SD308 Board of Education (2/12/2024)

0012024 can I have a motion can I have a roll call please Mr Cerone here Mr Gatewood present Miss Johnson present Dr Mario present Mr present Miss Simon present Miss present please stand for pledge of allegiance I pledge aliance to the flag of the United States America and to the rep for it stands one nation God indivisible okay good evening one of the things one of the best parts of working in a school districts are all the people the students and the staff members and the parents who make that school district the way it is and tonight we are honored to receive and to recognize our pride awardees and while um our director of communications uh Teresa citas shares a little bit about this Pride award I'm going we're going to invite you and the

002board members to the front to take some pictures and to recognize our pride awardees Teresa well good evening everyone tonight we're going to acknowledge our pride winners uh kind of going back a little bit thanks to our winter weather um from December in January Pride stands for proudly recognizing individuals demonstrating Excellence the Board of Education implemented this program in the fall of 2015 to recognize promote and celebrate the many contributions made by teachers and employees across our district we thank our generous District Partners Allied First Bank Huntington Learning Center Chick-fil-A and cerse for helping to make this program a success we would also like to thank all of those who have taken the time to nominate individuals for consideration awardees here this evening after your name is called we invite you to come forward and

003be congratulated by the board and Dr katti and then we'll have you hang up there while we take a photo our December teachers are Tony BAC Fine Arts teacher from bonari Junior [Applause] High Tony has created a classroom where all students feel welcome and safe no matter their artistic level or ability he connects with his students and motivates them to do their very best not only in his room but throughout their day he is a supportive colleague and always willing to help all one has to do is walk into his room and you'll see the impact he is making congratulations [Applause] Tony we would like to invite up Chris Crystal Rutherford the library media specialist teacher from trer Junior High [Applause] School Crystal creates creative spaces for students where they are introduced to books of

004different genres throughout her book talk lessons speed dating events and incentives to meet authors such as being able to read to the Ducks and chicks as well as visiting with the therapy dogs crystal is constantly finding ways to put book books in our students hands visitors to Travers say they want to spend their free time in the lrc because is it is such a fun welcoming environment that encourages learning and exploration congratulations Crystal Danielle zapple is a speech and path language path from homestead [Applause] Elementary Danielle is an amazing educator who students staff and parents love to work with she's very knowledgeable about speech and language topics best practices in special education as a whole her expertise on speech and language and assist of Technology are invaluable to her school she has an outstanding ability

005to connect with all students but especially limited verbal students and students with trauma congratulations [Applause] Danielle joining them are our January awardees Gustavo chavoya an English learner math and science teacher from asigo East High [Applause] School gustavo's nomination stud he goes above and beyond for all El students and staff working with students who speak all different languages and working closely with parents Bridging the Gap between school and home most importantly within the El Department he's the glue embodying all things with inclus inclusivity inclusivity sorry and staff morale he does not miss a celebration is a team player who goes above and beyond he's a one in a million staff member at OE next we'll invite up Miss Beth jessic an English teacher from Migo East High [Applause] School Beth nomination said she's always motivating her

006students to do the very best coming in early and staying late to meet students needs for extra help her former students come by and say hello and chat with her and it's a testament to the impact that she has with all of her students not just the current ones those who visit are welcomed with a smile and by their names she listens to what they have to say she's a team player with her colleagues always there to support them every step of the [Applause] way our final January award for teachers is Susan McMahon a special education teacher from Wolf's [Applause] Crossing Susan's classroom is a safe and supportive environment not only for her students but when other students are in need of a space she offers her classroom as a resource she offered to let

007another star student blend into her room when the student needed to take a break her classrooms provided a nicely structured learning environment for this student as well as an opportunity for building new positive relationships with other peers Susan has been open to problemsolving situations not only for her students but students in other classrooms which has been a great support congratulations Susan if we're joined tonight from any building administrators that are here with these winners if you could come up and join us for a photo got one more com [Applause] [Music] [Applause] we're going to move on to our support staff we have an extra big celebration this month awardees again if you would come forward when your name is called and stay up there so we can celebrate you with a photo our first is

008our December support staff winner Stephanie burer a registered Behavior technician from Wolf's Crossing Elementary Stephanie's nomination describes her as the definition of sunshine spreading warmth cheer and happiness throughout the building her position has her interacting daily with the most vulnerable students often during some sort of Crisis she makes them feel safe and can reach them using effective strategies to help calm them down and help them get back on task Stephanie is a calming presence in every situation never flustered or rattled by anything going on around her she works to make connections with all students and offers to help staff with things in their classrooms it is easy to see that Stephanie loves what she does and cares about everyone at Wolf's Crossing congratulations [Applause] Stephanie next up is Mr Larry Burns he's an building engineer

009from the wheatlands MR Larry's nomination said he's an amazing building engineer and exceptional human being whenever he is needed he is there promptly and prepared to do all things necessary to ensure the building functions at an optimal level more than that his door is open to all staff members who come in to him as a trusted Confidant and conveyor of wisdom in all he's as genuine and kind as one could ever hope to be congratulations next up is Alex hailes a special education teaching assistant from Hunt Club Elementary Alex's nomination says Alex is described as just the nicest most all-around positive and open-minded person ever he wears many hats but mostly works with individual students and a bit more closely as a resource ta he's always willing to go above and beyond for the kids

010and has such a calm caring demeanor Alex exemplifies what Hunt Club stands for as well as adding that Father Figure feeling for direction and insight to many of the students Alex is humorous insightful intelligent hardworking calming eager to learn caring and valued in our district h is beyond lucky to have him [Applause] congratulations moving on to our January support staff winners Daniela gay attendance secretary from Long Beach [Music] [Applause] Elementary Daniela was at Long Beach as a dedicated building sub then moving into attendance secretary role midwe M mid year and has made this transition seamlessly she's graceful in the way of adapting to her new role and being such a a delight to work with she engages with families Administration and staff in an authentic way and has built connections rapidly because of it congratulations

011Daniela Miss Rose gasset bus driver from our transportation department rose is one of the most student oriented people she is a staple in the school district and in our community Rose will support encourage and keep an eye on any and all children she'll be the first one to lend a helping hand a kind word or just how you doing to her co-workers congratulations Rose Tina Sosa custodian at East viiew element Academy Tina Tina comes in early to help keep Eva clean due to some staffing shortages she goes out of her way to say hi to all of the students as well as the staff she always has a big smile on her face and is willing to help whenever needed even if it's at the last minute Eva is sure lucky to have her congratulations

012to you Tina any administrators that are present here from these departments and buildings please join us for a photo congratulations [Applause] everyone get um all right ready okay so before we go on um onto our regular agenda this evening um we begin tonight on a somber note uh we'd like to offer a moment of silence for uh the honor of to honor the life of a young man who is both an alumni of our district and also the son a very special individual woman miss Robin Mrs Robin Vickers um she's a founder of community cares has dedicated herself to serving our students staff families and the community in so many ways I know many many um friends and families and colleagues went this past weekend to honor the life of Andy Vickers who was just

01321 years of age when he passed away after a hard fought battle with lukemia his passion and caring demeanor his empathy and loyalty and his bold advocacy for social justice built a legacy that will be remembered forever I'd like to invite us to join in uh reflecting on the life of this incredible young man and keep his family and friends in our hearts as they move forward with this difficult loss so if we could take a moment now thank you and I want to appreciate the staff and the leadership of the Long Beach um um School home and School Association and the principal and the staff there a scholarship has been honored in his memory um for students who are headed to college and so all students headed to college have an opportunity to apply

014for a scholarship um for their to get support so his legacy will reign forever in this District so okay thank you so as part of our our work to understand and to learn about the good work happening in the district um Dr Waller has uh uh taken leadership in welcoming members of various organizations and associations to to present so Dr Waller if You' like to welcome tonight's guests hello hello so I'm very excited for these amazing humans to step forward they have um taken a lot of time and pride and intentionality into what they want to share with you this evening um and so we have the board members um and supporters and family um and sponsors in the audience here from um both o and O E's Muslim Student Association so please please give

015them your full attention we are super excited to just hear your voices and you got this [Applause] welcome oh do we have a microphone if if one of you would grab the mic just so we can make sure um oh thank you chair thank you make sure it's on hello yeah we're good hello there you go Alum and peace be upon you um welcome to Theo high school and ASO East High School Muslim student student association club and we'd like to welcome to you to our presentation oh um next alikum my name is abdullaha I am the ASO High School president of the MSA hi guys I'm and I am the vice president of the O ohos board Salam everyone I'm sari here and I'm the communications manager of oo High School's MSA hello everyone

016my name is juu abua and I am the activities coordinator of os MSA our sponsor to miss Lando is here with us Abby Abby schwaz is our Treasurer as wellam alaykum uh my name is Aman ibal and I'm the president of Oe MSA or Muslim Student Association may peace be upon you salamu alaykum greetings of peace my name is Omar sad and I am the co-vice President of oigo East MSA hello I'm minha Fatma and I am the Secretary of O MSA Asam Alum I'm nahi and I'm the treasur at oi um a few more people that we'd like to recognize is Iman Khan um our other co- vice president um as well as Zacharia rahali who would be our brother's coordinator Fela fael who would be our sister's coordinator and unfortunately our sponsor wasn't

017able to make it but we'd also like to recognize uh mrsan who would be our uh Club sponsor Muslim Student Association Club also known as MSA introduces the religion of Islam to people who are curious and eager to learn more as we inform our peers about Islam it helps avoid anti-muslim occurrences and makes Muslim Students more comfortable to express their religion to their friends teachers and classes we show encouragement for Muslims to practice and fulfill OB obligations such as Friday prayer in our MSA we do lots of fun activities that include information about Islam in an efficient way adding on we create a positive atmosphere to eliminate any misconceptions about Islam lastly we use this opportunity to make light of the issues and and difficulties that surround Islam that not too many people are aware

018of we welcome anyone of all religions and as we grow this club we hope to expand everyone's knowledge about Islam thank you looking at many of our accomplishments at oigo high school we have successfully created a big event collabing with OE as our annual fadon which we successfully started last year our fadon consists of inviting iting Muslims and non-muslims from our district all over to come and fast with us for a whole day which later on we all come together to break our fast showing in the picture above coming together and breaking our fast leading up to breaking our fast we come together and we invite guest speakers of all diversities and all cultures to come and share what their experiences are from their past of fasting and becoming Muslims from non-muslims to people who

019are just new converts or Muslims originally um doing our faston we successfully were featured on the Chicago Tribune which is a very exciting and successful thing that we did in which the interviewer interviewed many people of different backgrounds of culture religion and we got many positive feedbacks moving on we have also collabed with mist in which is a which is where all msas msas across all the districts come together and we play games and test our knowledge of Islam and moving forward we have we do a lot of MS functions in which at ASO high school we have meetings every other Friday in which we invite non-muslims and Muslims to come and join us we do things such as donuts and doubts in which we all come together and eat donuts and talk about misconceptions

020of Islam and we just test our knowledge and see and question things we also do Jeopardy nights in which we talk about facts of common knowledge about Islam and just share new information we learn or just ask questions in case there are any misconceptions thank you all right so some of our accomplishments at iGo East High School include our annual picnic uh the Mist competition as mentioned before uh a large event of ours is the Islamic relief meal pack so that is uh last year we actually had almost 100 people and we were packed around uh 20,000 meals and so this year we plan on exceeding those numbers uh we also have a lot of collaborations with other clubs including the environmental Club the art Club and BSA in which we host a movie night

021every year we also have a lot of fun get togethers including our chai competition our ice skating outing and our arcade outing and of course our biggest event is the annual fundraising dinner and that is where we host uh theme speeches and presentations along with a cultural Feast okay as we all know the Israel Palestine conflict has been very devastating for everybody and what we need from the school board is additional support and we want to have the ability to have freedom of speech expression and beliefs about things that we are passionate about for example we want to have the ability to wear flags or clothes and we want to have open conversations with our classmates about Palestine and since it is a topic that so like frowned upon and um we want to have

022lessons that are similar to what was going on in Ukraine and we want Administration support to prevent islamophobic hate bullying and harassment the next thing I'm going to go over is some is some recent islamophobia and hate crimes the first hate crime was a murder of a six-year-old Palestinian American boy his name was W Alum he was stabbed 26 times for being Muslim in planfield Illinois the second hate crime was the shooting of three college students of Palestinian descent in Vermont for wearing a CA outside in public and the next one is Imam Hassan Sheriff that got shot and killed outside his mosque in New Jersey another one I would like to add that just happened a couple days ago was an attack on a Muslim Middle School student wearing the hijab in Glendale Heights

023Illinois it's important to note that these atrocities occurred because of the victim's affiliation with Palestine and Islam for exercising their first amendment's right to freedom of religion in W's case he was betrayed a man who was considered his grandfather figure was so utterly brainwashed by the by the lies of by the lies of social media by the bias news outlets that plague our country how this man was able to mercilessly attack this innocent boy based on the lies he was fed that is why it's important important to educate ourselves and those around us so terrorism like this no longer occurs in our community on behalf of both our club exec boards we truly appreciate the support we've received from our community and wanted to take a moment to acknowledge it in light of the conflict

024in Palestine Administration from OE specifically our social worker Miss Campbell our principal Miss Bowski and our assistant principal Miss Darnell had offered their support to our club and any students who may need it we were asked about our concerns and assured that we could openly express our support for Palestine additionally we're also grateful for the prayer passes that MSA members have gotten that would allow them to leave class for a couple of minutes to pray at OE we've been given a designated room in the lrc where these prayers can be performed and since they're mandatory in our religion Islam the space is much appreciated this support means a lot to the Muslims in our community so we' like to thank our district for being able to cooperate with our clubs uh we're very grateful we're

025very grateful for yeah we're very grateful for our opportunity to pray in school but uh as we noted in OE OE has a private room where they can go pray off for like privately o OHS does not have that privilege so like our our hope is that we could talk to you guys and hopefully we can get a private room where we could pray privately and comfortably um another thing that we would would really uh like to address or is that um we would really appreciate helping um in reevaluating some of uh our social studies curriculum to ensure that when studying Islam and Muslims within um our world cultures units or within um our world religions like lessons within middle school and in high school um we want to ensure that our faith is portrayed

026accurately and genuinely without inaccurate bigoted or ignorant material that may have slipped past um and so although we're very very proud of our curriculum so far um we would really like and appreciate if we would be able to re uh at least look over and review some of the material to make sure that nothing might have gotten passed that we that could be harmful we would also like to spread awareness about our faith through different literature different art Music Theater like anything we can use to to spread our to spread our faith and spread our religion another uh aspect that we'd really like to help change is to ensure that during the month of Ramadan um fasting students uh are provided the the the accommodations necessary for them um for example um in the past

027many students have sat in the LR seat while they're fasting during their uh lunch periods so that they don't have to um sit down in a place where their peers are eating in front of them which could be very uncomfortable for some students um another example of certain accommodations like this would be in the past individual students um have gotten um alternative lesson plans for their PE classes during the month of Ramadan so that when they're fasting they don't exert themselves to a point where it could be unsafe for them um other possible accommodations that we would really like to discuss would be uh for fasting athletes um who would only be able to break their their fast after a specific time after this on is set um as well as uh for example during

028swim units when um Muslim uh Muslim women and Muslim girls that uh would would feel more comfortable covering specific parts of their body um would be able to do that or would be able to be exempt from certain kinds of things where uh you would have to expose certain parts of yourself during uh swimming for example yeah uh last but not least we also possibly have some guest speakers come in do any during any world culture units or International lights to to bring in and help them talk about you like use their knowledge to talk about our faith in our culture uh yeah another thing about the world culture units that Abdullah just mentioned is that um we would be very comfortable um like walking in ourselves if if that would be possible as well

029or older students are alumni as well so um one more thing before we finish off would be that we would really like to mention that the month of Ramadan uh will start from March 10th to April 9th um more information regarding this month as well as fasting um and many other uh aspects of um like you know Muslim student life during this time period uh will be provided to teachers staff and administrators by Sister SAA sha over the next few weeks uh thank you so much for uh allowing us to express ourselves and for attending our um our presentation um we sincerely appreciate everything thank you [Applause] okay questions any questions I have a question um where can we get more information do you have you must have some sort of um online presence that

030gives us dates and and information where can we find that so uh do you mean like information about Ramadan or like in general or the club in general the CL about our club so we don't necessarily have our own website or anything like that but we do have um like most of the students that uh attend our club usually join our Google classroom and we post on there but we also have um our own uh Instagram account where uh we often post announcements or important information regarding our club what's the Instagram name what's the handle o HS MSA MSA I was is OHS I'm say and my my other question is um do you have a date for the um for the meal pack this year actually our meal pack is this Saturday so the

03117th yeah okay thanks and the Fast and the fast event that sounds really powerful it's great yeah the Fast Fun should be during Ramadan okay the the date is still to be detered termined but it's it's going to be during Ramadan so I think around after March or like during March yeah I I encourage anybody to go to the faston um there's great speakers um I think last year had author and had Au people and that's uh where the Tribune came right and yeah and then it was a wonderful meal afterwards um the question I had is um you're looking for to have freedom of speech expression and beliefs about something we were passionate about example wear clothing Flags Etc can can you help me understand you know the concern and and what's going on

032okay um so yeah um our main concern was that like as minha mentioned um we've been uh like we wanted to sincerely appreciate the support that we've already received from our Administration um from Mrs Bowski like I remember m Bowski um after October 7th like she um invited me um downstairs and I believe she also invited someone else I don't didn't she invite me yeah yeah uh just to like make sure that like you know uh she had a perspective from the students to make sure that uh if if we ever needed anything from administrators whether that be from social workers or any other kind of support that we would have that um another thing that we addressed was that we just wanted to ensure that if we wanted to express um like our personal

033beliefs regarding like International conflicts or anything else that are going on within the world that we would be able to express that through um of course nonviolent peaceful uh means of demonstration for example like right now we're wearing cillas a lot of us um which is a form of solidarity uh with the Palestinian resistance as well as um you know a lot of students have worn pins with Palestinian flag or stickers that they' put on their Chromebooks or something like that um our main concern was not necessarily uh not being able to express oursel because thankfully we've been able to we've been given that freedom but uh our main concern was more just to ensure that this keeps going consistently like it has been and that we're very thankful for how it has been going

034thank you I I want to thank you all for being a bridge for helping people have an opportunity to learn about your experience and your faith and uh you know it's so important a lot of what happens is there's a lot of misconceptions about people's experience and and I really appre appreciate the educational perspective you have taken about sharing and so uh really a lot of courage and appreciation for you all thank you I think there was a you even had a um what's your answer right and then you you know see who got it right and wrong and had a bunch of different questions so it's it's they do a great job so any event so I I had a couple of things and I'll I'll admit they're more comments than question questions the

035first one definitely aware of some school districts in the area that um really go out of their way to accommodate um uh during Ramadan um and um some of those schools too they they end up with some really good uh the teachers who volunteer they end up was some really good food at the end too let me tell you um but the other piece too listen I'm always guilty of thinking I admit readily I am always guilty of thinking long-term big picture guilty is char right and one thing that I I hope that we will contemplate or or or think about if you will is how our calendar is built right like the structure of our calendar sometimes you don't think about unless you um come into conflict with it right and so um I

036always tell people well I want you to imagine if you will that school happens on a Sunday right tell me how that would go if you had to go to your public school on a Sunday and and of course and you know people maybe hopefully think about that ponder that and as conversations continue to uh grow if you will about uh the concept of 4-day work weeks and and uh 4-day School uh or 4day uh uh School weeks around and so forth right yeah see I'm telling you I'm always saying a longterm big picture I got it right um and and and you you think about the um uh the three religions of of of Abraham if you will uh there's there's a quick solution to that which would be if you had Friday Saturday

037and Sunday off right and uh the amount of students that um you know I my my heart goes out to them that I have right where Fridays are um especially we're talking about around Ramadan right so just something to think about as momentum continues to grow right think about uh others so got to throw that in there because guilty is charged when I think about long-term big picture sorry but I just have a question how do you feel um our School dress code has supported you or not supported you great question um well for us like for us for the girls normally we have to like cover up a little bit and I think the School dress code as long as like nothing is like obligated towards us from them we're fine like we have

038expressed oursel the way that we would like at our school and the dress code hasn't affected us at all honestly like everyone expressing themselves as long as they get to do that and we get to do that we're we're good great to hear I have um a couple of comments and then a question my question is actually more to Administration I understand that in OE you have that space But at oh you don't what is their step and who do they talk to to make that come to fruition Dr k k I don't know if that's something you can so it's already in my notes okay I would be happy to follow up with Mr arson and M uh principal gree so I will follow up on that I appreciate you uh letting us know

039thank you um first and foremost I am incredibly proud of all of you I completely understand I shouldn't say I should completely understand I understand that right now it is a very tumultuous time to be in the United States yet alone anywhere else in the country so not only did you come here and advocate for your clubs today but you came here and advocated for a lot of other people so for that thank you for using your student voice that's what this is all about and that's why we're here is to allow to give you that space to have that have any of you experienced with the escalation of what is happening um in Gaza have you experiened experienced more um in the community or in the school than you had before so I think

040with uh a lot of these you know recent events um it is somewhat noticeable especially within like smaller groups like I can attest at least I've heard a lot of you know jokes about you know the issue or insensitive comments that I personally you know would find offensive and so I find that even though it might not you know be available to the public sometimes within a smaller student uh Community or friend group you know you often see a lot of uh insensitive remarks or uh you know they just don't assess the situation correctly or as serious as it should be and I think um even outside of this event or of the recent events I think I have you know witnessed certain acts that I think you know are not really appropriate uh I

041have witnessed you know we we put uh flyers for a lot of our events I've I've seen those you know been torn down even in rare occasions not very often but I've seen it a few times and so and I think especially with what's happening now I'm worried that uh this might escalate or you know more hatred will spread so I think that is something to address for sure um I appreciate you mentioning that um another thing i' I'd also like to add on is that um although like thankfully like at our school um at least from like I can only speak for OE but um at least from from our school like I've been like very like satisfied with the way that our community has been like I feel like in general our community

042has been very welcoming and very open and we've been like relatively very comfortable here um that being said um unfortunately like I do feel like there have been uh like incidents that have been going around that do hit kind of close to home like um I believe that you've mentioned like already like in planfield not like just a few months ago like that young boy that was murdered in planfield um many of us have family that live there many of us are connected to the Muslim Community in that area um and uh I believe you mentioned uh the girl in glendle Heights right um she was like the first day that I came across that was on social media um because basically what happened was that it was like this young middle school girl she

043was actually an immigrant like her parents came from Saudi Arabia and um they didn't speak English very well and um what happened was that like an older person like an older boy kind of shoved her into the locker and kind of like hurt her like physically and um like what was the most upsetting part about that was that most of the middle school kids like no one said anything about it most people were laughing and pointing and jeering and what was really unfortunate was that um even like on social media when it was going around it was combined with like five or six different angles of the same thing meaning that there were five or six different students in the same hallway recording the the incident instead of saying anything about it instead of standing

044up for her no one did anything about it and the thing is that she in the video it was very obvious that she wasn't resisting or anything she was just minding her own business right um and I have like family friends like I the whose little brother goes to that school specifically um so yeah I'm very thankful that our school like we've never had anything extreme um of that caliber like happen at our school and I'm very thankful for the way that we've been welcomed um but like just because incidents like this have been going around especially like close to like close to us um I guess we're here to ensure that the comfort that we have and the safety that we have here is maintained in the long run so yeah and I just

045wanted to mention I also am very grateful for our community and all the things you guys have done for us uh just because I didn't mention that before uh these are just some things that we want to bring to light but absolutely I appreciate everything that everyone has done for us well thank you for educating us I I will be honest I'm very ignorant and was very ignorant to the um the conflict because as I was sharing with Mrs sha it has been around my whole life and so it's just always something that's been in the background and I was getting my information from Main Street Media and realized that that was my biggest mistake because all of a sudden you know it it as it has elevated you kind of see people take both

046sides you know it's either you have to be you know on one side or the other and we don't we have to understand that it's a struggle Way Beyond all of us and we have to humanize it so thank you for coming here and humanizing it and keep using your voices and keep teaching and I also want to thank Mrs sha for inviting me into her home and helping bring awareness to this and also answering my fairly ignorant questions and and so that I can learn and so that I can better advocate for our students so thank you very much thank you all right thank you again one one last question so it says that more information will be shared with the staff regarding Ramadan by Simon sha so miss sha can you just share

047what is it that how H what what are you interested in sharing and how will you be sharing it thank you so I am part of school district engagement committee at our mosque um I'm the co-chair of that and so every year what we do is um dist dist 203 204 and 308 are our uh our school districts that we send out some Ramadan information so a couple of years we'd sent cake pops to about 4,000 staff members delicious and uh and then last year unfortunately we send chips and our parents are very disappointed and we were like lack of funds um but this year again um we're meeting I think the end of this week to decide how we're going to um share more information about Ramadan to the 308 staff all right thank

048you thank you you know can I just say one last thing yes of course I I I feel like to some of the things that you've said I think it's always imperative that those who hold positions of power make it clear to to model and to set the tone and the example because I think that's always imperative and so one of the things that I want to point point out and I just want to reiterate and say you are our commun and I think the pronouns matter you are our communities young adults children I I hate saying children because you but but our students you are our future you are going to do great things there is no way that a society should ever tolerate the mistreatment of our youth that even includes that even

049includes the mistreatment of our when we mistreat ourselves right you are going to do great things it is not acceptable on any level for anyone to mistreat Our Youth and I want to make sure that that is made abundantly clear I'm happy to hear some of the things that you say but but to your point um like I I I was so overcome with with emotion a six-year-old boy I'm I'm you know I'm trying to fight back now that is that is the future of our society our society and this shouldn't be tolerated in any way shape or form and so I just I I think I want to make that abundantly clear because when you hold positions of power it's important that those positions of power voice and have a voice and a strong

050voice yes thank you excellent job excent I just want to if it's okay I just want to just a last bit I'm so grateful for for each of you and thank you for all of the questions and the comments Etc um and I just wanted to just as someone who has been blessed to be in the space with these Brilliant Minds and so many other students um my experience with actually particip in Ramadan last year changed my world um and so I really do encourage you that if even if if you can't do full Ramadan that you definitely participate in the faston I grew to have so much respect and understanding for the commitment and the discipline um the acceptance and the joy um that comes from what all of you do and again same

051with uh sashan inviting us into her home as well to celebrate and I just want to make sure that it's clear because they said this a few times in the presentation that they want to spread awareness they want to teach about their faith and I want it to be clear because sometimes people feel like well they're trying to just put this on us and that's not what they're saying there's so much Beauty and joy and Brilliance in their faith that it's admirable and they are young adults and they have more discipline than some of us I'm just going to be honest so I just wanted to make sure that that was clear that in spreading that awareness it is to spread love joy and Humanity um I also want to thank Isabelle um who's in

052this face I know I'm I'm putting you out there but um last year Isabelle was pivotable PIV excuse me pivotal in supporting our our lunch and learn that we did at OE about Ramadan as a Jewish student so a Jewish student Muslim student and then they let me hang out for fun um and teach and so again that's just a testament to the respect and the understanding that these young adults have for each other so I just wanted to make sure that we acknowledge that piece in the end and thank you all so much for being here tonight excellent thank you Dr Waller just sparked something for me and and Mrs Shaw did as well which is um I am not a practicing um of any religion anymore but I was born and raised Catholic

053and it's just so interesting that all religions have a lot of threads that go through them that are very similar we do it in the C Catholic we fast in Catholicism as well and we and I think so often times we're looking at other people as being different instead of focusing on a lot of the things that bring us together and that we share in similarity and so it's been just um as nervous as I was to go over to Mrs Shaw's house and to open up you know discussions that are hard to discuss not because of her but because of my own ignorance I walked away with such a sense of peace and um realizing that we are not different as much as you know we want to celebrate the things that make you

054unique but we are also very similar too and that we're just human beings and we just want to show love and we just want each other to be respected and that's really like so much of what it comes down to is you all deserve a space to learn and to what um Mr ploger said to learn in peace you come in peace and you should be able to learn in peace so thank you all right thank you thank you Bard and uh just want to frame uh our board policy 710 regarding uh the school district welcomes diversity in its schools and so part of this work is to really emanate that so thank you uh next on our agenda we want to welcome um our special education uh District level administrators to help uh support

055us in a discussion U we've got tonight um Brad vertin Tony Galan Dr hanin and Dan stockhausen I also want to appreciate Cara Chase for her support in uh preparing for this evening's presentation oh no it's coming after public comment coming after yep do we need we need one more chair can we grab that for Dan oh oh you're good okay all right we want to thank yeah we want to thank the board for allowing us to talk with you this evening um and green I think was while we're checking that um also Faith dalquist uh took leadership as associate superintendent making sure hello hello preparing this so now I'm ready I'm Tony glan director of special ed and I'm Emily hanin the director of Health Services we want to uh also make make sure

056that we recognize yes as mentioned uh Dan stockhausen our uh our associate director of special education and Cara chase our assistant director of special education yes Faith dalquist uh for all of her support as our uh assistant superintendent uh our faces are probably new to you maybe all of us are new to you we're a relatively new team to District 308 uh Tony and Emily have been here a year and a half and I started uh on July 1st uh so with that it kind of brings a kind of A New Perspective and seeing where we're going and and with kind of hope and expectation around that this slide is not to say that special education is the center of the educational world uh it is actually to represent that we have to um collab

057collaborate uh work with so many others and in fact every aspect of our schools that we need to collaborate with them one of our major values and you'll see this on our website is that all students are general education students sometimes we slip into that well they're students in special education and you'll see during our presentation that even our students in special education have large amounts of exposure to in our general education settings so we need to be able to work with not just our buildings but human resources we need to work with student services we need to work with our Data Systems all of those are relevant to being able to deliver high quality instruction to our students on this next slide it's I'm going to stop at the very very top for just

058a second it says percent of students with IEPs and I want to highlight sometimes we use that acronym and just roll over it but it stands for IND individual education plan it is meant to be customized to that individual's needs so we can talk about all the categories on here and that does represent a lot of variety of needs and services but you need to understand that each plan is individualized those needs so we need a wide variety of supports and services in order to meet those needs so this slide highlights some of the programs that we have here within um asigo District um one key thing is our district is the one that came up with the names these are not legally recognized names they're descriptors that we use to help describe what type

059of programming it is the students will receive we have a very big variety that we offer um and last week we had our special education Forum where we invited members of the community and we had representatives from just about everything that you see up there different families coming some students came and gave voice and one thing I wanted to quickly highlight was across the board the parents expressed such gratitude and appreciation for the staff that worked with their students we got shout outs from the bus drivers to bus aids to teaching assistance to classroom teachers it was very genuine they very much appreciated the love that they felt when they would come into the building to talk about their students one uh wish that we got was parents pointing out that all of these programs

060are not available in every school so for students that no longer can attend their home school because programming that they need is located somewhere else they talked through how difficult that can be for them this slide we wanted to talk about um an indicator that the Illinois State Board of Education uses to monitor special education they want students receiving special education to remain connected to and inside of the general education classroom so what you are looking at is two years worth of data that 80% or more means that for 80% of the school day or more those students are with general education teachers in the general education classroom and the state wants to see the bulk of our students in that category and as you go down it gets towards more what we call restrictive

061more time away from general education on this one we are just giving some historical data on the percent of students here in asgo that receive special education services and under that we have broken out our district enrollment overall just four of the R categories and then how many of those students also receive special education and we want to make sure that the number with IEPs does not exceed the percent of their enrollment that would be an indication that we are overidentifying students in that category for services currently the easy data to pool was the data by race but working with the equity engagement Department we are going to start looking at different indicators um to consider um gender disability category looking at by program how many students are there how much time are they connected

062to gened we want to break it down by building and we also want to come up with some success indicators to look at outcomes to make sure that these programs that we have built no matter which one it is that those students are learning and growing and on the best trajectory we can get them them on for Success the health services team functions Under the Umbrella of the special education services and we partner to ensure that every need of all students are met districtwide so we have programming one of our main departmental functions is to ensure that students in need of hospitalized services or homebound instruction are provided there every student no matter general education special education anywhere in between is entitled to have their learning while they're experiencing the need to be learning elsewhere

063and so we provide tutoring Services it is required that we review as a team for a general education student how we will Implement that if they have 504 plan they get their accommodations they're entitled to those while they are home Homebound and then if they happen to also have an IEP they are entitled to their related services so we partner with the IEP team to be sure that for instance their social work speech therapy Physical Therapy occupational therapy there are more related services that they're getting what they need to continue to learn while they're experiencing homebound or hospitalization we also recognize how difficult it is for students who have away to return and so the District offers reintegration tutoring services and meetings to make sure we are meeting the needs of students where they are

064another point I'd like to talk about is that the special education department plays a critical role in helping with 504 plans 504 plans are not special education plans they are overseen and implemented by the buildings in general but I want to just point out that our special education department provides a lot of the compliance coaching ensuring that we are legally sound in the work we're doing for 504 so the special education department plays a big role in partnering with general education and oh sorry just one more I want to thank student services because they are working so so much to make sure that our students who are experiencing Mental Health emotional regulation concerns have the opportunity to have some prevention through seal SEI instruction and then the students who are experiencing frequent hospitalizations we try

065to put in place for them some plans to reduce that recidivism for hospitalization we are on track at this time regarding numbers we may have a few less than we experienced last year but we also experienced some more of those hospitalizations kind of in that January February winter time so our numbers we just can't know it depends on students and their health thank you in particular in this moment I would like to thank the board for your proactive work especially the policy committee have worked so hard to make sure that the department is prepared to serve students the way we should an example of this is the Naran policy we had to consider allowing schools to have Narcan the board said yes the policy committee said yes and therefore the board said accepted that and

066we were ready so when it was required this year we didn't need to do anything because every school has Naran all of the staff have had exposure to training the nurses know how to do that they teach the teachers how to utilize Narcan it is stored in the aeds in every school so we were ready because of your good work and I want to thank you for that that support the next new big thing coming up I use the word stop the bleed here because it's familiar to have a kit in the case that anybody is in need of a response to a trauma that could occur right so stop the bleed is a big expensive program we are required to have a way to address a trauma injury on site should it occur starting

067next year and so I will partner with other departments to make sure that we do that in a fiscally responsible way just includes bandages scissors to cut the bandages that kind of thing I want to introduce you to the Staffing of our department we're pretty big but we do great things in schools I thank the board for having a building nurse in every single school as well as the health office secretaries our nurses offices are very busy and so I without that help I think our schools would just not be as great a place so thank you for that opportunity we also have have program nurses those are required for our students IEPs what they do is when a student doesn't need full-time care they are able to still have access for instance a student

068who maybe has a tube feeding the nurse doesn't have to be there all the time but it's more than the building nurse can handle and So within four of our programs we have nurses who do that kind of work throughout classrooms we also have one toone nurses in six schools so that the students have access they would not other wise be able to come to school if they did not have a nurse with them to provide for instance their oxygen Etc that is our partnership with the oesa Union we're delighted to work with them and then we also work with the OA Union we have a team of certified School nurses who are endorsed to write IEPs they support our building nurses in the implementation of those 504 plans and they support the nurses because

069I am not a nurse I was a administrator for school districts and our team works together really really well we partner with student services for threat assessment safety to make sure that if 911 calls are made we really partner with student services and then ensure that all the buildings have the aeds and safety equipment required such as undesignated medication we make sure those are all there and finally a big true thank you for your flexibility regarding immunizations this year we were not ready for first day exclusion you have enabled us and empowered us to be ready for a September 15th exclusion date next year I cannot tell you how happy and excited we are as a team to have that so thank you for your support we really believe we're getting ready now to ramp

070up an example of that today the kindergarten registration the kids you know we telling the parents exactly what health documents they need so thank you for your support so we know we have many challenges in front of us and we also know that the only way things are going to get better are through continued and deepening collaboration with many different groups so I just want to highlight some topics that we're going to be working on first is around disregulated behavior and there's a number of challenges even within this number one is that students in crisis don't necessarily have disabilities sometimes it's their situation some sometimes it's being young and growing up in a world that feels very chaotic sometimes it is a disability and it's up to us to help sort that out with our

071team of experts we also need to address safety concerns uh we do provide training um in a variety of ways including non-violent Crisis Intervention but there's always opportunity to how do we go deeper with that how do we ensure not just the safety of our students but also of our staff we can do that in in Partnerships with buildings with our unions uh with outside professionals if necessary uh suspension processes we don't like to we like to avoid having our students miss any time uh but in those instan that are necessary we're available for consultation with our buildings and we do that regularly and we also know that when we refer to tier one and tier 2 supports that's things that happen uh across classrooms outside of special education we know our world world in

072special education works better when the larger system is working well and we're exchanging ideas and working together uh very crucial is part of hiring and I also add retention uh in working with Personnel uh we need to do this for a variety of roles uh all of these roles have major impacts right from bus drivers T nurses teachers um a variety of related service providers uh we know if we hold on to more of our staff we need to replace fewer of our staff we know that then we're going to be more selective in the staff that we hire all positive outcomes for our for our community and for our district we're also going to look at evaluation uh our programs looking at the outcomes I know Tony covered a lot of that so I'm

073not going to go is in deep but just to say we are going to have that Focus too of a part of an IEP is to have transition goals and that's the if you ever read those have the pleasure the focus is on what is life going to be like after leaving public education we certainly consult on a regular basis on mtss supports uh these are supports that all students bites experience uh along the way um including in before uh special education services are provided uh we consult in a variety of things uh and we have certain knowledge that we can provide uh to everyone uh and why wait until the student is in special education before providing those services and supports uh we're talking about curriculum um implementation we need to be concerned that

074we are delivering the curriculum that we promis to deliver trying always striving for those grade level standards for all of our students we want to work on we have a lot of we do get some funding uh special ed is not a fully funded program but there are some aspects that are being added that receive no funding this includes uh some very positive things but again no funding included where we're being asked to translate and interpret for families whose primary language is not English this is terrific allows us to to have their full participation in the process something we we really want but it does take time and energy and money to make that happen also puns is the prioritization system for uh the state to give uh Services outside of school we're now responsible

075for helping navigate that system uh to a degree and again happy to do it but it is one step more uh we also are looking forward to expanding Partnerships uh communication with our community again our special education forum is one example of that Community businesses uh this is something where we can look for support but one major area where we do this is in job placement uh and this is something our especially in special education that we're both excited about and look forward to expanding and with that I would thank you all and open it up for questions can I start yes this is Dr Mario okay thank you it's hard to know when to pop in when um I'm remote like this but I'd like to um say thank you for the team for

076the presentation um Can someone acknowledge that you can hear me yes perfect all right good perfect um I have a couple comments and a couple questions and I think I'll just say them all and then mute myself so I can hear some of your responses but um my comment uh is that all these challenges that you have on here and that you're working on um that's um all of those are big projects so I appreciate that you all are taking on a really a meaningful uh look at how to address these challenges through collaboration I know later on today we'll do a little debrief uh very small debrief on the um teach teaching and learning Equity committee where we talked about uh equity and we saw you know you highlighted some of the numbers earlier

077in the presentation about uh a little over representation of some of our uh at least our um racial groups in special education so I appreciate that that is a matter that um you your team is also paying attention to uh along with all the uh Equity committee items um my two questions are um if you could just give me a small synopsis of the reach program because I think I'm familiar with the other programs on your list uh but not as familiar with reach and then my second question question is on slide number five where you have uh listed how much time in general education I'm just wondering if you could tell us about the numbers that are there right now um are those good numbers could they be better how does it compare like

078what should be our Target in regards to how much time our special education students are in um um in general education environments okay the the reach program uh that is a program for high schoolers uh it targets uh it it really was initially targeting students with anxiety disorders uh very specified the or I should actually expand that to say internalizing disorders so it could include things like depression in addition to anxiety uh to a degree it's becoming uh somewhat more focused on school anxiety related uh programs it by the way it is a relative it is a one classroom program at this point uh we believe that and and this is a growing um problem Across the Nation it's certainly exists in District 308 uh where we want students um we have students that just

079cannot get through the door uh there they just strugg their anxiety overwhelms them and they can't come in now often these situations they come through the door they can actually have a very pleasant day but again they face that challenge reach is a way for them to feel comfortable for them to engage um and get back on track academically I just want to add to that um it's a blend of taking some classes online as well as having a teacher lead through a few subjects so it really allows that flexibility of when they are regulated and ready whether it's at 2 a.m. early in the morning after school they can access those online modules and then when they are with us the classroom is located within East viiew Academy they have access to Social Work

080support um and that classroom teacher who again she does teach traditionally as you might think in other classes but also is there to just help the children set goals what do you want to get done let's keep track of those credits where are we with getting on with graduation and being able to immediately process when she senses a child comes in and just doesn't seem quite right and something is going on they take the time to process through that to keep them moving forward and the classroom also uses a lot of flexible seating so it has some tables and chairs it has bean bags big pillows so if they want to curl up in the corner with their laptop and go through some of the online modules they are welcome to do that and then

081the other question sure um so when we look at the numbers um you were asking about the numbers for how much time in general education yeah what's a good yeah the yes um would you mind clicking back to the slide just so that everybody can oh yeah yeah thanks okay thank you um I mean you you could there are times where we in special education where we'd have said well the target is always to be a return to general education uh you know that's ultimately the goal uh but to say how we compare across um the board is that uh we are very comparable to most districts uh in in our what we It's actually an e code representation uh I've been in several other districts this would be very comparable uh to where they

082one thing to pay attention to though is there's been some EB and flow across the state um it some of this has to do with coming in and out of covid uh whereby when kids were remote you know everybody was in the same status and now we're kind of reshuffling and and finding our feet so there's been a lot of mve movement uh lately honestly towards becoming a little bit more restrictive we are trying to do our best uh we know uh a student's best Chan is with the the classroom teacher it can't always happen um so we just look to do as much support and keep that collaboration up can I do a and if I could add to that too um I would love to revisit that question Dr Mario in a couple

083months when we can really break down who are these students that are represented in these numbers I would like to go through and analyze them by Race by gender by which school they attend by which program they're in and see if we have any trends that we can celebrate that this is great or do we have some opportunity gaps and some certain buildings or certain programs where we really need to take a closer look at why aren't those kids at the same percentages as others with access to those gened peers and that was a follow-up question for me the trend data if you go to the next slide uh students receiving special education um instruction in sd38 is that specific to our district that the trend line is going up or or if you know

084um or is this consistent postco for all for school districts across the state country Etc I don't can't speak to the country but I know I can speak to the state and say if anything our trend line is slightly lower than the state overall uh a few uh I think they were at like something 14 back in 2022 and now the state is climbing up to 17 uh so not only our trend is the same but they're overall they're going up but overall they the state is going up as higher rate than sd38 and do we have any causation data uh for the state and then us to compare that to yeah um we could you know what and that's something maybe we could talk about bringing back bring back is fine but what and

085and too we've even had conversations with Dr katti and talking with the other um large districts in our state uh what they will talk about um is very specifically are the very young students uh yes covid certainly had an impact on all students but when you stop to think about how old were you when covid hit uh and just stop to think about if you're socialization really gets cooking at around a year to two years old okay uh they you know the talking starting the parallel play is starting and if you were experiencing that um during isolation what happened how delayed was that what can you even you know how do you find your way back um after coming through that experiences we know there are developmental windows from a psychological perspective so it's going

086to take a lot of work uh no doubt though um there is some lasting impact on the older it's I don't think it's a significant I think it Bears out in the data but it's certainly if you were say learning um your phonics and you were trying to learn phonics remotely uh that's just a very different experience what you're hearing what you're seeing is very different so even that ability to code is still showing up in late Elementary and goodness knows we we know about the mental health effects across ages uh and developmental levels but I would say it's more we're still seeing it most pronounced at the Early Elementary level I appreciate that explanation and I'm I'm really raising it because I think it's way too early for us to 100% to determine the

087impact that Co would have but I want to make sure that we are paying attention and trying to assess or even see early some patterns some Trend data so that we can become more proactive and get ahead of it as opposed to chasing it later well and one thing I I know that there was a board presentation on uh uh reading programs and curriculums right just a few weeks ago and we can certainly do our best and to to uh respond to that but push come to shove that is really powerful and important we were so glad to hear that all the work that went in because that is you know where I was talking about have what have we done in terms of phonics development for those that is a great uh it's a

088great thing to hear and that's going to be a great way to deal with things um a few thing I got three trying to remember the third but um can you talk to us about what effects we are feeling from the teacher shortage because the teacher shortage when we talk about that it's not like uh oh it's just across the board you know it's it looks different depending on your area and this is an area I have a lot of concern when it comes to that can you um speak and if not it's no big deal if you need more time like you can come back to me but on that one but can you speak I can speak to that um we want not only people that just have the appropriate certification we want

089people that truly believe in kids we want people that believe believe in the mission of this District we want people that can approach their teaching with that lens of equity um and when you only have one choice sometimes when someone applies you don't always get the best fit so we have had people leave us in the middle of the year we have had to fill some special education teaching positions with people that aren't certified special education teachers so they could love kids they could be excited to be there but they don't have that knowledge of the specialized instruction they don't have the knowledge of how do I read an IEP how do I write an IEP and that causes then stressors for their colleagues who have to step in and help support those gaps um

090East viiew Academy cannot keep a dedicated building sub it's a very specialized population and some people can't handle working there so they very much feel the effects that when they have a staff member who legitim imely needs to take a sick day take a personal day there is no one there to stand in that teacher's place and it causes exhaustion it causes guilt when someone needs to take a day off and knows there's no one going to be here to take my class to to help me out I'm going to stress out my teammates um it causes some of our Learners who need consistency and predictability and structure when some of our teaching assistant positions are just a different face every day or every week it is very difficult and there's days where we feel

091like we didn't get a lot of learning done because I had to console and explain and and try to calm and regulate before we could even get there because there was such a big change so we are hopeful I know HR is rocking and rolling with some great plans to help fill those out but same as you being in the profession looking down that pipeline of who's coming out of our universities and looking at what that demand is um I am also very passionate about hiring people that our students see themselves in um so when you layer all of that together it puts us in a bit of a jam to find the best people for our students and I'm going to pile on since you asked so uh one of one of the things

092that bothers me the most we know most of the turnover of Staff happens very early in careers right first and second years part of the problem is is we're entering a world in which sha staff are now shifting it used to be Staffing season could be done by end of May now we have people that may leave for other positions into August now we're having to go back and H maybe we've got a few openings now we're adding openings and you find a maybe you find a good candidate but now they have a week two weeks to prepare for the new classroom that they're going into uh it's not a great way to get off to your year off to a start so we're very excited and I know Dr zmy has a lot of

093great ideas but one of them is simply getting out in front getting getting our getting our openings out starting the hiring process that's going to be really crucial because I know said teachers but I'm going to say related service providers psychologists social workers speech P nurses those are bus drivers those are yeah those are some of the toughest positions to fill and and you know I can go on and on about all the Ripple effects that that has on the classrooms I I want to say I appreciate the honesty of this because I don't like being an education I don't think some people realize in some some some stakeholders don't even want to enter this conversation we don't not all of us in education want to have the real hard honest conversation about what this

094looks like and one of the things that I just plead with people our students our kids hear our voices and what we're saying and when we are attacking a profession or when we are saying oh don't go there over and over again that has un seen residual damage that I don't think we fully grasp or understand some do right and some are feeling it and don't even realize it we've got to be very careful with what we are doing collectively as a society that doesn't mean that we shouldn't be held to a high standard it doesn't mean that there aren't issues to solve yes that exists but we have to do it in a functional way we have to be functionalists we cannot go on being dis functionalist and the last thing I'm sorry I'll

095get off my so boox but the last thing this is the slide I wanted to look at I want to make sure I understand this correct and I do have a followup question so it's like I'm just going to pull um uh Asian uh American students I've got 160 have IEPs there's 1531 total correct okay so I'm I'm doing the math sorry actually math was believe it or not my strong point and I see that this doesn't NE neily add up to 100% doesn't add up to our student population am I to assume that what I came up with is about 845 and 212 um is that students who are biracial or multi-racial there's other yes yeah um it's the two or more races Pacific Islanders yeah there was a couple I just picked four

096there's a reason why sorry I'm I'm guilty of this too is running the math and if my math serves me correct what this tells me is there are 13.5% of our white students have IEPs you correct me if I'm wrong like if you don't know it off the top of your head I'm not expecting that but 17.5% of our Latino students have IEPs 20.6 man my eyes are failing 20 uh yeah 20.6% of our African-American students 10.5% of our Asian students but the missing Factor here which I want to make sure we talk about is if my calculations are correct and please I have no problem someone correcting me at a later date I'm looking at 25% of our students who are multi-racial with IEPs and so if that's correct if my calculations are correct

097they're not up there I I I did this by doing some algebra and some other things thank you Math teachers from before um and if and if that's correct F that's actually yeah you call fuz uh if that's correct then that group actually is is is kind of that highest piece now it does it does include to your point like but those are that's a small group and nobody did anything wrong I'm not saying like oh did something wrong that's that's not the point of me bringing this up the point of me bringing this up is As we move to um a student population that does not have a majority from an ethnic back uh um uh ethnic background thank you yeah uh or lens is good too thank you I I think it's cognizant

098of us to be aware of of that group of students because they are quite probable to be the the canary and the coal mine and so if those percentages are high I I feel like that's that's work that we we have to do if that makes sense can I pull those numbers and can share them out oh 100 100% yeah and and by the way no problem at all being corrected if I'm way off definitely let me know if I'm way off right but show up next time yeah you can yeah that'd be great I would love that I would love that but um I just I just want to make sure that that's not lost in and all that so thank you thank you yeah it doesn't bother me or just send us an

099email if you don't want to show up for hey you can do both if you want I don't it's all thank you for the presentation tonight's special um education has a a big place in my heart so I'm grateful for the update and and seeing it um so while Jared got down on his soap off his Soap Box I'm gonna get on mine this was a macro and I don't I'm this is not about any particular person or any particular thing it's about a skill set but um how are we training how are we teaching how are we advising counseling coaching around IEP writing um it happens to be just a little bit of a uh kind of a source spot um because it is a skill and it is something that um it really

100affects the student outcomes and I just wondered if there's anything specifically that we're doing to better train better Coach and um is it ongoing that is an excellent question so um you are correct so just make sure we're all on the same operation that individual educational plan is that child's blueprint of how we are going to Target their specific deficits connected to their disability to make sure that we have got them on an appropriate trajectory to get the best life outcomes here in the asigo community um we have our teachers on special assignment and our district support team that created four different modules on IEP writing so there is a module specific to writing those goals specific skills that we are going to regularly progress mon Monitor and collect data on make sure they're growing

101there's one on the present levels accurate data driven this is where the child's performing and that's why this is what we're going to Target next um we have realized that some of our turnover some of the vacancies has resulted in um someone who doesn't necessarily work with a child being tasked to write that IEP so we just started meeting with our tosas to plan moving forward forward how we are going to revisit those modules start targeting things I know we are working on a teacher mentoring program so that that would be a specific oversight with more touch points globally with larger groups but then also individually because sometimes that feedback you don't want that in a larger group you want to be able to have a critical conversation with someone who is not your evaluator

102to point out any shortcomings or differences or how to view something through a different lens we would also like to address the format of our IEP meetings and make sure that parents truly understand this is the tool that we are going to use to collect this data this is when you can expect to receive this from us this is the skill that we are working on um I am in the business and I have a child who receives services and I some times walk out of my own IEP meetings glazed over and think oh my gosh that was just a lot of numbers and talking so we are in the process because we realize we want those to be clear and tight because that impacts that child on a day-to-day basis and I and i'

103been able to review see IEPs in the district and I've seen one that really follows and makes sense and some that don't and even within our your own Department there are some people that are just really good at it and can mentor other people but again the reason it's such a sore spot is because it literally is the students outcome it is how are we going to transition them and get them to the next place and it's just such a vital skill so you know working with HR and and that continuous Improvement is so important and you know and everything that Tony said is true and and and sometimes it's being the new guy is really great because one of the things that I recognized that I walked into is there are actually great um

104training materials great guides uh great documentation um everything that Tony just talked about I think the biggest my impression of the biggest barriers uh to having things function to way we want them to at all times is probably getting back to some of the turnover issues of of the um Administration uh it it makes a difference whether you've been doing it 1 2 7 10 10 15 years uh and that's something that we certainly want to work on um and I think actually Administration has taken steps in that direction I also tell you that we're actually looking at how meetings are actually run there's one thing to have the paperwork come out but we are actually interested in in working on trainings um that that look at reworking that uh rework in a way where

105student uh both teachers and uh parents feel heard I appre I appreciate hearing that and understanding that and um I think the once you write a great IEP and you work with your families and you work with the the student supports again the meetings become the second most important thing but also I know because of the turnover and because of just in general sped being tough to staff sometimes we are throwing brand new people to our district they could have been educ sped Educators elsewhere we all do different things differently um it's having that time to on board those new employees so that you know it's great because you're going to take over some case load but you also need to be able to um shadow people in our district and and be able to

106be trained properly within our system I did go ahead I just wanted to make a comment because I'm involved with um the collaborative PE program at ohos and I also TA in a special Ed classroom um during the day and uh I've seen firsthand kind of the turnover and the lack of consistency um I just wrote down in the classroom that I've been taing in since August um there's one oneon-one ta that is still there from the beginning of the year till now and there's been lots of turnover and there's a lot of students that need to build up that trust with a TA and that require that assistance and it's been really hard in that classroom just the lack of turnaround and the lack of staff and I know that's been an issue everywhere

107that's been working on but um yeah so I've just been I just felt like I needed to say something on that but um I've been very blessed to be able to work in that uh environment and see firsthand the hard work that is put in and uh yeah let let me before we move on make sure in about maybe one two three four years that you're applying back uh no for real we we really want to work on that and you have the mentality of somebody would want super quick shout out um plank is adding a collaborative PE class next year so Thompson has one um high schools have them and now plank will have one yeah I Luke is this working good we can hear you it's just different than my usual but um

108L kind of made me think of during this whole presentation it's crazy because this morning I've been talking to my friend and her mom is a occupational assistant I believe and I was and she had just gone back to school her mom after you know her older son graduated and this was something she really felt called to and I was talking to my friend today and I just asked you know how's her job going and from the biggest thing was she's very overwhelmed she's going from and I know everyone knows about this like it's not anyone's fault particularly but she's been going to three or four schools a day and then working over time at home to write the reports on students and it's just hard to watch you know I Al I have multiple

109friends whose parents work in special education in this district and just they have a lot of passion a lot of them this is their second career this is what they wanted to do and then it's just I don't want these people to lose their passion and I don't think the district wants to lose them so hopefully there's a way we can fix the shortage and even luckily on a positive note I have a lot of friends who want to go in special ed and a lot of friends who want to be teachers so I think even with all the negative talk about being you know about how hard it can be to be a teacher I think there's still a lot of young people who want to be involved and I think that there's hope

110for you know well and and tell you actually just your attitude and if all of us can adopt that you know to stop and thank our our our staff all of our staff but especially our our staff that are involved in special education so thank you for recognizing that Dominic then yeah I just this real quick I appreciate that you're going to be uh dissecting this slide um further um I wanted to not make sure but uh see if you can put in you know break it down by e as well absolutely okay and work with uh Dr zumy and the HR team on trying to get uh um supports in the language of instruction as much as possible possible and I know that's uh that's another layer on top of the shortage um but

111uh you know we can I had dreams about layering and language so that was that was that I just uh I I was going to ask for that for specific data but if you're already going to be looking at it and you're working on it yeah appreciate it great point so while we wait for um them to join our staff in a few short years um we are going to be out and about quite a bit uh very aggressively uh we have an internal job fair on February 21st looking at special education teachers and Tas among other positions we'll be at Northern Illinois University on February 26th we'll be at the University of Illinois um and uh Eastern Illinois in a combination on February 29th we'll be at Lewis University on March 6th we have

112an online event on March 6th through aaspa we will be at Illinois State University on March 7th North Central College on March 8th Western Illinois on March 13th and Aurora University on March 14th will be where Human Resources will be spending some time looking for um our next generation of teachers nice that's all posted on social media um and then at at our open session next um uh February 26th we'll have a full presentation on our teacher Residency program and mentoring program to not only just help uh support special education but all of our groups throughout uh as Wego 308 all right Dr K uh just again thank you again to the team um again this is part one board um we really felt that it was important to first provide some framing information and

113then the next presentation we'll move more into some next steps and what's happening and I want to thank the team again for their leadership and organizing for this evening and I do have one other update on the statistics Dr cancade um yep so in alignment with this slide for our two or more races our um total IE percentage is um 4.56 compared to the total population of 4.6 so but Jered what I think you introduced is a third statistic of within the particular which would be about just over 15% so I think adding another line to this to provide some more data um are the numbers that I am seeing in our our student information system so is that you did you just give the biracial breakdown is that what you say 3.6 okay and

114so it was how many students total so it's about 4.56 of our total population but that then maps to 15% within that racial group so it's 118 out of 782 so if you um look at just the 118 compared to all of our special ed it's about 4.56 if you look at the 782 compared to all of our students it's 4.6 so which are those two statistics but then I think the third lens is then what is the percentage right that's the one I'm looking for okay which is I think then a third statistic we could look at across all racial groups also within that group of students with an IEP thank you I appreciate stay tuned for more and uh please bring the questions thank you all right thank you again team thank [Applause]

115you okay so we've got a lot of students we got to get home yes so we're going to go move on real quickly to um public comment we have public comment okay so on behalf of the board of education I would like to thank the public for attending tonight's meeting we value the feedback we received from our members of the public and encourage everyone to take an active interest in their Public School System residents interested in speaking to the Board of Education 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 please note that comments are limited to 5 minutes per

116person and that no discussion of personnel matters Staffing um stating names or responses to your questions are permitted the board does not participate in discussions during public comment followup to your questions or concerns will be addressed by Administration through the contact information provided on the comment card thank you so much everybody good evening again thank you so much um thank you so my name is Saima sha and I've been a parent in the school district for 17 years now two of our boys have already graduated from East and our baby right there um is go is a senior who's going to be graduating this year and so I've been a part of the school district diversity committee for almost 15 years even before it became an official committee um and so I'm really very excited

117to be part of that committee for for this long and I represent the Muslim Students and their families in the district and uh and I work towards their Equitable inclusion in the school district I myself as an educator and uh so again I realize the value in that and I trans transition to the field of mental and emotional health as a life coach after being an educator for for a long time I've always been very passionate about bringing people together their hearts together and finding common ground and that's why you hear you know me reaching out and and welcoming people to our to our homes and I've brought the same passion um to to my role in the Dei committee and so my 15 years experience in dealing with the 308 admins and staff has

118been mostly positive because I like to see things I prefer seeing things half full glass half full and so most of my experiences have been very very positive but at the same time I've had some instances where I did not get those positive responses and because and I feel that those individuals were looking through the length of equality at that point and not through the lens of equity um and so I do understand where they're coming from but again my frustration was you know change those lenses please um and then fortunately those kind of resp responses only encourage me to persevere stronger um and so ever since 911 and more so with the recent political decisions Muslim in the States and within our own Chicagoland communities have experienced hateful crimes and uh hateful messages and

119you've seen some of them that those and and now um experts are saying that there have been more hate crimes again Muslims now way more than 911 um so that is affecting each and every one of us at the uh ground um and then mostly because of bias media and uh one-sided news and then just a quick example is in the news you will hear oh Ukrainian children child was killed versus oh the Palestinian kid was found dead just you know just to mention just one and again I don't want to be political at all I just want you to know that that is affecting us and our children and our families right here within the district as well and so the only way to balance that is to empower our educational system to be

120just and fair to all which means implementing equity and inclusion whenever and wherever needed and as an educator I have seen great power in storytelling and so that everyone sees the truth at the grassroot level uh rather than always depending on the media and so my request is from the superintendent from the board to support that this Dei initiative in achieving our goals and encouraging 308 admins and staff to open doors please for such opportunities and again look with the lens of equity and inclusion um and if we need those three extra blocks to look over that wall that's what because most of the times I hear the response is like oh if we do this with you then we have to do it with everybody else but I'm like but they're not in the

121news being labeled as a specific uh group and so I truly truly appreciate the empathy I heard from all of you today was really really heartwarming and I'm so um so blessed to for our students to have all of you um and then I do have a message from the board that they do have some Quran gifts to give you um in the near future um and so again I'm really looking forward to continuing to work and connect hearts together thank you very much good night thank you is that it yes okay so now I would like to welcome Dr katti to give his superintendent report thank you board thank you um there is a lot to reflect on this evening and part of that work I know we're saying goodbye transitioning here good night

122y'all thank you you're welcome this month we are getting ready and I'm pretty sure the survey is already open around the five Essentials correct um so this month we are we have an opportunity to really reflect on change a lot of individuals often have comments or we're always thinking about how to make schools better especially as a board of education and as a superintendent I'm often asked what are your non-negotiables what are the things you really stand behind and I would say that the foundation of this survey is based on significant 20 plus year research that says that when you have schools that have effective leaders collaborative teachers involved families a supportive environment that's safe and caring with access to resources and supports and ambitious instruction where teachers have the resources to drive a motivating

123and powerful curriculum you're going to see returns and the research says that in schools where three of those areas those five areas that I mentioned so of those three if you are doing well and better prepared in three of the five you are 10 times more likely to improve student outcomes should I say that again 10 times more likely so then you're going to hear well it's a perceptive test it's done in the middle of winter or in the fall right now it's February everybody's it's dark like how is this evidence right how does this really prove anything well what I want to say is that that's the point right I'm not the statistician who's behind this bringing it all together but what they've done over a 20 plus year period as they found regardless

124of all the factors and all that it becomes a very useful test a survey to give us a litmus test of how we're doing now do we stop at the end of those results absolutely not just like if you went to a doctor and somebody said oh the the thermometer test you come out of that thermometer test it's like oh it's you're at 102 oh you've got you've got you know typhoid yeah wait you just took a temperature test and you're saying I have typhoid how how did you come to that so we're never going to use this data for those of you who are cautious of information which I am too we never use this unilaterally it just becomes an initial point of information that helps us unpack so I'm saying this because as

125this month you're going to hear of two major surveys one is a five essential survey and then also part of our curriculum audit which is an opportunity to look at our organization and our curriculum and to think about the strengths of them both of these surveys are opportunities for us and especially for me as a as a superintendent to really provide affirmation of the work that's happening um opportunity to steer and to orient ourselves El in the right direction and to really help cast vision and strategy and Investments around where the deepest needs are um I want to thank uh members of our superintendent's Advisory Group who've come out and droves really 8060 plus folks sometimes it's smaller sometimes but we've been hit above 60 plus um I want to thank everybody that's another form

126of data information so I just want to appreciate um all of you all our families at home Educators our administrators our teaching staff our assistants um Everybody throughout the system for your investment and really hoping collect helping Collective feedback it means a lot and it helps us understand um where we are where we need to get to and it just is again just crucial last thing I want to just uh I want to honor we've had a lot of celebrations tonight this past weekend was marked the beginning of the lunar year 2024 it's the year of the Dragon so I just want to uh celebrate all uh for all our families who are celebrating the lunar year just want to think of uh you know the dragon so you're the dragon okay and then last

127but not least as you know as I mentioned in last meeting we are in the throws of every month is Black History Month in my household but in uh Black History Month is a really important uh period to reflect and this month this year we've chosen to really focus on the Arts and I want to invite everybody to encourage you to join and attend the 19th annual dreamers Wax Museum of African-American history the theme is voices of resilience and hope and uh it's happening at there's a website you can check out uh please uh it's being hosted at the Cathedral Grace of St John Church in Aurora you'll find information on our website um again it features work of many young people from across our area and I want to just thank um this group

128for their investment in our our students and uh I want to last connect that I am uh our community crosses multiple communities our district I should say crosses multiple communities Playfield asgo Montgomery Aurora and one more jet jolet no Yorkville Yorkville I'm sorry why am I blanking out there I'm blanking too so all five communities are extremely important and I'm proud to serve on the Aurora education commission and this commission serves for the same purpose that we serve in that it crosses multiple communities and so the education Ro commission is purpose is to really come together and identify shared opportunities for investment in our people in our community as a whole and one of the things that the commission has done is it's really looking at early childhood education so that's one of the initiatives

129that we've launched um there's an initiative to really look at working with the Fox Valley Foundation look at the way in which we're supporting um early childhood education and then the second thing that was launched and is coming is that every kindergarten in our Aurora schools um will be receiving a a small uh investment of I think $50 they said where there will be giving those students uh college fund preparation for kindergarten can you imagine and so that's of the work that the commission has achieved and I'm excited to share that and I'm actually looking for any investors out there who may want to do that for all of our students so we'll talk so with that I'll turn it over to our board colleagues who will be joining board colleagues who will be sharing

130some other updates very good all right we'll have our student ambassador report oh no no let's do student ambassadors that's next yep yep yep student ambassador report and then we'll get them out out of here and then we can do our homework yeah all right so you can stay if you want so uh we had two very productive ssac meetings since we last met uh at a board meeting uh we have since completed and sent out our teacher survey um so we are able to analyze we were able to analyze the teacher survey and go question by question uh tweaking and perfecting the survey uh this was necessary to ensure that the questions asked in the survey would provide our committee with the data that would be beneficial for our goals and uh since we

131have sent out the survey on Friday we have received um 118 teacher responses just over the weekend and we are still accepting responses um the largest tweak we added to the survey was making all of the questions required uh by doing this we can ensure that we get answers in all fields fields to understand better and compare data the teachers can simply put na or prefer not to say for the short answer questions if they do not want to answer uh we hope that this teacher survey will give the ssac a better understanding of teachers perspectives on the student teacher relationships uh we want we want to reiterate that the purpose of this survey is not an evaluation of a teacher but a data collector as we look to find solutions for a bigger issue

132uh the ssac looks forward to analyzing the data in the coming weeks and at uh our next couple of meetings and we will have some much anticipated data to present at the next board meeting with the responses we are collecting so cool yes and um before I talk about Ascend just thank you to Mr Gatewood Dr Waller Dr Paul they really made this they really kept us going they kept us on track and really helped us get this out um and so we're just really grateful for their support and of course all the members of ssac Luke and I are very grateful for them attending and helping us out um but our Sim planning has also been in full force most recently we were able to get a presentation out to teachers and students on

133their options for speakers our four options include our very own Mr Gatewood along with Mr Cameron Bell Mrs Sima Shaw and Miss Anna Marie H areio these speakers will bring a unique and important perspective that we cannot wait to share with our students after receiving this presentation teachers were instructed to fill out a Google form that includes their classes speaker selections so they will vote on a majority then put those results through the Google form although we have had a couple hiccups along the way with having a couple student responses we have been organizing responses and as issues arise and we are prepared for Friday we have also reached out to our wonderful speakers on what the day will look like and we are very excited to hear their incredible stories overall it is so

134wonderful to see all of this world work come together to create an enriching and Powerful day and even being able to get our teacher survey out and as send done within like the same meeting it just feels really great in the season of new beginnings to be able to have so many things out to show all the work we've been putting in and thank you to all the amazing administrators and Educators that have made this possible we are so incredibly grateful to each and every one of you for making our Visions come to life on another note I would just like to thank MSA for their presence here tonight Luke and I are dedicated to giving students a present Within These for presence Within These board meetings and we are so happy to see all

135the amazing clubs and student organizations that have visited over the past few months thank you MSA and all the other CBS and organizations that have presented and shared their mission with us your voice voice is valued thank you that's great can I ask a question about the teacher response yes um how are you feeling about that um yes yeah uh we've been able to look through it a little bit um we'll be able to provide some more indepth uh data at the next meeting um but just overall I haven't been able to take a giant in-depth look at all of the responses collectively but um we are very happy to see that um the teachers are really putting in uh this time and we appreciate their time to that they're taking out of their busy

136lives to complete our survey they're putting in very thoughtful answers um all of the questions that I've looked through and um so we'll be able to provide more in-depth details with that but just to see that um they're really putting in what they feel on the survey and how they feel they can improve as well as the students so we look forward to looking at that for yeah I'll also say um I've checked out the responses like probably two hours in and we already had so many and I was genuinely so excited to open it up as soon as I realized it was sent out I like ran to the Google form and I just like I tried to read through all of them and it's been super exciting and really interesting to see those

137and honestly I'm excited to look through the data even though it's a little daunting and I think this has been really interesting to see did you have a goal of how many you wanted to get back um we had talked about a little bit um we were hoping to get like half between um the two schools and uh so the fact that we're already over 10 in one weekend is promising for us so uh we look forward to uh this we have this whole next week um for responses to be filled out so as we get into the work week so we we look forward to that okay Dr Waller did you want to say something no it's been great I'm exced I mean so we have you know about 200 teachers at each school

138so I know that there we really are pushing we really want our teachers to to just be honest there's also some um open-ended questions on there and they have been responsiv to that as well um they're also being very transparent about what they need and what they feel would be um helpful um one thing in here is uh a phone policy so I mean there's a lot of phone conversation on here um but I also thought that it was interesting that so far over half of the people who responded have over 15 years of teaching experience um and when we talk about like student classroom behavior um most of them have said occasionally or sometimes there's disruption um but quite honestly there are a couple where saying there it's happening I'm sorry um there are

139eight I'm sorry like at least 30 that are saying that disruptions are happening often or always and so that is going to be something that the SSC truly dels into and is helping me um to determine the research that I know I'm going to have to shift them to so um I'm just excited for them and excited for the teachers to to be heard and for students to actually be able to act on what they're receiving so and just a clarify with that sorry um the schools it was OE o Eng gos so that's something we're going to try to look at because obviously you're going to have different issues within every school so we're going to try to look at the data separate as well okay thank you and you guys can get to

140your home so you can get your homework done if that's needed and be ready for tomorrow thank you so much thank you there's some really cool dessert back there too um okay so we're going to move on to uh our board committee reports we'll start with equity and teaching and learning Dr Mar yes I'll go ahead and just do a brief report on that um we at our equity and teaching and learning committee uh we saw the video that uh we saw a preview of the video on the curriculum audit before it went out to staff uh kudos to the group that put that together um for the engaging uh video for this important project um I know that the staff is underway in regards to um Gathering assessments and data and stuff for that

141project so we're looking forward to uh the results of that and then for the rest of the meeting we spent a good amount of time uh looking at the draft of the district's Equity policy uh and talked about you know the continuing work that's going to be done in regards to success indicators uh regarding that policy uh so we look forward to hearing more uh updates about that at incoming meetings and um we were happy to see a lot of the uh Equity committee there that night at the committee meeting so we always appreciate um you know staff being involved in those uh so um that was our summary for the teaching and learning and Equity committee thank you anyone else have any comments on can I ask a question to the um committee members

142we in the past had a very large group of community members uh staff and so forth that worked and put a lot of effort into that Equity statement is the spirit and you know um the wholeness of it still represented so um this this committee originally sparked from um you know we have like uh design teams so there's like the SEO design team academic um and so we did make a shift in in that frame but this includes the start of this includes um it has representatives from every Department it has building administrators it has tosas it has District admin um we really wanted to cover the gamut so there's principles APS Deans like trying to get this full picture of um of their lens and so to be honest I I really got out

143of the way as they were developing this so that their voices could be heard and so the next step from this is to now put it in front of everyone so starting with that Equity teaching and learning um but then also the S um as well as students so there's like we're like on a tour of um including things now I loved the function of the Dei committee when it includes stakeholders Community stakeholders I would love to see see that um be something that we do moving forward but I really want to partner with Michelle early and parent University and Community chats and things that we're doing with that so that one when they're there it's intentional and I do think s really provides that space as well because we found in the last couple

144of years I know Miss similton sparked this like huge group of individuals and then there's that shift where people were part of that Dei committee that included all those stakeholders you found that it was more administrators than Community um so it's been exciting to to at least be able to bring this work in front of si si um and so we'll continue to add in those pieces because we do want everyone's feedback so even the feedback that we received from um ETL meeting like we've already made those shifts and adjustments and um we're just looking forward to continuing to do that and putting it in front of different people um to weigh in on their voices it do you want to share a little bit so the the draft the policy will go through all

145the Committees so Finance facility of Human Resources will have opportunity to review um we want to make sure every board member has an opportunity to review it and we also um part of our Retreat on March 8th and 9th will be to provide time to also look at the policy um and for those who are not able to attend there will be time before or after as part of that work um so everybody has a chance as well as then as um as it goes through its its development absolutely unequivocally it will have multiple different interest groups have an opportunity to weigh in because it really has to represent kind of a Wellspring of support um and the advantage of a policy is that then it enables us to make bold and move decisions around

146our investments and our timing and how we think about a lot of even the conversation we have this evening so I'm I'm really excited and appreciative of the work that's been developed on policies okay well move on to policy and legislative you want to take policy first I'll talk legislative sure I'll do policy and do my one legislation piece too and Lead anyway yeah and then you do both yes so on the policy side um we actually just kind of wrapped up all of the uh items that were in press number uh press 113 which are actually in included in your packet tonight uh which basically had to do with uh Personnel um instruction and students so that was kind of that was kind of it on the policy side um I did have the

147opportunity speaking of legislation and thank you to Teresa uh to go to a round table that uh was sponsored by Illinois Senator Sue resen and she called it uh safe screens healthy Minds and the packet or or the the theory behind the round table discussion was that we need to control what kids are seeing online and and all of the concerns um it's actually part of a it's kind of a three-prong deal uh with that being the major emphasis she's looking to take some action now she realizes that the federal she feels the federal government needs to take action but she wants to do some action prior to so she kind of explained the bill um with which uh you know it basically what it says from her press uh press release was um it'll

148be an amendment that'll require social media platforms to create an identity verification process in order to protect minors So in theory it's it's a good idea uh unfortunately and and and I brought up a couple questions there like um what about using somebody else's log on um like your parents so that you could get extra access um that didn't seem to be an issue for them at this point in time so while uh she continues on her Statewide Round Table discussions um I think they I think some more thought needs to be added to the fact that kids aren't dumb and that you know uh it's it's a great Theory but it's it's going to be really really difficult to uh to to police and over to you yeah so one of the other things

149uh spent a lot of time compiling a big giant graph with basically every bill either in the house or the Senate that was going to be proposed that had to do with education we had a summary for those and or we went through most of them actually I think we went through all of them up to that point um now they had until February 9th to um submit bills so there's a few more that I went back to we'll discuss at the next U meeting one of the um we talked about uh one particular bill that sticks out was the um the bill um for I can't remember it was grant money but anyways it was it was funding for districts that are dealing with with with migrants who are coming in right and so

150we we we looked at that bill and there was a couple of pieces that we were puzzled about I forgot who brought it up it wasn't me but um what happens if uh student goes to one district and some of these students are transient right and then well if they go to a district and then they transfer here and what's the process of of seeing if that new District still gets those funds that they're talking about and what's the timeline for those funds and so forth I did have the opport I don't want to say their name because I don't have that kind of permission but I did talk to uh one of our reps um in person uh face to face and I brought that that piece up and and uh they were thankful

151um I did do my due diligence and writing emails to U pretty much everybody that's on that committee and our reps as well and um I did hear back from a couple and and they were appreciative of that thought process uh to say the least um I don't think there's a witness slip opportunity yet but we talked about that piece too uh when witness slips are available it would be great for um the state to really start hearing from sd38 to say the least I always point out um last year I think it was the ebf hearing uh we had the highest amount of people on those witness slips um who were identifying themselves as some type of stakeholder in 308 so I think that's very encouraging um and then uh there's the iasb um

152uh Ambassador Advocates um and so excited that uh um I can't remember was it you and I you and I are on there right or is it I think all three of us are all three all three of us are on there so we made sure to get on to that um sorry I couldn't remember and uh I thought one thing that was interesting that I took there's a few things that you know I took out of that but one thing that I thought was very interesting is um when they talked they did talk about their iasb delegates right and so it's fascinating to me to see the process I'm actually coming over to agreeing with you that we have policy and legislative together okay but I'm going to extend that you ready because there's

153right you know it's me right he's laughing because he knows it's me there's there's the policy piece which is reactive there's the legislative piece piece which is which is proactive but then there's the delegate piece right which kind of brings those two portions together and and so um you know I know we've we've done a number of things with that delegate over the years right including the first time I went to ISB which discovered we weren't showing up right and so one of the things that I think we discussed was it really probably should be somebody coming out of that committee that serves as a delegate I don't care really who it is and I talked to another District in the area and and talked to somebody who had served basically he' served as their

154Delegate for like 12 years and then and then handed it on and there was some advice and it seemed very much like that piece was very much tied into policy and legislation so um I wanted to bring that up yeah it actually did make sense in retrospect in fact there was some there's some boards that they actually so they come together they decide who the president's going to be they decide who the vice president's going to be they decide who the secretary is going to be and then they actually decide like there's actually vote who's going to be the delegate yeah right there's some boards that do that as well sorry what you're you know it it makes sense I I know that there's some some issue right longevity longevity of board members in general

155and then um the idea that we always transition our board members from One advisory committee to another advisory committee so you know we don't have longevity in general and then we don't have longevity of someone being on the policy and legislative committee for long periods of time so I I think's work on some of that this is where I'm going to say you're right and I'm wrong about something see it's I can do it believe it or not I I spend my life hoping I'm wrong this time yay um but what I'm going to say is the advantage of putting those together is that now that you have three members I think there's probably a better chance that at least when we do have turnover as a board there's continuity there there's at least somebody

156on there hope in theory right numbers should should should back that up should be like 100% let's make that you know something that we we do we try but but to your point right I think the conversation that we should should have I mean we are here also in an educational role right is to take that feedback from from elsewhere and share it with the community and so it is always a good idea to have new voices up here right we we should have new voices but but there is a balance right and and we as a community have to find that balance between okay let's get some new voices up here but at the same time you know we need we need that historical context too and so I listen I'm not it's not

157up to me to decide what that balance looks like that's that's up to the community but I do think it's it's um it's important for us to convey that those things are happening elsewhere in functional boards in functional districts yeah so absolutely those were the discussions we had sorry thank you so can we um move on to our board member comments and start out with our board shoutouts sure can we start out with start with you and if you would do your board um your shout out sure you want to just do all right um we invite all our students staff parents in the community to join in our second public forum this year the Forum will be held on March 4th from 7: to 8:30 p.m. at plank Junior High School we encourage everyone

158to be there we're all Partners in the education and experience of our students February is love the bus month love the bus love the bus months it's a time set aside to recognize honor and celebrate the yellow school buses that transport some 25 million American school children each day we celebrate the trained professionals who manage and operate our transportation system ensuring the safe delivery of students to and from school each day and I don't want to just read that line I I want to sincerely thank all of our transportation people we appreciate you yes okay mine is um our school district's annual Amplified student Le event celebrating diversity across our community brings together individuals from so many different backgrounds cultures races and ethnicities this event celebrates the differences that make us all unique as well

159as the similarities that unite us this year the event will be held on March 21st at the asigo East High School with the theme of walk a mile in my shoes students proudly and courageously share their talents traditions and interests with those in attendance please mark your calendars and plan to attend this incredible student event again it's March 21st from 5: to 8:30 p.m. at ASO East High School wonderful we have some phenomenal athletic uh celebrations we're going to send wel gosh so many we're sending well wishes to our asigo East and asigo high school girls bowling team who both are headed to the state finals asgo East plays second and asigo high school plays fourth in the ihsa sectional so congratulations to them um we have great job to for our boys Co-op swim

160and the dive team um as the SPC conference Champion so congratulations to them ouro Co-op gymnastics team has claimed both the Upstate 8 Conference Championship and the ihsa Regional Championship um their team scored their highest point total as a team at the sectional Championship with Ava Sullivan and Sam Phillip both qualified to move on to the I ihsa state championship for all around in individual apparatus so congratulations to them and as mentioned earlier uh we have registration for our kindergarten and dual language program this is a very excited time of the year when we welcome all of our future students to register for kindergarten and all of the details for this registration is on our website um but we want to draw special attention to the opportunity for our district which offers um to our

161kindergarteners um for the chance to be a part of our dual language program um dual language is an immersive program for students to receive their education in both English and Spanish and this form of education continues throughout all subjects and and grades throughout high school and this helps them to develop um bilingual fluency and high academic achievement so more information is on our website um to be available for kindergarten and dual language registration please go there for more information more information and before I read mine I just want to say to to the bowling piece really appreciate um Partnerships with businesses that we have out there and I'm pretty sure we utilize Parkside Lanes so thank you Parks side lanes for all you do for our community as well uh so 100th day has been

162recent uh recently celebrated usually it's a big day for uh young students and I I know a uh I know an elementary teacher in my own District that they decided they were going to do the 101st day so they could do 101 dalmati this is proof that students are no no offense but kids are actually more resilient than adults many times cuz it threw the adults off right I learned what I learned is don't necessarily take the 100 and go to 101 with elementary teachers CU they they've got this like thing down about 100 days and you go to 101 and look out um this means a couple of things right this means the second trimester for uh elementary students is fastly approaching and oh there's that Temptation right there's that Temptation where you kind

163of see the light at the end of the tunnel like the end of the school year is coming but listen let's not forget right April is is there's a lot of school in April and May so yes we uh we've got you know it feels like April outside lately but uh it's not and we still have a ways to go but um encourage everybody we have strong students strong teachers and we're we're getting close to Spring Break and we come back it's going to be here we go so thank uh continuing with athletic celebrations um for boys wrestling congratulations and good luck to bradden Swanson who is a state qualifier in the 138 pound weight having placed fourth at sectionals can't remember the last time I saw that number um oh uh ASO High School

164co-ed competitive cheer um so proud of them they play second at conference and qualified for State for the second year in a row by placing fourth at section um they finished their impressive season in 22nd Place at State and I was huddled around with a bunch of teachers watching it on a really um bad um uh Wi-Fi but it was so I'm so impressed with them and they've just really represented throughout the season and as Dr zmy will tell you I've become a cheer addict I love it um and then our asgo East dance earned a trip to the ihsa state finals by placing sixth in their sectionals they finished their season in 26th Place out of an extremely talented group of 3A dance teams so kudos to all of our student athletes can I

165can I mention one other thing too it's getting late as it is um I there there are more ihsa sponsors more programs than just Athletics um I I don't have all of the I don't have all the names but the other things that they do sponsor are chess drama music speech and scholastic bowl um I do know one student who goes to I believe Trower that qualified for sectionals in uh original oratory and I just want to you I think anyone that qualifies for sectionals in any of those categories um does a great job so they're not just about uh they're just not not just about the athletes and during our ssac meeting athlet it was a a pretty extensive conf conversation because Luke Luke competes and a couple other people competes in the oratory

166competition so they're very involved so we're excited about it very good he did humor I said trur I should have said as humorist any any other comments before we move on it's getting late okay so we'll move on to 8.1 consent agenda are there any questions on the consent agenda I can make the I'm sorry can I have a motion to approve the consent agenda I make a motion to approve all items under consent including 8.1 minutes of the Board of Education meeting from January 22nd 2024 open and close session 8.2 to acknowledge the foer requests received by the district and 8.3 8.3 to approve the field trips for overnight and or more than 200 miles second are are there any questions on the consent agenda okay Mr Gatewood I Dr Mario hi Miss Johnson

167hi mrone hi Miss Simon hi hi hi motion passes 70 um 9.1 financial statements and the investment schedule are there any questions on these items okay next I want to invite Mr Queen for an operations update even good evening everyone good evening great to see you tonight so we're going to talk about two locations starting with oehs high school we're going to talk about tracks um well track so we've uh come up with a solution to the problem that we were faced with back in the earlier part of the summer and and beginning of the school year where we had a trouble located in the dzone the dzone is if you take a look at the screen is that little piece of real estate that we all hang out in during um cross down classic

168and other events that we're holding at the high school and what you're looking at is a section of real estate that we are able to move back to get this portion of of the high jump located we faced several obstacles with this um we had to work with the enduser and the coaches on several occasions just to make sure that we were in in in the right excuse me that we had the proper requirements for the ihsa requirements and that we could utilize it with the coaches and what you're seeing in that little circle arcway there is where they would set up that that high jump mat and and they'll move this fur for wind location several other okay reasons why they would want to um move this area around what we faced was the

169crown of the football field a football field is naturally crowned when you're dealing with natural Turf which produced a problem with the pitch and the leveling of that that dzone as a full and we talked about this several times in FFC and here here both and and and we didn't want to get into a situation to where we were struggling with another sport to make this sport work right so what Todd Roberts is done he's came up with a solution to where we're going to be in requirements we won't have to cut into our football field like I had mentioned before we're going to be able to get all of this in and and and the coaches will agree that it's going to be a great fit so we'll be pushing this out to RFP

170at the end of February beginning of March and our goal and our requirement is to get this done in the middle of July okay questions for Mr Queen I think the only question I have is what impacts does this have on or or does it make I don't want to phrase this does it impact either this season or next season more than we've already implicated does that make sense no so that's that's why this need needs to be done in the middle of July so we don't impact that fall track season I've worked with the coaches we're going to get in right after their May spring session around the track just to keep away from bothering anything there um so no this this should not and and another thing I would like to note is

171the price difference so when we first started talking about this we were sitting at about 103,000 for the change order this is going to cost us 50,000 so we is that a savings I'm here that's a big savings in the change order absolutely okay thank you thank you Mr bami and thank you Mr Queen goad got one more I'd like to talk about plank soank rtu yeah plank rtu replacement this was the replacement of nine rooftop units on the top of that building this is all HVAC related work right so our goal and and we're we're optimistic that if these five smaller units show up by spring break we will have these units installed over spring break and then give us a great jump start on that summer install of the F of the four

172larger units um we've we've actually had a lot of good work with the new contractor and this new liquidated damages I mean these guys have really been spot on with getting those schedules spot on with getting in there getting the things done that need to prep us for this spring break date so both projects are looking looking good on on track to to complete them both so as a point of clarification Mr would you or Bill do you want to talk a little bit so this is part of our new contract that we brought to the board correct in terms of how we approach the business as a result of the lessons learned from last year so I wanted you're saying that this is really motivated on Chang it it has like in the rfps

173that we've went we've went through we've we've done about three since we've done this we're seeing great numbers we're seeing competitive numbers we're getting more more biders people are wanting to take advantage of this opportunity to where all sides can can come out on top on this right we can we can get our projects done in that short period of time that I have to do them in the summertime and and the contractors have a advantage to to make some money on our end as well this is not hurting us because this is out of the contingencies so we're we're using that money out of the contingencies and it's budgeted for the project so it's not a total bonus it's a workable bonus okay thank you all right all right anything else that's all is

174there any questions rep plank no okay uh 9.3 mowing bid results mowing bid results so we met with five contractors um and our recommendation would be to go with the lowest bid as or ACS oi LLC um for the 2024 mowing contract with the option to renew a one year for two two years um this was an eight building hybrid program and the same as we run the snow removal questions just one do we have um experience with them from the past or or is this kind of new for us we don't the these are a new contractor that we're working with but we what we did do is check their references um they're doing bigger areas Fox Valley so they're holding some big clients that were very happy with their work I'm excited to

175work with them because they're numbers were real low and I think we can start a relationship with them and if we don't well we'll talk about renewing that one year or not or we need to go out to RFB again thank you thank you Mr Queen um next we have 9.4 evidence-based funding and Beyond so thank you Dr katti I cannot uh say this enough evidence based funding is Chang the trajectory of our finances for the folks who are listening to us who are wondering why the district finances seems to be in a better shape that's one of the biggest variable it's a game changer for us and I think if you remember when we met with our legislator uh the village uh the village legislative breakfast we made it clear to the legislator we

176thank them for the work that they've done in making sure that state continues to fund ebf and as long as that happens we will dig our way out of uh the struggles that we've had over the years and uh so I just I cannot say that enough so what I just wanted to talk about I'm going to try to to move quickly today don't spend as much time as I've done in the past is that I decid to focus on uh three basic things when it comes to to uh ebf the one is to there are three stages in determining how much money a district would receive from ebf one is uh the state needs to determine how much is actually costing the district to educate a child how much does adequate education look like

177so we'll go through the uh cost breakdown very quickly the other part is stage two is looking at how much local resarch does the district have to be able to do that and the third part is how much additional resources does the district need outside of the local resources to be able to get to adequacy so what I'm focusing on today is just the stage one determining the cost of funding uh education so if you look at that one of the key variable is enrollment still drives if you all remember uh few years ago before pre2 2017 we used to have to do the state used to fund School District with GSA everybody got the same amount of money based on enrollment and so enrollment is still a big variable in the process so what

178this shows it shows that this uh those it these items have to be backed out of the enrollment number but enrollment is still a big driver and so what is done is look at uh 2year prior enrollment in the last three years to get an average okay and then uh you see what the uh the adequacy amount is and then the other three variables that I consider in addition to enrollment average salaries of the staff member in the district as well as cost Factor Cali ation which I'm going to talk about in the next slides so these are abbreviations that will become relevant as we talk about subsequent slides Elementary Middle School High School low income and non low income those are all important factors that are taken into account so this are the core

179investment this are what district I expected to spend money on and that is then used to determine whether the cost factors are as I mentioned earlier as you see that teaching is is it's a big part of that so it's counseling then you have librarian and you have nurses and supervisory Aid and other instructional related uh cost and this is I wanted to show how much a district is expect to spend per student this is the core investment so you have gifted there's an amount that is uh that a district is expected to be able to spend per student and the same thing with computer tech uh assessment and then instructional material this are the in doing the calculation in trying to determine how much districts are spending this is what districts are expected to

180spend per student and it goes on again I wanted this the first one instructional this second set of data is more operational none related to instruction but still very important one big one is uh operation of Maintenance right Elementary uh Middle School and High School the expectation is for each child a district is expect to spend 1361 for operation and uh and uh maintenance and then central office dispenses employee benefits and then once you have there those are core uh factors then there's some non-core factors if you will one important factor that I want to point out is the comparative uh wage index we know depending on where you are in the state the cost of living varies from place to place if you live down state let's say you live in Carol uh the

181salaries that are paid through education who live down state it's not the same as folks who live in uh who live in the Chicago metropolitan area so that is taken into account so that is um a factory that is taken into account in determine what adequacy is so this is that's this is related to what I just talk about there's a regionalization factor based on the cost of living of different parts of the state so this is so I just went through how the cost are calculated to determine how much does our district need to invest uh in educating students next time I do the presentation what I'm going to then look at is look at what the local weals that are available for school district to be able to meet this cost and then

182the final one will be how the state then calculates adequacy and says okay based on the cost that you're supposed to have in stage one stage two based on the resources that you have available to be able to fund a good education for a child regardless of where they're located then the state will determine how much additional ebf funding should be allocated to the district and this is where the chair system comes in so tier one uh districts are the ones who are furthest from adequacy which is where we are and they get about they guarantee 50% % of all your money right each year that is appropriated then uh then it goes down from there TI two uh tier three tier two are closer to adequacy tier three are really really close to adequacy

183tier four they actually spend more money that it's required for adequacy any questions yes I try to go through that very quickly I hope it made sense I have one question yeah one question for can you in make sure you include the total cost to educate and then versus how much we actually receive to Levy to do the the Delta between the two of those sure sure and then and then you can add in how ebf makes up that difference difference absolutely and of course of course we'll know that we're still only will still fall short of that number but I just want to be able to see I couldn't I'm not as good as Jared I couldn't do the math as fast on slide six so just to to answer that question to actually

184answer that question I'm happy to uh to create a a pie chart that shows that that would be great and also a table that shows the Delta the levy only amount to 58% is the largest by far correct 58% so the state part is about 30% so that's a big chunk yes so if you are both of them you're talking about 8% everything else accounts for the rest correct significant source of for but I will put it in for the uh for the second stage but I love this I love to be able to see the difference as an individual student because I think that everybody will be able to see H how their tax dollars goes to per student and how much the state funding makes up the difference I think that it'll be

185important to see that and yeah I'm I'm happy to do that in when you look at the union the Illinois is actually I believe in the whole Union School District are more dependent on property taxes in funding education than any other uh state in the Union if I can repeat that again most of the school districts a big chunk of funding comes from the state and property tax is only a small part of it in Illinois is reversed so then depending on where you live determines the kind of education that you get so if you live downstate where the property uh the the property is more agricultural in nature which doesn't get tax as much the level of local wealth that you have available to you before ebf was limited but if you live in

186a place like korth or gleno you have a significant amount of property tax wealth so I'll give you an example where the average adequacy in the state is about 12,000 to educate child yeah per child if you go you start moving North to the NorthShore you look at Island Park Lake Forest wer vanburn uh uh willm Kena you look in a district that spend as much as $30,000 per child and no one could tell me there's no difference in how much you spend on the outcome that you get from from the education that you receive so that's why ebf is such a game changer for districts such as us even though our taxpayers pay a large Property Tax Bill relative to to other District because if you take the district and the nor sure the

187value of the property is high so the tax rate is low right here the value of the T the property is not as high as what you have in the N show so in order to be able to make up the difference I tax rate is higher proportionate to what you see in high wealth property area have um back at the beginning you talked about uh funding or you talked about student population taking the the average of the the current student population and the past two years yes and that's where you get your number from um so what happens when you live in a district that has a lot of new construction with a prob a potential future influx of kids are you behind the eightball then for those years because you can't predict so

188two things will have to happen you wouldn't be able to get that until subsequent years until it happen in two areas even in your property tax it's going to be important for you to calculate your property tax levy well because in the assessment estimate that you get from the uh the county assessor doesn't include new construction until those properties actually get on the tax bill and if you calculate that if you under calculate that you lose the ability to get those resources forever so you have to that's one of the reasons why we balloon Levy when we do property tax because we have the gome of uh existing property on the tax role but as far as new construction they have not been assessed yet right so we don't know what it is so we

189have to do a lot of data mining and then balloon that to make sure that we don't leave any money on the table to make sure that's on the property tax end as far as the ebf end what the uh state would do they'll look at a threee average right in subsequent years and if the data shows that you have increase in enrollment the ebf allocation will be adjusted to reflect that can you can you but but it lags behind yes okay yes can you add into that how the impact fees subsidize that for that reason yeah so no construction it depends on the type of construction too though yes because you get more money for single family because there an assumption there families live there they have children you don't get as much for

190tow houses and so it depends and then if you have Senor cities in housing for example like their W you don't get much in the way of impact fee because there's no expectation that children will be living there because residents are required to be 55 and older so it all depends on the type of development that we're talking about the so when a so when a developer comes before us and they want to wave impact these I wouldn't do it so the the only thing I like and you could definitely correct me or where I'm wrong but I like to always make sure I just pound in the historical piece here Illinois has 800 plus correct 800 plus school districts that's correct in the state nobody even comes close no I mean even California right

191doesn't come close and and there's always this like you know I I I kind of get tired of people kind of uh ridiculing the state of Illinois and here's why because I don't think people factor in the entire history and the entire history of Illinois the whole concept was for there to this local control and since most of Illinois outside of Chicago is farming communities right you had something that was created that was very unique to any other state I have not found another state that does exactly what we do in the form of high school only districts now Texas does have about a dozen notice I said a dozen we have over 300 yeah Elementary districts in Illinois yeah Texas has like 13 but they don't have any High School only districts if you

192want to go further yeah let's go further talking about education even if you look at the taxing district with L Illinois has more taxing district than most other school most other the state you have mosquito baitman you have I mean you have all this uh Bridge maintenance uh District so and they all they get a piece of the property tax L too so that's another thing that in Illinois lead and this is actually playing out right now I I've kind of laughed when it'll be very fascinating to see like there's this conversation about the Bears moving into Arlington and I'm laughing over here because that thing there's four school districts involved in that and so they're trying to get four school districts to agree to something it only takes one to say no and the

193other three are going to be like no thanks I thought going to the South Side now well that's probably why that could be why those conversations have started and so like I I think sometimes when everybody wants to know a what's the unicorn in Illinois but the problem is though if we're going to be honest and have this conversation it's nimi not in my backyard so hey when you go out and you decide to reduce taxing bodies don't touch mine like don't touch my community if it has an Elementary and high school district just touch somebody else's and the problem with that is you got two choices state of Illinois pay up because you want your 800 school districts because come on you're not going to convince somebody to not do it or somebody else

194to do it and you not do it and and deal with the price or you're going to have to have those conversations in some of those districts and a lot of people don't want to have those conversations in some of those districts I'm not telling them to my point is simply you can't have it both ways you cannot sit here and complain about the number of taxing districts there are in the state of Illinois and then turn around and say but hey not here don't touch my taxing buy and so like I think sometimes we we we want to pile on state of Illinois and say we hate Illinois or whatever some of us but let's be honest and have the real conversation about that so yeah in conclusion I just want to make the

195point two key things ebf whenever we see our legislator let's keep reminding them to keep making sure that the governor includes uh the required appropriation in ebf so we can start digging ourselves out it's not like we don't pay enough we pay more than our share of property tax in this community so it bef help the other factor is that being able to Levy to CPI those are the two key factors that has been game changes for us but the larger part though is CBF we need to let our legislators know we need to we need them to to keep making sure ebf is properly funded they're worried I I I have a calculation question it interests me that average salaries is part of that um so does that does that incentivize no not really

196I wouldn't say that I wouldn't say that because what you do you look at a region it's it's a you look at the region as a whole remember sgo is part of the Chicago land Metropolitan uh metropolitan area for economic reason for CPI reason so what you do you you want the the the thinking is you want to be able to attract good teachers we have shortages now if we don't pay as well as our neighbor in Neighborville we don't pay as well as our neighbor in 202 there's a tendency for educators to go to the area where they can make more money so part of the regionalization factor is trying to see what the average salary is based on the standard of living and making it's not the ever salary of the district no

197no that's what I was getting I was like that seems no comparative wage index that was what I the comparative wage index is based on the uh CPI Factor so what you do uh CPI the urban area when you do CPI calculation for Chicago you include all the caller counties there too and you do the average of that so the thinking is they don't want uh us to be disadvantaged because in part of the urban area we pay less than our neighbors and the thinking is if we don't if they don't take that into account and make sure we get money based on the fact that we need to attract uh we need to be attractive to to Educators then we're going to fall behind in our recruitment okay poor Charlie would like to go

198home thank you again Mr oemi for the presentations and to be continued [Laughter] um oh sorry whenever we're ready for you a board policy first read Dr K actually we have one more item oh wait I was going to say we got the we have board policy so everybody had access to these so if there yes so these were the remaining policies from our last press policy update um that we wanted some additional time to talk um with some people at the um in different departments so the first one we have is related to resignations so there is a small change um um recommended in your information we're removing the written notice um and then uh providing some information regarding um the 30 calendar days prior to the first day of student attendance the second

199um policy 5220 is related to substitute teachers um there is a change in the policy um there was additional flexibility given um during covid so that is uh changing a little bit um so in the 1 where it talks about substitutes people with only a sub license as opposed to Appel that are subbing um so uh brings that back down to 90 days instead of 120 um the third policy for your review is 6230 library media program um so this is in essence uh just a uh uh a restructure we already have um in our policy adherence to the uh Library Bill of Rights um this is needed to continue our library grant funding um in six or sorry 760 um we have uh for residents um there was some potential flexibility that we could

200have um looked at now with school code um we are recommending um that uh the current policy stay as is I just have one clarifier on the on the Ala the library media program so that came correct me if I'm wrong it came from press plus from from uh basically from uh legislation that came from the state without that policy we jeopardize potential funds coming in is that correct so we have two choices we can either utilize in order to maintain funding we can either maintain the language that we currently have about adherence to the library Bill of Rights or we can adopt a statement that specifically uh refers to not Banning books um so it's which is like a subset of the library Bill of Rights so what we currently have in policy is

201actually more comprehensive so that's why we're recommending that we stay with the verbiage that we're currently using got it thank you thank you okay 10.1 action item bills for payment can I have a motion please forgot I can't see make a motion to authorize the payment of of bills in the amount of 4,664 61810 as presented second Miss I Dr Maria I Mr hi Miss Simon I Mr gate hi M Johnson I Mr hi motion passes 70 action item 10.2 approval of Health Life Safety survey violations can I have a motion please make a motion to approve the work for violations classified as priority a and priority B for the two high schools second Dr Mario hi Miss Simon hi Mr hi mrone I Mr Gatewood I miss hi M Johnson I motion passes 70

202action item 10.3 approval of 2024 2025 school calendar can I have a motion please make a motion to approve the 2024 2025 school year calendar as presented second Miss venman hi Dr Maria I mrone hi Miss Simon hi Mr Gatewood hi Johnson hi Mr hi motion passes 70 action item 10.4 student disciplinary case can I have a motion please I make a motion to expel student 2023 - 24-1 through December 11th 2025 pursuant to the board's written findings and decision as discussed in closed session with the opportunity to return at the beginning of the 2025 2026 school year if the student successfully meets academic behavioral and attendance expectations at the alternate program second Mr Cerone hi Mr G I Johnson hi Mr hi hi Dr Mar I miss Sim I motion passes 70 action item

20310.5 approval of second separation agreement can I have a motion please make a motion to approve the mediation agreement resolving a discrimination complaint filed by the parents of a District student in OCR docket number 3-1 1607 second Dr Mario I miss menm I Mr Cerone I miss Simon I Mr Gatewood I Miss Johnson I Mr pler I and action item 10.6 approval of personnel report can I have a motion please make a motion to approve the Personnel report as discussed and presented second that's okay okay Dr Mario hi Mr Gatewood hi M Johnson hi Mr hi Simon hi mrone I miss menou hi motion passes 70 11.1 can I have a motion to adjourn make a motion to adjourn second all in favor I I I yeah