001let's go it is 7 P.M we will call the meeting to order welcome to the January edition of the Columbia Board of Education meeting I'd like to start off with Colleen roll please Kimberly here perfect we have a quorum so thank you all for attending if you all stay with me and recite the Pledge of Allegiance I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States one nation under God indivisible with liberty and justices around thank you hi Welcome to our visitors to join us we've got a faithful crowd comes every time appreciate you guys participating welcome to everybody and uh at home watching our YouTube channel do we have any public comments this evening no public comments all right perfect uh correspondence I think is going around there are no correspondence okay that's easy
002enough get right down to business we'll start with our consent agenda Mr Grote if you'd walk us through that please we've got the minutes and the financial reports and the expenditures we had a resignation our aggregate cultural science person who you might remember took a leave of absence for her maternity well she's going to work in the private sector and stay at home with the newborn child so we wish her well but she is leaving us and so that's our one resignation we've got some Employments uh Timothy Gould is going to be our high school English that's um for this year we will be posting that position we were expecting him to apply but uh he's going to finish out this year for the English teacher that we had resigned last month we've got two
003extracurriculars Kelly langraf is coming back to the volleyball position and Chelsea Pana is the volunteer softball coach and then we've got vacancies as I said we've got the AG science teacher we've got the high school assistant principal High School Middle School business teacher that's a retirement high school English that's the position that we've got that gentleman working for this year in a middle school special ed that's going to be an expansion and then a halftime music teacher the halftime music teacher is really going to be for Eagle View and Parkview right now we double up classes and um the preschoolers don't even get music so we're looking at uh see if we can get a half time we don't really need a full-time um but trying to take our staff and make it work it
004doesn't work either so we're going to be looking for that halftime teacher those things said uh Administration recommends the board approvement as presented or any questions or comments concerns suggestions then I entertain a motion to approve the consent agenda as presented I'll make a motion thank you Andrew enjoy your second second Lisa seconds roll call please yes Craig Myers yes hi yes yes unanimously I'll move right on to our Communications and reports the enrollment reports in your packets we'll go on to our administrative reports um so we have had an exciting end of second quarter and for our first semester I wanted to include some awesome pictures again the first two on the left top and bottom are of Miss Haven science class they were learning about food chains and food webs and they connected
005it to the game of Jenga and after the game the students connected the balancing of bricks to the balancing of organisms in the ecosystem so it's always Hands-On in there and she always does an amazing job and the kids love being scientists in her science class the second two are also in the sixth grade science wing and they were learning about how glaciers shaped Illinois through topography and they at the top they connected the continents through Pangea and the different types of rock formations and Mountain formations on the bottom they used they they used their imagination to put together what Illinois how Illinois was shaped because of those glaciers with Plato so um really cool to see them doing Hands-On learning and explaining it to me as I walked around to see what's going on
006the top picture is kind of hard but that's in Miss reps class they were using shaving cream to practice their spelling words so they loved that and I loved that the desk got clean you know as well and the bottom is our boys enjoying biotech class and dissecting a baby pig but they were able to explain to me the purpose and how they do that and Mr Birch always has them also engaged and excited to head to his class so lots of exciting things and this is just a glimpse of if you go into any classroom all of the excellent ways my teachers incorporate the kids into learning so very proud of all those pictures I have three slides so we'll continue on um the next one is of our eighth graders they started having
007Pals back at Parkview and Eagleview and they're really excited on our half days to go over there so at Parkview they interviewed third graders and they call them their third grade buddies and during third and fourth fourth quarters the eighth graders will write and illustrate an original children's book for every third grader so they'll get to keep it and then they also went over to Eagleview where they read stories and books to the kindergarten and first graders about kindness so it was an awesome day and they all really loved doing that I think and lastly is just our fun way to end second semester we all um got new CMS shirts thanks to two blue and we had dress-up days the whole District had dress-up days and the students at the top left and right
008the left one was dressed like a Snowman the right one's your favorite Christmas characters can anyone guess what those two from Home Alone the wet Bandits and and then of course there's Buddy the elf and Jovi we made Mr Elliott and I made appearance over at Eagleview and they really thought that we came you know and from the North Pole and they were all super excited so it was it was a fun time so lots of great things happening all of the time and speaking of great things Miss Alexander was going to tell you about our February and fifth grade yes so we have a date set for the fifth grade stargazing night I had to say this oh hold on um so it is going to be Friday March 24th and the river bend
009astronomy club coordinator last year um made a comment that it was such a great turnout last time and the kids were so interested and well behaved and they made a great impression on the members of the club so that was nice to hear and um I know that the fifth graders and their families really look forward to that stargazing night so um Friday March 24th um also there's a kindness day coming up in February so the student council actually celebrates kindness week and they've kind of challenged each grade level to come up with some kind of act of kindness or a way to maybe give back to the community so each grade level has a service project that they're planning for that week in fifth grade we are going to be working on care packages
010and pen pal letters to soldiers that are deployed with um with a focus on the Navy we have a student teacher in fifth grade right now who was formally in the Navy so he has a connection and we're kind of teaming up with him and he's getting us some soldiers and military people to send packages and letters to um in sixth grade they're going to be donating to the house of neighborly service seventh grade the Bria nursing home they're going to donate items and make cards and eighth grade is working with helping Strays to walk dogs and donate items so those are our plans to do our service projects in February a lot going on I'm very lucky thank you very much and we'd like to thank the PTA for supporting the stargazing night on
011there all right on to our assistant superintendent report um so I'm gonna start with some shout outs so I'm gonna start at the high school with our special ed department so Chelsea Adair uh Mark hasser John Guinea and Derek rozicki um so they send out a weekly accommodation check-in um and it's just one of those great ways to see how the technology ideas that they used during covid are actually helping and simplifying things for the school so they send this out to all the teachers the teachers can quickly fill out things going on not only with their students that are in the Gen Ed classes but also if there's a test coming up or there's a big project or they're concerned about one of their students the teachers can quickly fill out these Google forms
012and get it back and those teachers can then have pretty quick things we know that everybody's time is very limited so finding time to meet together to talk about these is difficult so they are using this the picture on the far right is Sarah Klein and rosemary langing from the middle school and so obviously they work with students a lot kind of when they're in crisis or they need something but what I'm really excited about with those two is that they are taking very much of a proactive approach to things instead of a reactive approach so instead of waiting for kids to have issues they are coming and saying in the past we've seen a lot of problems with whatever a situation might be and they are wanting to try things and Implement things ahead
013of time to prevent those problems so you know it makes things go smoother it makes those kids more successful that have those moments of struggling and like I said it's just nice to be able to play offense instead of Defense all the time so um the picture in the bottom middle is a picture of our coffee crew from here at Parkview so I want to give a shout out to um Caitlin Lish and Amy Vollmer who um their class is the coffee crew so they come around and take coffee orders um I'm very thankful I'm not a coffee drinker but they added hot chocolate to the list so I was very happy for that one but they also are finding other ways to um contribute to the building and so they are now also our
014mail delivery here within Parkview so they come up every day and bring Kim the mail and take the mail back down to miss Robin in the office and they are starting tomorrow working in the cafeteria helping out doing some things so um they are very excited and it's um just you know the brainchild of those two teachers exploring and thinking outside of the box of of getting their classes involved and then the last picture there on the left is Tish lineman um talking about custodians over at Eagleview she is usually our evening custodian at Eagleview and our day custodian had to go out and so she has stepped up changed her schedule and it's kind of hard once you get used to a set work schedule and she's now the morning custodian she comes in
015um but she is phenomenal not only is she like I said changed around her schedule but she's always helping um ketchup packets and syrup packets are the much to the Chagrin of the adults at Eagle View but the kids love them and so she doesn't hesitate to jump in and help the kids with that she's not not just there doing those typical custodial duties so um just wanted to give all of them a shout out um I wanted to just kind of touch base a little bit about some of our our growth data so this is looking at our map test that I brought so we do these benchmarks three times a year um and you know this is tied to our school Improvement goals at Parkview and at the middle school um so this
016just kind of Compares it goes in sets of two but the fall Benchmark to the winner Benchmark and so you can see you know obviously we're wanting that blue and green section to grow some of our scores you know didn't grow as much as we would have liked to see from beginning of the year to middle of the year but one that is typical historical data not only in our district but kind of all over will tell you that the winter benchmarking is a little bit harder partially because you spend first semester when you first come back right getting new routines in place reviewing things that might have happened over the summer finding out where those deficits or those holes all are are and working on those skills and then we also take this testing
017in December um which is not the greatest time of the year when you're trying to get kids to focus when we're really excited about is is there a snow day coming up um it is when's Christmas break how many more days till that um so it's it's a little difficult so um like I said there are definitely some positives in here so this was the math scores um reading kind of we're kind of seeing the same thing like I said a couple of grade levels we've shown some greater growth a couple things dipped just a little bit um but I am just looking at this data and kind of comparing it to where we were last year um I am confident that when we take those scores in May and we compare beginning to Middle
018I'm sorry beginning and end of year scores that our teachers will have gotten the growth out of our students to help us meet those School Improvement goals in the buildings so I am I'm excited about that um and then just a couple other things we have a lot of PD going on and coming up in the district um from all different Avenues we're looking at a lot of we have some teachers going to some positive psychology training um to kind of help you know how do you focus on the positive um we have some academic things we're sending out some teachers to help look at improving like the extended responses and areas of our state standardized testing that we have now identified as some areas of weakness so really excited about that next Friday on
019our half day we're running our own mini edcamp so we're taking the expertise of the teachers in our district because we have a lot of expertise in the buildings and the teachers will go through rotations they'll be able to pick areas that they want to focus on and learn from their peers so I'm very excited to to see that and how it goes and then the only other thing I kind of wanted to share with you was that at the high school there's some changes as far as with weighted classes so um a long time ago there was a switch um from taking out weighted classes for freshmen because what they were finding was happening was students were being pushed into weighted honors weighted classes students that wasn't the correct placement for them for whatever
020reason or they were struggling well when you struggle with a weighted class and your grade shows it it kind of Tanks your GPA pretty quickly and it's hard to rebuild from that so they eliminated those weighted grades at those classes um parents and students are now much more involved so the teachers still make those recommendations but parents and students have a lot more say in evaluating if that's a good placement for them and so we feel like those students should be rewarded for being challenged and putting in that extra work so starting next year honors biology honors English one and honors Spanish 2 will be weighted classes that our freshmen can take advantage of so that's what I have which is a superintendent report all right well at that time of year where we uh
021start looking to graduation Believe It or Not we've been going through a brief history looking at what we've done in the past and graduations have fluctuated um with all of school scheduling it's just it's near never able to find a perfect time from athletic competitions and post Seasons to Mother's Day weekend Memorial Day weekend it's just hard to find the best time we do know outside is definitely preferred um we've sat through mild rain you know and and stayed outside that is a good thing without a stage inside in the gym rain days are then the next day putting to a Sunday we used to have a graduations on Sunday and it got moved to Saturday to make the rain day because we could have it done the next day if you have a stage
022inside you can do it on the same day and do it during downpours because you're inside it can be the same day a air conditioning is better currently projections in the Commons area to so people can see the graduations are better um we're looking at all of this the point is being is that we will be bringing to you a graduation date next month and our goal is really to be able to say we do a graduation on you know the third whatever on this date at this time and try and find that date that will not in the future have issues so that people can start saying okay graduation for next year is always going to be on the fourth I'm going to say Tuesday because we'll never have one on Tuesday that I
023don't want people saying he said it um but we're going to bring that to you next month and so if you've got any thoughts or concerns or if any of your neighbors with graduating people put in their two cents to you all please make sure that Mr Reeves and I hear the input because we do um want to find the the best that we can um we'll also be bringing forward a calendar for next year I Believe Miss Smith shared it with the association today or we'll be sharing it with them today spoiler alert the point being that if you hear some of this we always think to the future but we live in the now you know we're talking about next year we're posting for next year's but we're living in the now I
024I kid you not um I was alerted today that there is a storm coming in next week and Wednesday get your bread and milk early because people have been asking me if Wednesday next week's going to be a snow day um I don't know anyway you live in the moments um we're going to bring a calendar for next year but we are focused on this year um that brings me to the five essential survey those will be coming out soon uh we want everybody to take it all of the faculty and staff will take it and they'll report what they feel about their buildings it gives us a cultural thing all students from fourth grade up will will take it and then we're going to be strongly encouraging parents to take it um it gives
025us a look at what people think about us in Broad in Broad ways and and we want to look at that data and be able to craft the culture that we can to make this the the place we want it to be um those are my three things that we've got going on and uh thank you thank you so they have a couple items for Action the first one is the approval of the Cobalt as our representative in the construction projects yeah we have um I want to thank Mr Hampton and Mr Myers for sitting in these committee meetings and going through this we went out to bid for construct construction managers as advisors or owners representations we were looking for someone that can um with a flat fee represent our interests and has the
026expertise in the constructions as we look at big projects we've got Kimberly Pollock did I say that right in the audience she's a member of cobalt um I'm going to let Mr humpkin and Mr Myers kind of talk about the company and whatnot but the administration recommends that you approve the um engagement of cobalt pending legal review of the contracts and some details that need to be worked out but we would like to engage them at a flat fee for the looking at the facilities Mr Myers we'll take it Adam or go ahead it's been a long day all right so basically as we know we're to have the high school project that's coming up and which is a very massive project and fortunately Adam and I both have construction experience so we we have
027a pretty good handle on things however neither one of us has the time to really oversee it um before the district and what we're worried about is we don't want to pay a percentage because to me it's kind of productive if you say I'm going to pay you X percentage of the project there's no incentive for them to hold the line the more they bill the more they make and so like I said I feel is counterproductive so we were very excited to uh and interview Cobalt we interviewed four companies we're supposed to see bids from four bids fruit companies so we had a lot of a lot of interest in the project we weighed everything very heavily and interviewed Cobalt seemed to be our best choice and we appreciate all their information and meeting
028with us and they jumped through all the hoops and we had a lot of Hoops and and uh with the project this size we don't want to take any chances we want to make sure everything is is there so the idea behind an owner's rep is there are eyes and ears so they're going to help us with the design they have a lot of heavy construction experience so they know the process from start to finish so they're going to be involved in the design and implementation to build everything so they're kind of our eyes and ears and so basically we're going to control the creep and so we don't want the thing to go 10 over budget we want it on budget and uh and so with with being proactive it's funny we met with
029the attorney for Mundo from Gwen and the attorney is especially special specializes in these type of contracts and he was just very excited you know it's funny because you have an attorney that does all these school districts and all this thing and it's very mundane and to hear him really excited about something he's like you know this is the wave of the future and uh he was really happy with what we're doing and and actually being more proactive and controlled our costs up front instead of after it's too late and dealing with it so what'd I miss I don't think I have anything to add actually perfect Miss Pollock is here to answer any questions should anyone have any they've got extensive experience in the fields and and let me say for the record she
030survived Adam's question so he is extremely thorough and uh yeah I was glad I wasn't hurting that time though I we're very worst comments suggestions questions and uh the three of us in the committee feel this is definitely our best way to go and I think it's going to definitely control costs and it is an added expense that you know some people look at um off the board not for the bat but uh it's I'm very confident it's going to more than pay for itself so what are you feeling yeah I mean I agree it's the whole the whole concept behind it is just the The Advisory service the expertise that they'll bring to the table to help us make good decisions up front put a good requirement out for any construction help us decide
031which construction is absolutely necessary what we can do in phase is what we can't all those things that cost you money if you don't know up front and you you leave two assumptions or to open bidding so the better we can Define our requirement figure out exactly what this build is going to look like the better we can do our price estimates the better the Project's going to run overall and that's where we don't have the time the resources to oversee it the way it needs to be to be ran effectively on on schedule on budget so that's where you know Cobalt will be able to help us significantly to make sure this runs smoothly so yeah that's I mean that's the whole concept behind it it does cost money up front but experience shows
032it saves money in the end so what is the cost well that's going to be that's still I think some of it's being negotiated still so I think that's what we're putting on the table is that that all the final terms and conditions are going to be you know they're they're not the negotiations are finalized um so I think what we're asking is for Mr Grote to be able to enter into that we're basically delegating to him to enter that once those once the paper Works final and we're we have agreeable terms at the end is that correct Chris that's director and what and just to be clear we're this is a professional service so um you don't need to be with the lowest right it's not it's not something that's that's specked and bid
033and I mean yes we we gathered that information correct but um and we interviewed four different folks or you said we have interesting four responses to that but um it's it's choosing the best fit for the um for the district it's not you know looking at Lois and best bid it's it's really choosing the who we feel are going to represent us the best yeah um there's a lot of factors involved in that too you know what kind of works have they done before Miss Pollock lives in the community her kids go to the schools here and so she's got vested interest in making sure that things go the way it's supposed to be and so there's just a lot of Dynamics but ultimately the administration would recommend that we engage Cobalt to provide these
034services pending the legal reviews and the negotiations and really to answer your question it's the total fee correct me if I'm wrong I think we're around the two percent of the entire project area previous projects that there's not enough for us to do more um we do have a flat fee for design phase and then a flat people construction page just because typically that there's more you know time involved with the construction side of it however we can it all equals I think when we looked at the project and did a whole Manpower out it was less than two percent when you look at your project budget compared to what our uh full fee would be I think it's important that it's not based on a percentage look at a project like that you you
035know insurance is going to be a percentage labor is going to be percentage materials Consulting so we kind of put it in that mind frame so you guys have an idea what what kind of dollars we're talking about so and then just curious like historically how much does it on average does a school district go over on a project like this versus with you guys my personal experience with education projects we haven't gone over budget um but it actually went reverse we were able to help get more into a project and uh and that's been the case multiple times so I want to say like 100 if not over um that you can hold me to for this time too but I don't have that historical or general I think I'd say from my experiences
036talking to other superintendents uh change orders and going over budget is usually around maybe a quarter quarter percent so I mean depending on the scope of your work and whatnot I've had the project within 100 year old building that was almost 50 percent of change orders water you mean total costs 25 yeah not a quarter another percent right and to clarify make sure but it's it's when you're remodeling an old building you don't until you get into there you don't know what you're dealing with electrical or whatnot I mean you know so you sometimes get in there and you find out that it was wired with stuff that now it all needs to be torn out or you know so there's a lot of various areas and there's other solutions that you can work around
037to try and make sure that the and we've had a lot of conversations as well we're still post covid so we're still supply chain shortages and that sort of thing where you know that's we had a long conversation in what do you do this isn't available we get to figure something else out we just don't let the project sit or overrun you figure out another solution another supplier another method something and that's where they really shine is is to keep things moving along so that's that's going to be a big part of it it's these are different times to build in believe me I just got done with the project so uh I can I can tell you definitely different times but uh I think we welcome their expertise I would but any other questions
038would anybody like to make a motion to approve Cobalt as our owners rep in the construction project pending legal review and authorizing Mr Grody to enter into a contract should everything be copacetic yes I'll make the motion thank you a second seconds all right perfect roll call please yes Andrea Corey yes Craig Meyer yes is that middle camp aye Lisa Schumacher yes Tyson search yes yes unanimous thank you very much and welcome aboard big things comments we're excited as well all right uh last item for Action is the approval of the second reading and Adoption of the board policies for the Press issue 110. there were no questions comments or concerns brought to me I don't believe that then you were brought to Mr Hamilton or Mr middle camp the recommendation is to approve them
039as presented most of them are changes due to Legal references and whatnot there was one question in there regarding whether or not we require unvaccinated people to get tested the answer is no and so um that will be duly reflected in the policies there but recommendation is to approve them as presented any questions discussions comments I mean like I'll just second what Mr Gordy said reading through and they were you know this was a large list of administrative updates um you know the last round there were a few a few items to just consider that were unique based on district and such but these were very admin you know very much administrative so I I didn't receive any comments or inquiries either but just that that was my read anyone else when I would like
040to make a motion to approve the second reading of the press pass policy 110. I'll make motion thank you Tammy 20 seconds Lisa seconds she beats out Tyson it's gonna be quicker next time there's no money on the table so all in favor aye aye any opposed any absentions our discussion item is our facility study we kind of touched on that a little bit here so we'll just add I want to thank Mr Schumacher and Ms Hines for um walking all the buildings with me um my feet were tired at the end of the day I don't know if I've walked or put that many steps in for a while but we took a tour of all the buildings checked doors talked to administration at the buildings looked at that from a Safety and Security
041point of view I'm bringing it up in the facility study because we did look at like Eagle View is packed we've got facility concerns there the Middle School's got plenty of room but it's the newest of the buildings the high school is also full uh Parkview is at maybe I think there was one room that's still able to be built into and so it's it's just as we look forward to the facility study and we start looking at our Safety and Security concerns and whatnot it was just we ended up having a couple of conversations about our facilities and where our students are and Staffing so I just want to thank them for that day and uh it was some good discussions so very good anything else for facility individual board member comments do we
042have anything for the good of the order president prerogative I was just going to Echo uh my appreciation for Lisa and Tammy for taking an entire day to go through that it's nice to be in the buildings and actually see things firsthand and gives us a very unique perspective so thank you both for doing that thank you for using your feet I I closed that Circle definitely and we'll watch sounds good all right I think we do we have an executive no action items after okay so basically we do have uh items to discussed in the executive session over Mr grudy just said we don't have any action items as a result so unfortunately you guys can't stay for the executive session but you're welcome to come back and see us adjourn a few so
043desire so with that I'd entertain a motion to adjourn into executive session I'll make a motion thank you second let me roll call on this yep all right real cool please thank you yes yes sir yes yes Perfect all right well thank you foreign oops ready all right welcome back everyone we just conclude our executive session there's no action items as a result and with that I'd entertain a motion to adjourn oh my goodness Dyson make motion and a second all in favor aye any opposed