SD308 Board of Education (2/26/2024)

001call please Mr seron here Mr Gatewood present M Johnson pres Dr Maria present Mr present Miss Simon present miss Ben present please student ambassador Luke please stand for the Pledge of Allegiance I pledge allegiance to flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands one nation under God indivisible with liberty and justice for all okay good evening everyone I am thrilled tonight to engage in our fall and winter athletic recognition I'm going to invite uh Teresa Kamas to to read out um some of the exciting acknowledgements but I do want to say that I'm so proud to be part of this community where our student athletes put their heart and soul into the Excellence of what it means to be on a team and in that recognition we'll now

002turn to Teresa we're going to invite all of you to join us in the middle okay okay good evening the board of education is proud to acknowledge the award-winning efforts of our students who have received State Andor National recognition for their school related and athletic related activities tonight we're going to recognize our 2324 asigo girls Co-op swim and dive team for their accomplishment of having achieved ihsa's combined state championship at this year's ihsa state swim and dive meet um this evening any students and coaches here this evening as you're called please come forward to be congratulated by the Board of Education and our superintendent Dr katti we'll ask that you hold Applause until all students have been recognized yes we'll invite everyone Chloe Diner Maya fenninger Addie Miller mateline Lisa Molly Gonzalez Katie gresk Katie

003M and this evening with us we have Lauren sidorski from us we go east she placed fifth in the 500 free and 11th in the 200 free relay and also here with us this evening um swim and dive coach uh Mr Bob sprunger and also coaching this year was Mr Ryan penine and Ariana trus and we will also invite forward our OE principal Mrs Laura Bowski um I don't believe Mr Grace if he's here this evening oh he's back there come on Chris Grace come on forward and we're also joined this evening with our athletic directors Tony and [Applause] Darren Tony and Darren you come up too congratulations everyone we're going to take a group photo congratulations thank you okay now we'll move to 5.1 public comment on behalf of the Board of Education I

004would like to thank the public for attending tonight's meeting we value the feedback we received from our residents and encourage everyone to take an active interest in their Public School System residents interested in speaking to the Board of Education this this evening are asked to have completed a comment card and presented it to the secretary to the board when the secretary calls your name I ask that you come to the microphone state your name for the public record and provide your feedback and order to hear from as many as possible comments are limited to three minutes per person comments should address the Board of Education as a whole and not be direct ired to an individual board member audience or staff member the board does not participate in discussion during public comment followup to your

005questions or concerns should be addressed by Administration through the contact information provided on the comment card thank you John McLure good evening everyone uh my name is sha McClair and uh I've been a resident here in Igo for about 23 years and the reason I'm here tonight is to uh hopefully get your guys' support on uh expanding the sporting uh programs here in iGo um my son is a 14-year-old getting ready to come to iggo high school and he plays lacrosse he started the sport when he was in kindergarten and uh myself and another father volunteered to help coach never playing lacrosse and uh over the years I got to know a lot about the sport it's a really exciting and upcoming sport here in North America it's an Olympic sport now and uh I

006think that as we look at our community there's a lot of sporting opportunities but there's also a lot of room for expansion and growth uh from a sporting uh event standpoint so I would ask that uh the board please consider looking at lacrosse for the next uh season because he will be going into high school and I would love nothing more than to wish or get him his wish and dream which is play High School lacrosse because unfortunately if we can't play lacrosse enough we go we do have to look at maybe going out outside the district and uh I would love nothing more than to get my son in that inaugural program and then I have a 10-year-old that will follow in his footsteps and uh the park district I think also is a

007good venue to help bring knowledge and interest in the sport for the community so thank you for your time thank you thank you Christopher Kennedy brought my wife to make sure she watches the clock for me uh well good evening my name is Christopher Kennedy we're new residents to the iGo sd308 School District really excited we moved from Carolina a few years ago we've got four children three in the district now one threatening to come in here in about a year and a half uh so we're very excited first part of my sentiments are to tell you all thank you uh from the new Resident perspective tremendous experience um at Prairie point and at trer uh actually I think every event I've gone to I've sought out at least an administrator to tell them how

008impressed I've been so it means a lot to us to to move and take that risk to leave Carolina where they're really well-known schools and so that was a question mark and we came in and so we're very proud to be here um but the other thing I really want to highlight is my career uh being in the healthcare Biotech Industry has a lot of similarities to education now it might not seem like that when we first think about it but we're all patients like every everyone in here with our shoes on we came in as patients you'll unfortunately probably leave as a patient and we were all students and most of the time what you remember unfortunately in healthcare was bad experiences and even sometimes in education it's an experience that held you back

009and I can recall a few different experiences myself and then there were the beautiful ones as well and so I kind of framed the discussion tonight around team and it was awesome to see these Champions that just got their photo taken because I I came here with my wife to invest in the community and to be a part of it and to recognize that we're all on that team now on a lot of teams you join and you say I want want to be on that team sometimes when you move to an area you forget hey we are all on this team and so I think it behooves us all to take the approach that I want to do something I want to be a part of it I talked to a gentleman from the

010healthc care side who started an organization 1987 when his son passed away and on his way out he was a young infant and he had primary immune deficiency and his quote was can you do something for me his wife just passed away after 30 years and they did something they brought cures to people all across the world and I talked to him to kind of give me the energy to land on my last minute here we're we're talking about lacrosse here you'll see some the lacrosse booster club but we're not really talking about lacrosse we're talking about a new opportunity and a case study of effort that you'll see on the little uh handouts that we sent around of the effort you can do when we engage private relationships and all the stakeholders that haven't

011had a knock on their door in a long time you'll see some logos on there um and but I I do want to pull everything together and just say this there's always meetings like this I serve on run a number of boards but behind closed doors and those Late Night Calls those are the ones that often times don't get don't get recognized for when things get done so I commend all of you for the work you're going to do after this meeting and I and I do ask that you lean on us not just for the cross still got 18 seconds but for any other activity because this lacrosse case study translates into the drama club the International Studies program and I think together with the energy of Dr katti and his tremendous staff that

012I've had the pleasure of meeting and Darren and team together we really can do something remarkable here and put our SW on the map as a [Laughter] leader the first I know Heen I'm going to set because I'd like to be on on the same level as you all so thank you for having me here I wanted to bring up some concerns that I've noticed over the last four years you might have known us for a trades booth that continues to serve Kendall in King County advocating for the travel trades and for visual canese Learners are who are helping build and restore your communities but the biggest concern that I've been hearing from students uh when we were visiting oehs earlier in 2023 was that our Building Trades classes they have to get bused to

013OHS and if their schedules do not line up they are not able to take some of those classes and I'm concerned because then I'm worrying that we're underserving some of our students who could be earning prevailing wages in that industry who are not getting the experience and the education that they need and also as a parent of four children in the asigo school district and of course being being a trades family we push the construction industry as well our son's CAD class is not going to happen next year there were not enough students to sign up to make the next level advance and so I'm constantly concerned we're we're marketing colleges you know we're marketing universities community colleges where are my union hall banners in the high schools where's the pipe fitters where's the local

01421 where's the electrical Union where's the carpentry Union if we want kids to get engaged in the construction industry which has a huge decline it starts at home with the parents and it starts in our schools they're not going to know that these opportunities exist if you guys don't Market it and if we're not marketing these electives and these classes students are not going to sign up because there's no engagement for it lastly what I wanted to bring up was a resolution I would love to bring up a resolution for you we have wonderful men and women who are serving District 308 within building operations imagine if you could take your deferred maintenance cost which obviously is a huge cost when it comes between state federal and local taxes right imagine creating a curriculum in

015a syllabus with a teacher and an instructor where we could teach kids to tucko our buildings wash our buildings them restore them learn a little bit about PVC work all these things are possible and we could decrease our liabilities with insurance because we're having it on the premise at our school and we would be creating opportunities on school grounds for me as a parent and as a business owner I would see it as a win-win because you could then reduce your deferred maintenance cost by possibly 25 to 30% maybe even 40 if you're really creative but I hope that we can continue the conversation to create new opportunities for students within District 308 thank you thank you Craig Kaufman hello hi all right hi Bor uh my name is Craig coffin asigo resident for the

016past seven years I believe seven or eight years moved into town and um I'm a part of the um lacrosse I guess booster club if you'll call us that so I just had a couple quick things um similar to what Sean said at the beginning my son began playing um at a very young age thanks to what I'll call some uh Lacross evangelist right other parents that were able to share their love for the sport and pass on the game that is pretty much a mystery to a lot of families and I think there's a lot of good things about it that um we're very grateful my son had found his passion but more than that it's just a sport that I feel like is a is kind of a Hidden Gem and be able

017to be one of the schools inside of the state of Illinois that offers that through the high school I think would be a huge perk as well as be beginning to start kids at a younger age and to create some sort of like a feeder program it's a very um familyfriendly inclusive sport that no matter your athletic ability I think there's all shapes and sizes there's um male female can all all play it so I wanted to to talk to that and just the fact that um it's very um parent driven so to my second Point um I know that the funding is kind of a big deal um we had Chris had handed out the sheet to you guys there there had been already discussions about how much funding is needed to start the

018program and I just wanted to speak to that as well I think that the numbers that that were initially discussed are a little bit High there's some grants available through USA lacrosse that will help offset some of the costs as well as um again giving Chris Kudos he's already started fundraising efforts and I think you'll see that that is very indicative of the parents that are involved and the families involved they're super passionate about it and they continue to contribute and find local businesses to contribute to kind of go with that sort of team attitude where it's not something that's going to fall on the district to fully fund the program um and then the last piece was the same same thing as like for my son coming into the 308 District at the high

019school level he played basketball in the junior high this is a sport that he he's very passionate about it if the only option for us until this discussion been put on the table was to look outside the district at like a private high school and so up until this discussion that has been where we looked at Ben in academy or Weeden Academy some of these other school tools at offer lacrosse so to be able to have it um in our own backyard it's a huge blessing so it really um just encourage you guys to consider moving forward with it thank you thank you Michelle Trager hi Michelle trer four kids in the district I want to talk about every single thing on the agenda tonight um as you discuss adding more Sports please realize that

020this is the second year that plank Junior High has not had any theater Productions while the other four Junior highs have can you imagine if this were the second year that plank didn't have any sports while the other four Junior highs did so I want to thank Chris for also mentioning those other things um there may be something in the works now with the ASO Park District theater Community uh company through their generosity and that that's because same here the parents are the ones who spearheaded that but we could really use some District support you're going to be talking about facilities tonight Boulder Hill please broken playground equipment broken air conditioning last week it was a foul smell in the gym and for months there have been ants some of which are reported to fly

021um you're going to hear an El report we have momentum in the Dual language program one concern is that an assistant superintendent who's been helping to that is retiring and we want our el director to have that continued support from Dak especially as we expand the elementary but because just now we're getting into how to improve the Junior High um everything we've done so far this year for junior high has just been to bring us up to the bare minimum we're not even into the Improvement of that program yet um you're also going to hear about Recruitment and Retention tonight I it was really cool to read that I'm excited to hear that present presentation tonight it looks good reading through it um but please don't forget the resource of parents especially in our DL

022Community some of whom had professions in their countries of origin and they may not need that much training to become bilingual Tas or even teachers um to take it back to the junior high we haven't filled a position of el coordinator there I think we have a couple teachers who are qualified for that so are we doing everything possible to make that position attractive to our own staff and then lastly I know last um meeting there there was a special ed report part of that report was talking about how in the really young grades in kindergartens we're seeing um some some frequent and extreme behaviors um and I know there was some talk about oh that's because those kids didn't have socialization during the pandemic but I I want to look at that logically that

023made sense for our kindergarteners two years ago when my daughter was in kindergarten because at as threes and fours in preschool they were home so they didn't know how to take turns wait in line follow routines that's the socialization but when we're seeing students being physically aggressive to their classmates to their teachers ripping up the classroom that's more than socialization and when one and two year olds are socializing they're mostly at home unless they're at daycare so they are socializing with their families anyway their families though during the pandemic it's been shown many parents have been going through depression and anxiety and it hasn't gone away and I think that's where we need to look get when we're trying to help these kids with their behaviors and as you know of course one of the

024board members said we're just seeing the tip of the iceberg with the pandemic and you know I'm always talking about how alcohol consumption increased during the pandemic and that half of our pregnancies are unplanned so we're just now going to see those students start to come into our early childhood programs so I covered a lot and I hope you'll consider it all thank you thank you thank you David Julian hi I'm David Julian uh asgo resident uh been here for eight years going on nine I have two kids now I'm going to preface this by the other dad coach that Sean said he met when his kid was six and the other guy's kid was five that was me Craig coff and start talked about uh his kid starting when he was little at the

025club the other dad on the sideline next to him that was me I want to talk a little bit about lacrosse I'm not going to tell you anything that you haven't heard already what I want to speak to is the opportunity to build a team and build a culture in the high schools now I mentioned I have two kids my son is in seventh grade at trer my daughter's in sixth grade at trer I have no horse in this race as of today I'm looking further down the road for it to be an opportunity for my kids to continue what they feel is their dream my son's dream is to go away and play at Notre Dame or Duke or Virginia or Maryland or North Carolina those are the Blue Bloods of college lacrosse my

026take is hey why don't you go to Lewis right it's right here great school great education ultimately it's going to be his choice my job as his father is to help facilitate what he wants to do and paint well yes absolutely put a lot of miles on the car as I mentioned I'm in a bit of a unique position because I'm able to take what happens here whether there's a lacrosse program or not a lacrosse program and make make our own decisions as a family as to whether or not my kids are going to go to school in the district or we have to seek things Elsewhere for my daughter who is also a cheerleader ASO High School makes perfect sense however she can't continue to play lacrosse my son only wants to play lacrosse

027played hockey played football wants to play lacrosse plays at the very highest level nationally in the country right now as a 7th grader in the state of Illinois and I will say this on record Craig Kaufman has an eighth grade boy in Illinois who's probably one of the best lacrosse players in the state of Illinois for his age my son at his position is the best player in the state of Illinois we have some really great athletes and students right 4.0 and students that are coming out of Illinois Craig and I a year ago had the opportunity for our sons to represent the US on a team for the Indoor national championships they played for the East Coast uh version of of Team USA not only did our Illinois student athletes stand out but they

028excelled with kids who were born with lacrosse sticks in their hands the opportunity here is to help to build a team unify two schools together and build a culture based on building great young men and women in our community I hope you will consider it moving forward thank you thank you okay so this evening I'm thrilled to welcome we've got members of our team I'm going to invite uh Miss Faith delist to open up on this presentation around some of the most important work happening in our district around um our English language Learners direct okay good evening Rene Sor director of English Learners great to see you tonight so tonight we're going to be talking talking about uh multilingual learner programs for the coming year our presentation we're going to provide updates to some of

029the enhancements that we're making in our programs but I wanted to start first by publicly thanking a couple of people who have really helped through this process but as you'll see the feedback and input of many partners has helped with this but I would like to thank first eron gleon who is our language acquisition instructional coach prek um without her Insight on everything elel and her deep historical knowledge of the programs in our district uh this wouldn't have been possible also I want to thank another thought partner who has helped me through this uh fa dalquist right here so her uh experience of both Global and detailed work in a districtwide system has been invaluable so I want to thank them both so can you do that okay so the guiding principles that have guided

030our programs has been first to promote inclusion and Equity within our Continuum of services that we offer for our multilingual students we also want to Foster bilingualism biliteracy multiculturalism through programs such as dual language and the Seal of biliteracy and we also want to actively involve parents and the community in their students education I'm going to start by talking just briefly about the different types of programs we have um Early Childhood has uh different offerings both uh bilingual and English for students uh every school in the district has English as a second language ESL resource that's where a teacher will push in or pull out small groups of students usually to help them with their language proficiency the next highest level is shelter English instruction this is where students who are English Learners are in

031a self-contained classroom with a teacher who has her certification in English language Learners and they study all together it's all in English but they learn all of their core subject areas with that lens of the increased in language proficiency and then the lastly we have our dual language program this program helps to build students bilingualism the classroom is made up of both students of Spanish Heritage language and also students of that you know come from just monolingual English families and both groups of students are in the classrooms together learning Spanish and English up through their 8th grade this uh slide just shows what happens at the secondary level uh dual language continues at the junior high at plank sheltered English continues at Junior High at Murphy and then the high high schools both offer a

032mix of sheltered and co-taught classes for our English Learners in our district we have over 75 uh languages that are spoken here uh the number keeps expanding and differentiating every year as you can see though Spanish is by far the largest group of uh languages that we have here and that's what allows us to offer dual language in Spanish because of the number of Spanish speakers we have in the district this graph shows that over the last 5 years the population of English learner students has grown about 800 students in The Last 5 Years so that we now make up about 133% of our district if we look at how many students that are still in our district were formerly English learner students and that have since exited based on the exiting criteria we're looking

033at 22% of the the students in our district as you can see we are just growing and growing so we really needed to look at space concerns and we knew this uh last year uh so we got together a group of Administrators we had Transportation there we had Finance we had special education all of these to address this um need that we knew was coming uh for space concerns so some of the things that we really wanted to look at at is we wanted to minimize the impact of moving students if they've already started at a school we wanted to prioritize keeping them at that school we also wanted to maximize if we could student attendance at their home school so that they're also going to school with their neighbors and the people that they

034see uh out on the playground uh and then we also wanted to make sure that we could have enough room that we weren't just making a solution that would be good for one or two years so we looked at all kinds of things demographer reports we looked at bus routes um we looked at languages uh if you went to my office right now you'd still see this uh great big map with all this information and we had many many people in many eyes uh and what we determined uh is that there is a great increase of new English Learners around Grand Park and the wheatlands and we see that Trend continuing while it's diminishing around Old Post we also knew that we had dual language space concerns uh that there is not enough space to

035keep going as is at Boulder Hill so we wanted to get together and we made many solutions talk through many different groups I'm going to turn it back to Renee to talk about SEI so where we focused our our efforts were where we saw the largest increase in English language Learners which we saw at the area of the wheatlands and Grand Park year after year the students kept the student numbers kept growing there so in 2425 so next school year we're looking at having kindergardeners and first graders who would qualify for the sheltered English instruction program go to Grand Park or the Wheatland based on their uh what their home school is and we're thinking of having two kindergart two sections at each School of kindergarten and a first grade the reason we're starting with

036a kindergarten first grade is we would prefer to have not just one single teacher there as the sole teacher of sheltered English that way they could have someone with whom to collaborate uh what we have now is there are eight current students that are in Old poost our current sheltered English site those students were offering for them to go to one of the two sites depending on their homeschool location this here is an outline that shows the feeder patterns for the the students from the various schools where they would be attending right I'm going to talk a little bit about what we did with uh dual language dual language is a really exciting uh program here we were one of the first districts to offer this and we want to continue with that and when

037we looked at all of the different options where we went was starting a third dual language site and we'll start it just with the younger students first uh and then be able to grow that so when you look at the new feeder patterns that was where the old schools were what schools attended if they were interested in dual language and then on the right you see the new pattern uh this is another chart that just shows the same thing unless you like charts okay so in November we had our first English learner Forum so here we invited parents to come and discuss at tables what they felt were opportunities challenges good points about our different programs we took a lot of feedback from that meeting from that meeting we also uh Garner garnered interest for

038having a district dual language committee so this committee has been meeting monthly since January uh in this school we've in this District we've been addressing different issues that the parents have brought forth and not just the parents but all the dist the committee members which is addressing the transition from elementary to Junior High identifying future topics such as gifted education within the Dual language program professional development and assessment of students and in this committee we've had representation from Dual language teachers of every school uh dual language administrators of Elementary and Junior High we've also had uh members of the bilingual parent advisory committee we've had Parents of both English Learners in the Dual language program and students who were who were not English Learners in the program and we've also had instructional coaches in the

039schools where dual languages on this committee from this committee I was able to Garner some uh testimonials from some of the members and I really like uh I I like the last one actually uh the most which says for my students for my own children it has built a sense of belonging I think this is the foundation of dual language and why it's so important to keep this as a program here and help it grow and help our families feel part of the community now our continuing work in this will be to we are in the process of informing the kindergarten students about the various programs and the changes that are happening we've been doing this through our uh kindergarten registration and then we'll be emailing specific parents at the schools that are you know

040most affected by the changes we're collaborating with other depend uh departments around the professional development plan for staff and administrators uh we've been meeting with the Dual language committee we're working with supporting our bilingual parent advisory committee and we're going to continue to analyze our access scores and other data points to evaluate how our progress is going uh just one more thing that we had uh talked about at the Dual language committee is the importance as we create a third site to have continuity between the different teams one of the great things that is now a part of our new contract is time for Teacher teams to get together uh and this can be across different schools it'll be really important as we expand that we have kindergarten teachers of dual language from the three

041different schools get together uh and be able to coordinate and talk with that and then also next year we will have the opportunity to have full day school Improvement days so there will be time to travel get together and see people face to face as well and I'd also like to add that in preparing these new school sites we're already in the works for let's say for wolf's Crossing where there's dual language we're going to be um offering what is an effective dual language program to all of their school staff and when I say School staff we're talking about all of the staff office staff nurses teaching staff Tas you know special education teachers that are there also what is dual language and how does your role support this you know to uh lunch and

042recess staff and custodians we want the whole school to embrace and understand the program that that they'll be getting also how to make a welcoming School for students and families and then we want to offer site VIs visits for the admin and teachers of that program to visit the sites where it currently is housed we also have already had the administrators uh participate in webinar webinars on Dual language so they're already starting that process and garnering what questions they might have to help us F further along their understanding of the program likewise for the sheltered English and program we're going to be talking to the staff admin office staff teaching staff what is an effective SEI program you know SEI sheltered English you know how does your role support the sheltered English program how do

043you welcome students and families into your school when you have this program and also offering to them to go visit the current site of sheltered English to see for themselves so those are a lot of the things that we have in the plan while working towards this this process so do you have any additional questions or well I I I appreciate the work that was that's been done um we definitely had to to make some facilities changes and um make some improvements and I'm appreciative of all the thought there um just quick testimonial um my kids went through dual language they're basically straight A students um it it just language second language acquisition just helps your helps your mind develop um there's more connections there um so uh if you have an incoming kindergartener um

044please uh you know consider the Dual language program uh if I wish I could speak Spanish um but if you're um uh if you're a Spanish speaking family and your student uh is coming into the district please uh it's a default program please accept that um and your students will be better off I wanted to go to uh slide seven um basically it just gives the numbers and this is so one of the things that I I've said is is so 22% of our students have either been are either currently considered English Learners basically once they pass a test they're no longer English Learners so it's it's it's hard to analyze and you have to be very diligent in analyzing how they're longitudinal um uh performances but when 22% of your district is uh English

045Learners how our English Learners perform is critical significant y so we have to make sure that we're um um it's it's has to be a priority so I I again thank you I just wanted the community to kind of see one out of five children um and it's growing I think that one of the one of the this was so that 30% number I think that you had mentioned that it was 25% for kindergarten this year that was um this school year 23 24 the entering kindergarten class of nearly a th students 25% of them were English Learners so that's so if it's 25% again next year so that 13% is oh it's just this is a huge number um and it's going to just continue to grow so um I had a couple questions

046but you all answered them in your presentation so thank you so much for that I wanted so I'm just going to offer an encouragement in regards to the collaboration piece um you know when you have programs that are kind of spread out between schools and stuff it's harder to connect with another second grade teacher that's doing the same thing or a fourth grade teacher um and I know that we have some plans for that it sounds like um I think I would be supportive of even more planning around collaboration for our dual language teachers considering you know some of the stuff you want to that's on your list your to-do list uh that that would you know to even go beyond kind of what is in the contract or maybe even the things you're currently

047planning and I know that know that we have uh or we will soon have um an adopted uh Ela curriculum and so I'm hoping that that will also be time uh for them to you know collaborate on on some of those pieces as well so um thank you for that thank you go ahead yeah I was going to make sure Jared had a chance too do you want to go ahead yeah um I just first of all want to say I fully 100% support this program I do want to however be cautious and really sometimes we have to go slow to go fast the increase is fantastic we know we need it we know to Dominic point it increases cognitive dexterity problem solving skills brain density having a second language also is being shown to

048help uh ward off Alzheimer's so we know this is critically important right we really need to work and be better at an authen authentic immersive exper instructional exper experience I think that we have obviously had a lot of challenges this year and the last couple of years what I really would love to see is some of these check-ins um for the board so you know what what support can we give how can we help um and then uh I want to just talk about the question that I get from a lot of parents I completely regret not putting my son in this because we live in Hunt Club um but one of the questions you hear a lot is what if my kid can't keep up what if my student can't keep up I know

049that's a lot of times um the question that parents bring to me and I'm probably not the best at answering that um but can you from your perspective kind of I think there's a variety of avenues here but it is scary going into it and you know what is this going to hold my student back is this going to hurt them it is going to be tough at the beginning but can you just talk a little bit about that those first steps and how we support families and students I'm sorry I'm really focused on the DL part of this sorry um so that parents that are out there making those decisions literally right now um feel comfortable making taking that step so sure so when incoming kindergarten parents are considering this we hold meetings that

050we tell them they have to attend or you know watch a presentation so that they understand that yes at the beginning if you don't speak Spanish at home it is it's part of a natural process that your child will be challenged so a lot of you know students can show um fatigue things like that but once they work through that they will you know that they will just Blossom now also it takes several years to acquire high levels of language acquisition so while students while young students they say are sponges actually they are very well equipped to learn a you know how accents and how to talk and to understand and glean meaning from actions just like a little baby when they're born you don't give them a dictionary to teach them how to speak

051your native language it's through you know actions and visuals and working things out together and discussions and a lot of language so it's similar to learning your first language how a student would learn a second language and the teachers in the classroom room they're trained in you know providing that type of instruction um let's see what other question did you have that that was really you answer it very well and I think there also is I I think you fail if you don't try it is okay to say this program doesn't work for us and we have had students you know go back into their you know General Ed classrooms and and that's okay too but don't I think don't if you if that's your fear at least try you know and and take that

052leap so thank you very much thank you so okay so some of the challenges that we've heard about our in regards in regards to Quality Staffing or Staffing in general and now we're going to an expansion and so I just want to know how are we handling those challenges Dr we do you want to I I yeah yes I that just itself to our next presentation of which I've been working together with the human resources staff on how to bridge that and and to build up our staff capacity in that respect so I'm excited if you just hold on you'll hear from them okay we have some great mentors for for our e programs that's for sure so Jared would you like to ask any questions yeah just real quick um you can hear me

053correct yes yes okay so I just wanted to make sure the historical piece to back up what Dom said you know back in 2015 when I first ran for the board I think our population was about half what it was and the argument was about whether this was going to increase and so I I you know it's ironic just this weekend a parent sent me a message just to kind of remind me of where we were uh at this point almost 10 years ago compared to now uh and the timing it was not lost on me the irony um but as you know I'm always kind of a long-term big picture and I know this might go into the next presentation which is fine but I am curious um you know uh at the point

054that we have three Elementary sites at what point do we need to start having a conversation about uh middle school and what that looks like yes I know I said Middle School uh what that looks like um and what our needs are going to uh mean from uh the facility piece that I I'm not expecting like an answer right this second but it's something that I want in our mind because uh while while it may be fine now when um if once wolf crossing those those kindergarteners are fifth graders I I'm curious about what that conversation is going to look like do you want to come back to that or faith do you wantan to sure so we did look at projections and obviously the the younger students kind in first grade is where we

055see that really growth So eventually that may need to be looked at but for right now even the next few years we don't see needing expanding to a different Junior High site or expanding it past that we will keep looking at that um but right now that's not an immediate in the next two three years I I'd love to see uh um EC uh DL since we're going the uh vertical uh line here so I just want to thank your team I know that it's been a lot of pivoting this year and starting to really pay attention to just what the voices are in the community and really increasing that engagement significantly and so I just want to say that that that is not always easy and especially when we have such care and commitment

056to these programs um your your efforts have been recognized for really taking it in and being willing to listen to hear to to to change to grow and those aren't always easy so I just want to thank you for your courage and perseverance thank you if I could say one more thing I just looked at my notes can we please put some data and financial analysis around our district program versus how many languages and kind of dle on in the general public can we look at our access data and start to um we've kind of asked for this in the past and I think it would be very helpful I think sometimes people question the um success of the program and then you know some of it leads to a seal of by literacy and

057so forth so if we could start to connect those dots I think that would be very very helpful that's a very good point just just because we talked just because that came up um this is again where that former eel and this is you know looking at the longitudinal data yes um the point in time so I I I had a discussion recently with with with somebody I'm not going to but basically once you break out the El versus nonel it it kind of enlightens you um as to because basically as soon as the child knows enough English they are not considered El anymore so the El numbers it's that's tough to yeah you got to look at former e if that makes sense yeah so makes sense okay than thank you both thank you

058thank [Applause] you we have this crowd every week so uh yes we appreciate the the everybody coming out this evening so next we have our annual report on facilities by Mr Queen and I'm going to invite Mr obafemi to open hello everyone uh it's that time of the year where we asked to provide an annual fac faity update and this is uh my first year working with Mr quain and I will say to dat I've been very impressed with the work of our facility team and we've decided this would be a good opportunity to showcase the hard work now Mr Queen and his very able dedicated team I've been doing and taking care of uh really large facilities come on the front y' come on in [Applause] I've asked Mr Quinn to uh to invite

059the Tim member here because I think it's easy to get carried away and say Mr Queen is a oneman band it's a very large team a very head uh dedicated hardworking group that keeps our facility running every day starting from the time the kids walk in they make it look clean fresh health and safe and I think this would be an opportunity for the community to get an idea of how much work goes into keeping our facility humming I'll pass it over to Mr Quinn thank you sir so as we get started here tonight um I would like to extend a a thank you to Brian zeny and his HR team um and I'm proud to say since 2019 we are fully staffed K through 8 so awesome job Dr Z Sarah La in the

060back she done a lot of hard work um and keep on coming out every first Saturday of the month 10 to 10 to one o'clock come and check out uh sd308 if you were looking for a job is this a new initiative you started it is it is this is something that uh Dr zimsky and I have been working on to get going and we've got it polished up and we're bringing the people in and we want to keep that going so thank you all right so we're provided or required to provide an annual report to the Board of Education here you will get an oversight of what our staff does day in and day out every day inside and outside of the buildings this is amazing right change so as you're looking at those

061two guys up there smiling those two young fellas I want you to keep in mind change change has put us in a position to no longer work reactive moving forward we've we've adopted a proactive approach our mission statement is easy our mission is to keep kids safe and a hang on our mission is simple is to provide a safe healthy work environment for the students the staff and the community our strategic goals are a key component to the work we do every day in these buildings outside of these buildings our strategic goal is in line with our mission to provide that safe and healthy place for this staff community and students 562 Acres stretches over Three Counties 65 square miles 27 buildings approximately three 3.4 million square ft under roof housing three over 3,000 employees

0627 largest District in the state and we manage this with 171 District employees and and one director and one director out of those 171 we have 117 custodians 22 building engineers 15 techs eight grounds Keepers three District drivers with one's job is solely to deliver the inter office mail and copy center every day you have members of that team here with you this evening as well right excuse me you have members of the team here with you as well I do I have a band of members with me from operations custodial maintenance groundskeepers we've got them all they're here to help help make discharge so did you know did you know we had over a th000 deliveries over a th000 yards of mulch spread over 1,182 mulch beds if you think about that conze to

063your house that's that's huge right with over 2500 bushes 1,00 trees and and this one on a light in last year we we spent over 166 tons of salt in those 4.2 million square feet of parking lot that's a lot that is a lot I IQ reports is the place and the platform that we track and um keep track of our work orders and school dos as they come in this totally speaks to the dedication and the work that these people put in day in and day out with the completed ticket ratio of 89% um we're we're averaging about 7 to 10 day turnaround from the time they're submitted until they're completed which is phenomenal from this group so that that just that little portion in there is what you're looking at is open-ended tickets

064or waiting on parts very minimal work these people are knocking and out of the park every day great we were budgeted with 7.3 3 million we've expended 5.6 most of that money comes from our local taxing body and property tax we're getting about 37% from State about 5% Federal dive down to that lower pie chart you can see what we're spending in supplies these things are from custodial chemicals to that mulch that 166 tons of salt things of that nature that we need to to keep this District running every day purchase Services those can range from anywhere from nikore ComEd these are the things that we uh reach out on to when we don't have that extra need from our maintenance tax to buy parts and and things of that nature our salaries with 14%

065leaving us with 1.8% in capital wanted to share with you a timeline on what it takes to get the progress from a for a job from paper to shovel in the ground we have a lot a lot of interaction a lot of communication and and three to four conversations with the Board of Education before any job is ever approved I'm very proud of this thank you Miss Johnson we live this every day in FFC correct yeah the finance committee we hear it uh I'm like is this new and then no we're just hearing about it more you're just hearing about it more yeah so this work chart does not convey the true dedication and the work that my people do day in and day out with this $3.4 million or 3.4 million foot of of

066buildings and 564 Acres it's it's phenomenal to what these people put in day in and day out their dedication we spend time away from our families long weekends long long nights holidays it's a true dedication and what this staff does day in and day out to make make the district sd308 run and I couldn't be be more proud or honored and privileged to run you folks it's been a privilege and I'm ready to take them to the next level sd38 thank you thank you Mr [Applause] Queen thank you Mr Queen I just want to say again these are my heroes these guys in this room they really are my heroes don't leave cuz we want a pi because they do they do their work quietly and they don't they don't make any fuss but we

067need them in order for us to be able to educate our children and a lot of time we don't see them they don't ask for a lot but they do a lot for us and I tell them every opportunity I get that you are my hero and I appreciate everything that you do every day thank you thank you sir yeah Mr que and they clean up after our students as well which sometimes are not the most right um clean um but I just want to say two things I'm incredibly first of all incredibly proud of this um Raphael Bill and Amanda um I know she's on the finance side but she is a great partner um you the three of you have an incredible Synergy and have absolutely turned around um some things that um

068were really concerning I think to myself and some other board members so Kudos um I'm very very proud of the work that's being done and I've um I just want to say it's something that I know that myself and other board members have been working for many many years to bring to the Forefront and to show um the community that there is transparency we just didn't have the processes and the procedures in place and you've put them there so thank you very much for your diligence it shows this is incredibly um powerful and we know there's a whole team behind all of you and we're incredibly grateful they really are the like backbone of our school system so thank you thank you and and it's not lost on me that when everyone else is at

069home because there's a snow day or one of those other days you guys are here we're here we're here at 2:00 in the morning yep y you're here till that snow's gone right so we we're enjoying something because of you all and your work that you're doing behind the scenes so we appreciate that I'm sure um Mr Queen has there might be more questions I'm wondering if we can just get a quick picture of you with your team who joined you this evening Absolut think that seems important so please wher they oh wow Raphael get in there and the amazing Don Ceno joining that group the food okay we switch to the first slide switch to the first slide yep I'm going Teresa there you go Teresa you yeah we'll do one with the board

070after rapael you look proud I like it okay stay there stay there wait are there any more questions for Mr Queen any more questions Jared anything no no okay thank you thank y thank you all right strategic Road M so this evening you're going to hear really I would say a lot about the Bedrock the beginning Bedrock of this work that's been happening how does all of this come together and really the board's Direction was really at the foundation of the shifts you're seeing even the presentations and the the way in which we are looking to shift both the substantive but also the the framework for which we approach things so I've invited uh Dr K to speak on behalf of really the cabinet and the work that's been happening across the system to start

071to think about how we are moving and changing things and really what we're calling our strategic road map to really next phase of a strategic plan so Dr King K thank you good evening um so what I'd really like to talk about is beginning our road forward so as Dr katti mentioned we're really establishing that strategic road map focused on our mission and vision of empowering supporting and motivating all of our students through the foundation of our six core values of Integrity collaboration humanization dignity and empathy and courtesy we really took a look at the feedback of um through our surveys with our community our parents our staff our students um through our superintendent Advisory Group our uh superintendent student advisory Council our teachers staff Union admin both our building and our district um our

072collaborative partners that were mentioned this evening around dual language um our partnership with an's coming Hogans so with these various groups um we're going to continue to seek engagement as we prepare the system for a strategic plan we want to take the next um couple months to really focus on coherence community and building trust really Paving that road forward so through the work thus far and based on the feedback what we have come to is eight main priority areas through this establishment of the priority areas we're going to take some time tonight to focus on priority area one we will come back um at our next full board meeting on the 18th with a much stronger comprehensive group um from all of these areas so tonight our focal point is the organizational health and systems

073coherence as Dr kelti mentioned is really the foundation um to our pathway forward we are seeking part of this board and if you go back to that for a second is an opportunity to hear this evening some of the the structure by which we're thinking about these priorities and really to get your feedback um either both this evening but in the days to come as you reflect back on this around our priorities so right now what we have looked at in terms of our strategic road map is the building blocks of establishing a goal so really looking at the why um through our rationale of improvement around each of our eight priority levels then focusing on the what so what success indicators and strategies aligned to those goals of the priority areas how are we

074going to accomplish that so what is our action plan and then when our specific timelines and objectives so our first goal for our organizational health and systems coherence really focuses on the foundation building Partnerships networks of collaboration for all levels our district our school and our grade or course team levels in terms of the rationale we really you know this is the why behind why we think that this is important first of all it impact the impact of our collaborative partnership impacts our student achievement our teachers efficacy and more most importantly our school culture and climate it's imperative as we've seen and we've heard that there is strong alignment with our district leadership for a common Vision we want strong communication of that vision and Leadership along with that alignment of our district procedures our

075policies our practices so taking a deep dive into how our priorities impact not only our district level but also our schools and then most importantly and we've talked about this um in the past is really building out those robust Data Systems so how are we using data input and feedback to drive continuous Improvement so for our organizational health and systems coherence we really want to ensure that our success indicators focus on communication deliverables Clarity coherence collaboration through the use of student data and our climate survey so we want both the academic social emotional mental health and well-being of our students and our staff through our strategies we want a strong focus on collaborative Partnerships as Faith mentioned earlier this evening um we as we transition into next year we have the opportunity to really um

076focus on teacher collaboration time we're focusing on strong union Partnerships um the training and support of both our building and District administration and teams reestablishing that robust Information Systems we're looking at um and will be coming um in the next few weeks with a aligned Staffing plan um at both the district and District excuse me district and school level and then as we heard at our last meeting and and tonight some very strategic goals in the area of special education and multilingual our English Learners so through this uh priority area we have some def defined action steps with timelines so in terms of the next few months so the remainder of the year for this priority level um we're focusing on a redesigned organizational chart at the district level we're finalizing all eight of our

077district priorities um including the areas that we've looked at tonight we're diving into developing those meeting structures so how are we providing concrete and effective collaborative structures again both at the district and school levels um working with our schools in our district Department um we will have a comprehensive Staffing plan for the 24 25 school year um we are starting work um through ANS cumin bogans with um oea on a special education study committee and then we are assessing our support structures for our principles so that's our foundational work um around this priority for the remainder of the year as I mentioned um on March 18th for our next meeting we will be bringing um the focus of our strategic road map so our goals rational from Improvement success indicators strategies action plan and timelines

078for all remaining seven priority areas so at this time as Dr katti mentioned um we're really looking for some feedback you know what would you like some um additional information are there any questions um about kind of the the pathway forward I have one question about the timeline piece when just about the how you're organizing it I see for example today that you've presented through May m um when do you have like a next year plan or when is that like what is the cycle for like developing the next stage the entire cycle for what we're considering the road map um is in essence the next 18 months so our goal is to be on a path to have a strategic plan for the start of um the 25 26 school year that would go

079through the school year well would would would start now go through the school year so this will start now and go throughout the next school year so by the end of the of the 2425 school year we would have a robust strategic plan so we really wanted to take the time to establish not only the Foundation but to seek um feedback from not only our students our staff but our community um as many of you know there's work already being done through our superintendent Advisory Group um on our portrait of a learner which we will extend to our portrait of uh uh staff member building system yes so we're really taking the time to do comprehensive and um Collective uh efficacy not only on what's important to our system but then communication throughout our system

080so you know as everybody uses a phrase go slow to go fast we have to establish clear systems communication expectations so we really we we don't want the work to stop so that's why we're using this transition time kind of as our road map which we will have some very clear um actions and deliverables so we can monitor progress throughout uh building a just a strong comprehensive plan by the end of next year I think it it's even fair to say that when the board met with Dr katti we even he was had even very aggressive plans and we even said okay let's just go a little bit slower a little bit slower just because we want him to be able to have a full year under his um leaders ship here um because every

081day is is a new learning experience thank you so um we want to get this right and I think we're still also coming out of that covid fog and seeing where where that has um taken our students and our staff and I think that will be very helpful too to be able to incorporate all of that into um what that plan looks like in the future is there any rationale or any um explanation of how the priorities are listed yep actually we had some conversation about that um where Priority One was really establishing our foundation then we were moving into um systems around our students and our schools and then our organization including our staff and community so we really kind of did a a bottom up to be comprehensive from the student to the

082staff to our community level but um at our next meeting we will have information related to 2 through eight so we'll bring that all at one time thank you okay okay thank you Dr K I'm sure there'll be continued comments but I want to just thank the teams who've been working very diligently on this um it it really takes a certain level of foresight and also pay patience as we go through this process um last but surely not least in our presentations this evening I want to invite our director of Planning and Development uh Anamaria candelario anamarie Candelaria and uh Dr zmy Who's going to introduce the rest of the team and uh take us into sd308 next gen well good evening Lord I'm just so proud to um have the priv served in this

083role as the assistant superintendent for human resources with anamarie pendio is also R SRA who's currently serving as assistant principal of South and been wonderful helping us with our mentoring and induction program um and then we also have our Recruitment and uh our recruitment specialist Sarah La um Mr Queen gave a wonderful statistic today um regarding 100% Staffing that ultimately is the brainchild of Sarah from her recruiting specialist role all kudos to her for the for the vision to put together that 10 to one uh every other every every second Saturday of the month Sarah and I get to spend time together with not only Bill Queen but also Mike de Aran um and and other folks throughout the district as we are committed to 100% are but um kudos to you Sarah um I

084want to thank the board um I want to thank our entire HR team and our cabinet um for their support of Human Resources in our district um ultimately the the biggest thing that we do is really threefold um we really focus in on recruiting uh retaining and rewarding that is our motto that's what we live by um on a daily basis so I'm going to walk uh through a little bit here of the history of of of recruitment in the district um you know we recognize that it's important to have some traditional methods um you know uh some some career fairs today Sarah and I had the privilege of being at Northern Illinois University um doing things like summer open interviews um having an opportunity um for our district in that traditional sense um to

085engage with candidates but then we we we want to be Innovative uh we want to recruit on digital platforms we want to implement targeted Outreach groups we want to focus in on a diverse group to hire um so as we talk you know together here there'll be a few things U that we we go through um obviously there not a surprise to anybody uh in the district we have challenges as a a national teacher shortage um special education by lingual ESL um Renee and Fai spoke to that earlier today early child assistance I'm proud to state today that we had an opportunity to meet several EC candidates and we were so excited today to meet them that uh we have chocolate um but we certainly said to them hey come on over here talk a

086little bit about us weo and I we have such a great principal uh in Dr uh Jennifer broes that uh I sent her a text and I said hey I I want you to talk to some people today so she gets on the phone talks to five folks today um you know we sing up some before positions you know um are quote unquote officially uh posted we always are very impressive with our marketing and and meeting folks so that was a lot of fun today I'm sure Sarah was like all right Brian that's enough but today you know we also focus in kind of on a a resolution we're delving deeper into recruiting strategies um we're looking at residency programs that I'm very proud of um that an Marie has been focused on we're building

087close relationships we have a wonderful partnership with the gor University we have a new partnership with the teacher Residency program um and we're very excited so I'm going to turn it over to Sarah uh who can walk us through a little bit of a change in recruitment style um and I'll give it to you the microphone has turned up let's see can you hear me perfect okay well hello let me reintroduce myself my name is Sarah I'm the recruiting specialist here in the district my goal here today is to talk just to show you um our recruitment efforts for 2024 and how they might have changed from when you are last aware of them so we are we are seeing an upward Trend in our open certified positions and we are seeing a projection of

088over a hundred of these open positions by 2026 so that calls in for a lot of recruitment in the span of just seven months we've welcomed 80 new teachers connecting or averaging over 35 new applicants weekly so this suggests a healthy interest in our opport OPP unities here within our district our focus is to like you have to say that again Sarah that was just such repeat that last part my pleasure so in just a span of seven months we have welcomed 80 new teachers averaging over 35 new applicants weekly so that is a healthy interest uh in our employment opportunities within the district here our Focus for recruitment is two-prong so I am focusing on our external recruitment Drive connecting with the community and our academic partners to bring in that fresh and diverse

089talent and then Anna Marie karia over here is bolstering our internal recruitment so she is working on nurturing our current team and student teachers through professional development opportunities which you'll hear a little bit later on in this presentation so together these efforts are really ensuring that we continue to be a district of choice for all Educators at all stages in their careers District of choice what a change all right so this slide our multifaceted approach to external recruitment we're tapping into our recruiting platforms like indeed zip recruiter LinkedIn and specialized sites to expand our talent pool and really bring exposure to the 308 name in addition we are bringing creativity into our engagement strategies with unique events like paroa and touchdown to employment aiming to attract our Rich variety of new candidates in addition we're

090also harnessing our power of social media using platforms like Instagram and Facebook in LinkedIn to boost our recruitment reach and really highlight our current staff so hopefully you are already giving us a follow and a couple likes and shares we are also active in our local and organizational events including University career fairs and asasa events to forge those direct connections with our potential new hires in fact Brian mentioned already that we had a successful trip to NIU this morning we met just about 19 candidates in under 3 hours wonderful people that we met hopefully we'll be bringing them in shortly and no in no time and lastly we are committed to our efficient communication and streamline onboarding processes this will enhance the overall hiring and onboarding experience for our new hires thank you can we

091hear me okay are you ready for this on your mark k um so um I am an Marie candelerio I'm the director of planning and development and I have had the privilege to get to know so many people in ASO including hearing staff Stories the reasoning on wanting to be an educator or leader and just getting to know a little bit about the foundation of us weo um and that has been really truly about community and loyalty and I think by building on this we're going to build an amazing Residency program so just to start you off with a little quote um today's challenges will not be solved with yesterday's thinking and so I would like to share Equity story with you with some data from our district and also some data that I was

092able to gain from the asasa conference we attended and I will read each one of them because I would like you to just sit with it and to see the implications of why a Residency program is so important so R population has doubled over the past five years as you heard today our bilingual Educators have left us they have decreased 6% since 2020 currently we have 17 vacant special education and four dual language position since 2020 we have doubled in open positions and lastly we have only 121 teachers of color compared to almost 8,500 students of color that okay okay um with through a Met Life study only 12% of teachers are sa satisfied with their jobs 26% decrease since 2012 through retention although it's been steady um the metli Sera data did indicate that

093school climate has significantly worsened one out of five staff have a mental health concern a school building encompasses all generations from Baby Boomers to gen Z and we need to creatively address issue related ongoing change to our work life balance and admin support to maintain employee satisfaction and to prevent turnover so how are we going to do this we're going to do this through the Next Generation Residency program so by two prong approach we are going to grow our own and we are going to support our own our first uh Residency program is our Bachelor's in special education starting in the fall of 2024 we will have teacher assistants or substitutes within Associates of Arts gain their bachelor's and special education we will have our special education teachers um by the end 18 special education

094teachers by the end of 2026 we also have our masters in elementary Ed with an e and lbs1 endorsement not that many districts are going through this aggressive approach but we know these are the needs of our district and so we are pursuing the best therefore starting this may in 2024 our teacher assistants and substitutes and career Changers with the Bachelors are going to work their way through The Residency program the first year they will be a co- teer of record um provide an intensive support by the second year of 2025 2026 we will have 20 teachers of record within our classrooms lastly we have our alternative principal program which is a new type of principal endorsement program this is a year-long program through aora University starting in May of 2024 we will have 20

095um Educators holding a master's degree to um add on a principal endorsement to support our own we have a couple of really neaty um we started our first Academy this year with the support and help of our directors and tosas with the aspiring teachers Academy this is a supportive program to teach overall skills for our aspiring and current student teachers through workshops feedback sessions peer groups and um different guest speakers they will engage in this immersive learning experience so far our um exit tickets from our student teachers um have provided 100% positive feedback and they are glad that they have joined the aspiring teachers Academy next we have our aspiring leaders Academy this project and um group is develop and enhance our leadership skills we know our leaders are facing many challenges and a huge

096part of leadership as we all know is building our leadership identity so through workshops um feedback sessions also peer advisory groups and guest speakers we are going to put them through a year-long engaging immersive leadership experience and then lastly Reagan will be talking about our NextGen mentoring Collective this mentoring program is a four-year mentoring program that aims a dynamic Network to focused on empowering our next generation of sd308 Staff through mentorship and support we have built some really solid external Partnerships um I'll Focus once on Aurora University this is our core um education preparation partner they are supporting our masters in elementary Ed and also our alternative principal endorsement what's great about Aurora University is that it's Community centered we have the individuals that I've been working with at the um Dean and administrative level

097are parents of the community they have students in our schools and they understand the need for the community and for our staff also just beyond collaborative they are helping us align our coursework with our needs and they're also serving as a Layon between Partnerships and school districts and connecting us with other school districts that may need to partner because of the lack of involvement with other teachers so we're partnering with them as well additionally um we are working with the national Center for Teacher residency this Residency program will put us in a large Network network of well-known residency programs Nationwide we will get our name out there um people will know who asigo um nextg residency is so with the help and support of this consultive program they're helping us plan and guide our Residency

098program they're supporting us through um supporting our design team they are helping us design our mentoring and our Milestones with metrics and outcomes providing resource tools and strategies to build our Residency program and lastly to help us become a registered Apprentice this program so funding supports the Big million-dollar question literally just kidding um so with the Bachelor's in special education um really working with the teacher vacancy Grant has been amazing um we had the opportunity to speak to one of our Senators just a few weeks ago and it was just great to share the work because at the state level they don't actually know what the where the money is going and they were like we would love to speak to you and and share like what are you exactly doing with the funds we're

099like we got this are you going to give us more um so with that um we are hoping to have enough funds between between our teacher vacancy Grant or Ida Grant and title one2 funding so the district can cover 100% of the Bachelor's in special education for the Masters and Elementary Ed with the El and lbs1 endorsement with the same grants we're hoping that we can request 50% of the program covered costs and lastly because everyone's just knocking the door to be a leader in in the nation um the teacher vacancy Grant um will be covering 100% of the alternative principal program I think I think this would be a good opportunity here I'm not sure everybody the knows but this is um we're in this position because of the foresight and vision of drade

100um in securing this grant for a teacher Residency program at $400,000 so the fact that we're sitting here talking about this is because of that sort of so I and I just want to share something I want to share something too it looks good for us to be able to get funding from the state uh for next year in the governor's budget uh appropriation the governor is requesting $45 million for the teacher Residency program Grant so we hope to be able to tap into some of that money yes going to get $45 million no stay don't no but if you have a rich friend out there who's anybody and if he's single call me thank you thank you um in the regards to funding the supportive um programs the support our own the aspiring teachers

101and leaders Academy and mentoring um will all be supported under the teacher vacancy Grant um with the academy we are providing 30 professional development hours and a $500 stapen for our aspiring teachers for aspiring leaders we're providing over 30 professional development hours with a $1,000 step sipon and a certificate of completion and then currently which Reagan will about to speak to is our NextGen mentoring Collective we are working with the committee and um discussing different leveled stiens to align with the level of support that we will have for our mentoring future mentoring program so some some really huge huge huge huge huge Partners um I want to highlight the tosa team has been incredibly supportive with I call it um just getting on getting on the the FastTrack train to um residency and they have

102been leading the work with the aspiring teachers Academy with our student teachers um and if you are on social media you could see all of the amazing work that they have done to really build up our student teachers we had over 25 student teachers together districtwide for our spring um cohort and they have just first time ever having student teachers all in one room to have a collective support and Collective just conversation and and discussion with them so that was just wonderful um we have been working with oea we have um you know created a mentoring committee we're working to build this program like I mentioned for four years um and build inclusive layers of support all the way from building level to individualize support which includes specific specialized uh professional development on-site coaching and

103Affinity groups and lastly um DC leadership which has been a huge part with working through them to figure out what their needs have been and then also to see what their strategies are and to align that with what HR is doing and so we have been able to identify Solutions and Improvement strategies to ensure that we are covering our most um our most needs that we have noticed through through the data dive okay so my name is rean sangra and I am currently serving our district as the interim AP over at Southbury so um I just want to share a quick stat with you from the national Center of teacher residency it costs a district approximately $117,000 for every teacher that we turn over so when we think about the recruiting of our highquality Educators

104we want them here in sc308 to sense to have a sense of belonging and feel supported so that they stay and want to invest the time energy in our district and our kids so that's something I wanted to share before we can share out um our nextg mentoring Collective so in the past we have had um we're going to kind of go through like what we've seen in the past and what we've done and we know that we've had some some great mentoring um systems in the past but always moving forward and and being evolutionary with what we can do in the future so I do want to recognize too we have some of our OE OA members that are helping with some of this Collective Ming in the back um so I also wanted

105to say like so for the past we have really focused on our teachers our certified teachers now in the future we want to look at supporting everyone we want to look at supporting our support staff we want to look at supporting our related service members in that mentoring capacity so that is what we would look at for that growth right we want to be able to support everyone um then when it comes to our past we've been dependent on our our upper leadership and when I say that we've had a lot of change in our leadership with the change comes the change in ideas and what the the system looks like so we want to build the system more around areas of focus so when we build our structure we're looking at that emotional Focus

106people centered supports for a focus of identity like who are we who are we as sc308 teachers and Educators and um then we also want to look at our physical Focus so therefore like what do we need to set up a classroom classroom management um looking at individual building protocols what do our staff members need to do their daytoday um institutional Focus what are our specifics our systems of 308 what do we need to know about 308 and then an instructional Focus knowing that that needs to be differentiated we know that our kinetic Wellness teachers need something different than our gened teachers need something different than our social workers our DL our El teachers um then looking at the last point there the traditional in the past that we've looked at a uniform kind of

107one siiz fits all for professional development in onboarding when we move forward we want to think about how can we consider our incoming teachers experience levels we have teachers coming in with one year of experience right out of school with great best practices we have teachers that have been in the field for 10 years and they need a different level of professional development so keeping that in mind we want to look at Job embedded coaching opportunities to observe our skilled staff that we have in this District we have so many skilled Educators give them the opportunity to go see our our staff in action um and then really being intentional with our workshops and our professional development targeting it around those Focus areas and then what do we have upcoming because we can't do this

108all at once although I would love to so um we are working currently on a College and Career educational pathway to get our high school students to become Educators so we are currently working and been working closely with Dan artson um wanzi Community College um NIU to start designing an educational road map for our high school students um and connecting that to coursework so they don't have to feel um the tension between do I want to be an EC teacher or do I want to be an elementary teacher so we're working on streamlining that process but we know that there are specific um timelines that we need to follow so we're really looking at over a two-year road map to really design welld design that we also currently working with um Dr Waller um and

109then um Dr Paul to design a portrait of an sd308 um candidate and when I mean candidate I mean educator or leader and so really um digging into to what students say and what students want and so by doing that and highlighting um the student input we're going to build a comprehensive profile with highlighting the qualities and skills designed in these individuals um with also designed questions for when we interview our candidates in the future um so that we have a streamlined process across buildings we are also expanding our Partnerships we are focusing on the community and recent graduates and getting their feedback we're you know reaching out to wealth of organizations and meeting individuals to come into our community get to know us a little bit um and really buy into what we already

110see um and and welcome that and hopefully hopefully support us as well on this new journey and then lastly the grant opportunities um I you know part of my position really is to seek those funding opportunities to enhance educator training and development programs um as Dr concate is a really awesome Mentor so I'm learning a lot about um you know grants and you know individual details and that's going to go a long way because this we want this sustainable this model and we want to continue it with multiple cohorts and so I just wanted to say coming in March um we'll have a little more info on the sd308 educator and leader and then I know um Dr zi shared a moment of gratitude but I also want to share a moment of gratitude um

111and I've I've told my story multiple times to individuals but I I was there with burnout and as a leader and I've heard many stories of of of in asigo of single moms of individuals who came from different countries um who were engineers and came here and now we Tas and they want to be an educator and so understanding I've talked to teachers who don't know if they want to get into leadership because they've been through their ringer through the pandemic and so we all have been in it but just the Gratitude of of creating this program and to build Partnerships has been amazing and it's truly a rewarding um experience although Dr swpi says I have the fun job I really do um so thank you um and it's just been um a really

112great um experience so far so thank you um and thanks for for hearing us awesome thank [Applause] you so I have a statement sorry a statement and a question um first statement is really to Dr katti and the entire team these last two meetings and and and all of the presentations today just the way my brain works it connects the dots based on what's being asked the strategy and then what's being presented is it actually going to help us to get to the solution and I the plum line that I've seen the last two weeks has been extraordinary and so I just even today everything that been presented I just thank you all cabinet and everyone for all of the hard work that you all are putting in so thank you for that um so

113slide number nine it's just uh one quick question just in regards to the Masters in elementary Ed and El lbsi endorsement program it says they were covering 50% um I just wondering what that 50 other 50% is and uh and uh exactly I figured so then the other you know I'm just just but I would know the cost of that but then to to the other question is it's exciting to hear that we're now going to cover that we're getting to the point of recruiting and we're covering Staffing at 100% but have we really thought about the incremental cost that once we do reach that 100% um the projected cost to being at 100% and how given our budget how we're able to cover that we haven't been there in so long we have not

114been there in so long just so just to are we budgeted as if we're going to be lower staff or are we budgeted as if we're going to be 100% staff that's that's that's the question that's that's kind of [Laughter] have if we're budgeted for 100% then we're good yeah we've seen those numbers for next year Well it it's this is a twoyear cycle yeah and very minimum just I think that in general the trend is we want to improve service for our students right yes and my my point is is that if we if we're budgeted just for the 100% And growth continues to happen at the rate that we're seeing then immediately we're under budgeted so I'm just trying to make sure that we're covered we will take that into consideration as we

115just stumped it's a great question I also want to say like very you'll have that reallocation of the 177,000 that then the NCT says you lose you know every time you have to onboard a new teacher and I think in a couple years where we see you know some teachers retiring will have a different landscape of what those salaries could be so um to add to the Diplomatic answer I just want to say like this is really impressive um kudos to the whole team a lot of people in the room or some people in the room know that I work on residency programs during my day job and so I work with districts that are doing this and I had some questions and stuff but I just really really want to instead of going to

116my questions I just want to reflect along like just out loud with you for a little bit um when we were when a group of us were campaigning in this last election cycle not even like a well a little over a year ago I guess we were sitting on people's couches in the community and talking about how we need a local teacher pipeline um and then I know that you were brought on board cellario in you know after the school year started and just based on my experience to see all of this kind of already in place topnotch I've never seen know Nationwide with programs that I work with so much in place in such a quick time so thank you thank you for that tell that's in my box no to the whole team

117cuz I do know that it takes a whole team and those Partnerships and so um very well done um and I think this is going to have really great impact on our district teachers are the number one you know impact on our students yes they spend the most time with them and so this is a true investment in that and that is what I'm most proud of the other thing I'll say is that we talk about we have talked about like this could be something you know that could put sc308 on the map right um when one of your small bullet points under NCT for the national Center on teacher residencies they talk about apprenticeship programs um that is going to be a thing um Nationwide and I'm don't think that there is one currently

118and except maybe and CPS there might be something similar but um but that will give us more funds because you'll be able to access those Workforce dollars at the federal level and so that's a sustainability piece uh that I'm looking forward to hearing more about too um so and I'll just finish my reflections with saying what you said at the beginning about I don't know exactly what the quote was but using old tools to to do the work that challenges will not resolve the yesterday's thinking all right thank you that was much better than my toolbox I to that's true for this but I think that's true for a lot of things in education so I'm proud that we're rethinking things um and um I had I just want to say job well done I'll

119end with that so thank you um so you know one of the things that one of the things that we are proud of and that we say a lot is that we are the largest employer in Kendall County right but to whom much is given much is required and um we can't just say that and then not follow through with all the that that entails and the responsibility of that and so when you say things like put with this put us on the map or um we want to be that District where people want to be where they want to come and where they want to stay and so these types of efforts are going to make that possible for us and so thank you Brian for your leadership thank you all I mean I

120just put down like in my notes impressive like capable and talented individuals you all are and so I appreciate the work thank you yes thank you I think I think on on slide you you either said it or it's on slide 12 something there's more to you're going to get us the details is kind of okay and then we'll we'll probably see this in the HR manuals and all that as well I'm sure um what am I what am my questions that kind of you'll probably give me those details later but I'm interested in um the programs that generally require teachers to take time off um is that are these you know this work with aora University and stuff like that or is this going to be a little uh you know less intrusive on

121their lives um where they be able to work and so our specific residency programs um are going to be either one course a week for a few hours they're going to be located on campus so they don't have to go to Aurora University um we are also going to have some hybrid options so with that um and then also they were going to go go through two summer intensive programs so we will be providing them professional learning around co- teing this summer before they go into a co-teacher of record and then the following year we'll providing a teacher intensive and then they'll go into teacher of record by being being solely part of of that classroom leading that classroom another layer is is that because I have an educational background I could support the mentors

122and mentees in that coaching level so I will be um on the ground with once the mentee are you know the mentors and the residents are on the ground supporting them as well and then they also will be automatically put into the aspiring teachers Academy so they're going to have that Collective support of other residents and then individuals coming in to support them as well and so again we are wrapping them around and giving them that layers of support I had one mom say she's a single mom that's another one that keeps arising too when I speak to individuals about being a single parent and so she goes I don't know what to do with my my my child during the summer courses I was like oh girl don't worry I'm Gonna Get You Daycare

123we're fine so like that's just something to think about is that that is a barrier and if we want to be barrier Busters we have to figure out how to really get that Busters bar bar Busters need t-shirts sit down t-shirts t-shirt we need t-shirts Teresa love me some good sag yes your Busters and and so really that is truly what it means to to to wrap our our individual our Educators and our leaders and so that would be an extra extra layer of support on top of the cours workk so working closely with our um individuals on the universities on the coursework to make sure it aligns to actually what is happening in our buildings and not so much at a theoretical level but what do we see and so integrating that piece um

124and then lastly our student teachers that are coming in from other universities um if they come in and and work for us as teacher assistants they could student teach and get paid so that back in the day when I had to take out loans to survive to be a student teacher and you all know what I'm talking about um that doesn't have to be no more like we can actually support and we know we have the TA positions open so we can kick two birds with one stone um by getting Tas in there but also supporting and our student teachers can get paid um during that time so again not causing A disruption in their life um which is that work life balance so some nontraditional new stuff okay and sorry that I asked about

125some details but it just interests me so yeah it's a great question very Dominic's going to be providing that daycare over the summer thank you since he asked um I did want to go back to the other question about the 50% because I I know you asked that um so one thing that has been largely supportive is that so certain programs don't cover um funding doesn't like financial aid doesn't cover certain things so for the Mt that program with the endorsements our endorsements aren't covered by financial aid for our staffing so what I've been sharing with the staff that the 50% which is around 10,000 they could you know either pay out of pocket or take out financial aid the cool thing is and it is very cool if that we put them in a

126special education position and they want to go into a high Needs school in a high needs position they could apply for something like the teach Grant teach Grant you get it for two times 5,000 that's 10,000 pretty much will get their whole Masters for like $750 so um been working working with individuals on scholarships um we have quite a few individuals that are minorities so we have the Illinois minority teacher scholarship so working with them to do that so although I'm not a College advisor um it's been really helpful for all the times I had to fill out financial aid because now you know knowing it through and through but those were the barriers for individuals is is things like that finding scholarships financial aid um and so helping them to support that and taking

127the exams we're providing that layer you have to take the 305 exam in order to get into The Residency we're going to provide support and coaching and tutoring around that exam so again breaking down all those barriers that got into way to individuals in the first place where they didn't you know teaching wasn't their first career choice or was but they couldn't go into it thank you that was I want to thank you Amar again for your leadership with the team and Dr zwy as well thank you so much for your leadership oh I'm sorry no way me too no way if you thought I was excited about Ela go ahead right if I didn't have a migraine I'd be jumping up and down first and foremost who runs the world right there um what

128a powerful group of women right there and empowered women Empower women so get out there and keep doing it I'm so impressed I'm so proud We 80% of our budget is our people and we had barely hanging on in a human resources team and it took someone like Dr katti coming in to understand that we needed to put the right people in place to support our staff so thank you very much for doing that also I think you don't want to go to any more um conferences and be hear that you're from the uh stepping stone District I'll tell you that story one day I want to I want to say that we have gone from act an active HR recruiting um strategy or a passive to an active thank you very very much to

129sit here and think that people are just going to come to us that's just not how the world works anymore so thank you for that um the teacher residen I remember six years ago sitting in my office crying when I was asked to start putting one of these together in another District where were you I had no idea what it was doing um this is literally blows my mind the teacher residency program for me is one Avenue of the critical function of succession planning and that we don't often in education get a chance to succession plan but it's so critical to what we do um so thank you thank you um also onboarding people think that when someone joins an organization onboarding is like the first week it's actually 18 months statistics show that supporting

130someone for 18 months successfully keeps them in your organization um so that is this is just brilliant and then the last thing that I have to or two things I want to say one of the programs that I did successfully work on and I don't know if you've touched on this yet but with NIU I put a waiver program in place so our student teachers that we placed we would then get credits for the rest of our teachers to take classes at NIU is that something you're working on so funny you said that um we we are partnering with um NIU to look at the El endorsements for our individuals and one thing that we were looking at funding because a lot of um Rene's Grant could support that but we're actually using our waivers

131to ensure that the teachers can get that fully 100% amazing and it's for tuition only you have to buy your books yourself oh yes thank you for that I have to always remind myself of that and then one last thing that you mentioned in there and I just went to a a very powerful uh webinar the other day about work life balance um it's kind of a a facade there is no such thing as work life balance we're talking now about work life Harmony and um Faith actually she and I were having a discussion many years ago about what that looks like for someone and we have very different like she's like I'm going to work on the weekends and like head into my inbox and get everything cleared out and everything and I'm like

132I'm going to have the Sunday scaries and just wait for Monday morning and deal with all of we really have to get to that point where if we're really going to be an equity District everybody's going to have different ways and it's really that work life Harmony that we have to strive for and it's going to look different for all of us so I just wanted to share that with it was something powerful that came out of my conference the other day thank you from the bottom of my heart Dr leny yep thank you everybody wait I have one more thing anamarie can you share what you shared with principles regarding the ability to be a professor an Adjunct professor but wait there's more I promise I will stop um so yes so part of

133the discounted tuition through Aurora University is the district taking on some responsibility so the responsibilities we are taking on for recruitment is a four-prong approach we are recruiting for them we are um getting uh the location for them we are providing the instructor so I will be reaching out to administrators and teachers that are interested in becoming ad junk and they will be teaching the courses so we will have our internal individuals social we get a lot of social workers from Au so as social work part of this or is that like a next maybe that's that's when they that's when my boss told me slow your roll and you know a little bit little a little bit but trust me I already looked into that too you know you can you could be a

134clinical get a shortterm license for school social work so so I always ask the question we maybe just wrap with this I always ask the question okay how many people do we have committed so as of right now what what are the numbers how many how many aspiring ad uh leaders do we have committed 10 out of 20 10 out of 20 okay how many um staff members uh for the teacher residency so for the Masters we are 19 out of 20 and for The Bachelors um we are seven out of 18 come on Wow all right so we are well on our way we are very early in this stage um but we are Unapologetic about the work that we're going to do um we work with everybody um and we are really really

135proud of the uh opportunity that we have here to really transform um our district uh with the next generation of Staff members I have one quick question I'm sorry the I wrapped it so well I thought I'm sorry I should Let It Go but do they they uh talking about retention when we give them supports like this and we provide some funding they're required to stay in our district for a certain amount of time correct that is correct so for our uh bachelor's program it will be four-year commitment after uh The Residency for our masters it is a three-year commitment and then for our leaders is a three-year commitment thank you one thing I will say is that this is a fertile field the receptivity of this community and the Partnerships the receptivity of our

136Educators um you mentioned the tosa team this evening quite a few times our Educators our administrators this is why this is Magic is happening right so I think the energy you've brought um Dr zmy the the and the the commitment and the expertise to this role as a team as a whole but also I want to just thank that this is a collaborative effort and really reflects the values and when we do this together look at how far we're going to go so I'm just really thrilled um and I appreciate the hard work really tonight Jared do you have anything uh no no anytime uh anytime I'm not saying much that's a that's a good sign like did I just did we just leave him speechless all right okay thank you guys so much thank

137you so you guys can I make a motion to move um our student ambassador report up to 7.1 to 7.1 so that we can get Luke out of here second okay I caught I caught URS law of guard over there it's okay Miss lmth hi Dr Mario hi Mr I M hi Mr hi Miss John hi Mr you don't even know your own name motion passes 70 all right go ahead am student ambassador Luke well thanks guys I appreciate it all right um so since our last board meeting we were able to put on our much anticipated Ascend event on Friday February 16th uh students experienced different speakers including Mr Cameron Bell um Mrs Sima Shaw and our very own uh Mrs candelario and Mr Gatewood uh we want to thank all of you for

138your bravery in sharing your stories and experiences with the students it was a success and it wouldn't be possible without you we also wanted to thank the rest of the ssac uh Dr Waller and Dr Paul and the administration at both high schools for making this event possible we were able to receive some great feedback from teachers and students on how the stories impacted them as well as ways we can improve this event for the future um moving on our teacher survey has been very encouraging um the ssac is deep diving into the data that we received uh we have gotten a total of 307 teacher responses out of around 400 teachers that it was sent out to teachers and staff uh between the high schools which far surpass surpassed our goal of around 200

139responses which was half uh we began sifting um sifting through the data and we will continue to go through the responses on Thursday it was encouraging to see that all of the responses that we received were well thought out uh the ssac thanks all the teachers and staff for taking time to fill out the survey that we put out uh we hope to use this data to better improve student teacher relationships in the future and uh we will keep you updated as we continue to look through that data um in addition we are very excited about our public forum next Monday March 4th from 700 p.m. to 8:30 p.m. this public forum is special because it will be led by myself and Isabelle we want to see as many students come out as possible to

140share their voices perspectives and opinions around our role as students and the roles of an educator and a leader so that's the student ambassador report for today excellent thank you so much thank you and grab some dessert in the back have a good night this one no matter where I go in the district is somewhere doing another rooll on another day I don't I just asked him when he sleeps try and fit it in we get we get the best don't we all right so I'd like to invite Dr katti to give his superintendent report good evening board I I just want to first start by really thanking um our teams who prepared this evening so um elegantly and with such dignity um reminds me of the work we started earlier in the year when

141we brought to the board the six values Integrity collaboration humanization dignity empathy and courtesy and I see I feel so proud this evening as I listen to the presentations and the efforts um we are we are just getting started but it's so um impressive to see those values reflected in the work that we're seeing emerging this evening um really and that goes on and that's really reflective of our community and that is just so apparent in so many different ways and uh this past weekend uh we were thrilled me members of our team Dr Harmon attended on behalf of the district the um and I know many people around the board as well um attended the hometown Expo on Saturday and what a wonderful event I Know Dan artson also was there um our district

142Booth featured the sd30 NextGen Residency program which you heard this evening about recruitment efforts were really on full effect and we thank the iGo Chamber of Commerce for organizing such a vast and successful event um last week um Dr Susanna Rivera Mills uh met with fifth graders she is the president of Aurora University the first uh Latina president um and female Latina and female president of that University and really the first gener generation to attend ATT college and just was wonderful our students and our Educators were so on point in terms of really bringing her in and the reflection and I was just so honored to be a part of that community and thank the opo staff for their efforts to prepare our students for that experience our superintendent's advisory had its third meeting and

143this work has really Blossom and I'm grateful to the steering committee under the direction of Michelle early um for really bringing together a a variety of experiences where we're able to hear from parents community members teachers and school leaders together at the table engaging in Reflections around our student handbook and the rights and responsibilities and our discipline practices and to be able to reflect together about what a profile of a learner would look like if we pursue this fullon what does that look like as we think about the next generation of creativity and I I got to tell you it's not in my notes here to reflect out but I was at the uh superintendent's National Conference last week in San Diego and I got to tell you it was so affirming I'm sitting here

144in this Workshop that I attended where the school three different districts naville a district in New York and a District in California all three had done transformative work and I got to tell you every single one of them start with a profile of a learner profile of a a vision and that that Vision helped them get creative everything from one day a week of an elective uh process for kindergarteners going from class to class doing creative work versus just the traditional learning models Blown Away blown away all standards Al line of course for those of you who are worried about that I am too I'm just want to say it's the whole the whole package so just really exciting and I thank the the parent that group last but not least I want to thank

145Dr Waller and Miss early who attended on our behalf of parent University experience in Chicago um you'll hear more about that board but I wanted to make sure that I went a record to talk about it where really it was an opportunity for them to go and see parent universities live and in action in Chicago learn from it um Mike O'Neal who's the executive director of the process was there um just to think about what does this formal experience of a partnership with parents look like as we start to build this out we have to go beyond the informal expectations but really build systems for making that partnership successful and some of the comments earlier this evening reflect that and uh that that comes to close my more formal comments this evening so thank you

146Madame President so do you want us to do our before you go i' just like to say thank you so much for your reports they are aligned to the goals um focused and and detailed and so we really appreciate that thank you mam president so is everybody ready to do their shout outs ready okay go ahead so over this weekend the ASO Co-op boy swimming dive team participated in the ihsa state finals so congratulations to state I'm sorry to chase mayor who uh mayor who placed second in the 200 free and the 500 free ether shraer placed 13th and the 200 individual medal medal and the team of Chase Ryan Tanner and Ethan took 13th Place in the 400 free uh relay so this season the team set eight new school records so congratulations to

147everyone [Applause] sorry um this weekend 67 members of asigo East chapter of business Professionals of America attended the state leadership convention in Oakbrook their competitions ranged in topics of Finance Health Care law marketing technology and business 37 students achieved medals in their respective events some winning mult multiple of those 37 22 students qualified for Nationals in May congratulations to these wolves and I just have my a few of my own board comments number one can you do that can we do that um in um 7 is that separate yep oh yep okay we're getting there good to know uh geared forward robotics hosted its week zero scrimmage this past weekend and I was there um actually I was there uh Dr wmy was there uh Jared was there I was there were you I I

148missed you at the beginning yeah Jen Jen was there um there were several of us that were that were there in attendance to to witness what was going on and and um it was really awesome um thank you to the to Illinois State Representative Stephanie kwit and asigo Village president Ryan Kaufman for attending uh the team invited other first robotic teams from the area to join them during their week zero scrimmage all teams now have three weeks until the competition begins uh they're aiming toward going to worlds in Houston um and the talent these students showcase is unbelievable and that's probably an understatement there is there are some really talented students that we have um and and also uh the the cooperation between teams if there were issues with um anything on the robots uh

149everybody was helping out in a collaborative manner which was I thought was really very cool so uh it was a great event good um we are excited that next week will be our first student Le public forum uh please join the board on Monday March 4th 7 to 8:30 p.m. at plank Junior High School our student board ambassadors Isabelle and Luke will lead the discussion alongside the board in developing a shared Vision or portrait of a learner an educator and a leader it is essential to hear from all voices we encourage all students parents staff members community members and Business Leaders to attend um fill the seats please come and uh tell us what your what your opinion is on these uh important topics a shout out for our journalism programs at ohos and oehs

150um they took place in in the SPC SBC conference journalism competition at planfield East High School on Saturday the 17th congratulations to asgo East for placing first and to ASO high school for placing sixth both teams have qualified for the sectionals competition on Saturday April 6th and so good luck to those [Applause] programs and last congratulations to trer Junior High Panther choir who had the amazing opportunity to sing at a Chicago steel hockey game on February 17th they did it a great job what a great place to be congratulations to all of our um teams and our efforts and I want to thank the board for joining in these shoutouts um in uh in sharing this good news and I know we'll hear more I look forward to hear more from the board's public comments

151thank you all right 7.3 board committee reports so we'll have a report on our finance and Facilities committee um what would you like to add well the report is available in the agenda yes um does anybody have any questions no questions no questions no it's late at night so it's it's it's there we covered a lot of topics they're all they're all here absolutely very good perfect okay so we can move on to 7.4 board member comments Jen would you like to start I just I was so um inspired tonight by the parents that came to speak this is truly how we the the best pathway for our students is when we collaborate as a community as parents administrators board this is how it's done so I really love seeing that energy uh last week

152I was able to join the superintendent Advisory Group I had sent an email to Dr katti saying you know portrait of a learner is very important to me is it something we're looking into and Dr Waller said hold my hold my water my water um and really the presentation um that uh she shared about what we're going we're going to go through portrait of a learner portrait of a system portrait of a leader portrait of an educator really absolutely BW my mind um and I happen to attend at our conference that we go to a portrait of a learner and so I was very excited this is 10 times better than what I saw um and then I really encourage every parent to fill out your five Essentials and um in honor of my two

153goddaughters who um are in Lacrosse uh they are in Carmel Indiana and one of them got a full ride to Yukon and is playing there her first year I am very excited to support um lacrosse and her little sister is right behind her and we're hoping to see the two sisters at Yukon so come on Yukon give her a uh a a a scholarship so um I've really seen um what amazing things lacrosse can do it's a great sport for all people to get involved in and um I fully support it coming to our district and girls flag football come on yes of [Laughter] course all right anyone else you Jared any board comments yeah yeah actually I do have one um sorry real quick um excuse me w nine Aurora uh scholarships are coming

154up and so if there are any uh swo East uh students uh who uh reside in um Ward n make sure you contact the uh career center and also if you live in Ward 9 and you're a student um they are awarding um some of those scholarships all the way up to um junior year in college so um just keep that in mind thank you again to Alderman bug for for doing this every year it's uh greatly appreciated so I just want to make sure that was uh mentioned tonight thank you for that I just if I can just do one real quick um I just wanted to commend the bands at both um o and and OE um I ate a lot of Pancakes over the past couple weekends um each of them had

155their own respective pancake breakfast um they were well attended pancakes were wonderful um and the bands that perform there um I mean we should band parents you should all be proud if at both schools um again goes back to more talented individuals we have in this District speaking of talented individuals yes I was uh uh pleased last time I shared a little bit about this past weekend joining our black student association their black Thai event in honor of Black History Month at OS and really a powerful evening um I had a chance they had a guest speaker there uh Congressman Underwood was there there and really spoke to the power of voice and the importance of advocacy and so reflected in our students I want to thank jaaya and Brianna to the students who really

156were spearheading and Miss Thomas for her leadership of this event 44 students came up and presented their um they all received honor rooll so they they honored those students for receiving honor rooll this year as well as they each got to present their career choices F from biotech fields um interest lawyers everything and really to speak to tonight we only had one person this evening want to be a teacher but it was so affirming for me that we are planting these seeds now through the apprenticeship work and through what's to come so I was just so proud to be a member of this community and I kept asking students and what grade are you in and they're like ninth grade I'm like what so just so talented and so many parents came out so really

157a heartwarming event yeah our our future is in good hands right they are they are yes okay okay moving on to 8.1 the consent agenda can I have a motion to approve the consent agenda please make a motion to approve all items under consent including 8.1 minutes from the special Clos Board of Education meeting from February 8th 2024 minutes from the Board of Education meeting February 12th 2024 open and close session and 8.2 to acknowledge the foyer requests received by the district second are there any questions on the consent agenda before we before we we second first okay sorry I I jump is done nope you're good second okay so now are there any questions on the consent agenda no okay Mr Gatewood I Dr Mario I Miss Johnson I mrone hi M Simon hi

158Mr hi am I okay motion passes 70 okay uh good evening I want to invite uh Mr artson Mr milard and uh Mr Howard to please come up uh welcome this evening I think is an important progress in establishing what I would say is some systems and structures around formally how we think about adding new ihsa sports we know that Sports play ancre incredibly important role in our students lives and we want to thank you for your leadership in preparing this evening's presentation for the board and how we think about uh future opportunities for our students sure thank you Dr katti good evening board uh as Dr katti said my name is Dan arson the executive director of high school to my left here is Darren Howard the ohos athletic director and to my right

159Tony Miller the OE athletic director tonight the uh what we will be discussing is really why we would add any new sports to sd308 and really the opportunities present themselves uh to grow our students in a lot of different ways uh and we look at that the second bullup there really kind of hammers things home for me is not every student may excel in something that is very much a traditional sport so when we talk about adding new sports some of the sports we going be talking about tonight regionally may not may be new to us but of course Across the Nation and even across the world not so much but you know I was was lucky enough growing up I was I was a baseball guy through and through played baseball through high school

160and into college and coached as I started teaching and still coached to this day in some capacity um Darren was basketball through and through and then Tony was baseball as well very traditional Sports uh locally and then even Across the Nation but uh as we had in public comment tonight you see that there's opportunities for other sports to be added that that would would provide our students opportunities that would be great for them and great for their maturity as well and in this and here uh I I've included a couple of different things from US Department of Education and then the last thing I put on there is the increasingly important role of Athletics in schools and this is an important article because really what this article uh displays is Athletics means a lot in

161our in our schools and probably now more than ever and really this article goes in details that you know our country is divided in a lot of different ways for a lot of different reasons but Athletics is one thing that's it's a uniting force and when teams get together they have that that that common Bond and they share that experience that really is more important now than ever probably in our history so that's one of the things when we look to add Sports we're doing this for our kids and and really to grow them in almost every different way for the ihsa Athletics uh there's a few different ways that new sports are added and we have here the emerging Sports and activities list from the ihsa website and then of course we have the

162ihsa state series here in here in 308 every sport we offer is part of the ihsa state series on the emerging list and to some degree every everything that we talk about is on the emerging list at some point what the emerging list is means that these are sports and activities that um some local communities have started teams or clubs things like that but they're not enough to the point where there would be uh the ihsa said says that we can Crown a state champion there're just a few few teams here or there and there is a threshold and we can talk about that later of when the ihsa says you know what now is time to move that from an emerging Sporter activity to an ihsa State series what we're going to talk about

163tonight is is what we would do with ihsa State series and again everything we offer here um in sd308 is part of the ihsa state series except for boys and girls lacrosse boys and girls water polo and girls wrestling and right now currently our girls participate in the boys wrestling program uh the ihsa state series for girls wrestling started in 20 2022 2023 so it's been a state series now for a couple different year for a couple years um as was mentioned earlier tonight girls flag football the ihsa came out last week I believe and said that they will make a state series NE starting next school year for girls flag football um and we can talk about that a little bit tonight but that would be a future conversation for us as well what

164we have here is the sd308 new sport evaluation process and I think every board member has the three sports that we're going to talk about tonight has memos uh really indicating from start to finish from the interest assessment all the way down through of course tonight would be for board approval is how we have evaluated each of these steps and where we are right now as far as um uh our comfort level with with moving forward with some of these we proposing these to you so interest survey is the very first one on there and that's kind of what we're going to talk about next is with the student interest survey so we put together a student interest survey it was it was sent out um to all 8th through 11th grade students obviously 12th

165grade students weren't included because this is for next year um but this was conducted from December of this school year to January and we had some very basic information we want to see what school they were at grade level gender and we asked one very simple question it was I would be interested in playing the following if they were offered an sd308 and this this slide indicates boys lacrosse girls lacrosse boys water polo girls water polo girls wrestling and then girls flag football and of course these are approved and girls flag football will be next year approved State series for the ihsa and that's why we asked these specific um these Sports here you'll see the responses there 832 total responses um really showing very strong interest in a lot of different ways for athletics

166which you have to recall here or remember that like a boys lacrosse team or a girls lacrosse team might have 25 people on a roster in total so if you're looking at that and there's 117 girls say they're interested in girls LaCross that is way more than enough to fill a roster right and that's just right now on our first year who might be interested without potentially even seeing the sport played uh firsthand so this is where we're at right now with the responses we've had 832 total responses and this slide indicates there's 644 students that actually completed the survey well you might might say old 6:44 and 8:32 that's because some students are interested in playing multiple of these sports right so the interest is there from our students and it's a really great

167representation through 8th n9th 10th and 11th grade uh across the board of who might be interested in playing this if it were really lopsided one way or the other this might tell us something but the reality of it is we have students across the board in really kind of a pipeline ready to play these and participate in these Athletics the first sport we're going to talk about tonight is is girls wrestling in girls wrestling uh girls have been competing in the boys wrestling program here for several years uh as I mentioned before in 2022 and 2023 the ihsa first introduced this as a state series uh for Girls We Believe As girls numbers continue to grow as well you'll see quite frankly girls wrestling explode over the next few years even more than it is

168right now as it currently stands that ohos has 15 girls involved in wrestling and OE has six girls involved in wrestling we believe that once we are able to officially split and say well girls will wrestle other girls this will be a lot more interesting for for some of our athletes because right now there's some question marks about do I really want to do this do I feel comfortable doing that our feeder programs are also introducing girls wrestling at a younger and younger age so that pipeline again is there for us uh and of that survey 61 girls in grades 8 through 11 are interested in girls wrestling and based on this the level of interest for this um this is where we would recommend not a co-op team that OS and OE would have

169their own separate teams because of the interest level of this of the sport and the nature of the sport and this is high school right this is high school Yep this is High School girls wrestling budget and resources uh a lot of what we're talking about tonight uh the girls have been participating in boys wrestling for several years um which whoops sor sorry I didn't turn my slide uh we have uh currently been operating the boys program so uniforms have been purchased along the way to support that growth mats space and other equipment is already there for us it's nothing really new we have to buy for that um the really the costs we're talking about here are associated with stiens for a head coach additional uniforms officials workers things like that that would be

170normal part of participation for sports and Athletics this is the 5-year break down and I believe in the memo you guys had this as well in a link to seeing the kind of the full uh spectrum of all of these notes up here year one at 247 going down to year five the year four and this is just a projection what this would include in year four is that if the program continue to grow this where we might have to split to a varsity and a JB level right so we're introducing a new level at this time if we can see if we continue to see consistent growth and that's one of the things that we just don't know yet we can predict it we think that the sport will continue to grow we wanted

171to provide you guys the numbers tonight so you can see that what that might look like in a potential year when that growth might happen now on to Lacrosse boys and girls lacrosse um again we have referenced this before um I think someone here in public comment had me mentioned this um it became a state state sanction ihsa uh Series in 2016 2017 it's been it was on the emerging list years before that and there's currently 96 boys teams and 86 girl teams uh throughout the state of Illinois participating in this and many of them are Co-op and that's what we're going to talk about tonight as well many of these teams are Co-op teams and there's some rhyme and reason to that and and Darren and Tony can help explain that as well but

172there are five teams currently in our conference we belong to the SBC or Southwest Prairie conference five teams that offer this and and many more are are thinking about adding this as well because of the the growth of the sport um you know one of the things in that interest survey again for students 88 boys and 117 girls are really interested in in pursuing this and and taking kind of a chance at what this might look like as well for girls lacrosse growth um we have year one and then of course we put in asterisk near year two for potential split again this may be delayed to year three four five or or it may not happen depending on what happens with the sport but the reality of it is the the sport will continue

173to grow and at some point we will likely have to split and what that would be is of course additional uh Transportation cost sement cost uniforms things like that that are involved in each and every sport and then we have the same thing for boys lacrosse you'll notice boys lacrosse is a little bit more expensive uh the reason for that is just simply equipment uh boys lacrosse and girls lacrosse are two very different games the boys lacrosse has lots of physical contacts helmets shoulder pads things like that the girls lacrosse game is not like that whatsoever um again very different sports but also two sports that are very excited in their own right and this again would be if in year two the boys lacrosse program continue to grow this is what the cost would

174break down from year two on uh but again this might not happen until year year three four five it just depends on the growth of the sport uh the lacrosse addition plan really we would look to add a JV code OP level for each boys and girls lacrosse be beginning next school year uh this will give us the opportunity to develop the program really work with our local community to provide camps and other other opportunities for kids to to gain interest um you know if you've never played lacrosse before it's it's a learning curve there's no question about it uh we have many people who are very um as mentioned here tonight very skilled uh in Lacrosse but we're going to have also teams of um you might have four or five kids that are

175very good in the team and four or five kids that are still learning so and it's it's not abnormal whatsoever uh we did this in one of my previous districts to add a JV level first and to gain that support as we go on and then from there we will look to to build within a year or two to a varsity level program uh but that would be what we would tend to do um again there's opportunities for um participation on JV soccer fields at either high school right now so the field space and and practice facilities are there for us one of the things we're looking to do as well I reached out to our our our PE programs talking about gaining interest in the sport is at Junior High and at high school

176there are units of Lacrosse that we have uh during Advanced team sports for the high school that they rotate on a kind of every other year basis just to keep things fresh and Junior High does this as well we would look to increase those as well to a yearly basis to make sure students are who aren't used to playing a club sport of lacrosse get exposed to that during the school day because that's a lot of what our our PE and kinetic Wellness teachers do it's about exposure to sports and teaching those skills and if we think we can grab onto that and capture that we'll have an opportunity when we even partner with Club teams or anything else to gain those supports that will just add um to the fire funding plan for girls

177lacrosse this is a brand new program for us so one of the things we we're looking to do is to get this really fully off the ground in Year One is to really uh harness those Partnerships and the startup cost with the district would be about $155,000 for year one everything else would come in uh would come in really from our support from our community as as some of what you guys have in front of you here tonight um and then year two and Beyond this would be looked to fully funded by the district just as every other sport here in sd308 but getting it off the ground does take a little bit of momentum and initiative um and we have people that are willing to help and support with that and we're going to

178harness that um and and use that and work toward really building that challenge together and I know I haven't let Darren or Tony talk today so thanks a lot for coming tonight guys they're going to answer your question very safe this the last slide take home guys handled the mouse this is Tony did a great job Darren I tell you what Darren I we couldn't have done this without you Darren he did a great job uh so this is our recommendation though and based off what you have in your packets tonight as well we went through a pretty extensive rubric uh and really kind of a one through five scale of some feasibility through all 14 of these different areas um and we kind of rated these totally separate and ironically all came in with

179the same ratings ourselves and you guys saw that hopefully in your packets as well basically indicating that we believe we have everything we need to move forward with these Sports and we should move forward with these Sports So based on the information we have um we believe is and is our recommendation to move forward with girls and boys lacrosse and girls wrestling starting next school year what are the seasons for these yeah good question wrestling is in the winter lacrosse are both in the springtime you could have passed this at any time you said there were five other schools I think I think it was for lacrosse that are in our conference that that offer lacrosse they have no problem feeling teams do they or no and another reason we're probably are we the biggest

180one biggest in terms of well planfield all four schools are Co-op together oh okay wow yeah so as Dan presented most of the teams in the state are Co-op for that very reason because initially you're not going to have the numbers uh the other reason we would start at JV is because it doesn't lock us into a conference So currently our conference the SBC does not have a lacrosse conference the teams that are part of that part of a different conference we would not be tied to that as a JV program so we would have the ability to travel as far and wide as we wanted to fill a schedule at the JV level before we moved to a varsity situation and we're tied to a conference Dan can you share a little bit more

181about the survey that was administered how was it administered was it all of the PE classes or how did it happen yeah well we actually had Teresa help us with that survey so thank you Teresa uh it was shared just through through student email um to make sure that they were trying to reach out we pumped it out several times throughout the course of the month making sure it was not just a one-time uh event it wasn't during a particular class where we had students sit down and take that it was just through an email survey okay so um but every it was disseminated to every student high high school 8 9 10 11 every student in the district yes and then um I I appre appreciate the fact that um you're going to advance

182um PE and the exposure for students to have lacrosse um not just every other year but consistently so that students get more exposure to it um one of the things I saw I noticed on the funding plan um it looked like the booster club was going to um chip in some funds but then in the year that was going to fall off and so I just like to ask like why would that be when I think most of our booster clubs who support Athletics they do continually um support the Athletics of what you know their the funding some to some extent so it's like you know what what skin do they have in the game what what investment do they have in it sure I think the original investment is looking at some some of

183the the large ticket items that we'll need to fund that goals Nets that sort of stuff well that falls off in year two but as you said the booster club will still be there and they're going to support in other ways um additional you know additional equipment for kids uh uniforms you know all all the sorts of stuff and uh we have booster clubs for all programs and so they just support in different ways for you know whatever it may be over Night Trips because lacrosse we may have to go on an overnight trip just to play some of the teams um in the state because of their location and so help with those types of types of things as well so I'd like to see some I'd like to see that commitment be a

184commitment as opposed to fully funded by the district kind of a thing so it's my thoughts thank you I want to can I just say all our sports are funded by the district so this wouldn't be anything different the L the booster programs would do what other booster programs do in helping with the ups and Extras y I want to thank um the team for bringing the these forward I think any OPP extra opportunities we can offer to our students is great and I appreciate the process around it as well because I think that's really important too um I've seen momentum for these Sports growing for a while now um both girls wrestling and Lacrosse so it's good to see that we are keeping up per se I had just a wondering about the survey

185as well um I don't know for how how soon in the future we might add another sport right but I think there's an opportunity even gain more more respondence to that um considering how many students are in eth to 11th grade uh and the only other wondering I had is and we won't know till people register or sign up for lacrosse but if I'm a student and I say oh yes LaCrosse or wrestling sounds interesting but if I'm a softball player am I willing to give up softball to play lacrosse so I wonder if we have any cross over there but I think that we'll have to wait and see what that play plays out like so that was just a wondering on on my part my other question is that's not that was that

186was a wondering you can respond to that if you'd like but my other question is about junior high is there a um I'm not suggesting anything but do we have a similar process around Junior High if we were ever going to think about adding Sports uh at the junior high level yeah I think and Darren just said we would follow the same process right I think that's something we have to take all those all those aspects into consideration um because obviously with Junior High Sports the growth of and I was talking to someone earlier tonight and of course we talk about all kinds of things with Junior High Sports and you know IA comes up about joining there there's all kinds of but we would follow the exact same process because we want to make

187sure the process is is consistent from start to finish with the same lens right that we're not trying to skew something something yeah so if and when a time were to come of adding a junior high sport or activity we would we would need to follow the same process and make sure that and again you know we did it you saw that boys and girls water polo was on there it's a state series for us we actually were not recommending that tonight because when we do the rubric and follow things out we don't meet the qualifications to where we need to be with that right um so just like anything else if someone were to bring something to us um we would always have to look at let's follow the process first and for us

188at the high school level is it an ihsa State series that's our first marker and girls uh flag football was brought up next year girls flag football will be an ihsa State series we won't move forward next year with it with that we will move forward and Os has already in place of a club team for girls flag football they have a ton of girls interested in playing this so there might be something next year where we're sitting here again talking about girls flag football because that is something and that has NFL money behind it because the NFL is very much involved with this too that that is spreading like crazy and it I've never seen that in action as far as what it looks like from the ihsa St I'm sure it's pretty fast-paced

189and fun so yeah thank you two thank yous one thank you for including the curriculum piece I think that's an important piece uh and then thank you to the parents that spoke during public forum tonight I appreciate your involvement in the process how many in the in SBC how many if five of them have teams how many are total school yeah total teams uh there are four total teams that include seven of the 12 schools okay and then you we're considering lacrosse as a co-op correct okay Junior our JV Co-op correct to start that's kind of like our pilot if you will so Raphael our budget is done for next year not quite not quite so where does this fit into I mean obviously Dominic loves to say oh well it's just a few dollars

190I mean in our big budget but do we have room for these yes yes so we in the we in what I'll call the shadow budget uh right now preliminary numbers and the way it looks right now we actually looking we're looking good we've been reducing expenditure in certain discretionary area so we've been meeting with departments and we've been uh really we're doing zero base budgeting so we are actually asking deep questions having folks justify the uh the amount that they requesting and with that is led to so far it's led to saving so far the budget would not be uh finalized if you will till March so we're still in the thick of it right now and we actually talked about this before it was brought to the board and based on the amount

191that has been requested it is something that we can do fantastic I just want to say to latata and Amy both pointed out I have I talk to a lot of high schoolers they don't read their emails because they get too many so I just want to make sure all all of our kids are getting messaged and kids that may not normally think about lacrosse I would love to get them however we reach them I don't know maybe through Power School or whatever but also we didn't even ask the parents yet parents are going to be like you're playing La you know like so I think there's going to be a tremendous amount of uh maybe we can have a board Clinic uh lacrosse like introduction moment at one of our turf you know as

192long as they sign a waiver of liability I know Dominic's ready I still have that did you hear me Dr K what' you say you have to sign a wave of liability yes of course we would make sure of that oh jeez National so Jared do you have any questions I got like four okay go ahead I'm not kidding either first one I have is does the cost include Transportation so that's question number one yes Mr Howard yes sir Mr ploger it does okay thank you uh question number two I have knowing that help me reconcile this I'm looking at these percentages and knowing that some of the schools in our conference are moving from Club to participating in the state series for girls football can you help me with why we decided to postpone

193that one a year we have have a process in place and it has to go through the process so it doesn't become a state series until 2425 uh which does not give us the opportunity to do that so we'll start with the club next year put it through the process and then bring it back to the board for 25 26 okay yeah I just I know I know one of our schools uh in our conference that they're they're moving from they're jumping from the club to uh the state series next school year um so I was just curious about that my third piece was I forgot my third piece so I'm I'm going to go with this one um I it's just a reminder listen I'm I'm all for expanding all this stuff so I

194don't want this to come off the wrong way this is good stuff oh I do remember my third one uh which was are there any Title Nine implications I'm going to assume no but I always want to ask and then my last point is I just want to remind us that when we made all those cuts years ago we decimated Middle School sports and so I just want to remind us that as we're adding these things for high school and I'm not saying they're not needed that is not what I'm saying but I also want us to have that historical piece in our mind as a unit district that we still haven't reconciled everything at our at our Middle School level but um that's just a historical piece and I'll I'll I'm sure I know

195the answer to the title 9 question but I want to make sure it gets asked no title 9 implications correct if we do this that's correct okay thank you is there ever I'm sorry this is totally off um lacrosse and all this sixth grade sixth graders is there they do we have basketball for them at some point and we had to cut it it's just never been a it's just track and we don't we don't have designated sports for sixth graders sixth graders can be part of certain Sports and we also reach reach out to sixth graders if we don't have enough seventh eighth graders to fill teams question how many teams and I I'm starting with there but I'm also just thinking it through so I'm thinking about the students who who have never

196had access to Lacrosse yes but I'm also thinking about the students and all of the parents who are here advocating for their students which is phenomenal and if you have tryouts and those kids of course have been playing for however many years but now you have these new students who have never been exposed but are interested but if you have 25 kids who are experienced then the other kids who don't have experien don't have access to the sport so I'm just thinking about um how many teams and then how do we ensure the kids who are interested who don't have who has not who have not previously had access how will they get an opportunity to play in one sense it's not a lot different than our other cut Sports we have that situation pretty

197much in all our Sports where we have to make Cuts uh the growth of the sport would help to a degree so we start out with a larger roster than you would normally we're going to keep 25 on each of the two JV teams to begin with We Believe within one or two years it will grow to a JV and varsity level which would up that number to 50 at each level okay obviously this is projecting into the future budgets all those other pieces but I can see within 5 to seven years where each school has its own program with the JV University level and then you're talking about 100 so it's naturally going to grow and take care of itself okay and it was one other question budget oh you said that we were

198traveling in overnight does that account for the 4,000 that I saw in the budget for transportation no so those we were talking uh I think the question was what where would the booster club go that following year and so we were talking about the potential for them to help cover some of those overage costs um especially if we do have to travel I know one of the conference conferences that we had looked at for lacrosse if we get to that point there's I think Washington Dunlap and some other Central Illinois schools are a part of a conference with some Southwest Suburban schools to where you may go down on a Friday night and play Dunlap on Friday night and Washington on Saturday down there where you would have obviously some hotel costs that might um

199be a part of that so that is not necessarily in that the 4,000 is just kind of Representative of our local travel got it and would that be covered by District or are you I'm just trying to I'm just trying to think of overall cost over overall cuz I saw like 12,000 for equipment I get it and some of those costs are one time you know and I but I'm just trying to figure out especially if the district is going to have to pay because the seven only if it's 300 per student 25 kids 7500 bucks approximately I'm just trying to figure out how else will the other 30,000 be covered annually and I know it's I know it's through uh through you know the District I get for their hotels you know overnight and

200stuff like that the show choir pays for their own hotels oh I got it yeah that's what I was asking yeah so our so when we go on some of our trips like we baseball team's going on Spring trip got it uh softball are going on spring break down to Tennessee so they they are paying for that trip themselves it through fundraising and through their activity accounts rather than the district covering the cost of that trip but the district will cover obviously our trips to plan fields and jolet our for those conferences correct um I don't Dr um K Kate or fate years ago and I wasn't on my board we did a breakdown of sports per athlete cost per athlete for sports is that something we can look into again yeah we could do

201that remember either one of you work on that we can do that we can do an analysis that we can share with the board I think that will help to both of some of your questions and some questions I have uh for us to see that yeah well so um my last my well my last question is what is this USA lacrosse Dei plan what is that is that their document yeah so this is important I can speak to that one is that um I know that as part of the commitment we received this evening um a flyer here and I want to thank uh Chris and your team for really putting this together I know you took a a lead on this uh really talks about the sponsors um particularly here at the USA

202lacrosse di plan is part of the national work around really promoting access and equity for lacrosse and so that it's not really it really becomes representative of the community and not exclusive but really um uh experience of diversity and inclusion so Dan I know that you have worked and this has been an important part of the work you did around this so do you want to add to that a little bit and how I know you received this recently this is something as part of the development of the sport it's important to our work um I I know when I met with the kennedies last summer and they they expressed interest in Lacrosse we talked about this not becoming an exclusive Club but really one um that changes the landscape of Lacrosse if not for

203us locally but nationally I don't see why we wouldn't do that yeah and as you mentioned the the efforts that have been seen here tonight with our public comments and uh Mr Kennedy and things um really what this is about is it's a national commitment lacrosse has about uh embracing everyone and bringing kind of everyone into the fold and making sure that it's an inclusive sport that when we talk about costs and things like that too that we're being aware of those costs and how to grow it and and we talked about breaking barriers earlier tonight too that's all part of that plan really is is making sure that we are doing the things that we need to do to involve every student and every family no matter what the cost might be or that

204might prohibit from them for being exposed to it and that's why we wanted to talk about you know some of the things that we talk about with PE and everything else starting that early so that we we understand that some people don't have those opportunities uh to be in club teams at 8 nine 10 years old and may be great lacrosse players um on their own just with some exposure to that too and one thing I'll I'll mention here as well is um you know beginning this spring and end of the summer useland um Park District is beginning ages 8 through 14 both boys and girls lacrosse which is a huge feeder program for us too to build that partnership with the swand park district our local Club organizations and then going into the high

205school that's a great transition for us when we start talking about those numbers those numbers will likely grow to the point where we're talking year two to year three going from a JV to a varsity and splitting that team for varsity and JV so um but that Dei work that's really just being inclusive to everyone and I know us I the flag has the a Dei plan as well yeah um and then but that is also part of what we would hope that I my hope would be that boosters would help facilitate costs for students that maybe can't afford it because lacrosse lacrosse is a very expensive sport so um yeah definitely something that I would hope that we'd be able to help absolutely and I think not only lacrosse but I'll give kudos to

206our boosters who do that for almost for every sport across the board regardless when they know there's a student who can't afford something uh you'd be amazed at how much support there is for those kids um so which is fantastic and I know bionic will cover if a student needs wrestling shoes or whatever as well too so what a what a cool cool District we have right okay anybody else thank you all for all yourk you so much appreciate it thank you thank you so much I thought you had Cricut on the list tonight too Dan what happened to that that's not in here I'm sorry wrong proposal all right um activity bus lease we want to welcome Mr dearman uh to speak to the lease and Mr Robi and also with him is uh

207Paul ready this is normally an annual right we lease a bunch of buses every year and as I mentioned to the board uh I think the last couple of board meetings the cost of transportation is actually been very very hard on the district at the end of last year I think I I I mentioned it we ended the year with a deficit of $5.1 million in transportation and to date we're looking at a deficit of close to $3 million in transportation so we've had to uh transfer money from uh from other funds to plug that hole so what uh we've been doing is we've been looking very carefully at expenditures and transportation and making sure that every dollar that we spend is absolutely necessary we also have been looking for efficiencies where we can save

208money in transportation to that end uh we normally release a bunch of buses at this time of the year it was kind of like an automatic R of Passage so when the topic came up uh once I started we went through a different process of trying to examine do we really need these buses or can we do without them so we started out uh with uh how many buses did we start out with initially yeah we're talking about leasing initi 19 so initially we start out with one to lease niten buses and at the end of the day after we we looked at the uh the need and our inventory we were able to get that down to eight so if you look at that we are talking about for the life of the leasee

2095year lease we're looking at the savings of 1 .2 million how much $1.2 million in in 5 years so the eight buses that we coming to the board for are the ones that we absolutely need to be able to function so with that being said I'm going to hand it over to uh Mr Deon and uh parer Miss uh really I'm sorry thank you good evening thank you uh I'm Mike de Arman this is Paula REI to my right she's the assistant and director of Transportation I'm the director of transportations for the school district um thank you again for letting us come to present tonight we appreciate the opportunity to present our proposal regarding the leases that are due to expire for 19 of our buses this July uh after careful review like like rapael

210mentioned that uh we have uh considered considering the needs of our district and considering uh our Fleet uh we are proposing to replace replace uh four activity buses uh the white activity buses we'll replace four of those we'll replace two of them with uh pre-owned activity buses and then we'll replace the other two with brand new 2024 activity buses additionally we're will be replacing four wheelchair buses that were uh 2020 model years with 2025 model years um the annual payment for these eight buses will be $229,000 for 4468 uh that's at an interest rate of 5.44 3% financed by American Capital Finance and if I can jump in on that too Michael we've never shopped around for interest rate before we bought our buses from American Capital American uh Midwest uh bus company and they

211provide us interest rate and we just took it as an article of Fai and we just roll with it so for the first time this year we actually shopped around and uh American uh Midwest uh Transportation offered us an interest rate of 7.6 6.75 originally 6.75 and we after we shopped around we were able to get interest rate of 5.43 from American Capital American Capital they don't sell buses but they finance everything so it's not a given that because you buy bus from somewhere it's like buying a car from a dealership and financing it from a dealership you can do that they give you the best rate so the conversation started how much do you want to pay and we're like no what is the interest rate how much is the bus what is the

212interest rate so that's what we're able to do and we there's a substantial savings from that too just from going to uh to a different funding company to fund the purchase of the lease of those buses the initial interest rate was what 6 Midwest uh was 6.75 Central States uh scho school bus was 6.53 and we negotiated that down to 5.4 we were able we going to a third part to a third party so that's a significant savings is that reflected in the report yes from what okay I want to make sure and this is a firm that I've used for leasing or for other things I've used them for computers for uh for buses for different all they do is they they do Finance it they don't sell anything but they do Finance it

213great thank you so as I'll continue with my we spent time on this so I got to I know it's not 40 slides like my previous presentations but you know we'll try to keep it short um so it is worth noting like rafhael said that we will uh let 11 of the mini buses that we currently lease uh go return without replacing them and as you said that would save us approxim or that will save us $247,000 annually and more than 1.2 million over the next 5 years additionally we want to make sure uh we note that we anticipate receiving approximately 50% reimbursement from the state of the purchase price principle through the transportation claim also so questions so the uh the eight that we're not renewing but we're we're getting eight new buses or

214whatever um you don't have if you don't have the answer that's fine I didn't ask this um I'm wondering what the increase was from the prior uh the increase from lease payments you mean or yeah the year-over-year on those particular on those eight items I'm sure they went up but I'm just wondering since you asked this is all for you too Dominic I knew these questions were coming um manyi buses so the Collins mini buses orig we currently paying $976 a year per bus um the wheelchair buses that with the lease that expires we're currently paying $5,988 1964 per bus per year for a total of $23,600 per bus I mean per year for those 19 for 19 for 19 vehicles so just for the eight you're talking uh 95,000 per year for the eight

215but so it's a pretty considerable increase uh but it's per unit basis on a per unit basis you you we've seen uh it's more than doubled for the activity buses and and the price is also uh probably gone up by at least uh 2/3 on the uh wheelchair buses okay one of the reasons why the the 11 mini buses that we're able to get let go um because we have extra big buses we can put um star seats or integrated car seats into them and still use them and use them in the same capacity as these mini buses but then we can also use them for field trips for other things where you might need more people on the buses so it kind of we don't need those manyi buses anymore and it's saving us

216cost on that as well so we feel good about the level of service yes the level of service will still be um just as good if not better I would think yeah I think the key thing the key thing we just want to make sure before we spend money we do an analysis of whether we really need it as opposed to a legacy decision we've always done it this way and we'll continue to do it this way oh yeah the bottom line is yeah it's um year-over-year I mean it's still 110,000 yeah um but yeah had we what you're saying is basically if we've took another 11 of those buses it would have been 250,000 y so correct and with what we have and the ability to modify the bigger buses like I said we

217we'll be able to use them in the same capacity and more so because we can use them as two different functions we can use them as the big bus with more passengers or with the star seats in it or the integrated seats for the little guys for the ELC routs all right thanks for having the answer I wasn't expecting thank you so much for coming in your presentation thank you guys please extend our appreciation to all the drivers and your teams who are literally keeping our district moving every day so thank [Applause] you okay Mr Queen uh Fox Chase roof replacement and I know I think you have Charlie johnso from clubber here this evening yeah cubber's here um thank you for being here just to give you a little bit of background this is

218part of our proactive work with those roofs that we're trying to do a couple of year right the high school elementary or whether it be a junior high this is just part of that body of work um this job is pretty rently we've done the homestead roof Old Post roof had great luck with them and at this point I would like to recommend Adler Roofing be awarded the contract and $715,000 and 70 bucks any questions questions this is and just to give you a little bit of background so we've done quite a bit of work with Adler and and the these guys have been great um bigger jobs they've came in the substantial completion has been right on time um they haven't dipped into the contingencies and and one thing you might notice different and

219and maybe crossing your mind right now is where is that liquidated damages that we've been talking about with all these processes this job is is very common we we can get through this project in the summer leaving us what minimal could work and if there was be anything it would be in not intrusive into the learning that experience for school to start back in in August so any questions all right thank you thank you thank you again team moving on to 10.1 action item approval of mowing bid can I have a motion please I make a motion to award the 20 I'm sorry 2024 mowing contract to axol LLC with the option to renew for up to two additional one-year terms second Miss venm I Dr Maria I Mr serone I miss Simon hi Mr

220Gatewood I Miss Johnson I Mr pler I motion passes 70 action item 10.2 approval of policies can I have a motion please I make a motion to approve the following board policy section five uh General Personnel 5 colon 210 5 colon 220 and then section 6 instruction 6 colon 230 and then section 7 students 7 col 60 second Dr Maria hi Miss Simon hi Mr [Music] cler I Mr Cerone hi Mr Gatewood hi M ven hi M John I motion passes 70 action item 10.3 if I can if I can can make a comment on 10.3 and 10.4 if folks have been asking question how are we what are we doing to make sure the comment will come after the motion yeah okay after the motion the motion and then I have a comment as

221well I U so action item 10.3 approval of K through five Ela resource can I have a motion please I make a motion to approve K5 Ela resource for Benchmark education for the total of one 1, 19525 payable over four years second all right now so what I wanted to point out is some of the things that we've been doing to make sure that we stay financially uh prudent and conservative in the way we manage money initially this payment was supposed to mail out all at once we supposed to pay the the money all at once so we decided to approach the publisher and just ask them front us for four years no interest charge they wanted the business they agreed to it so instead of us paying $1.8 million all at once we're paying

222it over four years go and what that means we have money in the bank that we can use for other operations that will not go to the vendor and C us you're just bring freeing up working cash is I love it um but um yeah I was wondering I was wondering because we had so much budgeted for this year um and then when I saw the amounts that were going to be spent this year I was I was thinking that maybe we were getting less product no we actually getting more product okay so okay I I have a comment too but I'll wait well I have one question yeah goad um I know that this was publicly available at the district office do we know if any of the public came to see the curriculum

223faith and Dr Haron one we had one person one um person that came okay and reviewed uh and asked a comment about interventions okay thank you I'll have that same question for the next agenda item as well yeah I and I had the opportunity to engage with the person who came um she was more questioning some interventions not necessarily our um curriculum so we we had an opportunity to to engage with each other and um show her show her the materials and that was the only person that came thank you wonderful Dr Herman just one second um can you speak to last I think it's really important for the public and especially for our Educators who may be watching there was discussion around professional learning and some of the feedback from the board about integration

224and stuff can you speak a little bit about what lessons came out of the board meeting last time just so we can go on record for that because I think it's really important um just the amount of incredible work done to prepare for this uh for you and Shannon's um preparation for this evening yes so we have um gratus days that are part of the purchase um for professional development so we're planning April 25th for all of our teachers to receive training for the materials and then they're going to also have some um asynchronous time where they'll be looking at videos and um engaging in the materials already to prepare for next year but in addition to that we have some um custom uh professional development that's going to happen for our pilot teachers to

225continue their learning because they've been on this journey already um so they don't they don't need to know about the program they've they've really engaged with it so we'll continue their learning there and they're um they're really working with us and and what our needs are and so we have additional days that we'll be looking um to to use next year and then we've already started some committee work uh and we are asking our our teachers what else do we need and so for the rest of this year too we'll be working on the curriculum we'll be working on what additional resources do we need what other professional development do we need and we're working on still getting Wy bevens here um for our teachers so we're excited about all of those opportunities so thank

226you Jarett you said that thank you you said that you wanted to wait why do you want to wait is it for 6 through eight is it for uh junior high no I was we're we're on K through five right that's correct yeah know I had something for this the next one okay no no K through five oh goad yeah yeah so um I I definitely did hear from some voices and and listen all listen it was great work and everything I the vast majority of what I heard was was very positive but um I do want to just emphasize that it felt like anyways based off the feedback I was getting that the higher grades were more on the fence with uh the two products that we were reviewing as opposed to the lower

227grades and so I just really want to uh emphasize the need for that vertical articulation and some of those communication pieces between the fifth and sixth grade levels just to make sure that those concerns that are coming from those higher higher grades um in primarily fifth grade teachers are are being addressed and and they're being supported and and that was it yes and and we um we absolutely are working with the fifth grade teachers again we're going to beef up what resources they need but also um there was this is a newer resource and so there's some errors in the fifth grade particularly um Ally Anderson was already working with our vendor we've gotten in touch directly with them and um and and and and they're being really responsive um so that that was part

228of it but um also um as you all heard Michelle Simmons um she has also worked in some additional resources in that background building and we're going to make sure that um the teachers have everything that they need to be successful I appreciate that Miss venm hi Dr Maria I mrone hi Miss Simon hi Mr G hi M Johnson I Mr cler hi motion passes [Laughter] [Music] 70 all right action item 10.4 approval of 6 through eight Ela resource can I have a motion please I make a motion to approve 6 through eight Ela resource for from is it Holton um muff hen miffin miffin hardart for the total of $777,000 second second okay now do we have any questions comments thought I just wanted to see did other people come to see this zero

229people were at the office to see the public okay thank you get on that microphone you know what um on a whole relative to what we thought we were going to be spending on the K through five and the 6 through eight did it come in substantially less than budget not just in year one but all together yes partially because of our financial wizard um here who went in and did some negotiating but we also budgeted for here's what we're going to spend so that it lasts for the next four years five years and now we're spreading that out over time so you're not having this lump sum that you're spending now will have increments that we're spending in that is amazing yeah no I just uh I don't know I because it was 1.8

230and then eight so I just it was a bigger number before right it wasn't 2.6 it wasn't it was that it was it was the same number it was just we will have to pay all in one fiscal year this year I remember talking about it during budgeting probably last year and I I thought I saw anyhow okay can you would you please remind me of the last time we had new Ela curriculum in the Middle School junior high 2015 I think so with springboard 2015 thank you okay Jared anything no no all right Mr Cerone hi Mr Gatewood hi M Johnson hi Mr pler I miss vmou I Dr Maria I miss I motion passes [Music] 70 I feel like we're at an award ceremony save the union action item 10.5 action on the

231uniform grievance m-d can I have a motion please I make a motion to direct Dr kilti to gather additional information as discussed in Clos session second with do I keep going with respect with respect to Miguel Maya's pending grievance against Mike dearman uh second Dr Maria hi Miss vmou hi Mr Cerone hi Miss similon I Mr Gatewood hi M Johnson I Mr I motion passes 70 action item 10.6 action on uniform grievance m-m can I have a motion please I make a motion to authorize president similon to prepare a written decision affirming Dr katti's decision with respect to Miguel maa's pending grievance against Ken Miller second Mr Gatewood I miss hi Mr pler hi Mr Cerone hi Miss menth hi Dr Mario hi Miss Simon I motion passes 70 action item 10.7 approval of building

232administrator contract can I have a motion please I make a motion to approve the building administrative administrator's contract as discussed and presented second Miss Simon I Miss Johnson abstain Mr Cerone hi Dr Mario hi Mr Gatewood hi Miss venman hi Mr Clover I motion passes 70 six I I'm sorry it wasn't okay sorry six one abion six with one exstension yes action item 10.8 approval of District administrator contract can I have a motion please I make a motion to approve District administrator contract as discussed and presented second miss vmou I miss Johnson abstain Mr ploger I miss similon hi Mr Gatewood hi Dr Mario hi Mr s hi motion passes six with one abstention act action item 10.9 approval of personnel report can I have a motion please I make a motion to approve the

233Personnel report as discussed and presented second Dr Mar hi Mr Gatewood I Miss Johnson I Mr pler I miss Simon hi Mr ceron hi Miss amendment I motion passes 70 can I have a motion to adjourn I make a motion to a journ