SD308 Board of Education (4/11/2022)

001i 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 and now we will have approval of the new interim board of education member can i have a motion to appoint jared kloger as our interim board of education member i make i make a motion to approve the new board of education member do i just say it do i just say i apologize i make a motion to approve jared plogger as an interim board of education member to fill the vacancy created by the resignation of dr donna moreno until the next scheduled school board election in 2023 second miss hamilton aye mr sivan aye mr gatewood aye ms swanson no miss doyle aye ms johnson

002aye motion passes 5-1 and now i will administer the oath of office to our new board member dear clover you're not sure to clap or not i see that heather good job good good good leadership manners there i appreciate it thank you for reminding us thank you so each school board member before taking his or her seat on the board shall take the following oath of office so if you'll repeat after me mr poger i jrplogger do solemnly affirm that i will faithfully discharge the duties of the office of member of the board of education of the oswego community unit school district number 308 in accordance with the constitution of the united states the constitution of the state of illinois and the laws of the state of illinois to the best of my ability i

003jared plogger do solemnly affirm that i will faithfully discharge the duties of the office of member of the board of education of the oswego community unit school district number 308 in accordance with the constitution of the united states the constitution of the state of illinois and the laws of the state of illinois to the best of my ability okay and do you also further affirm that you shall respect taxpayer interest by serving as a faithful protector of the school district's assets i further affirm that i shall respect taxpayer interests by serving as a faithful protector of the school district's assets and do you encourage and respect the free expression of opinion by my by your fellow board members and others who seek a hearing before the board while respecting the privacy of students and employees

004i shall encourage and respect the free expression of opinion by my fellow board members and others who seek a hearing before the board while respecting the privacy of students and employees and shell you recognize that the school board member has no legal authority as an individual and that decisions can be made only by a majority vote at a school board meeting i shall recognize that a school board member has no legal no legal authority as an individual and that decisions can be made only by a majority vote at a school board meeting and shall you abide by a majority decision of the school board while retaining the right to seek changes in such decisions through ethical and constructive channels i shall abide by majority decisions of the school board while retaining the right to seek

005changes in such decisions through ethical and constructive channels and as part of the board of education you shall accept the responsibility for your role in the equitable and quality of education of every student in the school district as part of the board of education i shall accept the responsibility for my role in the equitable and quality of education of every student in the school district and shall you foster with the board extends extensive participation of the community formulate goals define outcomes and set the course for oswego community unit school district 308 i shall foster with the board extensive participation of the community formulate goals define outcomes and set the course for oswego community unit school district 308 and you shall assist in establishing a structure and an environment designed to ensure all students have the

006opportunity to attain their maximum potential through a sound organizational framework i shall assist in establishing a structure and an environment designed to ensure all students have the opportunity to attain their maximum potential through a sound organizational framework and then shall you strive to ensure a continuous assessment of student achievement and all conditions affecting the education of our children in compliance with state law i shall strive to ensure a continuous assessment of student achievement in all conditions affecting the education of our children in compliance with state law and then you shall serve as education's kid advocate on behalf of students in our community school or schools to advance the vision for oswego community unit school district 308 i shall serve as education's key advocate on behalf of students and our community school or schools to advance

007the vision for oswego community unit school district 308 and shall strive and you shall strive to work together with the district stu superintendent to lead the school district toward fulfilling the vision of the board the board has created fostering excellence for every student in the areas of academic skills knowledge citizenship and personal development i shall strive to work together with the district superintendent to lead the school district toward fulfilling the vision the board has created fostering excellence for every student in the areas of academic skills knowledge citizenship and personal development congratulations thank you [Applause] um that's record 5.1 public comment on behalf of the board of education i would like to thank the public for attending tonight's meeting we value the feedback we receive from our residents and encourage everyone to take an active interest

008in their public school system residents interested in 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 comments are 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 follow-up a member of the administration will reach out through the contact information provided on the comment card thank you very much michelle traeger is okay by stan can you hear me thanks dramatic for effect right okay so my

009name is michelle trager i have students in elementary junior high high school special ed dl and gifted um i've taught to the board but not quite a few months not since mr schroeder and mr culture were seated thank you um so i wanted to talk about fasd which is what i've talked about before fetal alcohol spectrum disorder and i also want to talk about some isbe updates that you might not be aware of and i did indicate on my comment card that my comments do require feedback from the board so um in december i was invited to testify in front of the illinois state senate at the children's behavioral and mental health committee hearing i testified for 20 minutes it was a three and a half hour hearing and it was about the lack of

010mental health resources for our students with the highest needs and most severe disabilities and isbe's total abdication of responsibility to those students i further made public comment at the state board of ed meetings in december and january now you may not be aware that isbe has made some rule changes as the result of myself and other parents talking about the struggles that their own families have had left on their own because you might think ispe is a resource they've kind of screwed you guys over and other local school districts and they're not providing the resources that this district in honest good faith tries to provide for the students that need it so they're just now making those rule changes in march i spoke at governor pritzker's press conference where he announced a new children's behavioral

011health transformation initiative and i can send you the link to that press conference if you would like it i'm hopeful guardedly that some real change comes out of that to help the families who most need it here in the state of illinois but you guys need to be aware of this because someone has to hold them accountable it's the head of isve it's the head of dcfs it's the head of dhs it's the head of idj it's the head of hfs and idph and if you need me to tell you what all those stand for i can email you those as well i would like to talk to you about the fact that april is autism awareness month fasd is at least twice as prevalent as autism last month was national birth defects recognition and

012specifically on march 21st it was down syndrome day because of the 21st chromosome i would like to tell you that fasd is 35 times more prevalent than down syndrome i would like to ask this district to please put on the calendar that september is national fasd awareness month specifically september 9th the ninth day of the ninth month to symbolize the nine months of pregnancy when no amount of alcohol is safe to consume i would also like to ask this district to please commit to training our educators not just our special ed not just our counselors not just our social workers on fasd informed practices fortunately these often overlap with trauma-informed practices however to be truly trauma-informed we don't just conduct groups with traditional behavioral therapy we have to be informed i'm sorry time's up can

013i just finish that please we have to be informed about the changes to the brain thank you very much wayne harshberger good evening wayne hershberger i have one remaining daughter in this district and i'm counting the days until she's gone back in november of 2019 she had an anxiety attack that was not handled well that was at trauber junior high in august she had another anxiety attack that was not handled well this time at ohs by a social worker okay social worker the next time it happened was during her pe class where the teacher should have known about a 504. so why am i here tonight why am i here i've been communicating with mr miller there's formal documentation to mr miller i talked to him in december i've talked to him again in february

014i still don't have a response to my formal complaint from december and my my request was i've now seen three anxiety attacks not handled well by members and staff of this district and i'm now seeing a pattern in behavior so my last request was an investigation into dr sparlin and his executive directors and how they're handling the training of staff when you don't handle an anxiety attack correctly you actually make it worse okay so i'm the dad i don't always know how to deal with anxiety attack i give it off to my wife or my son so when staff members in these buildings don't approach a student in an anxiety attack correctly you actually make it worse and i'm tired of it i've gone through due process i'm not getting the response i'm here tonight

015this is your last chance before i seek a lawyer and i will have to bring this up with an attorney if i do not get the response i expect thank you 6.1 board member comments um this saturday this is update on the saturday the 308 panthers and wolves writers traveled to yorkville high school to attend the southwest prairie conference literary festival at the literary festival students attended young adult author jeff zentner's keynote speech various workshops and writing industry professionals an open mic of slam poetry and an award ceremony oswego high and osceola students accounted for 56 of the awards given to the 12 schools in the conference uh congratulations to our students and staff and representing district 308 in excellent fashion [Applause] [Music] all right uh gear it forwards we're happy to announce that the

016students of the 2 3 3 8 gear at forward are the undefeated winners of the 2022 midwest regional so the midwest regional is the oldest in the first robotics and frequently has teams from around the world in first robotics i read that wrong sorry this year there were 47 teams from three countries and states all around the midwest included in those were 47 teams were two hall of fame teams and at least five other teams who are also current world qualifiers uh despite the quality of challengers two three three eight did not lose a single match and won a perfect 16-0-0 this is the first time in our program's history that the team has will complete will compete bless you at the world competition holding the honors of both dedication to outreach and inclusion and

017robot excellence in the same season um congratulations to the students and the staff and we wish you the best in houston at the world championship next week in texas so amazing um and teresa posted a really cool video and it's on the sd 308 home page i think there's a contest to vote in too there's a contest to vote in it too i think there is [Music] kelly tell them to vote for it for our team tell them to vote for our team yeah vote for chuck chuck is the name of the robot right vote for chuck i just have something very short to share that um on the evening of april 7th i was able along with some of our administrators and mr gatewood to watch the amplified presentation at ohs i wasn't really

018sure what to expect going in but i was simply blown away the vulnerability displayed by our students and supported by our staff was not only brave but gripping i urge everyone to view the replay i think that is on our website teresa yes yes and i want to thank each and every one of those students and staff members and let them know that i see them and i thank you for leading the way and amplifying student voice it was great i'm sorry [Applause] i won't repeat everything that she said but it was one quote that stood out to me and it was a quote on stereotype it said the problems with stereotype is not that that they are untrue but they are incomplete they make one story become the only story and so i thought

019that it was just phenomenal a phenomenal opportunity by dr waller and team to give the um all of the students a chance to opportun a chance to amplify their voices so it was it was powerful please take the time book all right 6.2 super attendance report well good evening board i'd like to start out my report on congratulating two oswegoy students for being named finalist in national merit scholarship corporation competition arya bothra and ziyad khan were both provided with a certificate of merit for achieving this level so congratulations to both aryav and zayed on this wonderful achievement so give them a round of applause it's a big deal at os board of education meeting i focused my comments around our five-year financial projections and the progress we've made regarding our financial outlook tonight i'd like

020to speak to student voice in our strategic plan in vision 308 under support for student learning amplifying student voice is one of our goals so last night thursday night i also attended the amplify event amplify the amplify the coalition is a group of students who have come together to share their lived experiences dr waller and staff did a phenomenal job of creating a safe space to cultiva cultivate and amplify student voice that need to be heard as was just mentioned very powerful messages were shared and as someone in the audience i left uh with a sense of pride on what and what's happening within our district and but with that said listening to the students lived experiences but not only their lived experiences in school but their experiences outside of school and within our community

021that reminded me that there's still much work to be done as educators we're in a business of educating students we need to listen to what our students are saying take action to create the culture and atmosphere within our schools to ensure that students and staff feel safe and that they are cared for and to provide them the educational experience that they all deserve the purpose and the goal of the amplify event was to make student voice heard and throughout the evening students as well as staff express expressed their experiences from many lenses they spoke about homophobic language microaggressions they shared how their cultural experiences are many times not acknowledged due to our traditions in public schools and society at large they spoke about their transgendered and their struggles that they face not only in school

022but also their own experiences with their families as they try to navigate sharing who they are we heard from students on their experiences growing up black in areas where the majority aren't and we heard we heard from students who have had to deal with racism regarding the religions how they dress and sometimes how they've been treated in district 308 through our diversity equity and inclusion efforts we're making progress toward educating all students and staff in the topics i just shared we have created the positions of student ambassadors to the board of education to allow for student voice to be included in decisions that the board makes we have surveyed our students asking for feedback in areas we need to address and to improve upon as a school district we have a board equity committee that

023is looking at policy to ensure that our policies are fair just and equitable and we're providing professional development looking at our curriculum adoptions through an equity lens to ensure that our curriculum and materials we use in our schools are reflective of our student population and include the accomplishment and contributions from people of all walks of life so that when our students are in history that they see themselves in that history and can envision themselves as individuals that not only have contributed but also people who are able to be the change that we're all striving for so when i started my comments this evening i you know i started that amplify was a very proud i should say a very powerful event that i was very proud of this is just one example of what we're

024doing to provide a safe place for student voice here in district 308 there are many types of events and opportunities that occur throughout our district tomorrow night april 12th the black student alliance will be presenting our black excellent excellent show right here at oehs the performing arts center at 6 p.m and i say to any of the students or anyone that's here this evening or anyone who's watching at home these types of events happen on a regular basis in school district 308 we have some wonderful performances across the school district that happened throughout the year and i highly encourage the students parents and community to come out and hear what's here what's going on here at 308 because a lot of great stuff is happening i apologize for being long-winded in my comments but uh

025i thought it was very appropriate to say so thank you [Applause] 6.3 student ambassador reports so much shorter comment tonight just uh update that uh dr jessica and dr waller had a chance to meet with department chairs of the connecticut wellness departments um to discuss the process uh topics and glows and growth within the mutual ground program uh dr bojasic is working with mutual ground to also determine glows and grows from their perspective um dr sprawling and dr waller their next step is to meet with uh dr kincaid to discuss the action plan and then meet with the high school principals and we'll go from there on our next steps thank you all right on to our presentations item 7.1 is a presentation on talk and the bionic program tonight we have uh wendy mann

026and colleen prado from ohs and kathy ingam ingamunson and tiffany morelli from oe so we thank them for being here this evening and if you're ready you can come on up to the microphone and like i said when you're ready go ahead and start your presentation well good evening everyone i'm tiffany morelli i'm one of the school counselors here at ostwego east this is this is isaac mccumber i'm sam mendoza and i'm kathy munson one of the social workers um so first of all we just want to thank all of you for allowing not only us but oh to be here and to share what our program is the benefits of it and just hear from some student voices about how it's impacted them so you can see talk stands for teens activating a language

027of kindness and these are just some things we're going to go over really quickly our mission kind of the timeline and then hear from our coordinators here oops sorry do you want to do that for me actually thank you so talk started here at oe actually in 2004 so it's been around since we opened our doors and really the main mission of it is to help students connect with other populations in our school of 3 500 100 students and just get to know them better build relationships that they probably never would encounter in a normal school day and we also help students kind of build talk about building a positive climate spreading kindness and just you know activating that language throughout probably one of the highlights of the day this is a slide that shows

028our speaker eddie um i always say slaughter he has been been a key figure with talks since we opened it in 2004 when it first started here and you know he is a former ncaa all-american runner and he really brings a lot of his personal stories back some really funny and engaging stories when he was a runner about resiliency you know pushing through obstacles and things like that but one of you know the best ways that he gets the kids to really engage in what the day will look like um because he kind of starts our first two hours and he gets kids up you know in groups competing against other groups which really gets everybody up and kind of running around the pack at the auditorium he uses a lot of you know music

029and different ways to get the kids up and engaged even a lot of our boys are up dancing by the end this kind of highlights at the end when he really shares a very moving story about at one of his presentations that he was traveling around at another state and it was one of the fathers who lost a son um in the sandy hook tragedy came up to him and really connected with him and really gave a part of the story that he shares with our students that is usually there's not a dry eye left you know in out of the group it's very very moving one of the other things you know from that that he really teaches the students is that you know no matter what obstacles come our way that we have

030within ourselves the ability to you know channel positivity not only with ourselves but really with everyone that we encounter we've talked about using different speakers over the years because you're probably thinking my gosh he's still with you that long we did try a different speaker two years ago um for one of our two we do two each year um but the feedback from the students you know keeps coming back to how powerful his message is and we were chatting earlier because some of the students you know participate first as um as a participant then they might be a leader and then a coordinator so they've seen the presentation three times but what's beautiful about it is one of the girls today said i always take something different away you know from his um messages and

031his presentation because he does mix it up a little bit each time so he i can't say enough about how much he helps to impact our students really quickly just about kind of our timeline what it looks like in a traditional semester we do run two events a year this year we just did one but you know we start in the summer we start preparing looking at surveys and feedback from the former event figuring out maybe what we might want to change or implement in september we recruit our leaders and our coordinators who actually really run the whole day of talk we decide on those leaders and trainers our coordinators and start training them in october and then we have our event in november the next one okay um so i think this is isaac

032you're saying all right so uh just some things how like talk has it uh impacted me it showed me a lot how to like you know take responsibility towards myself like all my actions and everything and um you know like what i learned from talk like it looks all good you know like on paper and everything um but to some students didn't really strike them because some students you know when they walked into it they thought oh it's gonna be like an emotional thing or you know something like it might not be for me but it was what was really cool about it for me was that i sort of stumbled in on the talk right i was just a sophomore kid didn't really know much didn't really know many people i had my own

033group of friends but um when i walked in it was by one girl who showed me hey let's try this thing talk you know it's really cool event um think it might you know impact us so i went to it um you know the beginning of the day all good we had a lot of fun games we heard from eddie the speaker which really got us all engaged um after i heard from eddie you know everyone started you know sharing all their stories and then that's where you really learn like you have a lot in common with people that you wouldn't really think you would and like the type of people that came which is really cool is that it wasn't discriminatory it wasn't like some a certain people could come you had to be

034athletic you had to be known like it was people from all social hierarchies of high school that came in to talk um which is really cool for me because i got to meet a lot of new people who i wouldn't normally meet you know what i mean um so i just really thought that was you know a really cool event i really recommend it to a lot more people because like it's it's impacted me and it's made me who i am today so thank you awesome so i'm sam mendoza i'm a coordinator as well this is just a quote from one of our participants that they just felt like they could be themselves at talk it's a lot of people walk in to talk thinking that it's like oh i can get out of school

035for a day i get some pizza and it's like a really chill thing but like i know i always had a stigma about talk i was like no that's for people with problems like you know if you're insecure and stuff you you go to talk and you do your thing but then one day a teacher emailed me saying oh i think you'd be great for this for this talk program and you should apply and i did just because i felt like i had to and i'm so grateful that i did because it's so much more than that i feel like we all walk around like high school thinking like oh they're better than me or they're cooler than me i like their shoes it's always like you're kind of down on yourself without anyone really

036like doing anything specific to you and so through talk you kind of learn like we're all human and we all really face like have struggles and so you get to hear from other people about their struggles and you realize that you're more alike than you think and so i think that's a really great thing because it's like a domino effect that starts you're like oh i didn't know this person in my class before i saw them i talk and i saw that they have anxiety as well and then you just do that to the next person who didn't go to talk but it's like a domino effect you just keep spreading that kindness to everyone and then it goes around the whole school and that's why i think talk's such a great program like only

037one person in the classroom has to go to it but the impact is almost immediate you can see it like in every classroom afterwards everyone's just kinder to each other and it's more like a community thing than anything [Applause] that was a lot of great information that we shared we're just going to leave you with actually the quote that our coordinators came up with for our t-shirts for this year and it's just one act of kindness can change the world so we look forward to continuing this tradition at oe and just seeing how much better we can improve it each year so thank you for your [Music] [Applause] time all right we're not going to hear from ohs bionic thank you board for having us tonight uh i would like to say our presentation's a

038little long but i feel like it's very important to understand what our program is um i would like to give a big round of applause to our three sponsors here miss mon this is brettel and mrs i'll now hand it over to delaney to talk about bionic hi my name is delaney holman and i've had the pleasure of speaking with and reaching out to multiple of you we would like to first and foremost thank you for inviting us and being willing to hear from us the students to be specific as our teacher sponsors miss mohn ms predl and ms ziefert thought it was important for the student body to speak on the impact bionic talk and hike have had we're here with oe to discuss our two talk programs yes they have the same name

039but there are two completely different programs but it is important to note that we are here today to recognize that we work towards a common goal talk is only and although we're here to talk about talk talk is only a sliver of what we do and although you cannot talk you cannot talk about talk without talking about what's on the underneath you cannot talk about the umbrella which is bionic without talking what is talking about what is underneath the umbrella like talk and hike hi everyone my name is ethan rhodes i am one of the board members that you see up here representing bionic you're going to hear the word bionic a lot in our presentation so i might as well explain it to you now it stands for believe it or not i care

040it is a mission led by teachers but ran by students mr dr sparlin mentioned earlier that his agenda plan that we want to hear the voices and become the community that the students and the people in oswego want to be that is what bionic is here for that are the programs from any age from 5th grade to 12th grade to after college to before you even walk through the doors of st 308 there is always the possibility to become the person that you want to see in your community now there's a lot of programs and we're going to go over them a little bit but the whole point is that through kindness every day holds the possibility of change hey hey board i'm christian i'm also another board member that's representing bionic tonight um bionic

041is a club at oswego high school that runs talk as well as hike as well as path due to time we will not talk about path but we'll talk mainly about hike and talk so bionic does so much more we fundraise for all of our programs and our club ourselves bionic is fully immersed in the community as when we are not fundraising for ourselves we are fundraising for people in need such as our giving tree which you can see pictures of which provides families and needs with essential gifts and financial support around the holiday times bionic also trains all of our student mentors for programs people to people come to bionic for talk hike and pat but end up staying for bionic because all of the friends and they have made and the community that

042they are now proud of to hear our story i'll pass it over to abby hi everybody i'm abby um i just wanted to say that bionic has been a safe a safe space for me and made my high school experience more enjoyable i have watched my older sister flourish from a shy and introverted freshman into a confident and up and coming educator through her involvement in bionic bionic also gave my sister a support system and the power to become my brother and i's main caretaker when my mother passed when my siblings and i struggled with and endured the loss of my mother due to colon cancer just earlier this year we found a home in bionic people we could lean on financial support through giving trees in a forever family i know when i leave

043high school my brother will be taken care of through bionic and flourish in the same way my sister and i have the pro the program talk was especially helpful for me when i was in an abusive relationship and offered me a safe space to share my struggles and get help to to discuss more about talk here's christian so as you can see talk is a sel program here at ohs it provides great seo and is an all-day program where we invite as many kids to our main gym as possible as an inspiring student mentor led with full of games and get to know use as well as taking time in our day to spread the message of talk as we as we spend the spread the message there is also there's one main message that

044we like to spread it's that you're not alone everyone has a struggle but you're not alone we run activities that break down stereotypes as dr sparlin says and give students the opportunity to talk freely about their troubles and challenge in life and for in schools for example our talk program has been is going to be running april 21st uh at ohs and will have a wonderful opportunity to bring back manuka high school uh staff as long as along with their 40 students that they are bringing along for their talk program we'll also have three to five administrators from valley view take a look at our program as well as they look to implement it in their district we would like to say that we also have seven different districts come to our talk training to

045implement it in their districts passing it over to delaney to hear a talk story both christian and i's older brothers were on the board of bionic when they were seniors we both saw this as a legacy when entering oswego high school and we both have had the opportunity to be on the board of bionic as seniors as well as a freshman i fell in love with bionic at talk talk showed me what a few kind words could do and inspired me to stick with it and strive to make ohs and our district a better place at talk i found family community and purpose through talk i learned leadership as as a sophomore when i was elected to train other students beca to be a mentor to others and talk as well i and a sense

046of community so much so i will graduate with over 450 community service hours this year more than half of which i've done for bionic talk talk training and being able to paint a mural for talk to learn more i'm going to pass it over to abby about hike hike is a day where we bring our trained students together to be role models for 5th graders we go to elementary schools to run the hike program our hike program shares a message on the power of words and how to stop bullying our students provide friendship with the elementary students as well as are trained to identify and stop bullying at the source while ensuring all children are involved and shown a day of fun and positivity and then ethan is going to talk about his impact that

047hike made on hi everyone um on the previous slide that you saw was implemented seven years ago well i'm a senior now so that makes me fifth grade when we started the hike program i'm proud to say that i've seen this from the beginning and now i've seen myself become a hike mentor i remember in middle school growing up and thinking that i could not talk to anyone i was shy i did theater and i would repeatedly get bullied on a daily basis i would go to high school scared for my life wondering what is going to happen everyone says and any musical from disney channel will always tell you that it's a scary place but there was something waiting for me on the other side of those doors and that was bionic i got

048to join the hike program and i met a great mentor named jet he was a senior and he showed me that by using my abilities to really use my voice i can lead people and show them that through kindness we don't have to live like that we don't have to live in those years where we feel like we are nothing where we feel like we can't reach out there are so many kids throughout middle school and starting in elementary school and they have so many questions about themselves and they don't know how to be the person they really want to be again going back to dr sparlin and then thursday night this whole agenda is meant to show people that they can be who they actually want to be that they can live the lives

049they want to have and they can have the culture and the experience that they deserve i'm glad to say that now being a board member and a hike leader that i get to go to those fifth graders and i cannot explain to you the the emotion you read off their face the smiles that you get from someone telling them that they matter and tomorrow we're going to have a program just like that at home club that all of you are more than welcome to visit you'll get to see those smiling faces light up as people that they thought would never even notice them give them the attention that they deserve show them that there are people in this community that really do care about them and that they can be the people they want to

050be i'm going to pass it back to christian to explain a little more just where you can see everything i would like to thank ethan for his amazing story on how hike has impacted him and to hear more stories and read more about these different life-changing experiences there is a bunch of them on facebook as well as our own website that we have set up so you will get a link to this so go ahead and check out our website i would like to say that if you have read all of this you can see it everywhere on our social media we're flourishing with positivity every single day i'd like to say that you are all welcome to any of our events that we run we have a hike that is being ran tomorrow like

051ethan said at home club elementary school as well as we have a talk being ran april 21st so if you would like to get more information on on that you can email any of us or you can email our sponsors as well if you have any questions regarding the club please feel free to reach out to any of us and our wonderful sponsors as we have uh here so these are our emails so feel free to reach out again i would like to thank all of you guys to on behalf of bionic uh for hearing us out i hope you have a wonderful evening i think our work is done here i got chills i said i think our work is done here anybody have any thoughts or comments or questions for the groups i

052i was just going to say if if you can take a full day and spend in the program i had the opportunity to take a full day at both high schools a few years ago and they are it's a transformational experience it is a process and when you go through the activities that the students uh put on you realize uh you're not alone and there's a lot of people dealing with the same types of things that you are and it's very powerful so keep up the good work very proud of you great job i will be attending at hunt club tomorrow i'm a hunt club cougar [Music] but um i also wanted to share just a personal experience with delaney as everybody knows being on the board has been a little emotional and at times

053a little bit toxic this year with political environment that's going on and let's just say that delaney sent the right email at the right time and uh reached out and it really hit home that day so from the bottom of my heart i she can read you my ridiculous email um but it was you can't imagine that the impact that you made so thank you very much [Music] i i just wanted to say thank you also some of us um believe it or not at one point were younger [Laughter] it or not and um some of us are um you know survivors of losing people when we were in your shoes and so to see something like this for those of us who are is tremendously uh impactful to say the least so from the

054bottom of my heart from uh people that uh or from somebody that was dear to me that i remember i say thank you thank you yeah i've been i've watched talk from its infancy so i was employed at ohs when i was invited to attend talk and just i so impressed with the skill level of the um the trained students and then their abilities to get students to open up about all sorts of things and so we know that when students lead other students follow and i'm just so impressed with both of your programs and the things that you're doing within it um i mean obviously you know social emotional is a really important aspect of of where we want to focus our attention as a board and you know our mental health and um

055you know just our social emotional health and the safety of all of our students is so important and so the work that you're you are doing i commend you for it and keep keep up the good work and we support you and um you know i hope that our administration and i'm sure they are are supporting you in every way that you need and so we are here for you so thank you very much i was i was trying to my my son um attended talk this year okay the impact of what you all do thank you how it affects all of us and how it affects families thank you all right okay item 7.2 is a presentation from our executive director of human resources ken miller and this year's progress and the priorities yeah

056you guys do not have to stay for this yeah [Laughter] [Music] [Laughter] the other districts are checking them out you can really see it that's crazy that's awesome very tough like it's it's contagious you all people are amazing outstanding right now you got to follow that yes that's a that's a tough act to follow again i don't know tough act to follow it really is to say the least no it's it's amazing to hear what these uh students are capable of and uh with that said thank you dr sparlin uh it's a privilege to be able to sit here this evening especially after the presentation that just occurred to be able to talk about the role of human resources in the envision 308 plan so far this year as there is no specific quadrant to

057human resources tonight we are going to be focusing on the human resource involvement in three key areas which include recruiting and retaining a high quality and diverse staff maintaining a balanced budget and exploring ways to increase private and grant funding now the goals set forth in these areas in vision 308 are the discretionary turnover which excludes retirements promotions or dismissals will be reduced by 10 percent compared to 2021 in all categories that the demographics of newly hired teachers and administrators will reflect the demographics of those awarded bachelors or master's degrees in education at illinois institutions of higher learning that our five-year balanced budget projections would remain favorable and that we're adopting balanced budgets and that we're increasing our revenue from private and grant funding and i'd like to take a moment to go over these

058areas in a bit more detail when we're looking at recruiting retaining a high quality and diverse staff this slide illustrates the discretionary turnover that occurred at during and at the end of the 2021 school year in an effort and where we're at thus far for 2122 now the numbers are different because again we there is a degree of seasonality associated with turnover and a lot of it does occur during the summer but um there are many areas where we have made progress and in order for us to be able to help address the impacts of turnover some of the things that the human resources department has done was to negotiate retention oriented mous with the ota and with the oespa we've also revised our exit interview protocol and we've also re restructured the distribution of

059some work tasks to be able to reach this from a recruitment perspective this next slide shows the percentage of teachers and administrators that have been hired from different demographic categories and the percentage of bachelor's and master's degrees awarded in 2021 from illinois colleges and universities in parentheses it's important to highlight for example that candidates that identify as african american received six percent of the bachelor's degrees and slightly more than eight percent of the master's degrees in education in 2021 and 4.35 of our teachers and more than 28 and a half percent of our administrators hired this year identify as african-american i won't go through and read the rest of these but it is important to note that after two years of job fairs having been postponed shifted to virtual and the need to focus on

060less traditional means of recruiting this year has represented an opportunity to hit reset with respect to how we approach job fairs to this end we're going to be focusing our time energy and efforts on attending colleges and universities that are producing high quality graduates which reflect the diversity found within our community case in point is the job fair that we'll be attending at the university of illinois at chicago and it's important to note that because more than 50 percent of the bachelor's degrees awarded in education last year went to candidates of color according to the illinois board of higher education and for next year we will be broadening our scope to look for opportunities such as partnering with historically black colleges and universities so that way we are intentional and strategic with our efforts with

061respect to maintaining a balanced budget each year so far for 2122 we finish negotiations both with the oespa and the ocma on contracts that control long-term cost cost growth and also enhance our flexibility to reassign staff and also we've implemented medical insurance plan design changes that enhance the quality of our benefits while avoiding any year over year cost increase and it's important to note that we have not had to raise employee contributions for medical insurance now for five consecutive calendar years and with all else being equal employees who have medical dental and vision insurance will have had less money taken out of their march 30th 2022 paycheck for benefits than on their march 30 2017 paychecks in regards to exploring ways to increase private and grant funding the human resources department in conjunction with our

062benefit partners and consultants that locked in have worked on a partnership with rush medical for this year to provide our employees with a one-of-a-kind benefit that you will not get at any other public employer in the state of illinois the way that this partnership works is that any district 308 employee who is on our ppo or a high deductible plan or their covered dependents can submit for reimbursement of 100 of their out-of-pocket expenses for non-emergency care received at any one of the thousands of rush affiliated providers in the region in exchange for waiving the employee cost sharing the district does receive a financial contribution which reflects a discount above and beyond the already discounted blue cross blue shield rates that exist so for fiscal year 2022 this partnership has generated over 261 thousand dollars in

063revenue for the district and is truly a win-win-win for rush the district and ultimately our employees so looking forward how will we measure success a year from now and when i have the privilege of standing before the or sitting in this case before the board of education next march to provide the progress update you will see that we've updated our onboarding programs for all categories that we've identified high quality and diverse teacher preparation programs to partner with and that there are procedures in place to be able to prioritize student teaching placements from those schools and also that we've updated our performance evaluations for the oespa ocma and non-bargaining support staff with respect to maintaining a balanced budget each year we um we will be we will have updated our life and disability policies to reflect

064long-term cost controls when these policies were last renewed in calendar year 2019 the district was able to avoid several hundred thousand dollars in costs and we're looking forward to being able to drive a hard bargain with our providers for the 20 for the 22 23 uh calendar year and beyond we will all also successfully negotiated a collective bargaining agreement with our partners in the as we go transportation association with respect to exploring ways to increase private and grant funding we will continue to work collaboratively with rush medical to be able to strengthen this one-of-a-kind community partnership while also surveying the landscape for partnerships in other areas that can benefit our employees the district and our community partners so with that said that concludes my presentation and are there any questions from the board of education

065yeah i um that rush plan is i kind of want to just call it out just for the community it's huge yeah i mean you basically can get everything back and and it sounds like it's a win-win it's a win for rush obviously because they're getting more more customers more revenue and we're getting revenue do you know what a what utilization um like uh you know as a percentage of the people that are utilizing i know that he'd be able to say it's like well that's just a percentage that's not uh um that's something that i can uh work with our uh work with our consultants on and i'd love to be able to provide dr sparling with more information yeah because if we can grow that i mean everybody wins with that and um

066yeah just like it's a great program and to your point this is one of those opportunities where the incentives are aligned so that way if anyone benefits everyone benefits right and to your point it's free after mail and rebate so to speak yeah i mean and it's yeah even the deductible um you know it's it's a great great program so i mean i i i when i heard about that i was um impressed so very nice a very nice program well and ken had worked really hard on that when he'd started it a couple years ago and this is very similar to what they give their own employees for the employee benefit for our employees which is just kind of an extra bonus on top of the mail and rebate aspect of things that we

067can provide for our employees not only maintained costs of premiums but lower costs of out-of-pocket expenses yeah it's it's giving everybody a raise if everybody would take advantage of it yeah i'd love to see that's why i went i i want more people to hear about it i just had one question in regards to the strategy for 2023 it says you know under the recruit and retain high qualified and diverse staff um what other criteria have you considered in regards to [Music] retention and i see that it's pay and recruiting but i'm just trying to figure out is there are there any environmental factors that's impacting morale or uh the culture of or any efforts or strategies in regards to the culture of the the the teachers the staff the administration that will also be

068included in your in your strategy well i think that the ongoing impacts of the kova 19 pandemic have had an impact across the board and this is a challenging time to be in public education but with that said the opportunities for us to be able to really make an impact on student lives have never been greater so to that end that is one thing that i if i were to if i were to point out or highlight it would be that but we are continually looking at exit interview survey data and looking at those qualitative factors that can help to be able to inform our strategy going forward got it so we've been thinking from a proactive standpoint because it may even be an opportunity for us to look even before the exit interview is

069just a recommendation like a stay interview it could it could be stay but i'm even thinking about strategies that you know globally speaking if we benchmarked against other districts organizations or whatever it may be what other benefits or um what else can we do as a staff as a board to just to make three continue to make 308 a great place to work because obviously many of our staff and teachers are remaining here so what else can we do it's just it's a not a hypothetical question because i think we really should do something but it's just a question can i peggy back off of that um the most as ken knows i'm an hr practitioner so this is pretty near and dear to my heart this is a human resource update and like i

070kind of lost the human part of it for me um so i was just scribbling some notes i would like to see some culture goals in there such as to maintain a positive value-based work environment revamp the employee experience for substitutes and tas feedback loop um increase evaluations from you know increase evaluations from proficient to excellent boost our district culture via our district values i would like to see some of the people-ness in in these updates in the in the envision 308 plan so that we start to address um culture and then at the building level climate so i would i wholeheartedly um agree with eugene and then on the back page i just really had a question more than anything it says what does success look like in 2026 under maintain a balanced budget

071maintaining regular updates in communication i guess i don't understand how that is success that's kind of what we expect but what is what does it look like what is that what does maintaining a balanced budget look like for us via the human resource lens so i would just like to see that um updated a little bit if everyone agrees but ken doesn't do that we do that all that what she's asking for we do the budget right i mean like the peopley part i appreciate but like i i think that has to come more from the board to sparlin to filter down i'm sorry i can't i couldn't i think it i think it comes from the board like i totally i totally agree when we set our expectations i just i i totally agree

072but we also know that there are some things that are beyond our control kovid uh the political environment that seems like there's a little bit of attack on education public education right now those things create fear and uncertainty and there's very little we can do but if we can insulate our district and our culture then i think i think we're underestimate underestimating the impact of culture on our bottom line a strong culture actually increases your net income by roughly 765 percent and so if that's what it can over a 10-year period excuse me so if that's what it can do to positively impact it imagine what it's doing to negatively impact it so i just i would really like to see just some more um options around that and ali's right it starts from the

073top down jen can you send me your resource on the figures on that yes i i that's actually what my master's was in so yeah i'd like to have the resources yes of course so we know that like staff is like your best advertisement right so when they're happy they're going to sleep positively and they're going to then encourage others possibly you know send in applications etc etc so i know that you know their perceptions about their work place can positively you know can support these efforts or hinder them right hinder our culture what we how we see our culture and so i just wanted to kind of say maybe those some of those types of things should be included in in our efforts you know making sure that our employees are happy and that

074we know they are like getting that feedback that we need and i think that could help and regardless i do have one question do you um i mean looking at the um the shortage that is really hitting at this point everybody um in some areas what what um i see your indicators for success a year from now and i see what a success looked like in 2026 but i am curious um what impact you envision us as far as having to overcome uh when it comes to the shortage and what uh how you see us navigating through that um i mean there's simply just not enough people coming out of these programs in some in some of our areas that we really need people coming out of programs for and i think to that point

075this is a state issue and more specifically an illinois state board of education issue and i am pleased to be on measure at some of the flexibility that they have adopted over the past couple of years with respect to honoring through reciprocal agreements teacher preparation programs from other states it used to be when i was working for the state board of education that if you were coming from an out-of-state educator prep program you were given a provisional license you were required to undergo additional coursework and additional there were additional hoops to be able to jump through that made illinois a non-competitive place for people to relocate to i think that with some of the changes that i am glad to have seen from the state that is going to help and i think that we

076do that is going to encourage us to broaden our scope when it comes to recruitment efforts to be able to look at the broader the broader area because now it's a somebody who goes to the university of iowa would be on equal footing from somebody at uiuc when it comes to being able to obtain a professional educator license in the state of illinois that's something that until very recently was not the case did i did i also see something about student teachers can provisionally teach in districts that just came out too yes yes a lot of the the i i have to commend the state board of education for everything that they're doing to be able to increase flexibility and to be able to ensure that we are we have additional avenues and venues to

077be able to recruit high quality educators who may be coming from less traditional or non-traditional means or from less traditional locations like out of state knowing that there's less in the pipeline how i listen i appreciate everything i mean they're doing everything but throwing you know the kitchen sink it if you're following legislation down there they're doing about everything they can i get it but um i'm curious if there's a strain then on building administration if there's a strain you know that's going to come with um mentoring programs if there's there's unforeseen strains that we need to be aware of that we need to communicate um because you know quite frankly when you have less applicants when you have less that are coming through um you know there are strains that i think that people

078don't realize are coming because of those situations and i i'm curious if if you can speak to that or if there's you know there's unforeseen things that we need to be aware of that are coming i would have to say that if it was something that i had the ability to foresee i would have i would be informing dr sparlin and the board of education it's difficult for me to be able to anticipate one thing that i've learned is that change is accelerating and the rate of change is accelerating and it is difficult for us to be able to predict what the future will pretend and i i will have to say the increased flexibility that we're seeing at the statewide level is encouraging and it is my hope that they will continue to improve

079and build upon that to be able to ensure that we have avenues and venues to do right by our students by giving them the workforce they deserve i have two very short answer questions i hope that i just wanted to kind of follow up on one one of your um markers for success this year looked like a change in the exit interview revision process can you explain what that means to you well one of the things that we we did is we redesigned the exit interview survey in our process for administering that um the last time it had been changed i want to say it was sometime in the early 20 teens i don't know if that's an appropriate save because we're in the 2020s now or what have you but it close close to

08010 years and um and in order for us to stay relevant to stay timely and to be able to make sure that we're getting the feedback that we need we've redesigned that to be able to um to drill down a little bit deeper in some of the different areas so so we're using internal sources still for this and i maybe i'm just thinking more granularly about this but are we still sending out just basically an email are we um reaching out actively how does what does that look like here um we are we're approaching it through multiple means we're reaching out um through email we are also reaching out uh to schedule opportunities for individuals to be able to to speak with a member of the hr administrative team as well we're trying to broaden

081our scope to be able to drive response rates that can help to deliver actionable results thank you my last question is about the hard to fill spots i know in the past we have been looking at a few different specific subject areas where we've had hard to fill positions family consumer science rings a bell some of our dual language positions maybe at other grade levels um or maybe tas in in our dbe program can you share what we're currently doing to make those hard to fill spots less hard to fill the areas that are the hardest to fill again our areas are those highly specialized areas specifically with respect to related services when we're looking at our school psychologists our social workers our speech and language pathologists that is one of the areas that uh

082that the labor market is is close to being broken on um additionally have we seen some issues with hard to fill positions in what used to be referred to back in the day as the type 10 or the k-12 grade range endorsements whether that's industrial technology whether that is family and consumer science some of the foreign languages for example where we've had where we've had some some difficulty but it has not been to the scope or to the degree with the related service providers so related services is one key area that you're looking at some concern with um i heard you say the k-12 type 10 whatever those words are what that sounds like to me is as we're trying to expand career and technical education programs we might not be able to find people

083to teach them that's not necessarily with respect to career and technical education um the industrial education endorsement is but one of many ways to be able to teach career and technical education but i'm using that to point out broadly speaking that individuals that are going into the the specialized teaching areas where you've got a very narrow focus over a very broad grade range those are the areas where we are seeing some difficulty um more more acutely than others but that pales in comparison to what we're seeing when it comes to those related service providers related services i'm hearing that from you several times here i i've picked up that that might be something we'll want to look at all right thank you for that ken i appreciate it if i could add something um earlier

084you mentioned uh or the giving students the quality education they need when it pertains to recruiting retaining high quality and diverse staff could you maybe touch on what kind of impact it has on the student body the positive impact it has on the student body to have this kind of consistency and and diversity in our staff in our district well i think that with respect to to quality um we're looking at areas we're analyzing performance evaluation data we're looking at where we're sourcing those high quality those those pools of high quality labor from and trying to be very intentional and strategic with um with where we are diverting or diverting or devoting i should say our efforts too um i think that it's one it's important to be able to make sure that we have

085a workforce that represents the demographics of the community that we serve and that we're um but that we're also looking at ways to be able to do that that maximize the impact through having high quality educators who are trained who have a commitment to diversity equity and inclusion and that are um that are going to go the extra mile to be able to meet any student whether i can get them where they need to be now i'd like to throw that question back at you guys yeah i was just gonna say can what does it mean to you yeah i think i mean you kind of touch on it i mean having um staff in a building that students i mean they see themselves in our in our school and they see i mean it

086kind of talks to uh you know talk and bionic too is the fact that you see people who've had maybe the same life experiences as you um that you didn't previously see in your in your school district um familiar faces when it when it comes to you know retaining the hype retaining the staff um it really helps i know for me and and many other students uh the fact that when we see ourselves represented in school no matter you know however you want to classify you know diversity whatever you know whatever uh classification classification you want to give that seeing ourselves really kind of motivates us to be active in school be you know participatory in a plethora of things that you can do at each of our high schools so yeah i was just

087taking notes on this but um i guess this also goes back to our sexual harassment and sexual assault a project that the student advisory committee is working on building that trust with people you believe will understand you best and people you feel safe around and you know we have to account for the fact that there's many different ways that students feel safer on staff um it builds a bond between uh the school and faculty and staff and the students that i don't know maybe colton you might agree you might disagree but i think in some ways has been a little bit that gap has been really present especially recently and i know a lot of students and a lot of staff really want to bridge it you know building a really safe uh communicative learning

088environment is so important because it not only benefits student students academically but it helps them learn because they're focusing on their education they don't feel bogged down by you know those emotional pressures or that feeling of loneliness when you don't have other students to talk to it'd be nice if all students felt that they have a teacher or a different kind of faculty member to talk to for sure thank you guys for sharing that i appreciate it um the growth in achievement faith can is measurable when you have a more diverse staff that's representing your student population is that coupled with good instructional practices and resources and all of those things but yes the the link between uh how safe students feel how welcoming they are i would say the same for staff you know

089the more that you can work and learn in an environment that you can take risks for and feel like you have a sense of belonging achievement and accomplishment just zooms right okay thanks ken for the update yeah nice job thank you thank you thanks again thank you all right 8.0 consent agenda are there any questions on the consent agenda if not can i have a i make a motion to approve all items under consent including 8.1 minutes from the board of education meeting on march 21st 2022 open and closed session and march 23rd 2022 special closed session meeting second miss hamilton mr plogger hi mr gatewood aye ms swanson aye mr ceron aye ms doyle aye ms johnson aye motion passes item 9.1 is information on financial statements does the board have any questions on

090what has been provided not today probably reserve the right to have some leader item 9.2 was an annual informational report on the student rights and responsibilities section of the student handbook val patterson executive director of student services is here to present and ask answer any questions so val i thought we were going to get our staff members out of here earlier i mean it is only 8 37 good evening thank you um i would like to present the rights and responsibilities um summary updates for first reading a little background that was provided to you in the memo but i will state just a few facts from that typically january through march of each year and that occurred this year in 2022 we take the current school year's handbook sometimes called the code and we open

091it up for any legal or procedural review all suggested updates and revisions were reviewed some of the bodies involved in this clearly the board of education's attorney has legal updates for us all building and any district administration can also submit or recommend either a review process or direct suggestions from themselves the board's diversity equity and inclusion committee and the district's parent advisory committee which is within a special meeting of the board's policy and legislative committee also have input the parent advisory committee meeting was held on march 14th you can see in your memo that we did list all the members on the committee and we had an asterisk by any of the members that were present and participated in the review the co-chairs of that committee are jennifer johnson and ali swanson from the board

092i was there serving as an administrative liaison for the committee and of course we are so well represented by ursula studer who does all of our minutes and tracks all those corrections and changes to all the documents and then we had three guests in attendance at that meeting it was dr denise hildebrand to go over the requirements under the special education umbrella maureen lemon was there as board of ed attorney and michael de armand came in and had some recommended changes he went over to talk about with transportation all of these are required by state law i wanted to share that the recommended changes and updates have been incorporated into a draft for you as well as a summary which i also provided a big note all of the spacing paragraphs any of the things

093you see that are outline issues those cannot be finalized until we accept all the changes because it bumps all the spacing around every time you add or delete anything so please don't worry about that we will get that into you know printer ready shape we're really looking for any content revisions or questions that you may have this evening a significant change in the past we had some board policies that were either listed or linked but not clearly throughout i believe we've added up to 40 live board policy links what that means is in grades 6 through 12 students have the electronic rights and responsibilities now provided them on their chromebooks i think it will also bump down into grade 5 beginning next year and that means that as they're looking at that electronic document if

094they're researching a section and there's a board policy that applies they just hover and it takes them to it what's really cool about it is obviously we're linking it to current policies so when policy 7 colon 180 changes again when it comes to the committee as soon as we post it out on the board site it is automatically linked to the updated policy so there could be places we can add more references to policy but i would say under each section we're fairly well covered now that we've really researched and looked for a lot of these policies so i'm happy to say that all the hyperlinks will be checked when all the changes are accepted to make sure they work and they go where they're supposed to but if you saw anything that we didn't

095have linked correctly at any time we can very very quickly fix that so that said i don't want to take anything away from your time to ask questions um and i'll open it up for your your review and i have a place to take some notes here so that i can go back with any ideas or changes or thoughts you may have that we need to address i just have a quick statement that i i believe this was your first year on the policy committee i think second but the first time we were remote so this is the first in person here well it was mine as well and you really took on a large group a very diverse of opinion group and a lot of suggestions and handled it incredibly well and also took

096the opportunity to vet things through the other committees that we have so what happened in those meetings actually took val way outside of her of those meetings and she put in a ton of work so i'm just i'm great i'm very grateful for everything that you did this year thank you thank you i really do appreciate that um without going down the rabbit hole of the dress code yeah okay i was reading it do you do we want to talk about that i was just going to ask the bottom footwear what they thought about this because i i think we've heard a lot from students this last year especially but over the years about dress code and what we put in it versus maybe what we enforce from it and i would like to hear

097your thoughts anya and colton about this if you've had the opportunity to look at if you haven't that's okay i i personally haven't had [Music] a bottom and shoes yeah i i just read through the whole thing because like most of it's in like red now yes i was like when it was like really hard to miss yeah so i was reading through it um honestly like the stuff that that got crossed out like i already know the people who are going to be pretty happy about it it's the people who've had a lot of problems with the dress code already i guess a couple of points that i really liked was just kind of like that like cultural cultural awareness you know the inclusion and like the fact that it's explicitly stating you know

098it's like including these it's not limited to these you know the this is what you know you're allowed to have but not just because we're allowing you to habits because you have a right to have these in a school environment that's kind of like the the vibe i was getting from some of that which is really nice so that's just a couple of the stuff that i saw and most of it you know i think a lot of people i mean there's always going to be people who not will not be satisfied with things and you know that's why there's always like room for improvement but like overall i think these are some really good improvements that i saw read it sometime it's good so the piece that i was interested in that seemed like

099it might be part of what you guys are working on is the concept that that was new to me in here about um specifically stating that students are responsible for managing their personal distractions regarding other stress that's that's new for us um is that something that you have found in the work that you guys have been doing also that has come up yeah especially that it's not someone else's responsibility if you're wearing something um that could distract someone else from learning it's your responsibility to not be distracted not their responsibility not to wear something distracting that's a that's a shift and it's definitely been like i remember one very specific conversation and i think it was the conversation that started or you know student advisory committee's need to have a talking pen because everyone needed

100to talk at the same time it was a really intense conversation but it was like you know if high school's preparing us for the real world in the real world people wear what they want to wear so this is a great time to start teaching people you know like you know it's not it's not their problem they have to be able to wear you know within reason like what they're going to wear that's appropriate for the learning environment and it's your responsibility to not kind of take liberties with whatever they're wearing so i think yeah that was a really big conversation for us so i'm reading this and this has some really good points that i've not seen before in our old dress code so this is pretty exciting and to your point of like

101the shift like you know it's it's a new shift in policy it's it comes along with a shift in our culture you know it's it's something that students they you know we're going to look at that and we're going to like well well yeah you know it's just right it's something that's yeah it's it's our as a as a student body is our own kind of culture in high schools i'm you know everywhere is that just because when it comes to dress it is your responsibility to to manage those kinds of because what i consider distracting is completely different than what somebody else might consider distracting and why have it defined when it might not be either one of those distractions for us so it's it's that shift you were talking about is is it

102comes hand in hand with the ship that shift in our culture thank you but because of that statement going down to point number clothes or it's not a number actually it's under item number eight the new section the last sentence clothing that significantly disrupts the learning environment or could present safety concerns will be addressed and enforced equitably by administration i think that that's um to your point what what some may consider equitably may not be fair just to i think that we need to probably define that i think it's a little too vague because it leaves you know what you're saying on that it'll leave that up to the discretion of every building and every person based on what they believe is or is not and it could it could potentially everything that you just

103said depending on the person who believes it's equitable can deal with it accordingly and i think that we should do you think that's defined i think i think that the administration did give feedback on this saying that dress code if if they were left to identify whether every student in their building especially at the high school level were dressed within a certain parameter every single day would take the entire day there's there's a lot going on there i think for them um equitably meant that um if you know male female all all of the categories in other words whatever they're looking at no matter who in the environment came in with that t-shirt or that thing on it would be the same response so i think they're getting away from trying to decide if straps

104are too thin or not or all of that is gone and it's really about the disruptive piece i did include um you'll see that policy 7160 is linked and really it's it's not too different from student discipline where under student discipline to do exclusionary discipline such as a suspension one has to significantly disrupt the environment or significantly cause some kind of safety concern and i don't know that dress would be all that different the way that it's phrased here i wonder if there's a way to kind of include that portion do you know what i mean like if that's the point because i see what you're saying it could it could that sentence could make it very much like it is now yes that's my point it would it could almost and i i don't

105know how to fix that it's just up for interpretation and so i just whenever you have a policy that's up for interpretation it almost could possibly i don't want to say void the policy but i just think that we should give some consideration to that sentence can we maybe ask administration yeah to come up with a more of a procedure because i think i mean i like i hear what you're saying but i think i get you i think procedurally that's where we're headed not maybe necessarily policy only in that this is communication to the students about what we expect from them so even the procedure it's i think it might be fair for them to know what could happen and what constitutes that like if you clear a classroom because of what you're wearing

106i can't listen we're not going to go i can't even think of anything but um there's a level of of disruption that's clearly definable and then one that could be more subjective and i think that's what i'm hearing and if it's like a rubric kind of procedure but shouldn't we my concern is more for the male teachers of the world so if the administration got together and they created a procedure for equitable enforcement regarding student appearance then that would be our administrators primarily secondary that would get together and say if we were going to go across our buildings what is it we see every day that we would be addressing and what is it that would be not a big deal if you will well because that will change it will change a lot okay

107that's about the i mean yeah that's i see what you're saying you have different grade levels and you have all the different and disruption we deal with it all the time in in student discipline where i may say what's the disruption well two kids came down and complained that's not a significant disruption but 20 parents kept their kids home from school and 50 kids reported it and two teachers said i couldn't even teach today there you go there's like a difference in levels of disruption and i think they're pretty good with understanding disruption in that other way so i think it's applying it here but specifically looking at what would equitable look like so we could all make good decisions and the same student in multiple buildings and i think that's what you're getting at

108the same student in multiple buildings would either be allowed because it would say hey this isn't the hill that we're fighting on or we would all react the same way and say that that's really offensive or that has some language that we just wouldn't be able to tolerate yeah the the scenario that you just explained was perfect and it sounds like that standard operating procedures that's beautiful but for a new for a person let's say a new employee coming into the district and they don't know what our standard operating procedure would they act in the same way and if the answer is no then i think we have to give them something to be able to go by so it's for employees what to expect and then i would say it's for students what to

109expect so one of the things we could do is we could say within the procedure that there would be a student component that all schools would present to students within the first week of school much like they do a lot of the important um rules and things that have to happen and we would just incorporate that for the students to understand and be able to ask questions so they know what to expect yes i wanted to share and bell i don't remember the number or ally if you remember the number but um principal principal darnell was sharing with us that she spends hours a week on our this our current dress code and um it was surprising actually to be honest and that to me is kind of disruption now in all transparency and you've

110both done so well articulating tonight so i'm going to kind of pose this as a question we had a number of parents that were concerned um eliminating some of the um i'm going to say restrictions i guess could be the word from our dress code how do we how do we talk to parents about that how do we how do we alleviate their concerns about um making it a little bit more broad and open wow okay um oh hot that's me sorry i have the mask on so no one can see when i'm moving my mouth i'm saying that's like a problem but that's a really loaded question and i i know parents i have a parent actually who who has some really good points about the fact that maintaining a dress code in some

111ways could hypothetically enforce a more structured learning environment um but my parent grew up with like you know like the full-on uniform so maybe that's just like what they're used to for me i would say to parents who are thinking like that number one there will still like i'm reading this right now it does not look like there's no rules right things will be regulated obviously this just allows for a little bit more representation and in that in that sense it might even be more of a benefit because as we heard in the previous presentations right a lot of the school environment is not just academics it's the social environment it's the individual um i guess representation those relationships you have and those are things that may even influence one's academic performance we spend most

112of our time here and being able to represent ourselves freely without thinking you know like oh well the shirt i'm wearing today cause like a fuss and so and so class it's kind of liberating almost especially as someone who's seen other people get dress coded and you know it's completely different levels of shame in one class it could be the teacher saying like oh you know like take your hood off and then the kid will take their hood off in the other class it's like you know it's a little embarrassing right so i think it's just it's a little bit liberating and i would tell these parents you know while there is still structure it's important to consider the fact that for a lot of students this is another way of feeling more comfortable at

113school this is a way of really representing themselves do we are we needed can we just turn it over to them thank you so much you know my son is going through this jersey phase and i was reading the other day about belonging cues and so in his little ecosystem it's about jerseys and i think that's really what you're getting down to is that you get these belonging clues by what people wear or don't wear i see colton is wearing his auburn today um so i think that that was so well said anya so thank you thank you well and parents can still parent yeah well there there is that option oh yeah yeah you're right yeah because i would say like you know in that instance in some of the you know scenarios you're

114describing i mean we don't notice until a staff member brings it up brings it to anyone's attention i mean that's a good point it's not i mean i've never been in a class and now i'm not saying it doesn't happen but i've never been in a class where a student brings up the distraction because i i think as students we have a pretty good compass as to what that's a great point us ourselves what would be distracting and i wouldn't want to you know wear this and this to school because to me that would check we kind of have our own the ability to to guide ourselves in what is distracting to us well and it gets to the point where i would imagine that sometimes the enforcement of a dress code creates the distraction

115yeah okay thank you guys very much for that enforcing cell phones well i was just going to say i have a parent and i sometimes have to parent so she's not watching and uh just wait for that face but in you know i just want to say this parents are still parents we're protective of our kids and that shifts happen in each generation and so you you know i i also understand and want to be empathetic towards them because it is a shift for us right it's a different generation every generation parents are like oh look what those kids are wearing you know so um i just want to make sure that everybody had a voice in it and represent those parents as well so thank you for answering that wonderfully i no longer remember

116i'm sorry just all the conversation around this and really amplifying student voice and having a way that we are trusting our students to be responsible with their decisions and their reactions is the way to be any other questions for valerie thank you val it is so much appreciated this is a lot of tense things to navigate in one little area of the whole school district but i appreciate it i i want to thank the board for their thoughtful feedback certainly our student ambassadors fantastic job that was excellent feedback i do have some good notes i will work with i also want to thank dr kincade she did a phenomenal job under the dress code and some of the other new pieces just working across the educational services department different directors making sure feedback came in

117the two high schools had extensive meetings junior high administration was brought in dress code was hours and hours of discussion and i just really think that a good product came out because kids were consulted administrators were involved and there was just a lot of of time put in on it so i want to thank all of them and i know she'll be instrumental in helping to make sure that we get an administrative procedure with that equitable enforcement we'll involve shannon looters and that to make sure our junior highs come along too and hopefully that'll that'll be a big strong piece that'll kind of be off the table for next year we won't be hearing about dress code every day yes thank you thank you all right item 9.3 is an informational report on the consolidated

118district plan associate superintendent faith dalquist will to present uh go back to my seat to take that time just wanted to let everybody know that the consolidated district plan is a formal application that has to be filed with the state every year it's just happened in the last three or four that this has been a new requirement and what it requires the district to do is to fill out many many pages of applications to make sure that we would have coordination of all of these efforts and once this is filed after that we are allowed to then write the actual grant applications and submit those so what this does is just looking at all these different grants uh and the descriptions that are here and making sure that they are all working in conjunction toward

119a common goal and that they're not overlapping each other or working against each other so those are all the pieces that are there the next slide shows the different amounts that were received in school year 2021 and then 21-22 once this is filed the state will start putting in what the numbers would be for the next school year and we would start writing all of the grants that make all of this work possible some of the requirements that we have to do through those uh all of the processes that go through this making sure that we've involved stakeholders and that we have ongoing plans for improvement and how all of the funds will be used for that having a needs assessment such as the staff professional development survey that we've done looking at some of

120the assurances of our auditing processes and also coordinating if there are any private schools that are interested in the area on that and then i need to put down the board meeting date that i shared this information with you as part of the application process questions really well written faith thanks thank you all right item 9.4 is information and discussion item regarding board of education meeting calendar for the 22-23 school year so we put together three options that we would like your feedback and on in regards to the board of education meeting dates for next year in our conversations we've talked about ideas for change and this is an idea of change that we feel that could be beneficial so option one this is our traditional meeting schedule and there's nothing wrong with our current

121schedule but we wanted to talk about some other options so option one again is our traditional schedule that we've been following for the last couple years option two here we are moving the meetings to wednesdays it is the same as option one but holding our meetings on wednesdays why wednesdays many school districts uh hold board meetings other than monday nights uh for many of us but monday nights monday night creates a certain amount of stress on the weekends and uh before our monday night meeting and uh when we talk about work life balance and things of that nature we felt that moving the meetings to wednesdays can help with that also with board members have questions and uh over over the weekend you have two work days that you could have to answer and to

122answer those questions and it is a consistent schedule and then option three is holding meetings on wednesdays every three weeks rather than every two weeks i know for many of us when we have the additional week in between our meetings it allows us to focus on more just school business for that first week before we start have to focus back onto the board business the building agendas and things of the things of that nature okay this this one truly provides consistency in our in our meeting schedule because it is every three weeks on wednesdays you know there's we have we have school on those on every uh every three weeks on wednesdays and um so those are three options that we wanted to share with the board and get your feedback on and have discussion

123on we would like to bring the schedule for the board meetings back at the at the next meeting so this is your opportunity to have some discussion amongst yourselves and and uh give us some give us some feedback while i appreciate that i will be unavailable every wednesday due to my work schedule when i when i started for the board i kind of ran knowing mondays i'm a football mom so wednesdays i am football mom there are a lot of sports on wednesdays i do appreciate the more time they'll look things over but i like this process every third monday so yeah is that like that i i would support the every third except for the fact that more often than not that means a really long meeting because there's a whole bunch of time

124sensitive stuff you've got a cramming because else it's going to be three more weeks till you meet and you won't and and while i appreciate that the agenda setting does take some time i know that we're looking at adequate staffing plans to kind of provide more spread which should allow more time for that i would hope um but also i don't think that from a time standpoint we have the ability to do that and still have enough time to discuss things for information and then take action at a following meeting you know what's interesting about the ever three every three wednesdays to making it consistent like that lori it can't be wednesday or every every three third monday what have you yeah the um it equates to the same number of meetings minus one so

125no it doesn't matter about the number of meetings it matters about the timing of them so what we currently do kind of incorporates the fact that there is an ebb and flow to the timelines of things for our school district as in there's a lot of things due in this month and this month most people are on vacation because school's not in session so maybe we need one um and i think that that more speaks to our real work and the timing that it goes to but i can also respect just it's just every third whatever um i mean latonya i can share with you um the week of so some of my job is at night um just is can we look at just what that would look like of every three on monday

126sure i didn't hear ali did ali say she couldn't do wednesdays she said a lot of sports occur on wednesdays i don't think she did answer that okay i didn't hear her i guess she could answer for herself she could but she didn't she didn't yeah i would say let's look at if it's possible for every third but if not then because of the flow of the district then we have to just reconsider okay that's what we'll put together we'll put together it every third uh monday and uh we'll bring we'll look at that and uh bring that back and if it if it flows we'll bring it back and uh i'd like to see both options to compare to still i don't want you to get rid of our traditional option either yeah um

127no right so please don't come back with only a third monday for action is what i'm saying yeah no that that's not what i intended so thank you so um does it pose a problem with uh three weeks in between an information and an action item i mean is that do you foresee that being an issue at all or it's a mooring question no not necessarily no it doesn't have to be it does need to be better planned in advance and often that doesn't occur in a school environment we always have the option also of calling a meeting if something happens correct i was just going to say you can always call a special meeting if necessary to get something done if you had to but but the quiz doesn't matter the attendance ability matters

128but in emergency situations we can always call a special session oh yeah and we can now too however here's some specific examples i'll tell you about bond restructuring there's a time limit on we have had the issue of needing to call special sessions even with two weeks apart because it fell in a month where we only had one meeting that month and it was three weeks between the meetings yep dr sparlin i know you and i have often talked in the past about with three weeks you kind of forget the flow of what's been going on because you have that whole extra week in there and so when you come back from even just a one meeting month that's the benefit of the three week is that it would be more consistently every three weeks

129but you do lose some of that continuity it also will make each meeting longer because you will have more committee reports you'll have more topics that you need to cover and from what i've experienced and maybe that will be different going forward and i would hope so anyway but um there's often things that are last minute adds to our agenda that had been overlooked that we do then need to take a little bit more hasty action on that we don't have the luxury or where it's shared with that we don't have the luxury to wait till the next meeting when really for good consideration we should opt to do maybe that does it affect any bill pay no oh no so if it's only did you say one less meeting in the year correct yeah

130but it's more meetings during the holiday season it's more meetings during the spring break season it's more meetings during summer vacation season it's more spread throughout the year equitably but not necessarily when we have work there's not a whole lot to be done in some months in the school cycle of a calendar so consider that too great so we'll just see when you come back with it very good i will bring you back uh two calendars to look at thank you 10.1 approval motion i make a motion to authorize the payment of bills in the amount of two million two hundred and eighty one thousand two hundred and one dollars and fifty fifty cents as presented second mr cyrone yes mr gatewood aye ms johnson aye mr prover aye yes ms swanson mr oriol aye

131ms simonton aye motion passes 7-0 10.2 approval of elementary social studies curriculum can i have a motion please i make a motion to approve the elementary social studies curriculum as presented second mr oil aye ms swanson aye mr sirone aye ms simolton aye mr gatewood aye ms johnson aye mr prover aye motion passes 7-0 10.3 approval of junior high math curriculum can i have a motion please i make a motion to approve the junior high math curriculum resource as presented second miss simonton hi miss swanson aye mr kloger hi miss doyle no miss johnson hi mr cyrone aye mr gatewood aye motion motion passes 6-1 10.4 approval of intergovernmental agreement with valley education for employment systems can i have can i have a motion please i make a motion to approve the intergovernmental agreement with

132valley education for employment system as presented second mr cyrone aye ms johnson aye mr ploger aye mr gatewood aye ms swanson aye ms doyle aye ms hamilton aye motion passes seven 10.5 board policies second read and approval can have a motion please i make a motion to approve the following board policies presented for second read section 6 instruction 6 colon 310 section 7 students 7 colon 30 section 8 community relations 8 colon 6'5 second mr gatewood aye mr doyle aye ms johnson aye mr siron aye ms say molten aye mr plogger aye ms swanson aye motion passes seven zero 10.6 approval of no trespass order gonna have a motion freeze i make a motion to issue a no trespass order prohibiting mr james feckerata from being on district 308 school district property and at any

133school district of events including district 308 sponsored extracurricular and athletic activities whether on district 308 school district property or elsewhere through april 2023 except for attendance at school board meetings or with the prior written permission of the oswego east high school principal the high school principal um actually not that last part at all oh so that individual no longer has a student or excuse me is is not a guardian is a guardian but not okay approved by the student to be on school property or to have information regarding the student uh who is of age okay and so at this time there's no need to even have the permission of a administrator okay so we're just getting rid of that part shall i read it again you know it's just that last clause that it

134just has principles yeah just unless for to attend a board meeting stop after that yes yeah that's how it's important okay so does she need does she need no okay i do need to redo it no no okay thank you second wait can we read that again i just was asking miss samuelson hi mr kloger uh aye mr gatewood aye ms swanson aye mr siron aye ms doyle aye ms johnson aye motion passes 7-0 10.7 approval of personnel report can i have a motion please i make a motion to approve the personnel report as presented second mr cerrone aye ms johnson aye mr algar aye mr gatewood aye ms swanson no miss doyle i miss simonton aye motion passes 6-1 can i have a motion to go into closed session please i make a motion

135to enter closed session under statute 5 ilcs 2c1 the appointment employment compensation discipline performance or dismissal of certain employees and individuals