Crete Monee School District 201u COTW Meeting 4/12/22

001okay brown is here mrs galbraith here mrs walters here mr sawalis here dr hall vice president rule here president albrecht sure our mission is to empower each student to positively impact the world for a bright new future okay my mic is on now um terry do we have any public comment no sir did anybody come for public comment okay um okay next up board updates yeah i had a question so it's been brought up twice i know we talked about it the con the census of 2020 right and there we've talked about um the changing of the seven districts so i guess i just want to get the clarification on that on what our responsibility is because i had a conversation with somebody else last week with another attorney trying to figure out what our

002role was in that so i reached out to dr kara to at least talk with our district attorney what is our position i mean what is our responsibility so i should be here yeah i think great here we go the district it is our position that the district does not have an obligation to redistrict at this point in time after the 2020 census um i'll give a little bit of brief background information as to why um the district has seven voting districts that were created pursuant to a court order um that arose out of a litigation matter back in the early 90s okay um and and that is the the foundation of the basis upon which district 201 got voting individual voting districts for its board of education that is different from how voting districts

003are created through a process that is outlined in the school code so specifically section 9-22 of the school code lays out a procedure by which a district can basically voluntarily choose to uh you know with voter approval to have seven different voting districts as opposed to an at-large voting system um section 9-22 of the school code which we just described there does require a redistricting after a you know the annual or the 10-year census right that is not what district 201 has district 201's voting districts were not created per section to section 9-22 of the school code and accordingly district 201 is not obligated to redistrict after a 10-year census like other districts who might have districts who might have voting districts that were created pursuant to that school code procedure so all that is

004to say that no district 201 does not have an obligation to redistrict at this point in time um they just have to make sure you know they they have no obligation under the school code or under the uh court order that was issued back in 1993 they have no specific obligation to do so is that the reason why we have seven districts is because of the court order from 1993 yes so that's why we don't need to re uh do that every time you're after the census that is correct okay but we did redistrict back in 2010 11 after the 2010 census and that was because the population had grown correctly a certain percentage or something to that effect right so the um the court order that was passed in 1993 essentially requires that there

005be uh you know seven voting districts one for each board member um and that two of those districts have a majority of their population be african-american um and then uh that the each district is you know within a certain range you know close in population so i you know i was not personally involved back in 2010 in the redistricting but it's my understanding that yes there had been a change in the populations within the districts and that within the voting districts and so district 201 opted to redistrict as a result of that to ensure you know continued compliance with the court order making sure that there was reasonably equivalent numbers in each of the voting districts all of which is to say that the district is not prohibited from considering or looking at redistricting but

006at this point in time they are not obligated to so so if there if there was if there was accelerated growth like in some other towns kind of prior to 2010 i mean anywhere between 1998 and 2006 there was rapid growth in money and crete and other areas but since then we haven't seen that so as long as we don't see that kind of growth like we see in other towns manhattan new lenox you know in surrounding areas that are a little out further west it's not going to change much right i mean i don't have the demographic information in front of me right but but as a general rule i think that's correct which is that if the if the population numbers which within each individual voting district have not significantly changed such that

007they are you know within uh like 10 of each other then there's no obligation to uh no obligation to redistrict all right thank you and when you guys i'm sorry no when you guys decide basically through that component say yeah we can do it if you want but it's going to be a cost i said no thanks correct it is an expensive undertaking to do that yeah that's my person over here yet i said no thanks and again i don't think the population has grown much i think there's like 21 000 they're about 22 23 000 registered voters and each voting district has about a little over 3 000 you know we which equates up to 21 22 000. so i think that's been consistent over the last many years so i just have one

008question of the the court order said that two of our seven sub-districts must have a majority of african-american voters correct yes whose responsibility is that to make sure that we're abiding by that the court order does not specifically state that the district has an affirmative obligation to you know take steps every certain number of years to ensure that right um so procedurally if somebody you know had reason to believe that that the district was no longer in compliance with that um you know certainly if somebody could conceivably um you know go to the court and see if we're still in compliance with that alternatively if the district had reason to believe that it no longer was in compliance with that there's nothing to prohibit it once again from taking affirmative steps um to to do

009so so once again that's where i'm saying at this point in time there's nothing that creates an obligation for the district to consider redistricting but if it has a reason to believe that it's in the best interests of the district or its compliance with that court order it certainly has the ability to take to make that undertaking so there is no official watchdog on that correct the district has an obligation to comply with the court order but there's no specific procedures in place um uh you know there's no there's no oversight or panel or anything overlooking it should uh like i said should if there's a member of the community that felt that we're no longer in compliance they could try and you know go into court to enforce that or alternatively once again the

010district had reason to believe that it needed to take steps to ensure so what about at that time when that court order was imposed they said at that time they could only come up or with two districts that was considered majority minority districts because of the population but since then just using for example crete i think the population of african americans in crete back then was like 12 i think it's more like 20 25 28 right now so how does something like that come into play so what the court order requires is that at least two of the districts be the majority um you know african-american majority minority districts in terms of how you know if the minority uh percentages have increased in within the community overall um as i read the quarter i don't

011believe that imposes an obligation to change the voting district structure at this point in time the district's obligation is to comply with what the court's order was back in 1993. understood thanks okay thanks for bringing that up i just want to say thanks for doing this because there is a lot of misconception in the community and i think it comes from that whatever that number 9.22 or whatever was it that school code or whatever versus the court order versus rumor and i know mr sawalish was contacted i've been contacted i don't know if other board members were because there was an assumption that after every census you had to take a look at all the sub-districts and supposedly they could all be up for re-election blah blah blah blah blah so and the blah blah

012blah i just can't get into so i'm glad that we're doing this and hopes that it clears it up to both all of us i mean i wasn't clear on it and i know a lot of the community wasn't so thank you for taking the time to put this out and and clarify to the best of our ability how this really works i appreciate it and i appreciate you guys making sure that we did take care of it because i think it is important i think that people then think we're going and we're doing something we shouldn't legally be doing or whatever so again i just think it's great to have this information out there and hopefully we all remember it 10 years down the road okay any other updates from board members okay under

013this agenda item board updates we are going to have a presentation on program changes to the multi-needs program and cara do you want to yeah i'll say a few words um this evening we wanted to share some information with the board as well as our community and our parents that we've invited here this evening regarding some of the changes for our multi-needs program which is our k-5 program which is currently housed at coretta scott school as you know from our previous meetings the teacher and staff shortage has certainly impacted our district especially at the multi-needs program and all year we have been really struggling to make sure that we could provide enough staff along with some aides to help support the classroom setting due to several of the factors we have are needing to make

014some decisions in the best interest of safety for our students in particular to making sure that we can run and sustain a strong program we have found based on our our predictions for staffing for next year that we are going to be running short so our team along with hr mr neil had been talking quite a bit about what are our options for our programming and the best needs of our students for safety when it comes to staffing and so forth so we have talked about this we have met with our teachers there was a parent meeting we want to present this to the board this evening so you know what is going on with the programming and what our future plans are for the program as well you know before we make any staff

015changes at the next board meeting next next week this evening i have invited ellen bilotti to come and she's a director of special ed program to share a little bit more in depth about the the challenges that we've been facing this year some of the decisions that we have made and what our intent is in moving forward for the future of this program ms baloti it's all yours thank you and mr neil and i may be jumping in to give our two cents here and there so please don't mind us thank you so much all right well with a very heavy heart following a process to sustain the multi-needs program we can't hear you yep there we go is that better okay to begin again with a very heavy heart we went through a process

016to sustain the multi-needs program the decision was made to transition the program at the end of this school year for kindergarten through fifth grade to our cooperative speed middle school and high school will remain the same i thank you for the time to explain the process that has occurred first our challenges open positions we have witnessed many concerns through covid and we have seen that we have had a loss of workers in many jobs but those affecting education have been especially challenging from teachers to paraprofessionals to food service to maintenance to everything in between our district and those around us have a diminished workforce filling positions has been an ongoing endeavor since spring and summer currently in the area of special education here we know that we have many paraprofessional positions open as well as

017teachers went unfilled posting for one additional certified staff in the multi-needs program this summer resulted in just two applications and neither had the necessary qualifications regarding the posting for paraprofessionals the applicants there too were limited and many of those did not have even minimal qualifications for the positions those that had were unlicensed but had some college credit day care experience or some other like position i contacted them offered support as they went through the ispy process for licensure that resulted in two more paraprofessionals of course we did advertising indeed reaches many many communities and has been renewed every 30 days since july of course there's our own district website which incidentally also goes to every single staff member and we offered full-time and part-time para professional positions we were able to add two part-time positions

018we hope that this would be successful and we were able to add one person to talala and one person in our multi-needs program at csk the shortages of substitute teachers and substitute paraprofessionals necessary due to the high number of staff six days has been difficult additionally in the program we had resignations and retirement where our substitutes were needed we had one retirement we had four resignations and two paraprofessionals did not return and they didn't notify us till august other step steps that were taken to sustain our program most importantly we looked at our students and many of our kindergartners had minimal school experience because in march 2020 when we moved into virtual learning they were three in march 21 we were brought back into the buildings and many many of our students especially our little

019students stayed virtual so in the kindergarten we added a certified special education teacher into that classroom so that the students had two certified staff as of course the prayer professionals and what occurred was co-teaching again this was due to their limited school experience that we were aware of as they came through our door during the first week of school as the elc students began a few days later our paraprofessionals from the elc kindly came over and provided temporary support as we brought them in for that first week i need to note that the principal the assistant principal and the elementary supervisor were also frequent supports throughout the year in the classroom where there were challenges and shortages of teachers and paraprofessionals we adjusted schedules and we adjusted classrooms to address the student needs in fact

020the teachers elementary supervisor and i created a profile of the multi-needs students in the program supports and services needed as part of our work in team meetings in this last year due to these current challenges and concerns in november an alternate plan was proposed to the teachers for the two other classrooms we discussed the possibility of suggesting that the two classrooms that did not have co-teaching combine and become one of course they would have seen an increase in our classroom size but we would have stayed at the legal limit of 13 and each of these classrooms and multi-needs would have had co-teaching or to certified staff this plan was met with vigorous dismissal by both teachers and some of our parents note the plan was again developed because of our concern for our students this

021takes us to the end of february and march unfortunately we have been unable to secure enough paraprofessionals the paraprofessionals we do have we know that two of them are leaving us in the fall to pursue their education and student teaching we are concerned about our teaching staff as there are many openings in the district and quite frankly it's been a tough year they may have considered moving into one of those open positions in the district the program would not be ending with a full staff this spring as it did not end last spring with a full staff there have been copious emails from the staff and also from parents regarding the challenges this year expressing their concerns which please know we shared too there was optimism as we ended last spring semester that we would

022find the needed supports for this program as we began the year we were optimistic that we would have that increase in staffing especially paraprofessional staffing that we needed we lost a speech path in august we were fortunate to be able to fill that position in the fall we were optimistic that was what was going to happen with our positions in the fall there was optimism last spring there was optimism in the summer and there was optimism as the year started but there isn't optimism this fall unfortunately we now know the reality is that we cannot sustain this program in the district we needed to establish a transitional location for the program we contacted speed and they were able to accept the cooperate into our cooperative building this program speed has been our cooperative for many

023many years we've enjoyed that partnership of course transportation will be provided just as it is now and the location will change but the students goals services supports that they see in their ieps that transitions with the students next to our transition steps with our families and our students and staff the difficult task to share the definitive plan with staff and parents occurred on thursday both sharing this change before sharing this change it was important that the actual plan was developed and the reason the inability to sustain the program due to staffing was provided an invitation was sent out for the virtual meeting on thursday and 11 of our parents were able to attend another invitation was sent last friday to attend this board meeting where the transition of the program would again be shared the

024parents have also been invited to our speed cooperative on either wednesday or thursday of this week to meet the principal and of course see the building i realized the notice was short but speed is on spring break next week and knowing some parents would want to visit as soon as possible these dates were set another date will be set for those who could not attend after speed returns from spring break iep meetings to change the location of the program will begin on april 21st and go through april 25th the invitations for those meetings began to go out yesterday as in all iep meetings we will find a mutually agreeable time between the home team and the school team to make this change we will be respectful of the parents time in these meetings as always

025that changes to the iep or the location the serving school as well as the instructional minutes at csk which are 1725 will change to the speed instructional minutes of 1800 remember that our students at csk eat at their own tables in the general education lunchroom and and some do eat in their classrooms too but all students will be provided transportation as i mentioned car riders this year as every other year may choose to change their mode of transportation if they wish the district to transport parents will need to register at both the district and at speed both of which are virtual communication will be sent out to explain how to register on speed's website and of course our website here and it will also the communication will include information regarding the school hours at speed

026as well as their calendar future planning will begin when school resumes in the fall there'll be a committee form to review programs and services district-wide we have a continuum of services here in the district from three years of age through 22 years of age both in district and with our partners out of the district within the continuum we will also review a satellite option thank you for your time would you have any questions i have a question um uh my my excuse me for my ignorance maybe i just missed this but it sounds like like have we been talking about this okay so then it sounds as if if no and then i'm not the only one then it sounds like this decision has already been made and you all are just informing us that

027this is going to happen or i don't i'm trying i'm kind of confused with this so so the question is how many teachers do we currently have right now it's a four or five we have three um multi-needs teachers and our co-teachers are our two resources i'm sorry no disrespect though but i need my question answered first yeah sorry no i know yeah um is this a done deal or are you all informing us or are you asking us are we is this still up for discussion that's what happens so we can probably pick you up as well and miss mr neal you can add to this as we we've had this issue all year we we know that and what comes up is when it comes to staffing as you know in february and

028march is staffing month where we start taking a look at our numbers for next year and we start trying to figure out if we how our programs look and in our conversations uh with mr neil as well as taking a look at our programming we were seeing that this program was going to be again deficient in staff members it has been a hard year this year and we were concerned about having another harder year next year for certainly our students making sure that they had enough aids in the classroom as well as you know the extra work with our teachers with with the stress level without having enough aids in the classroom to support that and while i don't know if you want to add to that about the staffing piece and what we've been

029looking at well i don't have a whole lot to add other than you know we we started trying to staff for this year back about january february of uh 21. and we as as ellen pointed out we were optimistic that we would be able to fill all positions prior to the start of the school year over the course of this year we have suffered a shortage of between probably about 20 and 35 teacher assistance district-wide which is a very significant shortage of people we have pulled teacher assistance from other programs including shutting down some general education programs to staff this program to make sure it was covered so we have been discussing this all year it has been uh to kind of address dr hall's question a little bit um it has been in the

030fyi a couple of times throughout the year i believe once was in november and then again i can't remember the second time there was more information in last week's fyi as well spelling out the problems and explaining that we had significant shortage in staffing in this program and while we were trying to meet the needs of this one as well as all other special education programs throughout the district we were just becoming very concerned about our ability to fully staff this program as we went forward right now special education positions i believe we had four or five that went unfilled this year teaching positions yes so we're already short not just in multi-needs but in other programs so we we are looking district-wide at all programs to try to correct as much of this as

031possible and and and get ourselves turned around so we can get the staffing problem corrected so i guess my question is has this decision has has this decision been made or are you all informing us because as you know i work at a school and we had a hard time staffing our our building as well so should we send the kids to crete that's kind of frustrating well the the problems that we run this time of year if we wanted to play this out is it's it's april we may be looking at more than a couple positions to replace in that program and if we're going into june we don't have we have to reserve our spot with speed or we lose it like we did last year so that that was some of our

032concerns you know i just you know there's no saying that desperate times take desperate measures to solve these problems and it sounds like we just gave up and you know and and again this this is you know i read some of the parents letters very very detailed very labor intense a lot of fervor uh was involved with doing research with this and and it just seemed like we just taken again i'm not the pro at this but it seems like we just taken for lack of a better phrase the easy way out and you're saying we posted for these positions nobody bought into it did we take measures like possibly putting a bonus or a stipend or anything like that you know anything like that to draw a candidate in it doesn't wow that's what

033i i don't know i don't i don't know i'm just asking the question that's the issue we can't do because of the cma well that's what i said i'm just asking a question that's all i'm just asking a question trying to get the minds you know we got to do more than just think out the box here it's thinking way out here so i'm saying did we take every measure we could up to this point because it sounds like as dr hall alluded to that this is a done deal and lio you you stated a couple times that it was an fyi fyi for the board but nothing to the extent that our director said putting things in chronological order did it ever come to the board in such a magnitude so i'm just appalled

034i'm i'm somewhat disappointed how this has played out and as far as i'm just one board member here i will not stop and again thinking outside the box and even further i don't know again about this program and how how speed interact and all of that other than what i just heard our directors say those teachers at speed that teach this program are they only going to teach our students here that we're sending over there or they are their other students because it's it's amazing how we took mec it seemed like overnight we got a new program for them new building and bam here we are so which is a good thing and i commend dr cosman at least for driving that process and why can we not have that same rigor to take this

035home and give our students what they need and how how come we could provide a bonus where is it written in the contract that you could that we couldn't provide a bonus for a hard to fill position or something to that effect or even talk to the you i mean because the union to say hey maybe i mean i've seen other districts do it so it's not impossible to do i i don't know i don't i don't yeah when you said you tried everything like you tried the norm of what you typically do if you can't feel a position that's what it sounds like to me i didn't hear anything different i didn't hear anything creative to garnish and harness the staff that we need to teach this program or why can't we keep people

036that's the that's the bigger question to me as well because as you know people don't necessarily quit jobs they quit leaders so there's something about that that makes them quit what's going on because we're saying that this person left and that person left and this per then that's telling me that there's something going on to where they don't again i say it again they don't quit jobs they quit leaders i'm not saying you per se or whatever but who whatever or whoever that they're involved with directly so and i would just like to add we're talking about from what i hear what i see the letters that i've received and the board members have received from parents and even talking to our superintendent this is a highly successful program highly successful and taught at a

037highly successful school and i mean we should go out on a limb and and bring to the board here are the options these are all the things that we are looking to do to keep this program where it is keep it going not reasons to move forward and put it somewhere else lyle just is there i mean setting kind of contract limitations aside i mean is there a market that you could offer for these positions that would fill them or are there other dynamics in the marketplace that just there's a limitation on the number of of these type teachers with these types of credentials and paraprofessionals as far as teachers the the there has been an increasing difficulty finding special education teachers in recent years and part of that is changes in federal law and

038how teachers are certified that we can no longer use emergency licensed staff they have to be fully licensed in order for us to use them in a special ed program that's funded by federal funds so that has reduced some of the opportunities we've had to be creative with licensing and getting teachers on board the other issue is you know just simply having the license isn't always enough because different programs have different needs so you have to be able to have the training that goes into being successful in that program so as we have we were able to have three teachers in the program out of four which we were able to manage with our numbers the bigger issue has been the teacher assistant numbers and that is that is a system-wide issue i don't have

039a dollar amount but the districts that i talked to were having to go in the 20 to 25 an hour range which is almost double what we are paying according to our contract right now now the contract is in negotiation depending on how that comes out that may help alleviate some of that problem but just having the teachers isn't enough in a program such as this i believe we had 12 teacher aid positions and four teacher positions and throughout the year we had five teacher aides who were in that program we lost two during the years so we're down to three at the end out of twelve and we've moved other aids from other parts of the district but we are short 30 plus everybody every program was short so again can we can we

040offer bonuses absolutely if we can negotiate them with unions we can offer them um there's a there's a process for that uh we can uh you know we can do whatever we want we want to negotiate with the union we can we have advertised far and wide we have reached out nationwide for teachers teacher candidates it is just a very hard market right now i'm not saying it's impossible but i'm saying it's very hard and we were able to keep the program staffed this year we do have some staff members who are looking at other positions in the district i don't want to say any more publicly and that will leave it even more positions to fill for next year and and that's what we had to reach out and ask if there was an

041option for the co-op to help us out for a year or two as we try to rebuild the staff for the program it is our intent to bring this program back into the district as soon as possible but we can't wait till the last minute to decide we need the co-op we have to tell them ahead of time so they can be prepared so i want to ask the question can the teachers from speed come here uh no if speed would choose to satellite the classes on on our in our campus that would be absolutely fine we can do that that's just one option in my opinion and i i did instruct uh i did instruct ellen to to speak with the co-op and let them know we're prepared to satellite their programs here yes

042until we can again these are desperate times these are abnormal times everybody know that everybody has challenges and again i commend the district for being able to do the things that they have done to get us to this point with all the other issues that you have discussed so here we're talking about this moment right here when's the last time we had this many parents or teachers or staff here at a board meeting so this is telling me this is very important this is very important so it's very important to all of our public right there and possibly some staff members as well and it's very important to the board and it's very important to this district that we keep this program going so once we have um held a spot with speed can we

043can we back out of that well that's i was going to ask ellen uh what is the grace period that we have to hold that in case comes august we have no teachers we really need to move forward with what we are doing with speed because they have to plan and have planned just like we have to plan every year for our program do they give us a deadline though i mean are we looking at june july oh goodness no because they have to staff the program so what because i was just wondering if we could continue you know our search and maybe offer the bonus or something and try to fill those positions you know what i can contact steve to speak tomorrow and i'm happy to do that but they are a school

044district they are school district also and so they need to do their planning just as we did our planning and and that's the challenge that all school districts are having well that's that's what makes us warriors we're different so then i guess i would suggest if we can then um talk to speed i'll call them tomorrow and see if we can continue to fill those spots but have that as a backup obviously um i mean i get it number one is safety of our kids so we do have to have the proper staffing but clearly it is a very important you know topic here so i think it is something we have to give 110 so please know that this decision was not made quickly it was made very slowly we took steps during this

045year to try and increase staffing to try and remediate through co-teaching etc our teachers got tired as did our paraprofessionals it was a rough year we can't i don't think i don't think anybody is questioning that and i commend the rigor and the hard work that our staff has put forth thus far we're saying here's our problem and what can we do to fix it we're saying that the answer that you gave in my opinion is not good enough so my question is can we understand you have to make a commitment to speed to reserve space but can we accelerate and see if we could accelerate i mean can we pull back out of speed if in august first we figure out a way to have the program my concern is is you know they

046are staffing for our students well and that may be there there may be some financial penalty to the district to doing that but i think we should explore that and i think as a board i think as a board not only you our director i think we need some more muscles i think we need to put a directive towards our superintendent to be your backup or be the for the front runner here i guess i have a question though i have other questions too but you just made me think of one immediately they're staffing for our children why can't we staff for our children i mean where are they getting the people from am i i'm sorry it just dawned on me i don't mean to be a smart aleck but when you're saying they're

047staffing for our children how are they getting people and we're not is it because they're they're paying them a different what is how are they getting the people we ca we went to speed and said can you provide this at every right around now every end of february beginning of march we provide to speed the number of our students that are returning the existing students that are returning from all the feeder schools and they had to look at their numbers to see if they could take in our new students and they were they are able to and i'm sorry you just said that we couldn't back up because they're going to be staffing for our students which means they're they're making sure they have enough for our kids and these kids and these kids and

048these kids i don't know where they all come from that that's that's not here or there but if they're upping their staff somehow they're getting staffed because they must be we're giving them high i don't know that they're hiring staff they told us that they could take in our students i think we need to look at those guys so what i think what we've decided here of what we've heard here is uh ms bellotti is going to contact speed tomorrow yes she's going to find out what's the latest deadline and even so what's the penalty for us to pull out in august september if uh if we find that um you know we meanwhile can we up the antenna the other questions the other questions with mr brown your muscles need to be involved up

049front doctor cognitive yeah i mean let's at this point look the other thing i want to build on mr brown i haven't done yet a little bit is one of the things that you brought up was one of the questions is still could they can they teach here what's the difference i mean now the program and the kids are i said can they come here i mean we're missing that i understand can we hire people but why can't they come here but the other part is mr brown is right and i mean i'm and i'm telling you right now i'm sorry to say this but a couple months ago parents were here right they were frustrated and unfortunately thursday they had a parent meeting with someone they're frustrated with why hasn't i crime up the

050ladder to to address that i mean i i mean look at this i mean there's you're right i mean dr hall brought it up mr brown this is cannot be a done deal in this moment i understand timing everybody understands the respect level of telling a parent august first i'm sorry i have nowhere to go or telling them now but you can do that one if you've done all your homework like we've discussed but two i'm going to tell you now that the relationship that these parents have with the district is not good i mean the communication part of it is terrible and i'm i'm and i'm telling you the word communication in this district is awful it's all the way around like top to bottom and now we have parents here and the communication

051here is is again two three months ago we had parents here complaining you know about what's going on with the director and now here we're in the same spot and that person's letting all the what all the parents thought i mean come on the seven of us are sitting here going you know what do we do you know and now we're caught in in the middle of this and and here we are mr brown asked it what do we do dr hall asked it what do we do like did we do we exhaust everything um have we even talked about any of these of bringing them in and we talked about anything about adding the stipends or whatever if we can i mean miss roop is in a negotiation right now for uh acme has

052she been approached you no i am i'm sorry miss gilbert has anybody been brought up in in that meeting that that's what we're talking about that's the thing we haven't gotten sorry i can't really disclose anything but we're not to that we've only had like two meetings and the first was to tell us what we were doing so i mean again my question here is what are they doing to get teachers that we aren't doing number two when were these parents informed that it was ending have there been talks all along that this was a possibility okay unfortunately i can't let you um if if somebody else decides but i don't have that authority well i was i was going to ask could we go a little bit outside of our regular procedure now that

053we've had a discussion to let parents say something or i think we need to hear what what they've gone through i mean and what are we going to do if if they end up having to go to speed what are we going to do to integrate these children who only know this environment are we just going to show up the first day and throw them in a classroom i sure as hope not because that will be extremely traumatic i mean what is our plan if we have to go to speed how are we going to bring these children along that they're going to a different location i'm so i mean those i have more questions but those are my major ones and i really really really want to know how they're getting teachers and we're

054not yeah well i see my i guess my confusion is you just said that you continuously uh stated that they needed to prepare to staff and then when asked the question how are they getting teachers and where not you say well you don't know if they're getting teachers so you don't know if they need to staff or do they need the staff what i guess they assured us that they could welcome our students and so that would imply that they had the staff available so they don't need to get any other staff so that means that they can we can talk to them and you said you're gonna call i get that so you're gonna call to see about making sure that we can wait because is it a matter of if another district comes

055along with more kids or that they have to go out and hire because they have to go out and hire then we need to do the same thing so well go back to your original question yes this is the first time we're discussing this right true that's that's one thing i wanted to say i didn't want to throw anybody under the bus but my disappointment was that we get emails saying we're informed that the board knows and we didn't i saw it on facebook friday night i was going to email but i know that sometimes i do miss stuff so i wanted to make sure i went back to reread everything to see that i didn't miss it i know we have we have talked we had parents here like bill said and problems were

056because we were short staffed so i mean we we were aware that we are short staffed so i do understand that but we it never was stated that we would most likely have to eliminate the whole program and so i felt a little blindsided and i and and that's why i didn't answer any emails because i i just wasn't prepared to say anything yet because we hadn't had the discussion maybe we were going to invite everybody here tonight but i asked that we did that for the parents and um thank you for coming out i'm glad to see this many parents but um yeah so i'm just a little disappointed in the process but nelson if we could go a little bit outside of procedures i think we could either have a second public comment

057now or we could do one after all of the administrative updates i think that the parents got some answers or some feelings and some of the things that we've all brought up and i would like to be able to hear those no no i'm saying is the public comments should probably put in if well i think that we've made them sit here this far let's so do board members have any other questions for ellen or or or lyle or for dr dr cara on the presentation no no no if not then um any parents who would like to speak we have our kind of oh well we need we do need have we do have a procedure we do have a procedure we do have a procedure for public comments so let's still follow that

058but you need to just fill this out take one and then and then hand it back to me and so we have your name okay just just put your name down so and maybe they also want to tell them about repetitive questions you may want to tell them about repetitive questions yeah repetitive of course they may be asking i think one person is going to speak for all right and who's speaking okay okay and she is jillian going to speak for everyone is that that you want to speak to okay can you guys hear me okay no no can you hear me yes okay please bear with me i was not prepared to speak tonight and i'm very emotional about this matter so please bear with me while i get my thoughts together here i

059want to start off by saying that my name is jillian summers i was born and raised in crete i went graduated from crete money school district in 2002. i left for a while went to arizona and returned home to raise my children here i have three children two of whom are in the district one of whom is in the multi-needs program at csk he is a six-year-old first grader with autism and he started his school career here at the elc the programming has been phenomenal my child is growing and developing and flourishing and we have just been thrilled the staffing issues this year have been hard the teachers have struggled but i want you to know they've made it work the programming has been fantastic my child is making progress he loves to go to

060school he feels pride in his school please bear with me because i'm very emotional here so the thought of that being taken away from him because of a lack of staffing when we've had a lack of staffing all year is very disheartening to speak to miss belotti and her recent decisions i received an email last monday is that when you guys all received it last monday and we got a letter home in our children's folders on tuesday requesting that we'd be at a parent meeting at 4 30 pm on thursday so we got three days notice with no warning or description of what this meeting would be about we logged on to google thinking that it was discussions about programming for next year or changes and so unfortunately your children are no longer going to

061be able to be educated in our district you're going to have to go to speed cooperative that is the only placement available because your children has a special need and is in the multi-news program and we cannot serve them until they come back to sixth grade obviously most of us parents were blindsided we had no preparation or warning of this even have time to think of questions and the meeting ended rather quickly with us being told that meetings would be arranged for us to meet with speed as soon as next week and that iep meetings would be happening in the next two weeks to change placement i also wish to share with you i'm not a expert in special education law or procedures but i've had to learn a lot in my child's short life

062because unfortunately when you have a child with special needs everything is a fight um taking an entire group of children because they have a disability and placing them out of district is for sure against the law they have ieps which are individual education plans which means that each child's needs their social needs their psychosocial needs their emotional needs their academic needs are addressed based on them so to take an entire group of children and move them out of district to another program just because they have a disability is not only against the law it's segregation i'm sorry bear with me i know you had questions there are three classrooms three multi-needs classrooms at csk the children there have lunch with the general education application my son in particular loves to take walks and so he's

063with neurotypical children all the time at school if he goes to speed there is no exposure to neurotypical children from my research they serve children from preschool up to age 22. i don't know how you feel but would you want your six-year-old in school with a 22 year old who has behavioral problems i am very concerned that our amazing district who thus far has served my children phenomenally wants to move them out of district just because he has autism so i plead with you the board who i was told on friday with a call to miss belotti that you were aware of this and had approved of this i plead with you to please find a different solution my child deserves to be educated in his neighborhood with his neighbors with neurotypical children so that

064he can learn and grow and prosper as he's been doing speed serves children with very low incidence disabilities i'm a nurse so i feel confident sharing some of this with you schizophrenia for one children with behavioral problems cerebral palsy so my my child who is incredibly smart and gifted but non-verbal is going to go to school with these children and learn from these children and those will be his peers and his role models instead of the the neurotypical children he's attending school with now i know most of you are parents so i i hope you put yourself in my shoes for a minute and try to understand the difficulty that we're facing a lot of our parents here feel just the same as i do because just because our child needs a little bit of

065extra help they don't belong in the district anymore and please tell me why they can take three classrooms full of children at speed but we can't get one more teacher here or a few more aides here i don't understand um i have been told that most of the teachers at speed work on contracts i don't know like for a year or you know i'm not educated on on that particular issue but i just don't understand if it's a lack of staffing why can't we work harder to fix that so an entire group of children is not segregated from their home district if my child was appropriate for speed that would be indicated on his iep and given the fact that we just had an iep meeting a month ago and our team of professionals teachers

066therapists and my son's parents agreed that that replacement is far too restrictive for his learning so now all of a sudden i'm expected we are expected to line up like ducks and sign off on this and send our children out of district because miss blotti says so also i did request information about this in writing for miss blotti both verbally and via email and was told to come here and this is where i would get my answers so do any of you have any questions for me well i just want to thank you you said that school year you graduated i think you might be a classmate of my daughter kimberly brown i don't know if you know her okay and she's a special uh she's a teacher with a special ed endorsements and she

067have talked to me over many years in numerous cases and and the heart and passion she has for kids so i hear your passion and i really i'm empathetic sympathetic the whole nine yards thank you and again i want to reiterate we should not find reasons not to do something we should find reason to do it exactly and it feels as though our kids have just spent i mean to be honest our children and multi-needs are the most vulnerable in the district and so i don't understand why of all of the changes that could happen because of a lack of staffing it's our children that suffer first i moved to crete from beecher because they wanted to send my child out of district to school and when i came to crete and interviewed with miss

068testa at the elc i was told crete educates our own your child will have a place here so please imagine how i'm feeling that all of a sudden i'm being told my child no longer has a place here please consider other options i will continue to advocate for my child's rights determining placement for the next four years when it should be done annually and based on a child's individual needs is not okay and i'll keep fighting so i hope that you as as our board members are elected officials use your powers to please change this and make sure that my child can stay all of our children can stay in their district well we here again if i'm sure all of the board members again i don't want to speak for them but what i've

069heard from our my colleagues here your child is as well as the rest of the kids that's in this program has a position here thank you thank you very much jillian thank you very much for your time for sharing your heart you can give it to me hello can you hear me my name is lasham graham and i have two children in the district i've had three so i recognized one of the principles for balmoral my curtis graham went there and he graduated from the middle school and he's over at marion he's a sophomore there and i have two children that are still in the district and one is bust out to speed right now for behavioral issues not ashamed of it at all he is adhd and the district made the decision that they

070could no longer deal with his behavioral issues when he was in kindergarten and i didn't know enough when i was dealing with him and so i allowed those things to happen and what i do know as a parent of a sixth grader that's been dealing with speed since he was in kindergarten is that they do not and i can say this with assurance they do not have the staffing at speed to accommodate our kids my child is in sixth grade he's had five teachers this school year at speed i am very familiar with both programs independents as well as elc i have members that are teachers in the elc that's a part of my fraternity sorority and they often speak to me about the challenges that go on at elc i can absolutely tell you

071that when i speak to the vice principal at speed she talks to me about the challenges now i have my ieps at speed and i have a mediator from this district that meets me over there and one of the challenges that i often speak about is getting him back to his home school because fee cannot accommodate his safety christian's been beat up on the bus twice this school year i filed a complaint about his safety on the bus coming from 527 regent road in university park and going over there miss belotti and i are very familiar with each other as well as the social workers that are involved from this district that travel to that district to deal with my child my daughter is layla graham layla is eight layla is non-verbal layla is different

072from my christian because my christian can tell you what's going on with him he can speak for itself he can fight for herself she cannot she has a rare genetic condition called ring 18. she has developmental delays as well as global delays she started at ulc when i brought her to elc i was nervous i was crying every day because she was coming from a daycare that loved her that picked her up hugged her all the time and for the first time she was a big girl she was coming to the big school and she was coming for two and a half hours and it was tough to make the decision to allow her to even come to elc as a parent that works every day because i needed to figure out where she was

073going to be for the rest of the day right but i made it work because i knew that this was the best opportunity for her and so when she originally was getting ready to go to kindergarten she was supposed to start her kindergarten days at balmoral and that was the year that they moved the program to csk so layla's been a part of it since they transitioned that first year and from miss kolash to ms vilas this year they have loved on my daughter my daughter is non-verbal but she will tell you what she wants i had an iep on one day on wednesday and then on thursday they told me the program was being eliminated from the district now my surprise came because i've been asking all year long about assistive devices for her

074she's non-verbal but she can pick up your phone navigate it no matter what brand it is she can turn on damn tiger no matter what tv is online she can find peppa pig no matter what computer is on and i'm amazed at it because she's smart she's smart and what i've been asking from the district is not something hard i've been asking for her to be considered for assistive devices and what i was told in my iep meeting was the speed could accommodate but speed had a waiting list and they were full that was a wednesday keep this in mind and so mrs graham we're going to explore other options for layla layla will have her pick of schools to go to that can accommodate her being evaluated for an assisted device now keep in

075mind an assistive device is something that a technology department will evaluate your child for to see if that device can speak for you programs for you so you can communicate right i was told that speed was full on a wednesday and that she would have many options to choose from now what most districts don't know is when you are sending your child out of district it costs money and so some districts when you're sending them out is 60 000 per child to send them out bust them make sure they are lunt have lunch breakfast the money that we would spend as a district to send out kindergarten through fifth grade and make sure that their bus to and from school surely we can accommodate keeping our kids here even if it's to the point where

076we may have to bring the kids to this building put our children and our teachers emerge classrooms but figure something out because like i said on a wednesday i was told that the program was completely full and then on the thursday we all got notified hey it's not full for our students because we've already negotiated their room impossible because i know and i don't want you guys to be confused i know that that district does not have the staff available to accommodate all of our kids they would be putting out ads just as well as we would to accommodate these kids just speak to any of the principals over there and they will tell you about the challenges they've had for 2020 2021 as well as 2022 and speak to one of your district children

077who is christian graham who is 12 who has had five teachers this school year alone and he's 12 and he is a member and a student of this district that's bust out to that school district and don't forget about the safety issues that i have expressed that have not been addressed when it comes to busing our children from that school district to back over here it is a problem and they will tell you they will put security on the buses because you'll have flossmoor homewood markham chicago heights because they have oh my gosh i want to say eight to ten filtering districts they go into that co-op so please keep that in mind thank you thank you wilshire thank you very much got it thank you hi my name is sarah chapman and i have

078two special needs kids one is over at balmoral he's a fourth grader who has multiple issues uh to the point where if the classroom he currently isn't it well the currently he's in if he acted up he would have to go to the multi-needs program because he is that bad and then i have my daughter lillian who is a seven-year-old in miss kolash's class currently she has failing sight from a genetic disorder called captain five it's a rare one she is a medium functioning autism and she has adhd amongst other problems including a speech delay both these kids without the option of having the multi-needs program would possibly then be having to go to speed which i am uncomfortable with especially given my son's aggression issues he's a he's got dmdd which is a mood

079disruptive disorder he's got odd he's got a conduct disorder he's got severe adhd and he has a high functioning autism that being said this meeting is more about my daughter's current class with i have noticed a huge improvement she absolutely loves the structure of the school she loves the fact that she has a particular uniform she has to wear to go to school it's part of her set schedule and without that she thinks it's a regular day and then you have other problems because and she's like uncooperative my question here is have we talked to the local colleges that have graduate programs for special education and seen if any of those students would be interested in internship for the paralegal or paraprofessional positions because that would not only give us the staffing but it would

080also give them the experience they need very obviously for these kids i really don't know what else to say because i'm a little frustrated i have talked to multiple people about this i have talked to miss pilate before i don't know if i brought up the internship thing or not but i don't know if that would be a solution because i don't i don't really know what they need to have to do you know the pera but i figured that might be a place to look at least for that um so more of a suggestion i really don't have too much more to say so thank you thank you very much sarah i'm well thank you all for asking my name is devlin bowman can you all hear me yes my name is devlin boatman

081and my son is also he has he's come through the um elc program and now he's uh he had miss coalition now he also has miss bailless um my son is a very very happy young man okay just like his father he the stories that he comes home with every day telling me about the teachers the kids in the classroom it's just ecstatic as a parent to hear that your kid is having fun and also learning in the classroom okay um the reason that i'm standing here today is because fortunately i had the opportunity i did 10 years at school district 163 which is next door park forest in chicago heights and i also had the privilege of working for speed okay and i know the ins and outs okay i'm not going to sit

082here in bad speed but i'm also going to say speed is not a safe place for the young ladies and young men that are in this in a program that's here at crete okay and i am very i'm nervous and i'm very upset at the same time because i know how the system works when it comes to special ed okay if there's a classroom right now that's available at speed this was something that was done months ago months ago because right now i know for a fact that the list for speed just for one kid is absolutely full so from that being said i feel like the head of the direct the head of the special ed gave up on our children very very early and the fact that we found out about those days

083and you give the the answer of coming to a meeting that's how you give the communication that is very very bad for business and our job as parents and we put our kids in the hands of the teachers because we trust them when our kids are at school the teachers are the parents and when we trust our kids to come here and we put our kids hands and our trust in our feelings with the teachers and the administrators here and we trust for you all to have communication with us about certain things when it comes down to the curriculum and what's going on we expect answers we don't expect for you to just blow us off like you know these are these are our kids our job is to protect them and make sure that

084they're coming to school to learn and getting the proper material and that's why i'm sorry you all i'm a little nervous but i'm very very at the same time i'm very upset you understand i'm very upset because just like these other parents that are over here we have our faith and our trust and administration here and when we're not getting the truth from the administration who can we trust who can we honestly trust thank you all thank you thanks bill good evening to all the board members and all the parents here um i just want to say um the multi-needs program has been wonderful um i have two boys um they both have autism and my oldest i was gonna read this but i think i'm just gonna my oldest has been in the multi-needs

085for four years and he has done wonderful his younger brother started kindergarten this year he's doing very well he's very happy to go to school every day and i was hoping he would follow his brother's footsteps and stay in the program for the next four years for him as well again i just want to say the multi-needs is an exceptional program with dedicated teachers the teachers have done wonderful this year they've done the best that they can for our children and i'm trying to think what else i wanted to say it's just been a difficult year for for both of my boys returning to school after the pandemic wearing the mask adjusting to the routines and so forth but overall they were very happy and i really hope that this program can continue not only

086for my youngest son my oldest is going into middle school but for all the other students that would benefit from this program that's all thank you thank you anyone else well thank you all very much for coming tonight about my daughter graduating in 2002 it wasn't kimberly it was kyla so i apologize i don't want nobody coming back and say hey okay it was kyla i know i had a daughter graduating around there but that's awesome i think kyla better be getting a text message i know so so thank you all for coming out and giving us your feedback so it's very important to us so let me just say one thing first of all i wanted to say thank you for sharing your stories with us these are individual stories that about your children

087that we all hold dear we will go back to the drawing board and uh we're going to go back to speed to see how long they can extend that offer it's a reservation so to speak it'll give us some time to find out if we can do a satellite program to see if they can offer something here in our district uh to see if they have staff available to help us with that we are in the middle of negotiations with our um our non-certified staff we're working to get the wages up so that we can attract more people because that is a problem we cannot find them and they are going to places that can uh can pay them more money we're we're we're losing them to amazon actually and that's where some of these

088people are going so we we do recognize this and the board recognizes the board that's on my negotiating team does recognize us so we are at the table beginning to come or hopefully to come to an end before the school year to finish that contract negotiation once we have that we have some leverage to play with to going out and attract some people so if we can use this time to buy ourselves a little bit more wheel groom so we can go back explore these other options before we you know go in that last direction we're going to do that we want to work with our families so but you know i also want to say it has been frustrating for our staff as well as us and i know you as well um so

089we are in this together we haven't given up and uh we will continue to work into the last minute until um we have to make a final decision so give us forward yes like some of this because you know like other people when their time's up well you know what it's interesting that you say that uh the district is on top of that we are having uh we're going to be working with the principal next year we are going to be having a special position for recruiting of staff because that is a problem for us and we're being proactive to go out there and look for that right now we we've got a process that does af post covid things look different what people want is different people want more flexibility we're having to go

090back and figure out how are we going to track the new employee of today and and how we're going to keep them so we are looking at this uh you know really in depth as far as this and it is a systemic problem so we are aware of it and we we do take this very seriously it's tricky but we are devoting a staff member to specifically look at that for us next think i speak year everybody here i want to thank the board member for stepping up because if it wasn't for you guys on the board right now this decision was done it was made i just want you to know that now that we know we we all make notes so that we remember to ask her i'll send her an email and

091say hey can you make sure this is on the internet that was my question who's responsible for having informed you of just besides this usually comes through me for my from my fyis through this this was a process that we went through who's responsible for keeping you informed you know as a board member i don't want at this point you know we have some internal things to talk about to make the process better by the way yes and i can tell you we have a dynamic superintendent and we have some gaps i assure you that but let's deal with what's on the plate right now is to keep our kids two thank you thank you thank you for coming you know we're not hiding it we're definitely not hiding one more thing the one thing

092that terrifies me now is that they were renting in nature they committed to a huge investment to me in this town and sent our grandchildren to the school district keep it take pride in that because i thank you very much folks uh okay uh next up is administrative updates and with that i'll turn it over to ken mr cerma thanks good evening board good evening dr karen to the public too um there are three items that i'm going to discuss that'll be part of the business uh for next week the first one is acceptance and approval of first students for provide special education transportation services at the district's discretion for 22 23 23 24 and 24 25 our contract with american school bus cook illinois was up so we went through a process an rfp

093process what well that's all right okay i'll take cream and sugar though uh but we went through a process and there were two bids submitted one was safely transportation the other one was first student and so uh first student was after comparing apples to apples oranges oranges a little bit of discussion with each company first student was the low bid so you will see that uh in the information that i provided you it was for a three-year contract so you'll see the rates there it is an increase however what i have talked to the bus companies about is that i want them to raise the driver rates in those uh for their drivers up to 26 an hour uh from their normal rate of about 21 an hour so that they can attract drivers and

094so that we can have our routes covered because they're having the same issues for staffing as all of us are i was going to say that's the next step of this it is it really is is bus drivers we're not going to talk about that well between quite frankly as as we all know we all drive and you know the price of gas right so between that and and also uh the the wages uh so that's why you'll see the increase now the good news is we get reimbursed approximately 81 percent of that amount through the claim and all of that uh the governor has continued to fund that i just saw the latest come out of their budget so that looks good so this will be coming to the board uh next week so

095this would be on the special ed side first student already does the regular ed side so that is continuing i will tell you i've been very pleased with first student i know we did have some issues years ago with them however they have changed their entire management staff there and so our work with them has gone really really well and they have responded really well they are having shortage of drivers i know that that will continue i think i think it's going to continue for another year but i think this will help in raising the rates also who's doing our special education it is cook illinois which is american school bus they did not submit a bid at all we also supplement that with hopewell transportation they have the small vans so you know a

096lot of our elc elc kids are on the small bands and that hopewell is actually if we remember this the world was acquired by a first student right hopeful was acquired by first students so uh but they still operate as a separate entity uh but just are under you know the guys of first students so we will continue with hopewell also too so hopa will continue because they do do some regular ed too and they also do some of our homeless families they transport some of those also so we'll continue to work with them and their contract will continue that's not up yet but for uh you know so first student will be replacing um american school bus so it wasn't because there are any issues or anything they just did not come back with

097a bid do it on the small one they didn't come back right but we didn't really yeah okay okay bye now yeah they didn't come back with a bid so that's that's okay all right um if if you don't mind i'm gonna i'm gonna come back to insurance rate because that's going to be a little bit more complicated if i can let me go just to the certificate of payment number two that you'll see there well i just have a question oh i'm sorry no worries no no worries at all if i can find it in the document but it was a question on the increase with the kindergartens it was it was a like a 47 increase from from this year to the next year i think they gave us three years or so

098yeah i did put in there three years of rates i mean right and i was just wondering what drove that increase all the other grades were you know three and four five percent which is reasonable but that kindergarten was a 47 increase from one year to the next and then it leveled off and three four percent increase year on end after that yeah it's the pre-kindergarten because that's only a a two-tier rate uh a two-tier route um and so the other ones are kind of a three-tier so you can charge a little bit less for the other one so why did it go i think it was like from 202 to 297 yeah 297 yeah because it's just a double rate and then you know you have to guarantee six hours and so that's that's

099part of the contract is you guarantee six hours so by doing the am pm you're not guaranteeing the six hours so you got to charge a little bit more but on the other three you're able to bundle those together and get the six hours in so that's how you get to that number but was the last contract drafted up like that as well it was such a big increase i'm still still confused i don't know i'd have to look at the other contract to see mr brown i i do so i can get that information i mean it kind of stood out to me as a it really stood out to me it does it does it stands out to me too you know on that but but again i think it's when you when

100you started bundling these things and everything uh but i you know it doesn't it is a pretty big increase on the pre-k side um but again i'll you don't have to answer now if you can bring back to the board the regular board meeting just kind of a little clarification and go back and look at history yeah well we'll have it next week too but i'll put it in the fyi also okay i can do that appreciate it yep thanks sure um the uh certificate of payment that you'll see is just is for forty eight thousand one hundred fifty dollars that's the rl soho for renovation work that's being done at talala and elc so as you can see and have probably heard tonight uh we have some of the contractors coming in in the

101evening and on weekends to get ahead of everything so that is taking place in that so this is just uh their payment uh small payment right now we are holding back 10 percent uh as retainage um to make sure for substantial completion before we release that okay so this is the beginning of the summer work this is beginning of the summer work yes yes i was all confused it was 48 billion and i was trying to six times to go back yeah to go back and figure out like oh these eyes again i will tell you the work has so far has gone well uh if you don't know this we did abate uh the east wing of creed elementary over spring break so that went very well uh that's that that level that you

102know the two levels that are over at crete over there um so that was all abated it is not being used now um so the contractor is able to get in there on nights and weekends to start doing all the mechanical because that's where the mechanical room is going to be and then we're redesigning that we're putting in an elevator over there all those things so they're getting an early start on that which is good we have closed off that section um you know so we put kind of plywood up so it's closed off so we don't have to worry about the kids getting in there and all that stuff so that's been done and then again at talalan and you'll see you'll see them starting to do the prep work on the air conditioning

103and that too okay i just had one other question our architect when they came to the contractor signing off on a mechanical lien and our architect said well this is kind of the best secret almost like he just have to take his word for it because of the nature of the law something to that effect there was a mechanical link he signed off i think the contractor signed off on it or something like that so if you go back and look at that i will yeah to see exactly what our architect was saying okay he said this is i'm basically take it for face value okay and this is about as far as i can go because of the law i'm just going to take his word off he's going to sign off that he's

104not going to was that on last year's work mr brown do you know i believe it was okay i believe it was but it was it was in here okay i have a meeting on thursdays yeah i think it was the mcat they signed off you know basically we got paid we signed off no liens issued against the district and it's almost like our architect said okay we take his word for it but it's not really a document i can solidify okay and keep in our files that say they can never come back at us okay and that's the intent of signing off on a mechanical league that they actually cannot come back we paid them yeah and that's it okay deal is over but he had the architect has some verbiage in there that

105says that because of the nature of the law this is we have to take this document as face value i'll find out again i'm meeting with them thursday so i can find out what that's all about okay okay thank you all right insurance rates here we go this one and i i apologize for this because i we just came out of a meeting at four o'clock today uh it ended about 10 to six so uh janine and cheryl came came scooting down here so [Music] i'm going to try and summarize this a little bit and please as i go if you have questions ask this so as you all know we change brokers uh for our medical insurance uh to work with us and to go out to the market that that broker now is

106alliance um so they went out to the market blue cross blue shield came back originally or came back with an increase of 20.13 all right so it was a 20 increase in that um so uh and a lot of that what you have to keep in mind is that we did not take an increase last year and the recommendation was to have a 7.5 increase last year so that 20.13 it also includes the seven and a half percent that we had so in essence you know netted out it should have been about 12.5 percent okay so that's the thing to understand also our program we are a self-insured program so we collect all the money and um you know it comes pulled together and then we pay the claims it's administered by blue cross blue

107shield they send us a monthly bill and then we pay out the claims and all of that stuff so we kind of collect the money and all that we have a reserve account and that and then again because we didn't take an increase last year we dipped into our reserve in order to pay for that lack of taking it taking the increase we also found that our claims escalated last year too and so that's part of the reason for a large increase too because they do an estimate based on previous claims in that and we had a bunch of large claims that came through now we do have stop loss insurance and all that stuff but still blue cross blue shield pays out the money even though we have a stop loss policy but blue

108cross isn't in the business of giving away money so somehow they're going to get that money back one way or the other and you know it has to do with increases so we presented that to the committee and and i had alliance work up some options for us in order to lessen that increase and that increases not only to the employee it's also to the district because the district does provide single hmo insurance to all our officer to all eligible employees and we foot that bill so again if that increase is there the district pays that increase also so again it's additional expense one of the things i shared with the committee and we talked about is moving to a fully insured program and away from a self-insured program my belief is the district is

109in better position in the future if they were fully insured versus self-insured because self-insured your premiums are determined by just your claims and that so if claims goes up i need to get more money to pay those claims and i got to raise premiums or i have to raise premiums if i'm fully insured i'm in essence in a pool with all other districts that blue cross blue shield has in um pulling that money together so they can offset some of our big increased kind of other districts and that and you have more wiggle room and more negotiation i again my opinion is from a financial standpoint is that is going to be a better way to go for the district in the long run so i share that at the committee we discussed that did

110you actually have some factual numbers to compare to yeah they did and that's some of the documents that i have here i didn't i don't have that with the board but i'll be getting that to the board that i that i have that and that okay initially uh the increase if we went to a fully insured program is about 22 percent however we are able to bundle a lot of our other insurance with them and get a reduction of about a 4.5 percent from them if we bundle our other things so things like we have right now imed for our vision insurance blue cross blue shield has their own and so if we bundle that they will give us a one percent discount on our medical rates you know and so there's other packages that

111we have and so we shared that with the committee and so by doing that we're able to get the increase down to 17.45 so it comes down pretty quick in that then we shared with the committee and talked about plan and design changes of the plans and also to also reduce the increase yes yes on the self-insured the increase would have been 20.13 percent and now so if we no no design changes nothing else 20.13 if we went with the fully insured the increase is 22.6.06 however if we were able to bundle everything with the fully insured we're not able to do that with self-insured we're able to do that with fully insured and it brings it down to 17.45 so with these high percentages yes that is not indicative of our employees or staff

112paying those increases so we i've never seen our staff or employees pay such a high increase we usually absorb those as a district right you know from our reserves and we may impose maybe five percent i'm just using it or yeah but what you have to keep in mind mr brown is that last year they pushed off a 7.5 percent increase that we should have taken which we advise them to if you remember that okay and the committee recommended when we came to the board you know you know i we said we all talked about you know we should be doing it but i'm representing the committee and so i'm coming with the committee's recommendation for a zero percent increase so we tapped into reserves exactly that's what i'm saying that's what i'm saying maybe

113i miss oh no you're right phrase that yeah so we as a district absorb that increase yes and since i've been on the board for the most part i think we as a district have never passed that charge over to our employees it seemed like we just been going into our reserve to well we talked about the reserve right now yeah the reserve is sitting right now uh brian looked it up when we were there so we have an investment account that has 1.1 million dollars in it and then we have also like which is like our savings account for our health insurance yeah and then we have an additional account that's kind of our working checking account sure that probably has another three or four hundred thousand dollars in it so it's about 1.5

114million dollars is our result do we try to keep a minimum there well originally we had about 2 million and again we've tapped into that because we didn't take the increase last year so our goal my goal originally was to you know on a self-funded self-insured plan is to keep about two million dollars in there but can i think real quick how do we fund that working cash how do we fund that that's fun through the uh deductions that we take from the employees and also the costs from that the board pays on hmo so what we do every month then is that so when we deduct when we take deductions from salaries for you know ppo family that they have to pay that goes into the account and then we also fund the hmo

115single that everybody has from uh just our general fund which is just the education fund not working cash but just education fund that goes in there and then when uh blue cross blue shield sends us a bill then we take the money out and that so it's kind and then there may be some left over in there and so that's what builds the results okay that's why i want to be sure that we're clear that the the reserve fund is a segregated account which has been funded by those premiums paid in by employees over time that's not the district's money it is partially the district yes because for that right right because what the district does the district pays in hmo single so that may be six hundred dollars a percent it's still they pay

116in there but it's still relative to the insurance prem the insurance rates that we've charged people over the years it's not like we're taking out of a general fund to beef up that reserve no all right no all right exactly so so on a self-funded uh plan you your goal is to keep two million in there but now on a fully funded plan what is the goal to have in there at all you don't have to okay but here so so here's here's the whole deal so of course the question comes up who gets the million dollars that's the big question well what you have to do is you have to let your claims run out that you now have under your self-insured plan and those are going to take a while those may take

117six months to run out it's yeah or or more depending if they're long-term issues so once those run out then then the board is going to have the board the committee whoever is going to have to make decision what do we do with that money can that money be applied to a future so let's just say it takes a year and we're coming up on next year let's say the fun runs out you said there's approximately 1.5 million in there we burned through 1.1 million so you have 400 000. sure can that money be applied to next year's premiums it can be applied to that so that there's the increase is less so if you make sure it was uh eight percent yeah at the 400 like you know what i'm saying yeah one of

118the things we talked about is trying to start some type of wellness program also and you know the possibility of funding a wellness program with that there's a lot of things you can do with wellness programs from a preventative standpoint you know blood tests you know you know all that all those type of things so there are some things we do and so one of the one of my goals with the committee is starting in the fall and september to begin meeting with them and start working on a wellness program that we can implement and then you know we'll be able to see if there's any funds available now again you know that that money's at again i'm just going to say this way it's at the board's discretion so again if i tap into

119that or or would recommend it happen i would come to the board first and say this is what my my thought would be so in some sense the 1.5 million is is is hostage to the situation and stays there yes until we run our thing out so at this point if you go fully funded the hit's 17.45 right now however however so let me let me continue on then sorry in that the committee has decided to make some plan changes also in that because if you make some plan changes you're also able to reduce the percentage so on and i'll just give you general terms here so on the ppo side they decided to make plain plan changes that would save another 4.24 so that's now now you're down to about okay and then on

120the hmo side they looked at making other plan changes that will save another i think it's 2.2 percent on the hmo side all right now your premiums are less on the hmo side also on that so again it will reduce that you know that percentage increase that is uh both to the district and also um to the uh to the employee also you know those plan changes through higher out higher out of pocket higher deductibles yeah there's some co-insurance or some um i'm just looking at it here nelson yeah some out-of-pocket office cove like like if you go on your office visit copay we go from fifteen dollars thirty dollars to twenty forty so it's a five dollar increase you save point four five percent you know so so they broke it down and in

121fact i've got a chart and i can share this i'll share this with the board when when we get the final one but that's all that's all broken down in that so we had discussion and um it was nice because we were able to have discussion not only with representatives from acme but also from cmea you know and they were able to give their views on all of that so uh so that is what the recommendation is going to be so in essence i think the net is going to be about on the ppo side about a 13 increase and then on the hmo side probably about a 14 to 15 percent increase but again keep in mind that part of that is the 7.5 increase that we didn't take last year so because you

122got to make it up somehow going and and this would be on a fully funded this would be then fully insured so yes so if you go fully funded you don't need the stop loss i don't believe so no anymore because the insurance company is assuming that risk yes so that's that gets you that's a little bit of why you'd have a difference at the top end yeah who who who pays the premium right now for the stop-loss policy does that come out of the reserve no that comes out it's all incorporated into the rates that we have also and that so that that's all in the administrative rates okay plus yes so that's all in there too okay so i'll have to i'll have to look at that too nelson just to see how

123that's not calculated in to make sure and all that stuff too yeah okay so can at some point the district has a history here that at one point they probably was fully insured so to speak right traditionally i think originally they were fully insured my understanding is there was some issue with the carrier or something and they went to self-funded and now so now we're looking to go down a path to go the big route here the traditional way okay and if memory serves me right the workman comp we are in a pool we are in some type of co-op right with the workmen comp i know that's the kind of the workings comp is completely separate that's under our property and liability okay i thought we was in a pool illinois community risk management

124yes we are in a co-op right with other districts right to mitigate costs and all yeah illinois uh and i forget they're the acronym that they have but yes they represent a number of districts okay kind of in the pool so when we brought to the table the committee and all of that are we looking at other districts to benchmark or did we just look internally to fill these gaps we looked internally there is um i will tell you the forecast five which is the uh program that we use for our financials you know that you know we share all that stuff they actually do an insurance study statewide the difficult part of that is you don't get into particulars and that's what's hard about comparing um rates from one district to another i'll give

125you example i remember having this discussion with the insurance committee one time you know they said well you know people over at home at home at fostermore don't pay as much as we do in premiums and i said what are the particulars of their plan that's what i need to see and that's what's difficult you know what what's the deductible what's your out-of-pocket that's where you need to compare apples to apples on this thing and that's what's difficult to do and so we're trying to pull some of that data but it's just very difficult because as a potential employee comes to our district obviously for the most part that in potential employees going to look at wages first and then you know benefits so we as a district have really ramped it up for wages

126to be out there paying market rate and now the other component is benefits so i i don't hear you know in comparison where our benefits compare to other districts we know where market rates is and we've been told just a couple months ago that we are up there really up there or or above slightly when it comes to rates so yeah i'm just curious where sure we are with insurance you don't have to answer that now but i'm just curious just to see because we're talking about big dollars here as well and a benefit this is a benefit package to employees and potential employees and things yeah and you know this may sound a little cold but i am i'm going to say it in are you directing that to me no no no no

127no i'm directing that to everybody and the public but i do want to say this the district provides health insurance for every employee if they want it think of that we the district says you can have health insurance if you want it so my question is and this is something i've wrestled with philosophically i i will say this is it the district's responsibility to take also care of the full family because or is the district's responsibility to take care of its employees i believe we are taking care of our employees and and the board is responsible because we are providing health insurance for every employee that wants it that is eligible for it and can i add something to that it's just a different i have to put on my cook okay you know and

128that doesn't mean that we try and lessen the impact of other rates i i am all for that but it's important that i know all of our employees understand that we do have a concern for our employees and that concern also is with medical insurance and we're providing that for them because a lot of districts do not do that they give you an amount of money to use towards a plan i just want to add one thing when you said did we look around this when we first started he did look at other companies and immediately they were not anywhere near competitive to blue cross but part of our issue is as ken made a comment about we had quite a few large claims and they rank you on that and they also look at

129what the claim was does it look like it's going to be something that carries on was it a one-time shot so some of that was based on our large claims and there were quite a few unfortunately so maybe next year we we only get a small i mean if we don't have a ton of large claims and it does he explained make sure i'm saying this right you know he's out there for all of these customers so we are in a pool when it comes to that type of thing but you're still responsible for what's going on in your policy per se so that money that blue cross blue shield is having to pay out goes across the board of everyone in that group but you're still taking a hit because they came from your

130unit so you're still taking a bigger hit than maybe next door and i'm not saying it's a ton but it's not like you're penalized because it is spread out but if another district had tons of high claims we're going to take but part of that also does that make sense did i do that right right so unfortunately it's been a couple bad years for insurance claims and there are some very very high claims across the board across everywhere so i think that's where the program like a wellness could mitigate some of those things and catch things before they get worse to prevent right yeah right it catch it catches up yes and again i mean i will tell you personal experience i mean you know getting that annual checkup and getting those tests annually are

131really important as you said mr brown from a preventative standpoint yeah you know okay so our process is i'll just real quick i'll let you know what our process is so we are uh alliance is putting all together the final numbers um we are having a virtual meeting thursday night um to just go over everything one or thursday afternoon i should say uh to go over um all the rates and everything to make sure the community is in agreement and then i will get that information onto the board agenda uh for tuesday what time are we doing now 4 15. so what you bring to the what you send us is the is the insurance committee in agreeance too yeah so you're meeting thursday to agree and then yeah so what what we did was

132we went through so what what a line and i'll just show you with all my scribble notes so what alliance did is they put together a bunch of options for us and everything so that we can see it so we went through all the information we shared with them this is what we want to do so now they're just going to put the final page together for us so that we can review it make sure it's right and all that stuff if anybody has questions on thursday and they want something changed will that be enough time yeah we can be enough time i can still get it on the agenda and we can just adjust the rates a little bit if we have to do that so that's not a problem yeah so everybody will

133be in agreeance then yeah yes that's what the plan is yes okay so so you are it has been other than voting on it it has been determined that we are going to go to the traditional right and i i i can refer to you know janine and cheryl on they can give their opinion that's their recommendation from the committee that's what they have and there seemed to be unanimous consent on the committee that we wanted to go to the fully insured with us and also with all the administrators yeah administrators and with both unions unanimous good job okay thank you thank you okay any old business yes i do okay so part of it's frustration i'll be honest i sent an email to dr karen i think she forwarded to all of you guys

134so i gotta tell you i'm i'm i'm beyond aggravated that we did something as a district that was very good for our taxpayers and i had a trustee call me um and asked me that you know the village of money is talking about some uh property tax um check you know yeah rebates and stuff like that and one of the couple with the district and i said the district doesn't work that way um the state of illinois you know were underfunded with through the state of illinois blah blah blah but by the way we did a we did an abatement of the extra levy text he had no idea had zero idea so then i asked him can you please reach out to the other guys and the people in the board member and see

135what they know in my village nobody knows as far as i'm aware of that i'm talking to a couple village trustees is a is a uh elected official it is important for us to do these decisions and get it out there and do something of good and no one knows about it and i sent the email out to ask everybody that's part of your district you know does the university park know does park forest know does crete known as modino i gotta tell you man i it is as much as uh mr sermon worked hard on getting that out to us and and we put that together that i i agree with you 100 communications like to that out to our to our communities it would have came out in the papers if we had

136an increase that's right i mean my point is if we were to win for look at the referendum and everything with the referendum and adding money and everything yeah how often have we abated tax money back i i'm telling you rare we need to do a better job and it even goes back to our our parents here i i'm i'm telling you i'm frustrated i mean i'm i'm i was pretty fired up about it and then to be quite you know when a trustee doesn't know and i tell him and they're surprised the next one i'm like thinking what like what is it what is going on like does anybody i don't know if the i know we was kind of euphoric here as board members when that was brought to us and we passed

137it but i think we just kind of left out this room and kind of left and left it here on the table so when i saw your email i said build a spot on he's right there i agree with him but i thought it would be somewhere posted but i really be honest with you never looked for it but yeah you're right so i don't want to go as far and say it was a communication issue i think even us as a board could have said hey doctor dr colony make sure we get a press release out on it or something like that but for us the problem is the stigma here we're working hard to change our our financial profile our financial rating i think mr brown you've been on since the moment i

138got on here that's been really important to you in communicating that out right and and all of this other stuff and i'm thinking that was a big moment for us because i don't know if anybody else is doing that what out of the four communities who else is doing that besides us as a texting body so i just i mean i think that was a really big step for the school district knowing that everybody complains about the school district um it you know in the tax amount that they pay in and i understand that but it just the good stuff i mean the good stuff that happens in our district whose responsibility is it well it basically always comes back to me that's who it is so you know ken and i had a conversation

139about you know what would have been the best vehicle for doing this and is it a press release you know how do you explain in a press release and make it simple enough for you know the lay people to understand you know is it is it a phone call to our locals to say hey just letting you know so you know we were just trying to debating which was the better way of doing that and they don't understand the the what that meant you know what i mean they just think that we're i mean if you ask anybody you could pull 10 people out of any community what's the first thing i say i paid too much in taxes to the school district for us to do that uh was a good step i mean

140i thought it was a good step forward to give back i mean mr brown said at that one time is like it's a good step giving back why take the extra money you know because it was a burden on them i just when i was approached and talked and asked about it and then when i said something and he didn't know anything about it yeah i could i couldn't you look like sir pardon my language but you look like a horse petunia i'm like come on horses petunia petunia he says nicely so we've you said it's your responsibility and we've been talking about communication communication getting the word out you said that you and ken talked about it right at what point did you bring in the communications person or department or whatever it's called

141versus you and ken talking about it well i first asked him if he had had any conversation or you know generally how would somebody find out about this because i think that was the conversation we had and i think you had said you know generally they they look uh right so the conversation we had about this is what do i release and how do i explain it because here here's the thing their taxes aren't going down no i i get that no i i understand that completely but the first thing i worry about i i try and explain that and all of a sudden they get a tax bill and says well you told me i was gonna bait this thing but they're not going down so so how many people are on the tax

142bill let's call it eight right partners how many are in the tax bill we'll call it eight taxing bodies about yeah eight or ten something like that right my point is it makes the district look in a positive way um unfortunately against everybody else because you know did they did they abated did the you know did the village ammonia made it did the village of crete made it did the the the uh uh village university park park forest in those sections and then go down the library district the fire the police blah blah blah go all the way down you know we did a we did something in their best interest i just thought that it would be you know he's asking me like the district should jump in on i'm giving a tax a

143property tax review property tax rebates i mean no and you're talking in a different world in money right now with everything going on there and their finances things are different and and i you know question that you know i told them three four years ago you couldn't do that but now you can so i know the district's in a different light but i just was like sure i thought it was such a positive thing and i'm like at this point you just questioned yourself sitting right here going okay do something positive it doesn't matter i i definitely agree it's positive but my point is is can over the communications department so okay no so once you talk to ken and ken says i don't know so then would you go who's over the communications department

144i don't know who is i know natalie natalie natalie is the kid so my point is communication maybe at that point then you go to natalie and say hey what's the best way to get this out because this is some good news right or maybe natalie comes to you and says hey we were sitting there board meeting do you think this is a good idea to get this information out i don't know what the working dynamics are but i just know that we have the position and i've seen her put out good stuff but i think that it's uh everybody involved should get when it comes to the good news should be talking to get the good news out because that doesn't appear to be happening i don't know what happened before i got on

145i just know that i've heard that some people aren't happy with the lack of good news getting out and i i just would encourage that you all come together i mean i know you just as much you talk to ken that maybe you talk to the others about i do not that you don't i'm sorry i don't i'm not trying to say you don't but i'm just saying so what we have been struggling with as you know i one of the things i was working on was the communication marketing and so forth and we just finished our focus groups i just had that information hot off the press i was just talking to nelson today about how we want to share that information and what the struggle is is figuring out again the system and

146what vehicle are you using we have again facebook twitter and we have news releases we've started doing a weekly news release that's going out in the newspaper we've just started doing that on a regular basis so again it's looking at our structures and then figuring out what we're putting in those structures to more systematize it so i i hear what you're saying and i guess i'm saying i agree with you and i think we're finishing kind of working on that so i i i'm sorry i i definitely like that you're thinking about it yeah but i don't get the whole systems thing because twitter facebook that's free you don't even have to worry about hey how much do we have to pay for this this is these are this is like low hanging fruit correct

147these are easy so it's not even a it's just which vehicle am i going to send it out through all of them twitter's free facebook i mean they're all free so why not send them out another suggestion sorry let me get everybody off another suggestion would be i know we get a township newsletter and in that the assessor she puts a little burp in there that might be a really good place i'm assuming all the different communities do that but they put out a newsletter and maybe you know we could put something in there that's a great idea actually it kind of makes the township i feel sad that's when everybody say okay the district is going to abate but we're not [Laughter] in the wow right yeah you see it you gotta hold on

148with because unfortunately everybody today i mean everybody thinks if everybody just walk around and think positive a little bit more but they don't they grasp respond to that negativity and they'll roll with it and that's the unfortunate part i mean that's reality you know i'm just i'm i'm really surprised that the money monitor and the crete record i believe oh that creek is dead yeah there's something called that's always that's all we have to work with all we have is so they're not doing that because they captured every meeting for the last 25 years russell publication yeah and i think that's why we we've been struggling with this and yes we've been training our channels it's free but that you have to pick up yourself somewhere or online if you subscribe to online but otherwise

149there are no local papers so mrs wallace your point is well taken and you know i agree with you and like i said i i am we're trying to come up with this we just finished our focus groups our survey groups to find out you know how we can do a better job so so going back to bill we had the topic of abatement so when we conclude a board meeting or doing the board meeting do we say at that point dr coghill at least we want this out there publicized at that point let the president direct this at that point coupled with the other things that she don't just so i don't miss anything yeah i think i think there's some ownership on us to at least direct okay i don't agree i don't

150think it's our place i mean if we really want to make sure i think it's just a checks and balance and just so just a way of saying hey doctor doctor cognize you got this i think yeah but i don't think that every little thing it doesn't and i don't think moe's saying it's incumbent upon that they're only going to spread news that the board tells them to spread right but we can emphasize things right well that's what i'm saying i could agree to emphasize that that's kind of what i've got to do okay that's kind of what i'm going to do definitely think that initiative on the leadership's part yeah to whether it's they're thinking that even if they say i don't like those board members so i'm not putting anything out but guess

151what you look bad then or you can say you know what regardless if i like the board members or not i'm going to put it out because i want us to look me up so it's the initiative right because there actually there's a lot of really good stuff going on in the district and you know and sometimes i don't even find out about all the good stuff that's going on so again putting together a system so we have it's not just me or it's not just people in my department but we've got a whole team that's doing their pieces because communication is everybody's responsibility right and so making sure that we've got you know i think a good plan and a good uh partnership of who's doing that um so we will work on that

152and i tell you you know i've been knowing our director of communication for a long time and and she has received awards for communicating and our website is just top of the food chain and i don't know where gaps are has been bill has identified some dr hall maybe some other colleagues and there's a couple issues i saw with getting some dates out on the holidays maybe i wasn't really in tune with the process and you correct me a couple times dr coghlan is but we have the tools i think we have the tools in place to keep this ball rolling in the right direction when it comes to communication we just gotta just ramp it up a little bit okay okay any other old business any new business i have one item and i've

153approached dr care about this but i'm bringing it to the board quite a few community members have reached out to me and employees about what we're going to do about electric cars seeing as there is one charging station that's been put in at the district i did bring it up with dr cara because more than one person has contacted me so i'm just asking you if if you've had a chance to talk to your team and i think there are people in the community they're wondering the district is paying for people to charge their cars i mean i'm hearing all kinds of things the community always goes for the worst as we know most of them so they immediately say well you're going to pay for people to charge their car what about a people

154who doesn't have it you know and so i'm asking you where we're standing on that one yes actually we've had some discussion and mr sermon you can jump in on this uh we have piloted one charging station and certainly where is that located that is here district office right outside or is it really yeah yeah is it before the handicap perkins no it's along that it doesn't take precedent over the handicapped no it does not okay so it is along that wall and you know the intent is we do believe that again with gas prices we believe that there's going to be more and more electric cars that will be coming uh so we were taking a look at you know putting putting one in we did have somebody here at district office that did

155does have an electric car so as we were kind of piloting this we were looking then i think we were going to send out a survey weren't we to find out if people had the intent to start going into electric later on to see how many that we would probably need to put in as far as for charging what we would do just like anyone else you would you put in your key card and you know you it just me metered just like it is if you're in a parking garage downtown how you're going to operate it no no so i guess they're going to see your credit card so again for the district for the district yes i paid for the charger that is out there so for the future he's saying she's saying

156for the future so so let me explain so here's what we're doing as part of president biden's infrastructure plan there's going to be about five to 10 billion dollars available for chargers in the very near future so our plan was and i and i will be very upfront very honest about this i have a hybrid car and so i said keith let's get one and let's see what it's going to be like because we have to look at a couple of things are they turned on 24 hours a day do we put a timer on or can we work by a prox card how do we work the collection of uh for charging them are we going to charge i don't know that's the question so i want to be prepared when this is going

157to happen i paid for that charger out there i reimbursed the district for it it was about 500 well let me but let me finish because i want to make that very clear to everybody and then because and so uh i am charging my car off of the electricity from the district however we are planning on trying to put some type of device on there that will charge people for it we're trying to see how to do that and if we can get one that will work with a prox card or with a credit card that's that's what i have in my job and i work for a electric company yes you do and there's no freebies with those who have electric vehicles and they come and they use their credit card and the fee

158is a charge to their personal credit card now how how you know the district because you still is still using electricity from that particular site in this case the district and somehow there has to be some component where the district could be compensated for that part too so i'm not sure if it's against the credit card company or what that the credit card company reimbursed the district a certain fee well and so again that's what we're looking at because there are multiple charges out there and each one has separate devices that are hooked into it we're also looking at so what we've done with the charger out there is we've actually put a timer on it right now so it is only goes on at certain times so we're protecting it that way so it's

159not powered all the time and then the second part of that is we're looking to see are there ways that i can use a prox card and charge let's say a staff member's account so that i can do that or i can set it up using a credit card too so we're looking at all those things because when the money comes available i'm applying for it i was going to ask that i mean he unveiled a 5 billion to 10 billion dollar plan but it's not it's not it's not there's no details yet but but here's what i will say it's the same thing when it was with esser funds our district was one of the first to put their budgets in and we got our money you know and that so i just want

160to make sure that we are ready to go on this thing so the other thing we're doing as dr cogan he said is i'm going to be sending out a survey to all of our staff to see you know are people going to be buying electric cars in the future because that is the wave and if you look at any of the data what they are saying is that by dealers are going to be selling 50 electric cars now again i don't know the capacity or the lows or the kva or anything like that but i think it behooves us too because we're looking to upgrade all of these buildings electrically so i don't know i hate for us to say okay we put 10 charging stations here we put if you go to for

161example 167th and right off i-57 country club hill the little mall there you have a tesla charging station and they got a big new transformer there to just address five or six seven spots for tesla to charge their vehicles so i'm just i'm just you know i hate it you know we're putting all this money to upgrade the electric i know this project got to move forward but it just lends itself to go back and really look at this quick before no and i will agree i just hate to say oh my god i wish we would have did that but right now we've got it put on the building so we just run the line to there if you do it at some of the schools you're going to have to put the charging

162stations out in the parking lot so you have to run electric underground like the high school like the high school you know and that so you have to do it that way so there are going to be additional costs doing that and there's going to be loads that are going to have to be put on there now you run it with really a 220 line because i have one in my house i put in a 220 line at my house just have you know put an extra double fuse in there double breaker you know it's all right so again but again it's going to be putting more loads on but you know that's all going to be part of the cost and i don't know if the president's bill will fund that or not that's

163why i want to make sure we're in line and we're ready to go what i'm saying it'll just print more money mr brown 2027 rolling blackouts in the midwest i will do that too after all i'll be retired that's it yeah is it expensive to charge the vehicle i mean is it like does it really suck a benefit i will tell you this my my electric bill at home has not gone up yeah i charge it every every night at home yes i have a hybrid so the hybrid works on gas and electric right and so my my my car will go about 25 miles on pure electric okay and then and every once in a while will kick in gas and all of that stuff so um i charge it every night at home

164i plug it in and then when it stops charging it just shuts off i have not seen any increase in my electric i would say i don't have a clue and and you can use a regular 120 a regular 120 outlet or two but it says sticks you can use a 120 right just take a longer time to charge so my car will take on a 220 line will take about three hours of charge on a 120 line it takes 11 hours yes how's it going to say to you the advantage you have is if you're on a long trip the gas will kick in yeah because by 2027 i'll use my truck and tow all the electric vehicles i could run out of electric or you keep a regular you know 500 watt or

165something like that generator in new york trunk yeah so that's what our that's what our plan is janine i'm going to tell everybody to watch this meeting so they can understand what it is that's not a problem at all any other new business this is kind of old speaking of communication are we going to let the staff know that well we're doing we're going to be doing a survey in the next week or two we're going to be doing a survey to all the staff you know on their intention of actually buying electricity because i want that to me i think that that needs to get out no i agree i agree was that good mo is that good idea yes okay thank you so much so this is kind of old old but new

166business i know i had brought up about the softball fields in the past being in very poor condition it has now been brought to my attention that our soccer fields are horrendous flooding not safe for the kids yeah but concerns obviously with kids playing sports on our field so it's something we still need to address look into but it's been brought to my attention so now i'm bringing it dr hall can you can you address that please answer that yeah we're going to start i just know it's been a long time and it's a drain it's in the drainage uh area and it looks pretty but it's just in a bad spot and if we had a new field it would turn around we would not even have this issue the perfect promo for a

167turf field yes and i went to the conference and i picked up some brochures but and until we do that with our kids are going to be playing swimming soccer so hey that's it well just concerned parents of course obviously for you know broken ankles broken ankles yeah right parents are concerned so okay thank you thank you sandy that's sorry we have insurance [Laughter] is there any other new business i rebuke what he just said quick real quick i want to thank um dr coghlanis team when i was in san diego stranded on the side of the road trying to call everyone and uh nelson i want to thank him he answered the phone ken answered the hotel they wouldn't let me check in they said that there was absolutely no way that terry sent

168the information and i was upset i was upset with terry i'm sorry uh i was and yeah and terry's when she woke up in the morning at like three or four whatever time she wakes up she started sending me emails and texts and i didn't see him until i woke up because i didn't get to bed until about time she was waking up but they did work hard to get it fixed um nelson helped he you know he answered he called he got he started to but i told no no right up to that point don't don't that's right but um can answer he he helped out um unfortunately they had him up all night because they wanted us to continue to believe that terry didn't send it and they said they were going to

169send him the form but they never sent him the phone i said finally somebody told me the next day oh no we found it oh that's what happened he still never said what was going on in san diego the national convention school board i thought we kind of kicked it well i signed up before we got yeah oh he's special mr brown i didn't ask him what was going on in san diego i just said it was like did i miss the party yeah i didn't ask nope that's right it was pretty good um i'll be i can't wait to see what the new uh organization looks like i guess it's 21 or 23 states right now and they're trying to set up a convention um yes they are they are this is the conversation

170starting over but you can have later yeah okay he doesn't want to get another phone call uh we have no need for closed session tonight can i have a motion to adjourn second all in favor say aye