001school district 308 board of education meeting can i have a roll call please mr bauman here mrs doyle here mrs croner here mr lightfoot present miss morgan here mrs moyer mrs swanson here please rise for the pledge of allegiance i pledge allegiance to the flag of the united states of america and to the republic for which it stands one nation under god indivisible with liberty and justice for all we have no public comment this evening so we'll move forward to item 5.1 board member comments would anyone like to go first by raising their hands you can let me know that right then i'm going to pick we're going to start with allie anything to add today ally it's snowing uh it is snowing um i think dr sparlin wants to talk about this in a
002little bit but i think that the kendall county thing went well i hear that too we'll talk about it we'll talk about that in a minute so i have nothing new to discuss it was a big deal all right tony um i want to say that i know that there are teachers listening to the board meeting and other staff members i hope that we've made it clear to them what happens in the case of bad weather and snow days i want to say too that i think people are being challenged to do unbelievable amounts of work just based on the fact that the board is changing schedules from time to time and i know that this is this is me just acknowledging that every single time we change the schedule there's a whole constellation of
003people who have to then change their lives and their schedules and their things and this includes the parents out there who are watching too because to get child care and to do what it takes is very hard and i guess what i'm saying is i really appreciate the fact that all these people do all this and i hope that as a board we take it seriously and that we're not blithe and goofing around and acting like this doesn't matter because it matters a lot that all these people are out there staying up late getting up early doing without trying their best and then we're saying things that like do it again do it a different way and we are not taking that seriously or as seriously as we should sometimes and i felt like i
004needed to say that tonight because i've heard from many people in the community that are doing a variety of roles for the district and i think that sometimes we try to put a smiley face on things but positivity is one thing pretend positivity is a whole different thing and we need to take this seriously and we need to try our best to not put people in situations that are unduly stressful because these are real people who have done their best for us and god forbid we lose anybody because i'll tell you it's hard enough to get a person who's trained to go into these classrooms and do these services with these kids and do all these things if we lose people in this state for whatever reason we're going to end up using some person
005maybe without a credential some person that we don't know who this will be if things get bad so we need to make sure that we're treating people respectfully and that we're treating people logically and trying to get this thing rolled out in a way that does not unduly stress the people in the district because my deepest concern is that we will break this district ruth i'm good matt um yeah i think tony had some good points as we were going in through our our back to school plans and we are transitioning and changing um it it's it's very similar to what myself and and maybe many others had done back in the early stages of march april may where every time you went to work you you were faced with a new directive there was
006a new memo so to speak what was the county saying what is the state saying um how many people can we be around how many people can we work with from from my occupation what does the cdc say what does osha say how can we handle things and it was just a constant barrage of information and trying to figure out what you can do can you do it right and it's stressful and i know that staff is going through that now this this past month being back in the building and there are changes every day so i want to make sure as we go through and we're talking about how we're evolving how we're changing when we're changing that we do it with the expectation that our expectations aren't perfection and our expectations come with
007a little bit of grace for for when we fail everything's not going to be perfect everything's not going to be the way it planned and i think it's false to say that we expect that from every single person that's in our buildings that's working with the kids that's uh you know cleaning the building sanitizing this is all still new for everybody so i think we appreciate the work that's going on the expectations are low or not the expectations aren't low but we know that it's stressful so i hope there's those that can kind of take a deep breath and be able to just breathe and know that they did the best they could that particular day and tomorrow's a new day and we'll go through it again um but we do appreciate all the work
008that's being done all right i appreciate all the work that's being done brent yeah two things real quick so um uh lori you and i were last week in some buildings wheatlands and banarsik and got to see some some happy kids some happy teachers and some happy uh folks to have kids back in the building albeit under different than normal conditions but i i would report that things were going very well one of the most fascinating exchanges i think was actually listening to a principle of a building have a conversation with staff when a staff member was unsure and unclear about why something was happening and that that principal was able to immediately reiterate this this this this and this and we have it taken care of right so i i felt really good after
009witnessing that exchange and i don't think that wasn't staged for us but it was just it was good to say and see the buildings have things under control as we've been talking about things are not uh perfect things are not ideal there are still questions and we're working our our way through those questions um the only other one other comment i'd just like to make quickly i know the board had gotten some comments uh about it this week i got a bunch of additional comments from people i know regarding the j car isbe amendment that is being proposed regarding teaching and leading standards i'm not going to take an opinion on it i will personally be contacting my state legislators i will be personally sending an email to the i i i sab with my
010thoughts i would encourage folks in the community if you're for it great let people know if you don't like it great let people know my only comment i will make is i find it interesting that the the state board of education is focused on this right now when the rest of us are focused on very different things getting kids in buildings getting kids learning and focusing on things like how do we get above the state standard of 30 percent meets and exceeds at the high school level or 50 percent meets and exceeds for reading and math in the junior high or 70 meets and exceeds in elementary school i think that's what we need to be focusing on so i will go ahead and finish up and say that tony i completely agree this isn't
011something that i think anybody involved in education across this country i would dare say in other countries as well as taking lightly on any day of the week and i think that um what matt had said and what you are saying both are very true and i think the one thing that i have seen consistently besides change which is our favorite word is the fact that we will have different opinions and that especially in this boardroom i do feel that every path our community takes is represented and for that i am very glad because even though it's a little bit all over the place we've never done this before so at least we're trying to accurately reflect our community and come to something that we can create that will be in the best interest of
012as many families as possible that being said it's not something that is falsely optimistic except for yesterday i gotta be honest i was waiting for some way to get a segway so thank you tony for that because yesterday we were able i'm not even going to spoil the fun but we were able to vaccinate a whole lot of people and ursula and i had the privilege of sitting in discharge where one of our other employees suggested there might be happy people and there were and frankly it was so fulfilling to be able to see that our county health department was coming through for us that they were able to offer this to us on such short notice a little over a week ago i wouldn't have guessed this it happened yesterday much less that it
013would have happened so well and so organized it was it it was amazingly wonderful to see and i don't think that you can say anything bad about that because that was a great next step that people could have this that first step towards safety that they would like to have and i want to thank teresa especially i know she's been bending over backwards with her toes touching the ground in yoga formation to get this for all of our staff members and i am so grateful that we have you in our district to put this together for us and i know that your team and all of your other senior leadership dr sparlin have been working very hard to make this happen quicker and faster and more efficiently so that we didn't have to lose teachers
014in the classrooms for this so i i really don't have words i'd like to share with you that they were so organized they even had emts circling around the parking lot so that if you were feeling any side effects while you were in your car they would come get you which is what i told every single person that came past me in the discharge they're circling out there and even that little piece just was spot on and relieved so much anxiety and it was it was there's really not words it was pretty darn amazing and i was really glad to be there i would recommend all my board members come and help out if you're able to on the 28th when they will be back for their second dose i'm pretty sure we'll get a
015link with somewhere to sign up and the community's support for volunteering we had one student who's in our medical topics class who chose to take the fact that she wasn't getting internships because of this situation and turned it into i'm gonna come volunteer here and she volunteered sitting next to me over there in the discharge area just so she could get some up close experience in her chosen field because this is something that will affect her future and that was pretty much just like the icing on the cake yeah i think she said she's going to western illinois she's going to western illinois to play softball i believe so i don't want to give you away the numbers because you guys have earned the right to share how many numbers theresa do you want to
016say or do you want me to let dr sparlin theresa theresa how many numbers were there 2 000 yesterday so we had 550 prior to that and about 1400ish or so of yesterday ended up being our staff and substitute teachers so incredible numbers were any of our staff turned away everybody in our staff that wanted their first dose of vaccine by yesterday has had it yes we opened up um if they were available yesterday there's some people who weren't available yesterday yes you know for whatever reason but um yeah we were able to make a phone call about halfway through the day to every staff member um sent out a huge email and i talked with talked in text with about 90 people that we were able to add to the list on top of
017the nearly 1300 we already had from our district signed up so pretty cool cool event and we're we get to do it all a second time with balloon arches yes i hear there might be playlists of music and confetti cannons somebody had that no confetti candidates in the discharge area i'm not sure somebody had that question it was a great idea it was a good suggestion i liked it oh yes we'll appreciate all your help on the 28th but it was a very cool event huge shout out to the health department for all that coordination so quickly yes dr sparlin you got to be a bouncer which is my nice neat segue into your report all right no committee reports or oh did we have committee reports yes oh i i'm so sorry i guess
018we'll do those first usually i was so excited about this that i just wanted you to tell about it um we had equity committee and policy and legislative so ruth or do you want tony you go ahead and i'll just we um the equity committee met virtually and we discussed language for our statement that we're working on and it was terrific meaning to be a part of just a lot of really great discussion and i re i'm kind of a vocabulary nerd so i really enjoyed and appreciated all of the input and i feel like there was lots of participation and like really digging into specific words that we wanted to use because words mean things so it was great do you have anything you wanted to add i just think you and faith did
019a really good job of following the suggestions of the people that were trying to get across their ideas during that time and i want to bring up again so that everybody listening gets it into their heads that this is not one kind of equity this is equity across the board this is what you look like whether you're abled or disabled whether you're a certain color whether you're certain religious creed just having that in mind when we interact in the district and that's what people are trying to get into this language is the idea that you can treat everybody decently so yeah i think you guys did a terrific job faith in ruth [Music] i need to work on my muting and unmuting skills that's what i learned that night when you're in person make sure
020you don't mute else we will know you're not actually talking out loud yes good policy and legislative you want it he's pointing at me uh let's see so we have to appoint a board treasurer the board should be aware that has something to do with our minutes and that was board policy 2 colon 2 220. um there was something we added where it says the board's meeting minutes must be submitted to a board treasurer the board treasurer's christy tyler we appoint her as our treasurer yeah we just hadn't at the meeting oh okay so yeah um and then seven colon 345. is a new policy that discusses some of the privacy and security settings for the new technology and a question that we asked to be brought back was the whether or not students could
021bring their own devices and to kind of visit that whole thing there was some concern from some of our committee about cameras not being on on asynchronous days i think that's a problem in pretty much every district and then eight colon 30 we're going to bring back because we had some questions on the language um under procedures to deny future admission to school events or meetings so that one's coming back to us but everything else everybody was good with and we get way better attendance when we have them virtually we have discovered i heard several teachers mention and i've been to most of well not all of our schools four out of the five junior highs one of the high schools and i think eight or nine elementary schools so far and i heard more
022than one teacher say that they wished the kids had a picture of their ceiling fan around their neck on day one or two so they could recognize them i think that there might be a yearbook opportunity there in one or two schools to showcase their ceiling fans but um but yeah i can see why that's a an issue and when you bring cell phones when you bring chromebooks et cetera all right dr small and i think that they'll let me go to your part now you got to be a bouncer so how was it it was an excellent experience and i really just to reiterate what everyone's already said is just you know thank the volunteers we had so many volunteers uh so many of our 308 nurses were there it was uh it was
023just it was just an amazing uh everyone coming together you know to get this job done and if you if you like you said if you were there it was just smooth as can be you were in and out of there probably within 15 minutes at the like the longest so again thank you to the kendall ken county health department ran everyone that worked real hard the police fire emts everybody that were there i mean it was a impressive event so very well organized so thank you to everyone i also wanted to mention that last week was national school counselors week and i'd like to take this opportunity to recognize all of our school counselors for all the great work they do here in 308 and the impact that they have in helping our students
024reach their highest potential so thank you so much to all of our counselors and uh lastly this evening under uh under action the board will be asked to approve the budget reductions for the 2021 school year uh there are two changes from what was presented at our last meeting that i would like to highlight in regards to the idea of the four day in person and one day remote for secondary students for the 2021 school year that item was taken off the list that is being presented for this evening we will put together a study committee of teachers administrators and parents to study this idea and the findings of that committee will be presented to the board at a later date time and then the second item that has been removed is the item that
025was shared in regards to modifications to the goal program i had conversations with failed patterson last week she worked with the program director as well we'll work on ways of piloting this with students who may benefit from the idea but for again for the purposes of this evening it should be noted that we will not be changing the service delivery model for those students at this time that's my report for this evening thank you all right item six approval of the consent agenda can i have a motion to approve i make a motion to approve all items under consent including 6.1 minutes from the board of education meeting on january 25th 2021 open and closed session and 6.2 to acknowledge the foyer request received by the district second mr lightfoot aye mrs croner aye mr
026bauman aye mr swanson aye mrs doreal aye ms morgan aye motion passes 6-0 item 7.1 item 7.1 is financial statements does the board have any questions regarding the informational item can i ask one question that i obviously won't be able to get tonight but how much money did we actually save first semester by being closed down like i'm sure that you don't have that figure tonight semester yeah okay yeah um i can get your numbers all right very good no other questions regarding the financial statements presented okay item 7.2 is board policies for first read does the board have any questions in regards to the policies that are listed for this informational item you guys had said that there is a policy that's going back to the committee is that on this list no no
027i already pulled it okay item 7.3 is an informational item which is an annual item for this so christy go ahead thank you so a mowing bid was released because our current contract is expiring we did receive bids from 10 different contractors and the bid was released as a mowing on on as needed basis only our recommendation is to abort the bid to siebert landscaping who has a comparable experience and a district of our size and they are our current vendor so we would bring this back to the board at the next meeting for an action item who who siebert landscaping the bert landscaping yes so i have a question as it relates to one of the budget reduction items is this an increase in our current costs from mowing this is not an increase
028in the current amount of mowing that we contract out is it an increase in the cost the cost is increasing yes so the last bid is a 15 increase over the last time we did this and we're attributing this to the increase of minimum wage at that time minimum wage was eight and a quarter an hour and now it's at 11 as it moves up to 15 but 15 an hour by 2025. so i have a quick question normally i feel like we just go with whatever is the lowest and that one is not i mean well it's very close not exactly the lowest because so what would be the reasoning between picking siebert and not the one that was guzman guzman right meryl guzman landscaping yes um in checking their references they don't have
029any uh current accounts that are of a comparable size as the district's account would be can you clarify this bid for me is this per i assume this is per month per mo right yep for eight buildings is that correct and do we what if we have a drought in the summer right it's an as needed basis i mean who does yeah who decides that right and is there any opportunity for intergovernmental cooperation on some of these things if there's right would there be a cost savings in hiring a personnel that we have right now getting them a mower and a truck and mowing it like that so when i first looked at this obviously i did not have the i assume that this was per month but now you're telling me that's per week
030per mo remote right so you're talking three to four modes per month right for probably six months maybe eight give or take right i mean rob could you come up to the microphone please thank you so i guess that changes things for me because my question is now we probably have some staff who could do this job we probably have a trailer and we probably have a mower well we do actually yeah the portion of the district not on this bid we do in-house okay so it ex so the job already partly exists so what if i took a person and made it fully exist would i be paying less than approving these bids that's a calculation i'd have to run before well can we do that before we put this on as an action
031item i also would like to see that because if we're looking at budget reductions if it's going to be less expensive to right in-house and i would prefer to hire somebody in-house yeah especially like this is eight buildings why do these eight buildings have to be hired out and not all the buildings well i think that's an easier question to ask is why are these buildings put out to bid why aren't we doing them currently logistics the logistics we don't have the staff we don't have the trucks we don't have the equipment we certainly currently don't have the labor and the staff to do the entire district in-house so we picked areas that are reasonably awesome location to minimize right so we would have to bring on staff which equates to benefits to appoint equipment
032and things like that and it may be staff that we wouldn't need all year long either just for mowing well we do bring on summer help to help our crews so that it yes obviously we wouldn't need that for 12 months correct i think we've had these conversations in the past that it's been less to contract these type of services out i just rather than every time when we're cutting right i just if we're cutting a job that could do the mowing and the cost is pretty comparable i would prefer to keep current staff i'd like to at least know yeah okay we can do that thank you all right the next item is 7.4 item 7.4 is another annual information item regarding custodial chemical supply beds christie so these are uh products that we're
033currently using in our new electrostatic sprayers and our new kaivac machines however now that we just purchased pat in the past fall we're now seeing that the expected annual volume of these chemicals dictates that the product be bid so we are recommending that the vital oxide the gallon containers go to industrial soap company the vital oxide in the 55 gallon barrels goes to jh discount sales and the kibosh concentrate goes to unique products these uh this award would be to for like uh the rest of this current fiscal year and then the following two fiscal years to coincide with when our next big chemical bid would be um released so we would all be on the same those would all be on the same time frame so are we where what were the stipulations for
034uh delivery of these items should there be a shortage things like that that we've seen all of the supply warehouses are within reach so we can drive out and get them if they have a problem with transportation if they have a truck breakdown no i mean if they don't have the product to give us i will pursue it from a different vendor if we have to if they can't provide the product then i believe we have the right to go find it well and i'll just say that this is much like the hand sanitizer that the price has gone down so much so we're that's my next question yeah you know there's there's a the market is full now with the product so our vendors but three years from now it might not be that
035we need this much we're not bound to any minimums no correct no we this is strictly for what we pay for estimates annual uh usage of some estimates so if we don't use as much or the price goes down if the price goes down we've already been at it the price goes down we're locked into this price so obviously my concern with three years well we can uh if the price goes down well no it's a no or two it's the rest of this fiscal year in the two years yes so we are locked into the price but i can tell you the price um has drastically dropped from the first time uh we started buying this so then why would we want to lock into a three year right contract can we can we
036do a shorter to get the price we got right right because we said what's what's the price for two years and i can give you the camp so uh let me see here it is right now we are paying um for the 55 gallon uh barrel one thousand five hundred and fifty dollars was our last purchase and they're coming in at six hundred and twenty dollars wow yeah um they um the vital oxide the one gallon we're currently paying 143 dollars a case and they bid 69 a case so these are like very half competitive pricing okay are there any other questions regarding this informational item all right and item 7.5 is in regards to driver educational uh driver education vehicle bed christy so a bid was released for the six driver's ed vehicles we
037did bid it as a uh is two options one a three year lease and we just also asked them to give us the buyout price if we wanted to at the end of the three years and then also as a straight purchase a six dealerships were sent the bid we did receive bids from three dealerships uh darcy hyundai is the lowest bid for a rental we would recommend the hyundai sonata se as it's only a five dollar difference than the elantra but it's a roomier vehicle so we would recommend that to be leased for three years i have a question so i know earlier on the mowing bids we talked about siebert being comparable so i know the driver's ed cars right now are not cars they're suvs which makes me wonder why ron westfall
038chevy only put a trailblazer on here you know when uh we received the suvs that we have now from uh jobeck which are also chevy's heat at that time he told me that chevy is getting out of the sedan market so who told i don't i why are we not looking at suvs right i mean why am i not looking at something comparable a to what we have now these are i mean high school seniors are not seven-year-olds but why do you want suvs as a vehicle isn't that more cost for the games budget costs and the suv is significantly higher i'm just i a i'm wondering why they only submitted a bid for the trailblazer when everybody else looks like well we did it as a market and uh market entry level excuse me
039sedan or suv that's how the bid was written and did we put mileage on there for our lease or did we not an amendment for the 12 000 miles yes [Music] i what's the useful life considered of a driver's ed vehicle when we're looking at leasing versus purchasing well uh they do say the driver's ed department chairs say they put about 12 000 miles on so if we were to purchase um you know depending on the the warranty for instance hyundai's warranty is five years sixty thousand miles so that would be right we could purchase that car and still be within warranty the valley honda and westfall chevy those warranties are three years 36 000 right but so my question goes back to this suv where if i look at the purchase price of this
040one that they submitted for that trailblazer it is cheaper than the hyundai we're being recommended so if you look at the purchase price on that on the 21 trailblazer ls but it doesn't list the monthly purchase price for the purchase like if we're gonna buy it are you thinking we just buy it out right or we pay it off yeah i mean like i know that we've kicked around leasing them instead of buying them but if i'm looking at something comparable to what they have now i'm looking at the at the larger cars and i'm looking at the final purchase price per vehicle and if we buy the vehicle for some reason this trailblazer is cheaper than it's cheaper but not in terms of gas gas is very expensive that's a good point would you
041have to put gas and everything but sonatas don't use as much gas they get better gas mileage but a trailblazer could do double duty at hauling other gear for things no doctor sprout is like no no no i think we're getting too far into the week i think so too i think we had already discussed so we had decided to leave yeah because that would be the least costly option overall and while i too actually am intrigued by the fact that this purchase price is so much lower than the lease i think we had thought leasing would be less and at this point we're not looking to be adding driver's ed maintenance to the curriculum of our auto shop classes the cars they had before the equinoxes were impalas so they have had sedans before
042right but so we talked about leasing because it was going to save money but if you're i it's i'm only one so it i guess i'm just confused why the lease price is so much higher than the purchase prices but that's just nothing i know anything about or maybe it looks too good to be true maybe it is yeah i don't know well or it could be that the purchase has some kind of rebate on it yeah gotcha they're applying to it does anyone else have any questions christy do you recall i know you shared this with us before do you recall what the because we're paying a daily rate now right so what on average what is that per vehicle per month per month so our january bill was 697 dollars per for january
043per vehicle so substantial savings whatever direction we go so this is about uh if we were to lease excuse me it's a 33 600 savings annually if we were to purchase what would it be would be a one-time purchase so then you would save uh 4 000 x 12 so 48 000 a month a year excuse me is there so i we bid this out and i'm just asking um if we were to lease some hyundais and some hondas are we able to do that or do we have to go with a little bit no we could split it the purpose being why would you do that right i would do it for two reasons one i would have a fleet with more variety of vehicles that might better align with what kids are actually
044going to be driving and then the second thing i'd be doing is because we're doing this and we're trying to support local businesses uh i'm spreading our dollars amongst other vendors okay i i would want to clarify and you would i would want to check with the dealer because it was bid as six vehicles so just to make sure that they would split okay that's why i'm just asking the questions and just remember honda's are the most stolen vehicles yeah really nothing against them because i like honda's driver driver's ed placards on the top of them i feel they might be a little more identif i guess they could come off though yeah anything can be removed any other questions or information the board needs for this item so if you do have more on
045this i'd ask that if it's just more detailed questions about the various mechanisms by which we could do this if we could also email them so that we can all see answers that would be great okay that was our last information item all right item 8.1 action items does anyone have any questions can i have a motion to approve i make a motion to authorize the payment of bills in the amount of 29 million six hundred and ninety nine thousand fourteen dollars and two cents as presented second mrs swanson aye mrs toriel aye ms morgan aye mrs croner aye mr bauman aye mr lightfoot aye motion passes 6-0 item 8.2 approval of the 21-22 school year calendar i make a motion to approve the your 2021-22 school year calendar as presented second mrs croner hi
046mr lightfoot hi miss morgan aye mrs swanson aye mrs doyle aye mr bauman aye motion passes 6-0 item 8.3 approval of budget reductions i make a motion to approve the budget reductions as discussed and presented second miss morgan aye mrs croner aye mrs toriel aye mrs swanson aye mr bauman aye mr lightfoot aye motion passes 6-0 item 8.4 can i have a motion i make a motion to approve the personnel report as presented second mr lightfoot art miss morgan aye mrs dorial aye mrs swanson aye mr bauman aye mrs croner aye motion passes six zero can i have a motion to adjourn i make a motion to adjourn a second second do you pick one ursula yep okay i know we're all in favor aye aye we are adjourned thank you everybody