2021-08-02 Central 301 BOE Live Stream

001um pam can you take roll call a thief here [ __ ] president pill nolan eric badar rabe here gorman here please turn your mics on thank you you need a motion a second to approve tonight's agenda second a thief yes falk yes amphi yes no nolan yes rabe yes gorman yes please join us in the pledge of allegiance pledge allegiance to the flag of the united states thank you all for coming out this evening i would like to welcome everybody in person and watching the youtube at home um we're going to start with public comments this evening i'm going to call them out in the order that i picked them up so that's the order is going to go in tonight so please keep your comments for three minutes my little handy timer is gonna go

002off so if it goes off please wrap up quickly so the next person can state their comments also first let's start off with joe westwa hello um yeah i'm just a parent of a student starting uh high school and another week or two and i just would like to um i'm hoping that the kids will be able to return back and not have to wear masks that's it next uh justin rendon justin you may have to step up someone had to use the restroom all right chuck barkham we hold these truths to be self-evident that all men are created equal that they are endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights that among these are life liberty and the pursuit of happiness that to secure these rights governments are instituted among men deriving their just

003powers from the consent of the governed that whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these ends it is the rights of the people to alter or to abolish it and to institute new government laying its foundation on such properties and organizing its powers in such form as to them shall seem most likely to affect their safety and happiness we the people we the parents do not want our kids masked as we move forth into the next school year [Applause] parental choice should be the thing you vote on tonight and you should approve tonight we secure our kids every morning every night every day we feed them we clothe them we make sure they're happy they're healthy we know what's best for our kids your elected officials you represent we the parents freedom is the

004power to act speak or think as one once without hindrance or restraint and that's exactly what we're doing tonight as we the parents of burlington unmask our kids make it our choice end of report thank [Applause] uh you chuck uh next diana brendan is justin here okay there he is good evening board and parents thank you all for coming here my name is tim metz i'm a local i've been a local i've been here since 1965. i went through the school system my kids have gone through the school system i only have one left unfortunately but i want to stand here before all of you to represent my one son william metz we have not experienced the covid however i have had friends dear friends of mine that have experienced it it's been kind of

005a bad thing but you know what we all recall a spanish flu which we were probably not around then we all lived and survived that and i think that today with that man there i don't know his name i'm sorry but he did a very nice job of explaining what needs to be done and i concur with what he said and i feel as though that the vote needs to take place tonight get this thing done and stop putting it off we're here to get things done thank you [Applause] thanks tim next kelly cameron apologies for being tardy had issues with children um so i i'm allowed to read on behalf of someone okay um i haven't timed it so hi i'm so kelly cameron i don't know if you can hear me or not

006um i am reading this on behalf of a um well i know who she is um a substitute teacher named leanne landstrom who is a christian wife mother of two incredible teenagers and a school district 301 six-year full-time substitute dear dr stern and dr mangan if i said that wrong apologize i'm asking the lord for wisdom and words to communicate my heart's cry to you tonight in regards to the almost 5 000 beautiful children in our district i've had both the honor and privilege to serve daily in all seven schools for six full years since 2015. each year i teach approximately twenty five hundred to three thousand students in these amazing schools with administrators and educators and service staff who are passionate towards these young hearts and lives they allow them to thrive grow mature

007and learn each school year i look forward to younger siblings graduating into the schools where i teach and gracing the desks in the classroom i temporarily occupy to date i've subbed for well over 100 teachers and staff meeting these young ones on different points of their journey from childhood to adulthood last school year i rushed into pkms on 8 2020 the very first day of this unknown and unusual school year with my heart overflowing with joy to be back physically with students after a five and a half month hiatus those are 160 days plus at home brought illness loneliness sadness despair worry concern and hundreds of hours of prayer so on the first day of school i was jubilantly bounding into the office to get my sub badge and my assignment walking into the main

008hallway i saw hundreds of masked faces walking in two distinctive lines properly spaced taking hand sanitizer at proper locations and sitting in my classes six feet apart and using only allotted stairwells at lunch they sat alone or two each large table which usually seats eight students throughout the entire first semester i noticed how almost no sixth and seventh graders would talk to each other at lunch simply looking down at an electronic device passing the time with digital entertainment or distractions best friends were split apart by alphabet and were never physically in class together anymore they were not on the bus at lunch or in pe together which are all critical times to socialize allowing stress and anxiety to dissipate also in those places they get some much needed mask breaks while eating and walking outdoors

009the levels of stress and pressure on typical american teens and adolescents is already at our nation's all-time high before the added fear of sickness joblessness quarantining and isolation i passed these 100s of mass kiddos and prayed repeatedly to recognize them simply by their eyes and small part of their foreheads and to call them by their proper name kids want to be known to be seen to be recognized and cared for exactly who they are what they are capable of and for acceptance in social settings there's a lot more to this could i defer to later if someone has extra time okay um at these middle schoolers we're only together now two days a week getting minimal time to unwind relax be themselves breathe sufficient amounts of oxygen school became increasingly difficult throughout the school year

010i would repeatedly check in with students asking questions such as how are you doing really how are things going with the hybrid learning how are you dealing with being at home do you get to see your closest friends still are you making new friends with your new schedule looking at navigating those types of radical life changes even in adults they have an incredible children have an incredibly hard time assimilating now consider school age maleable brains with fluctuating hormones and every changing social standing and recognize the heavy impact on children emotionally mentally socially and physically not to mention spiritually after asking how they are navigating their new normal notoriously i would hear i want to be in person i just want to be at school or for those who would say i only want to be

011remote i like sleeping in and playing games all day long i don't like doing any homework i realize this last group of comments illustrates signs of social detachment emotional isolation despair and loneliness which are all traits of depression i witnessed students having anxiety attacks which caused them to leave the room ask to see a nurse or take extended bathroom breaks other students were in such a state of fear that they wouldn't allow people to touch them or anything they own or even allow kindness in lending a pencil eraser or paper to take notes in class the design the human desire to high five fist bump side hug sit shoulder to soldier shoulder to shoulder and willingly meet the needs of others by affection kindness and sharing was replaced with awkward glances sidestepping in the halls

012careful navigating stairwells staggering bathroom breaks and missing out on every fun and creatively designed pe game our staff has worse decades to perfect i'm going to sorry how much how much longer is it really what was the name so um i will just kind of go through some of things so the highlights of this is you know the the things that were um kids being taught digital symphonies and choirs without students allowed to sit side by side stress and strain on teachers and staff who worked full time in person while having while their own children were at home all day e-learning in closing our children do not need to be dehumanized by covering up their faces their expressions their emotions and innately who they are i know my students well and i know their countenances

013and their personalities when i see their expression i know if they are struggling with something heavy or emotionally taxing i can pull them aside or drop a note on their desk and ask lovingly what is happening to you today is you don't seem like yourself is there anything going on that you want to share we impact our students by encouraging them lifting them up in hard times praying privately for them speaking to their hearts and letting them know we care deeply when we cannot see them we have been stripped of ninety percent of the evidence that this child needs care a kind word an adult to show them i see you and i care um may we seek god's wisdom his power his authority and his guidance in every single thing we decide tonight and

014perpetuate on to our next generation i pray he will fill you with his perfect peace and he showers you with his presence as you carefully and prayerfully decide on behalf of almost five thousand children in their families finally will you vote for freedom for the kids for their faces to be seen to allow their bodies to breathe the oxygen that god ordained for them to breathe by his design and for all of us to show kindness and humanity to one another that is hardwired into our dna i pray that you will indeed choose these freedoms my blessings and prayers leanne landstrom [Applause] next michelle dubanowski hi um i did not plan on coming here tonight but hi dr stern but uh i got a disturbing text from a parent and speaking to some of these

015other parents here i came to find out that other people had heard the same thing today and to me as a parent speaking to all board members and lauren you're not even looking at me giving me the courtesy to look at me it's upsetting to to hear this and basically the message i got was it said fyi the district is voting tonight on masks if they get a hundred people to show up this evening they have stated they will make masks optional if this is something important to you please join us at the district meeting this evening between 5 30 to 6. it's no biggie either way but i wanted to spread the word and this parent said to me i just received this from a parent that knows somebody on the board they don't

016want their name released but they're aiming for a large number anybody that's interested have them go to the district building in burlington near pantherfield and she said i'm not sure how reliable this is but somebody just sent it to me and unfortunately i can't go um i'm a small business owner i was at work doing my payroll so i can make sure my employees get paid that we've struggled through this entire covit thing i set everything down and i'm going to go back when i'm done to finish i this is very upsetting to me as a parent i don't know if it's true but i can't imagine that multiple people that i talk to and a lady that i trust my own children with would have any reason to tell me something that wasn't accurate

017um i have a son that's going into ninth grade he has an iep he has add he's got some other learning issues and last year we struggled mightily thank god for kathy jackson at cms she is literally the glue that held everything together including my family through some really tough times to get him moving forward and continuing to move forward during school he struggled with anxiety because of the mask we even got an um not an exemption because it wasn't an exemption but it was a change from his doctor that he could wear a gator instead of the mask so he had that on he still had issues he was in and out of school all year last year i had him at work with me sitting in my conference room at times because having

018edd i couldn't leave him at home it was rough and i would tell you it was rough it was rough if i don't go to work i don't get paid i didn't get to sit at home i don't collect unemployment i don't get i don't get it it's up to me so to hear that what's sort of sounds and i'm not naive i know how politics work and how things work but what sort of sounds like to me that a decision has possibly already been made to have all these people here is very disturbing and upsetting to me as a parent um dr sterny and i had a conversation and it's private i won't share that with anybody but i know you know i know dr stern wants nothing more than the kids to get

019back to normal and i sincerely appreciate that as a parent you taking the time to talk to me but hearing this message it doesn't sit good it really doesn't and i just hope that all of you i know people are upset they want the freedom they want this they want that blah blah blah but you know what for me it's about my kid and him struggling through school and the lady i don't know where he went the lady that was just up here reading about the reading from the substitute teacher letter everything she stated in those letters i've seen with kids and it is sad and i realize people want everyone to stay healthy but at some point life's got to go on here and there's so much science now heck the new cdc recommendations

020are based on a study i think it was from india that is based on a vaccine that's not even used in the united states so i don't even understand how that makes sense anymore yet we're you know i don't want to collectively add all of you to the bunch but you're saying you're following the cdc so i don't understand that but that's about all i have to say and i really hope that you know i guess time i guess we'll know after you vote how you guys really are thinking about this and that's all i really have to say so thank thank you [Applause] stuffy all right good evening dr stern and 301 board members my name is erin stuffy and my husband and i currently have two young children in 301 schools first we

021would like to say thank you once again for your efforts at reopening our schools last fall while many other districts remain closed strictly with e-learning options your district led by example then and once again has an opportunity to lead by example now please do what you know is right and maintain the mass optional guidance for our children giving parents the right to choose unmask unsocial distance and focus on the health of the whole child as medical doctors and educators are trained to do our babies have suffered enough we implore you to maintain your recent statement for parents choice despite the pushback you may receive from big government as stated at the last board meeting we the parents and we the people will not co-parent with the government my husband and i and many other families

022are awaiting your next move if you go back on your word and mandate the masks many of us are enrolling our children from your schools altogether many speakers at the last board meeting gave examples reasons and sources for why masks should be optional this school year tonight i want to focus strictly on the numbers numbers don't lie after speaking directly to the kane county coroner rob russell who was present at the desk at all deaths in the years of 2020 and it is a proven and documented fact that no one under the age of 30 died from covid in king county he also stated that anyone who did die from kovid between the ages of 30 and 70 had underlying health conditions such as severe asthma or underlying heart conditions mr russell and his team

023scrubbed every single covet death for legitimacy so again numbers don't lie this is not affecting our children also dr stern and 301 board members if you do decide to revoke your previous statement of masks optional rules and guidelines are that are labeled as compulsory mandatory or obligatory will require one's active consent i know that i speak for many parents in this district when i say you no longer have our consent to mask our children it is not a law [Applause] it is not a law yet this is a political game that you are all playing using our children as pawns enough is enough again you all have the ability to do what is right at a time such as this our children should not and will not continue to carry a burden that was never

024theirs to carry in the first place please do what you know is right lead by example once again and leave the masking decision up to us parents yes thank you bart and parents mass are really for infected people to keep them from spreading infection to people who are not infected the typical mask you buy in a drugstore is not really effective in keeping out the virus i do not recommend that you wear a mask dr anthony fauci viruses become more contagious but less deadly as they spread this is basic biology our children learn in school the media governor and others in the government want everyone to be in fear of the big bad wolf the delta variant except the delta variant is less deadly than the alphabet according to uk statistics cases did not did

025get near the 50 000 case high that was set in january but then cases began to fall after about five to six weeks and continues to fall hospitalizations around are around six thousand compared to twenty thousand in january the daily dots are around sixty five compared to a thousand in january rising cases are no indication that hospitalizations or deaths are going to get to the emergency levels which is the only standard when direct government intervention is remotely justified in a supposedly free country the governor idph and isbe has no right to institute rules and regulations due to rising covert cases this is the definition of abuse of power and has no scientific basis one of the biggest things that was lost over the past 18 months was the term science science has no scientific meaning

026anymore because when our government and government agencies speak about science they are speaking about political science on 10 28 2020 pritzker said the contact tracing data doesn't tell you where somebody caught the virus in fact there's no way really to know where somebody contracted cover 19. so schools can't use insurance reliability as an excuse because that's completely untrue covet is seasonal and will not be going anywhere we have to live with it just like we live with the flu but because code was politicized from the start we were made to believe that all these measures mandate school closing et cetera was for our health if the government cared about our health would they have closed beaches parks and workout facilities when physical health and sunlight was some of the best ways to stay protected from

027coven idph and isbe endorsed the cdc recommendation that all teachers staff students and visitors to k through 12 schools masks well indoors regardless of vaccination status the update updated guidance reads while not a mandate it is an increase in strength in the state board of education's match recommendations not a mandate means recommendation which means masks are optional so the only thing that's changed in the past two weeks is that you recommend a hundred percent of people wear masks in school versus seventy five percent that would have been from the last after the last board meeting the cdc has shown over and over again that they cannot be trusted their initial recommendation 15 days to slow the spread was based off a terrible empirical data that said 2 million americans would be dead by the fall

028of 2020. do you know what the cec is using to justify their new mass recommendations 100 person study from india where they use different vaccines not approved in the us and hasn't even been peer reviewed but remember we must follow the science statistics from king county department of health kane county dust desks per month per hundred thousand round it so it's easier to follow remember cancer 12 cardiac 13 accidents three suicide one remember accidents three suicides one king county covet deaths deaths by monthly hundred thousand per hundred thousand twenty twenty one january eighteen february six march three april five may six june two july one june two july one compared to accidents three suicides is one what about any of those statistics say that we are in a pandemic or epidemic we simply haven't been

029in any sort of pandemic or medical emergency this year except for maybe january take away from the covenant 19 round table in florida just last week dr jay betta char y'all sorry if i must pronounce that professor of medicine stanford university i don't think the delta variant changes the calculus or the evidence in any fundamental way look at the data before the delta variant take sweden for instance kepler schools open unmasked no social distancing all year the teachers themselves before the vaccine were at a lower risk of covert deaths compared to the population at large and the school's children had no deaths and florida schools that imposed mass had higher rates of teachers getting sick from covid and the kids there was no difference in outcome kids are pretty protective from coven correlation evidence is

030mixed and there's literally no randomized evidence whatsoever for maths in school dr cody meisner chief of division of pediatric infectious disease tufts university school of medicine even if kids do become infected the likelihood they will become sick is very small the data is pretty clear so i strongly disagree that the recommendation that all children two years in the body should wear mass in fact there are some studies that child is less likely to become affected in school than they would at home i think it's very difficult issue but people like to say they are basing their decisions on science but they're not they're basing their recommendations on emotions dr mark mcdonald md clinical psychiatrist my position is simple i'm asking children as child abuse there is no evidence to support there's no evidence to support

031the contention that mass prevent the transmission of respiratory illness through viruses at all and there's substantial evidence that shows children who have been medically physically and psychologically harmed by mass mandates so there's no studies or evidence that matching children prevents covet spread period everyone has stopped thinking for themselves and the last comment any common sense they had prior 2020 well there could be a chance of our four to five thousand students one could get sick and die of covet being that there's roughly zero point zero zero zero six percent percent or one out of one hundred and sixty seven thousand chance of someone five to seventeen dying from cover 19 19 per cdc data to put that [Applause] to put that in reference that's less likely than dying from a lightning strike a dog attack

032hot surfaces a hornet wasp or bee sting my favorite a cataclysmic storm whatever that is or sharp objects so why don't we just put our kids in a bubble never let them outside again which means no more school definitely keep them away from dogs don't let them near stove or oven remember safety scissors only if we continue to follow the madness the cdc governor idph et cetera keeps telling us what we should follow when does this all end remember 15 days is slow to spread i'll tell you when i'll end never if we don't say enough is enough have the intelligence and common sense to make decisions for ourselves this will never end our kids will be mass arrests with our lives and all because adults we're too scared to stand up and protect them

033well you have the chance now protect the children from overreach of government and do what's right for them end masking now get the choice of families where they rightfully and legally belong thank you [Applause] thanks ken uh max chris beamer ford how are you guys doing tonight parents how are you guys hey i'm gonna make this short and sweet uh i didn't give here i didn't come here to give a long lengthy speech i'm a police officer i got off work late i made sure that i made it here i had someone come in early for me so i appreciate the time that you're going to give me to speak as my job as a police officer one thing that i've learned is it's service to the public i could come up here and start

034doing all the buzzwords of covet masks crt all that stuff i'm not going to do that when i started looking at my job as a police officer it was to help the community especially kids and i look in the back of this room there are a ton of kids that are going to come through this school district right service that i look at now is serve us right so we pay i want to use a foul word but i'm not going to taxes a ton of taxes right for this and the only reason we lived in evanston for 10 years and we've moved out here five years ago we have made more loving friends in five years than we had in 10 years in evanston we knew one neighbor i can't tell you how many

035neighbors we have now they don't know right so to hear parents start talking about the school board right kind of feel i have to get involved a little bit not returning phone calls not returning emails this can no longer be looked at as an adversarial thing between you guys and us it just can't because this is not going away i promise it's not going to so the only thing i will say like i said i'll keep it short because i know there's a bunch of other people here right you guys all volunteered for this right most is that correct board members yes okay so what i'll tell you is that should tell you something right you volunteered for a reason and the one reason is for the school it's not for anything else it's for

036all the kids that are going through school right here and you got a boatload of parents in here that are saying don't mask our kids right or make it mandatory if you feel comfortable masking your kids fine nobody has a problem with that but just let the parents decide okay thank you i'm gonna mess this up thank you uh chris uh brock he's gonna say that name brock hi my name is brock and i am in the fifth grade and i do not want to wear a mask to school these masks make me hot it is my skin it makes my skin itch and it is so uncomfortable when i wear my mask i have a hard time hearing what my teachers and my friends are saying and sometimes they have a hard time hearing

037what i'm trying to say too i used to love school but when i have to wear a mask i can't wait for the day to be over just so that i can go home and take it off my face please don't make us wear masks at school again [Applause] kelly my name is lori kelly i am here as a parent i have several conversations a week with people asking me how it got to this where did our freedoms go why are we being asked to mask up again and we thought it was over the answer is simple and it's happened before for many the loss of freedoms is no big deal but when does no big deal become a big deal when they knock on your neighbor's door or they knock on your door all

038for doing what's right since facts and law don't seem to matter and you've most likely already made up your minds and you'll probably play on your computers like last time so instead i'm going to share a story with you that relates to what is currently going on around us and why i'm here to fight for the staff and students of 301 so how did hitler get elected leading over 11 million people to their deaths well he lied to a nation he said men do not think make the lie big make it simple keep it simple keep saying it and eventually they will believe it in his autobiography mein kampf he wrote that the great masses of the people will more easily fall victim to a big lie than a small one only 10 percent of

039germany's population at the time was part of the nazi party the remaining population stood by and watched the injustices taking place at first slowly and only little changes see no big deal and it grew to more restrictions and now neighbors being taken away well that's no big deal because it's not me mothers fathers held their voices and covered their eyes and closed their ears the vast majority of the population collected their salaries by avoiding the uncomfortable truth around them and when the nazis came for their children it was too late people knew what was happening but they tried to distance themselves from it because they felt well what can we do to stop this in some villages every sunday morning they could hear the train whistle blow and then the wheels coming down the tracks

040and the villagers became disturbed when they would hear the cries coming from the train as it passed they realized it was carrying people in the cattle cars and week after week the whistle would blow in the villages and dreading to hear the sound because the villagers knew more cries would be heard of more people being taken away to the camps the screams tormented them so they would sing hymns at church as the train passed if screams from the mothers and fathers and the children were heard they sang louder and soon they heard the screams no more and i know of two children that were taken away from their parents never to see them again for the rest of their lives and my grandparents are a reminder to me to tell all of you to not

041repeat the evils of our past my bible says to me lord inca don't let what happened to me happen to your children and this is why i won't stop fighting ever the most dangerous thing is trusting a liar to lead us and i'm so disappointed in your cowardice as a school board you are directly and legally and morally and individually responsible for the staff and students and making sure their legal rights are protected so do not comply [Applause] because because we the people will not we all know the truth from the lies can you tell the difference can you hear the wheels and the whistle coming down the track and how loud are you singing uh brian kelly all right so i was gonna read something but i actually just have a couple of quick

042questions um well one the fact is that there's going to be a lot of kids coming to school in a week without masks without any covet protocols no medical testing is going to be allowed to be done on them anything like that so it's going to be a big problem next week so everyone has to figure out how we're going to proceed with this because they will be showing up and they will not have mass or any of that stuff going on um and then i would like to know what the disciplinary actions that are going to be taken which i thought was very very strange to read thank you abby and jennifer hi my name is abigail schlicker and i spoke last school board meeting when i spoke last time i was nervous but

043now i'm just mad that i have to speak again like what i said nobody even cared about when when are you guys going to see that you are just playing with us like dolls when i heard our parents get were getting to choose if we were a mask or not i felt happy like if it was a dream come true little did i know it was not true it's like taking candy from a baby it's so easy but it's so sad we are all just humans so make the right decision and make masks optional i yield my time to my mom thank you for listening [Applause] good evening everyone my name is jen schleicher my daughter abby and i spoke at the last school board meeting when we got the email after the last board

044meeting that masking our children would be a choice for parents i was thrilled because i believed we were making a difference my daughter was so proud to have conquered her nerves and speak at the last meeting when she heard of the mask optional email she said wow we can really make a difference what an amazing feeling as a parent you guys are all parents that is an awesome feeling right that lesson taught her more than any amount of e-learning trust me it did um then the minutes for this meeting were posted and made it sound like full masking would be the direction the district was going our children have been so flexible throughout this pandemic with masks and quarantines we've asked so much from them on a daily basis they have given up so much

045and it is our turn to give back to them it is one thing when you have an expectation for an adult to get a vaccine or wear a mask because we can make decisions accordingly we understand actions and consequences and weigh those every day when making all sorts of decisions it's heartbreaking to see these decisions shove down our children's throats and there are no other options right now it's the adults on the board in the administration building that are not being flexible those same adults are putting covering their own butts above or from liability above what is actually best for our children and you can't even admit it which is the worst part because everyone in this room knows why it's happening you made tough calls and went against the norm last year when all

046other districts went remote that took guts you made decisions and had kids in person learning as much as possible parents appreciated being involved in the decision and although it was not a perfect year we knew you were trying it was harder logistically but it was better for the kids right now i feel like we're in the middle of a blame game nobody wants any liability everyone just wants to pass the buck and get through all of this and say it wasn't us it was them that's fine if it's them then get me into a building so i can talk to them and plead our case but as of right now it's my understanding that the school board and administrators sitting in this room are them and you guys are making the decision district 301 is

047deciding to do with the rest do what the rest of the county decides to do the rest of the county decides to do what isbe recommends they do isbe is only following directions from the cdc it's basically copy and paste every level is so far removed from our children and the different populations and variables how can you possibly let them make decisions that would impact these children our children kids in the city have different circumstances than kids in 301 everybody needs to stop with the cya here's an idea the district can remove themselves from liability that they fear so much and give parents a letter to sign it can say if we send the school send the kids to school unmasked then we're releasing the school from any covert liability i'm just thinking out of

048the box because my kids will be in school next week and they will not be masked if you don't like that then let's hear a better idea that's we why we're all here because this district can do all the contact tracing in the world and the schools can make the kids stand six feet apart and wear masks and not hug their friends but as soon as these kids get off the bus it will be a contact tracing nightmare and i will not cooperate i've been patient up until this time but right now i am so done and since the district apparently only recognizes our parental rights existing as far as the bus stop or the school doors are concerned you guys are in for a rude awakening when my kids get home they're going to

049jump on the trampoline they're going to see their friends cousins family members they're going to have sleepovers and campouts and bonfires they're going to play sports and dolls and they're not going to wear masks because they are my children and i get to make the rules for them and i know that many other people in this room and at home feel the same way and we're allowed to because we know that the childhood years are fleeting and the district and the state have stolen those years from my children and i will not stand for it any longer have fun contact tracing that or is the total overreach going to extend farther than the bus stop and violate more of our children's rights and our rights as parents maybe you guys can set up a neighborhood

050tattletail hotline so we can all turn people in you know they don't follow the rules you have the trampoline police at a certain point this stopping about safety this has now become about instilling fear prejudice compliance control and conformity don't you see how damaging this is to our children the new variants that are popping up will never be gone so is this the plan to do forever are you telling us that our kids will only be able to receive an appropriate healthy functional and successful education if we parents bow down to the board in the districts in the state we can't question decisions when does it stop how far will you guys be able to take it it's a dangerous precedent to set right now you guys have a decision on your hands and i

051think you need to understand the gravity of the situation this is not about masks this is about the rights of citizens and parents and our right to choose what is best for our own families this is about parents not wanting to give up control over our children's health right now they are my babies but they are all of our future [Applause] do you have any is that okay or do you want to sure thanks john i like the hotline idea my name is vera kelly i was so excited to go back to school until sunday morning when my best friend told me that masks were the rule and i would get in trouble for not wearing one to school now i am angry i was so happy when i had a choice to be masked

052or unmasked my friends and my brother's friends all don't want to wear a mask they are too scared to stand up and get in trouble i am here today for kids like me to stand up for our rights there are thousands of students across the country whose rights are protected why is 301 different are you too scared to stand up for us children and follow the law you are hurting us more than you will ever know i am stressed annoyed and angry with all of you who are wrecking my education i will be going to school and running cross-country unmasked no one can force another person to do anything to their body medically against their will i wish you would just listen and let me go to school like a normal sixth grade girl i

053hope you have taken in what i've had to say and make the right choice goodbye um hi my name is angie gall i'm actually a former employee of the district and i have three kids in the district and i'm a high school teacher i had um no intent on speaking tonight but i wanted to just bring up a couple of things that haven't been mentioned tonight um i'm a special education teacher and as a teacher the reason i'm completely for us unmasking the kids is how difficult it was as a teacher to teach kids with special needs now my three kids do not have any special needs but they struggled big time this year masks were hard for just one of mine but it was a distraction it made her uncomfortable but they were fine

054what my concern is we have to have equal education for all and the special ed group does not in masks um first of all the main thing speech path pathologist it's a nightmare you can't see you can't hear and part of learning to speak is they need to hear clearly we are muffled in masks you cannot properly hear i mean how many times do we all what did you say what did you say you know it's muffled so they started with the gators it's still not the same you've got a cloudy glader they're trying to read lips and look at the way you form words so speech path alone that was a complete nightmare i personally work with mostly students with emotional disabilities so they have we have a lot of adhd sensory issues were

055huge you've got this on their face and what are they doing and then you know we're supposed to discipline for that and say put not discipline but put them on and correct it and that takes from their learning and finally most of us stud teachers said i am not correcting it anymore because i am never going to get through to these kids i'm never going to be able to teach them if they're completely distracted so we started to let a little things go and um it makes them miserable they have sensory i mean they can't handle clothes too tight and now we have this tight mask on them so that was a huge issue social emotional um we have a lot of oppositional defiance disorders in all of our schools and now we're giving kids

056a rule and you know with that type of disorder they fight no matter what rule so you're fighting this and you can't get them into a social worker when they're fighting with you because the social workers are overwhelmed from all the kids that are having mental health issues from the kovitz stuff so i know if the stats were there and it was showing that there's so many people dying of covid right now i would say oh my gosh we will get past that but we are depriving these kids of their education for a 0.3 chance of being hospitalized a zero percent chance of them i mean it's really really rare to find a child that passes away from kovid and even a teacher's age i mean even at elderly age it's a four percent death

057rate we're making years of education go away we're we're ruining their education for stats that don't they don't match up so that's all i wanted to say so [Applause] thanks angie all right that concludes public comment uh we're gonna go on to action items i need a motion second to discuss and an approved cue center contract for prom of 2022. second roger sorry oh do you have any details um you have a copy of the contract in front of you in a handout originally the high school was looking to go to a different venue that was far more expensive so we asked them to find a venue that was closer and that was more affordable this contract is in line with what we've paid previously for for prom questions yes 301's back to school guidance

058all right i know that many people have seen the guidance because they referenced it in their in their public comment tonight it is linked to the to the board agenda so um we've always said that last year people mentioned that they're proud of our ability to return to in-person learning and um it did not come without a lot of hard work as everyone's aware and um we made that choice to return we believed in that choice you're grateful for that choice and i'm thankful for that but we still followed the guidance we didn't deviate from the guidance that was given we've traditionally said that we will follow the guidance of idph and isb now what happened we did an issue about recommending mass by looking at various ways with enforcements but conditions changed on july

05927th when the cdc offered up new guidance based on the delta variant and that guidance calls for universal masking i'd like to i'd like to refer um the community that's present to board policy 830 that the school district expects mutual respect civility and orderly conduct among all people on school property or at school events note first on school property at a school event including visitors students and employees shall perform any of the following acts impede delay disrupt or otherwise interfere with school activity or function violate the district's policies or regulations or directive from authorized security officer or district employee or engaged in any conduct that interferes with disrupts radley adversely affects the district or school function we are an official meeting of the board please repo please refrain from public comment at this time so

060we were able to um return last year as i was saying on july 27th the guidance changed and now it's calling for universal masking of all individuals ages 2 and up in our building whether they be student staff or visitors regardless of their vaccination status today on august 2nd isbn idph issued frequently asked questions and when the subject of masking comes up who should be masked inside our school buildings the answer was everyone this weekend kane county moved on its covet level level from moderate to substantial for increase and i know in my phone call with the king county health department today hospitalizations have dramatically increased in the last week so in light of this in a consultation with various groups including law firms we've issued this updated guidance the district continues to follow the

061guidance of the center for disease control and prevention which was adopted by the illinois department of public health and the illinois state board of education key elements include the cdc recommends universal indoor masking of all teachers students staff students and visitors to k-12 schools regardless of vaccination status cdc recommends that schools maintain at least three foot of physical distance between students within classrooms whenever possible students teachers and staff should stay home when they have signs of not feeling well covet 19 prevention strategies will remain in place with layered preventions this will include increased ventilation increased filtration daily sanitation and disinfection to name a few and then like everywhere else we're going to have to monitor by locality for transmission of what's occurring in our area and in the county guidance for face mask coverings there

062is a cdc order because it falls under uh public transportation that students must wear a mask on the bus the students who attempt to enter the bus without a mask will not be allowed to enter the bus and will be sent home face coverings are not required when individuals are outside it's only when they're inside face coverings are not required when individuals are outside they're required when individuals are inside school premises so for our classrooms we will be following the cdc recommendations those of idph those of the ken county health department and we will be requiring masking for all teachers students and staff and visitors to our k-12 schools regardless of their vaccination status we will continue to monitor and work with the king county health department and hopefully hopefully in the near future there

063will be a relaxation of these layered preventive measures and we can go back to a more normal type of school year that said our school year is still going to be far more normal than it was last year with students three foot social distance with full use of our facilities and with use of the cafeteria order so public comments over please refrain from making comments now well you're still disrupting so please stop disrupting this this is this is this is a meeting of the board and the public i had a public this does not require a vote so i'm going to continue for health screenings sir you're out of order you need to stop or ask that you'd be removed call screenings hull screenings daily health screenings are no longer required however we do ask

064that families monitor their symptoms at home and that they they stay home remain home if they have the new onset of a cough diarrhea fatigue from an unknown cause fever onset of moderate or severe headache known case exposure to a diagnosed covid19 if unvaccinated muscle or body aches from an unknown cause vomiting onset of loss of taste or smell shortness of breath or difficulty breathing or sore throat quarantine status quarantine will occur with close contacts quarantine the district does not quarantine students the district has no authority to quarantine students ken county health department quarantines base coverings are expected to be worn inside the buildings and not school buses except while eating all district employees are expected to wear a mask at all times when inside the school building students who refuse to follow masking instructions

065will be subject to disciplinary action outlining the student parent handbook this falls underneath the rights of the board of education in the school code under section 10-20 and 10-20.5 so progressive discipline could be followed so so they're massive exemptions mask exemptions still exist so um it is possible to receive mask exemptions uh for for medical purposes and reasons so we've received documentation i'll just address that now so we've received documentation from from some families with form letters um saying what they will do or what they will not do um that documentation is being reviewed by legal counsel and by the king county state's attorney so that um you know what official recommendation could be made i'm not an expert in those areas extracurricular activities well oh i'm going on instruction dr mangan so instructionally the

066the plan for this year will be similar to what we had last year uh we will expect that teachers uh fill out canvas accounts as well as the week at a glance for the sake of when students are absent from school they still have access to the learning environment weekend class we filled out at the beginning of the week so that there's access as well as we'll be hiring the two liaisons that we had had last year at the elementary school level they'll work between the teachers the school and the families for educational purposes the 6-12 grade level teachers will have the canvas accounts as well as the week at a glance and we will expect that teachers touch base with students at least two to three times while they're out uh to make sure

067that those students are following the canvas and we can glance but for the most part those students are a little bit more inept at being able to manage what's going on inside the classroom and having conversation between the teachers um and what's expected um do we a question do was that something that had to be renegotiated wasn't that part of the mou last year it does not need to we've talked to both uh david everyone's moving forward with those types of options thank you ken having a common communication structure we believe is really important we found that that helped us a great deal last year in terms of having parents have access to a common thread they understand where to go they can see where to pull information from so having that canvas account for

068its parents who are aware of that as well as the week at a glance gives them an opportunity to be able to communicate fluidly with the teachers um and it helps to provide a good understanding in terms of where they need to be we do plan on having all extracurricular activities this year remain as if we're in a pre-covered state so we do have football starting with the normal football season as far as we know ihsa has not pulled back on any of the restrictions or the iesa we expect that all sports and activities will run as we had uh prior to last year um we anticipate that faculty will have their activities they'll be running their clubs they'll be doing all of the same things as what students would have done are they prior

069to last year are the since we did all that work with the activities last year with the virtual options and how um uh down blinking um you know how they had to follow up with that are we expecting they saw the option of being a wrote are we assuming everything will be in person with little exception we're assuming everything will be in person with limited exceptions we don't see a reason at this point in time unless for some reason we are directed to do otherwise that we would pull back so it's our expectation that students need that activity and that we have students present for those activities algebra community college which is dual credit courses that many of our high school students attend in that case uh elgin in some cases is still having some

070courses be remote so they need to pay attention to if it's a remote course as it was last year or if it's actually running in an in-person setting so they'll be contacted by their professors there at elgin and make sure they're following through with that we are intending to run all music and theater courses as planned so we still will have band in chorus and theater so that kids can experience those kinds of extracurricular as well as the music and band pe uh we are expecting to run pete just as usual it is our preference that physical education teachers want the weather is good that they go outside to get our students out as much as possible if it's in inclement weather then they would be inside in the gymnasium we are not planning on

071serving lunches in our gymnasium so we should have full use of all physical education facilities we'll be using the just the cafeterias for our lunches our goal is for the first few weeks of school to have a slow roll-up primarily to make sure that we're taking care of the social-emotional needs of our students trying to make sure that we're building relationships with teachers and students because we know relationships are extremely important and then moving forward from there into the academics so i i have a couple questions so especially referencing what um i think it was miss gaul right the the sped teacher so i think that that's something that i'd be interested in um exploring what our options are with distancing for those kids um if we do have the ability to be i mean

072i know the rules exist we obviously did what we could you know last year with the partition things for our speech therapists and our um our reading interventionists who you know were clearly we did what we could when we could and so i'd be curious to know about that if that's feasible based on the space the spaces that we physically have especially in our great schools and i certainly want to reiterate what i very clearly and i think we all agreed with last time which was as you already stated todd i mean my goal and i think i i think that our goal we have very diverse group in a variety of ways up here at the board level um and i think my goal and i think i will speak for everyone at this

073point saying that all of our goals are to increase our capacity to move towards a closer version of the year and so i think you know even like i said last time like what if we wait until five weeks a week after labor day and if we are looking that good i'm all for pushing the boundaries just like we did last year but we went up two and so we then as a board have to decide how far we go me personally i'm thinking k2 we talked about that last time like how do we think about our youngest ones especially from a literacy standpoint um you know reading and all that stuff phonating observing i think that that's really important so i think i just want to be very clear about that that i think

074that's my goal if we can do so reasonably safely based on what our numbers are in our district and i also have talked about this with some of my friends in infectious disease i mean one of my concerns with the way that we're running numbers is so we're looking at infection rates which are high but again as people have pointed out rightfully so um deaths are lower than they were a year ago with higher infections and so and hospitalizations are lower and so the challenge is we're getting recommendations based on hospitalizations which great that's one metric of many so my hope is that we shift away from just infections and move towards those metrics but again we don't have any control over that so i think that that could be potentially something that we we

075you know opt to use in our area if it gets the point where we feel like our data looks good for our district we can monitor our zip codes and see where our numbers are versus 60120 and elgin and we've got aurora just just different animals even in the tri-cities right their density is different so that's my goal so just just like um last year after the adaptive pause many districts remained closed we advocated that we took advantage of our actual two weeks open back up was wonderful and then in my weekly meetings with the king county health department that is something that i've stressed that look as we start the school year we have to look at what's happening in our district in king county because a district in a different part of the

076county could be different than our district so i think we have to they have to look at that and if we have low numbers if we have low numbers then we should be able in a systematic way to begin removing these layered preventions one at a time like they've talked about and i think that that's and and you know we talked a little bit about this last time too with what we had talked about and then a lot of things have changed in the last two weeks not only in the state of illinois but across the country for for what these numbers look like and so again i mean i think the same thing holds exactly what i said i repeated now i said the same thing last time i think we're on the same

077page continuing to use data my concern is about jumping into the school year like that instead of saying great can we get five weeks of data can we get 25 school days can we see what that looks like with our every two weeks running the numbers that esther did last year and getting us that information and what does it look like at that point so we can assertively but appropriately pull back on that and again work work on again our to me our youngest our sped kids of course or especially our youngest special ed kids um and any of our self-contained classrooms and uh our k2 would be my priorities personally so i again i'm hearing you say yes we're on board i think everybody sitting up here is on board with that and so

078i'm hoping that all of you hear that and i hope you don't think we're blowing smoke i i genuinely believe that we last year just you guys putting out which i appreciate that you guys have identified what we did last year but last year we used the cdc recommendations we pushed the edge of the recommendations we were essentially being as consistent as we can from last year to this year as far as using those using the same the same entities whether people's thoughts are about them that's a whole other ballgame and everyone's entitled to how they interpret that data but i think again we have maintained internal consistency at the district and board level which is something that i said every time this comes up isn't very important to me and what i do personally

079to maintain internal consistency and i do appreciate that i believe i believe that we have done that for those of us that especially here for the whole last school year right it's about a measured approach and we keep trying to take a measured approach to every decision that we're making at this point in time we're starting at where the cdc is asking us to go i think we'll have a measured approach we continue to watch our data we will monitor it every two weeks like we did last year and make assumptions or make decisions based on what we're seeing in terms of special education our speech language i know in talking with early childhood kids and talking we heard from somebody last year last meeting as well regarding speech language issues which we know is

080a challenge when you can't see the mouse even for social emotional learning when you can't see the smiles of their faces and we're teaching that in social studies at the kindergarten first and second grade level it's important sometimes for kids to see those expressions that we have in our faces i would want to definitely talk with staff to see where they're comfortable in terms of is there a way to get some leniency and some teacher choice in some of those activities making sure that they're providing the distance that they need guided reading is coming back this year we did not we were not able to do guided reading last year in small groups that is something we are offering this year because we can get within three feet and so we'll do our best to

081stay within that three feet sometimes we may break that a little bit to make sure that we're getting what's appropriate for our students but ultimately we want to make sure that we're doing what's best for our kids academically for speech language pathologists they do have small offices or they have different areas they could pull them and they're only taking one or two kids at a time so i do think being able to provide distances without mass could be something that we could work to do again i'd want to talk with the slps to see how comfortable they are with that to ensure that they feel comfortable as well and will our k5 be able to with reasonable ability take classes outside if they want to yep the new law this year requires that they have

082to go outside every day for 30 minutes um and so that is being that is being put into place this year so they won't be going outside for recess at least 30 minutes a day so not not for recess i mean like can they teach outside if they oh yeah they can absolutely teach outside yes okay they did last year too right that's what i want to make sure that our administrators are uh they can go outside and teach outside and and the reason why i think that measured approach makes sense is even based on some of the comments that we heard tonight so the the delta variant in india and the uk did spike but then after like five or six weeks started decline for various reasons and there's still questions about why that

083decline occurred so right now kane county health department says that this was today said that delta variant uh if if under the original covet strand every infected person could potentially infect an average one or two they're saying it's closer to eight to ten that's that's based on what they said i did not see any data on that but so but if it follows the same if order if it follows the same if it follows the same pattern then you could see like numbers increase over a five or six week period and then start to decrease but again we'll have to see what occurs with it all right they have changed mandates through public comments cdc will continue to make recommendations and then idp idph will either adapt those recommendations or adjust those recommendations and then

084the district will follow idph guidance what does that mean in the room public comment is closed yes it is do we need to take a meeting pause take them yeah moisture a second to pause motions what was the motion [Music] so people can cool down yes oh that's a good idea um so the district will follow um progressive discipline is spelled out in the parent student handbook so the goal as always is to keep everyone in school we want schools to remain open we want kids in school so the scope of that again things are under review just like we received documentation with forms from awake illinois those are also under review so there's areas that that we have more expertise in than others our expertise is education um i have to rely on the

085guidance of others for for health information and then for a legal input related to other mandates or other requirements or implementing recommendations i realize that this is a stressful time for everyone i really do and there's strong emotions on on both sides because um just like so many of you tonight have very strong feelings about mass being optional there's other people who really feel the mass should be required so there's this is a this is an issue that has potential to divide and that's something that no one wants no one wants that so i just want to get kids in school i will actually i mean i take issue with this like there's issues that there's differences on two sides there's more than two sides to this and i think that's the challenge as we've

086all fallen into this either or this binary and i think it's more nuanced than that which i think is the challenge um absolutely i as a disruptor myself in my personal life i appreciate people who i do not get me wrong i absolutely do that and i encourage my kids to do the same um and this this for my family is just not one of those things i might choose something else that somebody else might say absolutely not i would never have my kids do that so i think there is some individuality of this i absolutely appreciate the passion i love that there are kids here by the way again good job girls this week too so thank you very much for coming i think that's fantastic um but at the same time i mean

087i think the the either with us or against us i think that's a really really dangerous kind of position to take um and so to i think you said something about the community from you know evanston versus here i grew up here moved in 1985 kindergarten through 12th grade i'm back here for a reason i'm on this board for a reason so i completely agree with you it wasn't even evanston it really wasn't it was just the community which again everywhere and i looked everywhere and this is the most inclusive place that we came and what i said we have made more friends out here than we had in 10 years out there we picked out here specifically because all the parents care they teach the exact same things right love everybody treat them right

088don't give up on your rights that's what which you don't which which again wait so my point wasn't to go back and forth just to be very clear about that i just want to say one thing and that's it and then whatever the only reason that i came to this board meeting tonight was specifically because my kids came to me and said do we have to wear masks again two years two years and the only reason because i have taught them facts not flip-flopping of all the stuff so the reason that they ask is because which which again my sentiment being i feel the same way about the community as you know a two dad family i don't even know if there's another one in the district right now so i certainly appreciate the fact

089that i have been welcomed where i am i i i appreciate that um i think that you know so for for for all of us i think you know continuing to push forward to at least have compassion for viewpoints that are different than our own that are owned not necessarily to be persuaded or minds changed but at least to be open to respecting things that maybe we don't understand or otherwise i think that's the only way that we're going to get through this and what i feel is um the certainly the people that have spoken very passionately here tonight um are feeling like there's a lack of trust or feeling and i don't want that to be the case i i hope again as i already said i hope the public you guys trust us

090and we say we're going to move forward as fast as we can as regionally as possible um and if if we've lost that trust then i i you know i to be fair like people vote like that you somebody else runs for the school board and and you you do it like that's the po to chuck's point about the power of the people like that's the point i want to be here for a reason i hope to be here as long as people will have me you know and i don't know about everybody else's plans the bottom line is we're here to do our best for the kids right now we're not going to have everybody agree very clearly we know that for sure um and i really do think and i i appreciate esther

091and todd's effort in particular i know the board does because the amount of time and effort that they have put into responding to people and phone calls and emails i certainly appreciate on our on the board's behalf so thank you the last parts of the guidance regarding operations i kind of covered earlier that basically the layered prevention strategies that we had in place last year will remain in place and then with the exception of food service we're going back to normal uh hot lunches and in the cafeteria and then anything with human resources and then we will continue to communicate out um to our families as conditions change and as um as we follow and get the metrics that are coming in all right thank you very much move on to uh the track buzz

092it presentation now the real fun begins for students and i know last year my son personally and carrie walter over there is not my favorite person for multiple reasons but she took it upon herself to basically issue him i can't think of the word i'm so upset so let's let's not talk about public let's not talk about students we'll reach out to you with student services okay i guess they'll be left at their bus stop not like in the middle of the street we're not going to pick them up and drop them off in the middle of the street down the block and be like sorry yeah if you're concerned about the little kids being alone at the bus stop probably don't leave if you send them without a man i just answered your question

093though ma'am i'm just saying for other people that you know if you're concerned about that with little kids i'd either send them with the mask or stay there until the bus comes and goes and we will have a supply of mass should we need them you know for the bus but if people refuse to wear a mask they will not be bust parents would parents would have to parents would then okay let's move on why don't you give me a call tomorrow we can talk all right third time's a churn um so tonight i'm presenting the tentative draft budget for fy222 at the next board meeting august 16th i'll re-present it again and ask for your formal approval to approve it then it's going to go on display at the district office be posted in

094the newspaper and we'll have our public hearing held prior to september's meeting and then at the september 20th board meeting you'll be asked to approve the final budget and then once it's adopted it'll go on our website and i'll deliver it to the roes so a lot of my budget presentation doesn't change that much from year to year because it's numbers and just kind of updating things but i just want to make sure i don't i'm going to go quickly over some things so if you guys have questions definitely reach out and ask but i i want to kind of go over things too for the new ones on the on the board so fy21s budgeting process was pretty much like throwing a dart at a at a target blindfolded there were so many unknowns

095factors and variables at the state with the coven 19 guidelines and state and not knowing what we're going to do but we're still pleased with the outcome of our of our budget overall revenues exceeded expenditures in all funds i know we projected to have some deficits but timing of some extra categorical payments came in we budgeted for two we ended up getting four so in the transportation fund that was 1.3 million more than what i had projected so that would add to it registration fees um late fy 20 payments came in in fy 21 which normally doesn't happen most people do pay their fees for the next school year in in april and may but a lot of them straggled into the fall and then so we kind of had double registration fees this past

096year and then impact fees and transition fees i report out every month at the board meeting those are through the roof increases that just goes to show the growth that we have in our in our area and then the tax levy receipts they were saying that people could delay their payments july was going to be really low so i kind of projected more on the conservative side and we received almost 3 million more than what i had planned for so those also added to our fund balance and on the flip side for the revenues though we had less interest income because the interest rates were so low we basically got no interest on any of our money our lunch sales at schools were under budget 300 000 because we weren't feeding kids for the first

097half of the year and on wednesdays and a la carte is our big ticket item and not selling that really hurt the middle school and high schools there wasn't as much expenditure on the expenditure side there wasn't that much being spent on supplies because the kids weren't in there so you'd think that you'd be saving and offsetting the cost but we also had salaries that we were still paying for our cooks and just different supplies that we needed in the container self-contained containers and everything pre-wrapped is more expensive than just buying it involved athletics and fundraisers athletics and they both had declining results in revenues we didn't have fundraisers and then on the expenditure side we were very frugal with our spending we um just at any extra spending was basically kind of put on

098pause because we didn't know what to expect so um we were very conservative throughout the the year and then when the extra categorical payments came it was too late to go and spend that to offset it so the expenditures came in less than we had projected as well so that adds to the fun balance because we didn't spend as much as we thought we were going to spend so just different areas of the budget [Music] let's see so then the fund balances though all ended with um for fy21 ended with positive numbers um they'll be added in the fund balance reserves um and that kind of helps over the next couple years so uncertain what's going to happen with state and funding and everything [Music] and then some major capital projects that we completed we

099did central middle schools the district office and a portion of the central high school roofs the bleachers that were left in the original gym are updated to match the rest of the rest of the gym and then we got three maintenance vehicles we also started other projects like the cms windows and chs windows but those started so late this this summer that they they're going to be in this coming budget and then like we do every year whenever there's over budgeting or we can see that we're going to have over money we try to start spending stuff for this fy22 so a lot of the schools got all their school supplies for teachers so that it would hit last year rather than this coming year so we're kind of a little bit ahead of the

100schedule our budgeting philosophy this is the same slide that has been here um for my time um the number one reason we're here is for our students education providing instructional materials for our staff and supplying the tools for students to learn while giving them safe environments is our top priority our goal when we're budgeting is to balance revenues and expenditures when we can unless we're reducing upon balance we try to maintain adequate levels for fund balances which helps us give a steady cash flow by having those fund balances in april and may when our revenues and expenditures are getting low and we haven't got our early tax money come in that helps buffer that it avoids us from having to borrow or do tax anticipation warrants which that also causes more interest and just a

101waste of money it strengthens our bond rating and gives us better interest rates when we do need to go out for new bonds so very near future we're going to have to build another elementary school this these reserves will help with that we get a higher state recognition and um it just protects us from unexpected events like covet 19 or estate funding um and then we're also while doing all this trying to balance and be sensitive to our taxpayers with our tax levy request and try to be fiscally responsible and and trying to keep our tax rate decreasing if we can and then just being fiscally responsible with our purchases and keeping track of all of our assets throughout the district and everything that we possess this slide shows some key points the most expensive

102areas that drive the budget on the revenues and expenditure side you can see local property tax is our primary source of revenue state revenues the evidence-based funding is vital too those are the kind of the top two revenues on the expenditure side salary and benefits they're the largest expenditures that's the run of the people business so we have a lot of teachers and staff and then along with all of that trying to make sure that we're moving forward with our capital improvement projects not letting our buildings deteriorate and be in a pickle if they get really bad trying to cover our regular cost just normal electricity and everything and then predicting if we need more cleaning supplies or added more staff you know depending on on different things like that so revenues this slide shows

103you it's broken out by local state and federal so every every fund has their own local state and federal revenues these are the top ones that that kind of fall under the different categories so local property taxes registration lunches athletics and rental income off all under a local state is your evidence-based funding your categoricals and then your federal one these are all your grants your special ed idea grants medicaid national school lunch and then new this year i added the sr 2 and 3 that we're going to be receiving local revenues make up about 79 of our budget states 14 and fed is 7 so this year we're basing our state revenues on assumptions like we did in previous years evf right now in the budget is is kept flat from last year there they

104did approve more additional funds to be added to the state budget but we've not seen those calculations yet they said august 9th or 10th they might come out so hopefully i might be able to get those tweaked in here for the next the tentative or definitely for the final the last two times that we were given increases it was like 200 000 and like 186 000 so it wasn't much but everything every little bit helps and then um but i mentioned earlier that we budgeted for two categorical payments and they surprised us with four um which then adds to our reserves so this year based on how they paid last year i'm budgeting to receive four categorical payments the one that was owed from last year and three for next year um if and just

105yeah hopefully the timing and everything will will come out for that but that's how i budgeted revenue assumptions so local taxes we um for most most years we get fifty percent in the fall fifty percent in this in the spring um 49 51 you know it's really close to that these last two years it was like 40 and 59 and it was like way off kilter so that's probably part of how the just the assumptions weren't accurate last year so this year we're back to we did receive 49 so i'm projecting that we're going to get the 50 next year instead of the 43. um so our local taxes are going to be about 53.8 million dollars um evidence-based funding already touched on we're projecting those to be at 7.25 million we'll see if we

106get any new money on that one state categoricals same one delay payment and three and then it just shows you how much if transportation fund is the biggest one if we get all four payments we get 2.3 million dollars if they don't that's like 590 some dollars less for every payment that they don't pay so you'll see when we get to the transportation fund by me saying we're going to get 2.3 if we get the 2.3 that's how my projections are going to land that we're pretty close to meeting revenues and expenditures but missing one payment then transportation's going to be in deficit spending so it's that that's key for that fund impact fees and transition fees they just were crazy this year um it kind of spikes it's spiking back to when we were

107in 2006 2007 when we had to build the building is just crazy so it's it's coming from all different areas of our district so i i projected at these which is less than what we got but way more than what we had last year so i'm hoping that these kind of are pretty accurate so this is a snapshot of our historical tax rates you can see from uh levy year 14 through 20 on here our rate continues to decrease as eav increases and new construction begins to increase more significantly starting in 2012 which is not on here but through 2014 our tax rate was rising but since then eav's been increasing so our tax rate is going down except for in 2019 eav did not go up as much and then you saw a little

108bump up but then it dropped back down again and for projecting the levy that will be in november and december just doing rough estimates if we have three percent in new growth which we've seen huge growths all around us um and the 15 million in new construction then we're predicting that our levy's going to be 6.65 cents so in another decrease of 10 cents in our tax rate um so these are just the factors that go into the projected tax levy here again showing you the three percent increase eav 15 million new construction um 2020 levy those numbers are all known and the bond extension for the 2021 levy is known so you can see our bond payment went up for next year and then if based on the projections of the 15 million new

109growth then these would these numbers would be where we would land and then these numbers will all change when we do the levy in november and then december so on the expenditure side throughout the whole entire budget there's different account numbers and they're coded by different object numbers so every section in the account numbers mean different things throughout the budget these are the main objects so you have your salaries your benefits your services supplies capital outlays dues and fees and capital non-capital outlays so every section of the budget has ever has every well not every one of them not all of them have dues and fees or non-capitalists but you'll see the salaries and you'll see benefits and services and supplies in throughout the budget as we know salary and benefits are the major part

110of our our any school district's expenditures so here you can see the breakdown 73 of our budget for expenditures is salaries and benefits um 27 would be all the other sources of expenditures this doesn't change from year to year it might have been 72 last year maybe so it's pretty pretty stagnant over here total expenditures by all funds this one shows you the breakdown of all the operated funds it does not include the capital projects or the bond in interest those are not operating funds this year this one did shift a little bit from the ed fund which is your biggest pie that's where all the salaries and benefits and curriculum and everything comes out of and and some of it did shift to the o m fund which is um for capital projects and

111um you'll see um where we mentioned in our district gold board retreat all the projects that we were looking to use the asset funds wasn't this ad funded like 70 or 71 percent last year it was yeah so um but it moved over to the o m fund which was probably i don't know the exact numbers so don't quote me but that might have been seven so it kind of shifted where it went so for expenditure assumptions you can see a list of some major the major expenditures there's just changes happening every day the numbers and stuff in the budget are reflected of like salaries and positions and fdes as of july 22nd so payroll and hr went through we go through the budget line by line and we put everybody's salaries and benefits in

112their proper buckets based on where people were at if we knew that we had an opening that wasn't filled we you know would have that person's like a holding place for that person but i just watching the emails there's people shifting left and right so i i do expect a lot of changes um hopefully it won't net to a lot but it's definitely been a crazy summer which it always is in the summertime um so we basically added um we adjusted the salaries based on the contracts um we backed out those 10 temporary secretaries that we had last year that were did not rehire this year so those have been removed we added you know a little bit more custodial overtime for the extra cleaning that they may or may not do some of those

113weren't fully staffed all the time so salaries might have been a little less it was just a big fluctuation capital projects this year cms windows and frames that we received fifty thousand dollar school maintenance project grant a year or two ago we already got the revenue for it so that will be completed hopefully august september i think the final ones are done in september we have mobile units coming for the elementaries just for the growth and meeting all of our building capacities transportation and buildings and grounds they've overgrown their facility with their one stall bathroom so we need to and by moving buildings and grounds out of cms we'll free up more classroom space and cms for other teachers to take over and moving them out so that facility hopefully will get up and running

114and then we're just doing um ntec upgrades so that's all of our hvac i think almost all of them have been worked on we just haven't paid for them yet and then we always have our bus leases our insurance specialist tuition a bunch of things good question with staff janitorial staff i know last year i think we hired like another person for building are we keeping that staff on this year we are keeping the added staff on yep so we'll have the mid-day staff which we put in place we did not have free last year so it should help yeah we're still short trying to find custodial staff we're a little short but all right and then you'll see the overtime because other staff are filling in for those those gaps these next few slides

115just show you some of the key expenditure items by the fund so this slide shows you the education fund it just gives you the grand total of the like elementary salaries middle school salaries high school and athletics this next slide will show you same education fund again total food service department for the whole entire department supplies and everything is the 1.4 million dollars special ed tuition um 3.5 million the tech budget and then our contingency within the total education expenditures are 48 000 406. 48 million 48 million o m funds these are the key lines within the operations and maintenance fund you can see the total o m expenditures will be 10 million 531 632 next we have transportation fund same thing you got your salaries your bus leases is 1.3 million fuel your contingency

116so your total transportation expenditures are 4 million 858 365 dollars um this slide is all the other funds um just kind of in in grand total showing you your debt service which is all your bonds and your debt certificates um that we will be paying principal and interest your imrf social security medicare your capital projects and your torque fund this is your fy 22 fund summary so it basically just get it's all the funds it tells you what the projected revenues were based on all the line items in the budget your projected expenditures and then the difference of where we're going to land so you can see education and the o m fund do have a deficit but on the next slide you'll see that they have fund balance reserves that they'll just be dipping

117into them it won't make them negative but it will it will reduce their thing um and then here you can see transportation is only 160 000 um so if one of those 595 payments don't come through or two of them um then your expenditures or your revenues will be down and you'll be deficit spending there as well so on this slide you can see column one is our unaudited fund balance we've not been audited yet but this is where we where i believe we're going to land there'll still be some some adjustments to it maybe and then the middle column shows you those deficit or surplus from the previous slide that other column those are the difference and then that shows you the 6 30 20 22 fund balance is where we were going to

118land so the education fund started with 26 million they'll be down to 23 million if this budget holds true so you can still see that where all the funds are still positive balance and then also looking it doesn't show you on this but all funds have less than a year reserves except for the transportation in the imri fund i'm that transportation fund if that one payment doesn't come then that whole thing is blown out of the water um so for the imref and social security i can look when i do the tax levy to maybe shift some money up to some of the other funds to help cover some of the deficits um the most of them like the headphones six months o m is seven months and towards like about eight months that's with

119everything as is so all funds total the reserves are on average about seven months if we took out our early tax money that we don't that is scheduled for the next year total funds will be three months reserved so it goes down dramatically without that early tax money so even though these look wow and healthy and and strong they are but without that early tax money it includes money for next year already correct and then this is my second to last slide just there's always issues and concerns that we're always you know working on and and trying to keep up with you got your staffing your ftes some of these issues have been on here since when i started like the property tax relief task form is that's been a couple years old but it's

120kind it's still there but it's not really being talked about um the newest one that could hit us pretty hard would be the p-tel reform um it limits our new construction to 50 of our assessed value rather than 100 percent so um instead of the 800 000 that we would get extra we'd only get 400 000. so where's that other 400 000 going um i have no idea it's just they're just going to reduce our rates so you wouldn't get 100 it's like a proration they would just reduce it and you wouldn't get the full value of it it seems exactly but you get it the following year um i don't know i have not seen any further guidance on it you may never it's just a bill that's out there so that one was

121one of the ones that struck me when i was listening to some webinars i was like oh that could affect us so i think just some of this all these issues they build up steam some of them dissipate um dr stern dr mayan they're always watching the legislation we're running different scenarios making sure we're staying on top of it um then our enrollment growth is the next thing that's kind of a little alarming on our schedule because we are growing faster than any other school in king county and we just don't have the space for kids so we're going to definitely have to look into building another elementary and then the essa requirements i don't know all the details it's it's esther's world over there but there's a lot of stuff that's being thrown at

122us that they're working tirelessly to make sure that they stay up on those kind of those guidelines and things that we have to do so that's that's my budget in a nutshell any questions i'll ask what i ask every year did anything surprise you in putting this together um nothing nothing really surprised me i i mean i i was shocked at like registration fees was like whoa how did we get so much but when you look at it there's an answer for it i don't i i was shocked at how much we didn't spend because we i think we thought that this that copper is going to be a lot but i think we just we have good vendors we were very you know frugal with our stuff we didn't we didn't go by 3

123000 million trillion plexiglass dividers and then not use them we didn't overspend on like some of these schools that they were buying things i was like oh my gosh that seems crazy um i think we just we just do what we normally do and we're just always very conservative with our purchases almost maybe to a fault um so i i don't think there was no i have a question do we ever look at the previous year in comparison so actually show it next to it so that you can actually compare so um for each one of those funds so that you kind of know where you where you started and where you're going for the future so we do in the budget let me fill that one up for you this big packet yeah so

124i would say um it would be helpful if you could kind of see it next to you within the document oh that's pretty okay there's just a lot more lines to look at in that one and that's right there's a whole lot more lines here versus here in the pretty graph so maybe next to that and i'm not sure why it's not projecting by the actual yeah what percent got it yeah that's really pretty i like the picture of you dragon on the beach you can see the cell's there but it won't open on the screen change my display i think i'll tab here what if i close uh so um to answer your question there is a detailed budget um it goes line by line and it goes by every fund so you'll start

125with your education fund it gives you every single line item for every single revenue we have you'll see your here's your tentative budget which is where my totals came from here's last year's budget and then you have where we landed so that's what we actually did for the the school year that we just passed and then this is um a percentage of the change so every account is in here gives you your total total revenue from your local then you got your state then you have federal and then it goes into all of your expenditures so you'll go through salaries um here you have elementary salaries all the different stipends teacher pay lunchroom supervisors then you have all your benefits your trs your insurance medical dental life um then your services your supplies your capital

126outlays and then it just goes through every department and then after the ad fund would be the on fund and then it just goes through all the funds thank you for your work on that esther thank you sorry yes you