Crete Monee School District 201u COTW Meeting 5/10/22

001brown is here this is galbirth here dr hall here this mr swalish here mrs walters vice president root here president albert here please stand and join me in the pledge of allegiance i pledge allegiance to the flag of the united states of america and to the republic for which it stands one nation under god indivisible with liberty and justice for all and ms roop would you please read the uh mission statement yes our mission is to empower each student to positively impact the world for a bright new future thank you terry is there any public comment no sir okay um next up is board updates any members have board members have any updates um i'll just still do the one for us that we had another acme meeting and it was productive and we're meeting

002again tomorrow right tomorrow afternoon so we're we're in the thick of things now but things are going well so i just want to give the board an update that we're still we're meeting okay any other board updates if not i'll turn over to caracoglines for superintendent updates well i am just just thrilled tonight to share with the board as well as our community our jrotc and a special celebration this is the group that has gone through all four years in this district and we are so proud of them and um certainly under the leadership of theo reid i'm going to turn this over to him and then i think there's going to be some a few words after after that good afternoon once again good afternoon that's how i do my cadets okay ladies and

003gentlemen good afternoon i'm petty officer reed the senior naval science instructor at creep monday high school and welcome to our little small plank owners awards ceremony mainly for the district of personnel you guys have not known that crew money high school was established in it as an nadcc in which means everything operated by the school and had to be operated by the school and by the district with no funding from the navy i want to tell you a little small story of what happened here i requested an area of management inspection in september of as an nndcc which is simply unheard of for any in any dcc to have an area manager's inspection i knew from the attitudes and motivation from our cadets over here to my left that we were passed and passed with

004flying colors not only do we pass but we pass receive it and outstanding then the following year i requested another ami inspection in 2019 and was told by the area manager that this would not that you would not have an on-site inspection two years in a row because once again this is unheard of so then i called him back and i said please not only did did we pass another ami inspection but again we passed it with flying colors we would receive in 2019 another outstanding in 2000 july of 2019 i had there was a meeting for all the instructors and senior naval science instructor in great lakes illinois which we do once a year the director of njrotc captain tim dossler from pensacola florida requested my presence he came to me in the meeting

005and asked what the hell are you doing at crete monet i said that's creep money sir i thought we were in some serious type of trouble and i thought that we had done something wrong he then told me that crete monet is number 43 on the list to become an ngotc i looked in his eye again and said that's creep mo knees sir he said i would like to put crete bonit creep monet number one on the list and offer you to make history being the first school to become an ngotc from an nndcc in just one year i looked at him [Applause] i looked at him and i said crete monet accepts her plank odors for creep money high school in george tc these cadets and adults that we're celebrating today have made history

006we were the first in in ndcc to become an ngotc in just one year it has never been done before and i give great credit to the board um our principal our mainly our superintendent and and these cadets that are here to my left i am so so proud of them so let's give them a round of applause if you would we will now have our presentation of our plaques each district employees which is a plank owners will receive a custom njrotc plaque from the njrtc department crew money high school mrs margie trish along with ngrt officer commanding officer rachel perry executive officer christina jones and command master chief emmanuel grier will be honorable honoring our guests and distributed the awards when i call your name will you please come to receive your plaque nelson

007just albrate that way just walk that way shake the hand right here is there's pressure there extend that's fine maurice brown thank you sir okay janine galbraith cheryl roop um and the superintendent cara colonies let's give our ngo district plank owners a round of applause at this time you can take your seats oh you want to oh go take a pitch okay i can't see anything he's there we tall all right at this time our plank owner cadets would like to come up and give you like a two-minute word of encouragement and thank you for your support and to say their farewells each cadet has already received their custom ngrotc plank owner sash a strand blue and gold separated means they completed four years of njrotc with all a's and a blue and gold strand

008together means they participated in four years of njrotc they've also already received a custom njrotc and a custom ngotc plaque as i call your name will you please come to the podium michaela freeman [Applause] good afternoon everyone i'm cadet freeman i've been part of the njrotc family for four years and let me just say it's been one of the best experience i've ever had not only does this program teaches you the core values of honor courage and commitment but also teaches you to be disciplined respectful organ organized loyalty and pride it also teaches you to have fun even while helping others or doing community service you always have fun with and you're around people that you're comfortable with i just wanted to say thank you to petty officer reid even though i did cry freshman

009year after being yelled at thank you for being a father figure helping me out of my shy shell thank you for pushing me to be the best that i can be and helping me become the person i am today just thank you for being you i honestly would be lost if it wasn't for you i also wanted to thank ms trish and the board for making the program happen our community is in safe hands especially with petty officer and the program this program has helped so many students get on the right path and i'm excited to see this program grow thrive and continue to give back to the community my advice to the younger cadets is to stay committed and focused don't be a follower they get nowhere be a leader and show out it

010is safe to say that we can pass it towards continuing our legacy with the next generation of cadets with that being said cadet freeman signing off i'd now like to introduce cadet madison hall good afternoon i just wanted to thank you all for coming and i hope you enjoy i want to start this letter off by saying i'm cadet hall petty officer first class and boy let me tell you android tc has been an experience i will never forget when i first got into the program i was thinking petty officer reed was going to bully me i was thinking petty officer was going to tell me to drop down and give him 10. but i was just thinking about everything in the book but overall i did all that overthinking in android tc is not

011what i expected it to be i made friends i joined a drill team that i never thought i'd ever be on because of how shy and soft spoken i was i'm just grateful that petty officer reed petty officer smith miss trish and the district and also my fellow cadets i wouldn't be who i am today this program has so much to offer for you guys the cadets you just have to make the best out of it because i promise you if you don't you're not going to have fun or enjoy what this program has to offer so i encourage for this for the people that are coming back next year which i hope that is everybody the cadets that is here today to do these drill teams and community service events and and be active

012in the program so on that note this is my farewell letter and i'm cadet hall signing out i would like to introduce gregory hardiman [Applause] cadets petty officer reid principal trish members of the board superintendent kagalinis good evening and thank you for having me my name is cadet chief petty officer hardiman and i am a proud plank owner in this outstanding unit we have done so much for our school and community thanks to petty officer reed as long as he's a naval science instructor at creep money high school i believe our beloved program will be in safe hands petty officer reed has made a positive impact on so many cadets in the program i have never met a leader so invested in his work nor a teacher so invested in the lives of his students

013without him we would not be nearly as successful as we currently are not just our program but most of our cadets and my fellow plank owners we will never forget him for his sacrifices and sticking with us through our trials and tribulations to my fellow cadets it has been a pleasure working with all of you and i wish you success in all of your future endeavors whether it be college or going into the armed forces as i will be in three short weeks after graduation to all of you our board members on behalf of myself and all of the cadets in our program thank you for all that you do and thank you for hiring petty officer vernon reed [Applause] i would like to introduce cadet hicks good evening my name is charlize hicks and

014i just wanted to say during my time at njrotc i'd had many things and many opportunities and many experiences i've never had prior to joining njrotc community service parades and so much more i am very thankful for these experiences but most importantly i am thankful for my njrotc family especially petty officer reid these are the people that i've grown and matured with for the last four years i've got to laugh and cry with my fellow cadets and honestly they've made my high school career much more enjoyable especially petty officer reid he taught me what confidence courage and being a leader was he helped me get through high school and shaped me into the strong independent person i am today without my fellow cadets and petty officer i wouldn't be the person standing here talking to

015you in the near future i plan on using the skills njotc taught me such as leadership courage confidence and so much more to help support my community one of the best things during art one of the best things that i've done during rotc was joined as a freshman and honestly i can say it's been a highlight of my high school career the last four years i hope the incoming ns1s know that this program is more than a class but a family and this program builds leaders so this petty officer i hope that they take advantage of the experiences and opportunities and dreams njrotc has to offer and enjoy it like i did i know because petty officers leadership and our grand cadets this program will grow and prosper in the future thank you for four

016amazing years i'd like to introduce jasmine sprue hello my name is senior chief jasmine sproul i would like to start off with the thank you thank you for the best four years of my life thank you for the district that helped this program be it sorry help this program thank you for petty officer reid petty officer smith and my fellow cadets this program has brightened my future in many ways than one i would not be who i am today if if it wasn't for this program this program has broadened my perspective on life and let me tell you it has been a whirlwind when i first started um high school i thought that njrotc was a science class let me tell you i was wrong petty officer pushed us into drill into community service and

017god am i thankful for that i have had so much fun in this program now to my fellow cadets i hope you take our legacy and make it greater make this program brighter make this program what you expired for it to be now petty officer has been the role model the father and the leader that we all needed in our lives he has brought in a better a better future for us and i will truly miss this program i'll miss the laughs that we had in class i'll miss the little corny jokes that petty officer tells every single day [Laughter] but most of all i'll miss being a part of this program let's hope that this program flourishes like it will that we all know it will thank you [Applause] now introducing our master chief

018manuel greyer good day for the people that doesn't know who i am well i'm the command master chief of this program and it's an honor to stand here and read you guys this speech by the way my name is manuel greyer i joined this program my freshman year of 2018. in rotc i was known as a quiet one that didn't talk a lot me being known as a quiet one that wasn't confident in himself pio reid saw a future leader he pushed me out of my limits by making me join the new cadet drill team making me charge of color guard sending me to basic leadership training making me the orienteering commander and now as you all know me by the cmc command master chief during these four years he has made me more confident

019and a leader i don't know what p.o saw in me my freshman year but i thank him for making me into who i am today so leaving this speech off i want to i left this speech off to the cadets i wanted to let them know what pio has shaped me into and what he's for me to be a better leader i leave this speech to say cadets to join us uh activity in rotc do community service do orienteering color guard drill team we have so many teams that you can join just keep making this program grow and be what it is today i want to take the time out and thank our booster parents our district people our principal miss trish our staffs at the school and our cadets for always being there and

020supporting our program i want to thank p.o smith our new instructor for just being there helping us out i want to thank p.o re for shaping me and being who i am today and helping me grow into who i am today and then to our plank owners our seniors i thank them for just working hard bringing up the courage the dedication to this program and being the best that they can to make this program great so i left this speech to give out a torch to the cadets but this speech is going to give the torch out to you district people i want to get this torch is supposed to represent the family that we have with njrotc this torch is supposed to represent the dedication the courage the commitment that y'all put into this

021program and i thank you guys for everything that y'all did for us i'd like to call up our executive officer christina jones sorry about that everyone prime example good evening everyone i'm cadet xojones i would first like to give honor to the district board members and also my principal the lovely miss marjorie trish can give them applause please thank you for allowing me to stand on this platform and share with you all some encouraging words i won't be before you long high school has been a very interesting ride i've been in the njrotc program going on four years now considering the fact that we've all been in quarantine for almost two years it is clear that everyone has changed in a good way so applause for that um when i first joined the program i

022wasn't looking for anything specific to take away from it if i'm being honest like jasmine said i thought that it was a science course because it had naval science i'm like ships yay um but i i was sadly mistaken i was very reserved and a bit timid when i first joined the program but i got used to the way that rotc worked petty officer would always try and look for people with potential to put in lead positions and i was actually handed the position to take on the first new cadet drill team i was super excited for the opportunity and of course i was going to pursue it our first few practices seemed to be the most difficult task that i have ever been expected to do i started to question my own abilities as

023far as ypo would choose me to command i would complain to him and say things about how i couldn't handle leading other cadets and they won't listen to me and i can't control them and he would always say jones figure it out every single time that i heard those three words it just agitated me but let me tell you that those three words have helped me in a lot of different situations to get through i figured it out and the model that i try to live by is if there's a will there's a way um thank you petty officer for teaching me that there's so much that i can say about petty officer reed but if i were to describe him i would call him a perfectionist he has taught me how to pay attention

024to the little things like having our feet standing at a tension at 45 degree angle keeping your thumbs at the seams of your trousers standing at attention um making sure that it is six to the front three to the rear i'm always remember that we're marching this is how we do it here he's taught me how to correct and address in a professional way love that um he's taught me the essence of life now i know that that previous statement seemed like oh that's a lot it's really surprising but it's very true through observations for these past four years i've seen petty's petty officers consistency motivation and determination every day of course he's been through our struggles you know we're all human but to just see him come in like i said with the consistency

025and the dedication that he's had has been an inspiration for me of course i've had my own issues um which i've tried to keep private and i just wanted to say thank you petty officer for being that mode of that that example from me and honestly through quarantine through high school just thank you and i wanted to say to my fellow plank owners congratulations on all of your accomplishments um we're almost about to graduate um and just i applied you all on the past four years of all the hard work like everybody you know can't make it to community service but everyone here has done community service has done a lot of different things so i just want to applaud you guys today for that [Applause] and um i love you guys and again thank

026you to the district thank you to the superintendent um ms kira kalanis thank you for coming to the awards ceremony i love your presence there um and that's all from me so i just wanted to say farewell exo plank owner jones thank you sorry guys i wanted to call up my favorite person in the program our ceo miss rachel perry good evening everyone um so this is our farewell speech as you all know it's very touchy but we're gonna keep it together tonight um so i would like to start this off by saying i thought it was my last time but this is now my last time staying saying good afternoon everyone i'm the commanding officer rachel perry and i would like to say farewell to everyone farewell to the district who has been by

027our side supporting us through every step of the way hard times good times thank you to ms trish who made sure this program got up and running at all costs she called other schools had other people come out to help us and now we're able to do the same for other schools because of her i would also like to say thank you to the cadets and farewell to the cadets who make me smile every day they put a smile on our face you know they're the ones that really keep you moving it's like our own little kids you know in a way but you know we're gonna wait for that um also i would like to say farewell to my amazing exo jones who made sure she took of everything took care of everything that

028i needed her to do my noble cmc who oversaw my cadets and made sure things were in order and farewell to petty officer who petty officer smith who always had a door open for us to talk to last but certainly not least farewell to petty officer reid the father figure that we all see and all recognize the one who has been there good or bad up and down the one who has played a part in molding all of us into the cadets that we are today and the young adults that we're about to step out and be now um you set a very good foundation for these cadets and as we were talking about in class we had an open discussion we're the ones who laid the foundation well he's the one who laid the

029foundation we put the bricks and now it's time for the other cadets to set up the wood do the interior put the roof on the house all of that you have helped me stand up for myself to speak out and sharpen my leadership skills you have been the one to tell me when i was right or wrong even when i didn't want to hear it you have certainly made all of us cry but it was all something that we took and learned from it it's very something that we really needed even though it kind of hurt um also as you always tell us we would like to thank you on a job well done for making this program the best thing that it could have been as plank owners of this program i think i

030speak for all of this this was directed to the cadets and not only to the cadets to the ones who are watching the parents or the students who are watching encourage your students to join this program it's a life-changing program but down these four years with p.o guiding us to the cadets we were i ask that you keep these memories and the ones that you gained and cherish them forever we love each and every one of you as you as if you are our family and we want you guys to build that family and don't let it fall apart all the things that petty officer teaches us take them with you in life because they are resourceful devote your time to this program because blessings will come in return and when i was explaining this

031to them i always thought that a blessing was supposed to be something that you can physically get but it's something that you a mindset that i got in return and it's a mindset that i'm gonna carry on um and then also these cadets are a very special group of cadets so i asked that two board members don't give up on these cadets and push them to be their best every day and i said miss trish oversees them and petty officer oversees them and gives them the discipline that they need to make sure that every step of the way that they're by their sides and also we'll be there you know coming back to check in on them and stuff but um we are passing our legacy down to these cadets and we're asking that they

032carry it strong and hold it up high because we are holding them to the highest standards and we expect that you guys do the same for the cadets um last but not least i asked the cadets to take constructive criticism and to build a family i know you guys aren't the cadets but um i feel like everybody should be able to take constructive criticism and better themselves don't be in your feelings don't get annoyed and just be the best that you can be p.o always said perry talk to your cadets perry heat up my food perry but petty officer oh petty officer always said perry go get my ice my knees hurt which probably was my favorite thing um but now it's turned around petty officer i need you to give me some ice but

033last but certainly not least i personally want to see this program thrive so we all want to see this program thrive and prosper they are a family to us and we want to keep this family strong and as we all said farrell creedmoney high school's njrotc cadet perry signing out um i would like to introduce to you the lady who set everything in standards and you know made everything work our own principal miss marjorie trish thank you it definitely has been a whirlwind experience it's been four years of absolutely pure joy myself i did not have experience with an rotc nor an ndcc program i am overjoyed that we were able to set history within one year of becoming a njrotc under the leadership of p.o read i appreciate and acknowledge the vision of the

034board of education with the support of dr cara coghlanis it wouldn't be couldn't be done without you and our booster parents our booster parents can you stand please there's only two here tonight but there's been many that have that have been instrumental and supporting the students on field trips and at parades and whatever we need to do they are there first making sure that the hats are on right and the pins are in the right positions and the sashes are on and harris tucked and pinned and shoes of shine all of those things and we appreciate all the things that you've done for this program um last but not least to the students i remember each and every one of these students when they came into the school and when they say they were shy

035they absolutely were shy they were not the students that you see here today these are the students that will call me that will email me that will send me presentations about things that they would like to do or things that they have done they don't have a problem coming to the office and say hey look mistress we have an idea for you when they talk about commitment consistency honor lord loyalty and truth they mean it and we are so excited at creep money high school to have them a part of our program so let's give them a round of [Applause] um applause i'd like to say how honored i am to be a plank owner there's only nine students and four board members five board members i'm the principal and dr coglinis no one else

036will ever be a plank owner but us because we were the ones who were here from the beginning and we are concluding with their four years so what an honor to be called a plank owner for the njrtc for crete money high school all right [Applause] last but not least i'd like to bring up dr caracoglinis for a couple of words it is my privilege to be here tonight to get a chance to see how much you have grown in the last four years we have come to many if not all of their ceremonies and we have watched an amazement to every step was done in correct uh every and i don't what you would call those dances you would do those are my favorite those are my favorite you were right on step every

037single time and on behalf of the school board and myself in the district you couldn't make us more proud you really couldn't you know every board meeting ms roop gets the honor of reading our mission statement and it's empower each student to positively impact the world for a bright new future and i can honestly say by watching and listening to your speeches tonight and how articulate you are we are graduating a class that will definitely go out and make a difference because you were here so we thank you for that and just in a few short weeks we are going to get a chance to be part of your graduation and that will certainly be bittersweet for us to congratulate you and say goodbye at the same time however you will be crea money alone

038you will be cremini alum and you are always welcome back here anytime so thank you for being part of our story thank everyone for those outstanding speeches we will now have our final departure our bell ringing um ceremony um this would be our final plank on our departure uh we asked the board members once you hear your name just follow suit with the cadets whatever they do that's what you do just follow suit and you can come right back we will now have our final plank owners uh departure each person will be given two bells for the departure a stinger after the name is called indicates that the person will be returning so that's you guys are returning we don't want them to come back michaela freeman departing madison hall the party gregory hardeman the

039party charlie's hicks the party jasmine sproules the party manuel grier departing christina jones the party rachel perry the party marjorie trish the party nelson albrecht departing maurice brown the party janine galbraith departing cheryl root the party care colonies departing ladies and gentlemen this will end our conclusion of our ceremony thank you very much wow uh thank you yes it is hello um yes take me a year okay so next up under superintendent updates i'll turn it over to dr cara thank you it's hard to believe but this year is almost coming to an end at the beginning of the year you know we wanted to take a look at our communications in the district in particular to marketing in anticipating a teacher shortage as well as many other things there are so many great things

040that occur in this district and you just saw one of them there are so many others that we haven't been able to share with the board that go on all the time in our elementary buildings our middle school our high school and we want to do more to showcase what is going on in our district with our family to our families and so we wanted to take some time to really do a thorough overview of our current communication systems but more importantly to figure out how we're going to go into looking at marketing next talking about creating brochures about what's going on in our high school the various programs that we have such as the jrotc but many others that we are in the midst of building and that will be coming next because we

041want to attract families to our district we want to attract teachers to our district and we want to retain the high quality staff that we have so this was a project that we began early in in the fall and it's really come to closure at this point and we had contacted the donovan group and as you recall they had helped us with our referendum at that time to help us go out and get the information through a survey focus groups and we asked them to help put together a report to share back with with us so that we can help guide our work going into next year so i'm going to turn this over to mr joe donovan and he's going to be sharing the presentation he is virtual but he will be sharing i

042believe the presentation from his slideshow correct okay mr donovan nice to see you tonight oh this is a test sorry about that there we go thank you you made me nervous thank you doctor thank you uh board members and um thank you also for the opportunity to witness what we all saw earlier this evening i that was i will tell you i've spent a lot of time in board meetings over the last 15 years and i don't think that i've ever seen anything so moving so thank you for that and i i would i would just uh also say um that that truly is a testament to great things that are happening in uh in your schools um as your superintendent mentioned i'm here to provide some information about some marketing and communications engagement work

043that we are very grateful have to have been working with the school district over again uh much of the last school year i'm going to cover what we the results of our work very very quickly know that you have a busy board meeting um tonight i'll leave some time to answer some questions and so um as as your superintendent mentioned um the donovan group has been working with your school district on the first few phases of a marketing initiative and part of that is to do really a couple of things really starting with collecting data very grateful that dr kaglin needs to really um stress this as do we which is you start with collecting data and use thing data to improve efforts toward that end we conducted a marketing inventory a readiness off audit

044through both a staff and community survey a series of district focus groups and some other items that i'll discuss as well board members the staff and community survey that i'm going to discuss in a moment was opened february 7th through the 18th 2002 it was offered in both english and spanish and in addition to that i conducted some face-to-face focus groups in the district on march 16th of this year i'll cover this very quickly but as you can see what i'm going to cover are is is part of really a large project that started with data collection of stakeholder groups a swot analysis a review of a medium inventory that is the different ways in which stakeholders are engaged in your community a marketing readiness effort followed with um a phase four which was identify

045stakeholder groups for a marketing plan looking at marketing gaps and then um creating some goals and so again i'm going to cover this at a very high level um with that in mind again the survey that was conducted from february 7th to the 18th of this year was anonymous a total of 216 participants including two in spanish completed the survey the survey was administered using our uh district's survey engine efforts were made to ensure that all respondents had the opportunity to take the survey but that no respondents had took it multiple times this is the same survey engine and really the same methodology that we've used in your district before in advance of your referendum board members as i present the data and i'm going to go through this very quickly just i want to

046be very respectful of your time this evening i want to cover the results of this survey next to each of the items you're going to see in blue there's going to be a series of numbers please understand that that first group are all respondents so everyone who took the survey completed it is included in that first group included in that blue number a comparison group which is comprised of district residents who are not currently parents of preschool or school age children employees or students are in the gray box we use this methodology because we think that it's important to get kind of an inside outside look of the school district often we find that that people who have a familiarity with the district differ significantly from those who don't that's why we use that comparison

047group so let's we'll go through this fairly quickly here i am satisfied with the school district i'm going to see strongly agree for all respondents 7.87 strong agree 26.9 um disagree 44 strongly disagree about you're going to see board members that this was fairly similar with both groups both the all respondent group and the comparison group next i know what's going on in the school district again strongly agree uh and agree we're going to see that it's about 40 percent for our all respondent group it's about the same for our um our comparison group um and you're and you're going to see i'm sorry nearly nearly 50 percent um and so pretty evenly split between those who strongly agree and agree and those who disagree and strongly disagree in terms of i know what's going

048on in the district as we would expect it's quite typical that we have people who are again don't have children in the district would say yep i i guess i don't know what's going on in the district so seeing seeing that we might have more people in the comparison group saying that they disagree or strongly disagree is fairly typical next the district informs the community about the schools well you're going to see that it's about 32 percent for strongly agree and agree for our all respondent group and the balance would be those who disagree or strongly disagree we asked a question again as i mentioned we looked at the medium that is the ways in which people learn about the district where you get information about the district you're going to see and this is

049typical that for our all respondents and our comparison groups it's friends and neighbors and we see that that's fairly typical in most school districts you're going to see that it's heavily influenced especially by those who are closest with facebook we're also going to see that district mailings are very high up there especially for people who are not uh meaning you know don't have children in the district and again you're going to see the things like the district website are high for both groups other things like local television you know twitter even parent organizations are are lower in some cases those might be expected i always point out community newspapers um especially for people who aren't as strongly connected again higher 10 points higher at 34 than our all respondent group what types of information would

050you like to receive from the district again pretty typical updates on the district's strategic plan people want to know what's happening in the district board of education agenda in minutes very high updates related to the district's efforts to meet the needs of all students urgent updates um other items not as high alumni news such as class updates or reunions um so again part of this is that we did a review and we created the district's uh strengths and again this was an open-ended question nearly 130 responses were provided in the survey it should be noted that many use this open ended question to to vent or criticize rather than offer strengths that is fairly typical other respondents use this open-ended question to leave a wide variety of responses we found that they tended to fall

051in these categories people said there's a caring committed and supportive teachers and staff diverse population although some people indicated that maybe stuffed stuff demographics are not the same strong community and parent involvement and athletic programs new high schools some facilities and then credit scots king school were mentioned as strengths in terms of weaknesses this was pretty universal school buildings are aging and needing repair you're going to see that that's going to be a trend concerns expressed about the quality of education about the middle and high schools overall lack of engagement between the schools and community and there was a lot of uh criticism about the district i will say that at the time that we conducted this survey it was a time that we we noted a lot of turbulence um in in districts and

052so i'm not terribly uncommon that there was um criticism but in this case significant amount of criticism about the district in terms of opportunities uh the o of our swot analysis um some respondents indicated that they desire more communication people wanted that families seem more engaged and positive about that about their experience we did see some families that were thrilled with what's happening looking for increased engagement with families and the larger community about the work of the district i've just mentioned before that people are interested and hungry for information about like the strategic plan wider engagement with the district's website social media platforms again there's a hunger for information and again just as i mentioned updates to the community about the district's strategic plan they want to know where the district is headed threats perception

053about the fighting at both the middle and high school another threat was the amount of community support for the school including financial support that was largely linked to the building referendum political divisiveness the pandemic was starting to create a divided community again keep in mind that this was done in february and march we saw that and a significant amount of the participants again about 30 indicated that they don't trust any information provided by the district indicating that it was biased slanted and incorrect so again 30 out of 200 um you know so so significant um something that we should pay attention to um and which is why we're mentioning it here in terms of the focus groups i'll cover this very quickly um top themes frequency of of communication safety people said that there was

054a transient population um students you know students were kind of in and out that it was difficult in some cases as a result of that on the other hand caring staff trust people talked a lot about the facilities some perceived inequalities in equity some staff mental health came up a real high point was the international baccalaureate program that came up many times during the focus groups i'll i'll i kind of hit this at a high level and i want to keep things moving but we did include some focus group themes they largely kind of spoke to some of the the items that i mentioned before in terms of the transient population again this idea that you know students come and go it's difficult to make friends because students are coming uh and going in some

055cases people say um you know we really want more uh community you know more communication and some perceived issues with uh safety as we've mentioned um one of the things that i wanted to mention very high point um was um both coretta scott king as a school in the international baccalaureate pro program very well received um the pandemic came up a lot just as we would imagine again um it it wasn't that long ago but in some ways it was a long time ago as it relates to the pandemic people wanted some increased transparency related to covet mitigation so now i'm going to cover just a couple of marketing goals be happy to take your questions after this number one our suggestion develop a communications and engagement plan that focuses on building trust and transparency

056by highlighting the positive work and progress of the district more frequently number two construct and implement a communications and public relations campaign to retain and attract both families and educators really saw an opportunity again to talk about the good things that are happening in your district we certainly saw that earlier this evening creighton launch a district-wide community task force on school safety to identify recommend and report progress to the board of education in overall school community number four conduct a strategic planning process with the community our suggestion is sooner than 2023 to develop actionable goals focused on student academic performance and opportunities educator capacity community engagement partnerships and facilities and operations again your community is hungry for this information and they're you know our strong sense is that they will strongly engage with this effort

057so again i wanted to keep this very very uh short and a quick overview for you and so with that in mind i'm very happy to take any questions that you may have i'll mention that i can't see you i was able to watch earlier on on youtube and i'm having a little trouble hearing maybe uh so if i if i miss it i may have to ask you to repeat the question but with that board i just want to tell you thank you very much for the opportunity uh to be with you this evening on behalf of my colleagues and i thank you for the opportunity to work with you on this and again thank you at a personal level just for the opportunity to witness a beautiful ceremony earlier this evening with that

058i'm happy to take any questions hey joe this is nelson albright can you hear me i can't yes sir okay of the 216 respondents how many were in the gray column that did that didn't have they didn't have a family member connected with the district do you recall i don't recall off hand that's something that i can give back to you on we have a full report on all of the items and so um it would have been deemed um enough to report on okay uh but i don't i'm not able to tell you sir i'm sorry i shouldn't know that and i don't hi this is janine galbraith i have two questions on the survey were you allowed to take it more than one time or was it one time per login so you

059can the the survey allows for people you could go in and you can take it more than once however the way that we uh gather the information we are able to know if someone has taken it more than once there are a couple of reasons a couple of ways that we can track that um and the reason we do that and that we leave it open is because we've learned over many years of doing this that in some cases household members um you know pass a computer around and so we want for people to be able to take the survey that way if if it's a situation where it's deemed fraud if there's an electronic you know stuffing of the ballot box uh we can we can sort that out and we can remove the

060response okay thank you for that and my second question is how were the focus groups formed how did somebody become a part of a focus group yeah we put together i can i can uh maybe uh start to answer that and then i can uh yield to dr caglilanis who helped put this together what we do is we put together a profile of the panel of individuals that we that we wish to communicate with that we wish to engage really what we're looking for is we're looking for a broad swath of individuals to participate um so the survey participants that we we spoke with included some parents students some people who were very very engaged in the community in the school district maybe a little uh who were less so and we put together a

061series of asks and then we asked the school district specifically dr cogley niece and staff to help you know get people to participate and so um uh dr kaglini i don't know if you'd like to speak about the specifics of that beyond what i've noted yes i can miss galbraith we utilize the um the list the database that we use for the strategic planning group for the first round because it was well spread out it had all the stakeholder groups so ms tobin sent out a letter to all the stakeholders and asked them which which individual would like to participate in that group so they were members that already were on the strategic correct okay i guess that i don't understand we went that way because we have so many new people in our communities

062and so many more people coming forward i i almost think that some of those numbers might be slanted because those were people who have already participated with us and kind of do know what's going on because they are following us i wish we would have thought more random maybe that's my personal opinion because i'm not certain by going back to the same group we've used for other stuff that we're really getting what we're looking for all the time that's why i was asking because that strategic planning group there were many people who said they didn't even know about it so the people who ended up on there were people that i think we reached out to even then at times some of us were talking to him and i've never known anybody other than elected

063officials or somebody in the know that gets on these focus groups and i'd like to see neighbors and people who do have kids who don't have kids and i'm i'm not sure i'm not saying that these are slanted figures i'm just saying that i would have liked to have seen us reaching out to people who had never participated and find out what they're really thinking about our district because many of them might have been giving us more insight into some of the issues i guess that's what i'm getting at because just and i don't want to pick any one thing on here but you can tell by some of these responses that these are people who are well informed about our district and stay well informed about our district and so i think that we

064we didn't really see a lot of the people who don't know much about our district in those numbers that's that's the way i was taking them when i was watching it and certainly you know i can appreciate that and again this was a sampling however once we go down this journey we will be doing more focus groups once we start doing some of the suggestions there and to double check and to dip stick how we're doing so that would be something that we would do differently next time and i did have people who said to me i never get asked to do this i do a survey and nobody ever asks me to be in on these and i think you do have more people in the general public who would like to be involved

065yeah and that would be excellent because we would like to tap into them thank you yes thank you for the answers yeah those guys that's 216 people took the survey right 4 400 plus students so is that 216 individuals or 216 families those would be individuals yeah that would be respondents okay i will i will also if i could i i will i will uh say i think um the district did a very good job you know we have a process for informing and getting the word out about the survey there was again we call it turbulence there was a lot of turbulence as we know in uh the spring that was that was a lower than expected number and in some ways i think that there's something that we can they can uh we

066can be learned about the lack you know lack of engagement that comes from trying to engage an entire district community and getting a really small uh response rate but it certainly was not the result of lack of effort on behalf of the district that's for sure any other questions yeah i have a question uh joe this is maurice for remember brown so what was your expectations we said we had a low sample of the populations for this survey was there a number that you consider a reasonable percentage of the population to obtain data that's informative with this survey yeah thank you for the thank you for the question and and i appreciate it they're they're this is a question that we address a lot uh we do a lot of these surveys i wouldn't say

067that it's a particular percentage of the overall universe of people in in the community what we're looking for is we're looking for distribution across the community but we're also looking at in terms of the responses that we're getting if they are aligned i think that there was a fair a lot of them there was a fair amount of alignment in in the survey and so even though we didn't have a lot of responses in terms of numbers i would say that there was a great amount of consistency i would also say that i both did much of the analysis of the survey and i also conducted in person um the uh the the the focus groups i felt like i was hearing the same types of responses in the focus groups that we had in

068the uh in the in the surveys so i don't know that i think that the question that we always ask with a survey we never know for sure is would more survey respondents change the the outcome of the survey i don't have any reason to believe that it would but again i think from a district perspective and a board perspective it does suggest that there's work to do because that overall response rate was as low as it was despite the efforts of the district to get people to take the survey i think that it's a valid and i think that it's a helpful uh survey respondent pool it's not a scientific sample so we can't run regression on it however sometimes i say it's just like we had an opportunity to sit down individually and

069have a cup of coffee with 216 people in the community about their school district that's how i would look at the data and i think that it's very valuable data with that in mind okay thank you thank you thank you joe one other question i believe i saw on the information that you gave us about you are recommending that these we have a strategic plan in place i believe by end of 2022 i believe he said i thought for the marketing yeah for the marketing plan the strategic plan for marketing in place by the end of 2022 they're about if so our district strategic plan i believe that ends in 2023 so given our strategic community or district plan ends in 2023 you're recommending that we have a strategic plan for this marketing in place

070it's basically it as soon as possible how do you well what do you recommend how you can both join those two together in some way um yeah thank you thank you for the question i think um i i'm gonna take a step back and i'm gonna i'm gonna answer the question a little differently and maybe provide some clarification what what i think that we saw in both the the survey and what what i think came out in the focus groups is that community members are hungry for more information about the district's strategic plan um so so i i think i think that strategic planning process the large strategic plan um gives the district a tremendous opportunity to engage community members about the direction of the district and and it was very clear that people are

071interested uh in that as it relates to kind of the next stage of this process i think that i'll yield to your superintendent on that because again i think how this is staged with your strategic plan will be will be very important and i don't know that at this point i can speak to that specifically thank you so thank you toronto as i understood it just so we're clear he wasn't suggesting a separate strategic plan for marketing it was instead of waiting to 2023 his recommendation was we start the scripture planning process now okay it wasn't a separate that's what i looked at i thought it was a separate strategic plan for the marketing that he was looking to put it on a fast track by the end of this year but this is going

072to be incorporated with our overall next strategic plan right okay thanks for the clarity thanks any other questions dr karen do you want to wrap this this up or uh um i just want to uh again thank the donovan group for assisting us with this process it was a large process and a lot of information to kind of pull together what this does is it gives us information and we've already started to make some changes already based on as the information was coming in we already started tweaking things right away to try to start getting information out this has been very helpful for us this now creates the plans the goals you know that we're going to start working on for next year to start getting on top of this a little bit earlier and

073again the the various vehicles of who gets what what whether you're a community member that prefers something that's in the mail which we heard is something that we're going to already do for this coming summer we are going to have something in the mail in the post to kind of summarize the year to start that process as it is and we will continue with that and i will be providing with you a plan in the fall okay well joe thank you very much and uh sorry for the delay but you got to see a great program so yeah thank you it was it was wonderful i am again so grateful for the opportunity to work with you and again so grateful to be a part of your meeting and to experience what i saw earlier

074this evening so thank you i hope everyone has a great evening thank you joe good job joe okay mr cerma are you still there i am here good evening ford how are you doing good um i apologize for not being able to be with you this evening however a positive covet test has prevented that so i apologize for that but glad to join you at least over the phone i'm going to run through the items that are going to be on the agenda at the regular board meeting next week i'll of course stop between each one in case there are questions or or comments the first one is discussion to establish a date for the 2021 amended budget public hearing which would be june 14th of 2022 which is the committee of the whole meeting

075in june we do have to amend the budget the reason for that amendment is primarily because of the sale of bonds that were not included in the original budget so we will have an amendment for the budget the hearing would take place on the 14th with approval of that amended budget then on the 21st of june so that is just kind of a preliminary thing we will go ahead and do the normal publications and all of that stuff for and posting of the amended budget once i once i get that completed and and ken just to clarify for kind of the public uh amending the budget it's kind of a perfunctory process at the end of the year you mentioned because of the sale of the bonds we're not selling new bonds this is to

076kind of record and update the plan for the sale of bonds we already completed yes uh you know one of the discussions we've always had in in previous years is that you know i am not a fan of amending budgets however we are required by the illinois school code to amend the budget in certain cases one of those cases is when we have sold bonds during the year and it has brought in additional revenue we have to go ahead and amend the budget so we did this last year because of the sale of bonds and we're going to be doing it again this year okay thank you are correct yep number two is a discussion of proposals from rhoda of linwood illinois in the amount of two hundred and eleven thousand dollars approximately two hundred

077eleven thousand three hundred ninety dollars and fifty eight cents for the purpose of installing new school signs at del maro crete monie and talala elementary schools along with coretta scott king magnet school and the early learning center so i think i have in my board report attached the various costs at each of the buildings so i investigated and looked at getting electronic signs at all of our schools that are very similar to the signs that we have which is about the same with the signs that we have now at the high school and at the elementary school so this would get rid of the current signs it would put in electronic signs they're monochrome which means one color just like they are at the high school and the middle school they are also wireless so

078the messages can be changed from inside the school via council the same way we do that at the high school and the middle school so everything would be uh standard and consistent with all of the buildings then can i or i wanted to add something real quick before you went on to the next room again adding these signs was another thing that came up earlier this year as you know is you know people having to go out in those old signs and then doing them by hand and we couldn't keep them as updated as we would have liked to and i think this goes into exactly what we said here with this marketing plan and communication we can use these signs to better inform we can put more information on there and we can have

079them really out in the community as people are driving by we can start putting things on these signs so this is actually another one of our marketing plans so so what if you don't mind me asking what part of the budget or line item are these coming out of ken yeah ken sure so yeah so we were surprised that uh and please that we receive a little over 400 000 in evidence-based funding um additional evidence-based funding if you recall there was a news report where there was a miscalculation i put this in the fyi also to the board that there was a miscalculation that was done by the consulting group three years ago and so it resulted in the district in the city of chicago being overpaid about 80 million dollars and the other districts

080in the state of illinois being under funded the result of that was the district received an additional i believe it is i don't know exact amount but i believe it is around 440 thousand dollars this year so we are getting that money right now uh from now until the end of june uh as additional money in our payments from the state so this money would come out of that additional money that we received i would not take it out of fund balances or anything like that um i i think the signs look they look nice but the one thing i'll remind us is you were saying that it about updating them what doesn't get monitored won't get done so we drive by the high school and for a long time we see the same stuff

081that's still outdated regardless of if somebody has to go out there and put it up or put it do it from a computer and then how many times have you driven by a sign saw a couple words and wondered man i wonder what that said what the rest of that was which is totally different than if it was already out there put and you can read it really quick versus driving by saying come see what that was unless you slow down or you need to just stop and hold up traffic and so i'm not against it but i'm just reminding you that while they look pretty they're not as informative always and while they look pretty the upkeep of them or keeping the information current depends on the monitoring of that it would be nice

082to have a message that stays up there or right instead of the words that rotate maybe something that stays and then i know i realize that it switches but it's for example billboards on expressway you're going to miss some things because you're driving which you would either way but at least it stays up long enough where you can say oh that's i want some pizza tonight or whatever you know i'ma call dominoes because they have a special i don't know so we're going to ask you to do a pilot with us and ask us uh how long we should have something up there so that would be something for us to look at but again this is about the marketing we've only used the boards before as you know uh early dismissal those kinds of

083things but i i think if we're using them for more of the marketing pieces we'll have a different bent on that well we got to be able to read it we can say hey uh dr coghlanis and then what what did doctor what do i drive back around the corner to see what doctor cognition did and then by the time i get back he's back on something different that's that's my point that's one of my points yeah and i'm assuming the marketing piece is the philosophy behind having at the maintenance facility because i don't i don't really see a lot of value of having one at the maintenance facility but is that i don't know who drives by over there but uh right well am i reading it wrong where that's one that we'd have

084everybody gets something okay so so ken real quick on the 440. what can we use that for is it pretty much i mean is it specified for anything in particular no it's not it goes into the general fund so it can be used for any type of expenses okay yeah and i you know again on the signage and that i i you know uh dr hall is as dr cara has has talked about i think this is all part of our our marketing plan um you know natalie and i have had a discussion and she's already begun developing a calendar of certain events that you know we as a district need to put on these signs and you know just an example black history month and celebrating black history month should be consistent um and

085i agree with you there's an art to using electronic science and so it's it's educating people on that that there is and again i mean just like i said it has to be monitored i mean we have a a beautiful sign at the high school that has had some of the same stuff up there for four or five years and or so they did okay see spring break is no longer um but two hundred eleven thousand you know what i would do with two hundred eleven thousand uh that no no we start that's not enough but we'll start putting it in the bank put it in stocks and building it building it up that was great marketing hey they have a beautiful football stadium okay there are there any other questions for ken on the

086signage okay number three ken uh the third one is a resolution of baiting the working cash fund uh money of the school district in the amount of six million three hundred and ninety six thousand six oh seven point nine one and this is if you recall a year ago we did the same thing where we abated that fund 3.1 million dollars and transited over to o m and other capital projects to pay for the life safety projects this is we're doing the same thing with this amount and transferring it from the working cash fund over to o m over to capital projects in over in order to pay for the life safety projects that we are doing this summer in my board report i have kind of uh i haven't kind of i've gone through

087kind of a an accounting of that fund to kind of wrap your head around it so you can kind of see the distribution of funds the fund balances and all of that in essence this money is coming out of the 17.5 million dollars in bonds that were sold in december of 2020. um if you recall we have we were taking 6.1 million dollars and just living in there and then you'll see by my report we divided up the rest of that money um into either uh the purchase of the verville property the abatement or the transfer that we did last year the current transfer and then there's still going to be an additional 1 million dollars left in that fund for use of life safety projects because what i will be doing after this summer

088then is doing a assessment to make sure that we have all of our life safety projects done and if not we have additional money left that we can finish off the rest of them and everything you'll all you'll also see in my report the working cash fund balance i've worked that through since the end of so that after this transfer and i'm projecting at the end of this fiscal year there's still going to be a balance in that fund of almost 17 million dollars 16 million 888 251.09 so that money is still in there and that has been that will remain in there some of that is from the sale of bonds um some of that is disrupted from property taxes and some other things so so that is all in there so there's an

089accounting that took place there so i just wanted to share that with you but uh this money is being taken out in order to pay for some of the projects i don't know if anyone had any questions about that yeah so the 6.3 million we're talking about is just specifically for crete balmoral and csk's life safety it's part of our what we talked about yes yes okay okay okay next next uh the next five actually i i you know unless people have you know specific questions i'd be happy to answer them they're all the same they're actually certificates of payment for all the projects that are being done now um because every school is really except for l and dlc are put together but all the schools are separate projects so those are certificates of

090payments for all of the projects that are going on including number eight on this list is a certificate of payment in the amount of 931 185 to omega for the demolition of the sixth grade center in dome so that's part of the work that they have done already they of course are national police are um but that's for their part of the work that they're doing their total contract is a little over 1.2 million so there's still about 300 000 in work that still needs to be done there so um all of those payments are certificates of payments that have been certified by our architects so so items four five six and seven are basically summer 2022 work yes they are all summer 2022 where the csk crete and balmoral are the preparation for next

091year's ac and talala is the start of this year's ac right yes okay so ken on on the omega-3 payment yes um what do they have left to complete and does the monies remaining in the budget that haven't been paid out yet does that capture the work around the remediation around the oil tank i believe it does i believe in the budget um it's not included in the 1.2 million but we do have funds set aside when we budgeted and for contingency money so that money is already in the budget and we have it you know in the budget so so that is an issue the work that they still need to complete we were waiting for one other test sample of the underground storage tank not the oil tank but there was a gasoline

092tank under the maintenance um shop that had to be removed and um so we're waiting for those test results we've got some preliminary ones and you know when they when they kind of do this they did this and it looks like there was a little bit of seepage but it was minor so there'll have to be some excavation that's taking place but we feel uh confident that we've got the money in the budget to do that okay for the for this week's fyi could you kind of put together a punch list if you will what's left to be done there sure on that project okay yep that'd be helpful all right all right you finished uh nelson yep okay just kind of piggybacking somewhat off of nelson's question with remaining work at the sixth grade

093center in the dome site we were looking to do a final grade and put some grass out there so i haven't personally looked at the site and i don't know where we are with that so are we still going down that road or you know are we looking to do our rsvp okay and if so estimated costs and where are we going to get that money from if you have any searching out there go ahead you know all of the grading and everything mr brown is all included in the bid specifications that that's the responsibility of the contractor so all of that final grading um and seating is required by the contractor so there's no additional cost for that so that's in that 1.2 million yes yes sir yes well i think the the original

094contract that we approved was for 1.5 correct uh wasn't it something no i believe the original contract with the credit was only 1.2 million the budget itself is 1.5 because that includes all the fees and everything okay so okay so it's all within the 1.2 million contract that we approved yes the grading and the you know final grade and the seating for grass and all that is all included in the 1.2 million okay do we have an estimated date when the final grading and seating is going to be done because i would not like the seating to be done in the middle of summer and no we're not going to have sprinklers out yeah there can i can work with the contractor to postpone that i know the contractor has said to us his original

095plan was to be done around august first with all stuff but again i can hold up on this evening and uh ask them to come back and see it in the fall and probably do just you know not do they can do a rough grade now but then you know before they see they can always you know um you know rake it and all of that stuff and then do a final seed in the fall so it takes better there's more moisture okay sounds good thanks ken yep i hope you feel better thank you any other questions for ken okay next up old business is anyone have any old business yeah i had a question um i know i see mr wartell in the back here and he's waited very patiently all the way down

096to item number seven um i know that we had our last hearing and we all talked about it but i guess the question is we're supposed to vote on this next tuesday but would be really nice to see what a day looks like and what the plan is for mec and how that's going to function because i think a lot of us that were here struggled with how does that look and what's that going to pertain so and i don't know if you asked mr wartell to be part of that or not but well actually uh miss riley can kind of address that i think she kind of mentioned that in our fyi but uh want to make sure that you know she can address that now um earlier weeks ago months ago ms raleigh

097had met together with quite a few staff members administrators as well to map out what it would look like next year for some of our students ms riley uh if you can come to the microphone that way our our friends at home it's for some of the parents yeah the taxpayers the staff you know everybody let alone us i think everybody wants to know good evening everyone yes good evening can you hear me okay so yes um i have the opportunity to meet with uh administration from nbc as well as administration from cremoni high school including the counselors and we were trying to come up with a schedule as to what a day in the life would look like if we were to move nbc to the high school so basically the plan is we'll

098have three classes for next year if we make this move one would be for the general air population of nbc for the high school one would be for the middle school if we have middle schools students come over there and one would be for special education students who need to be moved there right now just to let you know it is may of course and the special education department they're still having meetings to determine where those students will be placed if they would be placed at mec or out placement so with those three classes that we have we developed a bell schedule that nbc students would start after the traditional high school students start and they would leave prior to the student start the students leaving during the day so as they have classes now

099part face to face as well as part of the day where they have online it would still be the same so they will have live face-to-face english and then the other courses as of now will be online with what's the name of the program plato with plato as they actually currently do right now they have two different periods in which they'll be able to actually have gym classes in the gym room when the high school is not there one has been i believe the hot the hero period and the other being the knife period so right now we're still playing around with the schedule but we want to make it so that they actually as much as possible have their day similar to what it is currently in the building at mec so will they

100have gym you said twice two opportunities two opportunities to have gym yes and they would eat lunch in the classroom much like how they do now at mec because they don't have a cafeteria correct but it's not functioning yes so that you okay so that's the question it's the lead in their classroom i guess the other question is i think it mec if there's somewhat of an issue and you have a cool down period do we have a place for that just because sometimes and especially moving forward um you know the mental stability of the students let alone step it's changing so we need to make sure that we're prepared for them right so in terms of a cool down period as we all know the high school space is very very limited but we

101are still trying to make adjustments so that we can have certain things in place like that they do have cool down spaces currently in the high school and perhaps we may be able to utilize that but again we're still not quite done with planning the complete program that we'll have if we choose to go there but we do have um like i said the day plan for what it would look like because we don't want to make it so it's so much different we want to make sure that we still have something similar to what they already have so it's not too many changes much like how they have the pbis program already at the school the the uh teacher the tier the tier one and tier two coach have already planned the maps for

102next year as to what the activities will be so we're trying to make sure that the adjustment is as the flow of the adjustment is as appropriate as possible and we want to make sure these kids don't feel like they're completely out of place we want to try to make sure that they'll adjust as well as they can okay i'm going to be blunt we're trying to do this we're thinking about this we hope to do that how are we supposed to vote on that next week and feel like we voted true to our kids and our educators i don't want to point to one person here but you didn't convince me anything is set for these students going over to mec we don't know if we can do this we don't know this we're

103trying for this you're not saying this is happening this is happening this is happening well we do have the bail schedule okay and we do have the space i i don't you're saying we're trying to get a cool down we're trying to do this i can't in in my heart vote on something that we don't have answers to and i'll tell you now the teachers are contacting me by the droves and i don't know if anybody else is getting this they're terribly concerned about all the discipline issues we're putting back in the classroom because all they're doing dealing with is discipline issues because we don't use mec for discipline issues anymore so they're in gen ed and they're spending more time dealing with that than they are being able to teach and now we're telling

104them we're giving these three special classes to mec there's a lot of issues going on here and i think they need to be addressed i don't feel comfortable right now that we have a plan a b and c put together and we need a b and c in order to make this move well to start with what you just said discipline starts in the classroom so some of the reasons why they may be actually spending more time with discipline is because we do have wall-to-wall pbis at this district but in order to make sure that that flows well teachers have to teach those plans now we've had reports from administrators in which teachers haven't even bothered to open up the email to see what those plans are so they can teach those expectations for the

105day so we really truly have been doing our best due diligence to partner and make sure that we are actually doing exactly what we say that we were going to do in a strategic plan by making sure that we collectively are doing our parts is not an administrative thing it's not a teacher think it's not a district office thing it's a partner thing and if everybody is not doing their part we will have problems well unfortunately i think the teachers see it totally different because they're seeing lots lots of issues and they say they talk to the administrators i have been going out to the schools i'm witnessing some of this um it's a tough tough draw out there right now for our teachers and i get it that's across the board but i think

106that you know this mec sounds like a great plan but already there's a lot of teachers who feel like all of a sudden now here we're going to get dumped on again we say only five kids are going to mec and why are only five kids going to be in three classrooms and it's not clear to me either and i think there are other board members who have the same questions but they won't speak up like i do i truly think that you know next week we're supposed to vote on this how are we supposed to vote on this when we really don't know what's going on and that you're saying the teachers are supposed to do discipline well if you give them four kids that have discipline issues in a class of 25 they

107spend all that time dealing with those kids and they never get their lessons planned they've notified administration we don't have aids we don't have this how are we addressing that when we say we've got three kids in one classroom and you've got 25 and five of them are discipline issues i guess i'm totally lost here and i know other board members are because they've talked we don't seem to be getting these answers and now and i'm not singling you out unfortunately you're at the podium this this whole deal with what we hope to do this and we're going to have us a separate gym period okay you got to get them to jim so we're going to make sure that i'm guessing that won't be during a passing period where there would be other kids

108and but that's not clear and that's not clear to the teachers and it's not clear to the community we have not done a good job of getting this information out and we're seven days away from a vote on this so i guess this is all coming to a head where it's the end of school people are frustrated it's been a rough year and now all of this is coming to a head and i've got to agree that i think that along the way here we're dropping the ball somewhere and i'm i am really worried about what we're doing unless i understand about the rest of the board um but i do know that there are people who have been talking to board members and we have to keep saying i don't know i don't know

109i don't know and you still are saying we're still trying to get this figured out and we're seven days away from making this decision right in terms of space because the space again is very limited right but we knew that when we wanted to make this decision and now we're we're at the finish line and we don't have answers not in terms of a cooldown no we do not so yeah it's about protection i mean the the students at mec um they just learn differently everybody learns differently one way or another and they you know they go over there and someone that has struggled in general population goes over there and they excel amazingly and well i just need to make sure that the kids that are going to be have the opportunity don't lose

110that amazing opportunity or i mean you know what i mean just i just want to make sure that when they're when they go to mec now uh they're flourishing they're graduating things are are happening i just don't want that to get lost in translation that's my only fear is making sure that we have the staff and the room for them again agreed seven days we're making a decision on what we're going to do and i just want to make sure that it it's clear that we're there for the kids and that's understandable i'm sorry i'm sorry one one thing i think the biggest thing for me and i've heard other people say is why can't we wait another year before we do this why do we have to like what's the rush to do it

111and i know you can't give us that answer so that's not directed towards you but i do have a question i think kiana can't answer which is you know and you know miss galbraith you know i i think expressed you know this a real concern about discipline okay and we heard it from the teachers but whether mec is left in the same building or not that's not going to address the discipline issues because it does not address this it that doesn't address the discipline that that's a different solution has to be found for that because we're not using mec too we're using but but that's but but just so we all understand that next year that that facility would not be used for these discipline issues that has to be addressed in a different way

112so we're mixing a little bit of apples and oranges when we get into that debate and i'm not for me i'm not looking at discipline i'm not looking i'm just looking at is are we able to delay it until we're ready to have a fresh start versus moving it out and then moving it out again and then right and then moving again and then it appears that we are kind of phasing those kids out only to what find another bunch of kids that can go in there i don't know but that's the way it appears because at the end of the end i guess we are switching the program from what the original intent was to um that was not the original antenna nbc though i i don't and i don't i can't claim to

113say i know what the original intent was i just know what for example at one point my son and daughter were at a private school i considered transferring my children to crete mondee high school and they said well if you transfer them to crete money high school they have to go to mec because that's why because that's just what we do when kids transfer why nobody had an answer so i can't when you came from yes when they yes and so i can't say what the original intent was all i can say is if you were late registering if you didn't register within the window of time you would then begin at mec yes that's what would happen this has 2011 one graduated high school in 2012 right and that was so that's why i

114said i can't say the original intent i know the various things that has been used for and how has evolved but again i go back to if why can't we just wait until everything is settled i do think that's where some of the confusion comes from though because like i said it has evolved through different you know it was a caps program which i was always under the understanding it was more for behavioral if teachers were having a hard time with difficult students you know that's where they would go and now it seems to evolved into a more like therapeutic is what they're saying but i almost feel like there's even some staff that is con you know they that's what they think like you were saying that you know we want to get these

115kids you know separate so that the kids here can learn so i just think there's some confusion because a lot of teachers are saying the discipline is really related to social social emotional and because they have that issue there's a discipline issue and so yeah you know we're splitting years here but i i think we need a whole lot more information and and i will say this too if um you just said that it's not for discipline then show me where it's written what it's for because obviously somebody re wrote what is what the purpose was for um over and over because it it has changed and has it changed that's because somebody said it's changed or has there have been meetings and things have been put in place and put in writing and policies

116have changed um and if policies have changed then were you all on the board to vote to change what the purpose of it of those policies were for um or if there is a policy so i guess there are there are a lot of ways to answer the question what is the purpose and it should be in writing whatever it is so it shouldn't be just what somebody says it should be for you know that might be a good segue for mr wartell to kind of address because there is a history here and some of it is far uh before any of us were here and uh the the program has changed yeah i think mr mortal i think it just comes down to miscommunication 2014 is when uh we stopped sending students from out

117of districts and and there was a thing that dr rogers used to have in place that you come in can you hear me okay and if you weren't registered in time you had to spend the rest of the semester at uh create money uh cap as they called it that's no longer there for last eight years we're talking about two different things and the same thing discipline the students are sent to us for discipline reasons okay every student that was sent to us has been sent to us for disciplined reasons but they have social emotional issues and that's what we focus on therapeutically so let's get that understanding right on board so um when teachers are saying that you know the students aren't getting sent over for um discipline that that's incorrect every student that

118has to go there has to be put a packet together that's sent to the central office central office looks at it then i review it and then we come up with a decision if it's a good fit now what i could tell you is what cap used to be was what the board used to use in lieu of expulsions so that's what students got now let's let's make sure this is clear they were sent over us because they were fighting um weapons knives things of that nature and some drugs and selling drugs and stuff like that that was the original thing in lieu of expulsion and so what we started doing over the years working in a therapeutic school an alternative school is very hard you can't keep stab there very long you know it's

119a burnout that you know happens after a couple years and so i started losing staff about you know six seven years ago you know we did a great job with the these students that were physically aggressive um we'd have the police over at our buildings a lot and all that and it just got to the point where it was really hard to maintain staff at that point and so over the time of the process we started looking at how can we be more therapeutic and working with the kids before they got physically aggressive and all that and so we did a better job as administrative levels looking for those kids with social emotional issues to send them over to us like that but it never was denying kids that we're not you know having discipline

120but we got to the point where it is hard to maintain kids that are physically aggressive at our school with our size and our staff i would say everything you said i think we pretty much understood the confusion comes in not from understanding that but from when we ask the questions of how nobody could really give us an answer it's uh well you know it's not that it's not right and so that's the confusion the way you explained it is the way we understood it to be but um and then it became well it's used differently it's for this it's for well we know is that there has never been a clear understanding now that being said um it still brings back my question why can't we wait another year to do this now they'll

121tell us well the numbers are low well the numbers are truly low because of a pandemic that's one you haven't had anybody just sitting over there but maybe you can maybe you can explain to us the questions that we're asking because we're asking the questions we're not really getting the answers well i i cannot answer that one but it was the perfect storm you know we had covet we we've always been at 40 45 students every year i was there but we had covet and then we had graduated 10 students last year another six this year and that just you know and the numbers just were low at this point and then when we started thinking about moving uh possibly to the high school that's when you know the the students you know were not

122at that point being referred to us uh at the greater number than we usually did and then let me and then we continue with that because i think we want to come back full circle why are we here and i think that's what you're at i want to send us back a little bit towards the fall we started an operations committee and the board had directed us to take a look at our finances to see you know how we were going to make sure that we were uh passing a positive budget uh balanced budget and so that's what we did we went through our all of our numbers in the district we looked at programs and you know through the school report card you know that's again we saw that you know the mec program

123was at that point about 66 000 dollars of students and i showed you the graph and so forth that is when we started taking a look at the program now the board had already made the decision that we were going to start uh closing down some of our facilities and made that direction to already do the wing at the high school so we knew that we were going to go there so out of due diligence we took a look at those numbers we took a look at the enrollment trends and we are making our recommendation to you for the financial reasons coupled with a decline enrollment to say to you it is up to you if we want to spend 1.2 million dollars a year to keep it open to one more year at the

124same time when we're seeing a decline of enrollment and at the same time we're saying we're going to need to revamp the program and have it a little bit different that also kind of matched you know some of the things that we were doing in the high school so that is what god is here we are not pushing you to to hurry and close the building we we are making a recommendation because we were asked to look at this as a financial piece coupled with what was good for kids let's go with enrollment eventually that is what you have to decide if you want to go ahead and you know looking at you know the costs and looking at the projections and where we're going if that's important to you to keep it open another

125year or if you take a look at this and say you know what you know that's not you know prudent with the money at this point so that's where the decision is i think i agree i agree with you 100 i want the real back it was the board to make the decision to build that addition to the high school to house our students from mec and other students and we dr cogwonis didn't have the whole program in place at the time we made that decision to build that and we knew that we was not going to move forward with mec with those facilities you know with the air conditioning and all of that our president brought a good option to us to say hey why spend all of this money and we can take

126advantage and build this new addition onto the high school you came to us with a program that was i think it was called a trauma called it the trauma and then i said oh that's a bad name for it but nonetheless i asked for where are we getting our return on investment then our business manager i don't know if he's still out there he gave us a dissertation and saw the other dynamics as far as academic return on the investments that's what you just alluded to as well so i think it's a little in my opinion it's a little not fair to the administrators to not have all of the answers in place right now when it was the board to say kind of move forward it was it was not part of the big

127plan at this stage in the game to add that building to the new building to the high school but we asked to move forward we approved to move forward take advantage of it with everything not been in place with the program and so on and so forth so it's a lot of moving parts me personally again that's why i'm kind of looking back i think our administrators are doing a good job trying to fill the pieces in and i know the board have questions we had questions at our last was it the form we had the community forum yeah the forum we had it was a friday friday afternoon we started asking questions maybe we should hold back what's the you know what's the consequences of holding back and kind of where we are janine

128i have not had teachers like they have been talking to you about it and you know i am not afraid to talk i'm not afraid no i don't think any of us yeah any of us if we got something to say we won't hesitate to say it so that's kind of where i stand i do commend the administrators for doing the best they could trying to make this happen i definitely commend the administrators for doing the best they can but let's not get it twisted or whatever we didn't say hey we want you to go build this addition and then move this was a recommendation and you know how it we know how it works we vote on the the superintendent and their people they come up with the plan we look at the plan

129we vote on the plan based off of their recommendations we just say hey build this and and move these kids and do this and that we didn't come up with that we are merely supporting the plan yes we asked for a plan we asked the questions but i think my ultimate question is again can we wait another year for it no we get we agreed to this vision that the superintendent had for this for 22 23. and the idea is i think the vision was that we wouldn't spend the money on life safety in the building if we were going to get rid of the building correct and then but i just would assume because there was on a plan that we would transition the kids directly from mec into the facility i think where

130it goes into a thing is are we doing are we prepared for the kids to be in the high school with the other kids are we prepared for that setting and and i think i just assumed that if we approve this which we did to go okay mec boom we're going to go right into the new edition that's what i always envisioned that it would step right over i didn't think it would be this quick where we're making a decision and i'll say this i i don't mind us i like us having a discussion i do i don't think anybody has said dr coglins you made this decision you did but you say to us the board and you put it back on us that's how i feel instead of just saying that this is

131what we because are we a team in this because we're asking the question why can't we we're not saying that you have made the decision to do this and why are you doing this but when you say you all the board did this the board said that that makes now that makes it look like out there tv land or youtube that these are decisions that we're making and we have decided to do this and we told you to do and and instead of making it like we're a team and we say and you say hey you know what remember we discuss blah blah blah instead of saying that it's us who are making these decisions and us who are doing telling you to do these things and in seven days we got to make that

132decision and i think it's terribly hard i think it's true i agree because she's made it clear that no you all have to make that decision well dr hall i just i'm sorry it came off like that that is not was certainly not my intent my intent is again when the board asks me to investigate things i investigate things i bring recommendations to you and eventually you know you do vote on that that so that was my intent to say you end up making that decision i can give you the recommendation um and like i said i think you're asking me do we have to close it next year no we don't have to close it next year you know i think we do but i think it does i think i think when you

133get into i think when you get into the numbers we don't make sense to have five students and spending thousand 75 students those were things that came to us after the fact when after we agreed on the building and when you came and brought us the numbers and how many students yeah that came that came after the fact and it just it just proved financially proven that we don't have five students but you know i heard the plight of the parents and the staff came and all of that so i do understand that i definitely understand that but doctor coughlin these came because i asked was anybody going to lose their job because she said no we can please a b and c in these roles that they are familiar with and teaching so on

134and so forth so it came down to the students which are limited still five six students we're talking about yeah and it comes down to we keep our students five students in a building i mean we have we have done a good job of or the administration has done a good job of everybody's talk so give me a chance so it's so funny so no but no but i think but you look at it i mean the administration has done a good job of of placing all those teachers if if we bring back to mec we've got the cost of maintaining the building we've got to staff it we've got to bring in a new administrator and then we have to backfill all the positions in a tough teacher and you know when it's tough

135to find teachers we've got to backfill all the positions we had allocated them to this year so your if i understand the feedback we've received and i'm not saying it's not valid but i think from when we look at when you look at the data and you look at the facts we have to move forward on this okay okay so we did vote and we do feel it's financially prudent to go ahead and move forward with this but we did hear from the parents concerned parents and rightfully so so i think what it boils down to though is how confident are we that we can have all these questions these unknowns answered how confident are we that it's going to be this smooth transition because i think if we can tell parents we have all

136that in order they're going to feel a lot better if we do go ahead and move move forward with this this year so i guess how long is it going to take for us to have all these answers of the who where you know that parents can be comfortable were there parents at the friday meeting that i couldn't attend yeah there was yeah there was one one really yeah because i at the other public comment i thought it was all staff and i think that's their concern there's a lot of like unknown you know what i mean what's going to happen and i think if we can have solid answers for them that's what it boils down to whether or not we move forward if we can't if we can't say there's too many question

137marks then i don't know how we do move forward but if we can be confident that yeah if we can be confident that it's going to be a smooth transition you know then i and i guess my other my other point here is everyone every day and i just thought on tv that chicago is putting an astronomical amount into mental health for their students and treating them over the summer and all the stuff with covets so everything's blamed on covet i get that nothing is anybody's fault except coded but if we have all these kids in our school that we keep saying are having social emotional problems why in god's name do we only have five kids at mec next year i mean you say you want to grow that program to 100 and whatever

138when we're at the new wing well we've got this building and now we're saying i mean i don't think i knew when i said all this was going on that we were only going to have five students left and every day your administrators you across the tv across the country they're talking about all these kids with social emotional if that's what we're dealing with in a therapeutic setting why do we only have five going to mec i think i think that's what this has shown is our huge disconnect communication because obviously the teachers don't understand the criteria and i had the question and you kind of answered that like what's the process because i've had teachers say we've recommended people and they didn't they didn't get it all day long so there's a huge social

139emotional rights district and if we have that many kids that we already know are having issues why do we only have five at mec i i don't well that's part of this whole process i mean that's what needs to be straightened out is one what the criteria is what the process is how what yeah i mean that's what the administrators are saying it's so they're and that's why it's frustrating because i think nobody understood frustrated and we and we don't understand but it's too late i think now for this next year i i do i mean like like nelson said i really think it is too late to say we're going to go back to the mec facility but these things have got to be ironed out and straightened out and be so clear to

140the teachers going forward and i think this too comes back to our earlier presentation we had about the marketing communication this is exactly what i'm talking about we need to have brochures we need to have things flushed out on the website we need to have these things done in place because of these reasons along with our uh credit scott king magnet school how are we getting more people to go to that school we need to advertise we need to market those things the same thing here so it's all the same things that we're talking about we do recognize that we're trying to figure out then how how we're going to do that i guess what is the qualification i mean what is the who recommends that they go to the therapeutic how is that done

141how's the process done who determines who goes then to the mec and that lends itself to what sandy's saying is that if we were willing to not put six to eight million dollars into the older school but we're going to put 14 million into an addition we're gonna have five kids there like that lends to her like to what she's saying is well what's the criteria i mean well that's why we're rebuilding it yeah i mean right because we do have a lot of social emotional kids especially after the pandemic so what is the qualifications who determines who goes there and why don't we have more numbers there then all right so i'm going to bring that back over to my uh team over there ms riley and certainly mr wartell so ms raleigh can

142you at least talk them uh talk a little bit about what the process looks at the building so when there's some discipline issues at the building how does that get brought to you know the team and the paperwork portion okay so once all interventions have been tried and the student is still not successful the administrative teams at the building then recommend the student if the student is a volatile student or a student like you said with drugs and weapons they wouldn't go to nbc nbc does have crit criteria in which ratel can speak more of to than i can what i can tell you is that when we get when i get the packet if it's special and i have to meet with ellen of course to talk through the packet with ellen but typically

143it's me ellen for special ed the building administrator along with mr wertel or mrs pappas if mr wartell can't be available or vice versa but it's usually both of them together once we go over the packet and looks at look at the whole child then typically they're told whether or not if they can actually be admitted depending on if mec can actually service them because nbc only services a certain type of child and you can't speak and that would like the type of staff that you have in their certifications right okay and so we do have um some students that we have to place out of district right now we have about thirty thousand dollars that we spent this year on having to send students to um schools out of the district because nbc can't

144service them okay so again we're we have five children for the next school year we're going to build a wing that's going to serve 100 to 150. how is that going to change if all these kids were recommending now are not making it to mec how does a kid make it to mec then i mean i'm really confused right so that was before that that's some history that i can't answer because that's before me i'm following the criteria that's given i know i know and we wasn't sending them last year to you before what changes are we anticipating that number two increase because of the pandemic and we're seeing more and more kids struggling do you think well the criteria itself needs to needs to shift the one thing you have to remember how the

145new wing will house how many people it can house about 80 about 80. and this new wing has what in it what's numerous classrooms it has a gym it has a workout room it has a cafeteria it has a washer dryer it has supposed to be for like um uh trades and things of that nature they have access to the trades because we if you so so my i guess my point is that hey so that and i'm trying to get clarification the 80 that will that could possibly be over there would that include students who decide to take that path or would the 80 be mec and other kids from the high school will also come over there to take trades no they think the trade rooms are separated it's just giving them the

146opportunity it's giving the mec kids the opportunity to have this you'll have the same opportunities right it's not going to be everybody's mixing the kids it's 80 mec availability for kids capacity to be in just that program adjust that program and and so will the trades area be separated from okay that's what i'm trying to get because i wanted to make sure when you said that it's not in the new construction but it's isolated okay yes so again we're trying to make this more of a choice program as opposed to your scent to mec because what we're seeing there's a lot of anxiety out there where students were giving them some more choices we talked about servicing students that are experiencing trauma we're looking at developing a universal screener to find them in eighth grade

147so as they're transferring in we can counsel to say we have some choices here if this would be something that would be suitable for you instead of saying you've misbehaved you know you're going there now because that's not what we want to do well i would just like to add and make myself clear in a statement that it may have been perceived that i was just focusing on dollars and that's not the case and how much money we can save by closing mec the one parent that came here on that friday and she was concerned about her kid not getting the treatment and the attention that if nvc work were to close that her child would be left out right and i totally disagreed if that is the case i think all the kids that's

148going to be affected by the closing of mec should get yeah should get the needs that was multi-needs oh that was the maltese okay well that too sorry i'm sorry about that but but going back to the kids yeah we got a lot of stuff going on okay i'm a multi knee person too but going back going back to those students so are we saying that whatever the students that we expect to come back as part of the mec program they aren't going to get the attention that they need in the new program we're saying that yes yes that's the question so so you're telling us that right yes yes we're confident for the few kids that are going to be there with what we have there with the strip the the schedules that it

149wouldn't set the only thing they're looking for is a cool down room but there are as available that would be i think the one thing and some board members are saying they have some reservations that that is not the case it's the answer is that the administrators is not getting is are giving us are not clear and concise and everybody in this room just said the word social emotional we're seeing it across the country but yet those kids are still in gen ed and they need to be at ndc but they've been refused and and the teachers are not understanding it either because they're having to spend all this extra time because that child has something they can't give in the gen ed world so they have to give an assignment over here and then

150help the kids so where's the gap between our administrators and the teachers talking and getting getting on the same page and again it comes back to what we're talking about a program that's probably going to be in transition i think that's where we're at right now and especially we've been closed for two years you know and we're getting ready to transition into a kind of a a hybrid program if you will and moving forward we gotta get that gap close quick so so is there information that the administration could come back with between now and next week that would help you on your decision unfortunately though you're talking about two different issues and what you the questions you want answered are not going to be answered by these three classrooms that are going to be

151at the high school this year i think we're talking about two completely different issues that's just my personal take on it i'm not disagreeing with you i agree with you i've heard the teachers i said there's a huge disconnect between what the teachers understand and what we have but that doesn't change the fact that that's that that disconnect was there even with mec they had that disconnect and that misunderstanding this past year even when we had mec that's why i'm saying that there's two different issues and i think that's why like this the teachers have to understand what the qualifications are i don't think teachers because i've heard too also from a teacher um what the qualifications are that you actually are then placed into mec so there is there's a disconnect there and i

152think everybody needs to get on the same page and and then we can feel more confident okay any other old business i do have a question are our ac rooms up and running in this 80 degree week um i don't believe so yet right our cooling rooms i mean that was the whole point right for everyone that got did you hear that question spring break that's a good question this is our first thing to do because right before i left yeah the update on the cooling rooms yeah the feeling rooms are up and running yeah yep there's a spring break except mec sorry yeah nbc has it too right tim they got the 10. yeah they got the 10. we just didn't put the ac in there so okay any other old business any new

153business okay we do have a need for closed session we have a couple of topics um can i get a motion to go into closed session for the appointment employment compensation discipline performance or dismissal of a specific employee for specific employees and for the purpose of let me look at my of litigation or not not litigation and let me find it collective negotiating matters between public body and its employees or the representatives move sec i got you guys roll call i'll take it brown is an eye dr hall aye mr sowalis hi mrs walters mrs galbert vice president aye president albert hi um i think we'd probably be about 45 minutes and then we'll come back uh the only item when we come back is the german opposed