SD308 Board of Education (1/22/2024)

001Board of Education meeting for January 22nd 2024 can I have a roll call please mrone here Mr gate pres M Johnson pres Dr Mario pres Mr pres pres present can we all stand for the Pledge of Allegiance I pledge Al to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stand one nation under God indivisible with liy and justice for all can I have a motion to postpone the following agenda items for future for a future meeting 4.1 5.1 9.5 and 9.6 I make a motion to postpone the following agenda items to a future meeting 4.1 Pride present presentations 5.1 student presentation 9.5 ebf and Beyond 9.6 mowing bid results second Miss venman I Dr Mario I Mr hi Miss Simon hi Mr Gatewood hi M Johnson hi Mr

002hi motion passes 70 do we have public comment okay since the there's no public comment we will move on I move to 7.1 the superintendent report good evening board and good evening Community it's great to see everyone this evening on this uh despite the iy conditions out there you've braved it and we appreciate your coming out tonight um couple in due to the what we know as the icy conditions I'm going to make a couple brief comments but in the last couple months we we've invited board members to also make shoutouts to regarding special events and we will save those this month for um for this board meeting um I'll be sending those out in a more of a memo and a followup um a couple of things I do have to take note and

003speak to this evening we've got our 14th annual community versus cancer event on Saturday January 27th um this is hosted at asigo high school and it's a partnership between ASO high school and Yorkville High School basketball game between our two teams um for boys and girls basketball um the first game begins at 9:00 a.m. as well and this event will include a blood donation bake sale Raffles bone marrow donation sign up and an art gallery proceeds of this will go to Cal's angels helping to grant wishes raise awareness and fund research for Childhood Cancer really important it it's such an important part of our community that we really invest in really doing for for others and Beyond what our own needs are and so so grateful for this this month we're kicking off a new

004annual initiative inviting all local artists to share their portraits to be featured in sd308 Coloring Book for our elementary students the effort is underway to collect works that better represents the students and styles that make up our district I'd like to ask Dr Waller to speak a little bit about what prompted this initiative because I I think it's an important story to tell all right hello um so we are um really excited to um support the students with uh asend and the work that we're doing with them um they have been working very very um hard to provide an amazing event um it will be taking place on February 16th um in addition to that um we have had some amazing meetings where the students have been really elevating their voice voices and um so

005we're preparing for um amplify as well as um getting our teacher survey pieces together so the students can begin to address student teacher relationships so we are really excited about all of their work thank you Dr Waller um this past month on January 18th our new District dual language committee met for the first time um this is really building on the opportunities that are before us as the community we've heard this past fall a lot of some of the concerns but also strengths of this dual of our dual language program and out of this we've launched this committee um 20 staff and parents participate participated um the committee's purpose is to build on the strengths and to continue to improve the Dual language program the group began by sharing out the positive outcomes for students

006then there was a presentation discussion about the growth of the English language English language learner population and the program's space needs yes we have space needs um the meeting was extremely uh productive and welled and I want to thank the leadership for organizing and the group meets again on February 15th and next month we are launching Black History Month although arguably it's black history month every day so um we'll kick off Black History Month formerly and throughout the month we'll be sharing stories of inspiration examples of preservation and achievement and ideas on our ways our students and staff can celebrate and Inspire Generations this year is also near and dear to my heart which is that we're celebrating we're focusing on the theme of African-Americans and the Arts um we'll be helping to highlight Visual

007and Performing Arts literature and fashion music all throughout the month and uh particularly for me this is unique as a black educator and an artist myself I find that this is really important because the Arts have had a big influence in my life and so I'm thrilled that this is the theme and this past month if you still have time it's still at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago Faith Ringold all of many of you may know the book tar Beach um if you taught third grade or second grade it's always a popular book there um and her work is being shown there the quilts there so head over to Chicago when it's not icy though so and with that um stay tuned for more information on our website and I just want to

008thank everybody as we wrap up the month of Jan well thank you for that report Dr katti and we're moving on to um our student ambassadors ambassadors are not with us this evening and so we will not have a student ambassador report can I have a motion to move 7.3 and 7.4 to the end of our action items make a motion to move the following agenda items after our action item 7.3 board committee reports and 7.4 board member comments second Dr Mar hi m s hi Mr hi mrone I Mr hi hi M Johnson I we'll be moving on to 8.1 our consent agenda can I have a motion to approve our consent agenda please make a motion to approve all items under consent including 8.1 minutes from the Board of Education meeting on January

0098 2024 open and close session 8.2 to acknowledge the foer requests received by the district and 8.3 to approve the field trips for overnight over 200 miles second are there any questions on the consent agenda Mr Gatewood I Dr Mario hi Johnson hi mrone hi Sim hi Mr i i a motion pass 70 okay uh this evening uh board we are going to begin with uh looking at the 2024 referendum Bond refinancing and invite Bob Lewis to join us and we also Mr oemi our Chief Financial Officer to please uh uh introdu hi boy we have uh Mr bub Lewis from PMA Mr Lewis is the district's Municipal advisor and just by the way of introduction this uh refunding is for a referendum bond that was issued originally back in 2013 that bond is cable

01010 years after and back in um in February of uh no actually in August of this of last year the uh in February of last year the board did an approval for the bond to be refunded but uh the administration looked at interest rate then and at that time it didn't make sense financially to go ahead and complete the refunding because of the uh the savings that were approv from that refunding wasn't significant enough to go ahead and do the refunding so we were waiting until such a time when interest rate would better and uh starting in October November uh based on the uh policy of the board and the economy interest rate is actually trending in the right direction right now so we've decided to bring it back and be able to realize uh

011enough significant savings to be what the uh the issuing cost so I've asked uh Mr Lewis to come here and talk to the board about it take it away Bob thanks very much it's not hello well thank you for having me here tonight and uh Mr obimi gave me a good setup there to review where we've been at on this discussion and a little bit more recap in detail you may recall last summer we refinanced another bond issue and locked in the savings and got that done and then that Bond was callable on October 1st that's why we could take the action we did this Bond 2014 is not callable until actually later the beginning of next month and the interest rate on this bond is 4.17% and they they par out that out standing

012is 9.6 million this was the estimated savings when we presented to the board at the beginning of August when the board took action approve the resolution to proceed with the the the plan and so the total savings right around 250,000 present value is around 200 and then by the end of August before there's things you have to get in place you can't just lock it in like you would have like a bank mortgage by the end of August savings had deteriorated to the point where there was very little savings remaining and after that point in time here's a graphical representation so here around a was right here is when the board approved to move ahead and then things just really kind of fell apart in the market interest rates begin to rise economic reports job

013in terms of jobs and inflation were not positive for Bond markets and the narrative shifted to the Federal Reserve is going to keep rates higher for longer that only lasted for about a couple months that narrative and it seems like they just spun around on their heels and by the end of this year the narrative was the fed's going to cut rates next year and the markets markets don't wait for the rates to be cut they they move and rates adjust at that time so we started to see the Improvement you see out here at the far end I'm you I'm pointing at the lines here these are represent a municipal Bond index of AAA rated bonds we use it to monitor Trends just like Dow Jones Industrials is used in the stock market it's

014not meant to be exactly where any particular School District would borrow but it gives us an idea of where where the Mark is heading I think this is one of Mr ob's first decisions when he came on board wasn't it yes he held us he asked us to hold so I think I a good I mean there really wasn't no value remaining so and so interest rates have plateaued since the beginning of the year they've started to tick up here a little bit so the savings that you see here are a little less than what I shared about a week ago uh this is what was shared with the finance committee unfortunately ticked down just a little bit more I estimate they're probably around maybe 3 45ish 340 um present value savings hopefully the market

015continues to hose couple good or important economic reports this week first reading of GDP for the fourth quarter as well as the fed's preferred inflation measures so see how those go so what are the remaining steps well we have to refreshen up the rating you can't just slap the rating on your bonds and say they're rated we have to have a call with the rating agency and we we're scheduled to have that this week on Wednesday and then it takes we're going to try to get them accelerate this schedule a bit so hopefully if we had the call this Wednesday we probably will be able to get that rating back more around February 1st and then you have to put that on a document called the preliminary official statement that gets circulated for about a

016week for potential investors to uh investigate your bonds so likely hopefully be selling the bonds assuming the market holds still um around February I don't know if the 8th is on a weekend or not but somewhere around there a little bit earlier than the 12 why this timeline's important is because that resolution that the board approved is only good for 6 months there's a Sunset date put into there and I don't have the exact day in top my head it's right around February 20th action has to proceed to sell the bonds if that action doesn't occur it's not a huge thing it just means the board has to reauthorize the resolution and if we get to that point that's because interest rates begin to climb again so we just would want to reauthorize a resolution

017and just be prepared to take action whenever on the market would hopefully e back our way so any questions on that presentation you know just uh slide six we see this quite a bit um so the the dollar savings projected as of now is 440,000 then we get the Net Present Value benefit what what are you using to Discount that are you using whatever the expected rate is going to be yeah the expected rate 3.49 let used as the PV Factor okay yeah for some reason I was looking at the 3892 and the 3496 the same yeah what this is that's a good question there's a lot of numbers here I probably could have done a cleaner job explaining them uh here's the present value savings and we take that number and divide it by

018the principal amount of the bonds you refunded to get that percentage and the reason why we do that is so you can make relative comparisons because if I was showing you a refunding for $50 million a principal and the savings were 375,000 that wouldn't be a whole lot of value for $50 million refunding so that's why so by dividing by the principal amount you get sort of a relative comparison regardless of the size of the issue okay and you're discounting it by three and a half okay yeah yeah they happen to be close that's coincidence yeah that's why I was kind of question that's all okay okay I'm good just out of curiosity who buys these bonds is do we I mean who specifically in our case buys them is a public offering or yeah

019it's a public offering Raymond James was the underwriter who won an our RFP and they will put it so what happens on the the day that we price the bonds an order period is open for a period of two hours and then different investors will call various Raymond James um Traders and put in orders and that could be Newen it could be black rock it could be SE management account yeah I mean right so a whole bunch of different types of investors might be interested in this um a big purchaser now are these separately managed accounts where they buy a bunch of bonds and then individuals can buy into these separately managed accounts and have shares in them this sort of like a mutual fund but a little more sophisticated thank you thank you thank

020you thank you Mr Lewis we're going to build on this and continue with just some of the opportunities one of them that happens every year is our final audit report um an extremely important part of our business in this district and I want to welcome Jason qu from Baker Tilly who led this and Mr Obi so this is a requirement uh by Statute every school district actually I dare say every public entity is required to be audited to just uh let uh the resident of the community as well as uh folks with interest to know what kind of financial condition the district is in so this is a financial audit that is performed of the prior year uh financials so the the audit uh result that uh Mr Carl is going to present is for

021last fiscal year I'm going to hand it over to to Jason thank you is that working now yeah there we [Music] go I was trying to hold it in I can tell good Let It Go all right well with that excitement we'll move into the audo report here um so yeah as was mentioned this is the audit audited financial statements as of June 30th um so I won't talk too long about this I'll just highlight a few things um by their nature obviously we're about s months after the end of the fiscal year so these these numbers are a little stale but that's how audits work you know it takes us time to go through and do all of our audit tests um um so in in your board packet are the financial statements both

022the ones that are distributed publicly and then there's an annual financial report that is submitted to the State Board of Education uh in the format that that they like um in your financial statements on page one is our opinion from our firm it's about three pages long um it's an unmodified or unqualified opinion which is the highest level ofur that we can give over the financial statements and the financial State uh information within your financial statements basically what that opinion means is that somebody could pick up the financial statements of the district and rely on the information in there as they're evaluating your financial health and your financial operations uh for fiscal year 23 um and so there's no change in the level of assurance that uh we gave this year versus last year um

023it continues to be un modified opinion right after the opinion is a section called the Management's discussion analysis and I know every board member wants to read these couple hundred page foot long financial statements but I do encourage every board member to at least read the Management's discussion analysis about 15 or so pages long it does a nice job of comparing the current year to the prior year there's some nice pie charts in there for example it'll show 45% of your Revenue comes from property taxes and then you'll see most of the rest of that comes from um grants um and then it shows you know where's your where's your money going in a pie chart and obviously majority of your money is going back to educating and caring for students um so anyway I

024would encourage you to at least read that document once we get into the basic financial statements or the me of the financial statements I won't talk about a lot of the detail in there but on one page is there's called a statement of net position and it's just one column and it's where we take all the funds that you're used to seeing on a monthly basis and we put them into one column and then we put other information there on there that you're not used to seeing regularly like your Capital assets your buildings your vehicles things like that we also put on there all of your long-term debt for example the bonds you were just talking about along with net pension liabilities and net other post-employment benefit liabilities again things you only see once once

025a year in the annual um in the annual audit um so just to give you an idea because pensions always seem to be a Hot Topic here in Illinois you're in two Pension funds IMF uh and the teachers retirement fund um your net pension liability as of the end of the fiscal year was $22.6 Million which is relatively small given the number of employees you have that's because most of the liability um for TRS is held by the state of Illinois not by local school districts um your other post-employment benefit liability which is other mainly paying for healthc care or subsidized healthare for retirees um was $ 31.2 million as as of the end of the fiscal year um as well so just to give you an idea some of those numbers that you don't

026you don't typically see um once you get into a couple schedules later you'll start to see the funds that you typically see in your border pack education fund Transportation fund things like that I will point out that the general fund is made up of your education fund and your working cash fund put together which is a little different from how you typically look at that but for external financial reporting purposes uh we required to put those together um your transportation fund did go into a deficit position for the year because you've been deficit spending out of that fund for the last few years so as of the end of uh fiscal year 23 you actually went into a negative fund balance uh position and I know at the finance committee meeting that was talked about

027ways to remedy that uh in the future um I do also want to point out that in the annual financial report that is given to the State Board of Education there's a ranking they rank all school districts based upon a numeric ranking of five different attributes and you're in the review stage recognition is right above that and there's also two stages right below that so um I say that by historical comparison you've moved up in the world if you will from where you were a few years ago so you know I want to make sure we recognize the improvements in your Financial Health that that you've seen there uh over the years um also in conjunction with their audit uh we do provide some recommendations on innal control improvements um you know the purpose of

028the audit is not to provide an opinion on your innal controls but we do kind of Kick the tires on them if you will uh as we plan our audit uh I'm happy to say that we didn't add any new additional recommendations uh this year there do continue to be a couple that we've recommended in the past um and the report only points out the recommendations we don't point out all the other great controls that are going on on a regular basis um the mechanism is really only to report the recommendations that we'd like to see um so again they didn't they didn't we didn't add anything to that and I know we've talked with management about ways they're planning on addressing those uh over the coming months and and years as it might be

029so I know that was brief and that was relatively high level but um I that really is uh the end of my formal remarks but I'm happy to entertain any questions you might have so one of the things that we discussed was that kind of that we're in the review stage and then um so when I heard review stage you know thinking oh that's not good you know but it's actually the second best possible so we've gotten a lot better that and the reason that we're still in review stage for the most part is because of that long-term debt right relative to our district size and all that stuff right the different categories your four being is the highest and one being the lowest you're in threes and fours and four the categories and then

030long-term debt ratio you're at a one uh you know largely because of the fact that um you're over the statutory limit because you got special approval to issue so much debt uh in the past and obviously long-term debt carries with you for a long time by its nature and so that you continue to you know the mechanism there gives you comes out at a one for you so I was I was kind of surprised that um you know our cash balance um was in a three or four so our you know our net position at the end of every year or whatever um at the end of last year got us a three or four whatever it was I don't know um but uh I is that because it's improving or is it because of

031the the whole number you think that we only got that we got a three or four on that well I haven't looked at historical Trends on that but I I would say it's probably been improving over the years because I know it wasn't not too long ago you were in watching or even a warning stage so I believe it's a couple of things is help to us one is that we have been paying down our debt true and we started back in ' 06 with 450 million and the last time I check we've gone down to about 386 that's the sub we're still one though yeah that's that's a substantial amount that's why I was you know and then by if you go out to about 20 uh 30 we'll be pretty much uh almost

032done with it so we go from about 37 million that we pay right now to about 710 million and by the time you get to 2036 we'll be out of we'll be I think there's I think there's a historical piece here too that when that legislation was passed specifically so that this District could do something with the the amount of growth we were having it's not like it was financially recommended to do what we did it was a matter of desperation right and so one of the pieces that I hear and I think is always important from the historical standpoint is in 2019 we had the nice little the nice bright lights right and we were sitting on a stage at OE we knew that there was going to be pain and we knew that

033pain was going to be um I want to say long term but it wasn't going to just be over like that and I mean we got a room full of Educators to tell you what pain looks like from from those cuts right and so I but we also knew that going through that pain would improve us over time and I think that that's the historical piece that it's good to hear this um but like kind of some of it I'm I'm not surprised because that's why we did some of the tragic things that we did and the debt continues to hang over us I think the other thing um we did a lot of um discussion in our finance and Fa facilities committee about our transportation department and I think that it's really important um

034rapael if you could to share with the board how due to um this is the second year in a row that we've spent more than we've brought in when it with regards to Transportation kind of how you're reimagining uh the transportation department and I think it's important for the board to see that we do need to cut some expenses there and how you're taking that on so Transportation as it stands right now is a sick child of the district uh the last few years we've lost significant amount of money which means that we actually spend more money than we take it and I think the situation is unique to us because of the configuration of the district we we're a big District we cover 68 square miles so so there's no public transportation to speak

035of so a lot of our children rely on transportation to move them around and we've not always done a good job with efficiency and with the way we manage transportation and with the fact that if we don't change the way that we run Transportation it will be something that will get us in trouble so what we're looking at we're looking at uh a number of things to try to right siiz Transportation one is we're looking at how to do routing uh to do it more efficiently uh we're also looking at uh the way we lease buses and make sure that uh we optimize that so we we need to make sure that any expenditure that we we have related to Transportation we're thoughtful about it with the people with the process those are things that

036we're looking at to make sure that we need to ring as much efficiency from the transportation system as possible if we it's not a it's not a choice it's something we absolutely have to do because of all the funds that we have Assist stand right now that's the most critical uh area where we're bleeding we're bleeding money thank you R can can I ask a question about that when you were talking about efficiencies and so forth if I look at a map of our school district there's probably two School District or two school districts two schools that actually have any kind of growth that are actually north of those schools the vast majority of the growth in this district is going to occur south of the vast majority of our schools and I'm curious and

037listen I don't need an answer right now for sure but one thing that I want to place in the back of our mind is to always be Forward Thinking think long-term big picture and so when the district grows out it's going to be quite interesting to see what happens if our student population shift further south and our schools are all built up here uh and what that will mean for transportation it's very interesting thank you thank you again for your du one one more one more point I'm one more point Sorry I'm going to assume that the whole reason that the state requires this is for transparency purposes correct one of the reasons that's one of the reasons yeah I mean again not only the school districts required audits but most governments in Illinois except

038for the very smallest ones I mean largely because you're holding and spending and receiving public funds it's good to to make sure that the numbers you're presenting to the public are accurate and that's that's our job 100% and related to that too Geral if you remember Mr Lewis from PMA just said something about refunding the investors also rely on it because it gives them an idea how uh financially where the district is with the financial statements that is independently other as opposed to something that we generate generate internally my my purpose in asking is from time to time we will have um comments that will come in about uh the financial transparency of um the school district so I would invite anyone to I mean it's a very extensive report it's very long um this

039would be this would be one of the reports to to read for those who uh believe there's not transparency out there this would I would I would welcome the uh uh anyone out there to take a look take a gander in fact you have quite a bit of information in the back of your financial statements that you're not actually required to have there um it's 10 years worth of historical Trend information which is you know can be great for the public but frankly can be great for you board members as well to have that very handy that 10year Trend information you you see what's happened quickly over that the past year so we even asked multiple times in multiple different ways the other night what could we do better what were their problems are did

040you find a lot of issues and you continue to say nope you guys are doing a great job and um you whenever you audit as someone who has been in that position before the Auditors come in they bring their crew in and they do what's called fieldwork and they literally are asking you for documents that you have to provide they're their job is to find things that is their job you're never going to be perfect but you were very um positive about everything that was found and so I to to what Jared said um there have been recent comments in um local um um social media that were very upsetting as a a board member that we cook our books or you know we're constantly doing things that are inappropriate and this is the best

041way to uh from an independent um third party to see exactly what's being done and and I'll make this quick but I I think the frustration level I get right I get the frustration level why are we spending at this amount and we see this this is the final product I totally get it but it's why I want to really talk about the history of the debt because that debt hangs over and looms over and so without it um it would be a very uh different picture if you will and things would look very different without it well to your point Jerry there will be no way to accommodate the growth that that happened in the uh in the early 2000 because 12 schools were built Transportation facility were built and there's not enough money

042in the budget which is why you do a referendum that allows you to go out and borrow beyond the regular budget so there was no way to get the resources to be able to do the development required uh in 2006 207 that without uh that's what those laws are for the referendum for for bonding incre and I and I just this is this is quick um we do even though we are transparent we do do have plans to become even more transparent with the budgeting process and all that so it's it's it's not that we're we're definitely looking to improve even um so to that um uh Mr oemi has continued to put um everything that we're doing from a finance perspective on our website we are so grateful thank you it's something we've been

043asking for for a long time so that the community can follow exactly what the finance and Facilities committee is doing and the documents that we work we walk through um in these board meetings are now online as well thank you kudos to both your teams uh Dr zy and mrm for your due diligence um this evening we also want to welcome thank you again from thank you uh next we have want to invite Charlie jono from clubber Associates um to speak regarding the health Life Safety survey for our high schools and Bill Queen will you be joining all right good evening everyone um this is our 10year life safety survey this is Phase One um this is required by is to uh for us to complete and present to the board Charlie would you take

044it away I will this is um uh as uh Mr Green mentioned it's a requirement this is the third time the district has gone through this and the first time you did it there were only six buildings so um now you have 22 academic buildings uh an academic building for ISB is houses students um we decided last year to split up the survey because 10 years ago we well 2017 we did all 22 buildings it was a huge burden on you uh from a financial perspective to pay us to do that survey also from an uh implementation process of even be able to do the the uh violations that showed up so we recommended breaking it up into three parts um ISB and its wisdom said that's great but you have to get everything done

045by the 10 years so that's why we're starting early so if it sounds like 2017 and it's not 10 years later you're right it's not so uh we did start that I'm going to kind of go fairly quickly we broke it up into three phases the high schools Junior highs and Elementary and lower that roughly is about a million square feet per grade level Pro for those groupings um we just finished the high schools last summer uh we we have you have two high schools roughly 700,000 ft and 5,000 students um the main uh point on this slide is the three um uh levels you've got urgent which means it happens to happen has to happen within the first year the re remediations required means they need to happen within the next five years and

046recommen recommended quite frankly isby doesn't really care about unless you're asking for funding on it uh which your district is not uh We've also migrated all of these elements to your Envision plan so that your uh buildings and grounds folks are looking at one place for information so Mission CR Mission critical and Urgent align uh uh corrective maintenance and required align and required uh kind of fall in a little bit of both preventive maintenance corrective maintenance Etc um these are the documentations that come out of the report uh the item at the very top is the schedule of violations you don't uh see that with exception of this format because when it goes into ISB it's entered line by line uh with a value in it they require the health Life Safety the called Safety

047reference plans which are the doc the literally the plans of the buildings and then the safety reference documents reference all the buildings the years they were built the codes they were built under and the requirements they're uh uh required to stay current with uh and then the third the fourth document over there is its alignment with your current planning um um the only thing I want to highlight here is those pieces that clubber does that are independent of code everything in the um not bolded is what the code requires we do uh but in addition to that we also are going to take after tonight we're going to take the document that we put together take it over to your Regional Office of Education review it with them because as soon as we input it

048into the Ia system it's electronic they'll see it but they'll have pre-seen it so then they'll go through it fairly quickly get it sent down to is and get their approval on it as well um we went through that key points from this past year survey is again it was just the high schools your facilities are generally in really good condition uh that's kudos to Bill Queen and his staff uh certain elements cannot show up on a 10-year survey like uh new air conditioning systems or sprinklers they're very typical these things are related to code violations under the codes in which the buildings were built um and then priority C recommended items completely were removed from the survey because uh the the buildings of ground staff said we can take care of those pieces or

049we want to get them in our plan and we'll work them in a different way because they're recommended they're not required we want to focus on what the state sees is required and we'll get through those um and again priority A's and Bs were also put into the plan so that there one place for all that information the next steps for buildings of grounds in clubber is to go through that and separate out building management components things that uh will absolutely be done internally and those things that have to become capital projects uh the other findings that came out of the summary is approximately $600,000 uh over the next five years because again we're focusing on urgent and required uh 150,000 roughly for a priorities and uh 425,000 for um B priorities and again those

050documents the schedule violations after today I'm going to review it with our we get those in uh for the next uh meeting in February when you'll actually approve sign off on this um again the uh upper bar as we progress through this process so next summer you'll see that grow it'll have all the junior high schools in it and you'll see all the monies but we'll also see it being paired down as bill and his staff start knocking off those um items required and again it's it resides in two places here and in your Envision Mark I did that very fast so if you have any questions it was a lot more uh in depth for the facility finance committee so just ask them they they know as much as I do yeah I I

051I don't think we're gonna have to go over anything in from the finance committee uh um later on today because we just heard all pretty much of the whole meeting um one thing I think the board would should probably hear is um why aren't we looking for funds for life and safety because you said because we're not looking for funds so the way life safety workers the way Levy Life Safety funds that uh Mr Ron uh referred to is all part of the levy the number of funds in the levy the head fund being the largest it's also the most flexible so if you do if you Levy in life safety that doesn't mean you get more money what it does does is it limits what you can use that money for and since in

052the district we have to be very careful about how we spend money we made the decision not to Levy specifically in life safety to Levy it in Ed fund so that gives us more flexibility on what we can use it for we can use the money we can transfer it to do the work that needs to be done into onm we can Levy in onm but we don't want to Levy in life safety if we need the money for somewhere else so that's why we don't Levy for Life Safety just to be clear leving for Life Safety doesn't give you any additional funds you still can only Levy so much but if you Lev in life safety it kind of locks you in to using it for life safety and we always want to have

053flexibility especially since our cash flow is so tight it makes it very restrictive if we do that so I think the other thing and Charlie went over this really quick at the beginning is that we still have to meet the 2027 deadline all 20 two buildings have to be done we focused on high school next will be junior highs then the elementaries and then the only other thing that I thought was just interesting for the board is that issues are reviewed against the code at which the time was built not necessarily the current code so I just thought that was interesting to share one one piece I just want to clarify so as I see that um you can help me if I'm looking at this correctly so as I look at the price tag

054it says roughly there's about 500,000 half a million roughly uh improvements that basically we have to make when it comes to the high schools so I think sometimes it's easy for us to want I say we um the proverbial we um it's easy for us to um or I guess I said us not we but anyways um to focus on something that we we feel like is needed that's an addition to one of these high schools and so forth but I think it's important for us to realize and correct me if I'm wrong that stuff has to get done right and so when when somebody says something like well it's 100,000 or it's 78,000 for something to the high school one of the high schools I don't think all the time that we're realizing but

055there's also half a million dollars worth of things that we have to do and so um I think that's the piece sometimes that gets lost and you can correct me if I'm wrong on anything I've said trust me I it won't bother me but um I know there's some things out there that people would like to see done to the high school specifically myself included but but I think we have to realize that that stuff has to get done yeah correct and the interesting you absolutely right the interesting thing is it grows every day this is a snapshot it's a picture in time we know every building degrades every hour so this is just a snapshot so to your point it grows every day it's half a million then but it's growing it doesn't include

056things like roofs or other things that we have to get done you know it's just not part of the life and safety cost but I do want to make the the understanding that while this is Health life and safety the other thing we talk about in financing facility is all of the projects that we would love to see done the things that are aspirational and the things that are things that are going to have to be done we just may not necessarily are able to do them right now so while we have asked added Turf you know to the football fields those are things that have been asked for we have all of that is being documented and talked about this is very separate from that in that this is something we have to do

057it is be related and that it is separate but it's also this is the health LIC and safety is also part of our bigger plan as well so there's all these kind of competing Parts working um together there's a reason it's called Health life and safety right well thank you for your due diligence and your team for the work you've done thank you thank you thank you thank you Charlie everybody get home safely and that binder right there that binder right there is the out there yes yes I know that are lots of well good evening I want to welcome now Faith doist uh Tammy Harmon and Shannon lutters um we want to we're we're thrilled with our we're thrilled with the participation this evening I know we've got lots of Educators with us this

058evening as well and so we look forward to hearing from you and uh this has been a labor of love and hard work to really bring us to this point so thank you VIPs VIPs yes we have VIPs in the house how about now there we go for those of you tuning in home you cannot see the PowerHouse of Staff um behind me um behind me well we can Applause before they evero so the amount of passion and Innovation and expertise behind me is truly amazing uh I'm not going to talk because the voices of all these people can much better tell the story than I can I'm going to turn it over uh to Tammy Harmon and Shannon lutters and we will talk about the new possibilities for ELA in both Elementary and Junior

059High good evening and thank you for having us tonight I am very excited to introduce our team this evening who have worked the last year together and um they have really stretched themselves and shown their expertise and their dedication to this work as a unit uh the individuals here this evening represent a larger group of about 50 people who have done this work at elementary for the past year together and at Junior High a little bit longer so um we are going to let them share their Journey this evening with you and so uh just one change actually two changes for Junior High staff presenting tonight Kelly Waldren is unable to be here with us but we have Jill Bean uh from plank Junior High uh joining us tonight and we are as Dr Harman

060said so thankful for the work that all of these folks have done uh I especially would like to say thank you to Stephanie paselli our secondary instructional coach who has uh really taken a leadership role in uh finding this new resource for us all right so um both Elementary and Junior High follow a very similar process in terms of getting to where we are tonight uh we first determine that we have a need for a new resource we go through and do a lot of research in terms of the types of things that we want to make sure and some of our uh teachers will talk a little bit about our criteria very shortly um but we also do at our level uh budgeting so the budgeting that we have for this year we allocated

061last year so a year ago um in preparation for this so then we reach out to our teachers and ask them if they would be willing to help us and pilot resources and then uh serve on their the curriculum teams and then um we get to the point of Pilots we make a recommendation uh within our teams and then we bring it to all of you for information and then we'll come back to you in February for approval hopefully the criteria that we did developed and choosing a new resource was very thorough um it was important to the committee to find a resource that not only aligned to our sd308 literacy framework but also our Equity statements would you mind introducing yourself just so just from Context ER cron I'm fourth grade at Grand Park

062Elementary um equally important we felt it was important for our new resource to meet all the needs of each demographic group within our district as well as offering a variety of assessment and differentiation opportunities and when we evaluated both Pilots this was the criteria that was used to evaluate Heather mayor first grade at hun Club our committees were made up of every grade level from every Elementary School kindergarten through fifth grade we had teachers piloting including special education El and dual language every Elementary buildings instructional coach was also part of our team um with our Pilots so for uh sixth through 8th grade our Ela pilot included not only classroom teachers but also any co-teachers so special education Andor uh other English teachers that were co- teing in that classroom we represented all of our

063schools all of our grade levels special education as I mentioned as as as well as our sheltered English instruction classrooms good evening I'm Megan man I'm the instructional coach at Southbury Elementary and if you can picture that long list of elementary teachers put them all in one room and ask them what are you passionate about for our reading and writing you know curriculum resource I mean you can imagine the energy and passion that was in that room um I want to thank our leadership for honoring the fact that that conversation needed to happen as this whole process started um there was a lot of passion a lot of ideas we whittel them down to this list right here right at the beginning you see a love of reading and writing you can imagine that was

064so important to every person in that room um we not only want them to be able to do it really well but we want them to love it and we think that could go hand inand and then we know that it needs to be systematic it needs to be very explicitly taught um that there's opportunity for collaboration throughout all instructional areas and that we can differentiate for our students all of the students that are in our classroom so we um are excited to share more about that tonight and um just again want to thank our leadership for letting us develop this statement hi I'm Nicole Watson the instructional coach over at Long Beach Elementary over the past year and a half there's been extensive professional development done with all elementary teachers around the district with

065the adopted literacy framework it was important to the committee that the resource we chose closely aligned with our framework and all of its components hi I'm Anna Gibson I'm the instructional coach at Old poost um first we'd like to all of us would like to thank the commit that sat in these chairs eight years ago and adopted our current curriculum um readygen they did an outstanding job um my job right now is to tell you why we need a new curriculum so um we know that phonics and foundational skills need to build on each other and our current curriculum does not have the rigor that we need to teach these skills for automaticity and Mastery we also need differentiated instruction resources that are built into the program where a teacher can easily access the content

066and this is very difficult in our current program because the resources are lacking or not available assessments both formative and summative are too narrow in scope and it makes it difficult when teachers want to use assessments to drive their instruction for our dual and English language Learners their resources are inequitable and for all of our students we need a variety of texts that include diverse characters authors in which our students customs and cultures are authentically embedded and ready genen which we have right now has some but definitely not enough and the last reason is is our current one ready genen is um being discontinued so I I'm Joan munsinger I'm the instructional coach at Fox Chase um my slides are the the data slide so you can see and I know you've done a ton

067of work with data but our last um year Illinois assessment of Readiness in ela um is on this first slide and so areas of green um and then dark green are meats and exceeds so um currently or within the last year when we gave it we had um 34% in third grade 39% in fourth grade and 42% in fifth grade that were in that meets or exceeds category and so we have some work to do um we definitely have some areas that we can work to improve in addition um you see now our different demographics over time the last four years of data is here and giving the I I um so as you look at this data we don't have any data from 2020 because of the pandemic year we didn't give the assessment

068that year but in all other data Cycles it looks like our um data really stays stagnant or declines in some areas um there's also quite a bit of opportunity gap between several of the demographic um subgroups that are there so knowing that um we know we have some things that we need to change from what we're doing right now and so tonight you're going to hear more of my colleagues talk about um different ways um that this um recommended curriculum may be able to overcome some of those opportunity gaps and provide some diversity and differentiation for our students hi I'm Vanessa farbacher second grade dual language at Boulder Hill and before we get into the good stuff of the curriculum um this is just an overview of our pilot and decision process which began last

069January when the committee first came together our initial tasks were to CR critically analyze our current needs and explore the available resources that would fill those gaps while still aligning to our District's literacy framework that you saw before me the committee explored several options and had narrowed it down to two resources which all the teachers from the committee piloted for the first half of this school year after that we came together to collect data and give our feedback from the two pilots in order to make our final decision good evening uh my name is Lan girth and I'm the instructional coach at Homestead uh so we wanted to tell you a little bit about the process uh we started with 18 resources uh to consider for us to Pilot which was a lot uh but

070we eliminated any that did not um have a compreh prehensive program or that was available in Spanish uh it needed to center around current practice and research and um meeting all the needs based on our ready gen review and the things that we felt were lacking so once we eliminated uh programs we whittel it down to four and then we had a presentation last spring from four different companies uh and kind of got a chance to take a look at all the parts uh that they were offering and we created a rubric that the ELA committee used uh and once we walked through that rubric we whittled it down to the two that were mentioned the first one was uh the hot Mifflin Harcourt inter reading and arba Laura how' I do um and so

071we spent the first part of this fall uh going through uh that pilot and then after that we took a look at uh The Benchmark advance and adente program and uh you it's the s's a little hard to see but it had a lot of different components both of them did and so we spent the second part of the first semester uh getting to go into the classrooms and pilot those it was really fun for us as instructional coaches to be able to work alongside of the classroom teachers uh and really get our our elbows into it and get to know both of these programs before we came to our big decision my name is Mahia Patel I'm a fourth grade dual language teacher at Hunt Club um and the for the moment that we've

072been waiting for after piloting both of these programs in the first half of the school year Benchmark was the selected curriculum and Benchmark was selected because it has a wide range of resources including texts featuring diverse authors and characters again features that we were looking for it provides explicit phonics and foundational skills instruction it gives us the ability to differentiate instruction for our monolingual students dual language students English Learners and special education students it is userfriendly for teachers and for students it has highquality accessible dual language resources that have actually promoted some enriching classroom discussions for us and it is development mentally appropriate at each grade level while also including units that build on each other at each grade level um creating continuity for students and more opportunities for collaboration for teachers hi Ally Anderson

073Avid Elementary um also when we were coming to the decision we did have um those that were on the ELA curriculum oh I piloted at H Club in fifth grade too I help um we um had them complete a survey so so we went through our first pilot we gave out a survey so we could have both quantitative and qualitative data at the end 31 of um those participating completed the uh survey then we did the same for Benchmark we had 35 responses for that and then on the very last day we kind of met so we we knew where everyone was thinking and then we went over our priorities and said okay now knowing that and what we know what's going to help most impact our students um meeting our framework and is what

074we're Desiring from what we're not have currently having um we gave a final survey and said what is your decision um and 45 people completed that so we are really really happy with those results um and pilot in action best part right these are our kiddos um and they are doing all things uh Ela and hmh um sorry Benchmark and hmh the um bottom pictures you notice that there was um a guest teacher Benchmark provided opportunities for um someone who used to teach Benchmark and now works for them to come out um and model lessons and then have a de debrief afterward so we could ask them all the questions um and really ask her about her experience as a teacher with it also which was fantastic hi eron gleon language acquisition instructional coach um

075as Alie said we collected our quantitative data but we also collected qualitative data um some of the highlights around that were those first grade and kindergarten teachers really did love that systematic phonics um saw a lot of growth already in their students in the short time that we were using Benchmark was which was fantastic our seci classroom found the materials for their English Learners to be such great scaffolds and such great language supports that the students were able to actively participate um some of the topics that are discussed within Benchmark are far more sophistic fisticated than the students have had exposure to before and we're able to bring up a lot of diversity and Equity conversations as early as kindergarten and first grade which is amazing and that builds on each other as they go

076up through the grades and then um our dual language classrooms as we said a big concern was ready gen wasn't completely Equitable between um our e our English classes and our dual language classes and this is a lot more equitable the resources are more consistent and it gives our dual language teachers a chance to collaborate a lot more with the monolingual teachers it's awesome hi I'm Heather Krauss I teach sixth grade language arts at Bed narc junior high and I also teach in the intervention Ela class as well so uh we're going to segue into the junior high portion of the presentation tonight and starting obviously with a need for a new resource at the ELA uh junior high Ela level you'll hear similarities to what the elementary said um our current resource springboard we

077adopted back in 2015 um we have found over the years that as we have adopted our literacy framework our K8 framework that um springboard is not necessarily meeting our needs as um our framework has identified our current resource of springboard is not really balanced in all the areas of literacy that we focus on um it is primarily focused uh heavily on the writing product but not the process um so that's something that we feel is lacking in the current source resource um it does not have an embedded seal portion um so that again is is not meeting the needs of our Learners and uh our teachers as well um it does not have contemporary texts and the form or many contemporary texts there are some but not many and the formats that reflect our diverse

078student population and as we grow as a community as a district um we need to have a resource that will grow with us and then um we found out recently that springboard um is being discontinued um after the 2425 school year so um just hence the need to get moving on this good thing we were ahead of the game all right so uh very similar to the comments that Joan made about the data from elementary school um the green represents our students who are meeting and exceeding from last Spring's I uh assessment um and we are approaching the 50% of our students meeting and exceeding but we definitely want to continue to grow and grow and grow um and then the next slide then also represents some of those opportunity gaps uh within our demographic

079groups um all leading to a need for as Dr Krauss mentioned the diverse texts uh things items that are students can relate to and see themselves hi I'm Maggie dler uh 8th grade ELA at benari Junior High uh this is our K8 literacy framework it was mentioned with the um Elementary portion of the presentation as well but does represent uh the expected breakdown of balanced literacy within our Ela classroom instruction and springboard did not include resources that supported all of these different aspects of the framework and the instruction that was needed so the chosen resource that that were we asking to be approved um it offered more resources it offers flexibility in the modality of the instruction being used within the classroom um it allows for the flexibility within pacing to meet the needs of

080all levels of Learners um while continuing to maintain uh the Integrity of the framework within our district and I'm Stephanie ply I'm one of the instructional coaches at the junior high level uh I'm going to talk a little bit about the pilot and the decision process which is very similar to what the elementary teachers just shared with you in January of 2023 the district team began researching potential Ela resources in April of 2023 we brought three potential resources to the pilot team who evaluated each resource using the district R rubric the rubric results determined that amplify Ela and hmh into literature would be the two resources that that we would pilot in the fall of 2023 in August of this year I'm sorry last year 2023 the pilot team was trained by hmh and they

081began the int literature pilot we were uh given plenty of uh support from hmh and we were able to have some virtual meetings with them for that support as well in the beginning of October the Amplified team came in and they uh trained us for the next pilot we did begin the pilot however we quickly realized that we were missing an entire group of our students the E population specifically the sheltered e population at Murphy was not getting what they needed from this resource we needed plenty of accommodations so we did work with our Tech Team and with amplifies team however we were unable to come to any kind of solution for the problems that we were having so in November we met as a team and again we brought the team two more resources

082to look at and the team ultimately decided again looking at those rubrics that the district had created that we just wanted to move forward with hmh into literature and so we then brought the resources to our Ela team content team districtwide and we provided them with links and surveys so that they would be able to look through the different resources that we had already looked through we asked for feedback from our Ela department and ultimately the decision was made for all of us to move forward with hmh into literature uh there was a virtual question and answer uh opportunity for our Ela content team in December and here we are today hello again um so uh as Stephanie was just mentioning um when we were trying to determine um you know we kind of came

083to a crossroad so during this pilot process um when we said amplify uh the the pilot pitch was not reflective of what we thought and it was not meeting our um entire student population so as Stephanie said we did uh reach out and we wanted feedback from our language arts committee at the junior high level everybody all teachers um to to get their guidance and help make sure everybody had a voice in this process so what you see on this screen was um the survey that we reached out to determine whether uh we should proceed with recommending hmh into literature um or if we should proceed you know and continue with that or if we should uh still proceed with piloting the amplify Ela curriculum so you can see the results here um a resounding

084support on the fact that they wanted and encouraged us to move ahead with the hmh into literature recommendation and not to move with amplify and then the teacher feedback from that data again just trying to assess the needs of our teachers and our students um but more so you know on the left is the the students needs um and does hmh meet our students needs and there was a resounding agree and strongly agree which you see when the four and fives um on the side and then with the amplify uh did they feel amplify Ela appeared to meet the needs of our students and teachers in the district and you'll see um that no it did not at all so um that helped us make the decision on on our recommendation along the way our

085pilot team uh I think I probably overs surveyed them uh but these are what they some of the responses that they gave us um with regard to the range of resources that hmh into literature has available and the positive ways that hmh will work for the students and the teachers in our district and then most importantly our students who were part of the pilot there were 454 students who were part of our pilot uh they were surveyed and these are their words just wanted to point that out these are their words um we wanted to share their authentic itic voice and opinions and we really felt encouraged by this the feedback that our students gave us and again with that student feedback we asked our kids have you been reading enough have you been writing

086enough and they felt as though they were using or they were being asked to read and write just the right amount so we wanted to share that with you as well that's good hi I'm Julie Vasco um I co- te sixth grade ELA and also um sth and eighth grade Direct One Ela um so we're going to talk a little bit about the differentiation options that hmh provides um as a lot of us know we have a lot of experience and are pretty comfortable when it comes to differentiation but one of the things I absolutely loved about this program is that if I was stuck or what I had usually done to help my students and it wasn't working um I had options and it gave me options right there in our program so um

087one of the things that I loved again having Direct One Ela um this is a special education class so we all start with one Mentor text and then I have options to meet my students where they're at so I have ample amount of data that says hey this is their average Lifestyle and I can pick and choose what text can support that Mentor text and still come out with the same writing and result as um like what is going on essentially in our genda population all right I'm going to talk a little bit about the reading opportunities that are provided with uh the hmh resource uh the variety of genres and formats the different titles diverse authors are short and long reads and those can all be access through whole class instruction um or with

088independent reading and offering students Choice um and then the bottom part the focus on notice and note this is a very popular research-based resource that supports comprehension it is a resource that's used by many many um teachers within our district um but with it implemented into this resource we're really excited that that will be something that all of our students are receiving um and maintaining that consistency across our Junior your high Ela classrooms and then with our writing opportunities um we are super excited about a program called writable that um is paired with hmh um and this is a um extensive web-based writing program that allows students to do writing get immediate feedback um it's very teacher friendly with a dashboard available for teachers to support students at their level um in the moment um

089um with what they need and where it doesn't look any different for a student on one computer to the next but they're receiving the support that they need to access the information and the skills needed for their level um it provides skill ladders uh which help to scaffold the skills that students will need for those end of unit uh writing tasks um it offers Mentor texts um and overall it's just really user friendly and with both the reading and the writing opportunities provided there are just so many resources so coming from a resource where we had such very limited options um at first it's almost overwhelming and that's a conversation that we've been having is how we're going to best support our teachers in looking at these options that are available and how they can

090be used and how it's going to fit within their classroom and how it can fit into um our literacy framework but all in all it's amazing to have these options at our fingertips social emotional learning is also included in the hmh resource uh every unit provides social emotional learning opportunities for students to connect with the topics texts or themes that they've encountered in class uh for example in one of our sixth grade pilot classrooms students read an excerpt from jacqulyn Woodson's Memoir brown girl dreaming and then they worked in stations to analyze the feelings that the author expresses then they work together to develop self-awareness by listing listing important events and memories in their own lives hi I'm Jill Bean I'm 7th honors Ela and e8th grade ELA at plank I'm going to talk about

091assessment and the assessment actually helps support all of the reading and writing opportunities that seem a little overwhelming so we currently have fast Bridge assessment and the hmh growth measure is similar but it's adaptive so it levels up and down until it finds the students level um gives us a really clear picture of their strengths and their weaknesses and the really amazing thing about it is the report being so userfriendly you can dial it down by standard and click into the standard and it'll tell you where the students are performing and then even better to help address the great problem of having so many resources it will show you literally every spot you can touch that standard throughout the entire curriculum and all the resource opportunities um kind of fantastic uh with family engage oh

092sorry lur Bingham principal at Murphy J hi um one of the things with family engagement one of the things our families have shared is that they wanted to know how they can help support their students at home um in this resource each unit includes uh letters that describe the theme of the unit the texts that the students will be reading and the tasks and skills that the students would be working on the letters are editable and available in multiple different languages which is helpful for Murphy because we house the SEI program um among the other buildings but uh that was one of the biggest things that we were really looking forward to um and this will help support family engagement and assist in the um facilitating the academic conversations at home and kind of Bri

093bridging that uh Gap I guess between home and school another great resource inside hmh is the technology springboard is kind of a giant PDF put on a platform saying it's digital and hmh is actually designed sorry it's designed with the digital world in mind there's so many different resources each unit starts with an opening video that's very engaging a poll to get the kids excited uh there's vocabulary and grammar instructional activities and then independent activities students can be assigned to work on on their own or along with the teach teacher there's pure coaching videos that are acted by students to make them relatable and engaging and they're so cheesy they're good even for the eighth graders to enjoy them um the videos really really got their attention and then each each lesson you have the

094option to listen to audio that is an authentic reader instead of a digitized voice um the the audio is fantastic and students can still annotate as can teachers in the digital platform there's a reader light bar that will move with the reading to support our English language Learners um and then also you can pull up the different texts in multiple languages so that is helpful and the AI tools are fantastic um students can get immediate feedback multiple times as many times as they want to click the button it will keep generating new feedback so as we are working with kids they can still get feedback and not have to wait as you look at diversity equity and inclusion a variety of texts that reflect our student population was one of our most important needs at

095the junior high level uh we found that the texts in hmh into literature reflect our diverse populations and we also were very thankful for the significant amount of time and work that Michelle Simmons one of our Dei tosas put into reading all of the texts and uh providing support collaboration insight to our teachers and to our team and uh we'll continue to do that do that throughout the uh um as we move forward Michelle did that for K8 so she did she provided resources and extension activities for our teachers thank you Michelle very very appreciated uh if I could before we um talk about this budget slide with amplify the concerns that we had um and Kelly Waldren is not here this evening but as she was preparing uh for instruction in her SEI classroom

096where she has I believe 19 different languages spoken by our students um it didn't translate for them wow um and when we had the original presentation we were told that it would translate um and I would and I know Kevin McDonald is is here tonight but the uh cooperation between Kevin and Kelly Waldren they spent hours and hours trying to get this to work um but it we could not um in good conscience Bring It Forward if it's not going to me the needs of all of our students and so that's that's a little bit of the background uh in regards to amplifying why we didn't want to move forward with that pilot um as I mentioned early on uh we created budgets for our resource adoption um a year ago so February of 23

097um Elementary Dr Harmon budgeted uh 28,000 and change for the committee work and then for materials and PD $1.3 million uh and then Junior High We budgeted 9,000 for the committee work 800,000 for our material and then 30,000 for our professional development um we do have a quote in from hoton Mifflin uh at under which is under our 800,000 and this is for material 791 th000 and some change and that's a five-year quote for digital and print materials um and it includes writable as well and some professional development in there and and we have a quote that comes in just under budget as well um the materials for elementary the large staff that we have just under 400 teachers materials and resources student materials and consumables um make up that as well as um professional

098development 18 professional development sessions with with the Benchmark group our next step so um the resources will be available for public review for the next 30 days at The District administration Center and online uh at the February 26th board meeting we will ask for your vote in support of our resources that we presented this evening our March 1st Institute day the junior high is planning for that notice and note training that the teachers described and then both of us um all ka8 teachers language arts teachers will have professional development during our April 25th Institute day we are working with our vendors to um frame that professional development so our teachers can walk away with materials and we know how teachers like to prep for their new year over the summer and they will have what

099they need as as far as that initial training um before the end of this school year and in May um we will uh junior high specifically will have some continued professional development with grade level meetings for planning and um we're going to begin Elementary uh pretty soon here in February with planning the curriculum so this is the resource that we've brought to you this evening but our curriculum will outline assessments and any additional resources and support just like we talked about Michelle Simmons and some other background building information so the committee work is going to continue and we're going to keep on working together to build a really robust uh curriculum for all of our language arts teachers at both levels and um during next school year we'll have ongoing professional development for all our

100teachers and of course we want to monitor our data and the effectiveness that this is having on our students what questions do you have first off great work yeah great work can I can I can I piggyback that because in 2015 before right before I was on the board uh and you had mentioned the 2015 and and I appreciate you thanking everybody who went through that because this is a true story I walk in I wasn't on the board I walked into the teaching learning committee meeting and they didn't even finish the presentation they couldn't get through the entire presentation in the committee meeting I remember talking to an Ela teacher outside and it was certainly an eye openening experience and so I think kudos to everybody in the district for how far we've come

101in in eight years and and I remember them then rushing over here to to the board meeting after not even completing the uh presentation and I see you not you remember that probably pretty well I I I know that we definitely sent the wrong message that day and so thank you thank you and thank you be and to everybody involved compared to what people went through eight years ago I want to also piggyback but just highlight I think what are some of the the quality components of this process aside from the obvious p passion and dedication you all have so just an inclusion of all the grade levels and the schools the inclusion of the El team and the Dual language team in this work I think was really important and key to uh what

102will hopefully be a resounding success uh commitment to a resource that provides content to students in in special education or access to content to students in special education and students learning English as well as our dual language students um supports for seal will go a long way to incorporate that into your daily work uh resources that align to our commitment to equity and then um I really enjoyed you know we talk about students being involved in the process the opportunity for our junior high students to give feedback about those resources um I thought was a really good and quality addition to to this process um two other comments um the resources are going to be available for public viewing so a note to the public that's for you it's called public viewing for a purpose

103so feel free hopefully and take advantage of the opportunity to look at those resources um and then the only other comment I have and I think I made it at the committee me I don't have a lot of questions because we heard this at our committee meeting as well but so I had some questions there but um I think I made this comment at the committee meeting I know I talked with Dr katti about it is that a resources is only as good as the professional development and time you have to utilize it and sift through it and things like that so anything as a board um that we can do to offer support uh whether it's leveraging structures for you know collaboration um or you know to me the PD budget seems a little

104small I'm just saying that too so um I would say count on us to um make that as successful as possible so we don't give money very easily so we're offering it up well when we're offering it it's definitely for students um I'm just curious as to whether you all thought that the needs of junior high and Elementary are so different that you would not choose the same source is one of the questions and then um if you're not choosing the same Source do you feel like um there can be that continuity in terms of transition from elementary to Junior High and what does that look like and do you guys feel good about your choice and your choice and those two being good for our students as they transition from elementary to Junior High

105vertical articulation vertical vertical articulation yeah vertical articulation I learned something new today yes uh and I will let any of the teachers jump in but um we determine what to teach based on our state standards for ELA um as they have all talked about this is a resource in order to deliver those standards um and so I am very confident in elementary um having their priority standards and the things that they are teaching um we know that our students are coming in already uh prepared for junior high and we expect that to continue um because we do base what we teach on standards um these are just vehicles for our teachers to deliver those standards for our teachers or for our students yeah but I will yeah and in addition the the amount of conversation

106and learning and robust vocabulary that the students engaged in with Benchmark far surpassed what hmh was able to offer and they highlighted the authentic um Texs for dual language students that Benchmark offers which which doesn't measure up to to hmh for for what elementary had um some of the other um strategies I know junior high was really excited last time to hear close reading continues um our students have uh consumables that they use that they're doing close reading right in those texts and they're um you know taking their notes and um and they were very excited about that that component continuing U for them in junior high as well and as as Miss lutters mentioned if anyone else has anything they'd like to say pass the mic it's coming Co for elementary and I would

107say teachers felt that both of our options were very good options um and when we went through the all the charts and data that were given to us um I remember sitting there and making notes and i' be like how' they do on this how' they do on this checking checking checking checking um both of them were strong but uh slide 17 we particularly bullet pointed the areas where Benchmark surpassed hmh for elementary so when you look at that slide it was um in diversity and variety of resources the explicit phonics and foundational skills um differentiation um an availability for teachers to use with wide range of students the ease of use um accessibility for dual language and the developmental approach appropriateness and I can speak to um you know summarizing happens in hmh and

108summarizing happens in Benchmark and synthesizing information happens in both and fiction and non-fiction and poetry and all of that um with very um well established them in both does that answer your question yes thank you and I think while you pass the mic I just wanted to add uh quite a few of the people well trying to think of percentage wise were part of a gr group um four years ago that created our literacy framework and we worked many many many hours on that and the thought and the design behind that we have our standards from the state of what we teach we joked around a lot of what are the truths that we hold self-evident about literacy instruction so we put that together and those two things combined really then we look for the

109tools of which we're going to do that so that vertical articulation what is important about reading instruction we really really worked on um so that we would have that combined with our standards to go pick a tool so um the tool might be different from elementary to Junior High but what we're trying to accomplish and how we're going to do that there's great continuity in I want to oh everybody okay because we have so many wonderful things to say and everybody's like oh I have 18 answers for this and so everybody wants to talk about it um having read both hmh from K through 8 as well as um Benchmark K through five one point really Benchmark doesn't exist 6 through eight and from what I heard last time it doesn't look like they have

110goals to make it exist and so benchmark's not available for the Junior High um but Benchmark for the elementary aligns so well with not just Ela content when they move to Junior High but Benchmark really Loops in a lot of Science and so social studies strands and we know as elementary teachers that it is a struggle to get through science and social studies in the time that we have in our school day and so if we're able to dabble in it through our reading skills then it benefits not just ELA teachers in junior high but also the social studies and the science teachers and ultimately we're going to produce more equipped citizens who are ready to go into all these stem sciencey Fields as well as who understand histories of various people in our country

111so they can go out into society and be more productive humans nailed it it I have I have a I have a comment in a question I have a comment in a question and the question is for Mr obafemi like how I led with that first of all no my comment is I think all of this is wonderful I think you you all did a tremendous amount of work I think it's great both programs are great Mr obafemi are we uh we good on are we good on funds for this uh yes okay my belief in budget and his programs Drive budget okay and we are in the education business so nothing is more suent with what we're doing than this Ela so we will find the money to make it happen Okay thank you

112perfect thank you I just had one more comment about articulation um there was kind of and this is for just for make the board aware there was a conversation of articulation with the high school as kind of a future step and I know that springboard is going to obviously be out of print and high school is using springboard as well so this is a perfect time to really you know enhance that articulation from middle school to High School uh as they think about a new Resource as well and that has a lot to do with sharing up those priority standards um many of the uh ELA teachers from Junior High that are over there there have have over the years um been on committees that have been 612 Ela committies um that we have done

113a lot of work with the high schools prior to this um and that was more about ensuring springboard articulation was happening and so um because they are continuing with springboard at least for next year um we will continue to work with them on what are your priority standards for each each year English 1 two 3 4 and any other English classes that they're using and then um the fact that Dr Harmon and Mr arnson and I share a same space um there is continual conversation very close on that yes I think um did you want to say something yeah just build a little bit so I was going to talk about the science and social studies connection but the the one thing that's really cool and I'm a little bummed about this because I'm retiring

114and so I'm not going to be here next year I'll come back um is the idea that across the elementary school everybody's going to be working on a similar theme like they're all starting with plants and animals at the beginning of the year and but each grade level gets more indepth with that theme and so I if we all think back to preschool in kindergarten a lot of us learned by thematic learning and where you can connect so much together and I was not a big proponent of Benchmark at the beginning and you know I think that's part of the power of this teamwork uh but I'm really excited about the Thematic learning for our students um and what we can do schoolwide as they're all working on similar themes I think it's going to

115bring um just a new a new light to our learning yes yes that's one please did you want to go no you go um first of all I just want to say that you know a lot of people ask have asked me over the years why am why I ran for the board and this is it right here um these are some of the people that I respect the most in the world I know most of these people and these women and have such a deep respect for them and it's because of the passion that they have literacy does in fact Rock um and I also just want to say that uh Dr alen would be incredibly proud tonight um so I just want to ask a few questions I'm very excited about this but

116how do we ensure um because I was looking at the the numbers for um professional development they look a little low to me how do we ensure that teachers are implementing this to the best of um their abilities how are we going to support new teachers because it's very overwhelming when you start out as a new teacher and then I'm really interested in this writable thing um so I just wanted if we could have a little bit more information about that sure um so with respect to the PD the 30,000 is for PD this year we haven't even started budgeting for next year so it's 30,000 for right now um and and so that's through May right and so um we will as we are building budgets for next year and Beyond which I also

117I'm retiring so will not uh be a part of but um you know I am certain that there will be uh professional development we will be utilizing Mrs belli as um the person who goes into classrooms she is she does this already um not just with Ela but with science social studies even math um uh and so that is how we will support our newer teachers is with a lot of PD a lot of um inside the classroom help okay and a lot of work with their grade levels and some of those more veteran teachers okay so for for elementary just if I could add in um it was so important that each of our instructional coaches who are in the buildings piloted with a teacher in their building and they they talked about that

118a little bit tonight and how they planned with the teachers they actually went in and taught with the teachers and just having that firsthand knowledge about what's contained there about all the components about having that experience with our students is going to be so instrumental in having all of our teachers feel supported including our newest teachers um next year agreed so Jen this this is just this is the exact same topic that I wanted to ask about so um I just wanted to ask the committee um do you feel like the ELA teachers the elementary school teachers are going to be ready for this come next year yes like I mean they they're all I really yeah everybody feels good about that okay I think everyone's been interested in the pilot and they're they're ready

119for some I think the um phonics pieces are very welcomed and teachers are very excited um K5 what that looks like so I think that's going to be the best part about it to really get people excited for something different we need it Ally you said something the other part of my comment that I wanted that I meant to bring up is that and I'm going to totally age myself but I grew up in the age of hooked on phonic and then it felt like we went away from phonic for a while so is phonic back you know it it's definitely based with when we look at science of reading and also Wy bevens if anyone looks is the guru of all phonics he wrote the phonics piece to Benchmark oh okay um and so

120you know we talked about that too like for when you asked about PD I think I can speak for teachers too sometimes it is nice to have um it's been a while since we brought some stuff in too and and outside of just the curriculum maybe thinking about what our teachers could use um from you know um the best of the best and and some of that too so I feel like when we have these big numbers for curriculum we always feel like can we please have professional development and so and I know I'm preaching to the choir here but we have to always remember that we're wasting our money if we don't have the professional development so we need to I just want to make sure that it is really baked in there and

121then can somebody talk to me about writable because it just seems really cool can I just get to the the phonics and foundational piece so um Hooked on Phonics o but um the the benchwork thing that I that I really love what it makes it so different is that it goes into the other parts of the lesson so it's not just in it's not just I'm learning it right here but it goes into small group goes into whole group so you're going to find it all part of the lesson um also the vocabulary is embedded throughout the whole whole whole 2hour it's in it's in your writing and so is the foundational skills piece it's it makes it so the kids can Master this skill we're not just learning it 10 minutes here it's you're

122going to see it throughout the two-hour block so that's what makes Benchmark um I think that's where we're going to see the big sping for our buck can I just say oh one thing about phing before we get to the writable thing um I appreciate the the um support that this phonics is being given within this resource because I've talked to like young teachers one you know first year students and and they tell me things like in our training in our in my in our education uh she said there was one of them said that they had a an exam and there was something on there called vcv and she said she had never even heard of it yes and and she and and she goes back to her professor and says what is that

123like we never learned anything about that and so I'm just wondering it's going to support teachers as well because if they don't understand vow consonant vowels and they aren't being taught that then now this you're getting support from these resources that you're going to be using so I'm in a fourth grade classroom and you know I started 24 years ago and it the big push was knowing the syllable types and teaching students the syllable types in order to decode um and we've kind of drifted away from that and this year through the use of Benchmark my kids can rattle off we've learned four of the syllable types even today in a reading group a student was struggling with decoding a word so we covered up part of it I said what kind of syllable is

124that he said open and I said okay is that a short vow or a long vow and he was able to tell me a long vow so those syllable types are being taught and that made my teacher Hur like that pretty much just seal the deal for me with Benchmark you know the enthusiasm is so important and I I'm really thinking about the change management you've heard about the investment in professional learning but I would say that also your collaboration is really noteworthy I mean I think you're your your shared commitment your discernment uh around the choices I pulled up the 2015 report Jared um I did some history digging right now and and just went back there and I think there's um lots of strength in that presentation and kudos to those folks but

125I can also see already Market differences in some of the things that you prioritize really centering the needs and the the outcomes of our students around academic performance and thinking about how we are identifying a resource that's going to match that so um can you remind us where uh the community can go find this resource over the next 30 days and um I know that on the night of the boards of vote uh please come back so we can or if uh tune in at least um so that you can see the the celebration of that but I would just say let's remind us where people can go and review the doc the information can I also interject one question just one because I have to get it in sorry so when we go to

126the Middle School [Laughter] model and if get done in the next yeah sorry I had to ask campaig and no I'm not for the Middle School model for that yes oh when did I stop if we get it done in the next 5 years I'm going to assume that this will not be a a hindrance in any way shape or form right sorry I just had to find a way to get it in there that's great question absolutely writable writable we're gonna do writable all right writable writable is super exciting from a language arts teacher perspective especially after having taught such a writing heavy curriculum for the last few years years writeable is a connected program to hmh so it's a program that I that we're getting with it and um it has every writing

127prompt that is in the text series is already pre-loaded into the program and you can assign it to students with different supports so if I've already pre-assessed and know who might need to do talk to text who might need grammar support I can turn that honor off sentence starters and frames for kids who might need it you pre-select that ahead of time so they don't even know they're getting differentiation um that's awesome it's it's pretty slick and then as they're writing they can get continuous AI feedback because getting around to between 25 and 32 students takes some time so they can get continuous feedback on the larger essays um you can use one of their rubrics and they're all all their rubrics are already standard by standard or you can build one so one of

128the writings we built a rubric in it that matched the standards aligned rubric we were already using and I scored them just human scoring and compared my scoring to their AI scoring I was within 310 of a point on every kid I was impressed and they provide feedback standard by standard and then a paragraph of feedback at the ending there's not enough time in the day for us to do that in enough in a short amount of time to make it meaningful it was I cried I'm not even kidding my my husband asked me how are you done grading I'm like one of my favorite features is a feedback feature where you can ask students to give peer feedback but you do it through the writable so you assign it to them and then they're

129getting in front of them pops up a peer's writing but they don't know who it's completely Anonymous and they get the standards in front of them and they can give feedback to each other and they can go like the the opportunities are just endless it's amazing I just have to say it's just very timely for me I was reading um my son's essay he was defending a position and I felt terrible because I reached out to the teacher and I'm like there are so many grammatical erors there are so many this and she's like I have a lot to like it's a lot to grade all these it's in a short amount of time and I can only get to so and I felt terrible and so she's like We're you just have to he's

130getting the best that I can give but I am one person trying to do all this so it's so nice to hear that you'll have support for that that other stuff it'll tell the student how many gramat matical errors one student said you have 102 grammatical errors and he just looked at me and his mouth dropped open I said you better get back at it and it doesn't tell them where so then as the teacher you can run a standard by standard report to see where they're struggling and you know what many lessons to offer that fit in our literacy framework love that love that amazing isn't it cool yes okay you going to say something and then we're going to cost element you said it came in under budget is it also five years

131license on the software or it is not five years um we are still working with them within some parameters to get multi-year um but the initial costs are slightly over um what we you what we purchased this year so for ready Jen for the costs for um our digital access replacement materials we also have words their way that has a digital component and that all comes in a little over $300,000 that we spent for this year and um for H A years of consumables and the digital components um the annual cost is $396,000 and um as I said uh we are still working with them to um to get to get the best costs okay so that's not the final bottom line okay all right yeah I was it wasn't mren will be reaching out

132to connect with you all to also have a go at talking with their their their company yeah I want to make sure that it was something that we budgeted and yeah I just want to make sure that everybody knows if you're wanting to come and view the materials that you just come to the reception area there at district office and we'll guide you to where you need to be to see the materials and then there was just one more thing um you gave an example you know of of of improvement already um Can can pretty much everybody say that they've seen relative Improvement more than they would have expected I guess uh just in the limited amount of time that you've Ed it relative to the current materials speak okay well I don't know if

133everybody everybody in the audience I don't know about the yeah and and it's here I had a kindergarten dad stop me in the hall I was work with the kindergarten class and he's like what are you doing uh cuz he was just shocked at how far his child had come uh with with the program uh I saw a lot more writing come out of the kindergarten than I had expected to see and so we were we were pleasantly surprised um and the teachers really like the consumables um so the kids can be noticing and noting even at kindergarten uh which is pretty cool of the Year yes they are the uh Benchmark provided us the full kits at no cost to continue for the rest of the year well thank you all go ahead it's

134okay no please I was just going to say from I um piloted reading with our um second grade teacher and writing with our fourth grade teacher um at Fox Chase and in second grade one of the coolest things that we're able to do is being able to annotate in the consumable it's like a little book and they love it I mean we are we have them annotating circling important words writing vocabulary definitions things that we are just not able to do with our current resource and it's really cool to see an eight-year-old be able to do that seven-year-old some of them you know to be able to do that so it's really it's really I I've seen um the kids change they're thinking about reading it's not just opening a book and reading it they're

135actually working with that text which has been a huge benefit and then my only comment is I love the uh you know the statement back loving to learn loving it I'll give it back Cu uh you know it's one thing to to get a meter exceed but it's to continue to love to learn and so um and glad that that was one of your your missions so I just want to make a quick comment about dual language um because I've seen a lot of growth in the short amount of time with their languages of connecting and really Bridging the two languages together since we mentioned before our ready gen curriculum was very separated where we would have a topic in English and then you just cut it and like switch next language and it's something

136completely different so with Benchmark uh really truly bridging both languages together we were just able to dig dig a lot deeper and what students were able to draw on both of their languages to really deepen their comprehension and their discussion between each other between their peers so it sounds like it really will uh enhance collaboration um which I know is difficult when you're when you're having a so many different resources and over the years it's just been uh tough so thank you for sharing that Shannon and Tammy congratulations I mean this is one of the most collaborative um experiences that I've had since I've been on the board so kudos to the both of [Applause] you thank you thank you thank you so [Music] right do you guys look at them no no please have

137a safe drive home this evening everybody thank you again back come here oh paging Aaron to the stageit and I don't just say that I that is my thing uhhuh yep I know I know we got you thank you for all your hard [Music] work yeah and then uh last but not least this evening Dr zmy uh with an update of our draft of 2425 school year calendar um one thing that I want to thank is I know that this has been a collaborative process involving our representatives from oea and our District level team so uh Dr zmy yeah well thank you Bor um this is a first draft tonight and as Dr kotti has said it's a really a collaborative process amongst um our unions uh we are open to feedback I'd like to

138go through three highlights tonight um in order to uh set up the school year for great work that we're going to see uh next year throughout uh English and throughout all our our other classes so um number one our starts and our end times uh for next school year uh is proposed for to begin on Thursday August 15th and conclude on May 23rd which is a Friday our holidays and breaks a couple things that I want to bring up to everybody is to be aware Tuesday November 5th is uh election day so there's no school so we needed to factor that in our winter break next school year year proposed is December 23rd through January 3rd our spring break proposed is March 25th through March 31st I also want to bring the Highlight uh many

139of you asked questions about professional development uh for what we just um saw with the great curriculum work um we have our teacher Institute days uh four of those to start the school year off we would have a teacher Institute day on Monday uh the 12th of August then a teacher work day and then another teacher Institute day allowing for more time to get acclimated to the curriculum uh was the design that and another area that is a little bit of a different of a design is coming back from winter break the committee wanted to move uh the standard second semester Institute day to the first day back to allow the secondary Junior High and high school to get acclimated to classes that are just beginning second semester similar to the runup that they had

140to start first semester off so a very nice um uh concept that we would like to try uh for next year so again here's your highlights uh August 15th first day of uh School for students concluding on May 23rd Friday May 23rd remember to um be aware of election day uh which we had to factor in and then the professional development days so this is our first draft it's a collaborative process we are open to feedback what questions may I answer this evening I just have a couple things one um first of all I can only speak from my own experience but that day when you're coming back from winter break oh my gosh like we we did a work day in my district and oh people people love it like um we had to

141walk away from it this year for some reason I can't remember what what it was and people greatly definitely missed it so i' while I'd love to hear feedback I think that's uh that's definite win the other piece too and I know we can't align perfectly but we do have a lot of Educators living in this District to say the least and we certainly have um a lot of uh um you know cross and I'm just curious if um I know they have to finalize theirs and we're all under the same kind of deadline but I'm just curious if for kind of looking at some of those other districts um uh just to I hate I I hate it when you know we have conflicts and some teachers have no choice but to call off

142it doesn't benefit the students or when students are taken out for you know various reasons and so forth so just trying to see if we're as aligned as possible I know that's impossible to do like with every District aligned with other districts like you mean like with like so spring break and winter break and and yeah yeah yeah again I'm not I don't expect an exact science but other questions so again Brian just review the timeline um in terms of process just so you know you know I I have heard we're a little later in um the calendar year than we would like to be um one thing that we talked about not for this year but into the future we are interested in bringing you two years of calendars at once um once we

143this team kind of understands the process a little bit more that' be something um so we would like to just get feedback here tonight um follow up with uh representation and then bring you a final draft in a final copy in February for uh you to uh vote on and we would recommend a final copy uh at the February 12th meeting okay thank you all right thank you Dr Z oh yeah I I was just going to say I mean the fact that it's been committee went through committee work and you know I'm assuming it's a pretty good product so or a good product okay thank you thank you all right president yeah moving on to 10.1 action item securely classroom can I have a motion please make a motion to approve the purchase of

144securely classroom second I have a comment before yeah me too but you go first so I want to thank the board last month for uh last board meeting it was like a month um uh for the feedback I know that the team worked hard to address the questions that were brought up these are memorialized in the uh memorandum that you received this evening and so it definitely helped strengthen the The Proposal that's being brought to the board and and I do I'm confident in the work that they've done for tonight so yeah my only comment is as I as I look at the costs and I see like for instance I see that haara is a thousand less and I understand what we were um you know the information we were given and I don't

145I don't discredit it I don't I'm not going against it that you know um we um you know securely is is what we're going with because of it um because of what we already have in place right and it working with what we have in place the only thing and listen I'm not saying everyone's going to have a crystal ball and be able to look into the future but when we do look at those bid proc processes I think I think it it's good for us to know in the future hey there might be other things that we have to utilize and there might be a cost to this and so when I go back and I think about what the bid was in my mind that bid was actually for you know for security

146was actually a th000 more right because we have to go this route and I'm not going to say I'm going to vote against it or anything anything like that that's not my point but I do think it's it's it's a learning tool and just something to be cognizant of if that makes sense just good feedback thank you okay Miss vmou I Dr Mario hi Mr hi Miss Simon hi Mr Gatewood hi Miss Johnson hi Mr BL I motion passes 70 action item 10.2 [Music] 10.2 policies for second read and approval can I have a motion please make a motion to approve the following board policy section two School Board 2 colon 20 section five general personel 5 colon3 5 colon 250 5 colon 330 section 6 instructions 6 colon1 15 6 colon 30 6 colon

14750 6 colon 60 section 7 students 7 colon 70 7 colon 1 160 7 colon 1 90 7 colon 270 7 2857 colon second Dr Maria I miss Simon hi Mr pler hi Mr Cerone hi Mr Gatewood hi miss vmou I miss Johnson I motion passes 70 can I have a motion to post action item 10.3 until our next meeting I make a motion to postpone action item 10.3 student disciplinary case to our February 12th 2024 Board of Education meeting second Miss mm I Mr cheron I Dr Maria I miss Simon I Mr pler hi Mr Gatewood I Miss Johnson I the action item 10.4 approval of building administrator contract can I have a motion please make a motion to approve the building administrator contract as discussed and presented second Miss Johnson I miss venm

148I Mr I miss Simon hi Dr Mario hi mrone I Mr Gatewood I motion passes 70 action item 10.5 Personnel report can I have a motion please make a motion to approve the Personnel report as presented second Mr Gatewood hi M Johnson hi Dr Mario hi Mr sler hi Miss Simon hi mrone hi Miss menman I all right we we are returning to action item I'm sorry we are returning to 7.3 board committee reports we have equity and teaching and learning I'm sorry equity and teaching and learning and finance and Facilities who would like to start I mean for equity and teaching and learning I mean you saw it I know I do have same with Finance Eugene Eugene got one very brief comment is that today's meeting and presentation is why I was on

149the board this is probably one of the best meetings that we've had to me that was great yeah that's great I just want to add uh equity and uh teaching and learning we also discussed um El location or DL locations which will be an upcoming board meeting um and space issues for those programs yeah and I think you know just to add on to that piece I I think it's going to be really interesting when we get to looking at um projections and so forth and again like I I want us to always keep in mind it's not blame like I think sometimes in society we get into a blame game or a race or I don't know what to be honest you half time doesn't make any sense to me but um it is

150what it is right and the reality of the situation is we have our schools located where they're located and building is going to occur where building is going to occur right and you're not going to stop it and so I think we need to make sure that our Partnerships and this kind of goes maybe with the legislation aspect of the um legislation and policy um you know we need to work with our partners we need to make sure that we're voicing um that piece infrastructure is going to matter all of these pieces and um and it's going to cost and it's yeah it's not going to be free right it's not going to be free and so um you know I I know this is can to sound really weird but my my oldest son

151he's in my house what is it what I I don't even know this is it Pat McAfee or whatever right and he makes I hear this guy make this side comment where he says well everybody should be learning Spanish in school right and I'm not I don't know Pat McAfee from anything but you know my son asked me and I was like well yeah I mean look at look at demographics look at the numbers look at everything else and so um we will have to have some serious uh conversations about dual language and um but it is important that we that we make this journey together and continue to make progress I just wanted to say our finance and Facilities committee and anyone that may possibly be list ing if you want to know what's

152actually going on with the track or with the swimming pool or with anything our committees are really doing the Deep work that they've needed to do for a very long time and so uh Mr Queen has shares an operational update on all the projects that are happening in the district and so I encourage the board to look at the documents to see what's going on and we it's the mo it's the most confident I have felt in a long time with understanding not just what's happening today but what's happening one year 2 years 3 years four years down the road so it's very um very comforting for that and I also we were in a makeup meeting um because our meeting got postponed a Thursday and I know that we really wanted to attend the

153Dual language committee I was so pleased uh when I walked a parent to uh Faith's office and I just want to thank you for the work that you're doing because it I have a lot of parents that have reached out to say we feel we feel heard finally so thank you very much all right then uh 7.4 board member comments any board member comments we have had a great meeting that's all I got to say you know I do I do want one more thing and I want to emphasize one more thing when I sat in that teaching and learning committee meeting in 2015 and I want to make sure that I make sure make it clear I was not on the board yet when that happened right I was is mystified and frightened right

154and and I can't help but you know we I think sometimes maybe deal with absolutes or whatever that continuous Journey from 2015 to now is is is evident and it doesn't happen in a day it doesn't happen in a year no offense it doesn't happen in three years this is something that happens continuously and the community has asked for growth and it's been occurring right and so over the last eight years I have always seen growth from one year to the next even when we had to sit up there and 2019 and sit on the spotlights and and do that kind of cutting there was a good deal of the community that still understood it and so um we I I remember some dark days in 2015 and we have continuously made growth and that's

155that's to everybody all stakeholders and I I I applaud all of them very good thank you all right 11.1 can I have a motion to adjourn motion I make a motion to adjourn second all in favor I you oppose we are