Carol you go over there here Carol thank you so much they are in our schools almost every day and play a pivotal role in working with many of our students so we really do appreciate all that you guys do thank you so much for being here okay on to our student recognition so tonight we are also proud to acknowledge the award-winning efforts of our students who have received State Andor National recognition for their school related activities our first group of students here tonight we want to congratulate the coaches and students who competed in place at the Illinois design Educators Association Regional competition the asgo East students are coached by Ryan hensin and Dan Orin and the asigo
009high school students are coached by Gina corac and Brian Allen students as your name is called we'd like to invite you to come forward and be congratulated by the board as weo East High School Jimmy Harrison a senior first placed in state qualified in assembly modeling [Applause] Dominic dadis sophomore second place in state qualified in assembly [Applause] modeling Jensen kunr senior third place in 3D computer AED design [Applause] modeling Haven Haven Barry Connor MCCA senior and Haley sorage senior second place in engineering design team event event Miss Emma K Kate senior Hannah RoR Jr and Adrien tuskowski [Music] Jr third place in architectural design team event and we have one student from asigo high school arlot on two J senior first place and state qualified for in 3D architectural board [Applause] drawing congratulations to all
010of those winners if we have any coaches or advisers or anything here principles anybody miss Kade would you like to join the photo yes yes you do mama okay thank you all right our next group of students are from asigo East High School we would like to recognize them for having achieved Above and Beyond in the classroom these four individuals have been awarded a $2500 National Merit Scholarship please welcome forward Amu perou [Applause] Jensen [Applause] coonrad SAR [Applause] shanas and Mana sasta we congratulate each of these young students on their well on their way to becoming successful Future Leaders so congratulations and again we would invite up um Administration glor here there you go for a photo congratulations [Applause] students thank thank you everyone for coming out tonight and for all of our um exciting
011accomplishments I agree I should say I'll say something no I think she knew it to oh somebody need to get a picture of that oh my gosh thank you Bella no it ain't going to be no one more time [Music] love it love [Laughter] it all right 5.1 spoil opportunity for the oh okay 5.1 there is no public comment tonight no one has submitted a comment card and so we'll be moving on to 6.1 thank you board uh this evening we have a presentation of our social emotional learning curriculum presentation want to invite Dr Paul who will uh introduce some of the other guests who will be joining her and we want to thank all of you for making the time to join us at the board meeting I know it's been a a process
012of Engagement and learning and we have students this evening I will be the first to say thank you students for coming out on a school night and we thank you for your presence here um and can't wait to hear more about what you have to share they still have to go to school tomorrow and we do have school we do have some that's why they're first on the program we have our teachers some students and myself presenting and um when it's their turn I'll hand the mic over to them we're very excited to share with you this evening about our social emotional learning curriculum and Universal screener proposal good evening I'm Sarah Fischer assistant principal at Prairie Point Elementary School and I've had the privilege to be a part of the seal Equity Universal screener
013committee as we will be discussing our recommended tier one seal Equity curriculum and seal Equity Universal screener we hope that you will notice how the tool aligns with our District's priorities through the use of our recommended curriculum our aim is to promote not just academic Excellence from our students but also Foster emotional intelligence resilience and empathy Additionally the universal screener will assist the district in redefining our culture and climate creating a process for understanding our student social emotional learning competencies as you can see this evening we have a number of Staff members that will be presenting parts of the presentation we're we're so excited for everyone to be a part of this work additionally you'll see some names up there of those that were not able to join us tonight but assisted with the development
014of this presentation we're also so excited because we have a number of students that will be supporting the conversation this evening this slide provides important data from The District's five essential s survey students study habits safety peer relationship ships and responsibility profoundly impact their holistic development by improving these areas we feel that we can Empower students as whole individuals we believe that by enhancing social emotional competencies it will lead to academic social and emotional success however our recommendation is not just about the data it's about nurturing well-rounded Learners who thrive in all aspects of their lives so what you see in front of you is the timeline of what led us uh to you this evening um we had a committee uh where we were comprised of preschool through grade 12 uh members of our
015district Community reviewing our social emotional learning uh Universal screeners um we actually took a deeper dive into evidence-based uh Universal screeners and um identified as a committee um our recommendation that you're going to hear this evening and um our goal is to have the community view uh the materials for 30 days after we present this to you and then bring this back to you again uh for further review um in the June board meeting hi Ally Anderson um so when we look at just the universal screener committee um notied that we wanted to make sure that all levels were represented um as well as from a variety of different schools so those are all us worked with the screener portion and then when we're looking at the curriculum and the screener the um the needs
016and priorities that we had so these were the five um top so obviously we wanted it to be engaging and interactive for students when we think about the curriculum um and also when they're taking the screener cultur culturally diverse um addresses the needs for the whole school um you're going to hear more about the parent and home component later on and also that most important we always need to look for something that's available in English and in Spanish since we have a dual language program good evening my name is harini Kanan and I'm the second grade teacher at Grand Park Elementary uh these are the members that were part of theal curriculum Review Committee the members were chosen to represent our diverse community and incorporate teachers and administrators from all schools preschool through Junior High
017hi I'm suan Pier g a fourth grade teacher at Old poost this is the rubric that we used as we were looking at the initial curricula um we wanted to make sure that what we chose would align with the needs of our students and families was um what was most important to staff and met the logistical needs of our teachers and also aligned with our district goals and met our social emotional learning competencies good evening I'm Amanda Fulk I teach eighth grade language arts at Bed narc I'm going to give you a little more detail about what we did each month of our meeting so in October 2023 theal curriculum committee came together to establish the priorities that were most important in a new curriculum a curriculum review of 13 different programs began at the
018November meeting teachers presented their findings from the 13 programs that were explored strengths and weaknesses of each were shared and the committee took their list of 13 down to three possible programs the other curricula La it also has it also has a student and parent engagement piece that is invaluable when communicating about social emotional learning in addition character strong has a digital component that's already formatted to Spanish that supports our dual language classrooms between January and March 2024 the committee piloted the character strong program there were multiple meetings and check-in so that grade level specific conversations could take place students who were part of the pilot were also invited to check in virtually during these meetings to share their experiences and feedback the feedback from the pilot teachers was positive the committee agreed that in
019addition to the winning aspects that were already pinpointed the character strong program addresses the needs of the school as a whole and has a positive impact on the culture and climate of the building there's ongoing teacher professional development of available from character strong that will especially help with implementation and collaboration and those were some of the ideas that were pinpointed hi I'm Beth jamik third grade teacher at Lakewood Creek Elementary School um during our pilot of character strong we took into account not only the administration's feedback teacher feedback but also our student feedback so I have two of my students here that would like to share some um comments from our class as well as some things that were created as part of the program hi my name is sake I think that my favorite
020part of the lesson was when we read the book it made me think think more about cooperation I also like the amount of games the activities are fun the class like the brain booster and also when we made the cooperation posters my name is Angela ja I like K strong because I can see other people's point of view I also learned about friendship and working together Corporation is the same as teamwork I like the exercise game because it was challenging I like to learn about coroporation and to create our own posters I liked when in empathy that there there the videos and the little pictures of the little sun and water drop helping each other she didn't if approved character strong will replace our current curriculum of second step for grades K to 8 at
021this time the character traits included in your packet are the same at all levels character strong allows all levels to focus on the same character trait at the same time within a building this slide shows some of the skills within those character traits that were addressed dressed in our pilot in my classroom we focused on responsibility and organization I have two students from my class to share with you what they experienced with character strong hi my name is Emma and one thing I learned is that I can't control what happens to me but I can control how I react to it gosh so beautiful hi um I'm Avery and um one thing I learned um is I learned different meanings for the word responsibility because I thought about it from a different perspective I know
022hi everyone I'm Michael Swanson the assistant principal at Old Post I'll probably take credit for these two right behind me uh so I'm here to share about the parent component of uh character strong so one of the things that I heard Ally share was one of these guiding principles we had in our pilot we wanted something that came with a parent and home component so that the conversations that we have at school continue at home so we collected the survey uh after conducting the pilot and I'm going to share two quotes with you tonight here's the first one uh this one talks about the newsletter that's available in the curriculum that teachers can send home and and this family went above and beyond they set goals with their student they talked about perseverance and then
023they followed up with the teacher to give feedback which informed our piloting process and ideally will inform how it's implemented going forward hi I'm Whitney theer I teach Ela at plank I'm also a district dual language parent um so we got to Pilot the junior high topics in my classroom um sixth seventh and eth have similar topics throughout the grade level and after some introductory lessons that tell you a little bit about what the structure of the program looks like and the expectations um there are at least two lessons per topic the activities are engaging and interactive and the thing that I heard most from my students was that they appreciated it being age appropriate in the representation in the videos in the terminology used and they didn't feel talked down to we got to
024look at understanding stress empathy and mental health they really liked it and even when I was out on a day that we usually doal they asked to be able to do seal so that was a huge thing for us I have yah with me who would like to share about his experience hi my name is Tiner I like the fact that uh this character strong C curriculum was more interactive than any other thing I've done cuz all the other stuff was they would just hand you a paper and you would just have to write what you see but now we get to walk around we get to say what we think and all this stuff has been helping me not only inside the school but outside with making friends seeing new people talking to people
025and all that other stuff excellent awesome hi so student engagement in our character strong pilot was very strong and as our uh sixth grader yes sixth seventh sorry seventh grader um was talking about the interaction in this program is wonderful the poster up there you see of that tree is one of of the lessons and that tree poster helped students uh not only in the classroom but outside the classroom at recess the roots are the um size of the problem and so um they are the students can say whether it's a small route a large roote and then they move on to the trunk of the tree which is the heart the feelings how did they feel about the problem how do they and then they go to the branches how are they going to
026solve the problem and this seemed to really resonate with a lot of the students hi there I'm Jen Riley a second grade teacher at hun Club Elementary um teacher feedback was extremely important to the committee and the feedback that we got was very very positive student engagement was high and we experienced firsthand the transfer of skills that we taught in the classroom um with the students um we love the website it's easy to navigate and it provides a variety of resources like games videos book suggestions posters and of course the curriculum itself the lessons are adaptable with little or no um planning there was also a Committee Member that was able to teach with another dual language teacher they were easily able to switch between English and Spanish during that lesson having a curriculum that
027fits the diverse needs of our student was extremely important to us character strong met those meets our committee was made up of not only classroom teachers but teachers on special assignment and also administrators we even had students join us via Google meet to answer questions and give us firsthand feedback so you can see in the picture there's some of the commune members and there's all the kids that joined us during their Google meet which was pretty special so here's that second quote from a parent that we collected as part of our feedback um they're on their own valtion recognizing one of theal competencies that we feel like character Sean can address the social awareness piece this comes from a second grade family in the district and they're recognizing how that skill building in kindergarten first
028grade second grade leads up and will support the children going forward again we're proposing this curriculum k through eight and we're hoping and we're believing that it will serve those needs as kids grow okay before we dive into the universal screener process let's give a round of applause for those really bra kids and awesome staff that presented about our or curriculum okay so I'm now excited to share more information about our recommended uh seal Universal screener so we met starting back in September of 2022 and as a committee that's really when we first started to embark on our seal journey within the district um so through this journey we dove into looking at Universal screeners and so if you don't know what a universal screener is it's a tool that assists in identifying strengths and
029areas for growth within our students and so in this initiative we are really looking at um strengths and areas for growth in those seal competencies um so to get more information we had gathered um you know some research we attended different presentations and we really wanted to find the best fitting tool for our district and so fast forward to today and we're going to share information about our recommendation thanks all right so we know that um student estl data is something that we've been missing and so when we know more we're able to do more with that information um and so again focusing on our priorities and what were important to us so that we could make a quality decision for our kids um I'm going to go ahead you can obviously see them but
030highlight just a few um we wanted it available in multiple languages and we wanted to make sure that it was easy to implement um across the district as well as continuing support for that implementation um also that it was accessible for all grade levels but it is important to note that it is going to be starting at third grade and then um when we were looking Sarah had mentioned um different presentations and seeing different options um we used this um rubric and um just important to note that it was tied to the social emotional learning competencies when we were making those choices so as a committee we are recommending Panorama as our Universal screener of choice so when making this decision we focus not just on the right fit but finding something that resonated with
031the values and goals within the district so what this screener does is it really provides administ rators and staff members with that data piece and identifying those strengths and areas for growth as I mentioned earlier as Ali stated we're looking to um administer this screener to students in third through 12th grade it is available for kindergarten through 12th but we felt like starting in third is a good point uh to start with for our students and we're going to uh recommend that we're administering it twice a year and both the late fall and late spring which will mat match up with our academic um benchmarking dates it's really important to know that when we're talking about this Universal screener we're not talking about a mental health screener here what we're doing is this is going
032to help us look at the health of our tier one seal curriculum right and how are our students progressing within that curriculum so this next slide is helping us to dive a little bit deeper into what Panorama looks like and so in Panorama you can see that uh we have normed data on how students respond to various questions aligned with those social emotional learning competencies having this normed data is allowed allows us to make comparison not comparisons not only within our district but within other schools around that are using the same Universal screener you'll also notice at the top that it there's a student component and a teacher and staff component at this point in time we're looking to focus on the student self- rating to gather that information of how students feel with their
033social emotional learning competencies and finally this last one is how our this next slide filters out demographic groups for us and their responses to specific questions so by examining these specific questions that are then aligned to the social emotional compet competencies were able to gather deeper insights on how different demographic groups perceive those various competencies additionally Panorama will be easily integrated into five Labs which is our district data warehouse and so that will um make it more accessible and usable as we're having conversations regarding student support discussions and so staff and administrators within our district have long expressed the need for this data point and having those conversations and so uh recommending this Universal screener to all of you is a significant step in that integration for our students and staff so as we conclude
034our presentation we wanted to share with you the financial piece of theal curriculum cost annually and also if we were to sign an annual three-year contract and the total cost for your review in addition um just to clarify um our curriculum that we're recommending would replace our current curriculum Second Step which we've had in our district for over 10 years it's also important to note that during this pilot process we did pilot oural curriculum preschool through grade 8 through feedback from teachers and students we decided that we were going to move forward with a recommendation kindergarten through grade8 only next year character strong took our feedback about the preschool lessons being um a little bit um too comp comp Lex for our youngest Learners and they're making adjustments we will pilot again next year and
035review to determine if we would like to implement character St at the preschool level in the future you'll see on this slide here our uh tenative projected implementation plan we are very aware of our current um literacy uh implementation plan that's going to kick off in the fall and so we really want to be mindful about when we do oural curriculum implementation as well as universal screener and you can see that's outlined there in front of you and we are open to hear any feedback or questions that you might have this evening thank you thank you Dr Paul and to your team uh What a Wonder a wonderful surprise that I want to just lead off by thanking our students again for coming out tonight high five to all of you I'm so proud of
036you as a superintendent um nothing makes me more excited to see your PO so go to all of you questions board I don't have any questions I just want to reiterate one thing that you touched on at the at the end Dr Paul and I probably said this about a couple things in the past but the the importance of PD so thank you for emphasizing that and you listened at our last when we because this is the we saw this at our committee meeting and I said you know or uh Ela is coming and then is coming so just being cognizant of that that PD load for some of our teachers ESP especially you know 38 you know all that are getting the double um so thank you for addressing that and just to um
037I'm always in support of more PD as you're rolling out things so that would be um you know uh another you know something I'm happy to support if it comes to that if we need it uh and then my other encouragement another thing I just mentioned that the committee meeting was just thinking more um strategically maybe about high school I think that's a future iteration of what that could look like we obviously have a screener now for it um we know the screener will kind of evaluate our our K8 implementation or our 38 or k K8 with the screener going or you know what I'm saying but um I'm interested in hearing more about high school in the future yes and if I could this is still on can you hear me okay um if
038I could address what you're sharing because I think it's a really great Point um The High School uh course teams last year worked on integrating social emotional learning standards into their courses and we Embark next year on a curriculum review cycle all curriculum review Maps will include social emotional learning standards and I know our literacy um uh program that we're going to be implementing next year has that embedded within so we're eager to hear and see um how that integration works even at the secondary level thank you and then just a follow up to to the professional development I I was excited to hear you say that um I know that this uh program has the ability to do the teachers as well and so of course we know a well-regulated adult helps us to
039regulate our kids and so I think that it's very I if if we have not already used something for professional development if this is an opportunity I would love to hear more about how this could be integrated as well Dr Paul can you speak to the coordination you've been doing with Kiana who's now leading our professional development planning process um and um would you share a little bit about that because I think it would be interesting one of the Investments we did this your board was in hiring somebody who would really help facilitate and think about the pacing they're not providing the PD just to make sure clear they're not providing all the PD but they're really important in that role so Dr Paul could you share a little bit about that yes thank you
040so uh Miss har and I have been meeting on a regular basis to talk about how we can continue to support professional development ongoing uh this year we also had an opportunity to Pilot some leadership Wellness um with principls assistant principls program admen these two are shaking their heads or part that uh we really good feedback we'd like to continue to see how we can continue to support the wellness of all of our staff moving forward thank you so I'm glad to hear that you're thinking about vertical articulation As you move this forward past you know eth grade um I and as it relates to the budget so we've had second step for the last 10 years right and is there any um in in the transition is there any Financial re requirements um as
041we move from that to here that aren't reflected in these cost so we sign an annual contract with second step so we would need to sign an annual contract for preschool only which would be significantly less but I can get you that information thank you so when we're looking at the first of all thank everyone especially our our students um it's very powerful and impactful when they're here I see some future student ambassadors out there so that's exciting um first and foremost incredibly important work um we we we are not Mental Health Providers we understand that I love that you said that um but we also understand that we can't just say sorry not going to deal with mental health you know leave it at the door so what we're giving is kids confidence to
042be able to deal students confidence to be able to deal with the things that do arise and do um possibly affect their Mental Health I get very frustrated and it's pet peeve of mine when it is picked apart in the bigger World um as to being something you know nefarious it's not at all um we could have at least my generation could have benefited from a little more social emotional um uh learning in in my time so thank you this is really important work I just want to understand this is a three-year for but these are two separate purchases basically and then the total is for 3 years is 280 560 so the two total costs put together got it but we could if for some reason down the road we decided not to use
043the curriculum we could still keep the screener so we will put theal curriculum uh and theal Universal screener in our curriculum review cycle so every four years we'll be reviewing its entirety to ensure we're doing this with Fidelity like our other uh content areas awesome thank you so much I would just like to say as well I love seeing whenever there's students here um it's just awesome as a student ambassador to hear that student voice and I know that's why we have a big part of seal is the students and that's why we're here so I love seeing them and I also love that it's it's expanding through 8th grade as well because it's setting some of the foundations that we've been talking about in our student committee that high schoolers are struggling with and
044so I think it addresses some of that and so uh just from what I've seen today I'm very impressed so thank you all for your hard work thank you li I know it just feels like a night and day curriculum versus what we had I don't know um some of the comments that were shared you know by the students um I don't know seems much more interactive um again a lot of head nods um so that's I don't know it seems almost too good to be true but you know let's hope it uh helps our students yeah improves uh performance and helps our emotional wellbeing I do want to know we have one of our potential partners with us this evening Jesse for Panorama came uh just a support and uh character strong has equally
045been supportive um on during our journey they're in Arizona so they're not able to be here physically but thank you so much for your feedback and I just say thank you to all um who uh endeavored in this uh it's greatly appreciate so all stakeholders so thank you okay okay thank you so much and uh so 30 days just to clarify 30 days it'll be on display and uh then it'll come to the board on May on June 3 is that correct for its final vote okay have a good evening everybody thank you thank you very much [Applause] has one more meeting oh Luke has only one more meeting don't get me ver CL thank you all right we're moving moving on to 7.1 we'll ask Dr katti to provide us with his superintendent report
046all right thank you president similon um so uh this evening I want to begin by U just really wishing a blessed Passover to those who are celebrating and who are reflecting this week it's a holiest of one of the holiest of holy days and we want to just uh extend our reflection with those who are um celebrating Passover uh today is Earth Day as well and Friday's Arbor Day both are important uh opportunities to reflect on the world around us and what we are doing to do our part for sustainability in the future um we're also proud of our students who came out tonight um uh shout outs to all of those who were honored this evening and I I have to I know that's in some of the other comments but I do want
047to give a special shout out to our robotics team if you don't know robotics yet to know robotics is to know about advocacy uh Brilliance creativity uh a spirit of collaboration and advocacy for all that our students um the best of our students so I want to congratulate them for their work this past their competition and we'll be inviting them soon here um we do have a full schedule this evening but it's important that I just say a couple quick things that I wanted to share um one over the past several months as you've heard we've we've dedicated a lot of time to really developing the structure and systems for our eight priorities as we think about a strategic road map to uh a road map to our strategic plan next year um one of
048those key priorities has been really building a foundation for stability and predictability and collaborating with our Educators and really creating a foundation for those so if you have not watched our board meetings in the last couple weeks U months I invite you to really look on those and you'll be hearing more about that on our website and in our presentations in our schools um our school leaders are also diving into this work and we want to thank our leaders for their patience as we coordinated and got ready to launch some of this work more formally in terms of how it will impact school Improvement planning for next year because at the end of the day the schools are the most important um places in our district we don't have a district school we have schools
049and tremendous places of learning that we want to support um part of that has been our hiring which is priority number five and I've asked Dr zmy to speak a few minutes about priority five and some of the ways in which this is being reflected and some of the things that have been happening Dr zmy yeah thank you good evening board um our our really three key priorities within priority number five in HR is to recruit retain and reward our staff members and when we think about um those three priorities it's important to understand how many full-time staff members we have uh we have 2,391 staff members certified of 1,498 classified 893 and it's important that that we we think about each and every one of them as as we do um we recognize that
050we have a number of open certified positions 98.36% [Music] uh teachers assistants bus monitors things like that um our goal throughout both systems is is to develop something for our staff all you know 20 nearly 2400 people that is predictable explainable and sustainable year-over year systemwide uh we've created a a five-step process for um our oea members uh we'll be working on our oesa members uh very very soon um where we had five dis stages um to create a spirit of transparency and volunteerism in the seventh largest school district in the state I think it's very important that we offered our staff an opportunity if they wanted to use another endorsement teach at another level um they could do so nearly 70 did and rather than uh looking at an involuntary transfer process where we
051would have to reduce and somebody would have to leave a school that they didn't want to leave somebody else might say you know what I'd like to to do that so we created that culture of of really focused in on our six core values and asked folks what would you like to do our both uh both unions all four of our unions are outstanding but both unions in related to Staffing oesa and OA have just been outstanding absolutely outstanding um so we're now entering stages three and four of Staffing uh with um some involuntary transferring where it's necessary we just want to make sure everybody has a home um and then our principal are interviewing uh they're interviewing internal candidates they're interviewing external candidates um I've I've been approving uh some just uh as early
052as today that will come to you at the the May 6 board meeting for recommendation um our goal also with oesa is really to reduce this year the dependency on contract Service admin uh contract Service folks all the way through eliminating the reliability on contract Serv Serv t uh and and so on so um I just wanted to give a really brief update this evening on where we're at we're very busy um we uh as I shared I know we had uh Miss law here and miss cellario here talking about the recruiting the recruiting paid off um we've been um very aggressive in where we've been we've been very aggressive with our principls our level leaders uh and we have some exciting exciting times ahead of us uh and once we get them our our
053goal is to keep them uh we're excited to have a mentoring program that will be starting here uh right in uh really late July so uh I'll provide an update on that as as we get ready but we just wanted to update priority 5 this evening thank you great thank you Dr zmy I want to now invite um members of the board to uh extend U part of the superintendent's comments some celebrations and uh reminders that we want to highlight I think you alluded to this one already but so uh I'll go uh off uh I'll go a little rogue on it but our robotics team geared forward just returned from competing in the first championship International Event in Houston team earned their way to this culminating event through hard work this season we're proud
054of you um I I had the opportunity a few weeks back when they had their event at um at at Bed narc and there was a parent in the district who was affiliated with another District that I'm familiar with and they're like and they asked me they said why don't why don't we have something like this at that District I'll just leave it at that and um you know spurred a conversation but basically you know the part of the conversation I will repeat is I don't think we fully grasp those of us that maybe aren't in um the robotics uh or or directly how much of a a g This truly is here I mean it is it is incredible uh anyone who comes across it uh please um take the time to really uh
055talk discuss see it is it is awesome it is awesome what is done there it is awesome the competition it is awesome the diversity in um what they do and what they bring to the table um and so we're proud of you just doesn't didn't seem like enough so thank you J oh um Boulder Hill Elementary School recently hosted an avid showcase Educators from other area districts gathered at Boulder Hill to learn more about how Avid is implemented in our district um great job to Boulder Hill uh for being an example for others um shall I continue on thanks this Thursday we're going to celebrate Service Awards and retirees at our annual District celebration uh these staff have contributed over 1400 years to serving our students and staff what an incredible accomplishment and congratulations to
056each of them additionally at the art connected opening asgo High School received a top 20 plaque for receiving over 2.5 million in scholarship offers One OS artist received a gold medal in painting and two one senior portfolio receipt Awards great job to those students eighth graders from our five Junior highs got together with Mr Robert herrings a guest conductor from Texas and rehearsed for many hours to put together a great program including the world premiere of a new piece for concert band great job to Junior High band students I'm excited to talk about two of the two particular sports that from one from OS the bass fishing team who finished third in their conference and so that was just exciting and another one for we recognize many of the students tonight but the co-op Esports
057team um they came home with the SPC conference champ as conference Champion so congratulations to all of the students for their performance hard work and their success very good and on Wednesday we celebrate Administrative Assistant Day we thank every one of our secretaries and assist and assistants for all their hard work keeping things organized and running smoothly across the district the board sends a special thank you to our secretary Ursula her organization and discipline are so crucial to keeping everything neat and on [Applause] time pretty good spe you can see she loves that do you do you want a chocolate cake delivered Wednesday or s that concludes the superintendent's comments thank you thank you Dr katti we'll move to 7.2 our student ambassador's report hello everybody um I'll first start off with a little bit
058that Isabelle wrote for today um she said uh first I would like to apologize for my absence today is the first night of past over a very important Jewish holiday celebrating the Jewish Exodus from Egypt and I am at home having a small seder with my family Happy Passover to all who celebrate uh so uh we wish Isabelle well tonight uh and as we move on since our last board meeting together the ssac got to work on our presentation to the superintendent Advisory Group our presentation focused on the data that was found through the innovate K12 disaggregation of our surveys that we shared with you a couple of weeks ago we were able to have with surve and what we can do going forward to improve and build student teacher relationships so I'll start with
059the piece that is group uh took part in uh she said our group focused on the generation gap between Educators and students and and the possible misunderstandings that can occur because of that okay hear me better now there we go um so uh she said many teachers cited phones as a source of disrespect but after further examination we realize that sometimes it is not the full intention of students to be disrespectful although student phone use is of course an issue and must be addressed much student phone use is a result of wanting to escape reality and to avoid life stresses along with the feelings feeling of dependence on their cell phones uh many teachers especially um of older Generations see the phone as a personal insult uh but instead sometimes it can be uh that
060generation gap in there as well um this is one thing that we would like to work on tackling uh as we move on with the ssac um that generational piece of students being kind of dependent on their phones and escaping it as a a way to deal with stress and how we can tackle that um the ssac overall divided into small groups to address our different data results uh my group was focused on the workload and perception of homework uh I highlighted back when we presented our data that homework was a big stressor for students however our teacher survey identified that most of of our teachers assign very little to no homework through that research and looking at this issue through the lens of students we discovered that homework is not necessarily the root of
061most students problems students are juggling between sports extracurriculars work family obligations and so much more outside of school hours that maybe that 20 minute ass homework assignment at the end of the night is just the students breaking point it's just the cherry on top uh it was also clear through both of our surveys that our teachers are also exhausted and can be overworked this is a commonality between both our teachers and our students finding similarities between our teachers and students within these areas will only further and improve relationships inside of the classroom though we will have recommendations for teachers uh for students we identified the need for students to have opportunities to learn how to take the initiative and communication practice practices with teachers and peers there could be resources um in place for students
062to better learn how to communicate professionally and effectively with their teachers when they feel overwhelmed it is also important that we open up and do more with programs like uh navian and showcase opportunities like tutoring and especially with tutoring not bringing it down to um a level where students feel less than because they're going into T dream but promoting it as an opportunity to uh grow and get better in their academics as well uh this can help our students Thrive and take ownership of their own success feeling more comfortable with their teachers as a result these are skills that if learned will help students thrive in the classroom and Beyond we want to thank the superintendent Advisory Group for the invitation to speak and present some of this important information information and data that we
063collected so thank thank you all I know that was a lot thrown at you so if you have any questions I can answer anything for you guys I I definitely um enjoyed because I you know I was attended and uh lots of connections I enjoyed kind of going from table to table I definitely thought about that um about all of you the other day as uh as myself a high school teacher and I'm sitting there and I'm looking at my student in front and uh my student in the front looks like this right and so I go over you know I get my Class settled and I go over and I have a conversation with my student in front I said hey you know are are you okay what's going on and long story short
064that student had been working till 1:00 a.m. the night before which just so we're clear the student is 16 or 17 years old so that was illegal what what his company was doing working him until 1:00 a.m. that's that's illegal um I believe it was was either a Monday or Tuesday night um that's on the rise and I don't think there's a lot of adults that are aware um however also as an educator I'll be honest I mean I'm thrust in a situation where if my administrator walks in there are many times where I uh they're not going to ask me questions they're they're immediately going to lead to jump to assumption assumptions as well and what I loved about a lot of this which has to happen more often is it allows us to
065break down many of the assumptions that we're jumping to and especially like the cell phone piece right uh how many adults are also unknowingly sitting there on their cell phone right and and what are what message are they sending unaware um you know and and so it was very eye opening and I continue to hope that at some point we're going to have some of the conver ation that that are being had I commend you for those conversations they have to continue uh I hope more students have them um I I continue to ask adults to please continue to try at the very least to hold up a mirror uh I guarantee you there are students who are being worked illegally uh it is illegal for students to work until 1:00 in the morning on
066a school night that's illegal that's against the law like and and tragically if you look at statistics um it's happening more it's becoming more acceptable and you have Educators who are now thrust on in the front lines and they're being they're being put to task why are your students failing and like you know how am I supposed to solve that piece um as an educator and so that to your point there's a lot of stress that's going on and so thank you for having those conversations it was just awesome to watch what I loved about your presentation especially at the superintendent Advisory Group was bringing that information to the adults that were in the room um first of all you all did a fantastic job of presenting um that information is eye openening I actually
067was quite surprised I really thought there was a bigger respect issue than the data really proved out and that made me very happy um that it there wasn't just this teachers didn't feel so blatantly disrespective like I thought maybe they would would but one of the things it did and something that um a few of us on the board attended when we went to our conference was about breaking down walls and assumptions like Jared said and I think just that dialogue happening was so powerful and it wouldn't have happened without you um the super the ssac so I can I really congratulate you on that I love that you're continuing to break down those walls anding bring this in and push this information forward because we wouldn't know otherwise with regards to cell phones something
068that Jared said and and that I will also say is you know we've had this is a conversation had all the time on boards and administrations and teachers and classrooms and cell phones or no cell phones but there are a lot of our high school students that are responsible for their families for their siblings and a lot of it is a safety net so that those younger siblings can get a hold of their older um um their older siblings so you know we talk a lot and it's easy to say well we're going to ban cell phones in the classroom it's just not very it's just not that simple unfortunately and I think that a lot of our data really reflects on that so we have to figure out what the other options are knowing
069that for a lot of students that and for a lot of parents that is a a key line of communication so um thank you for all you guys did I'm very proud of you Madame President can I build on that I just want to say one thing um Luke uh as I watched that presentation and for the public I was very proud of the research you all did if you saw this it was like being in a college class right but it took me back and this is some history for you the weekend before this I had the chance to attend the American educational Research association's Conference in Philadelphia and in the course of this conference I actually had a chance to attend a presentation by um our president the T of similton who was
070joined by who was there as part of the district's history um in this Workshop which was really about the work the Great Lakes Equity work and um Miss similon spoke to the history of really getting student voice and really building a pathway for Action student action research and so I was sitting there watching you listening to you it's living right and I want to thank Dr Waller for really continuing that work that was really seated um seven years ago would you say so now there's a book about this right so there's a book you know that highlights this and so at this presentation that was attended by somebody from Harvard University of discussant and you know and talked about really the the the way in which that action research is such a powerful tool when
071we start to think about what what are true voices what are the real voices saying there are all kinds of assumptions we make in the dialogue and what you all did is you said you cut through that he said let's get to the real issues on the table let's find a way to bridge uh those voices and and I had to not skip over this but to really say thank you to you but also I think it's an opportunity for the board to and for all of us to really thank you uh L similton for your leadership and really lifting This research back when it wasn't so popular around here so so thank you than you very [Applause] proud all right we're moving on to 7.3 board committee reports we'll start with equity and teaching
072and learning we just had the presentation didn't we didn't we though standing yes you just did it okay we moving on it was the yeah okay policy and legislative um at our recent policy and legislative committee we um spent most of the time just reviewing policies from press that will be coming forward uh in the future um and we got through I think all of all of them so that's what we did and I think we're Recon you know we're going to meet forget when thank you may 1 uh and hopefully uh Circle back to legislative uh stuff and uh try and figure out a vision for what that work will look for us look like for us in the future very good just that um we didn't have time like we didn't have time
073to get the legislative things and there's a lot of legislative stuff going on so we added a meeting um so um um we have an extra meeting as as you alluded to May 1st and we'll dedicate that to the legislative piece there's a lot going on right now there was a call to action by iasb um about the bill it's a very controversial bill um I have very mixed emotions about it so I didn't feel um I'll be honest I didn't feel one way or the other um as far as getting involved and the the call to action was in regards to the mandatory 45 minutes of um uninterrupted um um planning planning time thank you and listen from a purely Financial standpoint um it would be it would be interesting for from a district
074standpoint to provide that however um the fact that that's not provided for teachers that's also uh will tell you as an educator that's that's a problem with the system right uh that's something that every educator should have and the fact that every educator doesn't have it so um yeah like there there's a conversation there for sure um I don't know the state mandating it um is the solution however um there are conversations to be had about the system that we have and so we didn't get to that conversation and I'm sure we'll get to that conversation unless the bill is gone um um by the time we meet I have a question for uh for the policy and legislation committee last week at trer there was a really powerful um presentation on teens and and
075Tech and Tech and um a lot of things were discussed and it it really was very powerful um I don't know if it was recorded or anything but it would be great for a lot of people to see but one question I do have is that AI is becoming very very prevalent and a lot of school districts are putting a policy in place for the use of AI is it something that we've discussed yet Dr con Kate is it anything that iasb has brought up or is on the their Forefront so there has been definitely discussion Statewide I know Mr eron has also had discussion with both high schools so it is definitely on the Forefront discussing not only with teachers Department chairs administrators and um I do anticipate more for their progress in the
076next couple months thank you all right 7.4 board member comments any board member comments actually I actually have a couple this time yeah yeah um so visited the wheatlands um I was it two weeks Friday thank you it's been a it's been a few weeks I'm telling you people um uh so F last Friday uh the wheatlands it was great um I'm definitely somebody I walk in the building and there's there's just the nuances are the things I noticed so uh I noticed the um the I call it the Montage to one of our um uh Building Maintenance people which uh I loved um over on the on the top floor uh that was pretty awesome to see to say the least um the libraries I'm always impressed with our libraries when I walk into
077our buildings which is great um uh I had to say hi to my one of my my oldest son's former teachers when she yes yes at no it wasn't kindergarten I think it was I think it was second grade she was at Long Beach so that's always it's always nice to run into them as well but uh great school great Community um saw obviously few parents on my way out uh that was awesome and then Saturday I was able to attend Matilda over at OHS wow that was incredible uh there's some Talent up on that stage to say the least so uh ran into Luke Luke was doing a great job of um selling uh Refreshments great job Luke so anyone else want to say anything I I I also um attended Matilda wow I
078just have to say wow wow and wow um first of all it was incredibly long second of all it was in British I mean they all had British accents which for an entire cast to pull off is amazing and something that um we were talking about before the meeting is that four of the leads are freshmen wow and so our future looks really really bright um and I I'm getting Goosebumps and then I just have to say a a special shout I got to meet um the director uh Katie and I want to say congratulations to the orchestra wow I went and actually during intermission just said hello to the pit because they I mean their the music was beautiful um and to a very special shout out to Natalie meldon who was the president
079of bionic who played Mrs wormwood I when you know a student and then you see them at a completely different capacity you are blown away and I had no idea that was Natalie and then um the lead um Matilda uh gabrielis SPI I've watched her grow up she's uh a Hunt Club student and um it's just amazing you watch these these students grow up and you just never realize that they're going to absolutely blow your socks off secondly I also had the chance not very long but um I stopped over at OE to the OE College and Career Fair and if you don't know know Joy gats yes I'm going to get a little emotional um if you haven't met the incomparable Joy gats um I encourage you to do so she is truly one
080of the most amazing human beings that I've ever met and I was so sad that um Hunt Club lost her but now she's over at OE living her dream helping students prepare for the college and their careers and trade and she put together a beautiful and inclusive um showcase of not only um colleges but trades military and employers that are looking to hire 2024 graduates but she also went around to all of our surrounding communities and invited them as well so if you were students from Yorkville and planfield and are surrounding in and I just thought that was beautiful um so if you don't get a chance stop in student services and say hi to her um she truly is just a gem in this community and it was really cool to see all those
081different representations of what the pathways that students can take so um congratulations to that entire team of putting that together say something I I will say something um like Luke just brought me to tears because Luke just demonstrated this student Le data collection process that we call wiar and in 2017 we started on this journey with student voice with students just wanting to be heard like they were telling us that we were losing their confidence because they were sharing information with us in all of these different ways in which we collect data from students but they said it wasn't showing up in their experience so we started a a cohort of students and then we took them through this framework in which we were building their capacity to be student ambassadors exactly what Luke is
082so we've come full circle now from students who were we were just wanting to hear from them they were telling us that they didn't just want to be consumers of the decisions that adults were making for them but they wanted to be partners and collaborators in their lived experience so now here we are where Luke and Isabella and all of our other student um ambassadors and student voice participants and whatever um uh entity that they live whether it's amplify or all of these other student groups and we're hearing from them there are now influencing policy and being agents of the change that they want to happen and so for me um I was given the opportunity to present before the American educational research Association they're one of the largest um conferences in the world there
083were like 15 to 20,000 um professionals as their phds these are all like research individuals who provide theory on how school is taught and we had a organization called the Center which we've been partners with for seven years about and they have a theory on how they want Equity to show up in schools and so we we were identified they had they have 13 um States in which this particular map Center works with and they chose us to say we want what you've been doing in your district and the technical assistance that they've been giving us over all of these years we want you to come and show all these 15,000 people what this looks like because theory is one thing right but to actually so show them how it shows up in our school
084and so Luke I I just thank you for today and it's a beautiful thing isn't it so thank you and thank you for all of you who supported it because Yar is student Le but it's supported by adults adults you know need to resist the need to to take the lead and be the supportive um individuals that they need to be and it's showing up in so many different ways thank you all for the work that you've done and and is a I mean IET dubel is in the audience and S and in 2017 she came to our district because she was working in the equity space and she showed us a lot of these resources and we you know this is one of the things that I can tip my hat to you for
085so thank you for that all right we're moving on all right 8.1 consent agenda can I have a motion to approve the consent agenda make a motion to approve all items under consent including 8.1 minutes from the Board of Education meeting on April 8th 2024 open and close session and 8.2 to acknowledge the foyer requests received by the district second are there any question questions on the consent agenda can I have a motion I mean sorry Mr Gatewood hi Dr Mario hi hi Mr hi hi hi motion passes 7 60 we are now moving on to 9.1 okay I want to invite Mr oi to speak to the request for proposal for thank you say September of uh of last year we uh we started a process of replacing the current Food Service management company
086and the way to do that is to do an RP we did an RP we sent it out to a number of uh Food Service management company and um I believe we receive about 12 bids of those 12 bids we work in conjunction with the uh Illinois State Board of Education nutritional service department and we use the rubric that was recommended by them the process is very complicated we have to get approval from the state before we can even do the RP so of the submit that we got we got three beds that really uh qualified for the essence of what we're looking for and those were submitted by organic life uh Quest food and uh airac a current vendor and as part of the process we did with uh uh food tasting and the
087first round was done by adult and I believe a couple of the board members here with some of the food testers and uh we came up with uh with a score and after reflecting uh on that we decided that we should probably include our uh uh customers who are the ones who who spend most of their time uh eating the food so we develop a more kid-friendly uh Ro rric that we use and uh after that that process it was uh clear that a current company is going to be the new company so the letter of recommendation that you have in the package is to uh is to award the winning bid to arac arac has been in the district for about 30 some years I know since I've been in District over a short
088period of time that was something that I've heard consistently from uh customers our students about the need to change food uh provider and after it's all said and done and we find ourselves uh finding out that Arch is the is the win and bidder we had a meeting uh in the business office with aramac where we uh we share the finding of the RFP with them and we said uh we needed to to come up with a better way of getting immediate customer feedback so that if the things that uh our students do not like we have to come up with a way that we can we can provide that feedback to them and they can change the offerings and the process of the food that they serve and they agree with that and we've
089asked them to join us here tonight and to offer the board an opportunity to ask questions and for them to be able to provide answers to those questions all right welcome I uh Rafael I would really like to see the information that was collected I have to be very honest it's been years it was one of the first things that was brought to my attention um I've obviously pushed for this review personally um as one person on the board I also was a part of the taste test and I just I would really would like to see what the rest of the remarks were and the rest of the scores were because the difference in taste and um options are are great and so um I also want to know why we are not going
090I know we don't have to but why we are not going with the lowest bid the uh the reason why we the the difference between all three bid was very negligible as far as dollarwise so what it which is the reason why we decided to do a second taste test in the first test that we did the tasting was done mainly by adult and we know that I was one of the testers and I know I don't ordinarily eat the Food daily the way our customers do our customers are the students totally agree it should have been all 12 all the way down but I would really like to see that stuff that information what that looked like um because I just I'm very surprised by this the the difference in taste was night and
091day with um we can bring we can bring that we can bring the process I I guess I think I think it's important to know that it was a very um objective process that brought in very clear indices and so but I do think that we can provide that we we'll provide that we had questions on our rubric we had to go through our rubric because it was it wasn't laid out very well so we had to before we even got started I just want to see the process I'm very surprised by the results to be honest so um I would just like that to be made available to the board and sure absolutely I I was surprised by it too because I was I was sure we're going to move away but the kids
092make the decision and the rubric that we decided to to develop was something that would be easier for children to be able to use we had smiley faces we had one happy face we had some uh you know some faces that doesn't even show any any emotion and then we have a sad face and we were dealing with children we actually had a representation children from different age group because we wanted them to be able to have an opportunity to provide feedback and we got them in a room and we have them try different uh different food and without doubt they all coales against the menual that was provided by AAC thank thank you for joining us this evening um you've heard some of the feedback right so we know that you had this meeting
093with Mr obafemi um I think in terms of uh you introduce yourselves and then of course I think it's important to reflect on the the journey and what you've learned as you've heard the feedback from um our students but also as Mr shared with you as he sat down with you to think about the changes that were expected yeah absolutely can everyone hear me yep yes my name is Gina ratnayaka and I am the regional vice president from Aramark supporting um the state of Illinois what that means is my role really helps enable the work that goes on every day here and next to me I have your district manager Megan nun so she is she is part of the team that supports Patty Alex C your on-site GM your Two Chefs and your assistant
094food service director here in iGo to start I think Madam president you said something in when you were speaking just a minute ago you talked about how we can't um ask students to be the consumers of decisions that adults make and I think that's at the heart of what we're proposing in our journey that we're we're going to evolve on together each contract that in the life cycle that we've gone through with Aramark had different constraints and they were Peri perod in time constraints with those so we we've taken that approach as we've heard the feedback of our of our current perceptions of our program the quality of what students are receiving today and as we considered what we were doing moving forward we really had that in mind so we don't beg to have
095all the answers at this moment for the students we know that engaging the students between now and the end of the school year to ensure that the menus are reflective of what students want and then during the school year moving forward they're continually reflective of student feedback and changes that impact um and are meaningful based on what students are saying we absolutely know as a as an organization first and foremost we want to come with insights which is from students and take a culinary approach in delivering that and we know based on what we've heard that we have some opportunity here we need to do a better job of engaging your students but we absolutely know that we can deliver and we will deliver a different level of service and quality in the years to
096come for your students so and in recognition too of uh the point that the feedback that I received before we did the r and the point that was just made by Miss Johnson what we are recommending for the board to sign with ar which we had the conversation with them we're just going to do a two-year contract instead of a longer term contract which would be a way for for us to say you know show me they've been here for 30 something years the contract is going to be for for two years and I think it it has the potential of keeping everyone on their toes as far as making sure that the the quality of the food the services that our customers our students get continue to be what they desire what they deserve
097and the best that they have a right to expect um I would just like to add it a little bit um so over the last year Illinois has taken a change in their stance on Food Service um you know in in the past it's always been low bid right so the quality of that program is just what that program drives is that low bid a value meal when you go to a fast food place it doesn't give you the quality that your District wants and deserves so now that Illinois has taken that change in their process we are able to retain your business and give a better quality versus just retaining your business purely being off the cheapest price so we're excited for this change and and we hope to show you by the district
098investing in us and the belief of us that we will deliver on the results that you're looking for for your students we have a great program that we're already um starting up we've already started um sampling near students currently um the new products that we're going to bring in next year to show them that um it's going to be different and better for them I have heard that um so I do appreciate that um so this is you know kind of logistics availability so availability um some of the things I hear is availability throughout the day becomes less throughout the day so some items that might be more popular or more or even some items that might be cater to fewer students are gone you know by the end of that day um forcing them
099to resort to their fifth Choice um so how what do you you know what are you going to do to kind of ensure that there's availability amongst periods and amongst the schools yes um so every school has that's a good question you consistent exellent question options quality and availability yeah so thank you very much for that question I think um a good strategy to start with is really developing some kind of communication plan whether that's with um Patty and the principles um maybe we get into a a Cadence of meetings to make sure that we're delivering on the things that we do um we track that in the systems that we use so um maybe that's a training piece in our staff that we need to communicate with that um but we can we can
100absolutely look into those and if there are concerns we can address them and make sure that we develop that yeah you know special diets you know then they just don't have anything yeah so well special diets will I'll I'll take that um that's kind of a subset of question yes absolutely but I think it all goes to communication and ensuring that all stakeholders know who to go to to to bring forth a concern or a need um but specific to your question I I would hope I would look for you to be proactive right if you got that that yeah so specific to proactivity that's that's where I was going and follow up to what Megan said one of the tenants of what we've proposed for this coming contract is our student nutrition 360 insights
101a piece of that is a pulse survey so at the secondary levels where students have technology available to them at lunch we have QR code surveys that are real time where students can provide feedback in addition to that the proactive pieces the staff training and our our team being able to what I call manage by walking around being out in schools and seeing what's happening just like we expect all of our campus leaders to be present helps us ensure that the service that we expect for our students has been delivered one other followup to that and the routing the logistics side of what dominic is saying do you also proactively well different question do you do you commonly use the same route uh when you're dropping the food off if so therefore in the logistics
102and availability it seems to impact the same school every single time so is that something that you track uh as far in regards to availability and quality when schools are being delivered to so um all of your schools are on site production so it's not a satellite program so it should be a scenario that they should have the product on hand um yeah it's it's it's just prepared on site I I'll give a specific a very specific example that I think uh Mr Gatewood might be referring to um of we it was brought to our attention um by some teachers in one of our schools that um she resided in another part of our district and her son went to another school but she taught at the school at a a different school that what
103her son was getting and what so the men this is Elementary the menu is the same across the board but if it said corn dog then um there they didn't have enough corn dogs in every school so some kids would not get what they thought they were going to get on the menu so what we want to make sure is that and can you tell us what the process is for making sure that if everybody wants a corn dog in elementary that they're going to get it and this is really important to us from an equity issue because a lot of students are relying on that and it's probably and could potentially be their biggest best meal of the day um but we have seen a lot of instances when that hasn't happened there's been
104discrepancies it could be ordering could be communication but what can we do moving forward to make sure that that is that doesn't happen so I'll take that Jen um each School orders separately for themselves and depending upon their delivery dates there may be outages at the Cisco house so that school needs to communicate to us where we can find the product for so the elementary schools for example get a count the students will choose their Entre in the morning and they're sent down to the staff in the cafeteria um they'll do a tally and they'll cook over and they'll you know make a little extra padding there to ensure that there's enough for the students those leads at the school should be communicating to myself and my team if they do not have enough product
105on hand and we can pull it from another school that wouldn't be using it so that would be a communication piece and I would need need to know that from the staff um I have started sending out principal surveys so that we can start opening um some discussions where we're lacking in that and that where I need to know that so but are th those are your staff correct cor that would be our staff so if there's not enough product on site we need to know that so we can get the product to them to ensure are those to train then the staff correct because that's this seems like an error mark issue so what how is that what is changing to ensure that that um the communication so that we know that those things
106are occurring um they do we do have the production records that will ensure that they have enough on hand so we're train doing the training pieces on we've had several new staff members so ensuring that the training is done properly and consistently so we're um including our lead meetings with the staff and doing those training pieces on the system so that we don't have any lapses on that types of information a couple of other things too that we're doing differently this time when we met I think a couple of weeks ago we're going to be having a standing meeting that we're going to have uh periodically myself and the uh the VP from airac we will be meeting periodically where we put we provide feedback on the experiences that we have in our building I'm
107truly one who believe that you get what you inspect if we're not really paying attention to the level of service that we are getting we would not know how well the uh the vendor is doing that's number one number two we also are committed to doing survey where we survey the school we survey the administrator where they provide us feedback on the level of services that they're getting they're the Frontline folks and we also will do survey with our students too so they let us know how well they like the food so we're doing things differently than we've done it before whereas before we there was a level of apathy in the way we partner with aramac we're not going to do that anymore we made the decision based on the fact that it's me
108the best uh bid but we're not stopping there what we are doing is we're going to make sure that we have standing meeting where any uh issues that comes up resolve it right away we don't let it become a serious problem we will be doing survey with our building administrators and folks who are responsibility for making sure that our kids get fed well and the third part of it is we're going to make sure we do periodic survey with our users our customers where they give us real life feedback do you like the food that you're getting what don't you like about the food that you're getting we are going to do those three things and I think those will make a difference in the quality of service and the food that we get which
109we hadn't done before I I think an important Point here is that we've lifted a process the vendor that Rose was aark we are going to honor that process but as Mr shared this will be under Contin review and reflection and next time please bring corn dogs for this presentation we would definitely appreciate that so so incentives like you know when someone has had an experience and it's not been a very enjoyable one they don't want to come back to it right yes and so we have all these students who've not had a very enjoyable experience and I wonder if they're willing to come back to it so how do you incentivize a student who has had these experien es and who are very skeptical of of what we're what we're selling better food better
110services and they are right in what they said the state of Illinois changed the uh the fmcs process it used to be before you can only select the lowest bidder so now if you think about it if you are a vendor who's provid who's promising to provide you lunch at 99 cent a day and that's all they have and they they have to provide that and make profit off of that there's a limit to our we the quality of the food they can provide you we have to be honest with that now the stateof know is changed the process now where we necessarily don't have to take the lowest bidder we take the the organization that is well positioned that's got a better quality of food for our students and those are the variables that
111I think are important for us so I think what we have to do is we talk to them about doing a conscious campaign letting our customer know that things are going to be different rebranding rebranding better food better customer service survey that is going to keep them honest if they don't like Luke if Luke doesn't like the food that he gets in his school he's going to get a survey Luke is going to let us know in real time and we have a com since we have a standing meeting with ar we will let him aric know it and we'll let him have it I I just appreciate you saying that there was a level of apathy I think that's really important to be able to say that and be vulnerable and honor that so
112thank you for that and to uh Mrs Simon's point I'm just from a very very myopic perspective my son had two meals first grade and and we still have the same money from our pushcoin account when he started junior high he never touched it again um so that it's that but also and with all due respect I've been in food service for for 20 years we work at the Google food program so um we really believe that food is the energy for the body it's how you make decisions of how you shoot what we call your moon shots and um it's just really important that I mean air marks in the business of making money period like I get it but what we're doing here is making sure that the quality is consistent from the
113start of school to the end of school and from the start of the day to the end of the day so we appreciate whatever help you're going to do to get us there yeah absolutely I you have my attention and you have our attention and our at we had it several weeks ago and we had a conversation and some of the concerns that you all have also brought to light tonight were were brought forward and we are are taking a new approach and so the program that we're bringing forth um we'll have a new approach and we know to the point of some students have not had a great experience we have to win them back so we'll have to take an approach of repositioning and rebranding ourselves within within the school district to show
114the students that this is not the program they had yesterday well and also frankly on our side students especially in elementary are picking like a red popsicle stick a green popsicle stick or a blue popsicle stick that matches whatever their meal is and so I think we have to look at that from our site and I'm just giving an example but um you know how they're picking and they're like here I want the red popsicle stick today but they might not have matched it correctly to the corn dog I mean there's lots of issues but we have to look at things on our site too but thank you for hearing us one other question in regards to selection for the students do they are they Limited in their choices or will they be limited in
115their choices I can't remember I'm I'm a year a year removed from it but I remember my son saying I can't get that so it was like oh I couldn't get that because I don't know what it was and so I'm just wondering the selections will will they have options or or even he if he was he would come home and say I'm still hungry and I was like well you had money why didn't you buy or I I couldn't do that and so I'm just trying to again that's a very anecdotal solution but I know I said that all the time because he would consume our entire refrigerator when he got home yeah you know um I would love to understand from your son that that issue in in a deeper uh from a
116deeper perspective I have three schoolage children I have a a 12-year-old girl and two boys that are 9 and8 and um I these are similar conversations I think it's a it's a coaching conversation always with children about choices and what they should take at lunch and I was actually looking at my kids lunch account and noticing they're buying a lot of chips yep with their school meal but point being I think what we can do better together like Raphael said is collaborate um to impact the program in a very positive way and we are committed to doing that with you as your provider thank you thanks yeah it wasn't it wasn't an easy decision to make but we believe it's the right decision we didn't want to make change Just For Change sake I mean
117the easiest thing for us to say is regardless of the input that we got from our customers our kids we're not going to pick hairman that will make everyone happy because I said to them we had a really Frank conversation when we met met in my office I said to them from the day I walked in here and every day I walk into buildings that's one of the conversations I'm having when are you going to change a and we went through the process the way it was laid out and we got the result that we got we're could have chicken out and said you know what we're gonna we're going to roll the dice and just change throw away the process because this is the outcome that's not the outcome that we wanted but we
118have to believe the system that we put in place is the right process to select the best uh vendor and we believe that in this particular case aramac is the best vendor but there things that we can do on our part to enhance the process and we're committed to doing that and we talked about all the things that we're going to do and we got to make sure we hold our end of the bargain and we expect them to do the same thing because as you mentioned earlier their business they want to be successful because this is a big chunk of their business and they know we're watching not only are we watching the whole Community is watching this is their second chance to get it right thank you Mr and I just I I
119will add this like listen I I do think there is such thing as student voice and in student voice is important however I'm going to say this well I have a 17-year-old at home I also have a 24y old at home with the 17-year-old and what's great about having the 24 year-old at home is even though the 17-year-old has student voice and talks about about his food choices the beautiful thing is the 24-year-old will tell the 17-year-old that he's kind of full of it on some of his opinions and I'm just saying that with a grain of salt because like some of the decisions he's making aren't the greatest decisions when it comes to food I'm just saying like like there is a limit on some of the some of this and um listen my
12017-year-old has complained about about the food as well however he has also acknowledged that my son had a milk allergy and when he was in elementary school he's acknowledged they were they worked beautifully with him and he never had an issue once so um I also had another parent who like last year who whose son they wanted to know how they could shut off the account because their kid was buying so much food so there are kind of some like hits and misses and so forth um and I think like yes I think we all want to see more consistency I think that's what you I think that's probably what Micah's talking about is we get a charge every day and it's whatever the meal is for the day 355 and then there's chips and
121then there's a Rice Krispie Treat and then there's a cookie and so I think that's what it is I think it's they're given their meal but they either want more or they want the the snack but again I think that's a different conversation if they're having a Rice Krispie Treat and a hot flamin' hot Cheeto and then they're complaining about the food thank you Rafael you know thank you very much thank you we would love to turn that account off out of control okay oh this you oh this is you okay okay 9.2 uh storm water easement for wol crossing and Bernard schools Mr oi so back in 2001 one when wolf crossing and basc schools were constructed there was no storm water drainage there to take our storm water from those buildings to uh
122to discharge it and what happened is the school district uh used property that was available and converted that to uh stor water drainage now that property is now being acquired in addition to some aan property by P the uh the developer and polter is requesting that as part of their construction they will build uh a stone waterer discharge that will replace the one that we kind of put together there's no cost to the district and the uh the cost of it will be Bon by py exclusively all they asking for is easement from us that will allow them to be able to do that and an IG uh has been included in there that I'm sorry the E man release agreement has been included and the district attorney St has reviewed it and ISU an
123agreement with the charms of that doesn't cost us anything it's just going to make it better I have one concern about this having lived over there right and there was nothing there right I always laugh I listen somebody who grew up in the area goes back like I always I kind I'm not going to lie I chuckle when people complain about certain things around here because I got news for you we all lived in a field at one point because all this was field right so I got news for you there was nothing over there when there was built right so my one concern is I watched as Lakewood Valley was built and Lakewood Valley took care of all of the you know how this was going to drain and everything and I watched this
124house across from Lakewood Valley have to pump water out continuously and eventually the house was abandoned and they're like we're out of here right because basically what lwood valley did was they the water was just getting pumped into this person's yard across the street so my one concern about this is how are we going to make sure that PTY doesn't just pump the water into us like that's the one I love all of how of this sounds as long as the water isn't just getting pumped into our baseball field Feld or or or our you know Causeway or anything else do we have an architect that's we have a civil engineer who's actually looked at the plan and he's put a seal of approval on it at Mar cor so that's that's really what we
125can we have to reply uh we have to rely on the expertise of civil engineer that is the area of expertise yeah I didn't see a diagram or I was looking for it because I was thinking easen are they just digging to run it somewhere or are they actually going to you know put a trench where it runs I was I was just looking for the pictures I didn't see any now I can request a copy of the engineering study from Mary Corp and I can provide it at the next uh meeting before approval on May 6 but he did his due diligence and he agreed uh with the the proposed solution for the uh stor wordy discharge okay yes theoretically they're supposed to the situation always better than it was previously but yeah that
126I just that and I and I agree I just want to see and if it's an engineer working on our behalf you know then that's 100% but I just want to see it so because right now we don't know where they're routing it to it just says routing it you know efficiently or uh so I just want to see it and then I'll be good I I just figure had a lot of the conversations you I watch I I get it but I watched some I'm sorry I just spoke to uh Mr uh Queen here Mr Queen speak up pleas yeah so what they're going to do is they're going to tie into an adjacent drain so it's not just going into a field or into somebody's house it it's getting tied into another adjacent
127drain that that clarifies that was great that's great okay right okay um next we have 9.3 um intergovernmental agreement with the village of asigo and others um as well as a capital facility development impact fees update Mr oi so uh the uh the village of asgo as in revised the impact fee process the way of giving up the impact fees since 2015 and uh it wasn't that important back when construction was in the doldrum but things are beginning to pick back up right now and the The Village called together all the taxing bodies and wanted to uh to get our input as far as hiring a consulting firm so an RFP was done and the winning uh firm was DTA and DTA is doing a study to try to figure out what the new process
128of uh of uh the impact Feld will be and uh uh What uh what they they would like to do is for the uh the board to to approve the IG that uh all the taxing bodies are signing um authorizing DTA to uh to do the study required to update the uh the impact fee process can you describe this is uh standard practice to have a third-party entity develop this versus an individual I think in our conversations with the village board we heard that uh historically it's a good way to uh collectively hired somebody so it doesn't become a biased process um and so this is uh we want to thank our village partners for really bringing this to us Raphael do you want to speak to that yes sued you want to be sued
129it's an independent entity too that's done this all over the country really and the the significant importance of what Dr katti mentioned is an I'm lens deal so they have no uh they have no skill in the game if you will they'll use data they'll use uh past experience with the current way of Distributing impact fee in making recommendation as to how how we should move forward I have a question regarding the cost that's outlined there's no I don't see a cost outline I just see the the percentage so do you know for example it says the village of asigo is going to pay 48.4% of the total project we're going to pay 38.0 yeah what is the number of how much does this cost they will have to wait until let me see I
130think I have a I have ANP here I mean we don't have to sign this before this is just information yes is information right yes it is yeah I at least need to know and what is the how did theages get broken down because of how much where the taxes go to okay we had the 800 pound gorilla in the village I can I can bring that information at the next time thank you thank you okay uh next thank you mrfi uh we have uh Mr artson um regarding American Sign Language resource proposal there's adjustments here board so uh Mr artson is going to speak to some of the requests that's come in for this matter yeah thank you board and I'm going to bring up uh a couple people with me here who've been
131a pretty pivotal role well there we go I'm all over the place thank you um and I'll let them introduce themselves but uh I'll go through with a presentation but I want to make sure that we're introducing and giving credit what credit is Du for this too so uh go I I'm Holly forier I'm the department of World Language at asigo high school welcome Michelle sternad I'm a de and heart of hearing teacher at Prairie Point okay welcome okay and uh as we go forward with this proposal it would be nice if I could do that um you know one of the things we look at for any sort of new resource proposal is what's the need for it and of course as you know we we propose the the course proposal for ASL uh
132this this last fall and uh we then will of course need a resource for that so this begins on uh school year 25 uh one of the things we like to do with this too is make a collaborative decision based on sd3 WE criteria when we look at the sd308 criteria couple things I want to make sure that uh everyone's tracking up on here is the uh the standards that we're using are not exactly state standards and that's because ASL doesn't have state standards for us we will follow the guidelines of a acfl the the actual guidelines are the Illinois State standard that they that the state of Illinois uses for World languages so sign language will fall under that perfect thank you and then of course we're looking at the district Equity statements as
133well and what we always look at for any resource is the ease uh for a special education and multilanguage Learners a couple other things I want to highlight on here too is the technology uh and the digital availability of the resource and then student and teacher friendly additions it's really important for us to have uh additions of any resource that teachers and students feel comfortable using and we feel the resource that we've selected uh absolutely provides those as we look at the resource selection team members of course we have uh the two up here then who Kurt goldo couldn't be here tonight he's sis World Language department chair and we've had many other people involved in this process as well but when it came to really getting in the weeds with the resource these are
134the three three members I want to highlight the ASL resources that we also considered uh signing naturally levels 1 through 4 and master ASL and if recall from our fall presentation uh when we looked at the course proposal itself the master ASL was actually the resource we thought we were going to go with as we kind of looked out uh through other uh resources throughout the area and started really getting getting into the uh details with this uh we actually determined that these weren't the best resources for us and the resource we selected uh based on uh our guidelines was actually the true way ASL uh and this is a completely digital resource for students and teachers and you can see some highlights of the resource there too of course you're looking at ISBN numbers
135things like that um but really we're getting some added bonuses with this Resource as well and again this is a full digital resource for teachers and students some of the reasons we chose to select this resource um there's lots of things that we do within World Language and when we get to the Q&A section I think Holly can can add to some of these but it's really in-depth coverage of the the DEA culture and and really gets into the gr Dramatical aspects of ASL beginning early in the resource which really integrates well into our world language systems of how we operate every other World Language the next steps for this resource of course we're doing a presentation tonight for information uh the resource will be available tomorrow at the district office and this is digital
136access so uh there is a general username and password for this resource that we can provide to anyone who wants to view the resource we have that available at the district office uh the next time and that of course will be available for 30 days at the June 3rd board meeting this will be an action item and then if this is approved uh we'd like to complete the purchase as soon as possible because it gives our our teachers an opportunity to use the resource while working with the curriculum as we look at the cost of the resource um it is $40 per license we said by 350 student licenses there's actually 343 students between asgo high school and asgo East High School that are registered to take the course next year uh so that'll give
137us a total of $14,000 for next school year uh again these digital licenses can be used once so we will have to purchase these year after year um but the $25 um course fee will offset some of that costs as well what questions do you have for us regarding the resource quick just the math you said it's you excuse me you have 3 43 students but you're ordering 350 is what yeah we we we'll purchase additional licenses which is not of normal in case we get move-ins or other things happen like that we'll have a few and you know if if for whatever reason between now and and the end or the beginning of the school year it swells to 360 even for whatever purchasing 10 licenses at a time is not a big uh
138big constraint for us you know we looked into a a multi- deal um multi-year deal for this there's really not much of a benefit it was it was very minimal benefit for us to do a multi-year deal on this we opt we're opting for a one-year deal because quite frankly this is a brand new course for us we want to see if this is going to work for us in our needs and then from there of course we can Branch out into the other other deers I have one quick noticing and then uh two questions um when I first opened this presentation just coming from a World Language background the first thing I looked for was the culture component so I'm glad to see that this has an emphasis on you know culture and teaching
139that because I think that falls in line also with our diversity Equity you know mindset in our district uh so thank you for that does the resource have four levels if we were going to because I know we have two levels on the books does this resource have four levels and then my second question is does do we know other districts that are using this um that it does have a s suggested scope and sequence um they have 18 modules but within those modules are multiple like 1.1 1.2 um they suggest that it can go for four years a foure course sequence so is it up to as you look at the curriculum or what they offer is it up to you all to decide whoever is creating the curriculum decide which modules go in
140year one which modules go in year two because we have a yearly system obviously at the high school is that a curricular Choice then they don't have it broken up by levels they do they say um ASL one is like units one through five for example um so they have a suggested scope and sequence but that really is going to depend on the students and um what other pieces need to be developed to support it and they're they have a four year suggested sequence okay and do we know of any other districts that are using this I not that that's a plus or a minus I'm just wondering I do know some people who have attended some conferences that have seen the presentation for this um curriculum and they're very excited about it but they
141are so they already have their curriculum development their textbooks and everything invested in um so they're kind of excited to hear about it because it's um produced by a deaf um company deaf individuals um but they're not using it yet okay thank you I just um you know the fact that it's digital only um I don't know any concerns I want to ask I I personally think the digital option is a great way to go for the first year just in case because one if you order a whole set of you know textbooks and and and it's really not what you're looking for you're kind of stuck with those for years so I think that I think personally I think the online is is a good way to go and I I don't think it's
142going to be the end all be all of the curriculum that we develop um but in looking at it there there are a lot of videos what caught my attention were um the the variety of of ethnic backgrounds that were in the videos they were represented um that was so interesting to see just how many different types of backgrounds of of people signing for the kids to watch and and learn the language um what else did you do you notice anything else well definitely just the amount of videos I mean it's one thing it's really hard to look at a a paper representation of a sign um but to see it seems to bode well that's why I'm just kind of seeing what's your thought it does um but the digital component is um there's
143so much content with this curriculum compared to the other ones um but there's I don't quite yet know how that's going to work with being in class there's so much interaction um signing it with each other and it's interacting with a a screen I see more as something done outside of school um because really in person you need to be interacting with each other not with a screen so I think it's going to be a nice complement to um having in-class activities and outside of class activties oh yeah it it it is yeah inter Google Classroom as well because that that was one of the issues with one of the other resources that it was not it did not interact with Google Classroom so all these you know videos can be assigned through Google Classroom
144as warm-up activities or something like that so it works with our interface already does the resource offer assessment pieces as well okay so thank you no I just I really wanted to say thank you this is Faith Dan we are almost there it's been a long time coming and so um this is beautiful and I cannot wait uh to move forward can I vote today yes no that's not how it work okay I will say I just want thank and not only Holly but but shell has put tireless work in uh from The Proposal all the way through this resource selection the entire way so uh much of this work you're seeing here is shell and a few others but Shell's really been driving for so I really want to say thank you for the
145shell for that thank you and and your commitment to students you know it really it's uh these initiatives are so powerful and you you push forward and and what we look forward to seeing is the successes that it will yield so thank you so much much for your vision thank you thank you all right thank you all thank you um next we have a Mr obafemi speaking regarding our fy2 24 budget amendment thank you 9.5 so when the uh fiscal year 24 budget was being prepared before I got here uh there were some uh some lines in the budget administrative cost that are not allowed to be more than 5% from the pro a year actual expenditure that's just state law at the time uh the district communicated to the state that we will be
146seeking a uh a waiver based on the fact that we were in the lower 25 percentile of cost we actually weren't in the lower 25 percentile so since we wearing the low 25 percentile we have one of two options we can either go to the legislator and say legislator give us a waiver which will require the vote of all state legislator or we can do a budget amendment whereby we reduce the cost in the six lines as I referenced in the memo and uh we stay below 5% and the uh so I'm proposing we do that which is do a a budget amendment and reduce those uh six lines to below actually all we needed to do is just reduce two lines by 25% each and then we are in the um less than 4%
147which will make us compliant with the administrative uh uh administrative uh 5% administrative uh compliance so that's what so we're requesting that we do a budget amendment and the process for doing a budget amendment is very similar to a regular budget we bring it before the board today and then the um the the amended budget for those true line is put on display for 30 days and then when we come back on June uh 5th or 6th the board votes have a public hearing and the board votes to approve it and then the amended budget is provided to the state to show that we're in compliance I know I said a lot questions um yeah I have like many but uh H how when we present future budgets how do we ensure that line items
148don't go over 5% that is standard practice when you're doing your budget you look at those six lines and it gives you a lot of flexibility you got salaries you got purchase Services you got supplies you got benefits it's all kinds of all you have to do is make sure that those line stay well below 5% I've never in my years of doing this I have to do a budget amendment for administrative cost I've never because you just know to keep those lines below 5% and it's not that difficult to do okay is this um because of the um raises that were given to no not really not really because uh what it is the uh if you look at the memo they are and I I I'll be very blunt in saying that some
149of these lines too we were paying folks out of it we should not have been paying out of it so what it is you look at the prior year actual expenditure you compared to the next year's budget and what you have to make sure is the next year budget is no more than 5% of the PRI expenditure for example some of this uh the six line executive Administration Services the only person that should be paid out of that is the superintendent and it's related expenses we found out that we're paying other people who were not superintendent out of that line in Prior years another example is special education Administration Services same thing and if you go down to 251 direction of business support the only person who supposed to supposed to be paid out of
150there is to CFO the CFO actually wasn't getting paid out of that line CFO was getting paid out of the superintendent's line executive Administration and there were folks in HR who were being paid out of that line in Prior years so yeah so thank you Mr some this some of the work board is has been improvements that we've taken on through our infinite Vision I know I want to thank the human resources department working with the finance department to clean up L to to co been working on working on I'm working on it's a working process I'm going to thank you all for that I clarifying question If that had a bunch of stuff in it and we took it out how are we over no it's not so that was Prior year so the
151way it works it will be fiscal year 23 actual expenditure and fiscal year 23 compared to fiscal year 24 budget so if the fiscal year 23 budget is overstated then it will impact what was budgeted in the current year I know if you if you follow me I always forget about fiscal years that's what it that's what it is but can you um I'm okay never mind sorry okay you okay yeah all right we're good okay um next up we have uh FY 25 tenative budget presentation Mr Bei and uh we want to thank you I just to lead off to say thank you I know last week uh you invested a lot of time uh meeting with community members uh in preparation for this evening so I I will say that thank you to
152you and your team thank you Dr Kat that is actually my oxygen the opportunity to engage with the Community member and to explain to them what makes up the budget and to let them know what uh what makes up the the expenditure what is the source of the revenue and to really thank them for the fact that but for them we will not have a school district because the largest source of revenue for the district is local property taxes which we appreciate our community member writing us a check twice a year once in uh in June and then again in September so that was an opportunity for to be to be accountable to them to explain to them what we do with that money so the uh the goal of the community Workshop was just
153really to provide information to the committee uh to provide information about how the the tax dollar has been spent and uh what I've always said is that the budget is really a moral document that reflects the value the goal and the objective of the uh of the organization in this case the our school district we know there are some legal requirements uh that we need to have for the budget but above all though it reflects the moral and the the value of the board so the budget also is the source of funding the district priority uh the Strategic priorities a couple of things that I pointed out during the uh the presentation is the fact that the budget makes it possible for us to have rigorous curriculum and ambitious instruction which is what the business
154that we're in of educating children the other part is the the opportunity to engage with the community and partner with the community which is the whole point of doing the community workshop and lastly the fiscal and operational responsibility making sure that the money is well spent and we explain that to our community members so this is the budget your timeline and uh as you see we start getting off of the budget actually from November till January we start out by having the board uh designate someone to prepare the budget in this case is the CFO and then we get the information about property tax levy and what drives that is actually the CPI that is normally released by the Bureau of Labor Statistics for December of the prior year is then used for the levy
155February and March we start uh Distributing information to the cost administrator those are the folks in the district who actually spend money and then we create a budget uh a budget model and we do a financial forecast that look at the next five years and see what we're doing financially and we then work to do estimates and projection of our enrollment which then drives the number of staff that we'll need for the for the up coming year phase three is the tenative budget presentation which is what I'm doing now which is part of the community budget uh presentation that we did last week and we plan to have this become a tradition in the district where we engage members of the community and then once it's brought to the board like I'm doing tonight then
156it goes on display for 30 days after which uh final revision can be made and then the board will approve the budget in June as you would notice we actually doing the budget in June instead of waiting till September and the reason why we're doing it in June the fiscal year starts in July if we have the budget approved by early June then we can load the budget into the Erp the financial document so folks can St buying stuff what we've done in the past is people will call I need to buy something for the start of the school year I don't have a budget loaded we can't do anything so what then happen is people start uh you give people access to start charging expenditures on a negative budget line which is not a
157good budget uh business practice by doing it now by the time July 1 rolls around we have the budget loaded people can start spending July 1st can can I interject real quick yes sir can I say thank you because when I first came to the board and like every year since I've said this just seems backwards like like it's like we're rubber stamping the budget and I've got board members not not anybody up here I got board members voting no to Levy and then not even asking for projections on what that would mean like it was like the most like I did it didn't make any sense to me and I'm like I don't mind let's have a conversation about what that looks like but we're even having a conversation about what it looked like
158it was so backwards like I had no doubt in my mind that there was validity behind people in the district saying they didn't have faith in this I agreed but then the problem was like there was no remedy so thank you because the whole process to me seemed backwards from day one so I just want to interject that and say thank you thank you sir so as we mentioned during the uh the community workshop and we're saying clearly here tonight the board as well as the administration is committed to transparency uh making sure that the committee understands a budgeting process a Lev process as well as our financial process essentially where we get our money what we spend our money on and why we Levy them the amount that we Lev them and the fiscal
159year budget overview the critical part of it is that the total budget amount is 3.6 million and that includes operation as well as non-operational uh expenditure and that is an increase of 9.8 million just in the operating fund then of that amount 25.6 is in the operating budget if you notice I mentioned 3.6 in the total budget 25.6 just in the operating budget and the operating budget covers the dayto day the non-operating budget will be things like uh Debt Service the money that we pay uh to bond holders that we borrow money for the cost of doing capital projects that the money comes from the proceeds of uh Bond sales those are non operating but the operating uh budget is what we use for day-to-day expenses and in fiscal year 20 we budget $8.7 million
160to start tackling some of the uh the capital needs that we are in the district and the majority of these funds come from proceeds of budget that we sold I believe that was sold back in 22 that's the uh the working cash budget that we're going to use to start repairing our buildings and 36.9 or close to $37 million is debt service to start paying for the uh the debts that we issue so Revenue highlights property tax we have a projected increase of close to $7 million in fiscal year 25 which is an increase of 5.8% compared to fiscal year 24 cppt we projecting that our stays Flat state funding we only estimating that uh it will increase by 4 million even though if you look at the time from 2017 when ebf was instituted
161the district has gotten on average 7 million doll a year C can I stop us right here yes sir so and I want to I want to stop because I believe this is an educational moment here is it a I got two questions one is it oversimplification to look at this and say so we can look at obviously it's an estimate about 5.7 7 million in increase in Revenue if I look at these three things that's question number one my second question is are is Esser going to affect different districts differently because if I'm in a district that doesn't have an increase in ebf or if I'm in a district that doesn't see an increase in property tax I'm going to actually get a bigger hit on those Esser funds you get what I'm saying
162yeah whereas if you're in a district like ours that does have those property taxes increasing and does have an increase in ebf we're going to see less of a hit from Esser funds and the reason I bring this up is I if if that's correct if what I'm saying is correct the reason I bring this up is I I know that we have a lot of Educators in the district and they might say well my district is taking a hit on Esser funds the hit on Esser funds may not look the same from District to District depending on those other two variables you can correct me wherever I'm wrong absolutely now if you at a district like that what you need to have done is with exra funding you don't use that for operational you
163know it's a short-term uh infusion of Revenue what you do you use it for one-time expenditure well if I worked in a district like that what I would have recommended is you use it for upgrade to your building buildings for example upgrade to H for things that are directly related to covid-19 mitigation use it to buy uh to buy things that are directly related to that so that when the revenue goes it shouldn't have an impact on your operational funds if it was done correctly it was a one time it was like winning money it's like a windfall if you get a windfall you don't put that windfall into your regular daily living you you use it as a windfall you use it to pay for things that but for that windfall you wouldn't have
164been able to afford and you move on with you life because you know it's a onetime winfall and is that over is that an oversimplification to look at those and say oh okay we'll see a 5.7 million increase or is it more complicated than that it's it's a little more Nuance than there okay thank you because uh so what I was going to say about state funding we were actually been very conservative with the $4 million that we projected because this fiscal year alone we received an increase of $9 million and the governor actually his appropriation is appropriating 350 million which fully funds ebf so it's more likely than not that we'll get 7 million but we're just trying to be a concerned which is what you're supposed to do with Revenue be conservative with
165Revenue be aggressive with expenditure so we only budgeting $4 million perfect thank and uh Esser fund as you mentioned earlier $5.2 million in Esser fund that will receive this year is going byby which is a decrease of $37 million or 37% 5.2 milon down to 37% sorry I was following you no worries following day so I don't want to give anyone a heart attack good news is someone just hit backspace on the headline so you're good 37% 5.2 a m we only got 12 million and I don't know how we can be out that much so there are the Staffing changes that we made that are School based so if you see at the end of the day we have an ft increase of 3.06 of school based position okay and this are driven really
166by programmatic needs and projected enrollment is what is driving this trange now there's are budget additions that are not school based they're based in in the district office but it provides support to our schools we know uh some of the supports that our school folks needed we have not always uh the resources to provide it to them and we know uh for any organization to do well there has to be coordination there has to be support from managers to help the school-based folks uh do a better job of providing services for example we know not all of our kids are going to go to college we know a good number of them are going to be go to take on Career some of them may be pilot some of them may go into the HK
167business some of them may be mechanics plumbers but we need to start preparing them while they're in school instead of just thinking everybody goes to college we know everybody don't go to college and we know the folks who do not go to college if we don't prepare them for anything else we not really helping them they end up getting Minal job but if we stop providing support to them right now we're in a position to help them out that's one of the reasons why we have the direct of Korean College pathway additionally we know the one population in the district that seems to be growing is special education and one of two ways we can look at this we can pay now we can pay later because we know when a child is entitled to
168uh special education you have an i AP we have to provide those services to them if we don't they'll go get an attorney or an attorney will solicit them and request a due process we'll pay the attorney's fee we'll provide the services that they need and it's some cases we may also have to compensate the parents so we have a coordinated way of doing this like a director will help the clinicians as well as the folks in the school long term it saves US money we spending money up front but it saves US money long term can I just say in general yes it saves US money up if we do what's right it saves US money in the long term regardless absolutely not just an inter Fe absolutely absolutely Mr OB I think Mr
169Dr zi was going to add a couple things here also to the some of the numbers around why it's 4.0 when we know that there's been attrition or shifts in position and why the number is a lower number than let's say some of the hiring that we've seen I think just clarification would be important yeah sure thank you um I think if you look at our public site and you can see the the amount of positions open um it looks like there's a lot more new than there is um these these four positions these three position Humanity Steam and College and Career uh pathways are part of our new learning and Innovation Department that's going to be led by uh Dr Paul um we also started really trying to um staff based on Equity versus
170equality um so for example um we recognize that an assistant director of multi lingual Learners is something that we need to add um to uh our administrative structures for diverse Learners which we have an assistant superintendent that we're recommending this evening that would support that along with a director of multilingual Learners again again adding more to that infrastructure uh for example right now when you look at the number of assistant principles throughout our system we'll be adding another assistant principal to Boulder Hill uh in order to support um uh that ecosystem and our our children there Junior High Assistant principles when you look and you see four you say to yourself hey actually we have five assistant principles but when you do an equity-based model you start to recognize where do Junior High Assistant principles
171for special education need to be and then what could be shared uh a shared model so for example we have a shared model due to minutes programming IEPs and geography where we'll be sharing a resource between berari and Wolf's Crossing so we really tried to use an equity based model and then we also wanted to make sure that um through learning Innovation we are able to support um a guaranteed and viable curriculum and instruction model thank you sure thank you Dr Z so we're going to get into the numbers now thanks for the [Laughter] picture so this is the assumptions that we make for the fiveyear projection we assuming $4 million per year in ebf and we also assuming that we Levy to what is allowed by Statute which is CPI if we do that
172what you can see is from fiscal year 25 we start gradually building our reserves and so that by 2029 all things being equal we have a healthy Reserve but I want to point out that this is a projection the further out you are from reality the more dicey it is so yeah I'm just I'm just being very honest if I can project uh interest rate and all this stuff accurately I think I'll be selling bonds I wouldn't be here do do we do we start to get to a point not trying to get controversial but do we start to get to a point with our with our balance where money starts to make money for us in other words where you can start making short we have the more Investments we have and the more
173investment we have the more uh return yield that we have on our investment right y no okay so that's that's what the projection is based on but then if you all remember uh board member pler asked me to look at some scary scenarios we'll get there so we'll talk about that so this is the revenue comparison fiscal year 24 to 25 as I mentioned earlier uh the local revenue is projected to be up by close to 7 million or 5.2 28 state revenue the increase that we're projecting is the 4 million in ebf which is as a Delta of 3.68 and federal revenue as we mentioned earlier the 5.2 don't ever anyone get scared that's the sunset of Esser that's planned and we know that was coming so total revenue increase of 5.7 or 2.3%
174fiscal year 25 compared to fiscal year 24 can I encourage you if is this uploaded on the website not yet when you upload it I would make a note what those Redline items go to like suns setting of Esser because when somebody's looking at this without knowing a narrative gets created that we don't need so if we could just put the footnotes in that say what these are that would be excellent we'll do thank you so what I always let people know every opportunity I get I started this uh presentation by saying that we depend on our community members to make our school district run and the largest source of that revenue is local funds property taxes that's it if you look at the uh the revenue numbers that I just showed we get $260
175million in total revenue 139 million of it or 60% is from property taxes so we cannot function without property taxes we have some minimal income in cppt which is the replacement tax as you saw we're projecting that to stay flat in perpetuity we have some fees that we charge our students and we also sell foods but the big big Cuna of Revenue is from property taxes which is why it is imperative that we share this information with our community so they know that we depend on them in order for us to be successful that's a school district financially the next level of spend of Revenue is the uh State funding 38% uh 13 million the biggest chunk of that again is ebf then the the lowest amount is from the federal government which is even
176lower in fiscal year 25 because of the sunsetting of as and that is really from title fund Title One title two title three and uh Ida as well as uh money that we get flow through from the state from the national school launch program from the US Department of Agriculture so this is what I expenditure look like fiscal year 24 compared to 25 if you look at it the the biggest component the biggest increase and also the biggest component is salary I tell people all the time when the the people business the majority of the money we spend is on people we spend money on salary we spend money on on benefits that by in and of itself is close to 70% of our expenditure every day so a lot of time when I talk
177to people and people tell me why don't you just cut your budget if we cut our budget it's going to impact the classroom because that is where the money is people we have teachers who teach our kids we have administrators support those teachers in the school so we're in the people business so if you look at the $8.1 million and you go wow that's a big increase I want to point out a couple of variables that impact that one of them is Esser if you remember we have about $3 million in uh salary funding that we paid out of Esser that will now based on the directive from the board about the importance of those positions such as reading interventionist as well as Junior High Athletics we decid to continue to fund that through local
178funds that accounts for the the big chunk of that that couple with uh with Union agreement that we signed with Elijah Union oea and the other unions that we have that accounts for that 8.1 million so it's an increase of 5% which interestingly enough is in line with the CPI that we use for the for the levy which is 5% employee benefits related to the position 2.52 Delta $850,000 Dollar increase purchase Services a lot of time folks ask what is purchase Services it's really a fancy work to say services that we contract for Consulting Services those types of things will be uh the folks who we here earlier arac we pay them out of uh purchase Services we pay for uh Transportation Company the special air transportation company Durham septr we pay for them out
179of uh purchase Services we pay the light that stays on right now the utility companies that we pay for a light bill we pay for them out of purchase Services the heat that heats a building in the winter and the one uh that uh also cool a building in the summer we pay for that are purchase Services water that we the cost of water that we pay to the Village of oo we pay for that at our purchase Services supplies of material if you notice that that was a decrease of 11% is what is been projected and the way we were able to achieve that is the modified zerob based budget that we did this year so instead of just assuming we're going to increase the budget by 5% we had conversation with every single
180cost administrators and they had to justify why they requested what they requested and we were able to see that some of the expenditures that they are this year they will need it next year and that resulted in that 1.2 savings Capital outlay you can see a significant increase of 700% fiscal year 2024 this year we only budget 223,000 we know we have 25 facilities most of our buildings were built 20 years ago and that amount to about 10,000 a building you know in facility 10,000 doesn't do anything heck the $1.7 million that we budgeting out of local funds in fiscal year 25 is just is it's a tip of the iceberg we need our buildings need more which is why we budget it one close to $ 1.5 million can I ask you a question
181when we complete our master's facility plan will that number me more more realistic or not guessing so much uh uh yes so part of what the master facility plan would do is it would do it will include a bunch of things we will engage uh Educators we engage a community members we engage uh uh other stakeholders even the board members to look at what do we envision education looking like in our build in our in our district and then how does the building that we have now support the vision of what education looks like two years five years 10 years and 30 years from now and then it'll be used to determine what the master facility plan is once that is done then a cost will be put on it it will be based on
182today's dollars though and that would be a good Benchmark to start seeing how much we need to start fixing our buildings so it feels like we sometimes we're taking shots in the dark and that's not a not to be negative to anyone but we didn't have the tools in place to help us facilitate this number ab and we can look at 223,000 and no it's not enough for a district of our size so and 1.7 is not even close to it but that's all we can afford but we're going to spend more than that if you notice we're actually going to spend $8.7 million in total 1.7 is going to call from come from local funds the difference is going to come from the proceeds of the working cash bond that we sold back in
1832020 too that part of it is supposed to be used for facility upgrade so it would be the difference is that the other objects that you're that's on the next line yes and then no that that would be the Capal yeah exactly if I can go back so why is that how so if you if I go back here that is uh that's the 8.7 million oh yeah yeah yeah got it okay and I I just feel it necessary I know we're all exhausted I just feel it necessary to say how important this moment is because we have tried so hard can you just say it Lata you said we have tried so hard to be proactive in this District instead of reactive we have really pushed our admin hard to be proactive in the
184decisions that we made so we constantly aren't paying bad payday loans and so forth so this is such a Monumental like step forward once we have to budget again next year we can plug that number in and know we can't take away from this number because we're borrowing from the future and it that's a compound negative and so this is such a big big deal yes and and when we get to the I'm G to wait but when we get to the no Levy evf there's a piece that I want to add because I think it's very important for us to reflect on from a historical standpoint but I'll wait till you get there because I think it's a reason why admin was forced into being reactive no I I agree and I think but
185I'll wait till he gets there and if we can just put footnotes on these Pages for those numbers that's very helpful so the other objects are things like uh out of out of District student tuition and other of related expenses that's that's what that 8.8 things that doesn't fit into that categ but I just wanted to point out a big chunk of that is uh special education out of District tuition as well as offer AG payment that's what that's what drives a big chunk of that non- Capital Equipment is equipment that uh doesn't fall into Capital Outlet because of the value and the useful lives of those equipment that's what that is so the total operational uh budget compared to current year operational budget is an increase of 9.8 and and with a Delta of
1864.01 so I know we all learn differently some people look at numbers I think some of us we look at uh pictures and I thought we should do a donut that breaks down essentially what I just talked about as far as the revenue yeah so if you look at the revenue 54% as I mentioned earlier is from local funds property taxes and 34% is from uh ebf for State uh revenue and the rest are pretty pretty puny compared to the two of the major funds 3% that I mentioned earlier is the federal funds that we're getting and the same thing goes for the the expenditure as I said earlier we're in the people's business 54% is salary 14% is uh is uh benefit which is related to salary 68% of the total expenditure is tied
187to people and everything else is small compared to that so when we're saying we need to cut people it involves laying up folks we to cut the budget is this uh the 255 million or is this the this is 255 million we're focusing just on the upgate budget yeah the and I yeah I always uh purchase Services a lot of that would end up being salary and benefits if it wasn't for purch services so it's kind of I always add that into the salary and benefits for the most part because it's a lot of it is uh related to people that we would have to hire yeah so so just the picture I just showed this is a you know for folks who don't don't like pictures who like uh writing this is another will
188of putting that up 68% of uating dispensers are tied into salary and benefits the remaining amount 32% is for non-personnel I think purchase Services is a big chunk of that and I mentioned about contracted Food Services and utilities textbooks it's it's a big part of it equipment is computers and the software that we buy to run those computers and the software related to the presentation that was just given earlier for the uh for the uh everything American ASL yes yes thank you and then contractor Transportation special education durm as well as uh uh sepon and then uh some of that too uh the gas that we put in those buses are actually paid out of purchase Services too and then Property and Casualty Insurance a big chunk of the expenditure that we have we have
189to insure our property and then workers comp which is required by Statute is also paid out of workers comp for when our employees get hurt on the job that's the cost of uh of making them whole and also paying for the medical uh cost of them being hurt and then facility maintenance and repairs of the Consultants that we we uh we consult with who do uh the R2 R2 r2u unit that we putting in uh in plank will be paid out of the purchase Services too and then all the repairs that we have paid out of purchase services so these are the scenarios that uh one member pler asked me about so if we go back this is ebf been flat we get no increase in ebf in perpetuator for for the duration of the
190fiveyear projection so I'm going to go back to where we get uh the $4 million and you see we're going up nicely now this scenario where ABF is flat we got a bar off is is going down and uh by the uh fifth year we have a reserve of 23.7 instead of the 88 million look at how significance C be have it but it gets better wait wait wait like the commercial TV say if you look at the levy the levy is actually it has a more significant impact significant negative impact on us which is not surprising because the levy makes a more significant amount of our Revenue than even BF does so by the fifth year we're down to 15 million from the 12 from the 23 million of J CBF being flat so
191as a district we cannot afford not to Levy to the statutory limit that the lawmakers say we have to do that to have a viable school district and to ensure that our students have a a good educational experience and they achiev to potential and now this is the one I'm calling the Doomsday scenario which none of us want to wake up to here this is if there's no increase in ABF and CPI doesn't go up it stays flat if you look at that by 2027 essentially two years from fiscal year 25 we only have $15 million and then uh by 28 we have a negative of 10 8 and we you know we can't have a negative fund balance and by FY 29 we have a negative of 45 million now if we go down
192this path I can tell you for sure what will happen Illinois State Board of Education will come in they'll take us over and they will run the district and they will be the board uh the ISB will appoint the board and the state will run us it will show that we do not have the ability to be able to run ourselves that's what will happen if you go it's one of the reasons obviously I wanted I've always advocated for this because I'll be I'll be honest I'm I don't I wanted to call some board members out because I want to know why how they were advocating for this but beyond that I wanted the community people in the community to explain how they were advocating what they were advocating for but beyond that we actually
193have done this and I think it's important to note this was done so I hope people know this was done because when we didn't Levy the state was PR rating at the same time and for those that don't know what that means instead of funding at 100% the state was funding at like 91 92 93% the board that was in place at the time decided they were not going to Levy at the same time so when people were asking well how come we're having to make cuts for one two three three four years years in a row and how come we were having to make so many Cuts in the millions of dollars year after year we did the we did this the community did this and they didn't even realize it that they were
194doing it at the time they were not levying and the state was prating we've lived this all the pain that's that was felt over the last decade there it is it's right in front of you and for those people who want to be my quote unquote f club and take it nationwide which is fine with me pay attention because there it is you can criticize me all you want that's fine I don't care but look it's right there and we did it and that's like why I I I do care about the community I don't care if people think whatever they think about me but look it's right there please don't make this mistake again we have little kids who needed education we we we should all care about them yes I know some people
195get tired of me at nauseum talking about this but like I watched it all go down it wasn't fun and there it is and that's what we need to extrapolate out of this gener a generation to come back from that well I mean I think we are like listen in theory if the state functions properly and if we Levy we could be in some we could be in very good shape by 2029 right those are some what ifs those are some what ifs but it also can take one election and this is where the community has to pay attention it could also take one election where someone ignores that up there and we're we're right back under the bright lights doing some uncomfortable things give you just to to support what you just said the
196levy that we're getting an increase of close to S7 million this year for if we decide not to to Levy that $7 million what you do you essentially lose it forever yes you can't go back so 10 11 years from now my back of the envelope calculation shows that that $7 million becomes something like between 42 to $55 million correct that's lost for good correct now imagine if we have that money to to fix that fixing our building the way we need to fix our buildings now the compounding of that has been detrimental to this District I just appreciate having one chart in color that shows us exactly what can I mean that this is all that's needed right like this is what could happen if we don't do it well but beyond that it
197has happened like we have done it we were we were we were not levying while protion was going on right and while we had historical debt all at the same time like it's kind of crazy to say that out loud but that's exactly what we did as a community what did we we there was a calculation that was done we determined that where were we we did it it was about he's he's absolutely right 47 to 55 million million that we never got because of those decisions and we will never get it still impacts are ly to every year Forever on the next thank you m on the next chart on your frequently asked questions what are the benefit expenses expected in fiscal year 25 to 24 and they're going up 5 11% what is
198that uh it's the second column first question first question what was the increase from the amended operating budget to FY so that's the difference in FY 24 oppos FY 25 the opposite side what are the benefit oh that's the uh cost of the benefits so what happened we pulled out of being self-funded but we are and so we're saving no this is everything this is everything this will be retirement contribution RS imrf fer okay health insurance dental vision life insurance that's the that's all of that I and I I just want to say it's still that's a pretty good number so not horrible so after doing this presentation after uh developing this PowerPoint we thought about the questions that folks may have after looking at it and we develop an fq and that's what this
199is and uh and I always want to point out the last question what's the district total outstanding debt we still have uh close to $312 million outstanding from the 200 plus that we issued back in uh 2006 the critical thing folks need to to keep in mind is that issuing Bond taking out Bond dead is similar to a mortgage the first few years all you're paying his interest and then the next 10 years or so then you start tackling the uh the so by the we've been paying about $37 million for a while now then by the time we get to 2027 that amount drops to about 19 million and then it start dropping so that by the time we get to 2034 we have zero outstanding de that's great you know just the the
200general tenor or if you if you had to had a take away from the community engagement pieces because I'm I intended to to go but I ended up not being able to um what was the General theme what was kind of the you know folks were just they were they were really happy and content to have insight to our finances and uh they've never really um had an idea what a finance consisted of where our Revenue comes from what our expenses are that was the the feedback that I get just an opportunity to have an idea as to how we spend money where money comes from how we spend our money that's the theme that I I I received consistently the feedback that I got from folks who would attend thank you Mr Oba it's
201clear the the amount of work that went into this so thank you so much um for your Investments and nice nice to end it on a student with student voice so um next we want to invite um Michelle early who's going to speak regarding parent University um to see if the board has any questions you found in your president in your packet uh some information and Dr Waller will open for us hello okay oh it's in now okay good evening everyone very um thrilled to share with you a lot of information regarding the Ping University partnership um Michelle early has been leading Us in this endeavor we have had some pretty powerful experiences with collaborating with the chapter in Chicago with um collaborating with some folks in Savannah Georgia um but I won't speak too
202much Michelle early is the one who's very passionate about this amazing Comm Community opportunity good evening um thank you so much for letting me speak on behalf of the parent University partnership with sd308 um you all had a chance to review the memo that was um presented to you guys today but I just kind of want to reiterate the fact that a parent University is really our way to educate and Empower our parents our community members our Guardians to be those Partners Advocates and lifelong Learners who can support their children their child's academic Journey um are there any questions regarding the memo no questions are good question who do you who do we see this benefiting the most this definitely benefits our parents of our community um the purpose behind the parent University is it
203for is for it to be parent driven so it's a little bit different than when I used to support Community chats Community chats was more of me kind of throwing out a topic and then creating that safe space virtually this is actually going to be um parent Le so we're going to meet the parents where they are we're going to provide the parents are going to provide us with the topics and sessions that they want to to know more about that can be as simple as a mindfulness strategies to Art mute art therapy to FASA um mental health all the things that our kids go through throughout their Journey um so it's really getting that parent feedback and supporting them in this journey and how do they how do they take that lead how do
204they and I kind of already know some of these answers but I think it's really important how are we going to communicate and show them that this is available and help them kind of lifted off the ground yeah that's a really good question so within our superintendent advisory um group I was able to pull members to be part of a Community Partnership focus group um those individuals are really passionate about community outreach Community engagement so we have started the process of creating a survey that kind of identifies what is parent University why is it important why are we implementing this within our district and then kind of gave some guiding topics of what options could be available available to them um and then kind of left it open feedback for them to go ahead and
205respond to this survey so the survey that we created is going to be translated into Spanish um after this presentation or after this um discussion tonight I will work with our Communications Department that will be putting out a flyer for the community that talks a little bit about parent University um and kind of it's like a little teaser right like this is coming so keep an eye out um so we will definitely do that did I answer the question I just want to add that we also felt that it was important for us to collaborate with neighboring districts just as so we are hosting the first ones but they will be able to be guests um we recognize that between like Boulder Hill and a school in West aora is like 5 minutes apart um
206and so knowing that we we service Aurora we wanted to collaborate with West Aurora Easter wor so we're going to continue to build that but ultimately you know we know it's challenging at times to get families into spaces so we felt that if we were to expand this opportunity that we can continue to build and grow and learn you know more about what's needed as well as getting people in the space thank you Dr Waller and I think it's important to and I know you will work on this but there a lot of parents are stretched so thin I think during the community chats we learned about a lot and um how we get the resources in their hands and break through a lot of those barriers to getting them to um participate is going
207to be part of the chall so I think just no go ahead just your response to that I feel like the difference is when we hold these parent universities it'll be um on a weekend it'll be on a Saturday from 11: to 3: we are trying to remove as many barriers as possible so providing Child Care providing light Stacks um translation opportunities for our families eventually we will work up to that Transportation piece um and looking at if we can identify maybe two or three routes that families can get to um and then pick them up and drive them here another thing that would be a huge incentive is we're going to bring the Community Resources to the parent University so parents that might not know oh hey I need to know that are going
208to it's it's there for them so we're meeting them where they are we're providing them with what they may not know they need um until it's right there thank you both for your leadership I know it's required a lot of investment of time and learning and Gathering and so thank you and we're excited to see how this goes yes thank you so much you guys thank you for waiting all yep 9.8 I want to invite Miss doest and Dr Kade to speak to the Consolidated District program application you heard from Mr ofi earlier about Revenue during the uh budget presentation and this is part of that uh annually we submit the Consolidated District plan to the state and that is the first step uh in our applications for a lot of the federal grants just
209to recap uh some of the big federal grants the title one program is where we get funding for some of our schools with a higher percentage of students from lwi income families Title One Part A is school improvement from schools that are uh have an annual state designation title two is professional development title three is uh language instruction title four carries a lot but that's safety drug Health enrichment uh and then the Ida grants which are flow through for special education as well as our preschool for all this slide is just showing the amount of money that if we've gotten over the last few years uh from these this process and then these are the requirements of the Consolidated District plan we have to have an Evidence of coordination of Grants and services and I
210just wanted to throw out some kudos to Dr kgadi and the team uh for the eight priorities so that we could easily take through those and you saw in the memo that we had put together how the new Consolidated District plan aligns with the priorities uh we do uh conduct A needs assessment with staff that we had over 600 staff members uh complete and then we involve a lot of stakehold holders parents uh and administrators and teachers in this process we have to show alignment to our goals to the state uh and then we have to have assurances of sound auditing processes that go into this and then coordination with private schools and Foster Care do you have any questions about our plan okay thank you so much um 9 .9 operations project update Mr
211Queen good evening board so this is that time of year we're really busy and it's a lot of hurry up and wait just because we're waiting on two things uh the change of weather and school to get out right so uh I'd just like to start and touch on a few points I had my first roof construction meeting with Adler Roofing and things are going great there we are anticipating the start of that as soon as school lets out and tentatively we'll have that one wrapped up by the beginning of July end of June so we we're making our way there um plank rtu unit we're great like we got in there spring break we those guys knocked it out of the box for us they got all five units set minimal hiccups we even
212had rain in the forecast um I commend that team and mg uh mechanical they they they did a great job with getting that job brought into us and uh giving us a great jump on this summertime um move moving on I have a couple of other things we have on the agenda tonight for information um Boulder Towers 9.10 you want to just roll right into that one Dr 910 yes sir 9.10 so I want to give you a little bit background these these towers were originally installed in 1992 so we've used our life uh my team has fixed them and repaired them as much as they can just pause one second one second Mr Queen we just pause for a second just wait for one second getting my bid tib up there sir just give
213me one minute we're g one more person we'll pause for a momentary break okay continue all right oh we're waiting on Madam president not a problem not yet no you're fine you're fine so I I just wanted to give you a little bit of background on on the tower basins and what they are our systems are mostly generally a two two water pipe system right hot water to heat cold water to cool it and these towers assist us in cooling that once it gets back to our chillers for the building so it's just an added ex added extra cooling stage before we get to the building level um so and and like I stated before they they're very out of date 1992 is when they were originally installed and and we can't fix them no
214more and it's time for them to go um so it's Administration recommends uh commercial mechanical ink from Dunlop Illinois to be awarded the contract for B Hill Long Beach Towers in the sum of [Laughter] 421,500multifamily without without the the secretary we have to work on the length of the agenda here you come we need Quorum gentlemen we can't go on without you we we need to go to 10.1 now I went out the we l Jared I'm on 101 now you ready yeah man we missed yeah wow I'm impressed action item 10.1 approval of residency program can I have a motion please make a motion to approve the agreement for consulting services with national Center for Teacher residencies in the amount of $330,000 second Dr Mar hi mrone hi misson hi Mr Gatewood hi Miss
215joh ier hi uh motion passes 60 action item 10.2 approval of the Fox Chase and the Hunt Club concrete and asphalt payment Rehabilitation can I have a motion please make a motion to award the contract for the Fox Chase and Fox Chase and Hunt Club asphalt concrete Rehabilitation work to Geneva Construction for a total contract amount of 55 I'm sorry $554,000 second Dr Mario hi Miss Johnson hi Mr hi Mr C hi Mr gate hi Miss Simon hi motion passes 60 action item 10 point3 approval of the 2024 2025 board meeting calendar can I have a motion please make a motion to approve the 2024 25 Board of Education meeting calendar as discussed and presented second Dr marel hi Mr Cerone hi Miss Simon hi Mr Gatewood i m Johnson hi Mr I motion passes
21660 action item 10.4 approval of destruction of the audio recordings of the closed session meeting from April 25 2022 through September 26 2022 can I have a motion please Sor I make a motion to approve the destruction of the audio recordings of the closed session meetings from April 25th 2022 through September 26 second thought no it's the next okay Mr cherone hi Mr Gatewood hi Miss Johnson hi Mr no Dr Maria hi Miss Simon I motion passes 51 10.5 action item approval of the release of closed session minutes can I have a motion please make a motion to make available no closed session minutes at this time due to a determination that they require continued confidentiality second Dr Maria hi Mr Cerone hi Miss Simon I Mr Gatewood i m Johnson I Mr bler I
217motion passes 60 action item 10.6 approval of building administrator contract can I have a motion please I'll make a motion to approve the building administrator contract as presented second second Miss Simon I Mr s hi Mr poer hi Mr gatew I Dr Maria hi M Johnson I motion passes 60 action item 10.7 s approval of District administrator contracts can I have a motion please make a motion to approve the district administrator contracts as presented second Mr I Dr Mario hi Miss Simon hi Mr Cerone I Miss Johnson I Mr Gatewood I motion passes 60 action item 10.8 approval of District administrator contracts for 20124 2025 can I have a motion please I make a motion to approve the administrator contracts for 2024 25 as discussed in close session second second I I have a question
218um can we uh moving forward can we have a little bit of clarity on what these look like um from a perspective of experience education experience in the district and so forth to make sure that there's Equity built around these thank you thank you thought no I I maybe you guys have thought about that I just want to make sure that we have a upward trajectory for these goals and stuff like that okay thank you all right Miss Simon I Mr Sone hi Dr Mario hi Mr Gatewood hi M Johnson hi Mr hi motion passes 60 action item 10.9 approval of personnel report can I have a motion please I make a motion to approve the Personnel report as presented second Mr Cerone I Mr Gatewood i m Johnson I Mr hi Miss Simon hi
219Dr Mario hi motion passes 6 action item I mean I'm sorry 11.1 can I have a motion to adjourn I make a motion to adjourn second