001i hereby call this special meeting of the board to to order roll call please brown is here here president here please stand and join me in the pledge of allegiance i pledge allegiance to the flag of the united states of america and to the republic for which it stands one nation under god indivisible with liberty and justice for all ms roop would you please read our mission statement it's to empower each student to positively impact the world for a bright new future thank you can i have a motion to open a public hearing on the closing of money education center building moved second roll call please brown hi president aye motion carries so first uh dr carrie is going to make a presentation and then we'll open it up for any public comment good evening
002board members and members of our community i wanted to take this opportunity to spend a few minutes sharing with all of you the reasons behind our recommendation for closing the moani education center building as you know this program has been a wonderful program that we have housed at the moani education center building in moni for approximately 20 years it has morphed from starting off is called cap to being called the moani education center and you can see uh we have mr wartell and miss pappas they have been our administrators there for the majority of the time and with the programs that we offer at this site it allows for small class sizes it allows for more support for students that need additional resources and it also offers online classes as well as small group in
003non-traditional teaching methods but more recently in the past few years we have been noticing significant problems that are beginning to emerge for example these are our four areas the first one is low student enrollment we're going to share with you in a few minutes the enrollment has declined in this program for the last few years at that site the next one is diminished student-to-teacher ratios the next one is rising per student expenditures and the last one is deficient in equitable facilities and i'll talk a little bit more about each of these when we talk about fiscal feasibility when we take a look at how much it costs to educate one of our students we take a look at the costs for salaries expenditures at buildings transportation those all go into a per student ratio and
004i'll show you in just a few minutes how we calculate that amongst all of our schools in the district and where the students at mec emerge this is a look at a five-year trend looking at our data as you can see we've had some significant decline in the last few years back as far as in 2018 we had about 46 students in the program and currently at the beginning of this year we have 19. so it has gone down quite a bit and even the students that are going to be going in would be going in for next year that number has gone down significantly when i mentioned to you about the spending per student ratio this gives you a chance to see it visually of what we are standing per student at um for
005the uh moani education center and this was taken from the illinois report card of 21 school year you can see across all of our schools moani education center tends to have the highest amount per spent per student and that's about over seventy thousand dollars per student compared to some of our others in the district including the high school program so it is somewhat of an outlier some other things we want to take a look at we want to look at the students that are attending that building they do not have the access to the newer high school facilities that we have they also do not have access to career and technical education programs such as our manufacturing program jrtc as well as others and they do not have access to enrichment and extracurricular activities and
006again it's based on the proximity of where the program is located they are somewhat removed and it's very difficult to transport them back so that they can participate with the other students in after school programming as well though they are participating in many great activities again there's many more that are offered at the rate in the regular uh traditional high school setting when we look at our equity statement it is really important to make sure that we are taking down barriers and obstructions for equity we're making sure that students have equitable facilities programs resources and as we look at our statement number two which basically states we will analyze data through a culturally responsive lens in order to direct resources opportunities and supports based on student staff and community needs we are feeling that we
007are not meeting this goal for students at that particular site where we have it so just to summarize some of the key points tonight we are noticing limited enrollment we are noticing that there's a large expenditure based on the students that are going there and also that the students that are going at that particular site they are not having access to newer facilities programming that the rather rest of our students are so we believe this is the time to consider closing that building but we are not we're not closing the program but we're going to be moving that over to the high school and looking at adding the the new wing which we're beginning to have a conversation with now but the building at this point we believe has um met its uh its obligation
008and uh is probably ready to retire that site we do have some upcoming public hearings still ahead we have april 12th and that's at 6 00 pm we have april 19th 6 p.m and april 22nd at 2 00 in the afternoon so this uh hearing is being videotaped the other two will not be so this will be posted on our website for people to view at their convenience any questions i think the only the only thing just to clarify just so we're all on you know everybody transparent we're not closing down mec program no we're relocating it to a facility which is attached to the high school but i think that's just the idea so everybody understands that that we're taking that program and we're moving it over and i think the money that it
009would take to add some of the things at mec the current building and bring it up to code and add air conditioning everything it was you know more feasible to put the addition on and i think mr cerma alluded to it that at some point our long-term facility and finance plan says we have too many buildings so coupling them into one building is a financial more it's finance sense as well just because the upkeep of the building is going to be too expensive that is correct i think and just to clarify too we're not you know opening this wing for 19 students or less the intention is that that program will be built up to higher numbers again yes we're looking to service at least 80 to 90 students at that part of the building
010yeah and you put alternate teething teaching methods in non-traditional i think what everybody's losing losing to is that you know i understand uh maybe nostalgia you know however it looks but in the next five to seven years teaching is not going to be the same it's already it's not going to be what it is today it isn't it's not going to be what it was 10 years ago teacher shortages uh administration staff shortages it's just going to be different so having that could turn into something else meaning our non-traditional teaching ways may uh be something of the future i i don't know what to say with that but i don't think in five to seven years we're going to be we're not going to be having the same discussions we are today that is correct
011any other questions i just have one question i know some parents have alluded so how do you respond to that those parents yes and that is a good question we are we have been meeting with the architects in fact i just met with them today and we are meeting with administrators and we're actually going to be meeting with the the teachers at mec probably uh next week to show them the plans the plans that are put in place do still carry the spirit of having them somewhat off by themselves so they have that small more cohesive environment for them to continue so we are maintaining that in the new facility and cara the the the gap here here before the new facility is ready adjacent to the high school will they also be segregated or
012separated in classrooms at the at the within the existing high school building correct we are estimating about three to five students that will be uh going to the high school we have uh reserved about three classrooms to maintain their their current structure and we will be keeping the mec teachers there to continue that programming uh for those students and so they are somewhat isolated in that uh in that hallway they may have a staggered schedule so they may be coming in at a different time than they were at the other students as far as they're not having to go in at the same time with buses and they may have an alternative lunch schedule as well so we are still maintaining the type of environment that they're used to okay thank you all right thank
013you and terry there are no public comments board do you want to keep the meeting open in case somebody comes in for public comment or should we close the public hearing i'm looking was probably one of the or the very first graduating class at a camp in 2002. it served him incredibly well he is a very successful young man raising a family of three and if he hadn't had cap he would have been in jail i'm sure so i just want to say thank you for that program and i hope it continues because there are children that need that so thank you thank you want to close yep okay um can i get a motion to close the public hearing on the closing of moani education center building moved second roll call please repeat brown
014is an eye mrs galbraith aye mr sualish aye mrs walters aye vice president ruth aye president albrecht aye okay the public hearing is closed um can i have a motion to adjourn all in favor say aye all opposed okay we're adjourned from the special meeting you can turn off the you