SD308 Board of Education Meeting (10/13/2020)

001oswego community unit school 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 yeah mrs swanson here please rise for the pledge of [Music] allegiance of america and to the republic for which it stands one nation under god indivisible with liberty and justice for all [Music] on behalf of the board of education i would like to thank the public for attending tonight's meeting we value the feedback we receive from our residents and encourage everyone to take an active interest in their public school system residents are encouraged residents excuse me 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

002or to have submitted your comment via email when the secretary calls your name i ask that you come to the microphone state your name for the public record and provide your feedback please note that comments are limited to three minutes per person and that no discussion of personnel matters including names or specific job titles or responses to questions are permitted the board does not participate in discussion during public comment follow up to your questions or concerns will be addressed by administration through the contact information provided on the comment card to ensure that all topics get addressed we will hear three comments per topic this evening thank you terry strikepond the plan for reopening for junior high has me extremely concerned with only two days a week for three hours then returning home trying to slam

003a lunch and getting back to stare at a computer for another two or so hours does not seem like a very well thought out plan i've seen several different districts be able to be to implement more organized and plausible schedules we need to find a way to get our children back to school the board is saying it will take an additional three to five weeks to plan when we do get to move to the next step in getting kids back this is this realistically gets us to right around spring break to get kids back to real school the district needs to realize you are looking at keeping our children out of school for an entire year there has to be ways to organize and plan to get our kids in the building more even if

004it isn't at full capacity right away why can't they go more on those two days this truly is an injustice to our children especially when neighboring districts are making it work if two days a week then why can't it be two full days as a board and district you need to dig deep and think about what we are truly doing to our children you budget issues are the issue in my opinion not the children and that is just not fair to the kids i guarantee you that moms would come to help clean the schools if we could get our kids a proper education why does the district need to supply the amount of ppe you currently have designated that is a very large number that could be lowered by making it part of the parent's

005cost to go back there has to be ways to make this work way too many districts are already making it work for the board to justify this plan i hope that you can revisit this plan and have productive discussions to find ways to get the kids back for a more productive part of the day and time thank you for your time and consideration lever keep the kids home until after winter break and then start up fresh second semester for kids that have major anxiety issues this would solve a lot of those issues it's seamless and easier all around angelina smith as parents of an elementary school student in sd 308 we are concerned about the proposed reopening of school on a part-time basis we believe that this will do more harm than good for several

006reasons first there is still a pandemic and the number of cases of covid19 continues to increase around us this still poses a threat to both students and staff alike next there will be a significant loss of instructional time for both hybrid and remote choices this will hamper the progress that we have made as unconventional as it may be and teachers alike have developed routines this proposed hybrid reopening would completely upend the routines for both segments of the student population continuity should be a main focus lastly in the event of positive cases within the school population and possible school closures as we enter into the height of flu season will completely pose as another danger to the physical and mental well-being of our students while we are not opposed to an eventual eventual opening of schools

007i think this should give us pause to really evaluate the different needs of everyone in our community but more so our students any cut to instructional time can prove to be costly to the development of students i believe maybe we should evaluate any other plans at the beginning of january that's three we have no more emails on topics other than reopening so the rest will be sent out to us as has happened in the past item 5.1 board member comments where shall we start i can start by saying that i in an effort to put more time into the other discussion topics will do not have any comments to add tonight um i will follow ruth's example ally friend no tony just briefly of course you know um i just want to say that i

008think people are watching people are wondering what's going to go on tonight that we hear the people that do not want to go back to school we hear the people that do want to reopen school we hear a lot of things from different people in the community and it's important to remember that it's going to be a reopening that involves people not having what they thought they were going to have in a lot of different ways scheduling logistics the amount of time but hopefully it will include the kids being as safe as possible as much input as we could put into it by different groups in the district figuring out what would be the reopening plan and then this whole element of of getting groups that really really need to be back in school and

009we've heard a lot about this from the the parents and the people involved getting them back to school um and hopefully some good changes right that we're going to talk about but i i just want parents and teachers out there to know that i do see how hard this is going to be and i know that it's going to be a hard choice to reopen schools at all at some point but it's one of those things where i think we're doing the best we can to go into it responsibly and i think we're also doing everything we can to have a plan to go back to remote for all if that's what we need to do and i think that's what i wanted to bring up is that we can go into it but we

010can also come out of it if health concerns get to be extreme thank you i'm just going to add very quickly similar to what tony has to say that i don't think for me that any plan that we're looking at is anything that any of us could consider permanent i i hope not i don't think that there's an administrator here that loves doing school this way any more than they loved doing school 100 remote or they love any of the other options these are not what we think is best for education in our community else we would have already been doing it what this is is from my understanding is an opening step toward responsibly looking for a way to better reach kids and to better provide them with a step toward what they really

011need which we know that this isn't at least i have been listening and have heard that this clearly isn't what we would want um i would just ask again for a community to keep in mind that no matter what side we all fall on for what we think we should go back more we should be less teachers should do more teachers should do less administration should do more administration should do less parents should do more or less we all are working on this for the kids and i think it's worth remembering that there's no bad guy there's no um effort to keep kids from reaching their full potential that the motivation here is really for the good of the community and i would just encourage everyone in our community to pause and think about what

012it is that they're struggling with and to reach out to their teachers and their building administration for how that their situation can be addressed that's what i got thank you board committee reports teaching and learning um yeah teaching and learning we had our first meeting in quite quite some time on september 30th um it was um you know uh um faith did a presentation um a similar presentation to what we had received from the um at the board meeting um just just a couple days previous um about the you know in-person plan um so we kind of did a quick walk through of that and then we were able to have um answer questions and get some feedback and and whatnot and i think what i thought was interesting was you know certainly many of

013the questions that came up um from our committee members were questions that we were receiving already you know from um from the community so um so it was helpful to get some you know some of that information some of those questions answered um i definitely um you know i definitely thought that there was when we had our we had a conversation about how difficult um this hybrid plan really could be and and maybe will be for for working parents and um i thought that that was an interesting conversation that we really kind of delved into um i can really connect and relate to that as a working parent i am also really um i i'm also really lucky to have a lot of flexibility in my job so i can do more work from home

014um so i think some good conversation came of that some it was eye-opening for me too even to think about some issues that i hadn't really thought of and i thought it offered some um some good so we had some good kind of conversation about how the district might be able to provide some support around resources and helping families connect with resources in the community that they may not know about working parents that they may not know about so i thought that was a good piece that came out of our conversation tony what do you have to i just want to say that i was very grateful that night for all the community members that came out and were on the committee and made it happen because in these times it's not been as easy

015for people to show up and those folks that showed up we appreciated them a lot and they did bring up a lot of hard questions about the reopening plan about how because it's a limited amount of school time how are the families supposed to keep their kids supervised and cared for the rest of the time so that was one of the major uh questions that people had yeah so our next meeting is october 28th um and i think we're all looking forward to getting back into the group with our teaching and learning committee so um october 28th is our next one thank you item 5.3 the superintendent's report well good evening board since the board shared its committee's reports i'll share my committee report so uh last week i held my first superintendent parent advisory

016committee for the year i started the committee my the second semester of my first year superintendent and it's made up of parents who have kids in all of our 308 schools we come together four to five times a week and we always start the meeting the first meeting of the year by welcoming our new members and then i also i often share the vision that i have for that committee and there are three goals that we are basically i that i as the superintendent really wanted to get out of that committee and the first was to give me the opportunity to hear from the community and hear from the parents and what they're hearing out in the community on various issues the second is an expectation for the committee members to take the information they

017receive from me and take it out to come into the community to spread factual information and finally the purpose of the committee is to provide input in is in an advisory fashion uh to me as the superintendent as well as suggestions and how to improve so some of the i agenda items that we covered on last week were the 2021 board of education priorities our 2021 reopening plan of financial updates on the evidence-based funding and we've discussed topics for the future of the future meetings we've always had we always have great discussions with that group and i appreciate their input they're a great group of parents who give their time for the betterment of 308 and also at our last meeting i talked about the importance of the census and what a one percent under

018count under count means in terms of federal funds for our district for the next decade as you may have heard the deadline was september 30th it's been extended to october 31st so for those who are out there who may not have been counted yet it's not too late families can take the census online at my 2020 census.gov by phone at 844-330-2020 or by sending back the form families received in the mail from the us census bureau so that is my report for this evening thank you all right item six approval of the consent agenda is there any questions about this one okay okay so you ready i am ready does anyone have any questions no no questions but i want to um thank the um the new advisory um board or new advice yeah new

019board advisory committee members um for um for volunteering their time i'm really excited to see this getting off the ground with that i'll make i make a motion to approve all items under consent including 6.1 minutes from the september 28 2020 board of education meeting open and close session and 6.2 to approve the recommended new members for the equity board advisory committee as presented mrs moyer aye mr lightfoot hi mrs croner aye mr bauman aye mrs swanson aye mrs doyle aye ms morgan aye motion passes seven zero item 7.1 questions on financial statements 7.2 all right item 7.2 is the school reopening plan so at our last meeting we provided you with a presentation on our proposed reopening plan uh at that meeting there were there was some discussion and suggestions regarding the plan and

020we wanted to continue any needed discussion prior to asking you to approve the plan this evening the next slide tonight's presentation will give you an update on our current metrics for our area we also have two proposed changes to discuss from the initial draft those changes are in regards to the start date for junior high and high school for the hybrid plan as well as the sequential order of periods at the high school level these are two areas that we receive substantial feedback on and we will also discuss the timeline and future communications good evening teresa camuto instructor of communications serving in your public health role i just wanted to give you an update on where where things are at in our area in regards to the metrics and the stages that we've proposed here

021there are two health metrics that we are watching both the weekly new cases per 100 000 population as well as the positivity rate which is calculated on a rolling seven-day average and we've developed the four stages here and we'll continue to watch as a reminder those are built on our primary service area so the four zip codes that feed the most students to our district are what inform our numbers that we're looking at i wanted to give you a quick perspective as we look at what the current numbers are we talked last time about the importance of trends and not spikes last week on the same day last week we were sitting at a positivity rate in this area of 4.44 currently today we're seeing 6.75 new cases per 100 000 population one week ago

022today was 64.3 and today is 117.8 so this is just a great illustration again why we would not be moving quickly in or out of any of these stages but rather informing trends and not just monitoring uptakes there was significantly more testing over the last several days so our pool of people was quite a few more than we've seen up to this point which could be what is driving those numbers but again the overall trend from the last 14 days does show an uptake but we don't know if that's going to come back down like it has previously or if that's setting a new threshold for us so we will continue to watch an update for everybody that wants to keep a close eye on those i am updating those numbers on the district's website

023under health metrics those are updated each week so you can keep an eye on where things are at thank you as teresa had said we are now able to be in stage 3 which means we can talk about hybrid instructions so there are two options that we'll be talking about there is the hybrid of in person and remote and then there's just the all remote learning which we're calling remote learning by choice this information was presented last time at the different stages we are starting all of these self-contained special ed programs on monday where which is the october 19th during that week and then we are continuing with the november 9th start date for the remaining of the early childhood students and the elementary students at last presentation we talked about a december 3rd timeline

024for grades 6-12 that is one of the things that we will be discussing tonight as dr sparlin gave a preview to that i'm going to turn it over to heather kinkade to first talk about the order of periods in the high school schedule so looking at the additional feedback that we received so most of the feedback focused on classes with consecutive periods so double period classes and students with early arrival and latest ursuli early dismissal and late arrival so our second uh option that we looked at then reorders the periods into eight to one and uh one to eight so even though this does not maximize the arrival and dismissal of lunch what it does though is puts the priority of arrival times so in the proposal it keeps four and five at the arrival

025beginning times of our in-person instruction so our recommendation would be to switch from our original uh proposal to a day one periods one through eight followed by day two periods eight to one so the goal is to maximize when the students arrive throughout over a few periods and we think that keeping two of those lunch periods at that time will help with the arrival of the students not all at the same time thank you heather this is faith the question and we're going to talk about the start date for junior high and the high school hybrid option at the last presentation the board had asked can we possibly get this done faster or earlier so we did go back and look at those pieces and because of thanksgiving break and because we would need two

026days of orientation at least four days in it really backed it all the way up to a possibility of november 9th when we looked at the pros which are huge we would get students back earlier the cons just don't make that possible we will likely not have all of our staff hired in that time with all levels of staff coming back simultaneously and having needing tech support will be difficult devices would not be available for students at that point and we have had a delay from our vendor even on our staff devices that we're not sure that while they were supposed to be coming in now we don't have assurances that they would be ready in time for the november 9th date so then we did comb through a lot of the feedback that we

027had gotten and many parents sought out and asked questions or gave feedback either through the link on the website or during the superintendent's advisory committee or um as we met with people or we combed through a lot of the different social media platforms as well and there were many parents that wanted us to look at the pros and cons of starting after winter break so this chart shows that when you look at the difference between the december 3rd and the january 6th start date some of the pros of january 6 that we were confident that our devices would be ready there would be more time to train staff on live streaming there'd be more balance between groups a and b because at the semester break there's a natural change in schedules and we would be

028able to proactively make those changes to balance between a and b another benefit is the transition would occur at a natural break to instruction and we would have more time to hire necessary staff the con of that is that we would be waiting until january to bring our students back our recommendation at this point is to have junior high and high school students resume in january so that would make our start date for january 11th with our orientation for grades six and nine on january seventh and eighth next is the timeline for families to communicate if they want to remain in remote learning by choice families that want remote learning by choice will need to complete a form indicating that if this form isn't completed then it will be understood that the students will be

029uh coming back to school so for elementary and the remaining early childhood students the form will be sent out to parents on october 15th and will be due back on october 21st if the parents want to continue remote by choice through the end of the second trimester which ends on february 12th for junior high in high school again the form will be sent to parents on october 15th and will be due back by october 24 uh 21st if the parents want to continue remote by choice through the end of the third quarter which ends on march 12th it's important to emphasize that this form only needs to be filled out for students who are choosing remote by choice all their families don't need to do anything or fill out any form so what questions does

030the hat the board have in regards to what we just presented or the plan moving forward i just have a quick comment that i was grateful to the high school people that we saw at teaching and learning that was one of the things we didn't mention is that they did a lot of conscientious work to count which kids were in lunch which kids were early early or late start and uh early late start early release and um i think that they really dove into the numbers to try to figure out what was going to work on that schedule and that's what made the difference was figuring out just how many kids there were in each category so thank you to those folks who are teaching learning and you guys that maybe weren't but you were

031part of it uh you know yeah i'm just gonna i i'll i'll echo what tony said because i thought it was a really important thing to see as a as a board member and as a hopefully as a community member to see um the people who are on our teaching and learning committee who uh you know our staff who were frantically crunching numbers and working on their commun computer um you know multitasking for sure paying attention to um and and seeing them you know dive in as best they could and you know certainly leaving you know some of them working diligently after seven o'clock leaving them alone in that room um so it when we you know when we ask for information and we suggest changes and we're thinking sometimes out loud and processing and

032different things you know so much work goes into the data that is given to us and presented to us and um thank you we appreciate it i appreciate it and just it's incredible the behind the scenes work that happened so um may i ask two questions um so and forgive me if i missed it um can you explain because we have had a few questions i have had a few questions around gifted ed related to elementary and um and how that will be handled given the fact that maybe we're losing some of that small group time or or yeah well at the elementary the pull out program is for gifted math uh ela has done more in differentiating within the homeroom teacher and being able to do that so i'll address the math piece first

033so there is right now our gifted teachers for the pull out math instruction do go back and forth between two schools which is very hard if everybody across the district is doing that so they will alternate to those schools and then teach remotely to the school that they can't get to on that particular day with a different teacher providing the classroom management piece so that there still can be continuity of instruction and have that not be lost time for those and then there also is time built into the remote by choice in the afternoon so that our gifted teachers can teach math to the students that are purely and remote by choice in the afternoon so there's both of those time periods i know one of the concerns is around ela which is more differentiation

034and some of our teachers are really knocking it out of the park with that small group instruction and the time that they're able to do that part of the video that is going out to elementary staff tomorrow talks about teachers still having the discretion whether it was in person or in remote to continue with small group instruction movement breaks all of those types of things so that it will be a little more difficult because there's going to be less time but there still would be that piece and each of those groups will now be smaller than having the entire group to instruct via go live so it's a lot of it is kind of reframing and what that looks like but we're certainly not wanting to give up differentiation as we move to these two

035models thank you and then can i um just related to the timeline about the for about choice so um so we are looking at having potentially another a time to change at the end of either the second trimester or third quarter for the upper grades um to to to shift should that be you know where we're at at the time to shift your choice um to a hybrid or in person a versus staying remote for all right um what we're trying to do with that is at least uh get some continuity that it wouldn't be well i want to do it for a week and then i want to change it and then i want to change it back to you know people really thinking about what they would like to do but as theresa

036was saying different in the change of the metrics could cause us to move back as president doyle had said maybe we will be in a different place later on and we can even offer more in-person instruction or or make changes so that's the timeline for now but i think a lot of this and it has since march 13th is subject to change given what it might what else might be going on i know i had i said i had two questions may i ask one more question to to um theresa related to metrics and this really will be it for now um at the last at the last meeting you had talked about um a pause what did you call it um if we were seeing um some different trends um some adaptive pause an

037adaptive pause can you can you talk to me a little bit more about what that means and looks like sure so when we talk about changing between us stages those are very monumental movements i'm going taking everyone district-wide in or out of a remote environment or in-person environment and changing a lot of schedules a lot of jobs a lot of placements of individuals so if we see a trend like what we're watching in the numbers at this moment and when we've seen these numbers go up the last few days what we're doing is taking a look at whether from a certain zip code are we seeing a more prevalence among a certain age or population as these numbers come in each day we really nail down and drill down and try to figure out uh

038if there's a certain certain cause so given that if we see something within the district a set a certain geographical area like if there's an elementary school in a subdivision where we're starting to see numbers tick up or if there's a group of students for example a set of athletes at the high school level that have been together and that caused an uptick there we could decide that while we try to research understand maybe even do a massive deep clean you try to really figure out what's going on within that subset we could pull a pause on any in-person instruction for a period of time either for a class a set of students an area of a school a whole school area of the district or even the whole district while we really try to

039understand is this a spike is this an unusual situation or is this really where the new norm is and if that's the case do we need to make some adaptations to our plan or potentially move stages we just don't want people to think when you see the numbers pop in or out of the stages the way we've presented them for a day or two days or you know we aren't going to make those dramatic moves until we can understand what's really informing that number thank you yeah can i can i go back to that change at quarter so here's my my high school science teacher two cents for what it's worth i would not offer changing a quarter especially at the junior high in the high school level and here's why i think the number

040of kids who decide to stay home will affect class sizes and some of your actual classes that are running i think at some point we're going to not be able to run some sections if i if a large number of kids are staying home that's going to impact your electives that's going to impact some of your cte classes i it's going to kind of trickle from there so i i would just caution that maybe at this especially at the junior high in the high school level that if you're going to choose remote you should choose it for the semester i mean i understand that we're kind of doing both but like my fear is there's going to be some classes that aren't going to be able to run because we're going to have to put

041these kids in math and science and english and and we're because they're staying with their same teacher that class is either going to be happening remote or in person so we're not um like taking away sections it would just be how many are coming in person at the junior high level in the morning versus remote i think that and i i understand your logic i think we were worried about locking people in and saying no you try it and you're there is no try you know you're you're in whatever option you choose for the remainder of the time that we're in stage three or until the end of the year and we felt like we needed to give a possible exit ramp for people or getting back on to in-person instruction at some later time

042but your point is is valid about that there isn't a great natural break at the quarter for high school especially yeah and then my only other concern because i have been doing this for eight weeks is there's a there's there's kind of this whole cross section of kids who i don't want to say are falling through the cracks but are failing multiple classes because this type of learning is just not working and they're not special ed kids and they're not high need kids but there is a whole group of kids who you know you either anticipated or you didn't who are not just failing one class but are failing multiple classes so at some point when we talk about bringing kids back in i think one of the other ways that we should select some

043of these kids like i mean i assume that the houses we don't call them houses here we call them this is not hogwarts yeah we call them we call them houses at west side it's not um well every kid has a i mean they're counselors i assume that somebody along the lines somewhere however we do it my kids weren't those kids but i know that there are those kids um but somebody's reaching out to people who are you know is somebody looking to see how many kids are failing two or more classes or three or more classes or all of your classes and is somebody collecting all that data and saying hey we've got a group of 400 freshmen who are failing literally every class because they've never done high school before and that's kind

044of what that's kind of what we're doing but i don't i don't think it's just freshmen i think there's a whole group of juniors that are really struggling there's a whole group of seniors because i have them and i see them struggle so i i think that as we talk about these kind of groups coming back in we also have to look at like again free or equal isn't always fair fair isn't always equal i think we also have to look at those kids and just say look this isn't working for them we need to bring these 300 kids in maybe we at semester maybe we try to put them in you know here's these kids with these teachers just to kind of go off that a little bit is there an option for as

045ally is saying kids that are struggling in failing in in a few classes that clearly that this is not working is there an an opportunity at some point for some small groups to be pulled in before the second semester to address any of those severe needs because here's the thing we're only eight weeks in right so we've got another eight to ten weeks to fix it and some of these kids are still at the point where it may be fixable so i guess when we start talking about and i like i realized that that throws a whole wrench in the system but i just like how many kids are there that are in this boat how many you know how can we help go ahead we definitely have the ability to pull that in the

046system currently at least at the high school all of our students are tagged not only by counselor and by dean so those two groups independently and together as teams pull very much what you're looking for in terms of how many f's are being pulled the system that we have right now pulls lifetime data so what the grades are currently being used in progress is what they're looking at and i know that the counselors and the deans are reaching out not only by grades and also attendance so what we can do is start to look at kind of how else we can work with those students that are failing really just one or more classes so but i know that the buildings are looking at that data and reaching out to students so there's what a

047meant by reaching out there's that right so so like there's a difference so there's a difference from when i call a kid and i talk to his mom and i like hey let's zoom right now get on like there's a different conversation that happens or when you know i i you know call upstairs and i have three other teachers on the same zoom call with me with this kid's parent that's a much different conversation than when the secretary from the dean's office calls and says hey your kid's failing every class what do you want me to do no and i know that the dean and the counselor are calling um i can look into in terms of setting up uh specific where there's like team meetings with teachers um just to see i know they're

048talking about and working they've placed some students in intervention about getting kids back on track looking at what they're struggling with in terms of work completion and working with students who are struggling not only to engage but also to accomplish the work so um we can touch base more about that i just yeah i just we also can look at and i know it's been a few weeks since we talked about it but even doing some after school types of things to provide some in-person support to run during the school day transportation becomes quite an issue and sometimes students have transportation to school on their own and sometimes they don't but we will explore more options because with extending this even further from bringing them back in person we know we have students that are

049struggling right i mean i'm just suggesting like a cohort of here's here's a 10 kid cohort and let's you know let's make sure they all have the same biology teacher and let's make sure they have the same english teacher and the same sequential algebra teacher and let's just let's just try it with these you know with these couple of kids and let's you know what i mean i think if the board gives direction because this is not a fresh conversation right when we first started talking about having a conversation about a return to school program we started that conversation with the most at-risk students the special ed kids the kids that were struggling the kids that were falling behind the kids that were failing we already had this conversation about watching out for these kids

050and requesting that they're helped for so now x amount of weeks into it and just getting ready to start saying oh can we start looking into this i would have hoped there's some little nugget of research ability into a building that's half empty half of the day now that we're able to get this going but right so in all fairness as a teacher like i have you know three kids failing physics so you know it takes me it takes me some more time on top of the time that we're already taken to you know now i got to reach out to all these other teachers now i got to make sure that they're all you know what i mean so we're talking about adding a lot of time for the teachers so what i'm not

051trying to do is add more to the i'm not trying to add more to the staff but i'm trying to kind of bring it into a fold if that makes sense like you know are there maybe this is just to kind of ask on other options if perhaps looking at this during the school day can we this is how i'll ask it can we because we know that the reaching out is not working for a lot of kids and i know you know that too is there a way that we can provide more helpful resources in terms of connection with students that just aren't catching on as fast to how remote school works is there a resource that we can provide to our families to know what to do if this is a situation occurring

052and know how to ask for help because i know that there are tyler and there's google and there's the reminders to the student email and the reminders to the parents and then the newsletters and it does it's a lot so maybe there's just a way to make it very simple and clear that parents when they look at their tyler or they look at their students google classroom they know if their child is one of those students that they know what to do if that happens or if that is happening i don't know if that's something that we can provide through the school community resource collaborative or if that's something we provide through the school day but i would hope that as matt said we've already begun looking at that and i know that we have

053and i also know that there's a lot of kids that you can't get a hold of so i would just simply ask that we provide everybody a way to understand what to do to help right and i guess i'm just asking if we can bring some of those kids in even if it's just the three hours for a more intense like we need to really get these kids on math science and english because they're behind they're all behind they've been out since what march of last year you know what i mean like is there something where we don't necessarily have to take all the electives but we really need to make sure that they've got the math and the science and the english and then can i sorry this is a lot for you guys

054um but and i and i have a sense that it's probably already on your radar but just so we can have say it out loud when you talk about um when we talk about families making a choice about continuing with remote or coming you know doing the hybrid is there a is there an outreach plan for those students that clearly are struggling based on the data that you have that would be a more concrete and specific outreach plan to reach out to the student and parent to say based on what we're seeing we you know potentially could it would encourage you know you know an alternate one of the alternate options like the hybrid option or whatnot um so that there's that direct contact and and and feedback um i i realize that you know

055our for the we have a quick turnaround time here um in terms of the forms and and whatnot but i think we also have you know some internal leeway too i don't know if that's something that has already been discussed or could be a process we did some of that with the students in self-contained special education programs too where we absolutely if it was a health reason or those kinds of things but if we called and kind of further explained and talked about it then some people changed their minds i would think that the same thing would happen with this that doesn't mean that we want to put anybody where they would feel unsafe right but if um you know and if we don't hear from them they're automatically into the in-person piece and that's

056kind of why we opted that way um so that we would build classes assuming that those students would come but we definitely would be reaching out to our students that are on the list and making sure that they know about what's coming and encouraging them to pick the best option for what that means and that some families are having a very difficult decision between what's right for health and what's right for what they would want to do for educational purposes and we have to of course accommodate and understand that sure i have a quick question sorry this is ruth croner ask um in regard to particularly at the high school level i think the junior high at least at my kids junior high has a retake policy where typically they'll after meeting certain requirements you're

057allowed to do some retakes and i know that typically at the high school most departments have policies on that and typically it's there is no retake option because you're in high school and you need to learn responsibility and get stuff turned in when it's due and i totally i'm down with that however i do think that there are some extenuating circumstances potentially and i'm not saying we need to allow students to have another excuse to not do something but i think that sometimes legitimately they just are not getting it um and are not there's a connection missed i mean believe me like i said i've been on some of these things where they're just trying to teach them how to open a document and it's like pulling teeth and it's very painful to watch but

058i'm just wondering if we're allowing the individual teachers any kind of leeway i know a lot of that is department driven and you know in an effort to have equity between the two buildings and i totally understand that and i think that that is important but i also think it's important to allow the teachers to certain extent to kind of use their own judgment just like a pandemic retake policy type thing like this is extenuating circumstances for everybody and you know you can't read people's minds but i think a teacher can typically get a feel for their students and are they being genuine or is this like an excuse you're hearing over and over and over again ruth i think that what you're talking about too gets to are we letting the teachers cooperate so

059that they can create an understanding of what's essential in the course and then what's essential about the work turning and then making sure that the kids are sticking to what they're supposed to stick to and the parents are not you know bailing out too quickly but i agree with you that there has to be some flexibility in the time of a pandemic but there also has to be some communication amongst various people to make sure that we're not having one teacher who just says oh you poor thing you don't have to turn in anything another teacher yeah i don't i don't want that for sure and i know you know typically at the junior high level it's like if you got a certain score on a test then you can submit a form to retake

060it and you have to have turned in all the homework first and had a discussion with the teacher and not all of them well that has been my experience with the retake situation and i you know i appreciate that there are maybe some hoops that you're going to have to jump through to get to that but to especially for some of these kids who seem to be failing everything like standard space grading is a whole other conversation we could have it another day might exceed our discussion okay sorry nope it's that's a really valid point that i am curious to hear about too and i did have one other um question as clearly a lot of this the timelines for this is technology related and i appreciate that we want to do what's best for

061students and i do feel like what's best for students is for them to be in person but included in that is for them to be in person with a teacher who has the tools to successfully teach and a lot of that has to do with technology especially at the junior high in high school we're gonna we're gonna be asking them to live stream their classroom to the kids who are at home that day so that's obviously technology plays a significant role in that and you mentioned delays in delivery do we have an updated delivery i know we have like teacher devices and then we have student devices and that's maybe two different dates uh yes because we made uh purchase and made orders uh at different times and we're experiencing delays uh with both of

062those orders as are many many districts that put in orders as well i did see kyle uh our director of technology here in the audience um if he has any more new updates come on up but i put you on the spot there kid yeah all right i don't have very many updates outside of what faith had said our vendor i spoke with him on saturday and monday just to get updates were in a line that is very long they're filling units as they're coming in a lot less units are coming in than what they thought so that's where we're we're at okay so we don't they haven't even actually given us an estimated delivery date at this point they have been saying for a while that they would um and we have not gotten

063that great is there this might be a really dumb question but is there some way that we can ask our vendors to prioritize school districts over say stores for christmas or other purchases where they might have been making them for the general market to prioritize for school districts since this is a need for so many school districts is there a mechanism to do that i have asked about that and the only prioritization that they are giving is to medical and health care facilities which makes sense thank you thank you that'd be a good time to thank you stewart for some computers say that one more time no to thank east aurora for computers oh and my alma mater that actually is a very good point and i had made that but we did get a

064significant loan of devices from east aurora school district which we are ridiculously grateful for and then i believe also a few other uh just these doors yeah about 700 devices so again you to dr noral superintendent out there and the board of education for working with 308. okay um first of all i i want to just address this to the faith dr sparlin the rest of the administration i appreciate the um the plan that you put forth for us tonight at our last meeting on the 28th we were really kind of pushing as a board it's like hey let's get back before thanksgiving what can we do let's let's really move this direction and to come back and say no it's not going to be thanksgiving it's not even going to be 2020 it's going

065to be 21. i i appreciate the fact and the honesty of this is what it's gonna take to get it done and get it done hopefully correct correctly um with the vendors and the computers in stock so rather than trying to push through haphazardly something that's not going to be as effective as we want it to be it's not going to look like what we want it to be um i certainly appreciate the honesty and the recommendation on what it really needs to be versus what we want it to be so so thank you for for that guidance the high school schedule as shown makes much more sense especially with your explanation tonight that piece looks really good there were no changes or there were no additional slides to the junior high or elementary schedule

066so has that changed have we miraculously found any more additional in-person time at that level we did not make any changes to the elementary or the junior high schedules okay so that one will stay exactly as presented last tuesday correct and then to kind of go along with that depending on the outcome of tonight we'll be making videos to explain it to staff videos to explain it to parents putting out you know emails and different presentations to explain uh the different options and allow for questions and answers as people go through the choices that they need to make and it would be of all of the schedules not just of the changes that we made tonight of course anyone have any other questions i think the only other question that i would have is that

067i know that um we have state guidelines that from isbe and from idph this plan meets those criteria for safety and it does meet the criteria for educational time and then there was one additional change that i know some folks had touched on a little bit briefly before we were in session here about the restrictions they had lifted a little bit for some of our substitutes is that something that we're going to be able to look at there might even be potential to allow volunteers to help out is that a possibility or is that yeah no that's a possibility uh i spoke with mr miller just before we came in today and he and i will be meeting tomorrow uh we'll be talking with teresa and we'll be putting some information out within the next

06848 hours i don't have any other questions lori but i just wanted to i did want to say um because i skipped my my board member comment um no but i did want to say we i did receive a lot of um emails and calls and you know a lot of of course community engagement and i appreciated those i did not get to respond to all of them i read i think i read all of them um and you know um i hear and understand that this is a hard plan for for a lot of people we're in a hard situation it's a hard situation for a lot of people there are certainly i worry about our teachers i think we are asking a lot of them i don't think i don't think we can

069gloss over that fact i think this is going to be really really challenging for them i'm worried about some of our remote learners that if they continue fall remote you know i'm worried for working parents um i think that this is um i think this is an important first step in in getting kids back to school and it's as um as laurie mentioned it's not you know the perfect plan that we would be hoping for um but i do think it's an important step so i did hear i hear you know from all for all you parents out there and teachers out there i read what you said i heard what you said and um you know and i appreciate reaching out and it and the tone in these emails were very positive and very

070solution focused and had a lot of really great information um that a lot of information that was really really eye-opening um so so thank you to everybody and i have a question for heather and faith and probably so shannon for sure um is there an explicit word out in the district from you guys to teachers to say when we go back and when this model starts getting real and we figure out you know what's going to happen we will be open to [Music] identifying the core things we have to teach within a certain grade level or you know level of school so that these teachers feel like they have that feedback loop in addition to this this schedule in this model that whole idea of we're gonna adjust what we're teaching so that we can

071get through and not be over for example i was with some teachers today and they said they want us to do everything we do in a regular year and that's not possible so it what is the word that you're putting out i guess is what i would like to know so i can start with junior high prior to the start of the school year we had committees of teachers come in to to work on what our non-negotiables would be for those subject areas for ela math and science and then our social studies we have a curriculum committee that's been working and they also went through that process and after that committee went through that process how did teachers access to know what the non-negotiable it was sent out to all of our all of those

072it's sent out yep okay so i would echo what shannon has said in terms of work was started this past summer i know that work continues on the wednesdays during the teacher collaboration time i've seen some of the plc time that they've continued to use to have those discussions so um if there's you know concerns i would always encourage the teachers to reach out at the high school to their department chairs and assistant principals but i know that that message definitely went out this summer and continues to go out that we anticipate the need obviously as you discussed for modifications to the standard curriculum and the elementary teachers as well got together to be a committee obviously we didn't have all of the elementary teachers and to identify what are the essential standards and what

073can be so what is the really got to know and what is the nice to know in the amount of time that we have to do those instructions with the focus being on math and reading and writing yeah sorry lindsay i did not that's okay lindsay allen director of elementary education we did meet before school started with an ela committee and a math committee and we put together our power standards and our assessments for trimester one last week we met with the ela committee and we did that for trimester two and they did an awesome job and we were able to get uh that information out to staff on friday tomorrow we're meeting with the math committee to do that for trimester two and then next week we'll be looking at science um and then

074we're hoping that uh end of november and beginning of december we'll be able to do that for trimester three that way our elementary teachers know through the rest of the year what are our power standards and what are the assessments you can always hit more standards but what are we expecting what are the what are the core areas that we need to hit and i would just like to give a shout out to our ela committee and to our math committee they have done amazing work with the limited amount of time and with how busy they are and coming together and being very positive and really getting putting that all together and getting that out to staff yeah thank you it's really it is really important to me to that we um have a way

075i really want to encourage teachers to continue reaching out and of course reaching out to your um uh department chairs and um and building administrators and board members it's really really important to me that our teachers are okay and a lot of them are not feeling like they're gonna be that it's gonna be okay and for our kids to be okay the grown-ups have to be okay and right now it's really hard at home a lot of grownups at home are not so okay but i'm worried that we're gonna go into school and our teachers are not going to be okay and so we do have to find a balance and i appreciate the work that's been done and i i think we have to um you know we have to really be mindful of

076what um of what we're asking our teachers to do and how much appreciation we can have for them as they are balancing a really unprecedented year and we're asking a lot of them so thank you all of you all right any other items or questions regarding this item all right if not we're going to move on to item 7.3 debt service extension bond presentation item 7.3 is an informational presentation regarding our need for debt service extension bonds in our future later this evening the board will be engaging in dialogue and decision making regarding the refunding of the general obligation bonds and we thought this information to be important to have those for those conversations later this evening so christy thank you so i'm going to start with a little history of how capital projects have

077been funded in the district as you know in the past five years many difficult decisions have been made to balance a budget so that our reserves would at least remain intact and as you also know pre covid we were well on our way to increase fund balances however even without the financial impact of covid our fund balances would not have increased to a level that we would be able to comfortably address capital needs and projects in the next five years as we continue to have roughly about one month of reserves in our fund balance so last week i did actually speak to mike barr the former director of operations and he confirmed that up until the year 2017 the district was funding capital projects with the surplus left from the uh 2006 building bonds referendum

078when those what funds were depleted in the decision was then made to issue a 13.6 million dollar dsub bond debt service extension based bond to address priority building and technology needs and the plan was and is to pay that off in five years and the last payment will be made in february of 2022 back in january 2015 the board was presented with the 2020 deferred maintenance and energy assessment plan that strategy was to develop a plan to be used as a primary tool for long-range long-range excuse me facilities maintenance and improvement planning and budgeting this original plan had over 29.4 million dollars in improvements in annual maintenance we did go through this plan and totaled outstanding projects by the priority assign back in 2014 and for these purposes we did weed out any annual maintenance

079and maintenance costs that were included in that plan and obviously projects that have already been completed this leaves approximately 13.2 million dollars remaining in the three priority categories of outstanding items in the 2020 plan so you can see that laid out there priority one we have about 6.7 million left to address priority 2 4.8 million and priority 3 1.7 million also last month the board was provided with a list of capital projects we would recommend to be completed if the district were to continue on the five-year d-sub bond cycle that list did include many of the priority one and two projects as well as an additional 3.2 million in identified projects with that additional 3.2 the total capital projects is roughly 16.4 million dollars so the need for d sub bonds um continuing to delay

080items on the 2020 plan could be more costly in the long run and just i want to just go back for a second the 2020 plan um assumed or suggested that all the projects listed on that plan would be completed last year so it started in 1617 and went from there i'm sorry 1560 and went from there so they could be it could be more costly in the long run to continue to delay those rising material and labor costs obviously you know things continue to increase and without proper maintenance items may fail to the point where they are no longer salvageable so they would have to be replaced in a district our size and i have the stats there 3.3 million square feet of building space to maintain 540 acres of property with 97 acres

081of that being asphalt or parking lots and things like that so in the district our size there's bound to be unknown repairs or replacements that we simply cannot project without the dsub funds for capital projects any mechanical system parking lot roof etc that fails would require the district to dip into our already low reserves as i mentioned in the previous slide there's roughly 16.4 million to address our fund balance would not cover uh that in the upcoming years uh while the fundament we i did receive actually draft fund balances from the auditors last week and they were more favorable than we thought but that would still be to deplete those fund balances would leave us just over a week's worth of reserves any questions about the need for dsa do you have a timeline yeah

082are you saying that you need to ask us to vote on that now no it's just information for the next conversation the next presentation we don't need to decide today whether right forward but i think the question that i'm trying to ask maybe more reaches too part of for me the information that i'm looking for is to know where that factors in because one of the things that we're looking at is what do we look at for the property tax burden and is there going to be something that we all might need to consider as part of it or is this not in the next year or two or is it something that's three to five years out so it would be in the next year to do because we are the the five i'm

083sorry the 13.6 million that we borrowed in 2017 we are just about out of that so the the remaining money that we have in that 13.6 million is really just to close out the existing projects that we are have already started so we are yes at the point where we need to start considering um that next cycle if that's the way we're going to move forward well mike sorry my question is of the 13 million outstanding parties one two and three was that or was that not accounted for in the original dsub i can't imagine i'm not obviously positive but i can't imagine that it was because the original plan was 29.4 million i'm just trying to get a handle on did did we capture enough money and these are new projects or did we

084not capture enough money and these are the leftover projects it would be the latter over do you recall this when okay this is some stretch um my memories when you and i were on on facilities and we had a presentation with a former superintendent there was that list that was upwards of 20 mid 20 million dollar range that was done it was like 24 25 million like that yeah so so yeah not not all of that was even tackled by the last go-around with with with those bonds it wasn't right and and i do recall we had that we had the whole conversation about waiting and prioritizing certain projects because obviously we can't pay for everything i was i was just trying to frame the conversation around is it that we didn't plan correctly or

085we didn't have enough money or you know if we're if we're going to make a decision on selling more bonds we need to make sure we're understanding what is needed and that we're preparing for as best we can the long term so from what i remember um the last time we went around and looked at d sub bonds um and we did go through and get those um i believe that that was during the time we didn't have a budget for the state and there was i believe that was right in that time frame it was around 20 17-ish so at that time what the concern has been had been was that we knew that the state funding formula would be changing to something but we didn't know what we knew that um we didn't

086know what to expect for anything really so the concern was to take out too much debt um that we might not end up needing would put an unnecessary strain on our community so trying to limit what you're asking for for the true needs rather than the nice to haves was kind of the purpose so that we had time to see what would develop although i think back to that and i go wow i don't think anyone could have thought that this is where we would be when we were looking at the next step that was the intention is to make sure that we weren't asking for more than we needed and that um we didn't look too far ahead in the future because there was so much uncertainty at that time financially that's pretty much

087it right and then you know the other thing i'll say out here or i'll say at this point is yeah so we're about to see another presentation where we're going to be talking about not only refinancing but the possibility of additional d sub bonds and what i'm saying is is i'm not it's not clear to me that this is the exact amount of money that we think we're going to need and what is the time frame right so if we if we haven't even paid off the lat or we're not going to pay the last ones off until um a year from february right yep so then what's what's the and just so we all understand what's the time horizon what are what do we think the money that we're going to need over that

088if it's a five-year plan and then it takes seven to pay back the bonds because you sell the bonds before you actually get the money and all that kind of stuff i guess that's what i'm saying is i i think we all understand the need i think we need a little bit more um solid information on exactly how much money we think we're going to need with a plus minus before we make a decision on selling bonds does that make sense to everybody and i just have one other thing and i just got a text from bob um plus at that time in 2017 you were also hoping for the 50 million dollar grant so you just wanted to put that out and i also think and bob maybe you can help me with this

089at the time you took out the uh we took out the 13.6 million i'm assuming that's all we could take in our example that was the max we had in our debt service extension base available to us well you could have gone school club permits you go up to 20 years and we provided a variety of different scenarios and doing a five-year borrowing of 10 15 20. the board settled on the i think the finance committee recommended too and the board selled on the five-year option because you paid back less interest you would have five years in five years you have this conversation again and all the unknown you know i agree with everything that the board was talking about that's what i recollect too right because we don't want to be layering dsub on

090top of dsub that we haven't paid off but we've already right spent the money and now we have to go back and get more right but it sounds like we're also kind of in a similar situation where we're trying to predict a future that's just wildly unpredictable right now you know like we don't know what the state is going to end up doing we we know it's not great right now so i'm just a little bit concerned that we're sort of in a similar position maybe that you were in 2017 and i appreciate the background on but but that's that's why i'm kind of saying look i i think it's the number's 15 now right for the next one right i think we submitted and all i'm saying is is 15 the right number that's

091all i'm saying yeah and i think that we definitely need to do that i think the the for the purposes of this evening if i remember correctly uh matt had asked to see this as part of the conversation we actually are prepared to have tonight which we'll hear about in just a few minutes about um refinancing our bonds and that some of the conversation we had last time we talked about this had been related to whether or not there was a likelihood that in addition to this bond payment we might need to in the foreseeable future look for um d sub money also and what that would do to the total tax bill for debt in the community i think that i think that's what we were all kind of looking for so you're absolutely

092right and i completely agree i need to see a lot more information on what we need and i would imagine at this point our facilities needs may have changed since in what we're looking at and that's part of the bigger picture but this is just the basic information that we'd asked for as a board to facilitate decisions that we're going to make decisions on the other thing so it's all kind of part of the reason we had been looking at one of the things we wanted to is maybe not look at refinancing quite so soon that's why we were looking at maybe we wanted to see what how this all kind of shook out a little bit better and had more time for that information however as i understand it there's some good reason to

093think that it is in our best interest financially to look at the refinancing sooner rather than later and i don't want to like jump into anyone else's presentation so i'm just going to leave it there and can i add i think what at least for myself what we've we've seen in the past when when we see a presentation we talk about a need for dsa bonds we talk about what that deferred maintenance plan looks like when we talk about 96 97 acres of asphalt another thing that that mr barr would do is we would have a slide and we would have pictures of the four school buildings and the parking lots and saying look this this isn't working we cannot we cannot operate like this what is it i think it has a more impact

094in what the true need and necessity is we saw pictures of of the flooring in the buildings that was a safety issue things like that uh part of this project there was a little bit more substance to to what we were needing to approve and actually seeing the the urgency for some of those items rather than just saying oh we've got 13 million tell a thousand words yes we need visual aids those are of presentations when we talk about the needs and the maintenance at least that that i'm used to seeing making those decisions right and so but can i ask and just for clarity's sake though so the the spreadsheet that we got though a couple a month ago two months ago um related to capital projects are we is that not are we

095feeling like that's not current or we need to you know and i'm fine with more information i'm just wondering are we going off of this spreadsheet and delving deeper for priorities or a couple of them i think brent's question was is that truly the number is that what we need and then we saw the tennis courts we saw the athletic fields we saw the parking lots we saw right and if i could make my point a little clearer maybe i wasn't as clear you know when we look at this slide here this is interesting information but again it's are we saying that all the money in one two and three is money we needed for december 2014 that we didn't do because then that would tell me we haven't accounted for anything that's going to

096happen in the next five years and that's what i think we're trying to have as a conversation is to say how many boilers do we need to replace how many roofs need to be replaced how many chillers need to be replaced likely in the next five to ten years and you know what brent when i was talking with christy when i told her i said what we need is a new five-year maintenance we need a new five-year plan this is a 2020 plan we're in 2020 now and there is we need a new plan you know as laurie said the part of the reason for this presentation tonight was because it does go it does go into some of the conversation for the general obligation school bonds for the next for the next conversation and

097to highlight that you know in 2014 we outlined 29 million dollars worth of projects needed to be done and to show that from those from those projects that were outlined in 2014 which was six years ago there are a number of those projects that haven't been finished yet and they obviously they wouldn't have been finished because the uh the that's uh they did that service extension bonds were for 13.2 million out of a 29 million dollar set of plans that needed to be done so to answer the question when do we need the debt service extension bond money well to do any capital projects above what our maintenance budget allows us to do uh the money would be needed for this upcoming summer and i mean that we can do some projects because i keep

098on peripheral vision with the mass sun it's kind of tough isn't it we would have the monies in our in the operations budget for some projects but obviously any larger capital projects we would not so that i think that answers the question but we do need to have an updated five-year projects list that are that is prioritized presented to the board with pictures so we can see so we can get a actual picture on the dollar amount and i think the the timeline that we're working on with some of the high need projects coupled with the timeline for the board approval um coupled with our use of facilities that we have right now or lack of use of facilities that we have right now based on what's going to happen in the next couple of

099months the next six months with remote learning the the metrics the stages that the state is in uh to what capacity we're able to use the the buildings if that is going to go foreseeable into the school year of 2021 if we're able to put off some of those projects timeline a little bit more with brent's concern getting that that the last set of dsa bonds paid off before selling the new bonds i think a nice fuller picture i i would i don't know about the rest of the board but i would yeah and i think that that is what we are looking at this informational item is merely at this point to provide the information that was requested so that we can have a more complete picture because sometimes when we make decisions based

100only on one item it it doesn't take into account all of the other items in context so this provides that context i absolutely expect that this will again come before us before we would make any decisions on it because there is a lot more to do there are committees that will need to take a look at things um and we're just not there yet to make that decision but what we do know from this is that this is not a three to five year out far far away decision for our board to make this is this is a more present situation that we need to to consider when we make other decisions yeah that's just it so is there anything we want to also add uh to request for christy to include when she does

101come to us with this type of presentation we'll want to have facilities obviously taking a look at the plans are there any other committees that feel that they would benefit from looking at facility related issues i that's up to you guys if you can okay fair um so i guess not unless legislative committee has any ideas but that's i think it's it's finance and facilities yeah yeah okay all right item 7.4 is the resolution providing for the issue of not to exceed 74 million 500 000 and the general obligation refunding school bonds and we have christy tyler cfo and bob lewis from pma to present to the board right and i just wanted to before bob starts the reason that number changed from last time was uh to allow for or you for the board

102to consider all four options the originally the number was lower this i think it was 69 million and that would only allow for options one or two so just to give you more options tonight we increase that number okay sorry so i'm already on slide two if you can go ahead and page forward or is that me that's you okay you wanna do it sure so maybe if i could just touch on some of the discussion items you guys had on the dsub so the green bars represent the five year borrowing so four years are historic in the sense that you've already collected the levy in the fourth year you'll make that payment on february first so you already have those dollars to make that payment this last payment is as christie mentioned is due

103february first of 22 means you'll collect the dollars next summer to make that payment and then uh so think about the the deadline that comes in if you want to pick up that very next year with another bond issue you would have to issue that bond no later than february 28th of 2022. so christy was asking me okay what's the timing i said likely somewhere between summer and february of 22 is when you issue the bonds to continue uh on and using your debt service extension base so this is what your debt picture looks like right now and so here's what we didn't change any of the underlying scenarios one two three and four those are the same so the only thing difference you're seeing here is we've overlaid a potential five-year borrowing whether it's

104five or three or seven i mean you always have that option to do the amount that you want to do i i strongly recommend to my clients that they not go out more than 10 years if possible because those school districts that go out more than 10 go 15 or 20. they always need to borrow sooner and they still have six or seven years left on principal so they end up doing another borrowing they're just paying interest for seven years where they start paying on the principal again so you know as you're looking up those options i we show them five years here again but as you determine the amount that may determine whether you only want to go out three or maybe one about seven to get to the exact amount that you want

105to borrow but it sounds like from the conversation that it's likely that you would borrow and so if you're likely to borrow you may want to as you're looking at these four options you may want to consider those options that either minimize the impact of the taxpayer from doing the borrowing or or immunizes that impact if you will by maintaining the annual payment so in this scenario which is the one that i'm sorry it's mass keep slight now um which is the one that maintained the payment at its current amount but didn't allow for the issuance of additional debt without an increase and then this one paid down the debt the wrap most rapidly with a drop off right here if you were to do this restructuring represented by the blue bars and if you

106sold the d sub bonds that increased from there there would be an impact about 115 on a 250 home so it's not insignificant then if um you were to proceed with a non-referendum decent borrowing and implemented this plan that you see here this plan scenario two is the one that had a decrease and then maintain the payment here if you were to do another non-referendum bond it would be an increase from both the prior year and from where you had been the increase over the prior year would be 115 increase and the increase over from where the payment had been from here to here would be a 48 dollar increase now you would have the option i know there was some discussion to last board me and i think it was uh president doyle said

107well given where we're at in the pandemic having a one-year decrease that went back up would provide some tax relief for those people most impacted perhaps if if you didn't want to do that though you could just raise this bar up by restructuring less than this year to maintain the payments of just a 48 increase from here to here so it's optional whether you want that decrease or not you don't have to have it that way it's just the way we projected it and so with each successive scenario you're saving a little bit less money because the debt source is getting pushed off a little bit further so in this scenario we essentially are maintaining the payment from where it was at there's a slight decrease of 25 dollars but you know so essentially it's

108staying about the same with a modest decrease now you'll notice as it contrasts again with this scenarios you do get a drop off before the major drop off but it's not as large as it may have been or as soon as it would have been in these other two scenarios and lastly with this one we lowered the annual payment and maintained that amount so if you did a d sub bond that it was would be lowered by about 78 dollars here and again the same thing as i said in option two you'd have a bigger decrease here that would come back up you wouldn't necessarily have to have that decrease but you know you could if uh if it's something you wanted to do for the reasons president doyle had stated so i provided a

109summary at the end and um hopefully the board members had this in front of you let me pull it up on my screen i provided the summary in two ways i provided it without the d sub bonds so you can see these numbers are the same as you saw before as far as the impact to the taxpayer and the overall savings so you can see a negative number means savings so it's a reduction in debt service there's not a big difference between options one two and um three actually we had ran at one time a 2b can ignore that one we've looked at it internally and meant to hide that column um and so there's not a big difference between options scenario one and two between the total reduction debt service um about a two

110million dollar decrease when you get to scenario three but you can see the big difference is when you get from scenario three to scenario four so you know scenario four provides some more immediate tax relief does really cut into the amount of debt service reduction it's not one i personally would consider as i'm looking at them i would consider one of the other three before that one this slide shows you the same data set but with the dsub bond included so you actually don't get a reduction in debt service because you're you know you get a reduction in debt source from their funding but when you sell the d sub bonds that will increase your debt service obviously and then we estimate the the amount of proceeds that you would get at today's rates plus

111a little bit extra 0.35 percent your proceeds will be about 14.6 million so you know a little bit about the timing i think president doyle had mentioned that you know one of the things that the mark municipal bond market is very concerned about is the outcome of the the election not just nationally but you know here in the state as well and you know nationally there's unknowns you know we know the result right away um and for the state what the concern is especially with our state is what happens to the constitutional amendment pass or fail if it fails does that mean cuts in school funding nationally if you know depending on the outcome in congress that will perhaps determine whether it's more aid to states which would help states maintain school funding and so

112those so a lot of our clients and not just our clients but nationally a lot of people are trying to get their bonds sold before the election to eliminate that potential uncertainty especially i think it's more elevated here in illinois for the reasons i just stated especially for a school district like yourself that was is heavily dependent upon the increases in state aid hence why you you have a deficit in this year's budget because you didn't get that increase there's some concern what might happen to your rating as a result of that you know if it looks like you'll be further cuts we did have the rating call by the way i don't know if you did if you shared that or not but yes um you did maintain the rating at an a2 because

113you did have a positive result for fy20 but they remain they maintain the negative outlook because you have a deficit budget again and so and they're obviously concerned moody's is about what state funding is going to do so the thought process is if you could choose a structure now that we could get those bonds sold before the election eliminate your market risk when you go to sell these so i'll go ahead and take some questions now on the structures if you have any or if not you you know go ahead and begin your discussion just for clarity thank you mr lewis as always so as we look at like scenario one across the two with and without there so with without we'd be saving 14.2 million um but then when we add in the 14.66

114million the the total cost is with the refinancing is is 1.3 so that's just showing that there's additional costs right because it you would think it would be almost a wash but it's not because you're issuing bonds is that how we think about right and you gotta pay interest back on those bonds yeah you know yeah so you probably the last financing you paid i can't remember was exactly like 1.2 1.3 million and when you think about you know when you issue long-term bonds you generally are paying back 50 to 60 percent of what you borrowed in interest so but that's one of the reasons why you try to keep those shores because you get 14 plus six point 14.6 million proceeds only pay back a million some in interest so it's a pretty good

115ratio i hate this thing you have adjusters are they seeing the um the slides that we're looking at is the show slideshow online as well it's on board docs so if that's on board if anyone's going through it i just want to point out if you're looking at any of these slides with the scenarios that going out that magic year of 2034 when this massive debt load is paid off unfortunately what that's another cycle of our incoming kindergartens through the time they graduate just about but when we hear concerns about the property taxes that are paid in the district and where the majority of the money is going we pay so much money and why isn't the education so much better and why are we struggling for this this is where nearly half of that

116tax bill is going so look at that year 2034 that's when we're finally going to see some some relief so i just want to make sure that this is a great slide to talk about that because when we do talk about property taxes and people want to know where the money is going this is so much of it so please if you're not seeing it now open up board docs take a look at the presentation and look at any of those updates and see the timeline and how many years we have to go before that debt is repaid so what questions does the board have for mr lewis in regards to the scenarios one two three and four the other thing i'd like to ask is is are we at a point where once your

117questions are asked can we kind of go around and see if there's some sort of consensus on any particular number uh of plan between one through four and if there is a little bit of a three-way split or a four-way split that we can start to kind of make this down to where we feel that there is a decision that can yes be made they should my one clarification question i i'm pretty sure i'm right on this so tonight we're being asked to approve uh to sell bonds up to a certain dollar amount once we make a decision then that will determine exactly how much is sold correct so we kind of we kind of i think we kind of go out to bids to see who would be willing to buy the debt and

118because tonight we're not going to make decision on the dsub correct correct so at some point we will have a decision on that and that would impact how much money we actually are going to or how much in bonds we're actually going to sell correct but tonight's a resolution is just for the refunding bonds and once you you choose one of those structures then then that's the most i could sell but like christie said you know if you choose let's say scenario one or two it'd be probably 10 15 million dollars less than what you'd be approving tonight like you said the non-referendum bonds are not part of the approval tonight that's a whole nother different process so they're only involved from the sense of your acceptance or non-acceptance of whether you're going to need

119to do them and what structure you might choose for the restructuring so we can know the imp potential impact that those would have when we get to that point correct so so then but so that so then i kind of think um which as we're as we're talking about this um should we be you know everything that i heard was we need more information going forward about the you know the decent bond issue and we'll get that but was that certainly we will need them in the future and in the in the maybe near future so should we all be looking at the withd sub bonds slide as we're making our is we're really processing i mean i guess that's yes and no yes in that it it's part of the contextual picture you can't

120look at the overall tax burden on the property tax owners without basically three separate components one is the operating funds which is what we have to put out for a public referendum and we've done before the second component is the debt service bonds which is the blue lines on these scenarios and we only have certain opportunities at certain different points in time where we are able to call those and make any changes and corrections based on what we forecast as community conditions the third component is the d sub bonds which is sometimes called a backdoor referendum it isn't what it is is a way that the state does allow for the fact that there may be unusual circumstances needing extra capital funds that you don't have time for or don't have the ability to procure

121through a referendum the reason being that you have to keep the lights on in schools even this year without students in the buildings you still have to be able to keep the lights on and if all the light bulbs are broken or the light fixtures probably more than light bulbs you still have to be able to replace those and create a safe environment so that's the third part of the property tax picture and i think that what we had seen in the last discussion was that that is a factor for what we are looking at as the total property tax burden for the community in an important right important context certainly and the other piece of that was the ever climbing level of the repayment schedule that was happening and you can see as that

122were that existing phase was where we were going to hitting that 40 million dollar payment for several years and the last couple of times that we've had this conversation we were always kind of chasing chasing that care to keep refinancing and keeping the debt payment from hitting that that big increase also uh brent you guys talked about this and and financial facilities what was the discussion there um i i think and ruth i don't know if you have a different different thought on this i i think we were all pleasantly surprised that every option is a cost savings right so here's i mean this is when you should be refinancing not because you have to because you can save you can save money for the district and for the taxpayers so i think that's a

123positive i i think you know as mr lewis alluded to i think you know other members are you know some members of the committee would agree that you know scenario four is is probably not the wisest choice and then you would have some other members of our committee that would say well why can't we let future generations pay for i would agree that that was a sentiment right certainly was shared and also why why do we have to why can't we push it out even more years and and to lower it now more like level it out more and i and maybe some of that was just like throwing out ideas um i do not think that that is certainly not something that we want to be doing um i mean really when i'm looking

124this i'm definitely taking a look at the impact of those d sub bonds because i do realistically we're gonna need it right um we don't know an exact number yet this is just an estimate um but i think it's probably an educated guess and um i i certainly like the idea of being able to lower people's tax burden even if it's just a little bit or at least not adding to that but you also have to look at that bottom line number of you know when i'm looking at the slide number page 8 of 13 when i'm looking at these numbers the difference between you know the total levy increase in scenario two and scenario three it's not a small amount of money a couple million dollars it's it goes from 1.9 to 4.5 that's

125important too you know so can we do the polari where we're looking at what people are up for uh let's just yes let's just make sure nobody else had any other thoughts before we get to an initial thought just making sure i double check go for it i'll go first i will be extremely accommodating this evening oh no that's what i'd love to hear your definition of extremely accommodating i'm curious as well that might be a little subjective maybe that was just a little brevity for us all um i prefer scenario one i i can go with scenario two okay two two alley i'd like to see one but i will i would struggle with two but i would take two ruth i think i i also would go with two um but i like

126three back better actually but i would it's okay can you come back to me in 35 seconds yes matt do you have a way you're leaning it looks like the two options so far are two and there's one for three there well then there's two for three i i actually um you know the ultimate goal is getting getting this debt paid off is absolutely as soon as possible um but being able to keep those payments down even with the the d sub options there just at or under that 35 million dollar mark is appealing to me so i would support three um i was i mean i was like i was like i was a two or three but um um i was two or three though so either i could live with i guess

127i could live with either one of those um sorry okay so i i also at this particular point lean toward three i've been at two but kind of looking at what our picture is and looking at the different opportunities i do lean more toward three but i think what that does is limits us down to two options so we don't need to be worrying about a runoff vote so to speak of any sort so i think that we can safely say that when we are taking an action item we are voting yes to which one to what oh great what if we pull again and say but if we but it's gonna be yeah so if we pull again and say our two choices here are two or three okay then we talk about the

128like what are the major differences here between two and three because for what i see in scenario two but let's let bob lewis address it because that's the question right yeah so um the estimated reduction debt service for two is 13.6 million the estimated reduction debt service for scenario three is 11 million so it's a two point you you're eliminating we're losing about 2.6 million dollars in savings over the course of 15 years yeah actually more like 10 years because we're not affecting the last five years so really over 15 years we're looking at a difference in two million dollars of yeah it's about seventy dollars a year over you know the first um looks like eight years of the afterwards after year eight it's about the same as far as the annual impact and

129the difference up here in the property tax burden again estimated on a 250 000 home would you say that's probably average for our we're looking at approximately an increase of 48 dollars versus an approximate savings of twenty five dollars so also not huge but not tiny i mean and yeah on a 250 000 house yeah i can understand that so when we're looking at right but 2019 2020 and 2021 that's right i'm looking for the drop i want to pay the debt off now yeah because when you look at yeah what i like about scenario 2 is this back half too yeah that's what i'm looking at right now too you look at the contrast between those two because you know if the voters don't approve an operating referendum for a few years this one

130gets you a bigger drop off sooner which maybe that's when you can put more money back into classrooms which would require voter approval a little sooner than you can do on scenario three right we're looking i just make a random point um about the fact that we're talking about 30 million dollars a year that we pay for this if we had an extra 30 million dollars a year for our operating budget christie what in faith maybe dr sparlin what would that change for our district if it were not in debt if we were looking to pay this off sooner change everything it really would we probably wouldn't be looking at dc bonds right we wouldn't we wouldn't really need to borrow have the need to borrow money because we could address all our capital projects

131with operating money and curriculum and technology and everything else and you can start doing that in 2017. wait wait a minute 20 years now like a couple years ago but they're on my head in seven years as opposed to 10 years right right well in this scenario scenario too is maybe you do a six year borrowing so you fill in this year and then that be the last time you do a decent borrowing because then when you get to here maybe you can go for a living rate increase to address classroom needs and and do your capital on a pay-as-you-go basis yep laura are we talking you into two yet yeah i was at two before but i i really like the idea there are a lot of families really struggling right now and that

132little bit of extra it it could really help but the the fact is i mean we know that part of the reason and i know matt and i had this discussion also a few years ago part of the reason that we're in the situation we're in is because of this debt right we need everything a lot more dependent on state variables that we can't control that we don't have any real ability to affect we have some but not directly so i think yeah i could switch over to two if that were what we were looking at can we just talk really quickly about in this scenario to slide on page four where we see the little dip in where it says 2020 levier 2020 for taxes collected in 21. right so really there is gonna

133be a year of a little bit of a savings yeah and usually it looks like more than the 25 from the other one i mean in centimeter kind of box what a scenario to do though for the nuts and bolts of the uh district in terms of decision making for i just what it does as opposed to so taking off the taxpayer hat and talking about running this district and i'm just i don't what does that mean for the district versus scenario three maybe for the nuts and bolts of it like the operating cost it has no impact on that because it's a separate levee it's a separate fund and it still allows for room for the capital right and then any savings here sorry we can't put into the operating fund so if we

134save 30 million we can't just levy more 30 million more in the operating funds gotcha right sorry um no i was just going to say you know like if if we look at page eight so we first we were talking about sevens who we're looking at without the d sub now we look at eight where we've got the d sub in there we're looking at about two and a half million dollars in additional cost which is basically all interest right so in over five years if we were to sell the d subs for five years so to me that that sounds like pretty expensive money right an extra two and a half million dollars to get 14. yeah i think i'm a two okay well that pretty much gives us a clear picture of where

135we would want to head so then for the action item we would be voting to approve scenario number two sorry with an understanding that this does not include approving d sub bonds this is strictly for the refinancing of our existing capital debt so if we miraculously don't need the d sub bonds that portion of the property tax bill will go down i you know what sure well you're all sunshines and rainbows miracles listen it could happen happen we could abate those bonds back correct right if we got an if we sold these sub bonds and we came into uncle larry's fortune we had an alumnus who yeah we could abandon a bunch you could debate a portion of the bonds if we choose to do that or josh if you'd like to donate if you're

136an alumni listening to this right now we are excited yeah we wouldn't have to we those aren't the same as the capital debt service bonds in terms of um being able to abate well we could abate back that service too yes but we wouldn't really be able to really no i mean you have to come up with the money okay right there's that that would be a very that might be a sticking point okay all right no other conversation in 7.4 we're good thank you mr lewis thank you christy yep thank you bob appreciate you being here all right item 7.5 our policies for first read item 7.5 is regarded three policies we're asking the board to consider and approve this evening prior to our students returning to in-person learning all future policy revisions will

137follow the normal process of going through the policy committee prior to coming to the board as i think we mentioned earlier our first policy committee meeting for this year is scheduled for next monday october 19th are there any questions regarding the three policies that we're bringing forward tonight i have a question about the one that's um payment of employee salaries during the emergency school closures and i think um i just want to bring it to people's attention that are watching the meeting because it talks about how the superintendent would consult the board about continuing to pay salaries during an emergency closure it says here it's consistent with applicable laws and collective bargaining agreements and the terms of any grant under which the employee is being paid but i think that's an important uh an important

138policy that people should know about and i assume that it would be handled in the way a lot of board things are done maureen where if there was some drastic change in the amount of employees that were being paid or something because of a school closure during the pandemic that that would come before the board we would discuss it and then take action at the next meeting something like that yeah and what you're talking about is in fort colon 180 payment of employee salaries during emergency school closures and it does say consistent with applicable laws collective borrowing agreements etc so yes yeah thank you and then the face cut and then the face covering um draft or policy um so we are saying that even when you're in in a building even when you're able

139to maintain social distancing everyone outside of this very specific instances needs to be wearing a mask that's okay in a building yes in a building right in the building okay um does this allow for that same requirement to be do they consider school buses to be school buildings for the purposes of the masks yes and i believe that's up in the first paragraph under the general statement can you share a little bit about how we think that that will be able to be practically speaking addressed if there's a bus driver in the front is that an uncomfortable yeah that's that's a hard one right so a lot of it comes down to education making sure that our students know about the safety and that it's a group effort to keep everyone safe there'll be some

140peer pieces that we'll need to work on to be able to do that and then it's like following any of the other rules making sure that there are consequences follow up all of those pieces so it's no different than following any other school procedure or rule that we need to teach it and teach it and reinforce it but then also have consequences for people that don't and also if you keep the buses really cold people will want to keep their mask on i mean it's more convenient than having to wrap and tie a winter scarf but any other questions regarding item 7.5 i do have one more um when we're talking about and it's really just more of a clarifying statement board meeting procedure no physical presence of quorum or participation by audio or video

141we're not talking about something like now where we are meeting in session and i just want to make sure that we're all agreeing on what we think this means which is not that technically speaking right now we are in a public health emergency but we are able to meet in this phase of a reopening plan for illinois in person does this allow that if a board member is not able to be present that they will be able to phone in for any reason does this take effect over and above do you know what i'm saying right now you are complying with i believe it's board policy two colon two two zero on board meetings and because you can meet and so the only reason someone could call in right now are those ones prescribed in

142that policy but at any point that either again because of the numbers going up and or you decide that it's not prudent or safe even now you can choose to have a virtual meeting and then any of these other reasons would well it would all be virtual so okay but but i think the the good thing is the flip right which is that we have a policy now that conforms with state law that allows us if if one of us were to be quarantined right that we can attend remotely due to illness so recover any other questions thoughts on policies all right that's it for information item 8.1 approval of bills for payment may i have a motion please i make a motion to authorize the payment of bills in the amount of three million

143two hundred and thirty four thousand nine hundred and ninety four dollars and thirty five cents as presented mrs swanson mrs dorial aye ms morgan aye mrs croner aye mr bowman aye mrs moyer aye mr lightfoot aye motion passes 7-0 item 8.2 approval of the school reopening plan my assumption i'm just going to ask real quick is that this includes the change the two changes that were addressed in this plan correct can i make a statement before we vote please so i i want to say that i appreciate all the work that the administration has put into this the committee uh members that put into this the the teachers everyone's input this is a big deal this is a big decision that we're making tonight probably one of the hardest scenarios that this board has had

144to work through and we've gone through some some tough ones and there's there's a reason that that i have to vote no for this tonight even though i want students i want my students in the building more than anybody there's a cost to this program there's a cost for the custodians there's a cost for the sanitizers there's the cost for the health aides there's a lot of expense we're a board we're always looking we're always forced to cut cut cut and we want to be as efficient as we possibly can but for the ex the extra amount of money that we're spending for the limited amount of time in the classroom at the elementary and junior high level the the struggles the obstacles that everybody's going to face in order to get them in for

145a very short period of time i just don't see the value for the money that we're spending so that's why i'm gonna vote no tonight i guess i also will make a brief statement and saying that i appreciate the changes that you guys have come back with and i feel like that shows certainly to our community that you're listening and willing to be able to be flexible even with something you worked really really hard to come up with a plan that would be the most cost effective and safe while still getting these kids some in-person time and i i think we can all recognize that maybe everything won't go super smoothly and there's going to be some bumps in the road and potentially some shifting and adjusting that will need to take place and i

146appreciate that i feel confident that you'll be able to look at that and make any appropriate changes that are necessary or that become come to light i guess with trying this and we understand that some of this we're not we're just not going to know how well it's going to work until we just do it and i feel like we need to do it so yeah i'll be really quick friends with a doctor who has three students in the district and she actually works with covet patients and she said you know to me it's about the mental health of the kids getting them back into some sort of a routine even though if it is still totally different and you know her point which which i remember well is let's be uh safe but let's

147not be afraid i just think kids need to be in school anybody else care to be shared okay we have a motion please i make a motion to approve the school reopening plan as presented mrs croner aye mr lightfoot aye mrs moyer aye ms morgan no mrs swanson no mrs doyle i mr bauman no motion passes 4 3 item 8.4 8.3 whoops 8.3 i make a motion to approve the resolution providing for the issue of not to exceed 74.5 million in general obligation refunding school bonds of the district for the purpose of refunding certain outstanding bonds of the district providing for the levy of a direct annual tax sufficient to pay the principal and interest on said bonds authorizing the sale of said bonds to the purchaser thereof and authorizing the execution of an escrow

148agreement in connection therewith second miss morgan hi mr lightfoot hi mrs toriel aye mrs swanson aye mr bauman aye mrs moyer aye mrs croner aye please when you exit a door a building use your hands to open a door not your feet i'm sorry that's not a protocol but i think it's highly inappropriate to exit a room with your feet coronavirus um i missed something i think i'm sorry yeah i must have been focused on the motion that's a topic for a podcast after the meeting right that's the after hours podcast you're starting um that's really not happening so please um but uh that passed 7-0 thank you matt for i'm going to need the gavel here let's get some emails um okay so now we can go to 8.4 yes i make a motion

149to approve the school calendar revisions for the 2020 21 as presented second mrs doyle aye mrs swanson aye mrs moyer aye mr lightfoot aye mr bowman aye mrs croner aye ms morgan aye motion passes seven zero item 8.5 i make a motion to approve board policies section 4 operational services 4 colon 1 8 0 section 7 students 7 colon 165 new and seven colon190 miss morgan aye mr lightfoot aye mrs doyle aye mrs swanson aye mr paulman aye mrs moyer aye mrs croner aye motion passes 7-0 item 8.6 i make a motion to approve the personnel report as presented mr lightfoot hi miss morgan hi mr bauman aye mrs moyer aye mrs croner aye mrs swanson aye mrs doyle aye motion passes seven zero any final thoughts to share may i have a motion to

150adjourn my final thought before we go it's just your hand i really do hope that everybody is as supportive of the teachers going back into this reopening as possible because it is going to be brutal it's going to be very hard and so i'm thinking about all of them and all the staff and i really hope that this can be a good good case scenario and that we keep everybody safe and that the parents will support their kids and do what they have to do to make sure this all works and that they are supportive and helpful with the teachers and that critical and that's my final thought any others making sure i make eye contact all the way around can i have a motion to adjourn i make a motion to adjourn all in

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