001all right welcome everyone we'll call the meeting to order it is 7 p.m and we'll start off with our roll call please here we have a quorum if we all join me in reciting the Pledge of Allegiance pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States and justice for all thank you all right Welcome to our public in the Press one of the same and everybody joining us in the online thank you for tuning in this evening do you have any public comments all right perfect we'll go right into the consent agenda Mr Gert if you'd walk us through that please yeah um we've got one resignation Tom Detmer is our high school golf coach and he is resigning I know he was an employee of ours for many years I don't know how long
002he's been a coach with golf but he's retired from us as an employee in 24 26 years anyway he's stepping down so we want to thank him and wish him well is he is actually completely retired at this point uh coach baseball and yeah all sorts of other things too years ago okay um we've got hires of Jessica rux is our new payroll and Jennifer Rau who's going to be an LPN nurse at the high school and um we we just haven't been able to get any RNs and whatnot so we've got an LPN she's coming to us from Waterloo and uh she'll be working under Jan Turley and we're all good so we'll have a person at the high school with which is wonderful news we've got two leaves of absences there for um
003pregnancies that'll be starting in February and then we just have the vacancy for the high school Gulf Coast so right now the administration recommends that you approve the consent agenda as presented short and sweet is enough any discussions comments questions without entertaining motion to approve the consent agenda as presented I'll make the motion to approve the consent presented thank you Andrew do your second second it's in second roll call please yes yes hi all right motion courage unanimously thank you on to our Communications and reports and presentations our enrollment report is in the packet I saw and then we'll go right to our administrative reports start with Brian all right thanks so I was a little bit late we had senior night for golf cross country and volleyball so I was doing some quick announcing
004I ran up here so it's also parent-teacher conference tonight and the PTA donated all the meals from Joe's to all the staff tonight so I wanted to recognize them thank the PTA for that there's been a little discussion about swick and with teacher turnover we've lost a few dual credit classes but we've also added some dual credit classes so I wanted to make sure I made you aware of that through Slough we did lose physics and through SWIC we lost uh architectural Cad and mechanical CAD but then through SWIC we were able to add basic Horticulture Horticulture and production management I'm sorry Horticulture production and management consumer econ AG business management and npe weights so we did lose a few but then we were able to gain gain a couple more than what we had
005a busy time with sports our girls golf team for the first time a golf team Advanced the state as a team and they finished eight eight we had an individual boy qualify for second day of golf so you do qualify for state but then you also have to qualify and advance to the second day as well so that was very impressive our soccer teams playing the sectional final this Friday volleyball starts regionals next week cross country starts Regional Saturday they had a very great a great showing I'm sorry a great showing at the conference meet across country teams football start playoff next weekend and winter starts start next week so we just roll right into the next one and if you're looking for an evening out we have the the play the upcoming Play The
006Man Who Came To Dinner runs November 3rd through November 6th with a Thursday night Friday night Saturday night and Sunday afternoon performances there you go and with their pictures okay uh pictures that's new on the left we have our September students of the month the category was citizenship on the right we have our volleyball players with our pink out night and there's our girls golf team our male advancer to State and then our senior homecoming Court that's all for me thank you man I forgot about that Varsity was just about to start against Freeburg did he did believe they both lost JV did not talked about freshman you better get back to it okay that they have a very good student section there yeah yeah they did they traveled well that's correct the corners at
007a conference soccer meeting yes exactly well thank you for your report you are more than welcome to stay and you're also more welcome to go join them if you'd like to so it's completely up to you yeah I'll take I'll take off and I hope I didn't jinx it very good thank you appreciate that all right our assistant superintendent report I wanted to go through with you first so um the Illinois state report card is going to be released to the public on October 27th um so as we go through the slide you will see that our school ratings are top secret because we're not allowed to broadcast that to the public just yet um we are allowed to share it with board members so you do have a confidential piece of paper with you
008as I kind of go through some of these things um but like I said on the 27th of October is when the report cards will be released um so Columbia High School we're really excited SAT scores um they did dip a little bit this year which obviously was concerning when you first take a look at that but as I started digging in the state average took a massive dip this year and so while our scores dipped when you start looking at the percentage of how much we lost versus how much the state average dip was we actually are still much further ahead of the state curve than what was expected so met with Brian this morning and we talked a lot about how we're going to break down some of that and some of the
009ways we're going to guide the high school different departments to kind of help not only catch that growth up but continue to move our students even further on the future SATs the other thing that was exciting on those I said there's that breakdown of ela and math but just seeing the our participation on a lot of the things we get points for participation for different parts of them and our high school teachers and Brian do a really great job of making sure that the students are getting done what they need to so we can earn and capture all those participation points that we possibly can that goes into it some other areas that Brian and I identified as kind of some room for growth is our chronic absenteeism rate it's right around three percent which
010we are and you'll see in a slide later on for another school we are much lower than the state average for our chronic absenteeism rate but three percent in our opinion is still too high so that's an area that we're going to start focusing on and then the climate survey so that was that five Essentials as well as the students take their own perception survey and you know that one of our district Improvement goals this year was on climb Mitten culture and so that all feeds into what we're doing I do think based on the feedback I'm hearing and I don't know if any of you have heard or talked to any High School kiddos yet so far this year but they are really excited in these homeroom activities that our PBIS team has been
011doing and it's so it's really great so that's the high school Columbia Middle School we have some things to celebrate so you can kind of see there the blues are our district scores the red are the state averages so we are still in Colombia above the state average on both our Ela and our math proficiency for both of them again obviously right we want to hold ourselves and our students to a higher standard and so you can see that one of our rooms for growth is that Ela proficiency because we're pretty close to that state average but again have not only talked to Dawn but um that was something that Angie had identified at the end of last year as well is doing kind of a curriculum review on Ela and that is one of
012the buildings that doesn't have a clear curriculum set forth for them we depend a lot on our teachers as professionals so they do an amazing job with not having had a curriculum to kind of build from chronic absenteeism rate is something that we're also celebrating so this is where I was talking about before you can see the middle school is also right around that three percent so again not what we're happy with but the red is the state average so you can see that we are looking phenomenal when you start talking to some other school districts um math growth as I was digging through the data is something that we are really focusing on but I think a lot of that also comes though with our new math curriculum this year so we're excited to
013see um if that growth Gap has closed because that is just a comparison of our students where they were last year and how much they've grown by the end of this year so that really is a true data to or a true assessment to our own data and our own students um the other thing is is that while I can't tell you what our label is I can tell you that in previous years we had received a grant because we had an underperforming subgroup and that group has made great strides and they are no longer an underperforming subgroup at that middle school and so we are ecstatic to have that news as well um Parkview again we're very excited about their iar scores um and their growth rate um again so like I said that
014growth rate that bottom chart is comparing our kids to where they were last year to where they are this year and again we're growing but you can see math we're at the state average of what's expected for growth so again we're hoping that with this new math curriculum but also one more year removed away from covid will help boosting uh boost all of that there's a lot of research that shows that students lost a lot more math skills during covid than they did reading skills because when you start thinking about it you might have not have been doing a lot of academic work right but you were reading the cereal box you were reading the signs in the cars you were still reading even if you weren't doing academic stuff math unless your parents were
015having you help with the bills or something you aren't really practicing your math skills during that time we do want to focus on chronic absenteeism Parkview is one of those part of the reason why the data is under embargo for a while is because it gives schools a chance to go in and review what the data has looked like and when we first saw Park views absenteeism rate that came back it was double what all of our other schools were so immediately jumped into digging into that and then we got an email from the state that said oh a lot of people said that their attendance wasn't calculated correctly so they gave us a day and a half to go in and correct anything or go through and look at every student so we did
016that at Parkview so originally they were reporting that we had a six percent chronic absenteeism rate they just refreshed this afternoon um and Parkview was also down to a three percent chronic absenteeism rate so there were some errors in theirs um which so like I said it is nice that the state gives us a chance to look at that data before the ratings come out um and so like I said that math growth is an area and then finally at Eagleview um so chronic absenteeism theirs is the lowest in the district um so we are really excited because a lot of times that's hard at that level it's the first time kids are in school so they pick up sicknesses a lot faster and so we were really excited to see how low their absenteeism
017rate and then the growth rate of our students at Eagleview especially for kiddos that last year was their first experience being in school because of covid so not only just I didn't go to kindergarten but a lot of them didn't even go to daycare or anything like that but because of that when we look at our kindergarten Readiness assessment the kids test we have noticed that our students our scores dropped in half um on students coming in to us at the kindergarten Readiness so that assessment is given at the 40th day of school so it's not really judging what we've done at school but just where they come in at and we know that could come in at all different rates but last year's and this year's classes it's our teachers are dealing with a
018lot of different things that they haven't had to deal with before and again it goes back to I wasn't at daycare so I didn't have to share with anybody other than my siblings or I didn't have to sit in my chair and do what somebody else told me to do because my mom or dad told me to do something and either I did it or I got to go get and play on my iPad or whatever it might be so we're just really working on those Readiness skills for them and then again that math growth rate is we'd like to see it higher in comparison to the state level um but I feel like a broken record but again hopefully that math curriculum is is going to raise that up so um like I said
019the information will be made to the public um that just so you kind of have an idea too an exemplary school is considered in the top 10 of schools in the state um a commendable is a school that has no underperforming subgroups and then targeted isn't has underperforming subgroups and then that comprehensive is the lowest five percent of schools so that you can kind of get a gauge of where we are at um and then just a couple things I wanted to shout out for this year as I've uh or for this month as I've been making my way around the building um so the first picture um is Karen Proctor so I know we've talked before about bus transfer over at Eagleview at the end of the day and it's crazy and I have
020to you know give a huge thanks to all of those teachers that help with bus transfer there's no way it would be possible without many of them coming out there but Karen Proctor meets one of our students who um was having some different issues and needed a little bit of extra help to kind of stay focused and to get from his bus to the next bus and all of that um and so she meets him at his bus every day and walks him to his transfer bus but the really cool thing is to sit and listen to their conversation he got off one day and he said well I guess you don't have to come to work tomorrow because I won't be here and um so it was just sweet to think that you know
021she was his and her only reason for coming to school in his opinion was for him um I was over there the other day and I heard her say well tomorrow or Friday's a half day but I better see you okay I guess I'll come so it made me kind of think that maybe he hadn't been here on our half day in September um so it's just she's done a fantastic job building a relationship with him um the middle picture is our new librarian at Eagleview and Parkview Jordan vudeaman um she had some huge shoes to fill when she took Marla Rose's spot she jumped in and you would never have known that we missed a beat at all she's got those kids doing activities they are she's really building that passion and that for
022reading she's just doing an excellent job the picture on the right is a picture of Kelly langraf in her sixth grade math class except I've been doing a lot of visits focusing a lot more on math classes just to see how the new curriculum's going um but one of the things that I love is our elementary teachers are really good about small group instruction and making stations and kids go around right we think of that a lot as an elementary level idea and as you move up that becomes less and less of a focus with our teachers um but I went I was in Kelly's room watching and she was doing her her thing and making math fun and exciting and then all of a sudden I heard her say oh how about you come
023work with me today and how about you and it wasn't anything I mean obviously as an educator I knew who she was identifying and why um but those kids had no idea because then there were other kids saying oh can I come back and work at your table too or she'd open it up and say is there anybody else that wants to come back um so she just does a really great job of making it an inviting environment not threatening at all um and then it's very obvious that the students are comfortable with Taking Chances um making mistakes but that's how we learn and so she does a fantastic job with doing that um and then the last one it's really hard to see um down at the bottom but our new special ed teacher
024at the high school more concert did an activity with his homeroom and he uh was teaching them the importance of sending an email but how to make an email clear and get your point across and what it needed to contain and how it should be kind of be formatted trying to get his special ed students to Advocate to their teachers I need help with this or can I get some more explanation with that but did it with his entire homeroom class and so one of the activities he had them do though was email a teacher that had made a difference for them and so Not only was he teaching a life skill to our kids but I got several comments from teachers that received an email from a student or class just how it was
025a nice thing and you know we know we hear a lot about education is just hard right now and so right we a lot of times get emails of upset students upset parents upset administrators um and so to get an email that is positive and you know inviting um the teachers really liked it too so I just wanted to give Mark a shout out for for something that he'd done with his class this month too so that's all I have thank you any questions thank you all right and our superintendent's reports all right um before I start uh we've got from the Illinois Association of school boards we have an established board leader and so we got a letter and they wanted me to present this to her and so Miss Tammy Hines wow well
026thank you congratulations you've done the training that that they would like from you congratulations I enjoy the training there you go all right um I've been out a little bit more in the buildings than I had last month I think last month I told you that it's been with Staffing and whatnot a little harder I've been out more mainly doing administrative observations for their evaluations I've got to go out and I've got to watch them and so I follow them through meetings or I follow them through portions of their days and it's attached to what their goals are and as Smith said climate and culture is one of our goals and that hopefully when you're starting to get the sense of is the data-driven nature of how we target things and look at things Alyssa's
027diving through the attendance reports and all those other aspects to our scores has been wonderful to see I'm going to talk to you about PBIS positive behaviors interventions and supports um it's a reboot we're looking at the data and it's been fascinating I I'm looking just at district-wide data um and so I graphed it out or I didn't graph it out I printed out a report from Skyward and our largest issue is is cell phones which is probably not a surprise to anyone our second largest issue is not really an issue but they're things that we report in there and it's with 84 reports of cell phones and earbud usage right and this is district-wide we had 75 positive referrals that was the next item that we've been logging so if a student does something
028that that is completely and utterly right we notice it we can give them a positive referral it's kind of like that email that that the the teacher did you know saying nice things about each other um the high school is the only one right now that's logging positive referrals so those 75 all came from the high school and I must say that looking at the data and the issues um it's a great place our teachers do a wonderful job and there's a lot to be celebrating and positive behaviors is there classroom behavior is the next one Tardis is after that but really um right now what we're doing is we're looking at that data and each building is coming up with goals each month to address those issues and re-teach those issues and talk about
029where they're going to be but as an Administration we're looking at it as uh developing our Baseline data and systematizing our administrators are talking about oh you guys are tracking positive referrals how are you doing that and and with that communication we'll see it growing in the other buildings and our data will become richer and more um valuable as we start to systematize the processes in all of our buildings you know what's a tardy how do you calculate a tardy um but listening to the two presentations today of the high school and uh Miss Smith's thing it's I think qualitatively we can see that positive things are happening in the buildings the conversations and I'm not saying that they didn't happen before but it's just a wonderful thing to be able to take time and
030and and honor it and acknowledge it and I it's great so um that's what I have for my superintendent's report perfect thank you all right we're going to our we have no items for Action this evening so go right into discussion items and we'll go back to you for the facility study yeah next week Tuesday and Wednesday that's um October 25th and 26th The Architects are going to be at the high school and they're going to be meeting with teachers uh they're going to be meeting with um office people they're going to be meeting with nurses and other all the different classifications and we're going to be moving forward on defining what is needed what are our programmatic needs and getting some information on that the goal for that programmatic report is still for the
031beginning of the calendar year January 1st for a presentation to you all um questions concerns comments on that okay I'll keep you posted perfect all right and next item is security yeah this was requested item for discussion by board members um I recommend that we form a safety security subcommittee two board members I'd like to see on it uh I'd like to get the administration the faculty and staff Community representation I've talked with Chief Don John and he understands willing to participate in this uh the purpose of the subcommittee would really be to review our safety and security measures um do a deep dive into our data what's needed uh talk to people maybe send out some surveys and and and make some recommendations from there questions concerns comments on that or anybody that would
032like to volunteer I thought we had a security committee already I think we have a behavior committee I don't think we have a security committee committee well I'm on like this what is it called like I want to say I go to the safety meetings and then report back yeah I think you're the only one on that one though and that's really more for the um the yearly when we bring all the responders in and whatnot so am I hearing that Miss Heinz should be on this committee I would love to be on the committee okay I'll be on it perfect excellent Lisa Schumacher that's easier than getting motions out of you people that's amazing now that I know which two board members are I will email you and find up some dates um we'll
033probably be sending information out to the community to see if parents want to be involved in this and uh be moving forward great thank you both for volunteering next item is our is iasb resolutions and those were given to you in your packet basically these are at the annual conference um our delegate we have Mrs Hines is our delegate and she will cast a ballot based on the board's position of course as everybody knows board members don't have any Authority on their own so we're only a board as a consensus so we need to give her some direction on how the board would like to or the position the board would like to take on these matters so I think there's what eight of them uh nine if you includes the current position statements deletion
034and amendments okay okay so how's everyone you want to go through these one by one and them on real quick well did any or anybody or did anybody have anything that have opposed what the um ISB recommended great point I I wasn't in agreement on a couple of them but I'm not I don't I don't even feel that strong either um which ones the number one was taking the the ability to sue for school districts that that accumulate more money than they need basically the uh so I think the the Miller ratio of what you refer to is right now if a school district has um I think it's two years of fund balances cash on hand currently we for instance we have a six month cash on hand our fund balances are such that
035we can do payroll for six months we don't have a year um they're saying that if there is if you get to a point where you're got two years two and a half two and a half years then um there are some it can be brought to you by the community to do rebates for the taxes correct so my position on this is this is not this is public money it's not does it belong to the boards of the schools around Bales belongs to the taxpayers and I have no problem with adequate funds to run the school and Pay Teachers a decent salary and maintain our facilities but then when it goes up I mean the tax bills in Columbia just went down significantly because of the fiscal responsibility of of this district and I
036don't know I think it's a good thing but uh that's me yeah the recommendation from the the the the resolution committee from iasb is to support this and you're saying you'd like to see that opposed I would personally but that's let's just make the eye will go along with everybody for everybody so basically if there's more money than two and a half years that it's okay to send it back to the taxpayers correct and this would make the this is basically there's there's an existing vehicle for this and what they're trying to do is remove that vehicle so if a school board accumulates more than two and a half times what they need it makes it more difficult to get that money back in the taxpayer's hands is that is that per um per fund
037or is that overall I believe that's overall the Miller ratio was I think developed originally for townships that have a less of a payroll you know um if we weren't if we were staffed not as you know but that's why our tax rates are what they are is Right a school district is expensive yeah and so the Miller ratio I think was originally used for for townships I agree though with Greg give it back to the community if we get too much since it's not opposing this or supporting it is there anybody that wants to speak to the support side do you think our taxes went down because of this no no this I don't think this would really affect our district because the taxes way down this year for us because we extended more
038money like we normally do every year you extend for more money meaning we're asking for more money there was a property and a tiff that came off and so we still extended for more money we just didn't extend for more to capture that Tiff and so that property that came off is able to add money and so our rate goes down because there's more property that's being paid so we extend for dollars needed not um percentages right we don't control the tax we don't control the tax rate once we say this is how much money we need then it's calculated cincinnatif fell off and it was calculated that way that our base window yeah and our our our rate went down yeah there's another entity that's helping to pay the taxes but we still asked
039for more money as we do every year because you got to cover increased costs we will never get to a two no I mean this is one of those things where you guys can go either way most school districts are never going to be in that case am I seeing his consensus for opposing or is there anybody that wants to support yeah I guess as a matter of matter yeah sure then the other one we should probably talk about is the alternative funding for school bus basically electric bus subsidies and I think the association is a do not adopt yes they're worried about the rural communities and all that kind of stuff so is there anybody that wants to support that one or do we just go with the right those are recommendations okay that's
040the only one I really saw that was controversial so so you're ready to go with this is there anything else go with the recommendations which would be oppose the Firearms dealer location change Capital grants support school safety fund support oppose involvement with candidates for public office and and then support the last three mandate Review Committee Financial contribution to School Board elections and uh all of the current position statement deletions and amendments everybody good with that got it all right we have a consensus awesome thank you thank you for the suggestions Scott that saved a lot of time all right individual board member comments anybody have anything awesome right I actually I ain't gonna pipe up real quick perfect um one thing I wanted to say is uh this week I was at a JV football
041game and there was a serious injury on the field and there was not an ambulance present at the school and and so my understanding is it's mandatory for any Varsity proceedings that an ambulance be there but of course the age of any of our students or the opposing students shouldn't make a difference in terms of what was going on so this was originally it was a spinal cord injury they thought and it was you know and so we they had to wait for an ambulance to come and show up and it was it was quite a thing so there was a lot of chatter a lot of chatter about the fact that there should be an ambulance at lower classmen events as well for for for both sides of the thing so it was something
042I sure has been brought up but I also wanted to Echo that I agree with that and I think that that should be something that should be done so I will I made a note I will look into that okay thank you perfect anyone else right we're supposed I don't have anything and I don't believe we have an executive session this evening right I'll make a motion for a gentleman a second Perfect all in favor aye are you opposed all right that concludes our meeting thank you very much for joining us Brian did not jinx