001pledge of allegiance i pledge allegiance to the flag of the united states of america and to the republic for which it stands one nation under god indivisible with liberty and justice for all all right good evening board item 2.1 is an opportunity for the board to congratulate our pride award winner to uh congratulate our pride award winners of may so i'd like to ask the board to please join me in front here as we welcome and congratulate our pride award winner tonight the board of education acknowledges pride winners for the month of may pride stands for proudly recognizing individuals demonstrating excellence the board of education implemented this program in the fall of 2015 to recognize promote and celebrate the many contributions made by teachers and employees across the district our teachers of the month are
002sponsored by allied first bank this recognizes what our teachers do day in and day out for the continued growth and success of our students awardees as your name is called please come forward to the stage and be congratulated by the board and dr sparlin congratulations to the following teachers for having been recognized as may's teachers of the month katrina beadle a speech and language pathologist from old post elementary school [Applause] harper a science teacher at oswego high school kelly springsteen a social studies teacher at thompson junior high school and melissa gleason a counselor at oswego east high school okay we'll go ahead and do our photo if there's any um of our building administrators that are here this evening for these awardees we invite you to join us on stage for the photo don't be
003shy come on up yeah go on up there go on up there you can come and stand in front of like lorry [Applause] congratulations teachers our next awardees this evening in may are the employees of the month which is co-sponsored by chick-fil-a and huntington learning center this award is given an appreciation of employees who go above and beyond and are always willing to lend a hand awardees as your name is called please come forward to be congratulated by the board of dr sparlin congratulations to the following employees as our may employees of the month lynn demke a security dean's assistant at oswego east high school and nora garcia a health office secretary at boulder hill elementary school hello if there's anyone here to join nora for the photo we invite you up on stage [Laughter]
004head on up congratulations we'd like to give one final thank you to our generous district partners allied first bank chick-fil-a huntington learning center and culvers for helping make this program a success we would also like to thank all of those who nominated individuals this year and we look forward to recognizing more individuals during our 22-23 school year thank you [Applause] okay regarding public comment tonight we will have two opportunities for public for the public to speak the first will be during our public comment and the second will be during our question and answer session on behalf of the board of education i'd like to thank the public for attending tonight's meeting we value the feedback we receive from our residents and encourage everyone to take an active interest in their public school system residents interested
005in speaking to the board this evening are asked to have completed a comment card and presented it to the secretary to the board when the secretary calls your name i ask that you come to the microphone state your name for the public record and provide your feedback please note that all comments will be limited to three minutes per person for a total of 30 minutes no discussion of personnel matters or responses to questions are permitted the board does not participate in discussion during public comment if your questions or concerns require a follow-up a member of the administration will reach out through the contact information provided on the comment card thank you nathan brown good evening nathan brown 423 to vote drive oswego i'm the president of the prescott mill single family hoa i previously addressed
006the board about the need for more student parking at oswego east high school as there are now 90 cars parking in our subdivision every single day i've addressed the board on the issues that that has presented for our residents as well as the students in the past first i'd like to thank dr sparlin members of the school board and staff of oswego east for listening to our residents concerns and working towards a solution your time and attention to this matter is greatly appreciated last week the presidents of the three prescott mill hoas the other president uh richard funk is with me here tonight as well we met with dr sparlin several school board members the mayor police chief village administrator and a village trustee to further discuss the issue at that time we were told
007it's possible to add 60 parking spaces to oswego east and it would be added for consideration to the district's list of capital improvement projects i'm here to ask for the quick approval of this project and to expediate its completion before the beginning of the new school year this has been an issue in prescott mill and the village have asked the school district to address it for seven years now the safest and most appropriate place for students to park is on school grounds and the addition of these parking spaces would certainly go a long way to solving this problem thank you for your time and for your consideration the following procedures and protocols will be in place tonight for our question and answer session individuals wishing to make a comment or ask a question will be
008required to fill out a comment card with their name email and question so that the board and or administration can follow up if a question cannot be answered at the meeting to ensure the process is as efficient as possible we ask that speakers submit their comment card to the board secretary prior to the meeting the board secretary will call each person in the order the cards were received to ensure that all topics get addressed to the maximum extent possible after three questions on the same topic have been heard the board president will ask the board secretary to call the next person that has a question on a different topic at 9 00 pm or at whatever time is appropriate tonight the board president will announce the time and that the final questions of the meeting
009has been taken or will take place when the community members approach the microphone the person shall then state their name and topic of their question or comment for the public record questions comments will be limited to two minutes or less and may be directed to the board in general or to a specific member of the board if no board member is directly asked to address the question or the comment from the audience then any board member may ask answer comment and additional board members who may wish to answer or comment can do so as well board members answers will be limited to two minutes if no board member elects to respond to a question then the president will make a statement on behalf of the board questions can then can be on any topic except
010for specific student situations or specific personnel i.e no questions or comments can be made about any teacher employee administrator or by referencing the district employee's title if members of the public have any of these types of questions they should be directed to the building principal or district administration thank you michelle trager hi i'm michelle trager four kids in the district thanks for having a public forum i came to you guys twice in april asking for three things fasd awareness in september once again rate of fasd two and a half times that of autism not only do we have autism awareness in this district we have a whole program for it secondly to support the fasd respect act which is bipartisan federal legislation i've sent you all the link to do this very easily 60 seconds
011or less via a text campaign i've also asked you to thank congresswoman lauren underwood who has signed on to the legislation as a co-sponsor because she recognizes how important this is to children and families in her district which is our community i've asked you to get training for staff not just special ed staff but gen ed teachers and deans and administrators who are often dealing with individuals with fasd when it comes to discipline i sent you all the information you have the statistics the facts you have the links to the academic journals that's the reality the only new information is that it's mental health awareness month and i'll remind you that over 90 percent of those with fasd have co-occurring mental health issues and their suicidal ideation rates and attempts are higher in that population
012btw it's also national foster care month and if you want i can send you the recent 250 page report from hhs and cdc about fasd in the child welfare system i'm certain we have foster and adopted children in this district so i've asked for a reply i haven't seen received one this far um if we look at the prevalence rates we know that we could be better meeting the needs of 850 to 1700 students in this district my energy needs to go to other places who wanted me to present legislators who are interested in getting in on this so my question to you is what can i do to help you guys move on this and what are we going to do as a district thank you hi michelle how are you thank you i
013will say that i have read your email it was full of an incredible amount no and i'm very very cool in there is definitely promoting her with it um i'm actually meeting with miss underwood in the coming couple in a couple of weeks so i look forward to sharing that information with her um and i'm also looking to get more involved please thank her so i will definitely be doing that and i want to reach out to you when i have a moment so we can sit down like i told you i was a little overwhelmed perspective it's more of the administration that i know can address your questions but i just want you to know that it is something that i do care about for your constant advocacy um truly it is it is
014it is um it's nice to see and that you care and that you continue to push so thank you [Applause] oh i will absolutely reach out and thank her so um i tend to babble so i'll leave that short and sweet and yeah i will echo that as well i would love to sit down and meet one-on-one as well i don't know if i reach out as far as how do we do the awareness month um the training uh this might be actually uh maybe you theresa maybe youth faith i don't know um because i would be i mean i'm for any awareness um particularly something of problems so sure and we had spoken uh briefly uh right after the border me and then i had if we played phone tag a little bit it
015is on our agenda to talk about it at cabinet and light a little bit bigger but the things toward next year as we get toward the end of may here we're really working on ending this school year um and building that so we will get back to you lisa williams my name is lisa williams i have two kids in the district currently i am going to touch on or ask questions about school safety uh there was an incident that occurred at oswego high school last week involving my daughter um i don't want to go into that little background to know why my concerns have come to light um she was sitting at a lunch table minding her own business another student was at the lunch period that should not have been in the lunch period
016to begin with attacked her for no apparent reason after the incident occurred i was notified by the school as well as my daughter i requested to see the video from the lunchroom to see what happened and unfortunately i was told that the video was complete garbage and i couldn't make out anything from the video or anyone in the video and i asked if that was because of the amount of students kind of they just couldn't tell and i was told by three different people that the camera isn't working it needs to be updated or replaced and hey they have been requesting this for well over a year at the very least if not more so as this incident went on they are now relying on kids cell phone video recordings of what happened after the
017initial contact my first concern is you're using kids videos that they're not supposed to be doing they get in trouble for recording and now we're using those properly in the videos so um i don't know how many kids will give their videos willingly if they're known to get in trouble for this behavior luckily one student did give up the video it does not catch that initial act so we don't have that on video to hold this student responsible that was did the aggressive behavior um the next day there was more attacks on her uh social media everything as usual so she went in and filled out an incident report this time the incident occurred in the hallway and it was caught on camera so i was thankful but then i did question okay so this
018camera is working why not the launcher well that hallway camera works but other hallway cameras are in the same boat they are not up to date and they aren't catching certain things and again when a fight starts between two kids and you see this verbal altercation people start filming when it comes out of the blue no one gets that initial what happened at the beginning you're only getting the result of the rest of it so um i asked why again heard from other two other people need upgrading or they need to be replaced because they are not reliable this is a basic safety issue and i appreciate all the safety protocols we go through for coping and everything else i had no idea that sending my kid to school i had to question whether we
019had basic technology i think in this day and age that you would see a video and a good video of what's happening in our schools in the hallways in the lunchroom where a lot of stuff like this takes place so my question is what are we going to do about that has it been heard i don't know i've been told by the school people that they're requesting it i want to know if it's actually been heard and if we're working on this and you know um what happens if there's no video or witnesses in a situation and a child doesn't take responsibility or get blamed accordingly like they should or get held responsible another problem i had when this occurred on the very day because um i had trouble getting a video or viewing a
020video i sent in an f-o-i-a form on 5-11 i checked um in today because i would have liked to have that for tonight and i was told that they never received anything i said i emailed it i have a sent email receipt and then she said oh yeah and i'm not gonna name names because i'm not here to get specific people i just wanna address generally what can we do um that she remembers something there was no name attached to it which i find hard to believe because if you look at the form i had to sign it i had to put all my information in it so she couldn't make anything out or couldn't attach it to anyone so she just deleted my request so now i request it again today and um i
021received an email back saying we received a request back as of 5 19. today is may 16. 5 19 hasn't occurred yet and they give five business days to get a copy of this video so i don't know if we're pre-dating or why that date was given to me but i'm also wondering um when i will copy that video or someone acknowledge how that system works freedom of information act this is my husband what's that this is my husband who was out of town during the incident last week but wanted to show support for me okay yeah good thank you i appreciate you both coming up so my name is john petsky i'm the chief finance officer but i work with buildings and grounds and uh we're actually meeting um with my director of buildings
022and grounds is meeting with the schools to do uh kind of a technology video audit to see out of the of our schools are there cameras that are not working because they're out of date or because the network lines are not working so we're auditing that and making sure that our technology is is uh capturing what it's supposed to as well as adding cameras to where they need to be so i'll follow up with him on that and find out at ohs what cameras are out and need to be addressed can definitely do that um and then for the foia that's actually um to foia the videotape because it has the video actually has a lot of other students in it so it's not something that we would give out through a freedom of information
023act request because of the privacy rights of all the other students and people in the building but uh if you contact the principal we can see about you know what student what specific incident you're looking for and we can uh we can at least approach it from there so the school can see what video footage we have and if what you're looking for is on that as well yeah so okay okay dr petzke our question for you then is when was the last time if any did we have an audit regarding our cameras you know what i'll have to ask that i'm not sure when the last time we had an audit was um but i can look into that certainly now part of that answer that question is when the camera goes out or
024a piece of technology goes out a work order may be placed for it that's what should happen and uh i'm sorry to hear what happened to you was your son or your daughter daughter to your daughter i i'm sorry to hear that um and we have hundreds of cameras throughout the school district you know i remember you know 10 years when we started i started here we we had barely any cameras you know no buzzer systems no raptor system the uh different security measures that we have put in over the last 10 years have been have been expensive and we do we and we we do look at the updates as dr pesky was just uh mentioning but that tomorrow i will check to see if there are there has been any work orders and
025we'll check we'll check that camera it's like any other piece of technology um it can go out and you know it may take a little bit of time to get the pieces and the parts in if kids find out cameras aren't working i'm afraid of the free-for-all it could become as well called us safety big concerns thank you thank you lisa i just wanted to thank both of you mr mrs williams for coming tonight and bringing this to our attention um one of the board um focuses is safe and inclusive schools safe being making sure that our kids can get from class to class so um we will i will as a board member follow up to make sure that that that happens as well and thank you for coming tonight and sharing with us
026what's going on with your daughter thank you yes i did i i deal with that as well and also dr sprawling can i ask that whatever the results of the audit are that they be added to our comprehensive facilities plan um going forward thank you thank you hello my name is robin cook and i am a parent of a child attending oswego high thank you for allowing me to participate in an open session dialogue question and answers here to discuss fasd as an adoptive parent of a child with fasd i have learned that fasd children need to be celebrated fasd children need to be supported not hidden or ignored due to their disability fasd is a hidden disability and a medical condition fasd is more prevalent than autism or down syndrome what training and practices
027will fsd 308 put in place to support fasd children agenda for uh myself myself and uh mrs comutus to talk about actually this week so it is it is already on that agenda and i apologize i don't have any more of an answer for you tonight regarding that thank you michelle mcbridey hello shellman ferdi some of you recognized me from the january um we talked a lot this year in the teaching and learning committee about the deficits in learning that are happening here in district 308. um something we didn't discuss at length though was this idea of academic excellence last week we heard from our best and brightest right i was so disappointed to hear them speak last week because it just broke my heart that we're not honoring them appropriately so my question is
028for each one of you what does academic excellence mean to you and what are each of you a little bit more and what are each of you doing uh personally as a board member to raise the academic achievement of district 308 students um i'll go ahead and start the because i'm assuming that you're um you're bringing up the the policy shift when it comes to summa laude magna laude is that is that correct yeah which when that was um originally brought up on the committee that that you're you're referring to the teaching and learning committee um the we we had discussed thoroughly at what we were doing and the intentions of what um was supposed to be done with that policy shift and in the beginning um when we went to the latin system the
029concept or what was intended was never to take away tradition and so the intention was always to make sure that we honored the traditions we already had so we had the 10 dinner and we looked at the numbers we broke them down and we knew that there was no way to take all three of the latin systems or the the three latin categories sorry and have those kids attend our traditional dinner and so the idea was that if we stepped away from that dinner that there would be backlash we knew that back then when that was instituted and so the concept was or the idea that we came up with in that committee at the time was that that ten percent dinner would just become the summa laude dinner um honoring the tradition that we
030already had there was never any concept of taking away medallions or taking away a dinner because we knew exactly what that would lead to um to speak to what i've done personally i don't think that honoring [Music] students who are finishing summa laude or laude is a participation trophy because i think those students have worked very hard um i take i don't want to say offense but i take a little aside to that when someone says that's a participation trophy i disagree vehemently with that um and so i would say that being a part of that that is actually honoring those students now the fact that we didn't listen to the committee in the beginning when they came up with that concept i i can't i can't control that piece uh personally um but i
031think honoring in addition to students who have also worked hard in addition to our traditions and keeping those traditions in place is actually an expansion of honoring our students who have worked very hard and so uh personally that's what i have done um but not me personally alone i want to make that abundantly clear um but as a team and and with others other board members as well um and so that really is the whole picture what has happened you know with that um i i would i think that there are those who probably once we revisited the history would realize perhaps that maybe the whole picture should have probably been looked at yep that's what happened back in 2017 the extensive conversation was surrounding whether or not quality points were hindering our highest academically
032achieving students from actually doing anything other than burning out because we had no limit on the number of courses and because there was such competition for quality points it wasn't it wasn't doing them good once they ended up at the college or university or wherever they chose to go after high school um and so one of the things we had talked about was do colleges look at the valedictorian salutatorian class rank system um it had been put in with good intentions of let's figure out how to weight some classes more heavily than others for academic achievement um i think that there's nothing that we don't celebrate about academic achievement whether it be for students who are now passing a class that they didn't used to be able to pass two students who and i heard
033a group talking today they're having a final coming up and someone was very very concerned that their average would drop from a 96 to a 95 percent in an ap class and that to me was pretty exciting to see that there are students that are willing to take the most rigorous courses that we can offer our students and are trying to 100 them because they want to know the material and they want to achieve that that that is something that i don't think any parent could not support we all want to see our students achieving at wherever they're at for our highest achieving students um yeah i don't think that as i understood that the intention had been to expand the top ten percent dinner to include all summa laude graduates um and i wasn't
034participating in any of the conversations that that led to any of the changes um but for me it's very important to recognize these students i also really enjoyed at those dinners that um that they would also recognize their educator that was the most influential educator to them so that's that's what i've got all right so the first question is what's uh my definition of academic excellence and for me it's it's basically fulfill each individual child's potential and allow them to pursue happiness so that's pretty much my definition and what i do personally to try to help kids get there is that's kind of my mantra achievement this needs to improve achievement like every decision i make there has to be an element of achievement for whatever that kid said you know all the the first
035you know abilities everything in our district um it has to um further achievement for those kids so that's what i do personally i that's literally my focus i've only been on for a couple months though i'll take a crack at it okay um so i think their answers for personal excellence are fine i think we could do more i think the real question is why aren't they getting their medals and why aren't they allowed to sit up front i don't i mean that again that was not enough i don't think that was enough decision i wasn't on the board when that happened um but as far as could we celebrate more like personally i think it starts with common finals i think it starts with common curriculum i think we have buildings in the district
036that have pockets of greatness and i think that we need to all come together and kind of collectively talk about curriculum which we have you know tried to institute um i think at the high schools it's common finals i think you have things that are happening in us release that aren't happening in us we go and vice versa and i think again there's pockets of greatness that we could fix i also think we need to expand our non-college bound options because i had one that went to college i had one that was in the military um the other thing that we could do is we could and we've talked about this but we haven't really gone past the talking stage when we do the signing days for athletes we could also do the signing days
037for kids who are going to college and we've talked about it but we haven't really gone past talking about it so that's you know partly on me too one thing real quick though i just want to make sure that we are clarifying something the decision for medals and sitting up front was never part of that discussion when that policy was changed so that decision if it was made this school year it was made while this board was sitting up here it was not a change that was made when that policy was made that was never the decision so i just want to make sure we clarify that since i wasn't on the on the board when that decision was made i will address it um what do i believe or think that um academic achievement
038or success is relates to um my advocacy for all students and the reason that i am on the board and that's how my advocacy for success of all students shows up and the fact that if i as a board member um are advocating for a culture and a climate that um will bring success for all students that's kind of how i see it so addressing like disparities in achievement is really important looking at opportunity gaps and expectation gaps and closing those is how we get success for all students thanks thank you for your question but i'll go next so uh first what causes a student to excel academically is absolutely different for every student and so it's not a blanket approach but academic excellence for me um is really helping each student realize their potential
039not just academically but but not just academically but just holistically as a as a person and i believe that that's why all of us sit on this board because we understand students are not just their gpa and i'm sure again i can speak for everybody but every question decision action that we make is all through that same lens and so supporting and equipping teachers is very important to me um working to ensure that we have a culture conducive to that teaching for teaching and learning is very important reviewing the policies and procedures to make sure that all students have access and that is equitable is important and even to the point of personally mentoring and tutoring students um is is all equally important on why we do what we do to make sure that and
040even recognizing them because we understand all students or and i shouldn't say all students but again the motivation for each student for for what causes them to continue to achieve is different but we want to make sure that we're doing all that we can uh to continue to support them hi michelle i have the honor of sitting with on the policy committee with michelle thank you for your question i could probably take six hours to answer this because i'm pretty passionate about it um i want to talk about the medallion first of all i didn't even know it was [Music] um and so i i have so many thoughts on it i understand why we let go of the dinner because of the cost um and i think that there can be a great um
041uh you can still gather and get together and everything and and celebrate um when i was meeting with mrs simultan and dr sparlin last weekend i did um share my disappointment that we didn't involve our students in this decision um and see what their feedback would be and something another one of our board priorities is student voice and i feel like we didn't give them that opportunity and so i i certainly um let dr sparlin know and said please share that i was disappointed that our students didn't have that opportunity to say you know while our administration was saying well this pin is better or it's this or it's that that's from your perspective not from the students so i encourage and push us all the time to say what do our students feel and
042think um so i think that's incredibly important i do also realize that there is a line of demarcation of where the board ends and where the board starts and it's often um and i often cross that line as dr sparlin will tell you giving my opinion about what i think um i would like to see or so forth but i am only one voice um so i do i did get a um a better understanding from dr kincaid and from some fellow board members that were on the team at that time and i support the decision that they made i do hope that we can come to some sort of better solution um and let the students say what they would like to uh purchase and or um be carry with them as a memento
043for their academic achievement which is incredible something i never attain regarding academic excellence i'm an hr practitioner by trade and so my goal is always to put the human and human resources i truly believe that so much of our culture and climate stems from how we treat our staff and how we treat each other within the district safe and inclusive a school district is more than just our students it's about our staff as well and we have to continue to provide a culture that is safe and inclusive for our staff when they feel safe our students feel safe academic achievement will increase by nature and so i continue to be the advocate for is our staff safe are our students safe because until they are those relationships with their teachers with different staff members they
044will not excel so i will continue to be that advocate time and time again and push those questions and push how we are doing with um the people that are running the district and the students within our district and that includes our parents and our community members as well every voice has the right to be heard and i will continue to listen to every parent every community member and we may not always agree but we can again i just i'm sorry only because um i want to make sure that um the committee work that we did is um is honored because there's a lot there was a lot of there was a lot of work and thought that went behind it that policy um and i want to make sure we clarify the policy definitely
045does not say or cover anything about medallions that policy does not cover anything about the dinner in fact when we d when we did that work we were very adamant i want to make this clear we were very adamant about honoring the traditions that had existed which were the medallions and that dinner and so um that was though neither one was ever um taken away when that when that uh committee did that work in fact the opposite was the heart of the discussion the heart of the discussion was that if you take either one of those away we will find ourselves in here having people come in so i can tell you specifically is not in the policy it was never intended to be put in the policy and it was never intended to be
046taken away i cannot be more clear than that i do not blame a board any board for the fact that it is gone because it's probably not something that would be brought on any board's radar however i'm i'm going to be honest and and say forthright that those conversations were absolutely taken into account when the policy was changed and we were very adamant that you cannot change those traditions because if you do you will upset people and they will come in here and they will let you hear about it and so whoever changed or whatever changed at whatever level as dominic pointed out i've only been here for a short while um you know i i'm sure there were reasons or whatever or or perhaps just lost in translation due to the fact of what
047we've been doing for the last two years but i want to respect the work that was done by that committee years ago and those conversations were adamant to not change tradition and there's nothing in the policy that says to take medallions or a dinner away so i just want to make sure that's crystal clear thank you jared penny we as a board we we understand the difficulty of the work that we do and so we we are in full support of the work that has been done prior to us coming on the sport and we we very much appreciate it so um if if there are well let me just invite anyone oh go ahead dominic is there an update to the ceremony or anything along those lines if i recall yes the update the
048ceremony is the uh i met with the uh the high school principals and the uh students will lead the procession into the arena northern illinois university they will also sit in the front row just as they have in the uh past traditions so in past years when we had a top ten percent uh that was one group of kids the number of suma camelot is probably about the top 12 to 15 of the graduating senior class so uh and then we will also be recognizing the uh magna laude and the kamadi students but they will be in alpha order uh just as it has been in the past okay so i'm going to give each of our board members an opportunity to have any closing remarks and we'll keep it to like two minutes each
049if anyone has anything and then we can go and uh we will adjourn so anyone with any closing remarks that they would like i just want to thank everyone who came out to ask a question tonight and brought uh different situations to our attention oftentimes the board does not know what may or may not be going on um so it's very helpful to get perspective and um uh hear everyone's voice so thank you just just going to say thank you to um everyone who came out including our um administrators and and staff who came out tonight appreciate everybody um who came out and and definitely the voices from the community um as well obviously so thank you yeah you know yeah i'll just actually we were ready for any questions so i appreciate everybody coming
050so yeah thank you yeah thank you so much even for coming to our board meetings and sitting and waiting so patiently for your opportunity to make your presentations we have really tried our best to be cognizant of where you are placed on the agenda and so we will continue to do that and work to make sure that you're not sitting there all night waiting to make your presentation so we really appreciate it and thank you for all who came out tonight our our community members who addressed us we take these um comments and concerns very seriously we read all of the emails and we take all of that information into all the meetings that we have whether they're with dr starlin or um whether they are they come before uh of the comments that we
051make during our board meetings and um in our conversations that we have with with our with our community and so we we this the kind of information that you bring helps us to um to build relationships because we want to build trust at the end of the day so you know building um relationships uh builds trust and so that's that's that's our goal so if there are no more um comments from our board um can i have a motion to adjourn all in favor