SD308 Board of Education Meeting (9/27/2021)

001all right one nation under god indivisible with liberty and justice for all we will now hold a public hearing on the fy22 budget we will therefore have two opportunities for public comment tonight the first opportunity will be during the public hearing on the fy22 budget if you wish to make a comment about the fy 22 budget please make it during the public comment portion of that hearing if you wish to make a comment about some other matter unrelated to the public hearing you may do so during the second opportunity for public comment please make sure that you noted on the comment card during which portion you wish to speak this is the public hearing convened by the board of education of community unit school district 308 regarding the fy 22 budget at this time i

002will ask each member of the board of education the district's attorney and the district administrators who will speak to identify themselves for the record all right good evening board um i uh just i'm happy to say that we at our august 23rd meeting we were able to present a tentative budget to the board of education and with the purpose of putting it on public display uh we had no public come into either the finance office or the central central office to view the budget it was online i didn't receive any questions about that but we did have some time to continue to look at the tentative budget and to work with some of the revenues and expenditures and uh in the meantime the district auditors were in so we had um some time to ask

003them some questions as well so we also had an opportunity to present this at the september 20th finance facility advisory committee and i'm happy to present you with the budget that we have today we do have a surplus of 3.368 million dollars and our fund balance currently stands at about 25 million dollars okay and now the board asks members of the public to comment on the budget 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 the comments are limited to three minutes per person and that neither the board nor the administration will be answering any questions during this time thank you for your comments okay at this time we will close the public hearing on behalf

004of the board of education i would like to thank the public for attending tonight's meeting we value the feedback we receive from our residents and encourage everyone to take an active interest in their public school system residents interested in speaking to the board this 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 i will read up to three email comments submitted by students only 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 follow-up

005to your questions or concerns will be addressed by administration through the contact information provided on the comment card thank you joshua keith good evening my name is joshua keith and i am a senior here at oswego east high school i wanted to talk to you today about the free lunches while we appreciate the free lunches i would also like the opportunity to purchase items a la carte as it is right now we get one meal that includes a hot sandwich and sides which consists of fruits and vegetables i am not much of a fruit and vegetable eater as probably the case with a lot of students so the sandwich is pretty much all i get i would like the opportunity to purchase additional items such as another hot sandwich pizza sides such as tips or

006even a salad right now if you want to want additional food you must get it out of the vending machines which is mostly junk food and only available during passing periods outside of lunch any additional food i must bring from home the free lunch program should continue i would just like the opportunity to purchase additional items a la carte items such as sandwiches pizzas salad or chips i do understand that these are unprecedented times and everything is new but i also hope that thing that things continue to change through lessons we learned as we move forward thank you sarah wendy sato hi that's me wendy sato good evening in light of tonight's discussion on the district equity statements i wanted to share some thoughts i love the school district i love how when my son

007had athletic success dr sparlin wrote a personalized letter on two separate occasions stating congratulations i love how when learning was initially difficult for my daughter that the school rallied and helped her use strategies and now she maintains a 4.0 gpa when we adopted my youngest and came into the school to say hello they put an announcement on the intercom for teachers to meet him four years passed and it was time for my youngest to start kindergarten a teacher met us at the door and without hesitation said timmy we're so excited you're finally here we've been waiting for you i just genuinely love this school district now however i'm genuinely scared for where it's headed scared that we're pushing or encouraging hate and division and before you think what's a blonde woman know about racism anyway

008please know that my mother is a first generation american from peru and my father-in-law is a first generation from japan both of whom started their education without knowing a single word of english i get life can be hard i grew up in a rough part of chicago and was literally been jumped as people shouted kill whitey i get life can be hard now i don't know exactly what's being implemented but it's clear we're trying to force the vision we're trying to create victims or hatred and that does not lead to success we're a great school and we're a community when we hear the words once a panther the rest of us shout always a panther in unison we might have shortcomings but they aren't solved by teaching these same panthers that they have underlying hatred

009for each other that can only be resolved through a process that labels our children as bullies or victims based solely on the color of their skin please think about the ramifications of what you intend please realize that we create greatness by encouraging greatness not by telling children they are somehow less great because of the alleged evil mindset of their friends or classmates my children are hispanic japanese and taiwanese in my house we teach pride in our heritage pride in our schools and the goal of reaching for the stars but we never teach them their victims because of their ancestry why don't we because my children are not victims please don't force teachers to tell them otherwise thank you [Applause] john wright john wright chuck brooke hi good evening board dr and school administrators my name

010is chuck rook and i have two children in the district a sophomore daughter at ohs and a son that's in the seventh grade at chauver junior high first i would like to address the transportation problem that we have here in oswego well i think it's great that we have a plan moving forward to allow for parents to bring their children to school when we are short on bus drivers we need to address the elephant in the room the elephant is mandatory vaccines and coven 19 testing vaccination mandates violate personal medical freedom and by mandating vaccines in kova testing we are limiting the overall pool of potential drivers who would be willing to take our children to and from school this during an employee shortage my next concern is the sd 308 emergency learning plan which

011will be discussed later tonight according to the plan it states that there's going to be a minimum of five hours of instruction however after a full review i've noticed at the high school level when you take out the passing periods there's 33 minutes of instruction per class which comes to only 264 minutes or 4.4 hours of instruction per day now compare that to an in-person instructional day where my child would receive 48 minutes of instruction per class per day giving them a total of 384 minutes of or 6.4 hours of instruction per day i'm highly concerned with a lack of instructional time in a remote setting and have to ask why in the world would we ever limit our children's instructional time by a third our children have lost out on enough instruction over the

012last year and a half they shouldn't have to lose out on even more i want to see the remote learning time equal to the amount of instruction a child would have in an in-person day anything less would be a failure to our children their future and our community thank you thank you okay we will now turn to our board member comments i just would like to say that i am so excited to welcome our student ambassadors this evening and i also we're so glad to have you here i just want to thank and continue to thank our teachers and our principals assistant principals custodians the groundskeepers our teaching assistants our social workers and our bus drivers and monitors that continue to show up for our students over and over every day during this ongoing pandemic

013we are so grateful to them and we are so lucky to have them so hang in there we uh we have your back and we're all thinking of you yeah thank you i'd also just like to bring awareness uh that it is um national suicide prevention month and many of you have heard the term the second pandemic as we're seeing mental health issues rise and we know that our students and staff need our support also just a reminder that we are such a great community and to be thinking about each other and if you see changes in behavior whether it's your your students staff or your neighbor just extend some kindness and and let them know your concerns um just letting you know too that things like depression don't always present a sadness and irritability

014and anger and behavior problems are signs so if we can all have compassion for each other and look out for our kids i just want to bring that to our attention thank you i just wanted to say that welcome to our student ambassadors and it is it is my heart that you all have an opportunity to to speak to be represented you know it's you know students shouldn't just be consumers of the education that adults are presenting to them but that you should have a voice within it and so we are so grateful that you're here and that you'll have that opportunity just to kind of follow what dr moreno was talking about that this is a time i'd just like to remind our entire community that our students are in a situation where for

015the last year and a half they've been able to kind of as i was saying earlier have volume control on uneven teachers keeping everything at one single volume keeping sensory input as limited as they choose and feel comfortable with and that i would ask that our entire community take some time to give our kids some space when they get home from school that our teachers would give our kids some space from having to answer questions when they're uncomfortable and really focus on the social emotional health of our students because a year and a half ago they were in a really different place than they are now no matter what their academic abilities so i'd like to just take a moment to acknowledge that our students are going through a really rough time right now no

016matter what age level they are and that i would ask that we would all try to keep an extra thought for them and give them a little bit of extra space thank you and welcome to our new student ambassadors hey yes we'll move on to the board committee reports uh can we get a report from the equity committee okay sure so um we had our first meeting of our equity board advisory committee last week and um they had been working all of last year on their equity statements which we discussed at the beginning of this board period and those um equity statements will be presented here tonight for us to vote on and um you know our equity committee you know they're working on ensuring that all of our students are benefiting from the way

017we're educating them and we have a lot of evidence that shows that not all of our students are benefiting from the way we're educating them there was information presented at our last board meeting from faith dolquist regarding some of the areas where we can improve upon individuals and so as it relates to equity it's not just about um race because race is not a proxy for equity it's about so many other aspects of our students education and so we are here to ensure that all of our students are benefiting from the way we're educating them and so our committee brought forth those equity statements um they worked really hard on them and we will be looking at those tonight and they came forth with other ideas about what they want to work on this year

018and we have a committee of about 16 parents and other stakeholders from our community and we're very excited about what they'll be working on this year and we'll be coming forward to you with updates periodically all right and our finance and facilities committee we had actually a phenomenal several meetings recently and during the last meeting we continued to focus on the school budgeting one-on-one because we want to make sure that we level set and that we're even though everyone is very well-versed and educated we had great dialogue around school budgeting one-on-one but to also ensure dr pesky is doing an awesome job of ensuring that we're giving a a a sufficient overview to all of the board members so that we start i'm sorry all of the committee members so that we start on a

019level playing field and the benefit of doing uh the the one of the i'm sorry the um the level setting with the budget 101 is that it it sparked lots of engagement and plenty of questions that actually caused us to have some variant you know great dialogue so that we all were are on the same page we also continued to discuss the um the finance and and facilities of the facilities maintenance and improvement proposal and so we're moving forward on with that process and very excited about looking at and assessing all of our facilities because as we know they're all about 10 20 years old now and dr pesky actually gave an overview of that as well and then we did go over the tentative budget which we just you know had the public hearing

020for uh today and so we're looking we're looking forward to uh really and continuing to analyze the overall finances of the district and figuring out ways that we can um not only save the district money but also maximize what we have coming in great i'll only add to that that one of the things that came up as a question that i've actually heard echoed by several people this week is the concept of community engagement and sponsorship and our old business development director position that we'd had pre-covered and just renewed interest in seeing if we can get something going with that again the director development position okay thank you and we have teaching and learning committee so we had our first teaching and learning meeting um we have a lot of new members on that committee

021so we kind of started out just with brief introductions and then we discussed kind of what our plan is going to be for the year which will be to kind of do a preview of presentations that the board's going to be getting just to make sure that we're really covering information relevant to the public in in a way that is accessible to them and make sure that we're asking good questions and covering things that community members we have you know a lot of teachers and parents on that committee and we just want to make sure that when we're presenting things to the board that we're covering things from an angle that is relevant to the public and we've got a great action plan for that and i'm really excited to have participation from that community

022still anything else no i just want to add that we did something that i thought was very important i think could be utilized across any and all of our committees is we added a communication action item to the end of our agenda so that anything that was important that came out of that meeting that needed to go to specific audiences we would have an agenda item for that and mrs dalquist would would handle the communications through however we needed to with through the school system and that we'd reach out to teresa if it was parent facing and just to make sure that we are communicating and keeping that feedback loop open with our community about the things that we're talking about and doing in those really important committees great thank you over to dr sparley

023well thank you dr moreno so good evening board i'd like to start off with giving a big congratulations to two of our oswego e students aryaf bothra and zyed khan have been named as semi finalists in the 67th annual 2122 national merit scholarship program approximately 1.5 million high school students across the country enter that national merit scholarship program each year and to qualify students must take the preliminary sat national merit scholarship qualifying test which serves as initial screening for the program the nationwide pool of semi-finalists represents less than one percent of u.s high school seniors and includes the highest scoring entrance in the state so it's quite a big deal for to have two two students as semi-finalists so congratulations again to aryaf and zayed and being and being named semifinalists in the national merit

024scholarship program the second item i would like to talk about is the two young people sitting too at my right and how excited i am to be introducing the student ambassadors this evening last year when we made the announcement for this opportunity i held two informational sessions with about 50 students in total i talked about the application process and what the position was and what this position entailed we had 22 students who applied for two positions uh one student ambassador from each of our high schools and the board screened them down to six applicants and then then they were interviewed by the board of education one of the roles of the student ambassadors is to provide student voice to the board of education on issues that the board addresses throughout the year a second part

025of this role is to lead the newly formed superintendent student advisory committee which consists of the finalists of the other finalists who applied to be in this position the student ambassadors dr waller who is the director of diversity equity inclusion and family engagement board member mr gatewood the two high school principals and myself yeah we had our first committee meeting last week and then we have our first our second committee next monday it's important to state that the student ambassadors serve as an advisory role to the board of education they are not included in closed session meetings and they do not vote on any action items the ambassadors and the committee members will be working together gathering information from our student body and making recommendations to the board of education on issues students identify they

026feel the board needs to discuss by providing student voice to the board on issues the board ultimately makes decisions on we will create a transformative process enhancing what we do for the betterment of our students here in district 308 at this time i'm going to turn the microphone over to our first ever student ambassadors to the board of education uh can i get a big round of applause welcoming anya roy and colton cenido [Music] [Applause] thank you dr sparlin hello everyone my name is colton cenido and i am the student ambassador for oswego high school this year i'm a senior at ohs where i'm a member of youth and government democracy team nhs and a number of other commitments i want to thank the board of education on behalf of ania and i for choosing

027us to be the first student ambassadors of our high schools to the 308 board it's been something in the works since the end of last school year and we couldn't be happier to take on these roles and be with you all here today i know if we've learned anything over this past year and a half as a society and as a community it's that the more voices at the table and in the conversation the better and i want to applaud the board for taking the steps to make student voices heard in sd 308 as a student ambassador i will advocate to make sure every student of oswego high school and the district feels heard understood and respected we have a goal to reach out to the student body and create positive discussions about what students

028want to see in their district and what opinions or concerns they may have on district 4 decisions that affect them one aspect of this position is to ensure all students of oswego high school and district 308 have access to crucial information from the board as well as the board having feedback from students this exchange creates a necessary bridge of communication between the board of education and the student body that benefits the entire district as a whole to be as inclusive and accessible to students as possible each and every day i will strive to ensure that all voices of ohs students are heard and that they feel their voices matter because they do student voice is what helps our district and community grow and evolve for the better when you have a voice you have an

029obligation to use that voice to empower others our voice is our greatest tool in ensuring student representation and will allow students to truly feel like an active participation participant in their education being chosen for this role is an honor and i look forward to working with anya and the board of education to provide a voice for all students in sd3wig thank you [Applause] good evening everyone my name is anya roy and i'm a junior at oswego beast high school i'll be the student ambassador to the board of education representing oehs this school year at oe i'm the president of the national english honor society the vice president of the model un team and i'm an executive board member on our business professionals of america chapter i'm also involved in science olympiad the indian student association

030the science national honor society mual father the oe key club chapter and our competitive badminton team i'm honored and grateful to have been chosen by the board of education to work with our students and our board too as colton mentioned shine light on student voice in our district this school year student voice is what will allow our board to understand the needs and opinions and ideas of our students as we take our first steps in this newfound position as the student ambassadors to the board of education i hope that we're able to pave a path for a future that emphasizes student voice as a top priority in this district to accomplish this the student advisory committee in our most recent meeting last week had begun developing a survey directed at students in the district to

031gauge ideas thoughts and concerns that they may have in implementing the survey we are hoping to more directly communicate with the ohs and oehs student bodies thereby giving our board the best possible foundation for understanding student concerns and stances we've continued to develop this survey and plan on its administration and will continue to develop plans for student outreach to truly connect the voices of our students to the board of education in the future once again colton and i extend our thanks to the board of education for choosing us to represent our respective students as the first student ambassadors thank you so much can i get a motion to approve the consent agenda i make a motion to approve all items under consent including 7.1 minutes of the board of education meeting on september 13 2021

032open and closed session 7.2 to acknowledge the foia request received by the district and 7.3 to acknowledge the administrator and teacher salary and benefits report for fy21 second okay mrs simonton hi dr marino aye mr gatewood aye mrs swanson aye mrs croner hi mrs toriel aye mrs johnson hi motion passes 7-0 item 8.1 is informational regarding board member travel board of education adopted policy 2 colon 125 at the regular meeting on february 27 2017. this policy complies with the travel expense control act that became effective that year the travel requirement request form contains the maximum allowable amounts to be paid for the various travel expenses these are estimates only in order to get board approval prior to travel after the event all receipts must be submitted to the board secretary after which the form will

033be completed costs included to be paid for the triple i conference are conference registration fees lodging parking tolls and mileage the triple i conference is a great conference for board members especially new board members to attend the conference offers great professional development and networking opportunities and i feel it's money well spent are there any questions in regards to this informational item um we can we discontinued the practice of staying over at the triple i conference about five years ago i want to say due to budget restraints so i guess my statement more than anything is that while i do find triple i to be a benefit to our community what we've found more often than not is that the opportunities that it provides are usually on one day and that the evening events tend to

034be appreciation dinners and opportunities for networking that are not necessarily something that benefit the education of the students in our community combined with the fact that the mandatory training that they do offer as a preliminary option to this event can be found in less costly ways i get a little concerned when we start looking at things for ourselves to extend our own opportunities when we are still have a pretty restrictive travel not ban per se but really we don't offer this opportunity to our educators we don't offer this to our employees anymore we've restricted this pretty heavily so i feel that unless i understand more about why we would want to go back to including these expenses i i just i can't support adding this at this time the money for the for the conference

035is in the board's budget we choose that budget i think it's a uh you know this this is this is for the board to discuss but i do i do believe that for the first time board members i think it's a very good opportunity as i just explained uh for not only the professional development for the networking i um i appreciate that you find this valuable i heard what you had to say about it before ruth you were a first-time board member who also attended this with me in 2019 did you feel the need to have overnight expenses and to stay the whole weekend right well i will say that it was a different financial picture in 2019 we were still making budget cuts at that time um i used hotel points to pay for

036my own hotel at the time and i didn't we carpooled no we didn't just triple i yeah we did remember because the truck the listen guys is gonna get crazy because the truck remember that put the oil all over the car uh we drove home together i think i took the train in or something for you okay the first night for some reason i can't okay but i about the expenses and but i mean i would say i did attend um uh i don't know what you would call a reception dinner thing one night and it was free i didn't have to pay for it um because you often get invited to those kind of things so my expenses were minimal to myself i did find value in the conference i went to several different

037sessions on both days that i found to be i mean some were i thought were better than others but that was just my personal preference but i thought it was a great conference i really enjoyed the speakers that were that they had there and the large session speakers and i think it's great i hope you guys have the opportunity to go i think i think it's also very important to understand that one of the other reasons that you're there i reached out to two other districts to ask their board members if they thought this conference was important and they said one of the most valuable things is the networking that happens there with other districts learning about where they have had maybe some of the challenges that we've had and how they've overcome them and

038vice versa so one of the things that i've seen that maybe we sometimes haven't done in the past is that kind of reaching out and that collaboration with others and so i think um i think that you have to look at the overall versus the i mean the macro versus the micro so um i just wanted to share that i would say that this is a very important opportunity especially for the new board members i think that continuing education is extremely important particularly for the new board members and that we have a strong dedication to staying up to date on the topics and the education for what we need to do to do our job we do feel that continuing education has been neglected for the board who's weak because of the ex i'll speak

039for myself but i i just asked yeah thanks yes the others can decide if they'd like to share that or not um sorry i got thrown off by the interruption but um yes uh it is a feeling that by myself and that the uh that continuing education has been neglected and we need to stay up to date on these things i've talked with our iasb rep who encourage us us to go i've spoken to many of the other area school board presidents who highly encouraged us to go i feel that this is a very uh valid expense that is in our budget that none of the new board members created as they were not on the board at that time um and uh yeah i mean the board that it's a volunteer position and we're

040just looking to do the best job that we can and it's been highly encouraged and as jennifer mentioned it has been invaluable when i've spoken to other presidents of of school boards and it is a great education for us to be able to talk with other school boards as well as the as well as the more formalized speakers and such unless anyone has something they want to add i do want to ask though because i've heard what each of you have to say and i don't disagree with the point that we do need to have continuing education offered do you want to say something latanya i'm listening okay i just wanted to make sure if anyone hadn't had an opportunity to speak eugene i'll let her finish okay why again the change in because we

041do have a lot of employees who are still continuing in these same kind of activities that are paying for these expenses themselves and they're not able to charge them to the district to provide those opportunities why are we as a board looking to add back our own expenses this way i'm asking because this was a big discussion when this became a discontinued practice and it wasn't because of a lack of concern for continuing education we've had board members really delve into continuing education without having expenses and this is a change that is worth noting because of the because of the direction shift that this puts us in for professional development for our educators and employees as well if we're going to have more travel expenses for ourselves and for our senior leadership as a board

042then we need to talk about what are we going to be having for our employees as well because they've missed out also does that make sense so i guess that's kind of the lens i'm looking at questions with yeah that i i don't disagree at all and i i think those are actually two different conversations but you know in regards to the to the topic i think that because i'm responding to one of your comments in regards to the uh i think networking is vitally important as well as the information that will be gathered from the actual conference but being able to meet additional people so that decisions are not made in a vacuum so that you can get anecdotal information and instances is important to any board member not just a new board member

043just so that all of the suggestions and solutions that we're recommending are not only based on what we the information that we obtain within the district so i mean i can't speak to the value of the conference because of course i have never been but given from what i've heard i think it will be a great opportunity yeah attending the conference and acting as delegates for our district i think we've all found to be valuable and dr sparlin had discussed that as well i'm just speaking to the the extra expenses and what this says is a thing so i don't know if you have thoughts on that aspect of things yeah point will take it i mean obviously if it was a decision that was made in the past i'm sure that it was to

044contextualize that decision it was based on the budget shortfalls that we had at the time and so i think that it's most definitely something that we should consider because we don't want to send the wrong message however i think that you know we have moved or today is quite different making that decision today is quite different from the past and we should consider whatever the first person i mean the professional development needs of our teachers staff or whomever i think that that's important as well so i think that is a conversation that we should continue to have and i would say that our our budget is balanced and there is a surplus for this year and we should be considering these things for our teachers and staff too we're moving you know moving into a

045different phase and also i would say that the education is more important now than ever with having a second year of going into a pandemic and then just to be clear this conference is in chicago so there's no trap no airfare we're talking about just us driving downtown correct uh it looks like there was lodging and mileage and well i'm not sure what other expenses i'm assuming gas mileage but lodging was the one that we had most significantly cut out um and i believe parking if i remember right was on here um yeah those are this is the point that i'm trying to make is it's the concept of what have we taken from our employees that when we put it back are we putting it back just for us or are we putting it

046back for purpose that benefits our kids i have a question with all due respect i'm sorry go ahead ellie um i guess what i'm left wondering is and it's a great conference and i really think you guys should go i mean you know way way back in the day we paid for it ourselves right and there were also years where the district picked up also again way back in the day so i wasn't on the board when they cut the stuff but it is 100 well worth your time to go and meet people but a don't let triple i that only happens once a year be the only reason you reach out to other people but i guess what i'm left wondering is lori's pretty wound up about us not doing this for our administrators

047so i'm left wondering what is it that they wanted to do that they weren't allowed to do or had to pay for themselves what do you mean there wasn't anything we made the choice oh our professional development has changed we changed the administration and employee staff policy on travel to not allow out of district professional development and we pulled it in-house so the quote unquote fun parts and networking that they got to do had been pulled from them where they could reach from other teachers in other districts we have now brought almost entirely in-house um so that's what i'm kind of talking about we don't pay for airfare we don't pay for hotels i think we have a mileage limit on how far away they can go for these things and that was it you'll

048have to go back to look at the exact line items but it was a pretty significant cut i guess that would be my question not for tonight but yeah the other night i just don't want to make i want to make sure that everyone has understood that the context of this is that what are we looking at is the big picture what's the fifty thousand foot view it's not about triple i it's about what are we looking at as a travel policy and a reimbursement policy and are we going to do that just for ourselves are we looking to do this for our employees and at what cost ali just out of confirmation you paid the 400 yourself to register for the event so there they've been i think it's been so long ago um

049we went a couple of times i think when i was first new to the board we went and the district paid for it and then one year we went conference or the travel expenses also um i think the first year i don't think i paid i paid my parking and my meals but i think the district picked up the cost and i think the second year honestly it's too long ago that i don't remember i remember we paid for our own hotel room i just have to say that honestly i'm i'm somewhat frustrated a little bit offended by the comments because number one we haven't even taken the trip yet so you don't even know what those numbers this is just a a budget to say here's what you have to work within i personally

050wasn't going to charge for food or miles or what have you but as a body of seven people who work for free because that's what we do i am averaging about 40 hours a week that i spend as a new board member and i don't know that i'm always doing the best job that i am and this is an opportunity for me to find out with other people in my situation what they are doing how they are doing and so forth and for such a very very very small amount of money it seems like our community our constituents our students our teachers our staff would want us to be the best we can possibly be because we are making decisions that directly affect them so when it comes to the money looking at there is

051waste everywhere in budgets no matter what type of an organization you are and you look at talking and of talking around specific dollars in approving them or not approving them we this is such a nominal amount and i'm not saying not to take it seriously and it doesn't it shouldn't have this discussion around it but you have to look at the benefit and the cost for everything that we do and i just think when you look at the number compared to the benefit that it could bring it is it's a no-brainer so those are my my thoughts and as someone who did sign up to go and to spend two days away from my family you know i i i'm just i'm and away from work and away from work i'm just kind of frustrated

052that this is about this this was assumed that we're we're going to spend all this money and that that's frustrating to me so you know we're we're an institution of learning right and i know you're not questioning that lori but i know i'm a lifelong learner and i think everybody up here is as well and so in order for us to be the best that we can be as board members we want to consume all that we can from people who have other insights and best practices to share with us and i think that's you know that's valuable for us in terms of how we govern and and policy make um in this position and so sacrifice is important i think you're you're you're asking the question about you know what are we sacrificing what

053are we willing to sacrifice in terms of dollars but there's a lot of other sacrifices that happen with us you've been here for a long time you know all the sacrifices that you that you make to be a board member and so i think sometimes sacrifices aren't in dollars but they're in other ways and i think that this is going to be money well spent any other questions on this information item all right hearing none we'll move on to 8.2 item 8.2 is an informational item regarding our delta aquatics program tonight dr petzke is going to share some history of the program the different aspects of the program who it serves information on the revenue it brings in and to ultimately discuss with the board the thoughts moving forward so dr pesci good thank you

054dr spiralin um board of education just happy to present some information uh some background information to allow us to discuss the delta aquatics program so to begin just for start the program was founded in 2004 with the opening of oswego east high school in the facility where we had a pool that we could could utilize this resource and then the rest of this slide there's actually three points that i want you to see the delta program delta delta delta delta one is the program started as a learn to swim program so classes are held about five to six times a month for kids in different age ranges to learn how to swim the second delta is a diving academy which runs in the summer time we have a junior diving team where kids six years

055and up can start to learn learn about diving and then we've got a senior diving team 13 years and older where they learn both the springboard and platform diving and on the right hand side you can see is really kind of the flagship of the delta aquatic swim team and that's the competitive swim teams to be a part of that we are a member of the usa swimming coalition national governing body for the competitive swimming organization we also are affiliated with illinois swimming incorporated which is a local swimming organization and the levels of that competitive swim team we have a developmental group which is just basic skill development and then we have an advanced group so there's basic training development we've got a senior prep group a little bit more progressive training and then we

056have our highly competitive senior group advanced training for students ages 15 and up got uh some of our coaches here we've got timo flores who is our aquatics director currently the senior coach we have jessica bogey who's an assistant aquatic director and serves as a head coach and then bob sprunger who is a lesson coordinator for the swim lessons and the head age group coach as well they'll also bring in these are coaches but i think it's important to know that the program also has some assistant coaches and we also use some of the swimmers in our swim club who also come in and teach some of the swimming lessons we also pay some of the students to teach some of the swimming lessons as well a little bit about the program our athletes and

057fees um in our competitive competitive swim team we currently are in the short course season which uh there's a the four training groups you can see the developmental training group there's about 40 athletes and the charge to be in that group is about 800 we have the advanced swim group there's about 41 students or athletes in that program at about 1 150 for the season we've got a senior prep group which has 38 athletes in it about 1 350 for that group and then our senior competitive team who there's about 18 students in that group at about fifteen hundred dollars for the short course season so that's about 137 athletes participating this season currently 95 of those athletes are students and athletes who have returned to the program participated before 10 students have transferred from

058other clubs there are several other clubs in the area and 32 students or athletes are new this year so this talks about the short course and if my clicker will work there we go the short course kind of refers to the length of the pool so short course is a 25 meter swimming pool and that short course runs from september until about february sometimes it extends a little bit into march and then in february or march at the end of that season running through july we have the long course season and the long course is a 50 meter pool so regular meets during the season they do about they do meets about every two weeks during the season that the kids participate in and then at the end of every season there are also championship

059meets where the kids students need to qualify to participate in those meets so in february there will be some short course meets and in july there will be long course meets we talked about some of the other teams or students from other teams delta aquatics is a school school-run club affiliated with oswego 308 there's also another team the fox valley swim club which is indian prairie school district 204 they have neuqua valley and waubonsie valley and matea valley they've got a swim team as well or a swim club there's a maverick swim club which is a private based owned club as well as the academy bullets swim club and then there's also a riptide swim club that's run by a park district so i kind of kind of selected those just to show the board

060that there's some school run clubs there's some privately owned clubs and then there's also some park district clubs so to talk a little bit about the revenues i just put three different years of revenue and expenditures here and the reason i chose these were specifically to show the board typical fy 19 was kind of pre-covered so there we had some revenues and you can see what our expenses were and those expenses include salaries equipment fees things of that nature and it also includes maintenance of the pool and you can kind of see the difference in the revenues and then the expenditures that we have in fy 20 when with the onset of kovid we kind of got through the short season short course season and there were some questions about being able to maintain um

061maintain some of the procedures for covid and whatnot it hit in that fy 20 school year so you can kind of see it it impacted the long course season so we saw some less revenues and then our expenditures were a little bit less as well that year and then in fy 21 this um last year you can see with kovid for a full year with that impact there were fewer swimmers we typically have about 180 kids in the program and now we're averaging about 130. so and we're seeing those students starting to come back into the program so you can see the revenues in the expenditures there when we do talk about the delta aquatics finances i think it's important to note that the pool maintenance fees range from about thirty two thousand to thirty

062six thousand dollars annually and then as you can see um we also there's a little bit of revenue too there's about ten thousand dollars worth of revenue that the program being brings to the district as well so when we look at options for the future and what the delta aquatics team could be status quo kind of maintain what we have the school district could maintain ownership and oversight of the delta aquatics program the coaches the athletes and then maintain the pool and facilities so there i'm saying about forty five thousand dollars again it's about thirty two to thirty six 000 in pool maintenance that we would have to we would have to do with our own gym programs and our own there's a sweego boys and girls swim club as well that we run so

063there's still maintenance to the pool and things then another option for the future is just pool rental we could investigate other programs that we talked about other ways of organizing those swim clubs we would still have to maintain the pool facilities through rental agreements and again we would look at about forty five thousand dollars uh to maintain what we have now or a third option would be just to absorb the cost so the pool would only be used for the oswego co-op swim and dive teams and physical education programs and then pool maintenance costs would be absorbed into the school district expenditures so like i said we currently have about 32 to 36 000 in pool maintenance and then we also have that extra ten thousand dollars in revenue that uh that we typically see

064that we would want to recapture as well so that just gives you a really high level um really high level presentation about a little bit of history a little bit of context some of the finances the coaches a little bit of pool maintenance and some future options so on that i'd like to turn it over and see if there's any discussions or questions that the board might have or if there's any additional information that we might look at bringing you it's been really unclear who's really responsible for delta and who oversees the coaches and the program and can you clarify that yeah um you know i'd in my time being in the district i'm just told that the the cfo the finance department through the uh through the revenues and the expenditures in the program

065and whatnot the responsibility for oversight of that program has kind of fallen in the business office but i think really what it comes down to as well is i think that we we had a coach and uh we had a coach they've been with the program since the pool has been open and we've allowed that person to run the program on their own and just assumed that the program was running itself without a lot of oversight so i know um one thing that i would look at doing in the current situation that we're in is at least auditing or touching base with that program at least twice a year to find out how we're doing and uh and to really kind of audit and oversee that program a little bit more i understand that a

066cfo would oversee the financial pieces of this program and as a business but i'm not understanding that responsibility for overseeing an athletic program and coaches and the issues that that come there yeah and i think probably to better answer that question i i didn't want to reach out to a lot of people about the program without first coming to the board but knowing that that is a question that we want to have answered i would like to reach out to indian prairie 204 and talk to their their swim club you know how was it organized there how do they manage it there and find out what is that balance between a school district overseeing the club versus the coaches running the club and just find out what that relationship is like that's definitely something i

067can follow up with my understanding and i don't have extensive understanding of each of these teams but my understanding seems to be that the ones that are operated through schools may have a parent board that oversees those things and i believe delta hasn't had any sort of parental oversight or a parent board or anything like that in the past um i also think i know that for the bullets that's what they do is the rental thing have we been approached by the bullets team about renting our facility not about um not necessarily about renting the field facility because we've been we the the facility is prioritized based on several categories like if it's a school event if it's a school sponsored event if it's uh somebody affiliated with the school district and since delta is

068affiliated with 308 the pool has not been available for rent because they use it year round so i don't know if they've approached us about using it but if they did we don't have the we don't have enough hours to be able to give to them to run another swim team there assuming that we have the delta aquatics program running under the school authority correct have we hired a replacement coach uh we'd have we've uh we've got three uh three interim coaches now that's the teemo and jessica and coach bob so and have they been given contracts of any sort for this um contract employees how are how are they employed in our district like what is their employment classification they are employees of the district and they they work for the they work for

069us to run the delta aquatics program so their salary is paid for out of the delta aquatics program the revenues that it generates so the district is in uh doesn't creating their own revenue and that's kind of the balance or the financial oversight is is the program is the program cost neutral is it is it uh cost effective or is actually costing the district money so do they get a check from the district or do they get a check from the program they get a check from the district through the money that they bring in they deposit every month they deposit their revenues into our district accounts so we budget for them and based on the revenues that we expect them to bring in so here's i appreciate that you have stated that your intentions

070are to audit this program twice a year has it ever been audited before um to your knowledge to my knowledge no okay now i i do know i i i couldn't imagine the program got this far along without the business office being aware of what are the revenues the expenditures and what does it cost because we do have we do have budget lines specifically built in that are specifically for the delta aquatics program so you can go back into the finance system and see what's happening there but no one's actually audited it before to see because i listen i've been to a lot of swim meets and there's a lot of things happening there's there's a lot of parents making donations of items and obviously time but that's there's a lot of cash changing hands

071there's meat fees and there's cash boxes concessions there's cash boxes like if if there's no oversight and up until this point do we believe that it's been one individual that has had sole oversight into how all of that is happening okay that's what i thought and the other thing to keep in mind is there's a there's a specific all of these teams if you look at all these teams online they'll direct you to their team unify website so all of the payments and things like that come through team unify so to be a member to be an athlete on the club you uh you can either pay the one-time fee for the whole year that goes into the team unify account and then comes into the district or you can pay on a monthly basis

072yes i'm i'm familiar with that okay and i also know that there are in addition to how much they're paying to be part of the program there's also additional meat fees there's travel expenses there's concessions there's uniforms definitely uniforms you know all the things um lots of things i'm just saying extra janitorial responsibilities for cleaning up all the stuff i'm kind of with you ladies and saying like that's i understand why there needs to be financial oversight by the finance department absolutely but i also feel like that that could be a full-time job in itself you know i i think we definitely should have some sort of parent board um it should have some sort of oversight by i don't know an athletic director since it's an athletic program i realize that it's not part

073of our ihsa programs it's a club so it's a little bit different i just in finding out more this is a great program we have highly successful student athletes who have come out of this program and are currently in the program and i think it's phenomenal that we are utilizing our facilities for our students i hope that we can continue to do that but we've got some work to do to make sure that going forward we are we have that culture that we want in our district that we have parent involvement we have some student voice you know you say the program brings in 10 000 in revenue how do how do we know that like other than just the basics like who's monitoring that all that cash that's a lot of cash i can

074tell you going in and out so i just want to like make sure you're aware as you're looking further into it um you mentioned on slide seven and said a couple of times that you felt like maintenance fees were around thirty two to thirty six thousand dollars but slide eight estimates those at 40 45 yeah okay that's with uh again that's the pool maintenance fees what i'm looking at is the whole financial picture so the pool maintenance fees range from 32 to 36 but then we take an additional ten thousand dollars in revenue from that program so i would i would want to continue to maintain that um so we would be looking at at least a forty five thousand dollar um a forty five thousand dollar revenue um for instance if we rented it

075out was doing the math you know at uh rental prices it's about 300 hours in rental time for the facilities and in addition to that we would probably be looking at some custodial costs and things of that nature as well so that leads me to wonder like ruth saying this is a full-time job so we basically have two options either as a district we can choose to maintain this ourselves and we'll have to talk about what that would look like and have dr petsky look into it but the other option is because there are organizations that do rent these facilities i do know that the bullets is one of them that will rent school pools the point of having a pool team i believe if i remember correctly is that it kind of not only

076covers the annual maintenance costs but for example we had a pretty expensive rehab of the pool several years ago and it helps defray some of those costs too is it as a district worth our time to have somebody else handle that and all we become is like people would say the landlord and we don't have to deal with not only the financial aspect and all the different kinds of cash and this and that but also the performance evaluations of the employees working with our kids and the liabilities that go along with that do we want to handle that so that would be the two things i would consider so i would like to add to that that i believe the von center um used to rent out to possibly to the bullets could be i

077really i know that they do this have multiple multiple teams in like different parts of the state um it's a big program okay um and i think it was the bullets who used to rent the vaughn center but now the vaughn center has an in-house team that's the riptides so i would definitely try and speak to whoever it was that was in charge of that decision to move from renting to having an in-house team were there financial components that went into that decision and why and then 204 also rents like they don't have an in-house team they rent out to the fox fox valley club so they made a different choice so is that because of the oversight situation that was more you know a park district facility having an in-house team is a little

078bit different than a school district so i would encourage you to look into those um today today was today was what i was gonna say is meant you know for information and we wanted to start the conversation but we also need some direction on you know what it is that the board would like us to look into to report back on you know like as you as you said laurie do we want to look at do we want to talk to some of these of these other programs um that you know to take you know you know to come in and to rent our facility and uh so we don't own our own program anymore if that's something we definitely want to we want to hear that from you so we can go out and

079start having those conversations as well as talking like dr pesky said 204 and how do they run it and you know oversight management everything because this is definitely a full-time job from somebody yes and it's a full and he's got a full-time job that's what i'm saying well and i of course i can just say that all of this is great i do think we need to understand what the best practice is and what has worked and not worked but i will tell you that throughout this year this school year what has happened because of whether it be past oversight or lack of oversight or whatever it might have been we really let down our students this year we let them down because we did not have a process in place auditing in place and

080their swim year has been affected greatly by that so whatever we do moving forward we must ensure that the swim the swimmers are not affected by how this program is run like it was this year i i'm just really i feel bad for them and i'm frustrated that it came down to you know how this program was managed hurting them so however we move forward i want to make sure that the checks and balances are in place the auditing is in place so that it doesn't affect our students yeah that you know what jen the conversation dr pepsi and i had today was exactly that and we you know we talked about the time frame that we would whatever direction that the board gave us today to make sure that it that you know our

081investigation fits in with that time within that time frame to ensure that the kids in their current season if we were to go a different direction wouldn't be negatively affected in the future so one additional question to that because i don't i'm you know my thought is why did we choose to bring delta aquatics on as a district in in the first place and so not not that we have to answer that question but it's a question that we must consider because if we then switch to outsource it what will be the implications of that what will be the implications of that which i'm okay with that but we need to consider it for the you know the benefit because was there a benefit to to the students to bring it in and then what

082would the effort adverse effect be if we if we do outsource it is it a benefit to outsource it to the district maybe but would it what would be the impact to the students if we outsource it so i just want to make sure that we consider why we did it in the first place in the decision and then of course then we'll be the best for both make sure that we have the bandwidth for the appropriate oversight because that hasn't happened and just a quick question these other clubs that are listed we're the only one that's district owned is that correct yeah as far as i am aware because i believe mavericks is a parent organization they're out of 203 uh fox valley is out of 204 they only allow their own school district

083swimmers but i didn't realize that they weren't school owned i thought they were no i think i think that the fox valley swim club is is school owned i'll double check on that one but that's that's uh that one i wasn't sure of but that we do allow swimmers from outside the district which is what has been part of what has made it profitable is that we can expand the numbers where other ones can't because we have the ability to do that i guess i don't really know but riptides is park district um bullets is a chain okay maverick yeah yeah i don't i think we're the only ones i i would hope that there would be documentation somewhere i believe that this um if i remember correctly was todd colvin dr sparlin he was

084your predecessor in the hr area maybe maybe there's some documentation on when this began that we could right understand more very different as you said for a park district to own a swim club than a school district so i think what we're asking is in those three options it feels like we have a lot of questions about all three options and those need to be investigated to understand do we do we have the oversight what's the benefit to the district and especially our students and what's the cost in both for liability for our students yeah and i don't know if any of those i'm sorry no no no no no the time is one way one of the things that i think about is um when we built the school right we we decided we

085wanted to have a pool and so when you think about why do you want to have a pool and how are we going to absorb the cost of having a pool i would imagine it has something to do with the fact that when we have um for our students are there any fees associated with them taking swim yes swim right um does that do those costs not cover our what what you said 45 000 in maintenance and pool and facilities does that do those fees not cover it they do well it's uh those are other fees kind of like like course fees and uh and they go into uh they go into the course fee allocation it doesn't necessarily those fees aren't necessarily the revenues there aren't associated with the expenditures of the maintenance they

086may pool i think it would be interesting though to look at what what are the fees that we bring in yeah for the physical education courses right and it might be that we've hit the tipping point with the number of kids involved that's a really good point because at 200 kids maybe it covers the cost and makes the pool and and that's why it covers the pool expenses but at 100 kids it might not right because that's where i'm trying to go just in terms of maybe understanding some context because eugene brought it up and i've brought it up you know why why did we do this in the first place and if it was to absorb the cost of this pool and the facilities or to have additional revenues on top of that then

087i i understand it but if we can cover our fees um you know by our students then why are we wanting to be in the business of owning a swim team i think there is one small though it's not small i think there's actually a point that needs to be considered that's very important if you're a swimming family and your student as a swimmer this is an opportunity for them to earn scholarships for college so i think it's very important that we especially dr petzke when you're looking into these options that we have this place for swimmers to be able to earn scholarships and we've had a very successful program i think that's important um to state and so i don't i want to make sure we don't lose that i hear that i just

088want to understand well we have a basketball team we have a football team and we've got all these other teams and we don't have this apparatus in this structure and they still get scholarships yes agree i don't agree right but i don't want the program to to suffer because of the decision that we make yeah so i think i only have one other question for right now um i know i've emailed you a couple of things but um i i appreciate that this is just coming to us tonight for the first time for discussion at what point would we consider having um you know we've talked about the importance of having a parent board at what point would we consider having a discussion or getting feedback from parents who currently have students in the program

089and just getting their opinion and their feedback and why are you sending your kids to this program you know you know i i think it would be valuable for us to get some feedback from parents at each of those different developmental levels um training group levels and maybe even some of our students too i think they probably have a lot to say about what they would like to see going forward and what's important to them could you that's actually an excellent point i mean really this is a program that is most affecting our students like jen had said and is paid for by parents it feels to me like it would be really wrong for this conversation to continue much further without including the current parents of that are in the program right now um

090i'm i know that it makes sense we would have to i know you had to make a temporary plan for this season um but i also don't feel like we should just let this go indefinitely i think that our parents and students deserve like we will make a decision before the long course season or we will make a decision before next short course but can we please get their input get their input first and what they'd like to see because i think our decision shouldn't solely be both on based on finances i agree it needs to be also based on what's best for the community and the students and i think also another group to add in there i i definitely hear a feedback from students feedback from parents and i'd like to have more

091conversations with the coaches so and talk to the coaches about you know they've got a history with the program where they've been i do know a lot of parents come back to the program they seek out delta because it's built a reputation for a quality swim program and so i definitely think by bringing those three groups of people together and uh talking about their history where they've been where they are involving you know i know our coaches know our friends what's up just ask them where they want to go i mean it's great to understand where they've been but ask the families where they want to go with this with swimming i'll get you gotcha okay does the administration feel that they have enough direction from the board yeah yes okay is it okay with

092the board to move on now thanks all right item 8.3 is our final item under information this evening and that's in regards to what we need to have to have an approved e-learning plan so if we have to call school for inclement weather we can have the option of making it an e-learning day and faith is going to take us through that process all right great well we're there goes the presentation i just want to make sure that we're being very clear i've presented i don't know more remote learning plans in the last year and a half that i care to count this is a very specific type of learning plan over five years ago the state of illinois allowed for a provision for districts to put in plans ahead of time so that in

093lieu of a snow day or a emergency closing due to cold weather we would have this option so what we are talking about this evening is possible plans we do not have to use them but they would be available in lieu of those five emergency days for usually weather that happens within illinois this is not a type of plan that is the remote learning like you would do for a long period of time there are very different guidelines and provisions from the state and that differentiate the two different types of learning plans so i know the state calls it e-learning plans i'm putting in e means emergency just to try to make more sense for us so why have this it could be useful but not imperative to be able when dr sparlin gets the

094call at 5 30 in the morning to have some choices hopefully it's before 5 30 in the morning to decide would today be better to institute this type of plan or to close school down so this would give us an option if we were to approve this the timeline that we're looking at is being able to talk about it tonight bring it back for a public hearing on october 12th then after this it then goes to the regional office of education and then they would approve it and then we need to post it and have it available for parents and staff 30 days in advance of any time that we would use this plan some of the guiding principles that the state of illinois uses is it's a minimum of five clock hours of instruction

095or school work very similar to our school improvement days where we run those for five hours which does include the passing periods another provision that is super important is that we need to have access for all students it does not allow us to go to completely electronic or computer device instruction unless all of our students have that access at home to a device so looking at that at our early childhood level not all of our early childhood students have devices so this is a sample of a schedule it would be activities sent home in advance supported by teacher office hours because not all of our early learning students have devices so this is a sample schedule parents or caregivers could create their own schedule but we would have teacher office hours for phone email or

096google meets during designated times if there were questions or support needed with the choice boards we are looking at having our teachers create five days of these in advance and having them be sent home with students so that if that call comes early in the morning there would already be preparation done and those activities would be at home the next piece is for elementary obviously not all of our elementary students have devices either so this would be a possible schedule they again would have activities sent home in advance by teacher and then supported through office hours it's different at our secondary level we have devices that all of our students have so we envision going through the regular junior high and high school shortened day schedule so that all students would have time via google

097meets with each of their teachers and activities here's what the junior high schedule would look like and then the high school schedule these are schedules that are already in existence that we run on our school improvement days and while you're thinking of questions i do want to really thank lindsey allen and shannon looters who took the lead on this as well as a lot of our ed services directors and then our oea union leadership also met a few times to discuss this plan as well i have one question this is really probably a point of clarification for me uh early childhood you said that it would be sent home in advance but i'm thinking emergency situations you don't know in advance so is that snow day automatically or how would you know in advance so

098no what we're envisioning so there'll be a lot of literacy or numeracy activities that we could write now that students could even use in a month so it wouldn't be hey tomorrow might be an emergency day everybody take this home it would be teachers working on this over the next month and then sending these things home and having them be available in the possibility that we would have a day so it would still be contingent upon the parent keeping up with it in in in case that emergency day came correct hopefully we might have a little hey there's a snowstorm coming we want to remind you to see where i know those are where your materials are and we will post those on the website but of course that's problematic for those people that don't

099have a device i have a question but i really want to hear from you too on this i'll let you go first think about questions that they might have all right where where do where do you guys sit are student ambassadors um one clarification question that i would have would be so this is for days in which it would be for instance just weather created i mean or for instance like what we had last week with the busting situation would this be something that would be applied to that that's a good question we are looking at this mostly for weather pieces with our transportation as we wrote the different options we want to have our elementary students in and want to not close down the whole district or this is mostly if we had to

100close down everything so i guess that's a possibility with the transportation piece but we certainly hope not we need to have this if we are to have an option if we don't go through this and have this this plan approved through the regional office of education uh then there then there is no option and i think faith emphasized the word option because it's not the greatest option for our youngest for our youngest learners i think for six through twelve where we have one-to-one devices it's a uh it's a wonderful it's a wonderful opportunity so and go back to the question how do you feel about it yeah how do you how do you feel do you want to call off snow days for the rest of your peers i mean no pressure would you rather

101have a snow day or would you rather have an e-learning day that counts and we didn't have we don't have to add on to the calendar at the end of the year that's the key part yeah at the end of the year the school year yes yeah that is a good part okay i have no idea how my students i'm representing will feel about this but as like a dedicated student i do think that this is a great alternative um i think everyone like speaking from like the student eye we all like our snow days uh feels great it's a good break but um i think this is a way that actually emphasizes like maintaining an education despite these kind of like uh unforeseen circumstances so i think it's a great opportunity uh and i'm

102really glad that it was brought up but i did have one of the clarification question um it was brought up that for younger students these materials would be given to them uh prior to these like emergency events actually happening would this be given like in schools by teachers or would it be sent out to parents because i know at times depending if on if the parent can keep up with these kind of commitments for their children at school this might not be as applicable so will it be given to students at school yes okay all right thank you faith why is the why is lunch part of instructional minutes of the five hours so on your uh junior high and high school periods people have lunches at different times and that is all part of

103the instructional day so some sometimes it's fourth period fifth period sixth period is that what you're asking yeah seventh grade i would also add at the high school level their lunch period is kind of divided in half and one half they go to lunch and the second half they have guided study so kind of like a study hall uh so and that either is either at the beginning of your lunch period or at the end of your lunch period so so of the i don't know if it's really instructional minutes but well i guess that's what i'm just and like for the elementary for instance so i get that part but for a tet why is i guess my question is they're at home so why are we not using that 30 minutes they need

104a break i'm not saying they don't need a break but why isn't that 30 minutes instructional to get to the five hours so you're saying why aren't a teacher teaching during their lunch time not during the lunch time but why is it does the five hours mean nine to two like it has to be it's the time or is the five hours instructional it's the length of the instructional day so it's okay okay minutes but i just like our school improvement day it has to be a five hour day so that that's yes that's still counting lunch that's still counting passing periods those pieces okay but i think what you're saying jen is like if you work for an employer and you get scheduled for eight and a half hours because that half hour doesn't

105correct towards your work they're at home yeah so i don't so you give them the 30 minutes but it doesn't count why not have extra 30 minutes of instruction or or guided study i mean i don't i'm fine with that i just that doesn't make i i would want to get as many instructional minutes as possible i this is something i i don't understand why why we shorten the periods you know i have two high schoolers at home i i don't understand why they're ending early on a remote day and then if that replaces a full day it's just more instruction that they're losing so i have those concerns and especially with our elementary kids too because they were hit so hard last year well in our elementary day they don't in this plan have

106synchronous instruction with their teachers at all because they don't have devices to be able to do that so they have a much they have no live time with their teacher unless the parents call in with questions or go through that time because they don't have devices that's one of the the problems with us rolling this out is there are more opportunities where we have devices than at the elementary where we do not when you look at the amount of minutes yes there's that live time but as you know even with regular school day there are activities or homework or assignments that are given that are in addition to you know what happened during those times that we would still want students to have the opportunity to do that so instructional minutes at the state level

107even if it's student work that's assigned outside of those periods that counts toward time spent for example at elementary it's all homework and assignments that are given that are counting toward these hours if we wanted to pursue having a full class periods for junior high in high school and having that great of a difference between that and elementary and even expand that we can so this is the isb minimum so if we wanted to have 300 minutes versus 270 we could we couldn't go longer than the teacher contractual day we're bound i thought the district had purchased enough chromebooks for each student is that not correct that's in grades 5 through 12 that is not in k through 4. and definitely not at the early learning center sure but i would like to see fifth

108grade included i'd like to get i'd like to see it go five through eight on our plan if they have chromebooks there's no reason why they can't go yeah and they're old enough developmentally to be able to handle some online learning more so certainly than a first grader i realize that creates an issue with elementary correct in a perfect world i would like to see again i teach high school i can i can appreciate it the kids are okay with it it's better than no school well i would like to say that i think it's a little bit sad that we're getting rid of snow day even though and so you have to end it especially at the elementary level because hello who doesn't like to play out this no however certainly at the high

109school level with finals and the dates where things lay it definitely would benefit high schoolers to not have snow days added in to the calendar well it's an option that we didn't have a couple years ago that we now have so yeah i mean but we only have to add days onto the calendar if you use more than five isn't that right we would have to add another school day there are five emergency days built into the end of the year but if we took a cold weather day in february the day that the students get out would go a day later without a a plan like this put in place so it doesn't extend the school year calendar but for students and parents that are looking at what is the last student attendance day

110it would extend that does that make sense five days have to be made up anything after that doesn't that's great i appreciate the work put into the plan so i'm not sure yeah we need to yeah i think we need some clear guidance on this so we want to look at fifth grade like uh yeah we just said um we had some discussion on lengthening uh making the 612 a longer day or more the full full normal day is that what you'd like us to look into or i'm a yes on that for a full day yes i'd like to see the full day okay all right five hour day say it again ellie she wants to play in the snow and have a hour day but uh clearly that's not going to happen and

111it's not enough right ally with your suggestion about fifth grade are we are we putting fifth through twelfth well i guess that's a contract issue i think probably because it's k5 i think there's probably more to that than just hey let's add fifth grade okay i don't know where our kids at with what do you think about lengthening the day you're here for a reason i i would say um like for instance uh last tuesday yes um we had a full day and um i think it was great like dr sparlin said that we had the ability on a moment's notice in the morning to switch over like that and it made it easy to go that entire day you know having everybody having a chromebook and access to live meets and stuff like that

112that definitely in some weird way that was a benefit of the pandemic of knowing exactly what to expect on those days and you know as high schoolers yes we all love a day off and i love a day off but you know like was mentioned we also don't like making them up at the end of the year and also the struggles that we're having as students i think it's important to have as much instruction as we can and support time that we can and so for me i would say that an entire uh day online would be beneficial to us as students yeah and i was um i was trying to think about how it felt uh when we were in like complete quarantine like i stayed completely virtually i know a lot of other

113people did too a lot of students did that as well and i was comparing kind of like those shortened days to the longer days and i was thinking about that in my head um having those longer periods is beneficial not only for i think students but for teachers as well you actually cover the content a lot better when you have a little bit more time to roll with and i think that even if it's just one day right like colton said making it up at the end of the school year it's it's not fun right when you have things like ap classes right you're you have to study enough for an ap exam that doesn't move because you have a snow day you have to do finals you have to do midterms trying to catch

114up throughout the year is a lot harder and i definitely think that having those elongated days especially now that we have more experience with kind of that virtual setting it's a great option and i'm glad that like we finally have that even if it was through kind of like a bad experience with profit yeah and especially with like for instance ap classes the teachers and students were required to cover a certain information within a time frame so when we lose out on instruction even on days uh you know late start wednesdays when you know if i have a second hour uh ap class it's shorter than if i had a fourth hour pe class i mean ap class and i would say definitely for ap classes is you have a certain amount of information that

115you have to cover because it will be on your ap exam they don't college board doesn't care if you had snow days if you missed out on instruction it's expected of you as students and as our teachers to uh cover those topics because they're going to be on the test no matter what so i think it's important that when there's that opportunity to especially for any kind of i mean any class in general to not lose out on an instruction and per live instruction would be beneficial to us yeah faith i appreciate you doing the work because i think we all would agree if it's one snow day we can get past but if it's a as predicted a bad winter and we have 10 snow days then this plan would be extremely beneficial to

116have in place already all right at that point about the content i hadn't thought of that at all that the ap exam is going to cover the same content in the shorter day you you miss 10 minutes of that and 10 of those days can really add up yes that's a good point i agree we are very lucky to have them on this board yeah all right any other any other questions faith do you have the information that you need i think you do right okay that's our last informational item for this evening thank you all right so we're moving on to uh our action items 9.1 adoption of fy22 budget can i get a motion for the adoption of the fy22 budget i make a motion to adopt the fy 22 budget for the

117oswego community unit school district 308 as presented second mrs croner aye dr marino aye mrs johnson aye mr gateswood aye mrs swanson aye mr storyal aye mrs simonton aye motion passes 7-0 can i get a motion for the approval of envision 308 facility and maintenance proposal i make a motion to approve the envision 308 strategic facility proposal at a cost of 69 450 000 as presented second mr gatewood aye mrs johnson aye mrs doyle no mrs swanson no dr marino aye mrs simonton aye mrs cloner aye motion passes 5-2 can i get a motion for the approval of the equity belief statements i make a motion to approve the equity belief statements as presented second can we talk about this one before we vote on it so i know i was not the only one

118to get an email from mr pope and misato who spoke earlier today too so i still am struggling with some of the verbiage and i really liked what he sent today in particular mr pope had some pretty good comments i think under the racism he took out injustices that lead to and he put in the sources of these which i thought sum that up really well um and then instead of marginalized he had um protection of identities which i also appreciated so i guess my question is if everybody else is okay with it then we could just vote but i would like to table it maybe talk about it one more time before we commit are are you thinking you want to kick back some of those ideas to the equity committee yeah did did

119the equity committee talk about them this last week yes they did we did briefly talk about them how briefly well we got a thumbs up on on every one of them yeah i mean let me tell you we talked about these a lot there was a significant amount of time um that went in but that individual was not on that committee nor had they come come to any of the meetings or provided feedback and i get it that people don't know when things are happening um because we're all busy you know i feel like my perspective is i know the i feel like i have a good handle on where they're coming from if that makes sense like the the intent behind them is is to include all students is like the spirit of it

120is um very positive and didn't have it's not about racism you know it's about all of our students no matter their shape size color the way that they learn all of those different things were taken into consideration um when we discussed them if the board as a whole would like us to take a look at those proposals again like we would yeah i just preferred the words the sources of these in instead of the injustices and one of the things that we did talk about in the committee was the fact that this isn't something that could never change in the future like it's living and breathing right right right but we're adopting it as it is right now so i guess my question is and you guys could say no i just you know i'd

121like to make a motion to table it and send it back and just maybe talk about it one more time one of the things that we did talk about too was that we want to get it right you know we want it we want to do it right but we also don't want to we could talk about it forever and ever we have been yeah so did you make a motion today i did does anybody want a second i'll second it we should vote on whether or not we table it okay mrs doyle hi mrs swanson hi mrs croner i don't know what we're doing this is just a table this is a motion whether we table it so i [Music] nay mrs simultan nay mr gatewood nay mrs johnson nay dr marino aye motion

122fails three four okay so did you already make the motion and get seconded so now it's time for the motion since we have emotions we are not tabling it so now we would take the motion to approve i make a motion to approve the equity belief statements as presented second dr moreno [Music] um i just have to say that i do prefer the sources leading but i will say i mrs doyle aye mrs swanson no mrs simonton aye mrs corner hi mr gatewood aye mrs johnson aye motion passes six one can i get a motion for the approval of mou with the ota i make a motion to approve the mou with the oswego transportation association as presented do we have segments sorry anyone mrs croner hi mrs johnson i'm approving the mlu as presented

123on 9 13. dr moreno aye mr gatewood aye mrs swanson nope mrs doyle no mrs simultan aye motion passes 5-2 can i get a motion for the approval of the personnel report i make a motion to approve the personnel report as presented second mr gatewood aye mrs johnson aye mrs doyle aye mrs swanson aye dr marino aye mrs simonton aye mrs cloner aye motion passes seven zero can i get a motion to adjourn make a motion to adjourn second second all in favor aye we are adjourned