001it is 7pm like to welcome everyone to the april edition of the columbia school board meeting and we will start with our roll call kimberly please here tammy hines here andrea cory here greg meyer here scott little here lisa schumacher here tyson search here all here perfect okay we have a quorum thank you everybody would stand and follow me with the pledge of allegiance i pledge allegiance to america and to the republic for which it stands one nation under god indivisible with liberty and justice for all thank you all right welcome all to in attendance and our new hires just thrilled to have you here tonight and everybody at home watching for this uh riveting board meeting as usual i think correspondents are coming around um i think we have some public comments this evening
002i think one is a phone call yep we have one that's a call so i will make that now hello hi it's alyssa i'm calling you from the board meeting i'm gonna have you introduce yourself and then you can go ahead and have your your time to speak okay okay whenever you're ready go ahead okay my name is michelle good evening i would like to address the non-renewal of mr david ackermann i'm going to stop you real quick can you give your first and last name sure michelle mueller okay thank you go ahead um okay so i want to address the non-renewal of mr dinbachman's contract much of the board of education's actions surrounding this incident seemed to be veiled in secrecy this leads the district parents and citizens of this town just reminds that
003mr ackerman has been bought out no one on the board is talking about the payout and wasted tax dollars it is under the public's impression that the board voted to not renew mr ackerman's contract at the february 2022 board meeting however in tonight's agenda a new cms assistant principal's name is on the agenda for board approval under item 6 ce following that under item 7e the agenda states approve an administrator's voluntary resignation as submitted unless mr reeves mr blackley miss huels or mr dugan is resigning without communicating this first with our faculty and staff we assume this item line is referring to mr ackerman it does not feel transparent of the board to keep an administrator's name private in the public agenda and if the non-renewal of mr ackerman's contract is already voted off why
004is the approval needed for resignation there have been many steps in this process that have seemed suspicious like due process and proper procedures that not have not been followed when many of the board members of this board ran many members of this board ran for these positions a few years ago they were very vocal on how important transparency and honesty were however we are all left with the public speculating and spreading rumors about mr ackerman as they are unable to get accurate information about what really happened how can a board of education who have taken an oath to be financially responsible with the district's money justify paying two administrative salaries for one position the board of education most of whom have not set foot in columbia middle school met with staff or talked with those
005involved chose to be make a decision based on personal feelings and accurate assumptions and selfish motives the board completely ignored the teachers further cementing the attitude that our teachers and staff don't really have a voice and their input is not valued have any board members taken the time to accept the invitation of the teachers to visit the schools have any board members question the arrogance and ignorance that is highly apparent in the decision that has been made are you still blindly making decisions based on personal agenda the public deserves to know about the gross misuse of district funds to save a few bruised egos the cusd 4 staff deserves better and so does the public by the board of education that claims to care about our district okay that's your time michelle okay perfect thank
006you thank you all right that was only our our only phone call any other comments hi taylor nicholson i teach sherman at columbia high school i just wanted to make a quick comment to you guys and just have it on record uh that our german exchange students just arrived in town they just arrived on monday here at the high school with a nice welcome from the police department the fire department the uh and the ems as well um had a little welcome for them on monday morning thank you to mrs smith and mr reeves for uh joining in our welcome and making the german uh our german exchange students feel nice and welcome here in columbia um they'll be here until may 9th so you might see them out in the community for sure it's
007cool we've got some field trips playing but yeah this is uh we're at 29 years almost 30 years for our exchange and andrea toyzier a teacher from germany some of you guys might know him has been doing it from the very beginning so i want to make sure to get his name on the record because uh he's a huge part of it so thank you guys thank you mr reese mrs smith and i just wanted to get that out there make sure it's on the record that's all i got perfect thank you are there comments hearing none all right next item on the agenda i see correspondence is going around i believe all right and next item is our consent agenda let's see would you like to walk us through that um sure so in
008our um consent agenda let me go through here um so we have several resignations for many different reasons some of our staff is moving on to other positions some are retiring and several of our coaching positions are making some moves because of some retirement so we it seems like a lot but we have several that are leaving so that they can accept the next position up and we can kind of move some people around for that um our employment education um we're applying or i'm sorry we are recommending kaylee cox to be included as one of our paraprofessionals here at parkview and then we have our certified personnel to fill in those many different vacancies that we have in the different positions due to those retirements and people moving on next then we have the
009absence of jc limestone so she will be leaving for maternity leave at the start of next school year and then you start to see all of the additional basketball and sports hires from those moves listed above the non-certified class is just making that additional movement on like we do every year and then the extended school year the esy is our special ed summer school program and so that's our staff and we are really excited uh gene gotcha is overseeing that program and so those are the many different people that will be helping to make sure that we carry that off successfully and then our vacancies that we're adding on there for the different positions and then finally the last one that's on there is the summer workers and we have several different things so that
010we can get a lot of projects i spoke with kurt steve earlier today and he is overwhelmed with the number of projects he's looking at but hopefully with these additional summer workers he'll be able to get quite a few of those knocked off of his list so the administration is recommending that you approve the consent agenda item as presented one point i'd like to and nothing personal just we have two administrative positions here i'd like to remove them from the consent agendas just so we can have a quick discussion about those two so items c e and f mr elliott this is is it benny perfect nothing personal just very important decision i think the board needs to discuss it so you know there are comments are we going to go into the mission session
011then we'll do that after right we'll pull them and yeah yeah we'll go quick executive session then we'll come out with you guys so we need a motion i will make a motion to remove them item c e and f from the consent agenda maybe like a second oh second yes actually i'm sorry we don't need a motion any board member can remove any item from the senate agenda for discussion is board policy 220 i believe so forget the amendment forget that so be a motion to accept the consent agenda as amended correct i'm making that motion all right thank you scott appreciate it i'll second that motion perfect [Music] uh roll call please adam pumpkin hi yes perfect motion carries welcome to the new hires congratulations all right on to item seven is our
012communication reports and presentations like our enrollment report is in the packet okay so say we are up three students from last month so it's three students um but we're excited that those three students are here um and then tonight we have eagle view that will be making our building reports hello everybody my name is amy freese and i teach early childhood at ease with you just we've been very busy at eagle view lots of fun things that are coming up as well one of the things is mrs hughes did an amazing job with her musicals everyone was so happy that these were back because you know obviously with kovid things didn't happen it's really very very impressive if you don't know that mrs hughes can teach 300 kindergartners and first graders to get up there
013and know all their parts and all their singing and it's just from her you know she's the one doing it that's very very impressive she's a rock star as i tell her and we all appreciate all the work that she does she's very very good um the next thing is field day is back as well we have a netfield day in a few years as well due to covet and mr miller our pe teacher has always coordinated the fun events at our school so we're excited about that that'll be coming up soon at the end of may um on monday something that we haven't had in a couple years as well due to covet is the eighth graders are coming back to our school and they will be reading books with the pre-k through first
014graders um and that is that is really neat experience for both i mean teaches them patience it teaches younger kids all kinds of things from the older kids they look up to them so that is really really going to be exciting on monday we also have opened up our dramatic playroom back up it used to be a room separate where the kids can go and you know pretend to dress up or you know be at the bank or be at the store and work on those kinds of skills and that's really good because kids do learn especially at the younger age learn best through play and so that's how they learn how to problem solve and you know and interact with kids because let's face it social skills are important so um that's awesome that
015that's back the kids have been loving that it's very loud when you walk up that way so they've been really good um let's see it's a good loud it is a good loud right it is yeah uh kindergarten celebration is coming up as well at the end of the year um we never really had a kindergarten graduation i don't think but this is kind of it's not really like kindergarten graduation but it's a it's a really neat experience for those families as well just to celebrate what a great year they've had and with their teachers and they do some singing and stuff like that as well um friday one of the exciting times for me because i teach special ed is our ace olympics is back and it's our special olympics it's at the high
016school at the multi-purpose field and this is just a great experience in general for all all the kids a lot of high schoolers and middle schoolers come out and cheer on the kids and we also have a few other schools freeberger is going to be with us millstott um and this is just a great experience and this year i think it's really really neat the high school band or it's maybe part of the band i'm not sure if it's the whole band or part of the band is going to do you know the national anthem but what i think is really cool is when they give out awards they're going to be playing we are the champions i think that's really me so anyway that's coming up and that's really exciting so our la my
017last thing is we want to thank mrs pecker she's been here for seven eight years seven years and she's done a great job at eagle view and we just want to say thank you oh thank you awesome well i really don't have anything else to brag on other than we are full uh seem ahead with kindergarten screening coming up last two days of school kindergarten's last day current kindergarten's last day is wednesday and then the last tuesday two days of school we bring in the incoming kindergarten and we do them in small groups about 20 they get to hang out for about 45 minutes do some cutting some listening some get to know the building get those jitters out before they spend the whole summer worried about how kindergarten's gonna go so we do have
018that coming and inviting families back in um i know a lot of this sounds like you know we have to get back to where we were so inviting families in while their kids are screening i do like a question and answer kind of also to alleviate some of those jitters for the parents um that we get all the phone calls over the summer so might as well knock it out it's a group um i do want to thank my staff at eagleview it's been amazing thank the board and thank the community for my time here and i wanted to give a little shameless plug out to my drivers um we have had crazy field trips coming out we uh like picking up the students and even during easter break and sports don't stop even though
019it's easter break so we had drivers driving during their easter break as well so i kind of wanted to give them a plug because i had the chance to do it so thank you drivers and uh transportation department so yeah cool all right we're gonna combine this next two or we're gonna do them separate now i'm gonna roll them all into all right perfect so we have the superintendent and the assistant superintendent report all rolled in one sounds good so i want to echo first amy's sentiments too um unfortunately this is the last time we're going to get to hear from april at a board meeting but i've been talking with april quite a bit about all the things that are planned out for the rest of the year i told her i'm going to
020follow her around and videotape her kindergarten incoming kindergarten presentations to the parents so that we can have that ready to go um with all the communication so um erica you have a lot to you know possibly fill in in april's spot but um so like i said we're we're gonna miss april next year quite a bit um a couple of other things that upon i want to give a shout out to all of our um staff and teachers for not only getting the testing done you know we finished the iar state testing and it's been boxed up and shipped out the sat has been given boxed up shipped out we're working on psat right now we're finishing up the illinois science assessment we're doing the map assessment the ames benchmarking so there's quite a bit
021that the teachers are having to do that's outside of their getting their curriculum taught but even more than that is the flexibility that has to come with that i was telling somebody the other day when mr nickerson was talking to our german students and he was telling them well today you're in the library but tomorrow morning you'll be in the choir room because we have some things going on here and on thursday you'll be back here and none of that would be possible or run smoothly if it wasn't for the teachers that were so willing to be so flexible and and make sure that we get all of our requirements done but also that valuable testing that we need that benchmarking testing for our students so i just want to give a shout out to
022the teachers and the students for that we are currently working on the covid relief sick days being reimbursed to faculty and staff the governor has approved that that came out of the legislation and so um i'm going to give the administrators a huge shout out the faculty and staff are all given the opportunity to turn in their days and then our secretaries and the administrators went through and cross-referenced it and then sent it over to julie who julian brenda then spent time double triple checking that we have everything and that we're not missing anyone or anyone's days and then julie is getting ready to embark on the giant task of awarding those back to all the teachers which she told me cannot be done in mass it has to be done person by person and
023date by date so it will be a huge undertaking for julie but she is confident that she will have that done before the may payroll comes out so we'll get that done taken care of and have those reimbursed to the teachers and staff and then the only other thing is so in 2018 when the evidence-based funding formula came about there was a calculation that used student attendance to do that they have now discovered that there was an error in creating the code for that attendance calculation and so some school districts were grossly overpaid and they were working on how to get that money back and some districts were underpaid we were notified that here in colombia we were underpaid since the fy 19 school year so they are going to take our underpayment and split
024it up over the rest of our state evidence-based funding payments and hold on to your socks because we were underpaid by 409 dollars so that four hundred and nine dollars will be divvied up into our final evidence-based funding payments over the rest of this year so we're gonna try not to spend that all at one time in one place but we are getting some more money so never going to turn away more money so that is all i have for the double report perfect items for action i start with the approval of the ihsa annual membership sure so this is something that we do every year there was talk that we may have to pay again this year because kovid did so much damage to ihsa's budgets and all of that but we were notified
025that there is no fee for us this year so this is just um the administration is recommending that you approve the ihsa annual membership any questions discussions you'd like to make a motion to approve our ish i'll make a motion to approve the ihsa annual membership thank you andrew again twice in a second perfect no money involved so all in favor aye any opposed any extensions perfect that passes uh b is the approval of our consolidated district plan so again i feel like 2018 is a trend tonight in my speeches but um so from the 2018 testing our cms special ed population was identified as underperforming on the state testing and so that's we were granted then some additional money part of the requirements of receiving that federal funding was that we create the consolidated
026district plan so we use this grant to pay for a lot of the benchmark testing and supports that we use for the students it's cms but also kind of across the district and then there is a portion of that that we also meet with ics and share some of that federal funding with them as well so the administration is recommending that you approve the consolidated district plan as presented any questions would you like to make a motion to approve the consolidated district plan i'll make a motion thank you lisa uh there's money in this room i think so let's do a roll call vote on this one tandy yes andrea ford yes frank meyer yes item c is our approval of our amended 2021-2022 school calendar so we did use all of our emergency days
027this year so the amended calendar that's being recommended is that may 27th be the last day of school it would be a half-day student attendance day that day i'll make a motion to accept the amended 2021-2022 school calendar perfect thank you do i have a second second thank you tammy all in favor aye aye any opposed any extensions perfect item d is approval of our meeting dates times and locations for 2022-2023 so the administration is recommending that it stay on the third thursday it's a tongue twister the third thursday of the month at seven o'clock um as it has traditionally been held melissa interferes with the pencil awards correct perfect all right and we'd like to make a motion to approve the revised meeting dates i'll i'll make that motion thanks scott i'll second thank
028andrew all in favor aye aye aye aye opposed any extensions all right next was the proven administrative voluntary resignation as submitted this one so we have a resignation from david ackerman from the assistant's principal position at the middle school and is there any discussion before moving into this miss trackman has tendered his resignation and uh because i'd like to make a motion that i move that the board approved david ackerman's voluntary resignation is submitted effective at the end of this 2021-2022 contract year i'll make that motion same would anybody like to second it a second thank you i roll call please yes danny hines yes andrea corey yes greg meyer yes hi next one is our substitute pay considerations so mr grody talked to you a little bit about this last month and he included
029some of the studies that he's done looking at the daily rate of pay as well as the long-term subpay in there we did find that we were quite behind on long-term sub pay position so mr grody through that study is recommending that we raise the long-term subpay up for next year and we are competitive with the other with our daily rates for for subs on a daily scale so what are we going to and from um it would be uh we are raising it to 170 a day is what we were raising so that kind of puts us about average of what a little higher than average there are a couple of districts that would still be a little higher than us on the days and they consider a long-term position after 20 days in
030a 20 consecutive days in a position will he possibly look at revaluating the daily pay anytime soon um yeah i know we're competitive but there's one that's higher than this there is you're right and i would say i think that's definitely something that can be up for discussion um like i said i think he was when he looked at those numbers was pretty happy that we were were up there and definitely competitive with the districts surrounding us but i think that's always something that's open for discussion do we have many that are that fall into the long-term category um uh no we don't have a whole lot that typically fall into that um when we start getting into like maternity leave or medical leaves is typically when we would have more of those so i
031definitely think some buildings in some years see more of those than others i thought that i thought i was going to have this the single day rate as well as far as a recommendation so i think i'm with lisa it's while we're competitive i don't know that it's where it should be where it should be okay like long-term pay we're above or if we adopt this we're above average and only one district which is a little more difficult to get to also right but i mean you have to be here 20 consecutive days right at higher pay we're talking about the day-to-day because i know that the subs i mean that's a lot to step in and take a day absolutely and we raised um if i'm not mistaking a few years ago from 85
032a day to the 100 a day i think it's been maybe this will by the third i think it's three years ago shortly after i got on the board that we raised it so i feel like i feel like that could be a little bit more competitive sure if not would you have in mind i'm putting you on the spot you are putting me on the spot but um i mean there are lower ones too but it'd be nice to see i mean even a raise 125 a day say whenever whenever i looked at it i mean it even at an eight hour day at 15 that's 120 a day you know so that's honestly where i where i was thinking it needed to be at least 125 as well at least what 20 at
033least at least the 15 an hour if you figure an eight hour day that it's up to working if they work you know if they're working all day or takes eight hours of their time we have four hundred dollars coming in here so i mean we have subs on a pretty consistent basis we have excellent subs and uh personally i gave i don't really gauge it as far as it's good to know if we're competitive with other districts but i'm really just trying to reward the individual for their time so and for everybody in the audience and at home also our we're talking about the straight sub pay per day columbia is a hundred dollars a day there's only one district is dupo which is 105 a day everybody else is waterloo is the same
034as we are redbuds 91 smith 1095 and milstead 90. so let's get a little insight i personally have no problem raising the daily rate as well this is something we should look at the budget because we've got to look at are there a thousand 1104 days last year that we had subs so i guess that would be it do we know of the 1104 days how many were long-term how many were straights up um i think he has it broken out on the other with how many were here for more than that in this packet or was that in last month's with how many were here for more than the 20 days i want to say it was five we didn't really have anything in our last packet that was just something that i brought
035to the attention sure of him doing a little study on the survey that's something that we can definitely get i know that he had worked on those numbers so so if they were all just just daily rate and at 120 dollars it would be a 22 000 increase increase to the budget so honestly i mean coming from where lisa is where adam is i think i would suggest we increase the straight sub pay to 120 a day and go with the recommendation on the 170 for the long term what's everybody's feelings on that i'm okay with this yeah i agree with lisa and adam do you need somebody to make that motion are you making that motion i can but i'll make that motion all right perfect would you be the hero what's that let
036you be the substitute the hero for the day and i'll second the motion perfect so it's 120 and one so 124 strikes up pay 170 for long term and that actually puts us in the highest if not the second highest on on the scale so we're gonna we want the best all right so i have the motion and a second kimberly can you roll call please yes right yes lisa schumacher yes tyson search yes yes all right i think y'all thank for the subs for the work that you guys do much appreciated all right next item all right permission to sell bus number 15 which is a 2009 bluebird 77 passenger bus with roughly 47 000 miles um so on the previous two buses that we've sold we actually came out um very well in
037compared to what we thought we were going to make on those buses and so this current bus number 15 has quite a few mechanical issues and the estimate to repair those is quite high so seeing that we did well on the other two buses the administration is recommending uh or asking for the permission to sell this bus as well in the same format every little idea we we wound up netting nine times what we were going to accept on a trade-in value by putting on online auctions so that did work well and actually our buses had the one had a caterpillar c7 engine which is really undesirable and the other had a blown head gasket so with the two issues we had i think that was yeah i think we did it very well and
038we like to make a motion to get rid of our last problem child bus make that motion thanks scott second second at least a second all right heroic options right yes yes yes tammy hines yes yes motion carries uh last item is the approval for the intergovernmental agreement with dupos community school district number 196 regarding the joint transportation services sure so this kind of came about this year we have german one students that are coming from dupo they come over we have it set up it's mr nickerson's first hour obviously they're moving to german too and we won't need them first hour we probably need them second hour um but we also send our rotc students and the emt students to dupo um so what this intergovernmental agreement would allow us to do is when
039our bus goes over to pick up the rotc students it would allow us to bring back the german two students and then dupo would come and pick those students up at the end of the day um so it's really just helping each other out and going through it that way any questions discussions comments would be like to make a motion to approve the intergovernmental agreements with the dupont i'll make the motion thank you tyson jury second oh second and your second myers yes all right on to item nine which is our discussion items start with our facility study um so just kind of an update um the city is putting together an accident report for us from that route 3 section there kind of that stretches between the high school and the middle school and
040then we are including that and we're writing a joint letter to idot from the city and from the school district requesting that additional access road that be added in with that one-way turns only that would help cut down the traffic at the high school so that's that's where we're at the city's putting together their stuff to help strengthen our our need for for this extra turn route great questions all right item b is individual board member comments and we have anything they would like to contribute or say here yeah i'm just going to say so you know i just wanted to thank the the arts department you know attending the different musicals the middle school the high school the band concerts that went on all of that that happened over the last month i know
041the logistics for that it's not easy getting the volunteers i know that you know there was some hemos pizza that was uh used for some high school students to run some audio visual stuff you know that's just the kind of ways that you know some of our folks are getting it done so as a parent and a board member i just wanted to thank you know the band the choir all the arts for what you guys keep doing for our kids to keep the days enjoyable and continue expanding that learning opportunity anyone else i wanted to thank april for her years of service and good luck in your new thanksgiving thank you anyone else all right president's prerogative i want to echo lisa's remarks to april appreciate all the dedication and hard work you've done
042for the district and uh you've been a real rock and i know everybody's counted on you and and you will be missed so thank you thank you very much i do know a lot about buses now [Laughter] i wasn't well worse than that i wasn't in your education wasn't it no but it's a good it's a good department steve and brenda in the past and now we have abby they will you'll be in good hands so yeah perfect and i told april to keep her phone close by her one thing i'd like to do is address the public basically the board can't comment on comments that that come in where no one of us has any power by ourselves we are only a group and we have my opinion doesn't matter we're only have an
043opinion we're all together i can tell you that we have a fantastic board this board is here for the right reasons there are no personal agendas there are no hurt feelings there are no vendettas against anyone the problem is we hear all sides and we want to hear all sides and we will always hear all sides but it doesn't mean just because we hear you doesn't mean that we're always going to side with you so there there's always three sides every story your side their side and really what's in the middle usually you guys have have entrusted us with your faith to see the big picture to spend the time to get into the issues and that's exactly what we're doing we're all acting in the best interests of this community and not one person
044on this board has an agenda or a personal issue whatsoever so um there's just some items we can't discuss i wish we could just the way it is so that's i'm just gonna have to leave it there all right um and i did create an executive session earlier so uh we're gonna have to join into executive session for and i gotta get the glasses on make sure i get this right for the purpose of appointment employment compensation discipline performance or dismissal of specific employees of the public body or legal counsel for the public body including hearing testimony on a complaint lodged against an employee of a public body or against the legal counsel for the public body to determine its validity validity 5 ilscs 120 slash 2 c1 and the other one doesn't apply tonight
045so we're not going to read that one i'll make that motion promotion by scott we're second oh second second girl call please yes yes adrian corey yes fred meyer yes scott middleton yes mr yes okay we're going to enter into executive session um we do have an action action item as a result when we come back out so if anybody would like to hang around and come back in you're definitely more than welcome all right perfect we are concluding our executive session during our executive session we reviewed um items that were taken out of the consent agenda for the assistant principal and of the columbia middle school and the principal of eagleview so we had the discussion based on that and that brings us back to item c paragraph e and f i believe are
046item e and f excuse me which would be a the approval of this right here uh the approval of i want to do two separate ones sure sure um let's start with item c letter e which is the approval of jake elliott for the cms assistant principal i'd make a motion to approve uh jake elliott as assistant principal starting this next school year all right okay you have a motion to have a second go ahead tyson all right tyson seconds uh roll call please tammy adam hi tammy yes andrea corey yes greg meyer yes scott middle camp hi lisa schumacher yes tyson search yes motion passes unanimously our last item is the approval of erica benny right yeah billy all right cool eagle view principal i know it's been like half hour since i said
047it so all right approve erica vinnie as our eagle view principal when we like to make that motion i'll make the move thank you adam do i hear a second i'll second your seconds roll call please tammy yes andrea corey yes greg meyer yes scott middlecam hi lisa schumacher yes tyson search yes adam hopkins hi wonderful welcome to the thank you to our family all right well that concludes this evening's meeting uh if anybody'd like to make a motion to adjourn i will make that motion adam thank you a second second nobody wanted anyway everybody just keeps going thanks scott all in favor any opposed perfect that concludes our meeting it is 8 20. thank you for all [Music] you