SD308 Board of Education (01/09/2023)

001and you're working with at least 26 students faced their providers 46 students within fasc how much rain have you had you're doing your higher high school teacher with five periods of food surf classes classified as 20 30. we're teaching five to six students with Navi Shearer if you're teens take periods and it's six to seven students teacher over that time how to train that impact with that ASD how much rain like that third grade school or student services version LRT at High School in this District who are serving 143 students if you made it to high school for five years 36 new student each month where now you've got the size of 287 students the guesty have you had um if you are superintendent or admin or Board of Education matter in this District you

002are fasting elects the 800 number for students Jane had that you need to have dreams to begin to know what it is that you don't know what it looks like Hawaii students have been diagnosed the truth is we don't need to conversation differently so how do we recognize this as brain-based disability and how do we effectively as his word families I also wanted Bernie attention to the diversity equity and inclusion because we looked at the number of physics in our district and department at C foreign and personality um I will be doing a training very briefly at Illinois Council for children with behavior disorders um some of them are functional Behavior assessment those are allocated and really not best practice for our students challenges uh and I asked the district to ask the secret of

003education for support and getting this information participate [Music] about that this sister has been helpful communicative when none of us really knew what was going on so I think that for that but I don't need to use that so if you want me to be in your personal stories that combat fashion through my mind when I think if I'd only known then what I know now I'll be happy to share those videos thank you again for listening thank you thank you situation foreign um all right I said five point what is updated about progress in regards to work done with our facilities of the presentation to be able to answer any questions illegal good evening um foreign so we'll go through this and uh and share with you about the progress that we make today

004so uh as you call there's two goals for the facilities um there are two goals for the facilities aspect of our uh uh number one was review the need for the general maintenance acceptable for the next 10 years of work that should be done and the second one was to um the second one was to develop a high-year plan to address the physical capacity for a building program that needs uh the easy Academy transition broker and also looking at our old proper facilities indicators of success from the past year and then what IRS has been made on each indicator uh since that time so as you see we buy We Gather to be back on the far stakeholders documented their concerns evaluated their project priorities um and we end up taking that information and re-eating

005with building crystals building in shares to make sure that we um actually um captured all the little priorities that they had um and then we uh we aligned those building needs that our service exception dollars um for a timeline of food Sports um all those projects um have been identified we need to go look at number one is or outside contractors would we need to use for that burp and what type of work could be complete in-house so we looked at that uh that as well uh and bill has been meeting with facade and I'm working on that list and going through those priorities on um but it is definitely do versus the work that we need to uh if we detected with RV outside help in um see and then uh we we are

006using plans reading arguments One Word document what products are being completed for instance that we did this summer when we went ahead and we put that off of the list and we put it back on the list at the end of the schedule maintenance so that is another project that is unless but two years from now and that needs to be to wrestle keeping up with products and work we're doing what we've done and what needs to be on radio project Solutions facilities that we want to discuss um we are meeting with corporate program directors since uh current moment or their home objections how they're seeing the programs grow to make sure that we have room and capacity um we also are reporting on the program in moment Productions um continue to monitor that and

007also finally the last bullet point here is a review program needs based on existing facility space so comparing program needs enrollment based on what we have existing and where we where we've only taken ages so that's how do you update that the facility uh annual report like I said we're transitioning from uh this was the word that Rob and I did last year at the Sun and now that Bill had a table um we're interested in getting feedback that you may have come and just know that bill is taking ownership of that scheduled news plan um and uh doing a good job with that engaged the uh the indicators of success um reported this time next year will be how we prioritize the capital projects and uh and as CertainTeed most for the next level

008and also we are working with cabin right now on identifying and incorporating the district facilities utilizing Eda and old Traver and once we meet with Kevin on that um gather their feedback we're going to meet with the ELD team uh team and uh in the program writers together more input on a program facility needs for their uh their own programs and the very last thing there man is some highlighter connections to the other theories that are Envision 308 plan and the first is in terms of the finance uh taxider is really coordinating the facility grounds needs and building operation preventative Budget Car five year production as you know over the next three years we've got death certificate add in a one and a half million dollars into our operations for ongoing operations rejections as far

009as student learning uh the connection there is really just maintaining a safe and secure facility uh support or student learning again in case the secure facilities somewhere else for programming and Engineering Partnerships we're continuing uh share services for slaves and roundies opportunities to help us list after this one you know I am going to talk about it so I was getting friends and you're talking about um space limitations this is going to be very careful um [Music] um you figure out and and do the broker in the transition um from the elementary school and uh very Elementary ends go to one high school and you are gonna watch your high and you go to another so they're kind of starting over so um yeah so um the but um can't do that yeah those are

010decisions that we will be making is uh buildings um it's you're you know your team is the one that's you know finding out the space and you know the needs um looking into the principles and their feedback so I just want to make sure that that's out there and and high priority yeah very high yeah yeah and I think Bill would share the same I don't know yeah okay um I'll say this again and uh you know it again it I don't think it's a mystery that there are there are definitely those in the community who don't trust the finances of the district um and and no favors are done for us um when um apples are not always compared to Apples right just just as an example and I'm not picking on any particular

011taxing body but there are taxing bodies that have access to local revenues that we don't um and um so it's hard to to sit here and say okay well this taxing body holds holds a levy how come the school district doesn't right as an example well those taxing bodies have access to other revenues that the school district doesn't they also don't spend um there are property taxes on hardly anything compared to what the school district does uh because because they have access to other revenues that we don't um but a process that works in many other districts quite frankly doesn't work here um and I'm proud of the board for the first time that I'm aware of we came with five-year projections that showed us what things would look like with a levy without a

012levy I appreciate that with ebf without ebf should have been very eye-opening to everyone um but I'm going to tell you I don't think it went far enough you've heard me voice this a million times um and for those who pay attention they've heard me voice it a million times in addition I think what you're going to have to do and I said this a long time ago I said this years ago you're going to have to actually show people what it means right for some reason eight million dollars in cuts doesn't mean anything to anyone like I don't know why but it doesn't um I'm not sitting up here advocating to hey let's let's cut but I think you're gonna actually have to show people what that translates to um and and I and

013I do take it serious whenever we have to raise Levy I don't take it lightly and I think in order for us to do this process we're going to have to do all of the front work ahead of time and so show people what that translates to because again it's not an honest conversation to sit here and say raise the levy or not that's not the full conversation the full conversation is raise the levy or we don't turn the lights on over here right because all of this stuff costs money or we either increase the levy or what's the fund for our preventative maintenance what's the balance of that fund right now I'm asking you yeah it's zero zero it's zero right so um and and here's the thing for those who who for those

014who who who are new on the scene um you know there was there was a time you remember this Dr Sparling the bright lights and the auditorium and and and Men we sat there uh I remember um uh sitting there with many people uh very business uh oriented people who we sat there and made a lot of cuts right and that was one of the things we cut uh and none of it was comfortable so I think you're gonna need that you're going to need to show people that I'll say it I'll ask for it again I've asked for it a million times I appreciate what we've been given so far um and uh I'll continue to ask for it okay I have more I'm sorry please no go I just have one question uh

015and you're in the projections that you provided previously and it's just really into a comment that you made earlier that we've had to what we have here is listed the prioritizing for 10 years or 20 years out based on the allocation but from that we've had surprises obviously since bill has come in and so how has that impacted the things that we were supposed to fix this year but that that something break that was set for later or was it something brand new and now it's actually going to cost us more than what we actually projected yeah you know that's a really great question and fortunately uh kluber and the central office maintenance team put together a thrown off plan that what is breaking was on that list it's just they were on the list

016for maybe three years down the road okay so now we're replacing it and one that we thought had to be replaced this year well that one's gonna kind of keep going for two more years and take the place of when that original replacement should have been but but what people may not understand with that list is that each year we prioritized I think over this over the set of over the course of time let's just say that six to seven point five million dollars but if something that broke three that we were slated to fix three years from now breaks in this year does that increase the amount of money that we needed that of the things that are mission critical this year that again the balance is zero and so we if that I

017don't know what the thing was but whatever it was because everything on here is a capitalized project so it's it's significant so I'm just trying to make sure we understand that you know the budgets and the dollars that we have in order to make sure that our facilities are safe as we said in the presentation as one of the priorities um we have to figure out where to get this money from yeah and the nice thing about that is the The Debt Service extension so like I told Jared the money in that budget right now is zero but we do have The Debt Service extension the money we borrowed which was 18 million dollars we can spend all of that money now so we can right now if there was a project that was bid

018out we can spend those dollars on the projects that we wanted to do we would just we would exhaust that 18 million dollars sooner than what we had planned and the issue with that is in our second or third year here if we have another emergency happen well we've exhausted our 80 million and now we're going into contingency funds and so Justin I want to make sure that everybody understands that it's not prudent for us to spend all 18 million in the first year because if an emergency happens next year then what will we do right yeah and not only that but the 18 million isn't even enough right yeah can I can I ask how much we keep paying kluber to do all these assessments because we they in 2020 they did a deferred

019plan and they also did a facility maintenance and energy plan what they didn't call it was what they called it in 2022 when they charged us again and they called it a scheduling plan we also had it done in 2014 we also had it done in 2015 we also headed from not mistaken done in 2018. so we keep paying them to have these plans done and while I realize we have new people in place there has to be if you're going to be a good Steward of somebody's money you have to also know where that plan is and the other thing that I have not seen on here is we don't have we have what did we call it a general maintenance we don't have a preventative maintenance plan and some of that is just

020going out and changing filters so that these machines last five to ten years longer I think so that's not in any of this I think that I've seen so there's general maintenance on here but I don't see a preventative maintenance for where's that at I don't know if it's in here but I I mean I've only been on the board for I don't know nine months or whatever that's what I'm saying I'm looking at it right now where's that I so I have a question because I appreciate it was it was a shorter presentation thank you um and I appreciate the overview but where do we know like for instance from the July the big comprehensive uh scheduled maintenance plan um 23-24 uh is the 19 570 that we expected to spend at bouldered Hill

021has that been completed Grand Park Elementary have all these things been completed no those are those are the projects that we've got on the queue for write me rfps so um rfps we've done I think three or four of them and we have to do the rest of those for the roofs and the boilers the bigger work so we're going to release those rfps and get that work done in the summer of 23 and for the 24th School of the Year okay and that wait the summer of 20. this year yeah the summer for next year you say right yeah okay okay and then my question got us then how did we get these numbers and was it before um inflation and we've seen the cost of steel and conduit and PVC and all that

022stuff go up are these numbers reflective of that I mean July was still probably appropriate for that but where where did you get the nineteen thousand dollars that the RFP hasn't already gone out yeah you know that was estimates through the Architects on the work that they've done so the Architects provided those to us with some inflationary figures built into those but you're right the one thing that we monitor very closely and bill will be sure to share that with you when we do a memo for the board on hey we had the bid closing and here's what we got back this is what we estimated it to be at right this is what actually came in at we've been surprised by a few some of them have been two-thirds higher than what they were

023supposed to be and some of them come in a third lower so it depends on the project and uh um the workload of the those people providing us the bids as well so to and I'm kind of asking these questions to make a point one of the goals that we gave the administration was to build a reserve and I know that our five-year projections and our our goal was 20 and our five-year projections we're looking at about 10 and a half percent and one of the things that's really important for the community to know is that when we don't have a reserve these things not only become Mission critical but we then have to make Cuts because we don't have an option we do not have a little uh you know purse to go back

024to so when when we're talking about potentially not levying not getting ebf not doing certain things it there is a compound um nature of of this of this entire process and um and Jared has said it multiple times we have we've tried to reiterate it multiple times throughout um at least the two years that I've been on the board it is election season and I hope that all of our constituents in the um Community are asking the candidates these questions about what would you do how would you cut eight million dollars what would you do about the fact we don't have a preventative maintenance fund if you aren't for levying you know and so forth so I strongly encourage everyone to ask the candidates that are doing that because this is something that the these

025decisions have compounded from years ago and we just continue to kind of Kick the Can down the road so not not you not neither one of you thank you I just want to make that clear but for the first time we have this um really in-depth um comprehensive program and it makes it real which is what Jared you know had said he is asking for from the cuts perspective but it also makes it real and I encourage everybody to go back to this that if we don't have some money what we're not going to be able to do on this plan and it's it is pretty um you know we lose air conditioning typically once a summer from a school and get emails from parents and grandparents you know make sure you get the air

026conditioning working we're talking Beyond air conditioning you know so we just need to keep bringing that to the Forefront and talking about that so thank you both so where are we with that with regard to our grant um opportunities yeah so we we did submit a grant for the um the capital maintenance project Grant which was a fifty thousand dollar match and luckily we had a project that had not gone out yet was bid out but had not been because it's not important officially out and any spending begun uh so we use that um it ended up being I believe it was like a 1.2 million dollar roofing project and uh that will get fifty thousand dollars um for that and that's coming out of debt service extension and there's two other grants right now

027that Bill and I are taking a look at unfortunately some of the grant opportunities our district doesn't qualify for we are not low enough in our financial State compared to other Illinois districts so we are we don't qualify for those but we'll continue to monitor those and submit for those that we can uh and the one thing that we're keeping in our eye and is something that Dr Sparling worked very hard on the past few years and that is the 40 million dollars in Appropriations that we we should be hearing more about in the near future and would really put us in a good spot if we got those dollars back so for those on the board who might not recall or those in the community who might not recall in 2004 we spent money

028on buildings knowing that the state was going to reimburse us for those costs and in 2004 they had reimbursing us those dollars so the district spent all of their funds not being reimbursed to the tune of about I think it was 38 million almost 40 million dollars and the state is now looking at funding those uh those uh that out out service that so we hope to see that in the near future yeah that's a big if it is it's a really big if can you talk to us a little what yeah we all do can I can I do what is what was the 1.2 million dollar project that was a uh there was a roofing project in oh it was the back the cafeteria the backside of oh we did the front side

029this summer I think I just wondered thank you when we don't meet our financial reserve as as a goal as well as the recommended um percentage as the state requires how does that impact us you know that's a really interesting question I think something that the community might not be so familiar with is our District's Financial profile that's awarded to us from the State Board of Education they basically give us a score of one to five and put us in States of uh Financial uh positive Financial standing or it could go into a financial warning Financial Risk and on the five elements on the rubric that they used to judge us on three of the elements are related directly to our fund balance that being number one do you have a 20 to 25 percent

030fund balance we don't we get a low score on that yeah number two the fund balance is directly related to how much cash on hand do you have on a daily basis well since we don't have a fund balance we only have 55 days of cash on hand and after after spending down that fund balance we need to borrow money for our cash flow so that's how the fund balance affects us there and then oh the third one is escaping me there's a I think our bond percentage right and that's another one but that's not related to The Reserve oh okay I'm sorry there was One Direction related to the reserve and it's escaping my mind right now I apologize but today yeah uh three of the areas we are negatively hit because of our

031fund balance one of them were negatively hit because we have a larger expenditure Revenue level than what we should have legally we we only should have a have a 310 million dollars worth of bowering capacity but in 2004 we went to the state we had that that uh level raised and we currently have about 315 million dollars so we have more money long-term debt than what typically we should have so we're hit there as well oh and the the third item was short-term debt that was the third item is uh the level of short-term borrowing well we have tax anticipation warrants every year which is short-term borrowing so because of our cash flow we don't have cash on hand we don't have the reserve and we have to short-term borrow so we have a negative

032um we have a negative profile for the state of Illinois that we are aware of we are maintaining and communicating and making sure that we don't fall any less than we are in the in terms of the state standing right now so these are all reasons why we should increase our fund balance correct and last time that it was five million dollars every year from the time that we didn't Levy which is compound to like 35 million dollars as of now and every year going forward and that keeps us from increasing our fund balance because of that's just one reason why yeah right I mean and who wants to have to borrow money to pay their bills right that's like a payday loan in a really big way yeah and and the thing is with

033that if if you're going to do that like so let's let's talk about that if you're gonna not raise the levy then you need to do your due diligence which is what ends up being outcome from that which is you got to go and figure out what you're going to cut which is why you have the auditorium full of people and the bright lights and and everything else which somehow got forgotten about I don't know how but that was pretty good house packed house but but nonetheless um like then you have to do that like you like that's I don't know how else there's no way to avoid that like one or the other you know if that's the full story that's the full narrative you can't avoid one without the other good uh I

034think Bill and I would just like to thank the board we were just looking at each other here I don't think we've seen uh board members having this level of conversation so we appreciate how much you know about our finances about our facilities and we really appreciate the feedback are helping to educate the community and can I just clarify because I just went back and looked at the kluber presentation I'm not talking when I talk about preventative maintenance I'm not talking about periodic I'm not talking about corrective I'm talking about what are we doing with our boilers and chillers to keep them lasting five more years which is not on here that's it's not as part of their plan you know what I'll put that down uh bill and I can talk about that but

035we do do for instance uh I was with AJ one of our central office grounds gentlemen he uh or a central maintenance gentleman and he ends up doing what he calls punching tubes so making sure that all of the all of the cooling water is filtering through the way it should through our air conditioning we replace filters in the classroom so we can get you a list of things that we do on a preventative maintenance I'm just I'm looking for something as a district that we're doing district-wide that will extend the life of the high dollar equipment because here's what's happening we're buying equipment from Canada because we can't get it in the U.S right now and it's still like that and a lot of our machines are out of date and they're going to

036have to be replaced at some point so at some point you have to build up some sort of Reserve so because they're going to go out but we don't have yeah let me Boulder Hill for example Boulder Hill was out when it was 100 degrees out so it's funny you just brought that up Ali I I currently have a service agreement that I need to go over with John for the boilers alone that's every boiler in the district district-wide to start servicing those right but we shouldn't we should have people in house that can do that we shouldn't be I do and but I just don't have enough of them so as a district we're big I have 23 locations to take care of I have two preventative maintenance that are Central and I have

037one at each high school so that's a total of four we've done pretty good but as we get bigger we do need to grow that pool so we've always kind of leaned on help from outside services to help service those boilers and chillers and stuff of that nature thank you very much thank you all right 6.1 superintendent report all right well thank you Mrs Hamilton and good evening board can you guys call Lori Doyle back somebody hung up on her she sung her way in oh she oh maybe she wants to listen she just said are we still on the facility presentation I can't watch YouTube they hung up let's see if we can get her back just so while she's driving in the car so we're still having uh at some kind of yeah

038YouTube issues I don't know I don't I wasn't really watching it to see it I just noticed it [Music] heinous but we didn't hire him hello the mute yourself oh oh there she goes okay all right what I'd like to start up my comments this evening by welcoming everyone back to the second semester the 22-23 school year and uh just before break I was informed by the national board Resource Center at Illinois State University and Illinois National Board of Professional Teaching Standards that the following teachers in our school district uh were renewed for the national board certification Robin series Christina Hernandez Brett maois Pam Phelps Elizabeth brigadich Angela sharper Amy severinsky Joyce shumate and Kelly Waldron so congratulations to each of those teachers that I just mentioned and uh congratulations for not only earning the

039national board certification but for also maintaining that certification because it is a prestigious certification so congratulations to each of them uh the following is an update in regards to uh what's been done we've been going on over the past couple months in regards to our transportation so as we all know due to a Nationwide bus shortage uh busing has been a significant challenge this year resulting in Sometimes some substantial delays I'd like to thank our parents for their and our students for their patients understanding and cooperation as we've received uh as we've worked through this to uh provide the best transportation service that we can under the current circumstances for our kids so over the past couple months uh the route Studies have been conducted to find Opportunities to combine stops and to shorten the

040routes income to combined routes over winter break our transportation staff worked hard to adjust routing in order to create more efficient transportation for our students and Route updates were posted in Tyler last week and parents were notified additionally we're working to recruit our recruitment efforts are continuing to increase the number of drivers that we have on staff we're also monitoring the changes that we've made to ensure that those those addressed the those changes have been addressed to the best of our abilities it's important to note that the changes that we've made to the best of our ability uh are been done without probably the most needed variable in this equation and that is having the proper number of drivers that we need so I'd like to send a word of thanks to our transportation staff

041for their hours and dedication and commitment towards improving the transportation and for our drivers and our monitors who are covering extra routes and providing the extra time to benefit our students they should know that everyone up here appreciates other other work um my final comment for this evening is to share that on tonight's Personnel report uh the board will be approving my retirement from the position of Superintendent at the end of the 22-23 school year I would like to thank this board and previous boards for the opportunity to serve the students staff and community of Oswego for the past 11 years of my career it's been my greatest honor to have served as your superintendent for the past seven years and I thank the board for that opportunity I look forward to continuing our good

042work together and through between now and June 30th and to support the board in any way that I can in regards to as you search for my successor so that is my update for this evening and thank you you Dr sparlin so we'll have many opportunity [Applause] opportunities to say our final goodbyes and to express our gratitude for the many years of service that Dr sparlin has provided to our district and so we look forward to several more months with him and then we will we will have some opportunities to express our gratitude one of the things as a board we hire one person technically for the most part and that's the superintendent and so in doing that in order to help us find uh his successor there are ways in which we go about

043doing that and one of those ways which is traditional but yet most effective and efficient is a search firm and so I want to open it up to the board to kind of share their thoughts about why um this might be an appropriate way to go um or not but I'd like I'd like to hear from you all regarding your thoughts on that which side of the room you which which side you want to start with well I'll go first a couple things then uh we're gonna come back to it we can come back and talk about busing right because I do want to talk about busting sorry but at some point I always like put the kids first and so we'll talk about busting yeah his agenda items the waiter in the agenda okay

044because I I do want to talk about the busing and the kids not not listen Dr spot let him [Music] gracious and or I'm sorry I'm very grateful grateful was the word I was looking for grateful for for everything and and so forth but um well first of all um before I get to your thought uh Latonya I remember running in 2015 and I remember the situation with the superintendent in 2015. um I remember very well thinking that um where the community was and thinking to myself that the community should have have as much of a voice in this process as possible and one of the ways that the community can have a voice in that process at the time was uh by going to the polls and so while I believe um in having

045a process that works one of the things that I think has plagued our district is that we have not at times looked at what works elsewhere we've cherry-picked at times we've said hey let's do what this District does and then it's been well okay but they also do this well I don't want to look at that part you gotta look at the whole package right you can't just cherry pick things you have to look at the whole package if you're going to look at things and uh one thing I'm adamant about is uh I do not think that a superintendent should be picked before this election is over I think the superintendent whoever comes in should have the support of whoever the seven people are who sit up here and they should have uh and

046that person should have um that support uh however I think we have we have many districts that are unified districts that are large districts in our area that have done um a phenomenal job at this and the pool is small [Music] who want to take on this position so I think if we think we are the smartest people in the room no offense but I don't I don't think we are so going through this process and doing our due diligence to to find out and passing on that knowledge I think is is the route we should take um you tend to agree so um we want to get it right so and you know at the community and uh not just through the polls but through their input direct input um we can definitely utilize

047that in the process and it sounds as though these outside firms look to that as well so um yeah search firm makes the most sense to me I don't I don't have a problem with the new board picking the superintendent but I think you need an outside superintendent because I don't think right now we have an internal candidate who is going to meet the needs that we have right now so yeah I I think the uh an outside firm is most definitely uh the best way just to broaden our scope um I don't know if I would say I don't think that we have an internal candidate because I don't I don't know who I don't know all 200 2500 members within the district but I believe that I absolutely believe that a search firm

048will give us the opportunity to make that Pro the process objective and to cast our Nets wide so that we can get the best possible candidate for the district that the students and the staff deserve so I agree that it should be a search firm I didn't prepare anything and I typically get in a lot of trouble when I don't do that so I look forward to uh going viral again tomorrow so here we go number one thank you for 11 years of service through one of the darkest times in education we often do not agree with each other and um you have proven something to me that still exists but is fleeting in this in this in this world which is we can have really um crucial conversations we can highly disagree um even

049maybe not be so happy when we walk out of the room but we continue to treat each other with respect and kindness and um I I pray and hope that that um that really what seems like a really simple thing starts to make a return to um to our community and To The World At Large so for that I thank you I thank you for allowing me to have the space to completely disagree with you to not understand your point of view to maybe be closed-minded sometimes but to continually um address me and treat me with kindness and respect and um I thank you for that it is it is not always easy to be in your position and to remain calm and you have done it many times when I may not have been

050able to do that so um this morning my boss said to our leadership team everything you do is a choice being happy is a choice being disagreeable is a choice being um disgruntled is a choice and so we all have those choices to make and I have seen you consistently make the choice to show up and make the best of a situation so thank you for that I I just want to to say that and it struck me um right now when I was sharing that a lot I haven't always made the right choices and I'm trying to do better so thank you for that and and the service that you have provided to this District um also I just want to say um I don't know how to let tonight go and not talk

051about the fact that a six-year-old brought a gun and shot his teacher um obviously it made the the news headlines and um I do believe there is some sort of faint connected dot to what I just was sharing with you which is we have lost the ability to disagree with each other without there being some sort of massive other reaction and so um I I have thought about that story over and over in my head today and it's disheartening and um my heart is broken for that little that little person who doesn't understand what they did and for um his or her family for the teacher who is recovering in the hospital tonight and the fact that once again she proved to be a hero by getting all of her students out safe our teachers

052should not have to do that our teachers should we our kids shouldn't have to have um all of the training they have to and teachers shouldn't have to go through all the training they have to and we shouldn't have to worry about that but we do so we keep moving forward so I just um I don't know if I connected the dots tonight sometimes I don't uh do that very well if I don't think things out beforehand but um I just wanted to share those thoughts with everyone tonight and um and uh that's it so in light of you know our discussion about a search firm um you know just thinking ahead and providing you all with um lots of information that will help you as we go forward in terms of looking at search

053firms and doing our process and our due diligence through all of that I mean there are some highlights which are one which Jared mentioned we want to search firm who understands the importance of our community's voice in this process and our students staff parents everyone and their importance and their voice in this process and um making sure that they understand what our needs are as a district and making sure that we get the leader that can take our district forward in a transformational way and then also obviously you know nothing is free and so just looking at the information that has been provided so far we're going to have to invest anywhere from 25 to 40 000 dollars in order to um engage a search firm that will bring us the best candidate so those

054are just some things that we're going to have to start mulling over there are lots of things that the board has to do even though Ali had mentioned it to me there's a lot of work that goes into this process over and above all the the things that a search firm is going to do so we as a board are going to have to um Buckle in because there's a lot there's a lot that's going to be required of us and so I just want to read a statement and the statement will go out in many different um on many different platforms and um Teresa our director of communications is going to help push this out tonight but from our board we say dear District 308 community in response to Dr sparlin's announcement to retire

055at the end of the 22-23 school year the board of education is beginning the process of selecting a new superintendent the first step is to identify and evaluate search firms who might assist us in this process students staff parents and our extended Community will have opportunities to provide input and be involved in the search for our next superintendent after January 23rd board meeting we will share details of the Avenues of communication available specifically for feedback and put on this very important matter we will continue to provide you with updates as this process evolves thank you okay now we will have our 6.3 student ambassador report um hi everyone so our new members have officially been selected for the ssac and we're hopefully meeting on the 18th for an introductory information review on our roles and

056responsibilities regarding our goals for this year which include mental health Dr Paul and Miss dalquist will also be attending this meeting as we continue to make plans for this upcoming year um and I know that uh you briefly mentioned this but we're going to continue exploring the facets of mental health the sub issues that we want to look into and we do want to look into the possibility of creating another student survey that'll evaluate how students view mental health the specific sub-issues that they want us to look into regarding relationships with teachers or relationships between students homework things like that and I know that last year when we were targeting sexual harassment we built the second student survey to better understand what students understood about sexual harassment if they had any insight on how we

057could work to make sure it wasn't happening in our schools and that was very helpful and I think having that additional Insight will be crucial in our understanding of how we'll be able to amplify student voice in the future and ensure that these mental health problems that aren't limited to our district they expand far beyond that but within our district at the very least how we can begin targeting that here we're again going to thank everyone who applied um for the ssac position we're so excited to work with the people that are on an executive board but we want to encourage students to continue coming forward and bringing their Insight in the future thank you how many how many members are there now I think I think it's between it's a little bit bigger now

058it's between 13 and 14 if I'm remembering correctly um I think I think 13 is the number on you I believe yeah look at me okay but yeah so we definitely got some more voices this year having like a small group was really nice um for like that period of time but as we're addressing these bigger issues and we want to make sure that we're actually getting you know that wide diverse set of you know perspectives that our student body has like I'm really excited to work with a bigger group and to see like where our conversations will go now that we have more insight and I encourage you to continue to bring it proactively to the board you don't have to wait for a board comment or or what have you continue to use

059your voices and and have a seat at the table and um you know you don't need to ask permission thank you yeah we had a significant number of students who applied and the student ambassadors along with the rest of the committee conducted the interviews created the questions you know Dr Wilder and I were in the background you know just watching and listening and it was phenomenal and diversity that this group is so well-rounded now and I'm really excited to begin together to get on the 18th yeah and they were all just like so amazing I think I learned something from all of them you know so it wasn't just about who we selected but I think just having the interviews was so insightful so I guess that kind of like helped me realize that this

060year maybe I want to help starting expand like our student ambassador to the rest of our student body to make sure that they understand like what it is and maybe we help them communicate more directly with us because everyone has such great perspectives and a lot of our students care even though you know maybe they don't really know how to show it yet because they don't feel like they have the resources and I think that's a big part of what the ssac is supposed to do it's supposed to be a resource that's wonderful thank you all right 7.1 consent agenda are there any questions on the consent agenda okay if not can I have a motion to approve the consent agenda you sure can but why do I feel like I'm in the wrong area

061oh I'm sorry I make a motion to approve all items under consent including 7.1 minutes from the December 5th 2022 Board of Education meeting open and closed session second Miss Dora [Music] aye Mr Cerrone aye Ms simultan aye Mr Gatewood aye Ms Johnson aye Mr cloaker aye motion passes 7-0 item 8.1 is information on financial statements does the board have any questions on what's been presented this evening hearing nine go oh um 8.2 resolution authorizing the issuance of tax anticipation warrants so this is an informational item in regards to the taws and Dr pesky is going to present yeah thank you Dr Sparling so as we were just talking about in our early agenda item it's that time to look at our cash flow and issuing tax anticipation warrants for those who are unfamiliar with

062those tax anticipation warrants are exactly that we're anticipating the revenue from taxes our next payment will be in June but until June our cash what we have what we have in the bank for our uh our ongoing expenditures will not be enough to cover our expenses so looking at our cash flow and what I'm presenting with you here is very similar to what we had last year it's a parameters resolution and those parameters are we could issue up to 20 million dollars we will probably not based on our cash flow analysis now we will not need to borrow 20 million we're probably looking at 10 million at this point uh and the other parameter is the interest rate that you're allowing us last year it was a three percent this year with inflation um we've

063been advised that uh there could it could possibly be a six percent interest rate on the money that we borrow so um and then the other thing is when we sell them uh we inherent says that we would have until May 31st but looking at our cash flow of April is the first month where we're looking at a negative cash flow um and we won't get our revenues until June so we'll need those tax anticipation warrants for April May and June um and then we'll pay them back in July so we're looking at about a four-month uh four-month borrowing of uh of 10 to 10 to 15 million dollars you know something that I just thought about is pertinence of the conversation is what we're just talking about with the the importance of having a

064fund balance you know if we had the fund balance of 20 that equals no more taws which equals no more interest on money that we have to borrow so that's another reason again pointing out here for the reason for the fund balance if you don't mind it that equals a few FTE right so you know yes it does so that's that's exactly right we're in the business of educating kids and so yeah spending money um potentially unnecessarily but you know hurts but see to a couple things like to your point I mean I I don't disagree with you that's a great point right but but see that's that's my point right when you bring up okay well that's a couple ftes that's exactly what I'm saying like we need we need to we need to

065start doing this with a budget like we need to start saying hey I don't know what it is hey you know I always love you it's I don't know 50 FTS whatever it is right you know yeah I mean but that's what we need to start having that we need to start having that conversation um one quick thing on the taws um can we get a follow-up at some point at a future board meeting to see who buys and what it costs us yes we can thank you wouldn't it also be a very interesting number of all the interests that we've paid like just pick a time period in the last 10 years now I'm very proud because we did pay it off early last year and save seventeen thousand dollars so I don't want

066to discredit that but the amount of Interest we've paid for all these what I call payday loan shark loans has got to be pretty significant that's a great point because it has a lot of context to the conversation because um you know it may be a hundred hundred fifty thousand a year but like you just said over 10 years it's 1.5 million dollars to compound all of that too right so yeah and what what is interesting is when I think I don't know three years ago we were at we were we were at 25 million dollars in terms of tax anticipation loans and then we we inched down to 20. now we're down to 10. yeah well but keep in mind the reason we're there right now is because of our debt service extension the

067money that we borrowed as soon as we spend that money on capital projects that's an additional 18 million we will not have towards our cash flow so well we still need to grow the reserve so correct and that's running so that will still be building the reserve so we will be coming down but not not a not a 20 million dollar landfall good point and and I know in the past we have we have literally had neighboring school districts have have bought them so I mean we're we're we're literally indirectly funding evering school districts so yeah it was Plainfield most recently right yeah last year was Plainfield was one of them I forget who the second one was but you're exactly right yeah I mean we want to get to the point where we're not

068we don't need to borrow money to pay our bills yeah that's why I really you know helping to keep the board focused on that 20 fund balance is so critical that's why it's part of The Envision 308 plan is it's a very important part of what we need to finance be financially responsible because that 25 million when we borrowed it we paid a hundred and twenty thousand dollars in interest for that and what I'd have to look in confirm but that doesn't sound off especially you probably needed it for six months and at 25 million for six months that could be very close to that I don't forget because we signed it exactly so uh today is Dr sparlin said this is just information if there's any questions about tax anticipation warrants I'll make myself

069available I'll be happy to answer any questions and this will come back to action to the board on January 23rd and what you're taking action on is just the parameters giving me the ability to between now and may sell up to 20 million dollars at six percent uh for tax anticipation purposes very good any other questions regarding this item all right hearing none uh item 8.3 is a continued discussion regarding vendors and contracts uh since this is a new process we wanted to put this uh on for information to get feedback from the board and tonight Dr pesky has brought this forward to show where the business office is in regards to addressing any vendors who have a cumulative dollar amount that exceeds twenty thousand and where we're at so Dr pesky great um and

070I I added um and I apologize about the delay but I just got this to Ursula today to post for the board but based on our last conversation where Eugene and I had done kind of sub categories and totals um so you could monitor the spending in that area I added to it that all of the totals we've been talking about so far have been what we've provided to the Auditors for last year's FY 22 budget so that's uh all the all the numbers the board has seen is the contracts and vendors that we spent last year and what I've added to this now is our current spending as of December this year what have we spent up to with the same vendors or of additional vendors made it to that list and uh I've

071added to that as well what the board has asked me to do or the direction that I was given through cabinet was to either if we reach if a vendor reaches that twenty thousand dollar Mark or starts getting close to that 20 twenty thousand dollar mark do we a enter into a contract with that vendor to make sure that we have the best pricing and uh and a relationship with that vendor that is uh meets the board policy about twenty thousand dollars in spending number two in addition to the possibility of entering a contract is the idea of perhaps going out to RFP for um uh for uh getting the best prices or make sure we're getting the best prices on the the things that we're buying and the third option that the board directed

072was to look at a preferred vendor so we can gain some efficiencies in our spending perhaps we're buying paper at 45 dollars from one vendor and that that vendor were up to twenty thousand dollars where we we could get it from Office Depot for half the price so we no longer go for the one higher price vendor and we gain some efficiencies in who our budget managers can use to purchase from when I looked at that list in cabinet and I have been going through this so Dr spiral and Faith Heather Teresa and myself have been really looking at this and and uh taking a look at the process and monitoring some of our spending and the other option that popped up was status quo maybe on here there is a vendor for instance one

073of our attorneys that we spend a hundred thousand dollars with well we don't necessarily have a contract but we know what they're doing for us and we are okay with that spending as our district attorney at that number so we're not gonna we're not necessarily going to revisit going into a contract we could uh we we wouldn't necessarily consider going into an RFP or we wouldn't look at going to another attorney for doing that work because there are designated attorneys so for that one we would just mark it down as status quo we know that spending what it isn't going down the list when you look at these there's some software programs that are over the twenty thousand dollars we don't have a contract with them but they're a vendor and they're just a little

074bit over that twenty thousand dollar Mark and we don't no one else would offer that same software that same level of service so our budget manager for that software program purchased that software so that would be another one that status quo although that is something we could look at why don't we have a contract with them and do we need to pursue that so there's kind of that gray area between status quo and actually having a formal contract with them or them just being a vendor So based on that information I've provided for the board a comparison of what we spent total last year with these vendors and then currently what we spent from July 1st until December 31st um this year and we're halfway through the year so you can take a look at

075uh take a look at some of those costs and what I'm looking at doing today in in terms of providing us for information from the board is to make sure that the cabinet myself are on the mark with what the board would like to do and based on your feedback I'm going to be revisiting this with my finance team to continue to Monitor and start adding check marks into these columns for instance status quo we just continue what we're doing we present that to the board and it gets a check mark it's done immediately if we need to enter into a contractual relationship believe it or not that is the same length of time as it would take to go to RFP so to do that would take about three weeks or one board meeting

076cycle to go through um so about a three week time frame and if we do the preferred vendors and look at reducing the the vendors and the efficiencies that we can gain in using select vendors that's something that can happen within a week just communicating to our budget managers so nothing on this nothing that the board is asking us to do would take a long time but I do want to start with my team communicating that monitoring that and making sure that we're all on the same page so one quick oh can I just give a little context um as to how we got here I think that it's really important to understand that many of the board members I won't say all we were we were somewhat surprised to learn that certain vendors may

077not have had a contract may have had a contract that we were not fully aware of the processes and procedures for how money was spent and also that in the business World there is an opportunity when you have vendors to either go to RFP even if you've worked with them for multiple years because typically what happens is is people feel a little bit more inclined to continue to give you certain levels of service and so I want to make sure we provide that context to everyone we also were really searching for some transparency other than a bill pay list where a lot of us were doing our own calculating and creating our own spreadsheets let's do it as a group and understand okay from a legal perspective I don't even know what some law firms

078might be named let's see how much we're spending on on law firms let's see how much we're spending on curriculum let's see how much we're spending on um I don't even know what we call some of these things but ed services and so forth because when you look at it as a block of money it tells a different story and it paints a different picture and one of the things that I've shared multiple times with the board members is that a financial mentor of mine told me you don't need to tell me your priorities I can look at your checkbook and it will tell you our priorities so we needed to see it in a different way um I I do want to share openly that I still strongly urge this board to put in

079a vendor review policy and to or of a very strong vendor review procedure if you will I think that when we don't hold our vendor vendors accountable whether it be the food service service or what have you Ingenuity or whatever it's very easy to become complacent and I would like to see us make sure that everyone is aware of our district goals board goals and to make sure they're meeting the the parameters that we've set forward and I think one of them should be Dei as well like do you have a diverse staff and so forth so I I think that we're getting there but I still think we have a ways to go and I would like to see us to put in a vendor a vendor review policy doesn't mean that we're going

080to pick another vendor it just means that they're gonna after so many years they're gonna come to the table and put an RFP just in like everybody else it's no different if we have employees who want to be promoted and they have to interview just like everybody else so um I think we still you know I think there's we have we we need to look for money and um see where we're spending and where we shouldn't be spending I know I talk about paper a lot I know I talk about why we're spending money on printing business cards in the digital world and then I constantly look at that Amazon number and think we've there's got to be a better way so just all right so if we were to go to contract route so

081I think terms of service service expectations we need to be part of it um depending on the budget manager and their inputs I think that that has to be taken into consideration with each contract if we were to go a contract route um sometimes you can um structure a contract where you don't necessarily guarantee any volume um depending on you know what that service is so I mean looking at the flexibility but yeah I mean levels of service [Music] trying to think of some of the other things that uh you know stay away from model renewals you know but obviously all that has to go through budget managers so it would be a process to get contracts out and negotiated with all of these vendors but um I think in general it's probably worthwhile I

082mean there's there's probably I mean Amazon is probably you know there's there's other retail vendors on here that you're not going to get that with because you're just going to go you have to go buy stuff supplies but um um I don't know I'd lean towards going contractual but I'd like to you know what what are the budget managers saying I really would like to know if they see opportunities and that's where bringing them this information will help them see that because I don't think individually they necessarily see what they're buying they don't see what all the other budget matters I don't see the volume so this is a good tool to bring to them to say well yeah it's only three boxes of paper for you but district-wide it's you know 300 boxes of

083paper so and that was my question and that's exactly what I wrote down to me when we go back to the context of why we were doing and I hate talking about paper too because I mean such a small item spend less on paper but contextually I don't it may not be less on paper but it my question that I wrote down can the budget managers easily search and find the preferred vendors that we keep mentioning but can the budget man do the budget managers across the district know what other people are doing because to me I think that's where we can realize the efficiencies and we may if we all can get on one Accord and start to order from that same place that may dictate that vendor or I shouldn't say dictate or

084well necessitate that vendor to to treat us differently because right now it may be two or three different uh people calling them and they may treat us as three or four individual customers as opposed to a one uh Community School District 308 so I think that the main thing that we have to look at as we're doing this across the board are what are the best practices for the budget managers that will help us to be more efficient so that we can now maximize the reason why we're doing all of this because if we if we don't do that then we will still um I don't think we'll still realize the benefits and cost savings from a centralized ordering process and again I I know that's probably a lot more easier said than done but

085I think now presenting this to all of the budget managers and having them have that conversation I think that's a place we can start yeah off of that um I thought they had a central purchasing department that we brought in in like 2013 or something like that in order to kind of handle all this do can someone refresh my memory when we had kind of removed that section understand her purchasing department why did we still have that department you know we uh I think what Lori might be hinting at is it the central warehouse staff because we did have like we had some folks in uh buildings and grounds that were trying to maintain a central warehouse and then we had some people in the finance department and it just kind of devolved uh into

086uh budget managers buying what they need when they need it through our partners or our vendor relationships so that's something I can look into more and whatever okay um we have we had uh at one point and I think that this was in one of the first year of finance committee meetings um we had hired uh somebody to kind of manage all purchases and it had changed how we used key cards yeah yeah I remember that exactly literally yeah yeah it was supposed to the position was supposed to be paid by the p-card um reimbursements but um yeah it's potentially it wasn't materializing um it's Mike S but yeah I mean it's a good question um I I do know a lot you know a lot of vendors um you know because I work for

087a large you know corporate as well they don't necessarily want to take P cards because then they got to pay that high interest uh uh The Interchange fees but uh do you do you remember that does that ring a bell at all do you no no one was before his time yeah I was like none of them were here I can talk to I know there's some people in the finance department have been here for quite a while I can ask them about that initiative who that person was and what happened I'm sure they can share that and yeah you said about 2013. I don't I don't know if it's even necessary to re-look at it but just the spirit of why we were doing it can we look at it and see what makes

088sense now yeah um and and because all it is is a purchase department is centralizing the purchasing to make sure that we're you know that we're realizing the efficiency so I would say based on the spirit of what Lori is saying does that make sense and because again I'm not telling you all to do that I'm just saying uh it's a consideration because I don't know the amount of work that it would go into or if that would even be worth the work because it would it cost us more in time than not but I think that it's a worthy but I do know this for sure that if we don't consider it then all of the efforts that we're putting in to realize the efficiencies I believe will be lost no there's there's um

089markets there's markets there's um uh.com markets where you can put out your invoices to the vendors that you're paying and you say Hey you give me a seven percent uh we'll give you um we'll pay you early if you give us a seven percent you know reduction on what we pay you um and that annualizes out pretty good I don't know if we have a big enough this is 85 percent of our power yeah I mean 85 percent of our uh expenditures goes to um salaries you know so if you look at that it's a pretty small pool that we're talking about here um but I mean it's something I don't know if it might not even be worth the uh infrastructure spending you know on the I.T side but uh you know there's there's

090like there's opportunities out there for things like that and I don't even and since we don't have a reserve we might not be able to even do it it's just I'm thinking out loud here and I probably shouldn't be your friend but there's to go along without all the ideas that you guys are talking about you know when we talk about going to RFP the other thing that will eventually come to the board with and that's one thing I need to work with my team on is we are members of purchasing cooperatives so instead of going to RFP we can leverage a Cooperative what does that mean mean legally how does that meet the RFP so there's some information I can share with the board but I'd like to get through this first and then

091and start going through this and then eventually looking at okay how many rfps what type of what type of materials are we looking at purchasing and can we go the through Source well or by board or some of these other there's a a group out there called compare co-ops which you can say hey I'm looking for paper since we're talking about that or looking for paper you can put it in there and it'll tell you the four different co-ops that are selling paper at this cost and and you can lock into that cost it's as if you as a district wrote the RFP so there's some uh purchasing cooperatives that have really become big in the last three four years that I think we could leverage a little bit better as well so that'll be

092a part of this evolving conversation this is where having the discussion with the budget manager is probably yeah and with the holistic Viewpoint as well you know obviously um the other thing that it might be it might be some things might be best for um depending on the vendor correct and the purpose the other thing that I was hoping we could and I don't know if this is the appropriate place but it there's a reason that I'm suggesting it and I've been thinking about it for a long time when we experienced a lot of growth we started just kind of putting people in random places throughout the community and one of the reasons that sometimes I feel like we have some inefficiencies is because we don't have all our Administration Under One Roof and I

093was very shocked to hear how much we spend in other buildings specifically Mason Square but I can we just see like a portfolio of the District of all the buildings that we're paying for and you know my my dream someday I've shared this with Dr sparlin is um you know to have everybody Under One Roof obviously we have a lot more priorities but I do think there are efficiencies gained I think from a cultural perspective and from a financial perspective but I think we should also see what our um our our portfolio of real estate looks like and um the money that's going out for that as well and I don't know if we can um just append that to the end of this uh document it would just be really helpful for us to

094see and the parts of real estate that we own that are kind of not doing anything for us like the land we own for the third High School um the land with it has um right on Route 71. thank you old trober and all that um I think it's really important to understand that and we also have to still maintain you know that we have to pay taxes on and maintain buildings so um can we have like an overview of that so I don't think we pay taxes yeah we don't pay taxes generally an asset for uh for a governmental unit is pretty much a liability because you have to maintain it well but I mean on on the buildings that we are we don't own we don't I mean the leases that we have

095the I mean it all has it it all extrapolates out to whatever we want to call it whatever uh wherever we want to put it on our our spreadsheet but it all has a financial impact on our bottom line Jen one of the uh plans that Dr petsky had referred to earlier you know in regards to it will address a lot of what you're what you're what you're talking about you know um because you know I totally agree with you to have the all the administration Under One Roof uh is is great in many respects in many respects and at one time uh a few years ago I had accomplished that and it brought him out all Under One Roof and then we have a three-phase plan that we started a couple a few years

096ago that we just weren't able to continue with so that's part of the plan that we're working on now because it brings them all back it brings the whole Administration back Under One Roof IT addresses a growth for the pathways program IT addresses growth for the Early Childhood Program at Brokaw and as well as the uh some other areas of the school district and consolidate some of those areas like we have that property on 71. okay what do you do with that if you're selling what's that property worth what can we do with that where can we reinvest that into the school district the Mason Square you know that you mentioned there what's that property worth if we took the you know the people that are housed there and got them all Under One Roof

097it's another building facility that we don't have to maintain and then we can reallocate those resources to the plan as well so we're getting close to bringing that back and uh it's a good plan and we look forward to having more conversation on it and I feel like my we got into this was because we were Outsourcing money and spending double to Outsource what we could be paying our people so that was another reason we got into this and it's the same thing it's like I talked to you one day about why we don't have a turf field and all these other places and Yorkville just announced it we spend so much money to have our fields we can't use them but if we were to say we want to put Turf in you know

098there would be an uproar and I understand it but we have to start having an in putting a narrative around how expensive we are functioning by not looking to the Future and so we need to see these things they need to be in plain sight even if it's just putting it in board docs every week and somebody asks a question about it it's what I always say are the efficiencies that end up costing us money way more yeah yeah um there's one thing too just on a side note I would love sometime to see see on the very end of this list at the very very very bottom it says Village of Oswego water I would I would love to see sometime the projections on that and how that's going to affect us in the

099future when it comes to our budget because I got a bad bad feeling about where that's going I was gonna say I think Dr pesky you've started that conversation already haven't you yeah yeah so so Friday update I just got the information the day for you about the cost so I'm like didn't Jared read the update yeah for Lake Michigan water yeah yeah bad feeling on where the price of that's going yeah so all right so we said we were going to help each other with the deliverables for the administration so you got them all somebody they're on the way somebody's got yeah okay this is this is great it's great for the community it's great to um information out there all right the next item is 8.4 it's an informational item regarding a bus

100lease agreements for activity buses at the high school so this uh this goes back to a conversation that we had at the beginning of the year with the transportation challenges that we've had we've had After School athletics um be a real challenge we've had to since uh uh rent out the coach buses to take teams and whatnot because we didn't have the the ability uh with just two activity buses at each High School to get a full team where they needed to go and so then the conversation turned into well can we get more activity buses and we have been nosed to the grindstone trying to dig up activity buses and uh the bus company shared with me in a normal year the uh car manufacturer Chevy and Ford usually give about 3 000 chassis

101for their Vans to be able to convert to activity buses but with the procurement issues and things due to covid they reduced that number from three thousand dollars or three thousand units per year like 150 units it was way low so activity buses have been hard to find um we uh back in in the fall we asked uh two of our bus companies local bus companies to get us on a waiting list for when the next buses would become available and we're happy to say that those activity buses will be available beginning of next year so we can we can take possession of these this is just an information item um but things have changed a little bit since this went to the board um what happened is uh our other second company came to

102us with the same buses and uh very similar buses and uh uh they are less so we went back to this company to say that you know did you sharpen your pencil and are we getting the best deal so we got a little bidding war going and so today for information we're telling the board we have the opportunity to get four buses four activity buses um but we are going to when we bring it to action it could either be this company that you see tonight or it could be a second company who has the same buses but less money or this company for less money so that's a good thing uh the way Mike has orchestrated this we have four buses two at each High School currently on a lease this would be four

103additional buses so each High School would have four buses but if we do get our transportation staff up to par and we're able to go back to Athletics through large buses and through uh more drivers then we'll have two leases and one of them we can just let it run out not renew and go back to the four buses two at each high school so this gives us some options um and I I was happy with the way that Mike orchestrated this one rather than waiting and adding this onto our existing lease so any questions on that two questions so if that's the case so that as that does that double the number of drivers needed in order to do that each bus uh each bus can take up to 14 uh students so uh

104some of the sports they can just take one bus or two buses uh some of the larger Sports they would need to take all four and I know the high schools have talked to us about using off-season coaches to be the drivers for the on-season coaches so they've got some ideas about getting them and I've asked Mike to share with me the number of miles that the activity buses are driving to make sure that the the buses we do have out there in field are getting used and they are they are got it when are they getting fixed because one of your buses over at OHS is having a yeah and those buses are due next year to be for new buses in place of these older buses and the other is what is what

105are the implications of us not doing this not doing this um it we would be uh we would be utilizing the coach buses the kind of the luxury buses which are costing us about twenty four hundred dollars round trip as opposed to a regular school bus which costs us about six hundred dollars round trip and these activity buses would uh they're about twenty thousand dollars per year for five years so it's uh it's it's not a bad deal and right now on this it you'll see the proposals here are twenty thousand dollars per year per bus and uh the new proposals that we're looking at are about fifteen to sixteen thousand dollars so we save about four or five thousand dollars per year per bus wow okay and have we attempted to go after any

106grants regarding uh green buses yeah we have taken a look at that and that's going to stay on our radar we're watching some surrounding districts Especially since one of the companies that does the battery powered buses just built the shop down in is it like Peoria or something or um fairly close so they're looking to get into surrounding districts the problem is um tooling for those new buses there's an expense to that and then the cost benefit right now it cost us more money even with the rebates to change to the electric or the propane fueled buses but we'll keep an eye on those costs and when we reach a break-even point we will look at growing our inventory to more of a green um we did have one District that used them uh south

107of us Joliet uh come wintertime none of their none of their electric buses would start it was too cold for the batteries to kick them over so we had problems with gelling diesel but we just added some additives to our gas got them fired up and they were sitting there with dead buses so can I as part of that conversation when we had it originally we talked about returning some of our currently leased buses that are just sitting in the fleet where we went with that yeah that'll come up on the next agenda item with the buses uh but real quick I did ask Mike about that one and we're using GPS to track all of our buses and we're at the kind of industry Norm of we have about eight to ten percent of

108our buses that are are not used um uh and uh but that's those buses are then used when we have a bus breakdown we have that eight to ten percent inventory to put out there and to use in place of the buses that are breaking down if we have a bus that gets stuck we need to send another bus to go uh relief so we're we are utilizing all the buses that we we have so and and we expect to after this contract negotiation we expect to get back up to our staffing levels so we can uncondense the routes spread them out a little bit more and then have those extra buses um have those buses the eight to ten percent um be uh be used for drivers on those new routes can I ask

109my best questions that I never got to because I didn't know we were combining the board comments with I thought you were just asking about this I didn't know that was our board comment also yeah okay um because I I did come in here tonight very much concerned about bus routes so I'm sorry it doesn't necessarily have to do with your but I'm not leaving here without talking about the bus routes today um uh how do we know the changes we're making are actually working what's our feedback on all those the changes that we've made um I know did we did we do a trial run uh yes yes yes and yes so we'll be following up with the uh you know with with the drivers we're monitoring the radios uh we'll be following up

110with the principles to gain feedback from them in regards to the looking at the number of parent phone calls and uh it's things such as that and monitoring the buses uh drop off and pickups in the morning and I'm sure there'll be some tweaks that will need to be made to the plan that went forward today but um from all indications it was better and hopefully over the next few days as those drivers become more familiar with those routes and kids as well as the steps it'll become better again they you know we're trying to fix an issue without like I said earlier having that key variable is the right number of drivers to do what we're trying to do the the one concern and listen I again I I do want to reiterate what

111you said I'm very appreciative I don't want to sound not appreciate things but concerns yeah I'll go with concerns that's a good word concerns yeah concerns that I fielded or again Junior High and I I just it it gets at me right that like that seems to be where um I don't know how we end up doing this to our junior high students and and they're a very diverse group um and I'm talking about size right um so if you're you can you can fit three junior high students on a seat and get away with it fabulously in one row and then the next row good luck to you right and um and so I I fielded a lot of concerns today about Junior High um and so I I don't know if you could

112attest to that if that was you know Jared any of those concerns you know if you could uh funnel those to doctor and so he can work with uh Mr direman in regards to that because and that's what we need to hear we need need to hear the concerns from the concerns and the issues from the new implementation from you know I mean it started today so we can again continue to tweak it to make it as good as we can with what we're dealing with and the supervision piece right so I want to make sure that we're not just dropping off and they're not supervised I don't want that either no nobody wants that okay thank you all right item uh 8.5 is information in regards to uh bus lease agreements regular size buses

113yeah so these are 29 regular size but or actually not regular size these are these are seven pass a smaller specs uh here at this time we had the 71 passenger buses that we renewed with the board and this is now uh 29 uh smaller buses that we use for special education uh that we are renewing the leases for so these buses go back the end of The Five-Year lease is up and we get new buses to replace those because the entire fleet is on a rotation correct the entire fleet is on a rotation yep any questions regarding this I think some of the questions and dialogue we just had answered some of this most of them the only question I have is uh will we have drivers for these I don't wanna I don't

114want to spend money if we don't have drivers for the buses yeah we do we currently these would be taking the place of buses that drivers are currently driving the buses those old buses go back and they get their new buses so do we have across the entire fleet is it just five buses that have lifts say that again yeah it says on the on here it says the five buses or the two sections at the bottom those are the the ones that have a lift in our total Fleet do we only have five buses yeah that's the the three uh 24 plus three means you could do 24 students um or you could add three uh three more to the number that bus can carry but we take out the seats and they they

115take the wheelchairs so those those last five buses have wheelchair lifts I I don't think I don't think that answered the question that you asked um I think I think to answer your question uh Eugene is that out of the out of the buses that are on the rotation for weaving these are the number of buses that have you know so out of the other four rotations there are all multiple buses that have who have sounded as well because I was I'm like we only have five buses yeah sense but do we have to do all of them right now uh yeah because they're on a they're on a lease uh after a five-year term so we we leased them for those five years uh we could have gotten a little bit cheaper price for

116going more than five years the problem is then we're also responsible for the maintenance on that so we give the buses up before we need to start paying for the maintenance and upgrades on those buses and uh we we trade them in so these buses will be on the market for other districts to lease or buy and we'll have buses that we won't have to worry about breaking down the question Mike it's again you know is it half a dozen of one sixth of another I guess is this smart is is this a smart way to do it I mean we might not take out the maintenance but then one of those buses don't have maintenance and then we just keep being on a Perpetual Leasing Yeah in our experience this is the most efficient

117way to do our bus fleet so yeah so how many on on how many buses in a fleet is it about 30 average about 30 in a fleet no when he when he uses the word Fleet he means all the buses that we all together correct so so 29 in this rotation 27 last year so yeah 27 29 and then I'll have to find out for Mike with the next three that's okay I just wanted to kind of figure out okay yeah thanks very good okay item 8.6 is the uh 2324 school calendar which is an annual information item around this time uh the calendar committee which is a standing committee outlined in the oea collective bargaining agreement met on a couple different occasions to finalize what's being presented to you today is information uh

118the calendar that's being presented is very similar to this year's calendar uh the first day of students is Wednesday August 16th and the last day is Friday May 24th which is prior to Memorial Day and uh one change that was made was to move up parent-teacher conferences from the second week in November to the fourth week in October so that formal communication with parents could happen earlier this item is for information this evening and if you have any questions we'd be happy to happy to answer them I have to um have we considered or talked about um the week of Thanksgiving we did not going to school there's just not a ton of impactful instruction that I've experienced lots of yeah there is at the high schools yeah yeah that has been that has been

119a topic of conversation uh but the uh for the two you know it it's a it's a different it's another break in the year but the teachers uh felt exactly like what Ellie just said that we do yeah very or no okay and then while it's not relating to the calendar dates has a committee been formed to discuss start times uh so uh yes but there uh we do not have membership from the oea they're working on that right now but we do have a date uh in January that we're working on that I think by tomorrow I will have a finalized list of names thank you and you'll let us know where where yes where this what the status of that is because it has been one of the things that I've heard the

120most about from our community this year especially Middle School is there is our county-wide Institute the same as Kane County -wide yes this year okay that is uh that's our last informational item we can move on to uh 9.1 bills for payment okay bills for payment can I have a motion please I make a motion to authorize the payment of bills in the amount of three million 943 498.70 sense as presented second Mr Cerrone yes Mr Gatewood aye Miss Johnson aye Mr pluger aye Ms Swanson aye Mrs Doyle I Miss Hamilton aye motion classes 7-0 action item 9.2 approval of updated intergovernmental agreement on resource officers can I have a motion please I make a motion to approve the updated intergovernmental agreement on high school student resource officers as presented second but I have a

121couple things on this before we vote yeah me too uh number one uh who wrote the agreement do we know who's who wrote the agreement yeah thank you uh and the second piece is I I wanted to thank you for getting back to me um as far as what sros um what sros SRO pay looks like as far as uh costs from districts around us what we're paying as far as price pretty comparable to other districts however percentage-wise there are districts that are not necessarily paying 100 percent and of course there are some outliers too uh and then there's some I know that are difficult to find right and you know I know like for instance here Joliet is saying maybe they're not paying but there's but they're paying something we just don't know what

122because they're some kind of special assignment rate and and then there's Yorkville who apparently they're they're not paying um so thank you Yorkville for that example um and then Naperville is only Naperville 203 is only paying it looks like 50 percent however fifty percent of that salary it's pretty comparable to what we're paying so uh you have to figure that piece as well it is also interesting that some of these only pay the salary only some of them pay a little bit more so there are some West Aurora looks like that's 50 but then there's some pieces about um nine-month benefits and some pieces about clothing and and so forth there's a lot of stipulations on the West Aurora one so um it's not necessarily uh and also the it's interesting the Joliet police department

123in the Plainfield one is on special assignment so that's interesting so it's not necessarily um hey you just you just pay whatever but I appreciate your due diligence on this and I just wanted to pass that along so thank you very much for the investigative uh work on that um Jared thanks for saying that because Dr Kincaid and Mr Bell spent quite a quite amount of a large amount of time to find that information out it was an easily accessible right and you know and one of the pieces I I want to say that you know first of all I want to first of all thank um thank our law enforcement and in all of our communities um I mean they provide a service that is um immeasurable um but one of the reasons I

124bring this up right is because um one of one of the places that um you know when we talk about holding a levy in property taxes one of those the places that they go um is to is to benefit um is to benefit their their pension and so forth when you're talking about um level and so I'm happy to help them I'm happy to to be a part of helping people that we honor and that we want to uh that serve our community and so forth um the only thing I ask in return though is an honest conversation as as as a whole um and that's why I wanted to bring this up um and part of that conversation also by the way is um there are there are officers in other communities that are

125that are getting paid more um as well so keep that in mind as well so thank you I appreciate your your hard work here I can't stress that enough I have one comment um I appreciated exhibit a and how it went into the goals and objective of the SRO program uh and the and the national standards and practices uh from the National Association of school resource officers I just wanted to I know when we had this discussion uh prior to now voting we had quite a bit of discussion in regards to the role of the SR sros and when and how they are engaged by staff and I think you know based on all of the goals and objectives that are listed here in regards to you know making sure there's positive engagement healthy attitudes

126for students toward the staff have lost toward law enforcement et cetera et cetera I think that's very important however we did talk about the standards of when we should engage them versus uh just having School staff engage the students and so I just and as well as the training the cross functional training from the sros based on the standards that we have within the district and so I think that you know sros are could be great inside of the schools but I just want to make sure that they're great when used properly and so I just wanted to stress the the exhibits a b and c that are listed and and and to understand how we're using them in our schools to promote the objectives of the sros in the district and so nothing to

127necessarily be said but just to make sure that we're utilizing them Harper thank you Miss Doyle Miss Swanson all right Mr Cerrone aye Ms simultan aye Mr Gatewood aye Miss Johnson aye Mr Plover aye motion passes 7-0 action item 9.3 approval of intergovernmental agreement of sharing Services can I have a motion please please I make a motion to approve the shared services of intergovernmental agreement as presented second I have a question on this one too same question who wrote the agreement on this one yeah this one was written law and it was why we gave it gave it to a lot of reviews Miss simulton aye Ms Swanson aye Mr ploger aye Ms Doyle Miss Johnson aye Mr Cerrone aye Mr Gatewood aye motion passes 7-0 action item 9.1 one approval of personnel report 9.4

128I make a motion to approve the Personnel report as discussed in closed session second Miss simulton aye Mr pluger aye Mr Gatewood aye Ms Johnson aye Mr Cerrone aye Ms Doyle hi Miss Swanson aye motion passes 7-0 foreign can I have a motion 10.1 can I have a motion to go into closed session I make a motion to return to close