SD308 Board of Education (2/27/23)

001celebrate the many contributions made by teachers and employees across our district teachers of the month this program is sponsored by Allied First Bank this recognizes what our teachers do day in and day out for the continued growth and success of our students awardees as your name is called please come forward to be congratulated by the board and Dr sparlin congratulations to the following teachers on special assignment known as tosas for having been recognized as our February teachers of the month Ali Anderson [Applause] Aaron Gleason [Applause] Dominique [Applause] and Reagan Sandra [Applause] congratulations to our toast as we're being our teachers of the month so if we have any of our admin team that would like to join us for a photo [Music] and we're going to have you ladies stay in and climb in there

002for a picture get nice and close stay there don't move we're gonna give a second okay don't move don't move all right families you want to grab a quick trip really fast oh goodness if any family wants to jump up feel free to grab a picture Lee let's hear it for the toaster [Applause] congratulations ladies this evening our next awardees are our February employees of the month this is co-sponsored by Chick-fil-A and Huntington Learning Center this award is given an appreciation of employees who go above and beyond and are always willing to lend a hand awardees as your name is called please come forward to be congratulated by the board and Dr sparlin this evening let's congratulate Mike Bailey mechanic at the maintenance department [Applause] and also Dan Long Mr Dan [Applause] if there are

003any members of our administrative team that would like to come forward to join them for the photo we invite you to do so laughs [Laughter] all right congratulations gentlemen we'd like to give a thank you to our generous districts Partners Allied First Bank Chick-fil-A Huntington Learning Center and Culver's for helping us to make this program a success and we would like to thank everyone that takes time to nominate individuals for this award have a good night don't forget I have no cookies okay no cookies 5.1 public comment on behalf of the Board of Education I would like to thank the public for attending tonight's meeting we value the feedback we receive from our residents and encourage everyone to take an active interest in their public school system residents interested in speaking to the board this

004evening are asked to have completed a comment card and presented it to the secretary to the board when the secretary calls your name I ask that you come to the microphone state your name for the public record and provide your feedback back please note that comments are limited to five minutes per person and that no discussion of personnel matters or responses to questions are permitted the board does not participate in discussions during public comment follow up to your questions or concerns will be addressed by Administration through the contact information provided on the comment card thank you Michelle Trager Pretty in Pink hi good evening Michelle trigger four kids in the district um I have to tell you I actually was not planning on speaking tonight so why am I because last week I accompanied another

005parent to a domains meeting at OHS and the nurse asked that parent oh are you the mom who talked to the school board about fasc and so I know that even if people are not here in person they are listening over the live stream and the more I bring fasd to this board the more people will hear about it and awareness is thus raised so is there anything new that I can tell you um well also at that meeting you know it was interesting because the nurse said oh I remember a student I worked with who had fasd and I said I bet you've worked with way more than one and just didn't know it and just being there in OHS figuring 2 800 students there they are actually working with about 140 students on

006the fetal alcohol Spectrum according to the CDC statistics I presented about fasc and the neurobehavior model the first weekend of February at the Illinois Council for children's behavior disorders conference I don't believe that anyone from this District was in attendance this year or last year when I presented um I did talk about the neural behavioral model and that is um different than the learning theory model that we all I as a social worker was taught it um learning theory um thinks about learning as a as a conditioned aspect of conditioning using targets and rewards versus the neurobehavior model which is focusing on if the environment is a poor or a good fit for a person's needs so the conference was interesting because there were people like me talking more about a neurobehavioral model and then

007people talking about functional Behavior assessments which we do all the time for our kids but I do believe there is a way to merge those two philosophies and finally if you're not aware of it the state has just re uh announced it's nine and released it's 92 page report that is a blueprint for transformation of children's mental health in this state because we're very concerned about the mental health of our students in this District this might be something that you guys want to peruse only 92 pages I know you guys have stuff that's way thicker than that so that's it for tonight just wanted to bring it to the board's attention especially because in March we do have developmental disabilities awareness so thank you guys so much 6.1 superintendent's report okay good evening board I

008have a few comments that I'd like to make tonight the community advisory committee met on February 15th and at this meeting Mrs dalquist led the committee in regards to the five essential survey what it is and why it's important and uh I'm going to put a little plug in for the five essential survey it's an evidence-based system designed to drive Improvement in school uh the survey identifies five indicators that lead to improved outcomes for kids those five factors are effective leaders collaborative teachers involved families supportive environment and ambitious instruction at the meeting the learning Target that was for the participants was to have an understanding of the five essential survey data and to review two schools performance and for performances and share their findings with the committee the committee were given Chromebooks and research to

009schools of their choice and then engaged in conversation on what they noticed and what they wondered from the research and then the full committee came back together to discuss and have their questions answered I felt it was a good meeting my second item is at the February 6th board meeting uh there was public comment made in regards to dollars that we are spending for contractual services in our district and tonight I would like to respond to those comments so on Thursday February 9th Dr petsky Dr Hildebrand Mrs bankowski Mrs dalquist met with many of the teaching assistants here at Oswego East to hear concerns as well as address the some of the misinformation that was shared during public comment uh first Dr petsky addressed the information it had been expressed during public comment that the

010district was spending 1.4 million dollars on contracted services for teaching assistance this is not the case the actual expense for contracted Services through the end of December for oh was around sixty thousand and for Oswego East it was around 40 000. so after that the administration listened to concerns about how teaching assistants were being utilized as well as concerns about low pay with our Tas Mrs dalquist had a follow me follow-up meeting with Mrs bankowski to dive into the utilization question and to work on plans towards Improvement and also meeting with special education leaders to review the schedules and prioritize those student needs in my final two comments for this evening are two congratulations uh one is to an alumni and the other is to a group of our current OE students uh last week

011it was shared with me that 2015 Oswego East a graduate ebony graves will represent the state of Illinois in the 2023 Miss Black USA pageant this summer in Washington D.C after yes after leaving 308 ebony graduated from Hampton University in Virginia and received her MBA from Royal University in Chicago I always think it's nice to highlight some of the successes of our alumni and we wish ebony the best in the pageant this summer I'd also like to congratulate ohehs students Jensen coonrant Aaron bothra Ahmed Fazal Denise Gutierrez Mark Townsend Olivia Schwab and Mr Scott Johnson as the winners of the lemelson MIT inventing competition for group projects these students from the Sten Club worked on developing a device to improve poor air School poor School air quality using LG biofiltration one of hundreds of proposals

012submitted for consideration their project was awarded seven thousand five hundred dollars in order to further develop the project as well as receive MIT mentorship this past Friday night I attended an event at OE right here in this room it was a full room of people uh when the students discussed what they uh what what they accomplished and what they uh want to accomplish in the future so we look forward to following their progress and you know board member Johnson you've mentioned before that uh when we talk about the student ambassadors and and things like that some of these kids are kids that are going to really change the future in listening to the students talk and present on Friday night right here in this room that that by the LGBT bio filtration system was sitting

013right where you're at it was just phenomenal and uh you know they're going to move forward to compete in the in June at Eureka Fest which is a really big deal so we wish them the best but these students are going to change the world absolutely phenomenal so that's my board for this evening thank you yes yeah [Applause] yeah Ambassador report hello everyone I feel like I'm going to be talking for a little while so bear with me um on February 15th the ssac came together we brainstormed about mental health student surveys that we wanted to push out this semester um the foundation for this survey stems from the primary research question we developed which is what are the root causes of mental health for students at the high school level which is the primary

014level that we're focusing on currently we first discussed social emotional learning techniques that are taught in high schools such as self-awareness self-management social awareness relationship skills and decision making but more important to our conversation we talked about how SEL will be taught in classrooms we wanted it to be ingrained into the learning system because these skills that we learn in SEL are things that we learn through communicating with other people through relationships we built with other people to build through human experiences and it can't be taught in in a lecture style fashion and that was something that a lot of students outside the ssac and inside the ssac have brought up in the past and that's something that we wanted to push forward in the student survey as well we proceeded to brainstorm about other

015facets of mental health and high schools that we wanted to ask in our student survey we primarily focused on student-to-student interactions teacher-to-student interactions and safe spaces in regards to teachers student interactions we wanted to discuss the building of ingrained safe spaces in classrooms two-way communication and workload flexibility especially since students do have jobs that last late they are pursuing extracurriculars they're applying to colleges they have home responsibilities and we also talked about student to student interactions primarily on the effects of ingrained SEL in learning environments microaggressions and the power of language we began brainstorming questions about safe spaces such as asking students to Define what a safe space and a learning environment meant to them as well as what could possibly make a school feel unsafe and a lot of the answers to that might

016be a little bit uncomfortable but that's why we want to ask these questions because mental health is an extremely broad topic to be covering especially in one semester alone but with our expanded ssac I'm really hoping that we'll be able to come together uh push out some more research and be able to find a couple of those root causes that we can tackle within the semester we have left so a large portion of our conversation relied on building comfortable effective and respectful learning environments that depend on mental health strategies and SEL strategies to succeed and these are the factors that we want to research through our student survey thank you that wasn't too long yeah thank goodness I felt like I was talking for a long time so as the public murals and the board

017knows that we are uploading our committee reports to um board docs so that our community can review those committee reports and have a document of what is discussed up here and so you can find those committee reports in board docs and now I'm going to ask the board do they have any questions regarding either of those committee reports we're good so if there are no questions um I will then move to 6.3 board member comments do any of our board members have any comments that they'd like to make I wrote a very extensive board comment this evening on my phone and cannot find my phone so I've been looking all over for it so I do want to highlight one thing that I do remember on the 21st of February I was able to join

018our community chat that is available to anyone in the district and it was a very moving experience we talked about taking care of yourself what does self-care look like and what why is taking care of yourself important and I went in there to support the staff that put this program together and ended up getting out of it more than I could have possibly imagined it was this particular evening a group of moms who all come from very diverse backgrounds but when it comes to Parenting at the end of the day it was interesting that we all wanted our kids to be safe and loved and cared for and so I strongly recommend on March 22 second for you to take a look at the website the next Community chat is um is scheduled from six

019to seven thirty unfortunately it is during our community advisory committee time I hope we look into that in the future so we don't schedule over those but it's about bonding and building relationships with your children and I think it will be as impactful as the February 21st one to have a bunch of parents come together and be vulnerable and talk about what we all face today as parenting uh kids in this environment in today's day and age it was um it was really beautiful to come together and see that we have many more similarities than we have differences so I strongly encourage everyone to do that and then um I just wanted to take the opportunity that when I was talking to Anya she just informed me that she is a National Merit Scholarship winner

020of course she is I'm going to get emotional um and I'm just incredibly proud of her and um as I am with all of our students and um Jensen has been such a an incredible student for us and throughout her years has made such a footprint in this community but I wanted to say it when Annie was here but she's getting going home to study so just incredibly proud of her and she did it not expecting anybody to you know just to tell me because she was proud and I do have my uh my watch but I still can't find my phone so I just wanted to share that I hope everybody jumps on those Community chats it's such a great um experience to have another parent say oh my gosh I totally know what

021you're going through and I feel it and I understand it and you not feel alone so I just wanted to point that out this evening thank you and if anyone goes out and they see Jen's phone because it's locked between between this door and well the parking lot if anyone sees it it's hers anyone else have any comments two weeks no so yeah uh Thursday I had the chance to what I consider almost going home uh back to the beach so I was at Long Beach during school hours uh did a visit there reminded me of all the years of volunteer work back at the beach which was a very rewarding time early in my uh um my introduction here to Oswego 308 so many familiar faces although not as many as uh as there

022used to be certainly had some changes over the year years work there being done is phenomenal I reminded as I walked through Long Beach how blessed we are in this District we have seven exemplary schools and 13 commendable schools um none in the targeted or comprehensive range which is great um I got to joke with Mrs day and told her class how my oldest son was once a student in her classroom and and now and unfortunately I had to made her feel a little old there by saying that my son now has a son also so um sorry Mrs day and then uh hugs with Mrs thompter as she informed me she is also a grandparent as well one concern though I'm going to ask you about uh Dr sparlin as I'm walking through Long

023Beach uh can you tell me about the roof because um um you know I'm always protective of my beach so uh tell me about the roof and what's going on that's right we don't want to beach inside inside the building right right very correct please uh talk to me about the roof please yep District Maintenance has been working on uh trying to find out where some of the issues are there and they believe it's not in the roof but it's underneath the uh HVAC system there and once the weather breaks we'll be able to determine the corrective action for that problem so it should be addressed in the very near future okay thank you but I'll wait if any of you there you go is anyone else not right now no okay so um I

024sent you all an email on February 15th it was um regarding the student Forum date that we had scheduled on the calendar for March 6th if you guys recall the email um so normally we have two for the public we normally have two open forums where the public can come and talk to the board about whatever their interests or concerns and desires are and we already had one we were having we were scheduling another one for March 6th and um this was going to be a a forum for students they were going to organize the entire thing and then it was for students by students and so it's an opportunity for us to hear from a wider range of our students as to what their school experiences and how they want to see how they

025want to experience school and so as we started to plan that what we realized was that um there were several organizations a numerous amount of organizations who were coming together to put on a candidate forum for as part of our student voice efforts with the district and so what that meant was that we were going to be asking them to really take a lot of time to organize our event as well as take time to organize the other event and we know that um you know their time is really important they have to get their studies and so I was asking the board whether or not they wanted to reschedule the March 6 Forum or um you know cancel it all together it just all depends on what you all want to do and so

026I ask that you would send something back to Ursula around what that looks like and how you guys want to go forward so since we're here we can you know you guys can share your thoughts about that I would say that um it's unfortunate that those two events needed to be planned on the same night but um I I think we definitely want to have those two public forums a year however we could move it to be a public forum for that similar to the last one we had except maybe have the all seven of us have the tables um as we had discussed after this past public forum instead of planned for students by students anyone else well they were they were a week apart the issue was is that they were going to

027have to plan both oh the planning they were planning yeah either way yeah um and then yeah and then I I if we were to postpone it that was going to be problematic as well because then you're getting into finals and spring break and um so and they're seniors a lot so um I'm all for Lori's suggestion I don't know if we need to do it that day um or I don't know we can push it to you know in March or April I mean April or we can have it the same parts yeah I said I don't I'm open to either put it because you don't want to start moving them to where people couldn't for why not just leave the League of six is it is are there no scheduled forms I just

028I don't know do we know well and that's only giving that's not giving too much time to prepare for it either well um we don't have to have up no we well in terms of just making sure that they know the topics that they want to discuss because they'll be different from the last time they won't be the same as the last one so Dr Sparling I mean you can share whether or not you feel like that's enough time to get things together or there's nothing on the six there's two on the seventh so again I I think we definitely need to have yeah we cannot we cannot not have one but um are we just inundating our community with more forums when there's already like what eight or nine or ten or something already

029on the calendar I mean I don't know well I mean that this is ours this is a candidate for him this is about current board topics so no I you know will we get the when we get an audience when people are juggling with all the other things honestly my biggest concern is that there was an incredible amount of effort put in the first one and very little Community um involvement and so if we were to do it that week with all competing with all those other things I just see more effort being put in and um so I would argue we don't I mean we don't need to have a presentation by our administrators if this is a board forum and we're just here to listen to the community why can't we just be

030there to listen to the community and if we want to do it the round robin tables or however or we all just sit in one big happy Circle but but the reality is it doesn't have to be a lot of work for anyone we can all just go and talk about things that are we're currently working on and maybe given the fact that there are a lot of forums it would be good to if people have more questions because they're going to so many to say hey what what is the board currently working on for XYZ since we're hearing about it I agree with you I don't think anything needs to be presented I'm just saying the last couple ones that I've been involved in have had incredibly low turnout right so I don't feel

031like we've how can we better engage our community how can we give them the opportunity to listen to them and to um engage with board members I just don't know that we've come up with that magic format the format I thought was great I think I think why we it was really important for us to have the student forum totally agree but if we're not able to to do that given the competing interests and limited time I mean it's better this than nothing I think I think one thing to consider and you know I've heard this many times from and granted I mean we all have different schedules I get it but one thing to try and try and do the best that we can and I know that's difficult but is to try and

032figure out when our quote unquote down times right because I think I think there are times where we are having things that it's just not going to be six o'clock on a Monday is not going to be feasible right because people people are busy people have a lot going on um and and so there are times that are just not advantageous so it was Mark's March 6 one of those days that are not advantageous and does the board want to take time to think about that and plan for the future or hold it the public tonight whether we are or we aren't on the sixth and are we going to reschedule say for something in April um might be better I don't know it's up to well maybe this discussion uh uh that we're having

033today will um spark the interests of some of the people listening so maybe we should check whatever next week make an online version I would love for people to be able to submit all questions or submitted in our answer from the board you know and we do it I mean listen if if truth be told if I wasn't sitting on the board I wouldn't be going to a meeting as a general human being with kids in sports I don't have time for that what I do have time for is if I really have a question I can phone it in or I can type it in or I can but in general I show up here and ignore some of the other things I got going on in my life every so if we someone

034if we were to have this under structure where we we allow people to submit questions would we would then come together as a group and then answer them or why not just answer them I mean I don't know I'm just asking what is the why not make some kind of I mean we do online here for God's sakes why can't we I mean all right sure the quality of the sound is terrible I'm not promising that you're going to hear it but what I'm asking is if it's possible no huh if we did a zoom and everybody is that legal Marine but at this point you always should be perfect person right but we could have something really good answer yeah yeah I just think it would be helpful for more people to to have

035a voice in that and and we answer those questions and a lot of times we're seeing people come in with very specific questions to their family or their student um and I don't know that that's the place that if they want to say it that's fine but well I also agree with Lori that we don't need a presentation taking up the first half hour yeah different districts and maybe we do a community Circle where you know we're all in this circle together no big eyes and no little eyes and we just talk do we want to do that and do we want to do that on the sixth sure yes we can do that because it's relatively simple I suppose um I don't know if we need everybody that normally would come but um you

036should probably get some good representation so you're saying um it doesn't need to come just a few I don't know we're not taking yeah I mean because I don't know if that was intended on the sixth anyhow yeah next all right so we're we're on for the sixth and we're going to do a community Circle does anyone know of anyone who um who's facilitated Community circles um we've got some people in the district what do you mean to facilitate a community Circle you need a well why why don't you facilitate it what you do have experience I mean I possibly could or we all just sit around and have a conversation without anything you do need you do need you need one then I would say you should because as our board president one and

037two with someone with experience in this I mean some answers little experience but not like not as much as I would like but if I'm with that you have more than many other people does Dr Waller have a community circles I don't know we'll just have no we'll just have to see I'm pretty sure okay so March 6th at what time what time do we have it scheduled for it was at 6 30. seven it was from seven to nine I had 6 15. clearly I was sweet can we can we do something shorter do we want to shorten the time guys that's a long time 90 minutes is what we did it depends how long any individual person wants to chat because some people like to talk for a long time and some and

038we want everyone to have their voice heard but okay but is that good for everybody will people be able to submit questions sure sure okay live so they don't have to physically no present no no if they submit something like do we have a some kind of a mechanism or portal are you asking for questions to be submitted ahead of time or questions to be submitted during the live stream oh either why not so we can monitor online we would just want to make sure we're monitoring it so it's not like an open Zoom okay so someone can monitor the chat and that's the thing that we can do now we just saw somebody just has to be assigned to that job so I'm sure that that can get worked out um I don't think

039we will get a ton of questions that it will be yeah Ali's gonna monitor it she said she would okay so so all right no you can't respond no we can respond Ally can't respond in chat no but you do want a mechanism for people to submit questions ahead of that evening or you don't yes sure right I I think that any and all questions and ways that we have the ability to capture we should if the goal is to actually communicate um I I like that concept I do too and this is a community circle is that correct yep that's what you want it yeah sure it might be an oval whatever it is we'll all be in the same place in the okay all right let's go on 7.1 consent agenda are there

040any questions on the consent agenda all right can I have a motion to approve the consent agenda and make a motion to approve all items under consent including minutes from the Board of Education meeting on February 1st 2023 and from February 6 2023 open and close session and to acknowledge the foia request received by the district second Mr Doyle I miss Swanson aye Mr Cerrone aye Ms simultan aye Mr Gatewood hi Miss Johnson aye Mr Plover hi motion passes 7-0 okay item 8.1 is an informational item regarding High School social studies materials Mr stalkers yes uh is there an online version of that book yes yes yeah I was gonna say it's a must now right how are you good good thank you thank you for being here Dan nope do you want to borrow

041my glasses can you hear me now hey look at that all right uh I'm going to be presenting three new resources for high school social studies look over here as you can see up here there's a process we go about selecting a resource of course the first thing we need to do is determine the need for the resource and The Many Items up there on there include creating a budget all the way down to seeking board approval tonight one of the items we of course look for is one of the middle middle points there is the process we use here in sd308 to select materials based on our own criteria the criteria here that we first and foremost need look at state standards and state standards are continually evolving right and we need to make

042sure we're staying up to date on those State Standards one of the important things we look at is the alignment with sd308 Equity statements and we look at all different types of diverse points of view from diversity student choice you name it on this and we look at kind of all gamuts the student Choice aspect is and is going to be a big theme throughout tonight especially when we talk about inquiry and we'll get into that here in just a second but we find it really important to engage students in the content and we're we're always looking to find a way for that to be involve our students in the material one of the things here as well is the ease of differentiation it's easy to think about general education students but we also need

043to make sure we're identifying other students that are that are also going to have the content and this goes for students uh with IEPs or English language Learners uh and it's important for us to to realize that and make sure we're supporting those students and the content resources we're looking for have whole group small group independent work and other activities as well and of course as I mentioned before the focus on inquiry inquiry and I'll say this here for people at home as well it's really active learning it's posing questions uh problems or scenarios and allows students to engage in the content if you have traditional learning it's really the teacher presenting facts and the students there kind of just trying to absorb the facts as best they can with inquiry we're really trying to

044engage student and have them answer some questions about the content itself and what are they interested in specifically related to that content so that's a big aspect of all the things we do here in sd308 with the criteria is really looking for a student or that focus on inquiry to engage students in the content a couple other items on here too is technology is one of those items here as well and then of course it's student and teacher friendly some of the textbooks we've looked at they had great material in there but they weren't really engaging or student or teacher friendly for use and that's something the the the committee kind of looked at as well Oops why do we need new resources the first one contemporary human geography and I've linked the course descriptions

045at the bottom because if you remember in the fall I presented this as a new course for us this will replace modern world history for all 9th grade students and you can check out the course description for that there if you need be so we'll obviously need a resource for that for that course there Civics and U.S history the last time that that textbook was adopted or was 2004. obviously the world has changed quite a bit in the last 20 years so there's a need for that for new resource if we look at committee members here there's members from Oswego High School and Oswego East and all three of these different committees have members from both high schools including members from general education of course but also special education at El and I think that's

046important to note if you look on the left hand side of your screen here these are all the textbooks considered there's five different textbooks we're in consideration and the textbook that was selected by the committee uh was the one here contemporary Human Geography which of course does match the course title whether that was just by habits dance or not right but that was the committee found that was the most appropriate text you'll see for this one students will receive a physical copy and a digital copy of the text and we can talk more about that for the textbooks if need be later on contemporary Human Geography the reason for selection this aligns nicely with the what we currently use for AP Human Geography so there'll be a seamless transition if students want to go on

047to the AP level of this course it will be easy for them to it will the book will flow with that course as well and then of course inquiry activities in each chapter analysis of primary secondary resources and then really you'll see on here too excellent graphics and student friendly content of course we're not selecting textbooks because of graphics and things like that too right but it does help to engage students in the material Civics curriculum again members from Oswego High School and Oswego East High School and the considerations there on the left hand side of the screen and then the eventual nominee so to speak was on the right hand side of the screen there in Civics the reason for the selection the big part of the selection portion for this textbook is state

048government is embedded in each chapter whereas other other textbooks they have that periodically or a single chapter alone on state government where this is specifically every chapter has something with state government in it and then the group found that that was really important again inquiry journals or activities are incorporated into the curriculum really the analysis of primary secondary resources again with that and then of course the digital version is available and it can be adjusted on re-level if need be reading like Lexile levels and again of course student friendly content is something else in taking consideration the final book here is U.S history um and again members from Oswego High School on the left-hand side Oswego East on the right hand side and for each one of these slides I've mentioned that department chair Jennifer

049Quito and department chair Jim Vera from each respective High School who are involved in this process the entire time and of course we have on the left hand side of the screen here the textbooks in consideration and then the one ultimately selected and again this one is updated all the way through the 2020 election and Beyond so it incorporates all the last few presidents that the only one did not again inquiry is a part of this and really provides the last build is really pretty interesting too it's the analysis of current events and really how to engage that in historical events as well which is pretty pretty interesting for students the description of the process itself we began this last school year formation of committee uh really three different groups and and having kind of

050an idea of what we wanted to uh come out of this process uh last year there was group work about state standards and how to align those standards and how to renew the curriculum and of course looking at after we get through the standards and things looking at the textbook that best fits where we want to go and then of course bringing it here tonight and then hopefully for approval uh eventually here then in May if things get ordered properly teachers will actually have this in their hands to start looking for it before summer and here's just the next step here again it kind of outlines that that timeline tonight all the way through potentially in May questions I have one question before Jerry get started because this is like his area of expertise yes

051um so my question when you go back to the book is there a modified all right so clearly we modify most things for special ed ourselves however some texts nowadays are coming out with some supplementary materials sure uh it depends uh some of the resources for the most part what they offer is the digital version which are our teachers editions will all be digital versions so teachers will have the ability to modify anything in the digital format to present to students so if a student doesn't have the digital version the teacher can provide that for the student or provide that material or those accommodations or modifications right but we're talking about like taking four options and sending them down to three testing but worksheets as well I mean you could right so when you when

052you when I say digital yes I'm looking for a little clarification so there's two different there's many different options obviously there's a hard copy here yeah and there's the digital format um the some companies basically only allow us to do basically you're getting it all in one you're getting if you buy this you're getting the digital copy as well teachers editions are all digital and of course they can use the student Resource as well for hard copy but the digital resource which is available for students if they want for a Chromebook or if we need something for a student with an IEP specifically we can absolutely order that what we're looking to do though is provide a student taking this course with with a hard copy of the textbook and the reason we want that

053route is is twofold it's the most cost effective and you've seen up there the last time these courses were renewed were 2004 and they in the chance that we don't have the financial capacity in six years from now to renew licenses students still have a resource if we want the digital route only six years from now we'd be forced to find a new resource go ahead I mean like I'm looking yeah I don't know that's not what I was looking for um but I guess maybe what I'm looking for doesn't exist right like I'm looking for you know for kids with low reading isn't going to read it to them sure for kids who have a hard time seeing and and I forget the name of it but following along right and all of that

054stuff is available sure through a variety of options but for special ed teachers in particular who are teaching some code talk classes I just like I feel like maybe it's the Publishers that need to hear me say this but there has to be something that will help the teachers to help the kids sure and and we can look into that too obviously when we talk about massive orderings we're talking on the masses right if we need to reach out to Publishers to talk about specific um professional development opportunities for teachers or professional or specific resources for a student we can absolutely do that in an individual basis when we talk about ordering from the masses we're talking about you know basically hardcover or digital copies of the same resource yeah yeah can we can I

055make a plug just to buy hard copies of the teachers books too so we will do what we can some of them don't offer the teacher edition yeah but I listen some of us are old not me of course but I want it in paper I want it in print I wouldn't be able to flip through it yep I don't want to read my news online I don't want to read my textbooks online either sure yep I'll look into it go ahead Jared did you go last nobody else go on Jared all right a couple things first of all I'll be honest some of them are Quasi questions um are you a are you a history teacher it's possible um I'm excited about the inquiry base and I'll say this right we talk about diversity

056all the time and for some reason it gets a bad rap and I'd like to point something out here that by bringing in inquiry-based instruction you or you can correct me if I'm wrong the nice piece about this is you are bringing in student voice correct right and really if you are allowing that to drive your instruction which I'm excited about right um You have situations where for instance you have a teacher like in my case where students ask me they want to know oh who'd you vote for for a president and I would always tell them the same thing I'd say Hey listen if you really want to know that bad you can ask me after you graduate right and I did have a situation at a student's graduation party where they had a

057bet right because they couldn't figure it out sure right and the point of that is that's allowing students who I had who I knew had different political leanings sure right that's part of diversity also and sometimes we think it's one thing so I'm excited about the inquiry-based piece I think that gets lost sometimes in the conversation unfortunately we can we can talk about why um in addition I'm curious about I'm glad about the state piece do a great job on the national great job on the state and I know that some of this is not your fault actually probably most of it to be brutally honest with you is not your fault because I've talked to people in my own field and it's like deer and headlights but the local piece is still lost sure

058and it's so frustrating and you know me I'm gonna say it and I say it every time right and I will never forget my own student who left such an impression on me when I said hey explain to me when we went through the election numbers and I said hey here we go you got 75 percent you know my students were in will I said 75 percent of the adults are showing up for the presidential election 50 percent of the adults are showing up in the even years 15 percent are showing up in the odd years and that student their words not mine said that's because they don't understand how it works and what's interesting to me about that is I've already shown my students in my classroom their sample ballot and what's interesting is

059there's an art to voting not who you vote for I never get involved with who you should vote for in my classroom but there's an art to voting and we don't teach it and if we taught it we'd have more engagement the numbers prove that they prove it when you look at that piece the 75 the 50 and the 15 because the odds are that if you pulled the people in this room the odds are that the vast majority of the people in this room if they had come across a mock election in their education career it was probably a presidential election it was probably not a Governor's race and I'll be damned it was probably definitely not a local race and what those students saw when they looked at that local piece that that

060sample ballot they notice something they notice that in One race someone was running on a post in another race there were a couple write-ins and in another race there weren't enough people to fill a ballot and so I had to explain to them that means this person's running on a post nobody went in when there was a time period for you to put in a write-in for a petition or your uh put put in petitions to be to write it over here there's two write-ins there there's one and it started an entire lesson and these students one student asked me they said hey does this mean I could have literally this is this is a senior class I could have literally gone and put my name in and been elected and I said yes you

061could have we don't teach and it's frustrating and if the adults were actually honest and looked in a mirror I'd be curious how many of them knew some of this stuff themselves because we even have politicians who should probably look at some of these sample ballots because we and I think some of them have forgotten their small town roots because instead of looking to see that we can't find people to fill some of these local pieces they're introducing legislation to try and remove people that's what I see and what what frustrates me to no end is this stuff is not getting taught and we have situations where people don't show up at the polls for years on end and then when they do engage they engage with hostility and I'm going to honor my student

062who said that's because they don't understand they haven't been taught and hey as a social scientist I'm always here to engage but at some point we have to call out everybody includes the publisher everybody on down the line that we do not teach local governance we do not teach local elections we just don't do it we can sit here and we can make excuses but we don't and you remember what I said when I was off the board I said at some point it's gonna it's gonna harm us and so so real quick real quick and then I'll be done I'll get off my soapbox and I'll be quiet probably for the rest of the evening except to vote please whatever we can do because the more that these students are engaged and the more

063that they see these pieces statistics show that they will vote and they will be more engaged and that point of all of this is for them to be better than us and I understand what you're going up against when it comes to finding that piece because I've sat here and talked to people that do this stuff for a living and they're like it's so hard we get it and you know what you're right we should and I'll be quiet I'll yield but it's part of the um my personal issue with prescribed curriculum you know when we use a more resource-based um option to allow Educators to pull from different sources we need to as a board say this is important to teach local elections it's important to teach why local elections matter it's important also

064to see that when is b or any entity wants to take away the opportunity for local boards to make and have control over their communities and there are so many layers to it that people don't realize and it's really frustrating so I hope I've honestly hurt Jared's speech probably a dozen times over the years and annoyed and I'm sorry the last two years now I get it and um I am in shock about our low turnout and out and so to everybody that steps up the plate and runs man I say congratulations because you are doing so much more than you realize um but please if we don't if it's not in our prescribed curriculum it's okay to to support our curriculum with other resource based um options and to make our students the best

065they can possibly be the most engaged they can possibly be we can't ask them to be Global Citizens until they're local citizens so let's teach them how to be good local citizens and then worry about um it's why I struggle with our mission our vision it's like we're way up here but we're not aligning it with the resources and what you need to do to get there and so I love when people want to talk about you know uh well I went and voted for the president or I went and voted for Congress or whatever but did you vote for your local school board did you vote for your local mayor did you look because that's where it all starts so I finally get it cheers I finally got it and Mr arnson um you

066know we're Trailblazers in this District in a lot of different ways sure and so why not be in this way too sure okay and I made note of that too and I'll make sure to speak with our archimedia communities about that and the importance of that but I have a kid in physics right now who is learning this stuff so before we throw the baby out with the best water realize that we are teaching some of this in our district um and I'm going to bring it back just for a minute so we're talking about getting a new textbook and we're talking about inquiry-based which um we're converting all of our physics curriculum currently to and GSS which is all inquiry based correct learning and I will tell you with 110 certainty that you need

067time and and that's going to cost money yeah yeah because these unless you're gonna expect which happens all these guys to do all this work at home by themselves in a little pockets of islands yeah it's gonna take a lot of time to do it takes so much more time takes time with the kids it takes time prepping the lessons no book comes fully made inquiry based notebook I care about science or history so you guys have to know that you're gonna pay money to make this happen to even get to work well that's what I'm talking about and by the way I I'm not doubting inquiry based yes I'm aware yeah thank you the one thing I will say is that so these resources will be on uh available to the to the public

068at the district administrators administrative center for the next 30 days and there'll be a sign-in sheet if someone wants to review these and that way if you have questions or comments I can get back to you with those all right thank you have we just said I'm out of curiosity as part of this um news Ela and we talked about that as kind of a yeah for these particular courses we use that in our Junior highs so if well let me ask this then so if we use it in our Junior highs is there a district what's the word I'm looking for should we pay for that as a district so that our high school teachers maybe like our special ed teachers have access to the we do not pay for a full District amount

069it's based by a student and by school so we do not pay the full cost that all students in the district would have access well how much more would it cost to get that so I've reached out to new level actually to speak specifically about that cost because there was a request for some resources and and interested in what that would be different are we using are we using all of our I don't know how many you get when you buy just a Junior High version I guess what I'm asking is as these kids move into High School why can't that travel with them I think what we've been looking at with the social studies piece is as Dan just said looking into the cost and whether that would be these are new resources and

070three courses but that is something that we're looking into is because it does allow for a lot more differentiated of Lexile level to be able to make the reading portion of it and the inquiry of the resources available to students more at their level so we know it's a good thing we're going to do it right looking into it that is not a yes we are looking into it right now put that on the what am I out of here may yeah can we put that on the April agenda yeah inquiring minds want to know thank you thank you so 8.2 advertising costs associated with superintendent search so as we all know nothing's free and there are some additional costs associated with our superintendent search which was outlined in the presentations as well as in

071the proposals that we received so this is not anything new to us but the dollar amounts are new to us so um I wanted to bring your attention to the document that's in your board in board docs that was presented by our our superintendent search firm that we selected and the the highlighted areas are the ones in which were um recommended they total about a thousand dollars and they are as follows so the Illinois Association of school administrators website um has what they call Job Flash and it has some enhanced features over and above the the website itself that they that there are no costs for it's emailed to 5000 plus superintendents and um there's addition to the postings on their website and that's a fee of 599 dollars as well as um the National

072Association of black school Educators Alliance I'm sorry National Alliance of black school Educators for approximately 250 dollars for 30 days and then the association of Latin American superintendents for approximately 150 dollars for 30 days these are the ones that they recommended and have found great success with so this is just one aspect of their recruiting um this is just what we what Jim would you call passive recruiting versus active recruiting so can I ask a question about this because in the presentations I heard every group talk about Ed week um and I don't see that highlighted not on there right well it's on here but it's nice as a recommendation yeah it's only 3 9 right it is well listen we can do it yeah no I understand but I'm curious as to what the

073my question is why not did you ask a follow-up question yet of this this group why they'd recommended it in the presentation but they're not recommending it here Eugene are you there because I don't recall and I'm not sure if we asked that question or if they if they ask it I don't have any notes well I mean yeah this was this was the one constant between all three candidates was what I used um as an HR professional it is um sometimes people aren't necessarily looking for a job they are reading an article on edweek and then they're like oh look what's available so um it's a really great audience to capture and for 395 dollars I think we would be I would be remiss if we didn't do it and then I also have

074seen over the last I would say two to four years LinkedIn has become a great networking space for educators and um I think that should strongly be considered as well did Eugene Eugene did you are you there and did you remember if you guys had had a conversation about that switch from edweek but I I don't want to speak for them because I don't know exactly the reason why they said it so I think we would have the same problem with them you know I'm trying to find it right now but for some reason I'm thinking that like one episode one article or one version of that week um was included that's what I thought I'm trying to find it right now but maybe that's all it is is that they recommend you know doing

075that and that was included in the price or something well that one one of the organizations I don't know if it's the one I'm not sure if it was that or the one we selected I thought it was pretty much all but yeah I'm I can't remember I thought it was too but I mean I think yeah but now we're seeing maybe one I think it was calling us oh look he's got an answer oh yay wanted me to get him on the phone sure can we do that can we do that um um Maureen says yes Maureen says yes okay he's listening that's responsive service thank you here he is [Laughter] I don't know let's see I'm gonna say call back there he is hi Dr O'Mara hi Dr O'Meara hi you are you

076have a captive audience Ed week is a good source but aasa gets a much wider audience these days especially with the augmented search that we're recommending and uh hi can you hear me yes we can hear you loud and clear okay so all I was saying is end week is fine but um edweek would be a supplement not instead of so all I'm saying is that week is fine are you getting feedback because you're listening to us you want to turn that down or off or something yeah you have to turn it off so we can only you can only hear us [Music] but what about I want to know Dr Romero are you still talking oh he has to mute his YouTube about a 10 second delay that's it was Ed week a part

077or any part of your um cost that you propose okay it's okay he he answered the question that I was asking so it's okay just tell me my question is geography aasa which is the site to go to if you're a superintendent but or talk administrator yes yes we can we can still hear you and Jen Jen Johnson has a question does aasa speak into your mic does aasa have the same geographical reach as at week or vice versa I think they're very similar to both National audiences but but ASA um this is a much wider audience these days these days that's fair and you you you got your question answered did you get your question um answer regarding Ed week something about it was it included was one week included I don't know if

078it's relatively immaterial but ASA we belong to aasa edweek is a paid advertising option only okay and then what what are your thoughts about LinkedIn because I know that um you were not recommending that one yeah LinkedIn is really not heavy in the education Market these days it's more for private firms and um other agencies we've had some clients use LinkedIn but we've never had a good finalist or semi-finalist person that we recruited through Linkedin I just think it's a waste of taxpayer money okay I like the blindness yeah does everyone have their questions answered my last question is is there a way for us to post the position on the district but it get the application gets sent to school exec connect or can we put a link to wherever the application is so

079that people can just go directly to our website to submit I I I I can send Ursula or lasagna or anyone you'd like the link the link for the okay yes because that was one of the things we talked about in our meeting that that would that was going to happen yep that's that's pretty standard we would encourage you to post that on your website for listening okay I'm sorry to interrupt I just was watching your board meeting and wanted to fill in any questions that you might have no that was perfect thank you just just bye-bye the right one didn't we okay so are we are we in agreement then with the aasa the National Alliance of black school Educators and the association of Latin American superintendents because that's about a thousand dollars if

080we add 3.95 for Ed week I just don't know if if hearing that the reach is higher on aasa the only thing I could see then to be gained would be if you're not currently a member of aesa um so I I would like to add that 395 dollars to add Ed week but that's well I mean you're getting 5 000 superintendents with aasa I don't so you think about it in a different way than yeah that's okay yeah okay um guys you guys I mean I'm good with the recommendation that's why we hired them that's kind of where I go with the record s okay so we could probably add another we can do more if we need to do we need to do anything else Maureen okay all right item 8.3 is an

081informational item titled thinking Upstream so tonight we have Mrs dalquist Dr Kincaid and Mrs comitas who will be presenting as we start tonight oh now can you hear me yes yes as we start tonight we ask for your close attention I've been doing presentations and trainings for over 30 years and I feel this presentation is in the top three and its importance and potential impact for moving a group of people forward to improve schools before I begin I want to state that I truly believe that the vast majority of people are good hard-working employees and that there if there is a failure or inefficiency it is a systems issue when I tackle a large work problem I approach it from that angle and since I arrived in this District not yet four years ago I

082have been asking myself why are we constantly reacting instead of having the time systems and resources to be proactive this has been an observation shared by myself and others that have come from other school districts it's because of this mode of operation that we started to read Upstream as an executive leadership team I'm now going to ask Teresa to talk just a little bit about the premise of the book so as a member of the executive leadership team which faith will go into shortly and we did read this book and we discussed it as we went through chapters and really the basic metaphor of Upstream is kind of a definition of um you know how to tackle the problem appropriately how to be proactive so if you think about a river a stream let's say

083we're at the bottom you know rescuing people as you know children as they're floating down the river to save their lives right but we don't take the time and the moment to look back and figure out how are these kids getting in the river to begin with what who who or what is throwing these two these kids in the river so that we're wasting all of this time and energy instead of preventing the initial situation so that's kind of a simple metaphor for it but we did read the whole book and have had some very meaningful discussions around it the next slide here is really a summary of the climate and culture survey that we took district-wide last spring the slide that you're seeing up here is really talking about the work-life balance we presented

084these results on a high level basis with you previously but we really wanted to note that the District administration and our school administration our numbers are a little concerning up there especially that 35 percent agreeing that they have good work-life balance from our District administration team we talk a lot about strategy um but we all know that culture eats strategy for breakfast so as we've spent a lot of time and effort around development of The Envision 308 strategic plan and all of the directions that we all want to move forward the goals and things that we want to see it's difficult to move forward because of the impact that the culture is having on that so so while reading Upstream I saw this group of very committed 16 District administers strengthen their ability to work

085together and come up with two priorities and while I was really proud of their work and I felt that we were on the right track my heart sank when we identified our one main wish here was a committed group of people set up to fail and they myself included hadn't realized it I had been too close to it to even realize what the main issue was here's what we now firmly believe needs to be done in order to make our district function like the organization we know it can be I want to thank everyone in executive leadership team that helped solidify the ideas and the information in this presentation so we had all come together and we decided to build capacity of Administrators was our top Mission and we were ready to do it and

086then we thought about how often we are changing administrators the district leaders are exhausted and can't get anywhere because the team is always changing we thought about at a school level if a principal had 70 percent fresh out of college teachers every year how much would we expect them to make progress so in the case of school leadership it really looks at how often frequent turnover has a negative impact on school climate we talk a lot about at our meetings and at the board level the importance of trust trust takes time when there are administrators that are turning over frequently relationships are hard to develop and to maintain we also know that at a school level student scores are impacted and then if you look at how long it takes which is about five years

087for that to make progress at a school level think about that as a district level there is a reason why District strategic plans are not on one-year intervals so as part of our Upstream discussion we really looked into how does this impact our overall budget what does our employee turnover rate look like and what impact could that possibly have in our findings of our research we found that the impact was actually one half to two times the annual salary and based on our turnover just over the last three years that would equate to roughly 1.75 to 7 million in looking at our building our building admin turnover rate in the last two years we've had 50 percent of our principals and assistant principals turnover and in the last four years it's up to 67 percent

088while those numbers are high our district admin are even higher so if we look at our district directors executive directors and cabinet in the last two years 63 percent of them are new to their position 84 percent are new in the last four years so as we talk about Building Systems as we talk about building culture it's important to make sure that we have longevity within those positions so as part of our team we talked about what are those priorities ensuring decreasing admin turnover we looked at reducing spending and re-allocating those funds how are we spending our money most effectively we talked about improving the overall climate not only of our team but also of the district and if our priority is increasing student achievement we have to make sure that we decrease our admin

089turnover to help lead this charge so Faith's going to talk a little bit more about decreasing and so we then looked to various sources on how do we reduce turnover and it boils down to in several different ways four different things and we will go through each of these I will start off with valuing and developing staff so how is that done a lot of it is very simple saying thank you also being clear with expectations providing support and coaching and holding people accountable and this has to be done at all levels of the organization all people in the organization but especially those within close circle of influence this next slide shows the circles of influence and how that would work at exec leadership team we need to be appreciative especially of the people in

090the adjacent circles all while all while focusing on students so for principals and assistant principals and even back up to the superintendent how do we say thank you how do we be clear with what we need then provide coaching and whether that's coaching down or coaching up and then how do we hold people accountable we also need to hire the right people and how do we do that we have to create a maintain a positive energy that can be very contagious as we bring people in we've worked to create interview questions that are lied to climate for learning on how we want to do that and then we need to maintain salaries within a range so that we can attract high quality candidates but also with that we need to maintain salaries so that our

091first choice and our second choice candidates would be interested we have all experienced many times that we have gone through the selection process only to have our first and second choice reject the position because of salaries which leads me to the third point we need to stay competitive in our salaries and benefits this next slide is what our candidates see or anyone in the public sees when they go to our Illinois report card site and look at the left hand side is our administrator average salaries with that Top Line the darker green what it is across the state and that's the whole state Southern Illinois as well as here and then the lighter Green Piece of the district the right hand side is what our teacher average teacher salaries are we also then did a

092lot of uh work just a few years ago looking at some of our local District salaries that we often compare ourselves to so let me explain what you're looking at here that first gray column is the current average salary in SD 308 so Elementary principles that's the current average salary then we have the current low salary in the yellow column and then the lavender or purple we looked at seven local districts that we often compare ourselves to back in 2021 and then took the lowest Elementary principal pay from all of those seven districts and averaged that together and that's what you have in the lavender column the final column is what percent of our people in that category uh have been here less than four years so for elementary principles where there is a 46

093turnover the difference in the low from two years ago in our comparison districts to our current low is fifteen thousand dollars our elementary assistant principals well there are 77 percent turnover the difference in the low from two years ago at other districts to our current low is twelve thousand dollars the Junior High Principal level where there's 40 percent turnover the difference in the low from two years ago to our current low twenty one thousand dollars the Junior High Assistant Principal where there's 88 percent turnover the difference in the lows is to eleven thousand high school principals difference is twenty thousand High School assistant principals the difference is sixteen thousand so what would it take to not be competitive but to move closer to competitive for the 48 principal and assistant principal salaries we're looking at

094378 thousand dollars or less than one tenth percent of our District budget we also looked at 46 other administrators those include Deans athletic directors program coordinators and many district administrators we looked at District comparisons again they're not as easily drawn but we did look through that and we are looking at two hundred and thirteen thousand dollars again much less than one tenth percent of the District budget I'm now going to turn it over to Heather okay so Faith just talked a little bit about the recruiting and retention of our admin financially as we saw from the data shared by Teresa at the beginning our survey data shows an area statistical significance in work-life balance so that is another area that we know that we need to significantly make progress towards different ways that we can

095try to achieve this is hiring some sufficient staff so in a little while we will talk about some additional staff in addition to that Clear Vision and purpose so how are we communicating not only our expectations but then also job responsibilities so with that Teresa will talk a little bit more about a dynamic work chart and last we want to make sure that we're decreasing to staff turnover so in closed session later this evening we would like to discuss two possible new positions some budget considerations and the impact on the proposal and then changes that we're recommending to our current org chart so now Teresa will talk a little bit more about the chart okay so first is a quick screenshot then we'll take you through a short video so this is a live web

096document it is not published with a link on our website but this is a live link here what we've done is gone through and taken a look with the community at the very top and coming down through that organizational chart and as we have people's faces titles you expand those out you'll be able to see a profile of those individuals you can expand below them and see those people that kind of come underneath them either as a department lead or support staff as that flows out so we've we've put quite a bit of work into this and and the next slide here you'll be able to see a really fast demonstration here so you can see the profile pop up and the ability to kind of click up and down throughout the chart to find

097information out about someone as well as there's a search bar up there in the right hand corner you could type in someone's name their position portion of their name you'll be able to see the search results that come up for that I know I know I'm just like this agreement inside I don't even want to look at you so it's it's still going it's a lot of work but it's there and we've been working really hard it's been a nice visual for everyone to see sort of who makes up the teams and what's above and below those individuals go back okay so then we get obviously our one solution is to decrease administrator turnover but with that comes for asks our very first ask is to help us value people we at executive leadership team

098have committed to this we now start every meeting with thank yous and celebrations of one another and the people that report to us we create an annual list of learning expectations for our principals and this is a coordinated list from all of our departments we've created a huge amount of professional development for admin and it is our number one priority moving forward at the same time we want to hold people accountable within our team and adjacent Circles of influence we ask that you join us in our efforts in this area ask number two is to help us hire the right people we will be rigorous in in our Recruitment and our selection of Administrators we ask that you allocate funds to bring starting pay up to closer to competitive while raising existing pay so that

099our current staff isn't devalued the money spent here saves money later and less turnover and more highly trained experienced staff the cost is less than two tenths percent of our overall budget we have to invest a little to save a lot ask number three is to help us continue to be more competitive we need to continually invest in our leadership to make SD 308 more competitive again this is only moving us forward in the future we will need to consider additional funds ask number four is help us achieve work-life balance we will maintain a dynamic org chart and stay true to the purpose and vision what we ask of you is to provide Clear Vision and allocate funds for two additional positions with these clear expectations and vision there is less work and more purpose

100which allows for our work to be passion not stress we will stay true to this purpose and vision we ask that you provide Clear Vision and help us out as we continue to work to have better work-life balance and model that from the district on down in closing if the priority is reducing spending if it's improving overall climate if it's increasing student achievement then it is necessary to decrease the amount of turnover on our Administration we are aware that asking for additional money while we are trying to build a fund balance may seem counter-intuitive however we strongly believe that not only is this investment imperative to improving District climate it also will save money in the long run in closed session we will show budget reductions and efficiencies that have been found so this does

101not negatively impact our five-year budget projections and continue toward our goal of increasing our fund balance taking these four steps to proactively work to reduce admin turnover will increase student achievement improve District climate and reduce spending in the long run executive leadership team is committed to focusing our efforts in this very important area we ask for you to help and join with us yes I'm going to look at thank you for the presentation this is a very impassioned plea and I know that there's a lot of emotion and there's a lot of stress that goes behind this that you're asking for help with and I hear that and and I want you to know that I I hear that my questions are related to truly solving the problem so I have some questions for you

102regarding the climate and culture survey we are looking in here at um one first about that first thing and I'm looking for the slide number I apologize um the climate and culture survey you talk about the work life balance can can each of you at NLS Dr sparlin as well your arguably our four senior leaders what are you doing to model work-life balance so one of the things that um and people that means different things to different people I believe it's having a clear purpose and deciding what it is that we need to do so at executive leadership team instead of the list of 22 things we've narrowed it to two that we are taking celebrations on and then working towards I do believe that work-life balance is different for different people sometimes that is

103being able to be successful for you I'm just asking for for our four senior leaders in the room what are you doing to model work-life balance I think laughter is good okay uh I think that you know talking and getting to know one another and having relationships at work helps with that thank you um I am working with not only our team but my own specific team about family first that the focus the work while it's important needs to be prioritized based on our family goals and objectives um so there will be times that I know we have collectively talked where you might get a late night email from me because I've had time with family first um so that's one way that in discussions as our team prioritizes when things will be due and

104we talk about those timings we prioritize around family thank you I would say for me um and kind of having a little bit of more of a longevity perspective on kind of what things were like seven or eight years ago compared to now the the work load continues to be higher but what I feel is different over the last several months since we really delve into this is really the the ability to be honest to say I can't right like there's only so many hours in the day and if family is first we sometimes have to be able to say we just can't take one more thing on and by meeting as a team and really being able to be honest and open and ask for help and in the ways that we were able

105to ask each other for help we're able to come here to the board this evening and ask for help and be honest with that I think it's a really big culture shift and it feels um it comes across as a lot of support and ability for us to be able to take back some of that work-life balance that we lost Brown you know I'm going to Echo a couple of things and add a couple of add additional you know family first is something that we've talked about you know at the elt we've uh We've we've really stressed the idea and working together as a team we've put together different outings you know just outside of work to come together to socialize as a as uh as peers and and working together at the cabinet level

106we've created a list of norms and expectations of you know when we talk about work-life balance uh you know what does that look like when emails can be sent when phone calls are eat text we have uh we have you know we've outlined all that and uh you know at the beginning of the year we began the beginning of the year I mean this was the first thing I talked about with the entire District administration was the importance of work-life balance and things that we can do to put into place and uh you know social emotional learning Dr Paul has done a lot with a a weekly newsletters and things like that to the staff in our administrative team so it's not any one thing I think it's a combination of everything that we're that

107we're talking about tonight and stressing the importance of what we're talking about that I agree with you I think the work-life balance is a really lacking area here and I'm just glad to see that we're able to even at this level be honest about what that means in in everyday life are no our meetings here go late that affects work-life balance things like that so how we're making up for it my only other question is on Slide 19. because this is always the slide that I tend to like to just remind people that while this comes from the Illinois state report card the word administrator means something very very different in a lot of districts for example we count our special education coordinators as administrators here and in in many districts they counter special education

108coordinators as teaching staff um which can kind of while there are lower paid administrative salaries those can kind of skew some of these numbers not saying we're not really far apart because we really are um but one of the things I like to make sure we've considered is that this is also how we Define these rules we've asked for a lot of our assistant principals to take on a lot of these double administrative positions and when we're looking at adding two positions I'm going to ask and this is just forewarned um what are we doing about the fact that on our most numerous administrative position artists assistant principles where we've doubled the amount of responsibility what are we doing about that in addition to the two other roles whatever doesn't sure so one of the

109things that we have admired about the problem at elt when we're talking about whether it's special education Improvement whether it's talking about mtss whether it's SEL whether it's even about budget management we we've got a lot of expertise to go train our administrators it's not administrative like well you've now had one month of training you're good to go it takes quite a while and you need to have not only people at the district level but peers at that level to rely on to be able to have those pieces and I know from experience in other districts and from the wealth of information that we have at exec leadership team that we can train people but we need to not have them leave all of the time so when you look at an assistant principal who

110is learning all the complexities that are involved with special education leadership we need people that have surrounded them that have been here for a while to get it in good shape so they're coming into a system that's working we also need our special education administrators to have been here for a while and built processes and systems that are working I've worked and led other districts that require their assistant principals to also do this special education piece and it it works if you have systems in place and you can provide professional development over a length of period of time and it isn't 88 turnover at the district level office so if they're they're leaving all the time because we have these extra job expect and the only way to get them comfortable with the extra job

111expectations is for them not to leave all the time that feels like a little circular and sure and I don't think that it's only because of the expectations that we have I think it's also coming into a system that isn't fully developed it's also looking at salaries at what are the quality of people it's and I love having some green people that come into work it brings a great new energy but hiring I don't know of anyone that we've hired in the last four years into their position that has coming to us with experience in that position so we are always training from brand new and that doesn't mean they are great great people but we're starting from scratch thank you I yeah I know it's um a little late here this is important so

112you know I look at it as there's just a lot of lost opportunities a lot of lost productivity um ability to implement you know you've got we've got great ideas it's just hard to implement when you're having 77 percent turnover Over a four-year period in your assistant principles and then your administrators that number was um 63 in two years and 84 in four years that's just not sustainable and um so it's a you know it's an investment in leadership like you said it's less than 0.2 percent of the budget if we look at that in perspective and how much you can get of it you expect um once somebody's been there a while and you're able to retain people and and get people with experience which is kind of um hard to hear that most

113of the people that we're hiring don't have experience in that job and that's because we're not offering them enough money so they're coming in they're training for a year or two and obviously leaving um and that's just it's almost like you yeah you don't really get anything out of that position then um because then if you're bringing somebody else in with the same cycle it doesn't make sense so over time and faith and I've talked about this over and over again um over time it's just costing us a lot more money we're not able to implement um the programs and the the systems that we need in order to implement changes and get achievement gains and stuff like that so I appreciate the the boldness and bringing this forward to us because there is definitely

114um if you look at it from from the context that you provided and it sounds like you're even going to try paying for it with some inefficiencies um you know that's that's this I'm looking forward to hearing more um are you going to be discussing the inefficiency the inefficiencies in closed session yes okay um so yeah we need to we need to do better um I've been actually saying it over and over again our assistant principal is not even on the same planet um as as other districts and it seems like we ask even more because we can't get other help you know for those positions so uh even if we were above average in those positions we probably would be it would probably make a lot of sense so I wanted to first of

115all just thank you for the presentation and for the content because like I'm screaming inside and I I know Jen was over there too and it has for me it's like this is why we this is what I'm going to speak for me this is why I came to the board like to see these types of changes to see these types of ask because we have a responsibility as a board to give you all what you need to succeed and and so I'm I'm just excited about it I'm I'm I always say that you know I appreciate what you said um Faith about this being an issue of systems right because strong systems require strong people to run them and I see in so many areas where we are not being efficient in our dollars

116because our our the the I don't want to say quality but um the the skill set of of staff may not be what it needs to be and so we're compensating or over compensated compensating for in another area um and and I see the dollars that we could be using somewhere else being spent because we're over compensating and so I'm excited about what what you'll present to us um you know in closed session regarding these types of efficiencies because I say it all the time as the head goes so goes the body so whatever I'm thinking makes all this happen my brain is saying one thing and my body's doing what my brain is thinking so for leadership if we don't have strong leaders we're not providing our leaders with um the professional development that

117they have the skill sets when we hire them to do the job but we can't hire them to do the job because we can't afford them all all of this stuff I'm so excited to hear that we are addressing it and so I just want to say thank you for that and I feel like this is some of the reason why I came to the board yeah you know I'm is huge for me too and Latonya I just want to thank you for supporting that and stating that you know we we knew that there's uh we know that there's a lot to be done and we ask a lot of everybody and so um I'm proud of us for acknowledging that yeah because I mean we four or five years for bringing that again so

118yeah six years ago we were cutting and slashing everything and it's cost us so so and that has been let's let's bring that up because I think that needs to be brought up and listen well let me preface before we bring that up appreciate I also appreciate you bringing this up and I I Echo everything that's been said however there needs to be a warning here right and that is that you have to invest in your schools like all of this is a common theme we have the TA situation we have this situation and I understand what the teacher's salaries say but that's because our teachers stay here if you look at where they're starting out it is the lowest starting out salary around this is we have to acknowledge what we have done collectively

119as a community and what we are digging ourselves out of and we can we can't seem to face that collectively the community right next door did not do what we did which was they they said hey we have to we have to raise the levy we have to do it and guess what that Community politically isn't any different than we are maybe they are but I don't think so right and I'm sorry but at some point we have to face reality that that hurt us yes and when districts say oh I can't believe you did that it's not oh I can't believe you did that it's I can't believe you did that I talked to many of my friends on boards who by the way lean right if it matters who vote to increase their

120Levy all the time in fact I work for one and he's like do do your do the people in your community understand where you're funded and I say I I try I do my best I carry it around with me and I say here let me pull it up I literally have it I'll show it to you but we can't I don't know whether it's guilt trauma whatever I feel like some of it is because I feel like some of it's passed on to you and all I can do is apologize it has hurt the community it has hurt our kids seem to to so so when we have to raise we have to do what we have to do the levy the first reaction is to attack oh let's make it political and attack

121that hurts kids when you do that it hurts them hurts the Tas hurts our kids it's done it has hurt our kids and now people want to move backwards and do this all over again we're supposed to learn we're supposed to be the model we're supposed to be an example Yorkville does the same darn thing and I don't see the Press attack in Yorkville but boy they come out and attack us go to Yorkville they're no different than us politically they don't have any problems raising Levy you know why because they're looking at where they're funded and they're like yeah we're not going to do that and it's hurting people it is why I vehemently said please show us projections with and without ebf and with and without the levy and without ebf should scare

122everybody in this community everybody and thank you to those out there who who witnessed slips saying please PBF funding disastrous for our schools without it disastrous thank you to those people that did that and thank you to our reps and our Senators who paid attention most of them did unfortunately we had one whose response was to pass Bill to get rid of school board members I guess because they were mad because we brought that to the attention I don't know why this has to be political I don't understand any part of it we should have learned a lesson by now and I apologize cannot apologize enough brought trauma to so many people and for those of us that had to sit through those cuts the reason why some of this happened is because we simply

123try to cut as far away from kids as possible and what people understand is that they need the teacher in the classroom cannot go down that road again we just cannot and we're trying to dig ourselves out as much as we can and if we don't invest in the schools that's what we will continue to have to do is dig ourselves out and we have to understand that when I started on this board and LaTonya I'm speaking to the statement of when I came in I came here because I wanted strong leadership the head turns the neck you know that's been going on for a long time everybody's wanted that the reason that we I think also ended here obviously it's all about money right we don't have it we didn't have it we made

124a lot of cuts because of different decisions that were made as a board that continues Beyond individuals we took on special education without a plan probably five years too late when we were already big we took on 450 million dollars worth of capital debt that we have to pay mortgage on and by the way there were no property taxes levied and by the way there was no state budget for two and a half years so those are crippling these are all crippling things that are ending up in this years later so when I look at these things it's it's not without a sense of yeah and I don't want to set anyone up to go back to that by another decision when I started on this board I remember having a very impactful conversation with

125someone who strongly supports our schools in a very strong strong strong way and that individual and I sat for two hours in a parking lot at a school building talking about administrators and that person who strongly supports our schools firmly firmly felt that they didn't see a reason why we needed more than 14. oh yeah no no this actually happened this is and it's not because that person is not smart they are smart they they were looking at it from a different perspective and their meaning of what an administrator meant is different but but even our most supportive families that wasn't an unheard of thing for someone to say and that wasn't that many years ago and it could go back there any day of the week so when we talk about building our Administration

126and a couple positions that I'm guessing aren't going to be classroom positions that we're going to be asked about just a guess um I want to look at the entire picture of this is why we need to do this this is what we need to as a community understand about why it's worth spending money on more than 14 administrators and it's not about ideology or nice to haves it's about actual systems you have to have somebody put them in place you have to have somebody maintain them but it's also about the fact that I don't want to make financial decisions on things that will put us back to where we're making a really crippling Choice yeah and I think when you talk about like this number I don't know if this 14 is some arbitrary

127number but but what what you look at is you look at your surrounding um sub uh districts you look at your large unit districts you see what it is that what is their uh makeup of Administrators look like there's a whole bunch of things that you would look at and not just pulling some number out of the sky so you know I want to listen to but in this community and and I won't ever out a person that I speak with like this safe to say this is all real but the piece that's missing is that this is still new being big in a lot of people's minds so in a lot of our communities minds they don't look at what other large unit districts are doing because in their mind we're not one we

128are we are very much so this is a new process so the education piece it's it's real harmful to just make a bold statement that I I need to have leadership yep everyone's always agreed but we need to understand all the different pieces that that goes into and why it hasn't been here at this point yeah and I'm sure I just want to think long term and yeah we talk about it a lot when we talk about looking at um the organizational chart and in a in a comprehensive way in making sure that the all the pieces fit together nicely in the puzzle and that we're not just making arbitrary decisions and so and and just let me for the last point I want to make and then you go um I respect every one

129of the board members who's ever sat in these seats I would never disrespect any of you or anyone who's ever sat here because I know the sacrifices that are made for us to be here for the sacrifices our families are making and so when I say this is these are reasons why I wanted to come to the board it's more about just the the two things that are that that we're responsible for is organizational Effectiveness in student learning and so when I say come to the board to see things like this be proposed because it's a part of having us an organization that is effective and that's that's all I meant by that no disrespect the highest of regards for anyone who sits in these seats and has to make these type of decisions can

130I I was waiting I was just yeah can you go to slide five for a minute are there not 17 members of our executive leadership team who's missing I have been part of the conversation and uh I've spent many hours with the uh with the cabinet as well as uh faith and I talking about what we're going to talk about in closed session as well as the presentation here the reason my my face is absent from there is because I will not be here next year that that's that's the only reason right but I but here's my point we can't talk about leadership and empathy and Grace and all of these other things that we want to talk about if we're not including a everyone in the conversation which is part of that executive team

131so whether it was an oversight or whether it was and I'm not going to be here is is not lost on me and the second part of this is if when we're talking about adding positions you're going to add the biggest position and I don't know that we want to do that before we add that position well you know what I mean we don't have that conversation well we're going to have that conversation but like I may not be here to say it first over my two cents for what it's worth well my Yeah my two senses she may not start here later tonight is what she's saying yeah yes you are oh listen I work life balance um what what I'm saying is it wasn't lost on me that there was somebody missing from

132this and and B our first job is to hire the superintendent and before we hire any other positions I wouldn't even entertain hiring like I understand y'all are working very hard but I'm not going to entertain hiring anybody else until we hire the superintendent because that's not our job that's his or her job so that's kind of where I'm sitting right now for what it's worth okay okay Jim this is very hard for me because um this is my wheelhouse this is what I've done this one of my Deb I dedicated my masters to this the financial impact of a poor culture um and with regards to turnover you have all heard my soapbox a million times we couldn't even do a fundamental put a dynamic work chart together I've been asking for two years

133so it's beautiful to see you can't start to fix things if you can't even see it it's about really simple foundational that's in the book what book that they're talking about oh Upstream what I struggle with is this is all great and for me not has nothing to do with the three of you sitting there in the work that went into this that the executive leadership did this is all performative much like Dei it's all performative until each of us look and I've had to do this in my career over and over until you look in the mirror and you take crucial accountability for the part that you've played in a toxic culture some people have paid bigger roles some people have played lesser roles when you had me until you got to the money

134because that is the answer that I hear all the time let's throw some money at it and it's gonna make it feel better yet almost on a daily basis I talked to someone that works in this District that does not meet one of the foundations of culture of foundations of a positive culture are three things safety you belong here vulnerability you can take risks and we will support you and number three purpose you are here for a reason and every single phone call one of those things I can say is what the other person on the other line is telling me that they lack so what is missing from all of this is what have we as an executive leadership team done the work because it takes an incredible amount of work an incredible amount

135of crucial accountability and setting our egos aside and that's her I have a hard time doing that because until we do that and until we build those three foundations of a successful culture the rest of this is all performative it sounds beautiful it looks great on a piece of paper her but it doesn't matter and all of it links back to one thing our vision and our mission it's why I will continue to vote no to it because our vision and Mission is is vanilla as it comes it doesn't take into account yes we've talked to people yes there are stakeholders included but it could be plopped into any District anywhere in the world I wanted to be a mission and vision for Oswego Illinois District 308 and let me share two pieces of um

136to more statistics 23 percent of employees strongly agree that their organization's values do not impact their daily work that's that's a problem number two only 27 strongly agree that they believe in their organizations values mission and vision so let's just pretend on a high that's 50 for us We There is a disconnect and what I try to share with you and sometimes because I'm so passionate about this it comes off and and I've shared this with Teresa and with faith that it comes off as me pointing fingers it's not it's passion because I know that when this works the best thing happens our kids are rocking and that's the only reason I'm here I'm here because I want every single one of our kids to have every opportunity available to them so frankly I don't

137think right now we need more people I don't think we need more money I think we need to be as real as we can with each other and John has now exited that that part of the formula you have to do that work with a new person and it is going to require building fences with people that need to be built fences need to be built and relationships and you have to figure out these three things along with a vision and Mission that accounts for every voice and sometimes they're not the voices that we agree with but they have to have a seat at the table whether they're students whether they're family members whether they're us she's not going to respond to that or it's our local government and right now none of those things

138are working we're just not communicating with each other and it is literally what keeps me up at night I don't have all the answers but for somebody who does this all the time I literally see these holes and I've tried to help and I haven't been as um successful as I would like but this is this is really phase two phase one is sitting down with that group and saying what do I what do I bring to the culture and what do I take away it's like a checking account what do I deposit into the culture and what do I um withdraw from the culture and I'll give a very generic example when when I hear an employee tell me that they are being told by their administrator that they can't do something that they've

139been doing for a long time and there's no reason given why or I mean that's just I don't even know what the examples are but it we are not all standing in line having set expectations Ellie and I talk about accountability all the time it is when your mission and vision are aligned to your expectations are in a line to your organizational values every decision is easy you say oh we need to spend nine hundred thousand dollars on this okay check check oops doesn't check this box and we continue to stumble over this we continue to disagree at the board level you making you guys might have that opportunity you wonderful human beings might have that effort to make have that in your meetings and so forth may happen on the building level meetings but

140all of these things are just not unfortunately cascading down so I strongly advise or ask or whatever it is if our end point is ours as many as possible of our students are achieving their highest possible potential and we are putting supports in for the students that aren't to get them there that is all of our end goal what are the steps that go before that to make that happen what are you depositing into that culture what are you and I don't mean School climate culture that's a whole different story I'm talking about the day-to-day workings of what we're doing with our people and it all starts with those people right there and that's going to change because our superintendents up there and because um Dr Hildebrand is leaving and because role org charts might

141be switched and it's why I I harp upon an org chart and job descriptions because when those foundations are in place you understand what everybody's doing and when you have role Clarity and you ask the board to support um chain of command all of these things are linked together so I strongly urge you to look in the mirror and say and have a really vulnerable conversation with each other and say Here's where I've been making deposits and here's what I'm making withdrawals help me help me be accountable help me be accountable maybe that's already been done I don't want to make a ton of assumptions but I I've seen that's one of the reasons that I ran for the board because all of this if you fix this will result in two different things you'll

142find a lot more money available because when your goals are clear and your values are clear you will make decisions based on them and so you will find money more money available number two you will be able to identify the gaps and you will have a group of people that will do anything to support you and say yep take it we'll find it for you we'll give it to you all those asks that you have will become so much easier but I agree with um Ali that I won't even begin to say do you need the help I guarantee you do that I know but until that person comes in whether they be interim or a full contract hire it's a really important piece of the puzzle I think this work is phenomenal it just

143needs um us a step before it so I don't want to detract from all the work that's been done I don't want you to be um anybody to take it personally I just want to make sure that when we had the culture survey results I was waiting for for somebody to come forward and say we've really taken a look at our foundational leadership and these are the things that need to change and I haven't seen that yet and I was really hoping to see that tonight before we got to money money doesn't fix everything there are people groups that and teams that work across the world with just such a smaller portion of the budget that we have available because they have the principles of a successful culture built they trust they have the safety

144they have the vulnerability and they have the purpose and the purpose frankly is as much our responsibility it is yours so yeah I'm sorry I'm sorry I really am um I I agreed with um where you save money in the culture I totally agree with that but we need people to do be able to do what you're asking um so 10 of these people are going to be gone in two years possibly uh 13 and four and pay getting people in at least that are able to do the job that have experience doing that job hitting the ground running is going to help get that done so I'm not saying that hey maybe we wait until New superintendent um I'm not saying that but we really have to take this into consideration um we can't

145wait for everything to get fixed we need people to try helping fix it too so yeah but you're asking them to fix something that there's not clear Direction on that Clarity is so important and we we don't even agree on the vision and mission of our district our our stakeholders don't agree on it and I know you're passionate about this but he just thinks about it differently than you no and that's okay I understand that I just want to get I want I want I expect the administrators to be able to do that stuff um and it's just when when you have this kind of turnover it's very difficult so okay that's all I'm saying thank you oh go ahead Eugene oh thank you I'm sorry it's not the easiest to hear you all so

146please forgive me if I repeat and or admit anything that anyone has said but um I appreciate you all for the presentation and um specifically I mean I I I I I personally understand the impact that turnover has on a on the culture and climate of an organization um and I appreciate this slide that is up currently we're all 16 members of um the executive or 60 members of the executive team contributed and set around the table um to brainstorm and and do research and I I just I appreciate the contextual knowledge that you have not just industry but also for our district to identify what you believe is needed in order to move us forward and uh Jen I don't disagree with anything that you said but I also agree with what dominic just

147said as well as within their presentation they pointed out that um a clear expectation meaning a Clear Vision is needed in order for them to do what's being asked and so I think that it's a at first I thought it was a you know chicken art egg which one comes first but I actually think it's simultaneous work they will have to do and it's a very unique position that we're in because typically of course vision is always cast before you actually begin to execute and so I believe that we do have to continue we have done some of the work already we do have to continue to do more work so that we can I won't say come to a consensus but to to make sure that we have Clarity within ourselves to to do

148our role as providing that Vision but I do believe that this presentation or partly I guess I should say from what I've seen thus far um could could help us gain some traction that we need in order to gather some momentum thank you very much Eugene so simultane can I share one other thing yes please to respond back a little bit to this so um a couple things and this is just coming from from me on a personal level when I look at the faces up on this slide um I always used to feel like the new kid on the Block but to be perfectly honest um sitting as the longest team member as part of the executive leadership team with just going into my eighth year sitting here um it I I totally agree

149with what um you know Mrs Johnson saying as far as the importance of being able to be vulnerable and have systems in place and all those things but I feel like when you you look at the climate and culture results and you see um kind of some consistency among the satisfaction in our other positions outside of the the leadership positions we've taken the role and this is you know kind of being vulnerable I feel like we've really taken the role of insulation so we've kind of taken the big mess and the unclear vision and we've tried to insulate um the going from the um the tasks but also what Jared mentioned as far as like the the money when the cost cutting came it came and it hit us right because we wanted to keep

150it as far away from the classroom as possible but the problem is the US keeps changing and so when you look around the table when we do interview and I've personally done it where we've interviewed people for positions and First Choice this is a person that's going to come in with great ideas and great experience but they won't take our position because they can go 10 miles away and make 20 more you know why would they or somebody that that does come in and they learn great things from us but they realize they can get plucked away somewhere else really easily so I don't think that we'll ever attain the ability to be vulnerable and to have clear direction if the people around the table change every year at the rate of 80 plus percent

151and we already know several spaces that are changing again but to look back just eight years ago in my opinion when you look at who's around the table and that's every single that's representing every single function of a school district from the business and operations side to the curricular student and learning side you can't not have it impact the classroom in some way when the people are changing because it takes time to build relationships it takes time to build trust and if if you're expected to kind of insulate from the bad but also you know develop the systems so that we have sustainability long term you can't do it when you're just spending every year learning the new people and trying to develop the relationship and then the next year it's a new person at

152the table again so what so while money isn't the only solution from first-hand experience I would say that it's it's definitely been the reason why a number of people have chosen not to come here or the reason why people have left the table and when you look at the work-life balance and satisfaction numbers I think those of us that have stayed which certainly weren't staying for the money we were staying for other reasons can't do it anymore yeah right like the the ability that we can sit in front of you right now today and have this kind of conversation it speaks Leaps and Bounds about you know vulnerability and about this team coming together and really understanding the Upstream but we can't move Upstream if every time we develop a system to save a kid

153from falling in the river a new person comes along and we have to retake the system again you uh listen we are actually saying the exact same thing what I hope that you hear from me is that and honestly it's even less about this team and it's more about this team is making sure that we are giving you Clarity but also that I'm what I'm suggesting is if we raise salaries and if we give you two more people that will not fix the issue if the other stuff isn't fixed that's why it's for so well it's not either it's not I don't really work it's about it's a either or it's a both and that's what I was saying just got to do it all to say I just feel like we have had like

154um we're saying the same things yes we are right so you are absolutely like hitting the nail on the head and frankly you have really you have insulated a lot of people and have really taken some hard hits so I hear that in you and I just want you to know that I'm we're very grateful for you and everybody at that table but what I just want to make sure that the board understands is that two people even if you did find the money somewhere else which I knew you would because I know it's there and um and um meeting some of the and putting some of these things in place these processes these systems is not the only not the only parts of the puzzle we have to be really really cognizant of where

155we've played a part in it I have I have responsibility for that too you know and so I don't want anybody to think that as a board member I am immune to that right we all have to take a look at the responsibility we've played but this board owes you what was the superintendent which then he Cascades that down Clarity and I just don't feel like we're there so I we're all saying the same thing and they're all parts of the puzzle and when all those pieces come together we're gonna be soaring and our kids are going to be soaring and that's the most important thing okay thank you thank you for this conversation thank you for this conversation it's been really enlightening and um we will have more of it thank you all right

156we're going on the 9.1 action item approval of roof bids can I have a motion I make a motion to approve are we do are we going here and I have a 9.1 roof yeah nine point okay okay the motion to approve the bid from JL Adler Roofing and Sheet Metal ink for the OHS roof replacement in the amount of 531 400 and 70 and the bid from Metal Master Roof Master Inc for the homestead roof replacement in the amount of 423 dollars second one yes Mr Gatewood Mr Gatewood Miss Johnson aye Mr ploger aye Miss Swanson yeah Miss Doyle I miss simulton aye motion passes 7-0 action item 9.2 approval of District mission statement can I have a motion please I make a motion to approve the district mission statement as presented I'll read

157the mission statement together we Empower support and motivate all students to thrive along their unique educational Journey second Doyle I miss Swanson aye Mr Sharon aye Ms simultan aye Mr Gatewood Miss Johnson no Mr cloaker aye motion passes 6-1 action item 9.3 ratification of letter of agreement with school exec connect can I have a motion please I make a motion to ratify the letter of agreement with school exec connect second oh second Ellie said second yeah Miss simultan aye Ms Swanson hi Miss Doyle aye Ms Johnson aye Mr Cerrone aye Mr Gatewood motion passes 7-0 action item 9.4 approval of advertising costs associated with the superintendent search can I have a motion please same to me no yeah I did I make let me know if I read it correctly I make a motion to

158approve the following advertising costs for the superintendent search aasa job flash National Alliance of black school Educators in association of Latin American superintendents for a total cost of 999 dollars second Mr ploger aye Ms Johnson aye Mr Cerrone aye Mr Gatewood all right Miss Swanson aye Miss Doyle aye Ms simultan aye motion passes 7-0 action item 9.5 approval of memorandum of understanding I make a motion to approve the memo memorandum of understanding as presented second Miss Johnson aye Mr cloger aye aye Ms Swanson aye Ms Doyle aye MS simultan I motion passes 7-0 action item 9.6 approval of the bargaining agreement with the OTA I make a motion to approve the 2022 through 2026 collective bargaining and agreement with the Oswego Transportation associate Association as presented pending attorney review second aye aye Mr pluger aye

159Mr siron aye Ms simultan aye Mr gate what all right Miss Swanson hi motion passes 7-0 can I make uh just now that it's passed yeah um can I just make a quick statement about that I mean it was a you know it was a long journey and it's only a 30 second thing um Dr sparlin um are we able to say what the the vote was the ratification percentages yeah yeah that's right okay um so I basically I'm excited that we were able uh to come to an agreement that resulted in 90 of the Oswego Transportation Association voting yes uh it was a pleasure working with everybody the 3008 administrators uh the OTA negotiating team LaTanya um actually and Jen filled in a couple times for me our board attorney and uh Mr Healy

160he helped a lot too he was a mediator right we've been diligently working together for the last seven months to reach an agreement that addresses safety concerns allows for flexibility eliminates many previous salary issues for new and existing drivers within the contract's duration addresses salary concerns for our current employees and makes SD 308 competitive to new employees uh this contract is a huge step forward in reducing our dependency on third party providers and making sure students and families in this District are properly service so I'm just excited I'm more than excited that this one's done that was an ordeal yeah so excited yes this is very exciting yeah yeah to give um you know to give the I I can't speak I'm just so elated about it so I'll leave it at that but great

161job um rapid you know summarizing that I really appreciate that yeah um so now we're going to go to 10.1 can I have a motion to go into closed session I make a motion to enter a closed session under statute 5 ilcs 120 slash C1 the appointment employment compensation discipline performance or dismissal of certain employees and individuals second aye Miss Johnson aye Mr K ate hi Mr