001okay i hereby call this meeting to order roll call please brown is here dr hall mrs galbert here mrs walters here mr swallow here vice president ruth here president at auburn 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 right ms roop would you please recite the mission statement our mission is to empower each student to positively impact the world for a bright new future okay and let me get the right can i now can i get a motion to go into closed session for the purpose of self-evaluation practices and procedures or professional ethics when meeting with a representative of a statewide
002association of which the public body is a member roll call brown isn't i mrs galbraith hi mr swallows aye mrs walters aye vice president rue aye president albert aye and for public anyone watching will be in closed session for approximately one hour and we'll come back and pick up the meeting again with public comment okay we're back in open session um terry do we have any public comment yes sir okay next up uh any board updates yes well we had an insurance committee meeting and um i don't i think we can mention last time that we have a new what do you call them i was going to say provider but that's broker okay and so we're just we're just starting that process and so we're waiting for some quotes from blue cross blue shield
003and um we're hoping to get everything together early april so that we will have something to present and to come to the board for a vote for the new insurance you know just the way we're planning to go but we really don't have the information yet so there's not a whole lot that we could say at this point and i'm sorry i didn't i didn't prepare anything right thank you the only other thing i had um so last tuesday dr hall and i went to a iasb uh meeting for the three rivers division and they had a gentleman there talk for about an hour about the state about the taxes and how it affects everybody in the state and i will say that about a year ago ken you had mentioned that we have about
0048.5 million to spend and we had a year window well that window is closing so apparently the way it works is i think this year it's somewhere around 3.7 billion and then next year 530 million will be available and then in 2024 four more billion just about 3.8 to 4 billion and then in 2025 there's no money allocated from the state at this point so i guess the reason i bring it up is that whatever we're making today we have to be prepared for as ken had mentioned a year ago that at the end of the three years how are we going to sustain what we're doing right i mean essentially that's what we want to make sure because we're not sure if the funding from the state is going to be there in 2025
005right well and and i think and mr wallace are you talking about the art money that that is going on yeah right so um so the way that works is that we have been allocated in rp3 or sr3 which is the american mastery plan um i believe it's around 9.5 million and we could use that over three years up through 24. september of 24 so it does there's a couple things that are happening during this whole this year next year i know mr neal has been working on i don't want to say staff reductions but efficiencies with our staff and all of those things along i know i and gentel are also working on efficiencies in our systems and all of that so that when we get to a point at 24 you know we're
006able to sustain what we're doing so you put them in the budget and then that's the point is that what we don't want to do is make some really good changes and then in two or three years have to be just dealt with the decision exactly what are we going to do we want to be able to maintain that you're exactly right and so that's that's what we're doing um right now and again i don't know the numbers up top my head and i'm actually uh i've talked with uh robert dinardo who is in jontel's office who handles a lot of the grand stuff i'm going to be going through over spring break actually it's one of my projects to kind of do an audit of all of our grants to see where we are
007because you know we haven't we haven't even come close to spending all that 9.6 million dollars you know as i as i shared with the board we want to spread that out over three years so i have to go through and see exactly what is left in a lot of these different areas and then you know we'll begin a process of reallocating that for the next two years and then you reallocate for the next year and all of that so it's a constant kind of amendment that you have to do with those grants and everything the good news for the district is it does set the district up very well when the tiffs are rolling off the two major tips that are going to be rolling off and again as i share with the board
008last month i'll be addressing that when i present my budget in august and september but it does uh set up well because um there'll be an influx of money probably beginning in the beginning of calendar year 25 so that'll be in a 24-25 budget so it sets up very well at the same time for the taxpayers as we talked about there's this property tax relief grant that is out there um that what i'm hoping for um as i shared with you we applied for it we didn't get it uh 39 schools got it we were number 40 on the list so uh and i couldn't even finagle anything mr brown i tried but i couldn't um permit what should happen is this should set us up for next year getting that which again will help
009us because as you all know cpi is up so it'll be a five percent increase if we balloon our levy so you know it works out really well it it plays it playing out very well as we go here so i think it sets the district up very well financially in the future and now but mrs whilst you're right i you know we do have to look at these things and you know while it's an influx of money we want to make sure we can sustain all of this right it's not so much what we're doing right now but in 2024 going into 25 everything that we've done in whether we've hired people or put them in positions we don't want to just we want to be able to maintain that to continue what we're
010doing yeah and you know and again you know you kind of look at our financials right now and i think last month we were projecting a surplus i think it's around 1.5 million something like that of a surplus this year so that'll just go in the bank you know and all of that so um so things are things are playing itself out pretty well as we move forward here we still have some work to do you know we're not satisfied with that but it's playing itself out really well financially thank you oh the next one i had i was reading the fyi and the only question the question i had was um it said discipline review committee there were some numbers on there that i think need to be you know again we're working on
011that the communication piece getting that out i mean there were numbers on there it said defiance was down 51 um it said disciplined behavior was down and fighting is down 25 the only problem with that is no one knows that so i think that's where i know we get that information but that's the information that we need to share and what we're doing to to correct that um because it's as weird as it sounds as we've all talked is that a lot of our perception is based on the high school and there are so many good things there and i just think that they need to be out i mean these these are good numbers that what we're comparing them to yes and thank you for that we were very proud at those results what
012we want to do is take a look at the trend data and from month to month and then we'll probably make a presentation again when we have quite a few months to take a look at but our trend data is looking really excellent and that is certainly the result of you know everybody's job here everyone's been working very hard and bill you know it's interesting what you're talking about the perception because i was lucky enough to go to the njrotc help me say that again ami inspection list last week and um it was so impressive and miss trish you might want to finish this off for me we were we were awarded an outstanding rating and my understanding is it's the first time the commander has given that rating so those are the other things
013i mean i i can't remember the number of students we have in that program but it was amazing to see and those are are the other types of things i mean that they were awards for community service hours how many you know each platoon competed against the other ones and it was academics and they get a banner for their their flag thing and it was you could see the faces when they were when their platoon was named a winner the faces were like they couldn't smile but you could just tell how excited they were that they had worked that hard to get it so i agree with you that those positive things need to be really hitting home because um it's very very important yeah i mean it's springtime it's march the next the next
014the eighth graders are coming in so we want them to be a part of that we want them to be you know coming into the next phase of that and being ready let alone i think the fifth graders going to the sixth sony any of that you know we've talked about that that's the biggest that's a big thing i had the opportunity i know we were invited to read at moni elementary to a class and i was able to do it and so i wanted to give a shout out to miss smith's third grade classroom they were awesome i mean they were really you could tell that she really um she really has a good relationship with her students when i walked in they were doing a book reading a book together and she was
015asking questions and and they were all engaged and and good behavior and then when i read my book they just were very well behaved and you know whether or not they were really interested they acted like they were they were great listeners i was really impressed with this third grade class so i think we have a lot like you're just saying we just have a lot to shout about and i think we just need to do that more okay thanks everybody any other board updates okay i'd like to say a few things about the discipline committee okay i know my colleague if you want to add on anything here if i you know i want to comment a couple of things here so it's been very informative what i've seen thus far since august of
016last year with the discipline committee and they basically started off using the restorative approaches which is good not not you know looking at a infraction and the first thing they're going to do is discipline so they're not looking at that so obviously the year 20 y20 to y21 there was no infractions because we was not in school so that's a good thing no suspensions so i just wanted to share that with the board and they are looking to pick up the mentoring program that the district had a while back at mec and places like that so i chimed in i said let's make sure that we because one of the issues with a couple people with the mentoring program and the question came up were they qualified to do mentoring and i had asked the
017question that we make sure that we get qualified mentors before we start interacting with our students and they agreed that they were going to do that so they said that they wouldn't we're going to continue to review district policies throughout the year which i thought was a good thing and one of the biggest things that they see is a a potential opportunity to excel is book bags throughout the district what should book bags look like should they be clear should they not be clear so they our discipline director when it did some market research out there in the industry and came to find out it was like 18 issues dealing with book bags when it came to the elementary grade level and she was like wow you know so it's more to follow they're still
018trying to firm up a policy on the use of book bags and they will incorporate that and bring it to the board as they incorporate that into the which document is that uh the parent and student handbook okay so that's a good thing anything to add on that sandy about the book bags anything like that no i think you have it i actually had to leave the meeting early so i didn't get to finish the rest of the meeting but i was impressed too by the numbers um i know with kovid it was hard on kids you know and it was good when we did the comparison to 2019 to see how those numbers are now coming down with restorative practices so thanks to all of you guys keep up the good keep up the
019good work oh she's back there i didn't know if i said anything i didn't know he was back there oh well since you're back there and i know you're back there i want to make sure that i give myself kudos because i made a comp i made a um a statement saying what a good job you guys are doing when it came to no expulsions and our director said there may be one coming to you guys sooner than later and we had it tonight so but nonetheless a good job for again using those practices restorative practices de-escalation all of that because our whole our whole thing as a district is to get our our kids educated and get them out and as our missing statement says to make them productive citizens in the world at
020large and i don't want to inundate you with a lot of data but the first couple months of this school year we did have as far as infractions or offenses we had more towards the middle school seventh sixth seventh and eighth but we did have some trending up in our lower grades i believe specifically from our last meeting just a couple days ago the fourth grade and so we walked work in progress on that the committee is going to be coming to the board in may of this year at our committee as a whole to bring some things to us they should have a draft for the nine it's two documents it's the code student codes anybody send this right director yes oh yeah that's the one doc we get the parent student handbook and
021we also have japan's student handbook two things same thing okay so again i'm i'm excited to be part of that as i talk a lot here in the board meetings i talk a lot in the community i ask a lot of questions right we have had all meetings on a virtual method and my hands are constantly coming out because she really runs a tight meeting she said you don't talk until you ask and put your hand up on my hand and somebody said maurice mr brown's hand is up i said no i'm not my hand is up but he said well you got to tell us to take it down so one time it stayed up pretty long so but i'm excited and they're doing a good job but that was my compliment it said
022mr brown acknowledged the hard work and attention to keeping students out of expulsion which i already mentioned before that's all i have to ask anything else sandy again [Laughter] i took me some notes about four meetings we had and i think we got one more meeting we got actually made a 12th but we're gonna have one in april right april april 28th remember he serves me right i'm pretty good with dates okay april 28th that'll be our last meeting we have one two three four five okay okay thank you mr brock you're welcome i have one other thing that i don't know you were going to bring up or not but mr albrecht and i are on the acme negotiating team and we're having our first meeting this thursday correct mr hill that's right so
023we will keep you updated on that just thought i'd let you know okay next up administrative updates and with that i'll turn it over to ken you've got three items for business i do thank you very much [Music] not the calendar though the first one is the resolution providing it for abatement of the 2021 levy adjustment i believe as i discussed with the board uh last month and you gave me direction to prepare a resolution of not accepting that money and that money is uh automatically added to our levy extension that we will receive at the end of march based on adjustments that have occurred uh on equalized assessed value in that so uh this is another one that's the other one but so you'll be getting a resolution and it is uh abatement of
024307 572.88 um so we will not be accepting that money from the county which will uh help the taxpayers um it does not hurt the rest of our extension or levy of money that we requested this is an additional money that is new to the illinois school code as i shared and that the will county clerk puts on the extension so if approved next week or not next week the 22nd if approved i will share this with the will county clerk and then that will be taken off the tax records okay okay um the second one that i wanted to talk about was just the contracts that will be coming up um and again one of the purposes of moving the meeting to the 22nd was so that we could prepare and get out to
025bid the contracts for the mechanical work at balmoral creed and coretta scott king those projects are now on the street the bid opening is the 15th which is next tuesday and then once we have that we're preparing the documents for approval at the board meeting on the 22nd i don't have any numbers on that but the projects are put out there as three separate projects we didn't put them together they're put out as three separate projects so that will also be coming to the board on the 22nd i'm hoping to have that probably by the time you release the board agenda i'll have all of those numbers and documents and all of that stuff when we share that out probably the friday prior to the meeting i wanted to talk about uh and that's what
026you're going to see up here uh is a discussion about a contract with bci burke company llc to replace the courtyard of the early learning center with an ada compliant playground in the amount of four hundred forty eight thousand eight hundred sixty seven dollars and ninety one cents um don can you put it as a full page please yeah i can flip through but you can put it in the page the first part you're going to see is just the board report i've put a whole packet of things together i'm not going to go through it's 50-some pages i'm not going to go through all of that but i wanted to share with you one of my ideas here is to begin trying to upgrade all of our courtyards throughout our buildings and the first
027one we would start with is the elc building and what it would do is one of the issues we are having with all of our courtyards quite honestly is the maintenance of those courtyards in this building itself as you well know there's grass in there so we have to move the lawn mowers through the building in order to cut the grass in there also the issue is it is not ada compliant that facility and i say that because this is the way the courtyard worked it looks right now and what you'll see is that if there's no way that i can get a child with a wheelchair up into this area at all there's no ramps we could probably install some however there are wood chips in there and everything and in all honesty a
028child wouldn't be able to maneuver in there in a wheelchair or even with some type of walker that would have to go in there the area in here is really a perfect area to put a confined rubberized concrete facility in here so i've worked with this company along with which is uh it's called play illinois along with our administrators in the elc uh ms chester and also mr shetty to develop this playground in there and what it would be is the entire entire area is 15 000 square feet and about 9 000 square feet would be rubberized concrete that's what you'll see in beige and colors and all of that and all of the materials and devices that are in there are ada compliant and also need all safety guidelines in that the green area
029that you're going to see around here is actually astroturf the sidewalks will not be in there actually but there will be concrete walkways that will come out into this area so everything is ada compliant and everything is wheelchair accessible or walker accessible for all students though right one of the reasons why i chose this area really to start first because it affects all of our students throughout all of our entire district is it affects all of them and so uh at the elc program and it is really the basics and the foundation of the rest of our programs and that the current equipment that is there will be donated there's a company that comes out and actually takes out that equipment and will donate it to another organization that is in need of it you
030will see up here uh this is the current shade area so that is staying so the only thing really in that area is going to be the shade area the reason the cost is so high is they actually have to boom all the materials over the building so all of the concrete is going to be boomed over the building in order to lay the concrete for this and all the rubberized surfaces the price tag of 448 000 because you say okay how are we going to pay for this so one of the things i think i shared with the board last last month is that the district has received or is allocated an additional 1.2 million dollars in idea funds that is a carryover money that we found so we have that allocated so what
031we are doing with that money this year we're taking 600 000 of that and taking our special ed salaries for the rest of the year and moving it over there so it frees up 600 000 in our general fund and so this money that money part of that money that is freed up will be used to pay for this then so we're not going to take it out of construction funds we're going to take it out of our regular funds i can't use straight idea money for this because this would be for all students not just special ed students on that so i can't use i can use part of ida funds but it was just simpler moving over special ed expenditures that we have currently in the budget over there and it still leaves
032some additional money there that can be utilized you know for other things that may be needed the second part of that 600 000 that we're going to be getting we'll we'll use next year and that's what ms perkins is going to be working on with the special staff to allocate funds for next year for the additional 600 000 okay you will also see there are two proposals that are there in your packet one is for 448 000 the other one is for 478 000. the difference between the two is the 478 000 rubberizes the entire area it goes building the building end to end i don't believe that's needed because i don't believe that this area needs to be we could save a little bit of money uh 30 000 35 000 by just turfing
033this and everything so my recommendation would be to go that way in talking with elc it helps from motor and sensory [Music] skills in order to have a contrast here also on everything you will see in design of this just let me kind of touch on this so this is an entire play area that is designed ada we have put colored areas because we can tell children go to the purple area go to the blue area go to the yellow area and then this is kind of a ball play area an open area where the where the children can play and then you also have an outdoor teaching area over here that they could take and teach kids there and then under the shade you'll see some uh houses and things i honestly don't know
034because i don't want to but they're there and those are things that they wanted you also see some benches here that we're going to put in and our pto has asked if they could donate any money to it and so i'm working with them actually that they can work on donating some of the benches and then we'll put a recognition a little recognition plaque on there that says donated by pto 2022 or something like that so we're working on that also you'll see these here these are just kind of little shade areas that'll kind of shade the area that is in there too everything that is right now in the current area all of these actually all the trees and everything those are all coming out on that because it'll make us maintenance free in
035there really the only maintenance to those surfaces the rubberized surfaces is really kind of blowing them off with a little leaf blower that's it really that's all i have to do uh for it there is a 10-year guarantee for that surface uh i believe no i'm sorry i think it's a seven-year guarantee for the surface a 10-year guarantee for the astral turf that is out there all of the equipment is actually guaranteed uh between 10 years and 100 years actually uh one of the things and you know one of the questions is do we save the equipment that is currently here go out there actually there are bolts that are exposed out there and nowadays when you install these all the boats are hidden it's a safety feature so my recommendation when we started doing
036this if we're going to do it let's do it right let's get current equipment in there so it's all safe for our kids okay so questions i'll open up gee i have two sure how are you providing shade when you call these shaded areas if there aren't trees how are we providing shade so one of the things you'll see in the diagram is these areas here these little like fans that are here triangles those are kind of shaded areas also that'll kind of shade some of that but we're also keeping the main shade out there that sale that is currently out there now okay because that came that was part of my next question that came from a grant or something i believe a few years ago yes we also got some equipment at that
037time because parents there was a big weekend thing where people came and helped us assemble that yes you're saying that all the equipment that's there now is going to be donated yes who's making that decision of donating it where it's going um i could find out where it's going and bring it to the board and let them know okay i would like to see it stay as close to home as possible we have a lot of needy sure day cares and things around here and and some of the equipment is quite new i think that was only about three four years ago that some of that i think it is yes um and i would like to see it put to use in our community if we can okay yeah i'll be more than happy
038i can talk and find out i know when i when i talk to burke they have actually a company that comes in and removes it and then donates but i can find out where it's going and i can you know ask them or tell them that i want to donate it somewhere within one of our communities you know i think i think the other thing if you do know someone that wants it you know let me know and and i can always work with them and get it out i don't want to be involved in getting the equipment out that's what i don't want to do because there's liability things and all of that stuff so yeah and costs and so if somebody wants it you're more than happy now i don't know what it's
039going to take to get it out to be honest with you i don't know that you know that so but that's something yeah i'll be happy to i have two questions yes the first question is 10 to 100 years how how's that determined great question dr hall but as i looked at their documentation so there's a hundred year warranty on aluminum and steel upright posts there's a hundred year limited warranty i mean it's i don't know who determines it but that's what it is they're specific to each what is warrantied 10 years on certain things this is 100 years on some of the uh or 15 years on the bolts i mean it's pretty specific on what is being warranted you can read that mr brown will still mr brown will still be on the
040board yeah mr brown will be on the board so he'll take care so my other question is in regards to i'm not like one of these save the earth type people but the trees can they be replanted somewhere or do they just have to be uprooted and destroyed i mean i can find out i'd have to talk to i could talk to an arborist about that and find that out i'm not i'm not sure that you have to dig don't recall if all of them are alive right now i i don't know that uh because i can't recall that but i can check all that out and see it's getting them through the building too i think it's what you said yeah we'd have to go up and over on all that stuff if this
041is approved is this a uh 2022 summer yes it would be 2022 it would take probably about six to eight weeks so the plan would be to start this uh as soon as school is out which is basically june 1st and be ready to go by august 1st yes and they're aware of that right they are aware of that yes yep that's why i would want to bring it to the board now so that we can start the process of the equipment and all that the other thing i will mention about the equipment too is all of it is being purchased through a co-op so bidding does not need to happen it's already been bid through it's called omni which used to be u.s communities that have dealt with before so everything has already been
042bid and everything you know ken can you tell me again where is the funding coming from sure sure mr brown so we found out and we did not budget for this but we found out that there was a carryover in idea grant money that happens from year to year of 1.2 million dollars that the district was allocated we found that amount out i don't know how long we found that out [Music] november december we found that out so the question is is what are we going to utilize that for because if you don't utilize it they're going to take it away from you because it's carryover money it's an addition to our other idea grant money we have all right this is just money that's built up over the years the difference with idea money
043and title one money is idea money you can continue to carry over and that with like title one money you can only carry over so much at a time in that so this is money that has been built up so we had a discussion about you know this project and what i was thinking of doing is trying to use to use the ide a carryover money to pay for this however because we have regular students that would utilize this when you use idea money you can only have special ed students utilizing whatever you use that money for example when we bought us if you remember we bought a school bus using idea funds only special ed students can utilize that bus we cannot utilize that for let's say uh the softball team the baseball you
044know to make trips so in order to pay for this then what we will do is or what we've already done actually is we are moving 600 approximately 600 000 in salaries special ed salaries right now to be reimbursed through the grant through 600 000 of the 1.2 million dollars this year we'll get that money so they're going to give us you know that's 600 that's 600 then with that with the money that that frees up in our general budget we will then use that money to pay for this so in essence what happens is i've taken 600 000 in expenditures out have added the revenue so i've taken that out i'm just going to be replacing it with 448 000 so the 600 000 thousand dollars that you had budgeted for salaries as expenditures
045you're offsetting this with the grant money yes sir so our balance or deficit is going to be that much less or because you you didn't expect when you shared with the board the budget that included that six hundred thousand dollars did not include that money why not which isn't well that's what i'm saying you just found out about this in november but you the budget came to the board in august and said or september so those expenditures for the special ed staff members was budgeted right yes yes yes right so you did so we knew about that yesterday so what i'm saying is so now we expect to see it more of a surplus or offset of those expenditures yeah there's actually you know the net result is going to be a surplus of of
046150 000 dollars when you're done when i'm done with this whole thing don't have to pay for it if the yes okay so my last question is that this i i'm going to just say id no matter if you say i d e a still id like t d okay id sure the id money that you're looking as a grant and it can be used on special ad and certain things only is this our top priority that it could be used on um i i think that's a great question i think there has been a and again i can talk to ms perkins about this um i think there's been some studies that she is doing to see if there are any other needs in special ed that need to be done i do think
047i will say this i do think a priority is our courtyards all of that that's so nice yeah i think just go back make sure i as a board member i will just make sure that that is you guys from your team you know we looked at all angles and this is in fact our top priority to utilize this money yeah the thing with you know seeing i'll tell you what makes this project unique is if we were to put in because one of the things i weighed mr brown was community use of playgrounds okay but one of the things that's unique with elc is the fact that even if we were to put this out and i'm gonna say this way and i thought outside our walls if we put the playground we still
048have to fence it off and keep it closed off because it's elc and that's what the code says and that's what the grant says so the interior here is a perfect place for this type of program i think in our other courtyards we look at making outdoor classrooms using astroturf like that little seating area that we have it would i think it'd just be really cool in some of our in our courtyards even in our elementary schools to make outdoor classrooms turf all of those so we don't have the maintenance anymore we don't have to you know we won't have drainage issue because all of this turf is drainable uh you know that and so i think i think that's what the future holds it could be a lot less money doing it but i
049think making outdoor classrooms so the kids can go outside when they're in the classroom they're or in the courtyard then in the classroom they're secure also from a safety standpoint and i think that's really cool and if you look at if you look at the majority of elc there's a lot of kids that we bring in that we have that have uh walkers or like different things that right that's not compliant yeah that that is not compliant yeah and i like this just because it touches all the you know all the kids from all the communities will go through this and utilize this i think that's really good i'm just glad you see turf is the way to go you know me right now don't you if you know what i'm talking about i know
050what you're talking about hey dr hall that's that's the beginning that's the start that's our experiment okay thank you thank you ken thank you thank you very much good job okay next up teaching and learning 2022 2023 calendar discussion fabulous ms perkins yeah it's here good evening to our board to our students family staff dr cara i have one agenda item this evening we're coming to you with our draft calendar for the upcoming 22 23 school year we wanted to let you know that the committee met hold on let me take this off the otl team and the committee met and you wanted some information on how we make the decisions about the calendar so this calendar that we're presenting this evening um will be uh kind of a two-year consideration so because of construction
051the calendar that we present this year and the calendar that we present for next year will really look close to the same we've balanced out the trimesters we put in the concerns about construction for the next two years we did put in a volunteer professional development day we would like to train all staff on a volunteer basis even though they would they would also get paid for but it would not be a mandatory training so we put in a day for that in case we need to do training we looked at our new higher orientation elc has a separate calendar they operate uh during the same time periods but their days look different at the high school we will start our ninth graders on the first two days when students return and then on that
052monday we will have the 10th through 12th grade come in so k-9 will start on that first day which is august 25th we have two institute days built in we're able with this calendar to get our high school students finished before we go into winter break for their first semester we also have to consider that with our nyp program at the middle school that we have to get in 50 odd days of instruction so we put that consideration in as well as the hours that the students need for drivers education we built in a back to school night as well as we put in our graduation dates for middle school and high school this year in illinois we will have election day on november 8th we are now required to have that day as a
053day off in the past we had taken pulaski day as a floating holiday and maybe it's sometimes veterans day but we are not allowed to do that without having a public hearing so those dates are back on the calendar when they are to be held we have our winter break and return to school we have our spring parenting conferences and early dismissal days this year we came to the board and asked the board to give us some extra school improvement days because of the pandemic we are going back to our traditional days which looks like two school improvement days a month and we took in the feedback from parents with those early dismissal days to try and make them as consistent as we could on the same days of the week to help families with
054their planning and then we will end on february i'm sorry janu uh june 9th and then we had 16 members on that committee and don can we bring up the actual calendar does the board need to see that questions yeah yeah so you said you you this year the teachers got extra days to help you know after the pandemic so now do we take that is that taken away and now they're only going to get two a month so we traditionally have done two a month and this year we went up to three to four a month so we are going back to our traditional twice a month for school improvement days has the feedback from the teachers have we have we asked them i mean i would assume i didn't see the list um
055but are you know do they look at that to make sure that they're that we're okay to go back she's on the committee again yeah so on the committee we have 11 teacher members and two acme members as well as three administrators on that committee okay yeah okay uh the other thing is is it is the is everything being late just purely because of construction is at the theory because i mean we're starting and i mean getting out june 9th is pretty late i mean this year i think we're out before memorial day that would be two weeks after essentially uh is that purely based is that is a big decision of that on construction it is based on construction is putting us again as far off as we could start but also giving us
056those days that we need for the ib program the high school driver's ed so we had to put all of that in and start as late as we possibly could because of the construction and again next year's calendar will look very similar to this year's calendar all right all right and this will be presented for approval at the meeting on the 22nd correct okay all right thank you thank you um next up i'll turn it over to dr kara for mec update thank you board members this evening um i wanted so tonight we're asking you know for your guidance in thinking about next steps um if this is a direction we would want to go in other words to close that building at the end of this school year as you know if the board
057did want to to entertain that and look forward to that there is house bill 1785 that you're all very familiar with about the process that a district a board would need to go through with the hearings and certainly attorney bernard would be able to kind of talk a little bit about that but i wanted to open up the questions for you as a board member if you wanted to ask any questions about what's going on at nbc where we would be moving forward i have invited our panel back there that our experts and of course miss riley she's been working with great detail um with with both buildings to to look at staffing and needs of students so i open it up to you for questions so so i do have a question what ken
058what if you don't mind what is the projected opening time frame for the addition on the high school i mean theoretically there we go theoretically it would be fall of 23. and and that's realistic right yes because we're in the process of programming right now i think uh dr karen um some of uh the other executive council is going to be talking about programming along with all that and so uh the goal is to start construction i will i i'm pretty sure september october is so that'll give a good 12 minutes yeah bids he said would be going out probably early summer in june so we're we're moving along so so this lends to a conversation i think we had and it kind of goes back to the junior high a little bit so before
059we make and and move forward with this we need to make sure that we talked to mr wartell and miss pappas about what the needs are kind of like we were short before we don't want to do that again and is the high school going to be able to handle the time frame you know you're going to have you're gonna have a point in time where we're we're either not gonna have mec currently and decommission the building or we keep it but are they gonna be able to handle that okay is i guess the first question but the other thing is we got to make sure that what our needs are there and so that we make sure that we get them into the planning stages to make sure that all the needs are met
060like where's the vision of of the program i mean we could probably see thomas we're telling he'll tell us exactly where he wants that program to go and i think that's where we need to go with that what is the ultimate goal of that addition and making sure that if we're going to do it we want to do it once again i think the next phase of our facilities at some point will be putting an addition on the middle school um you know i don't want to have that conversation in five years with this i want to make sure we do it right so um i guess that's the two questions is what's our vision for that and then a is can the high school handle or have the space what if you get five
061students from junior high or an additional six students from the high school will they be able to handle that all right so as i said next year we have projected to start with three students and we do expect uh you know more students come in and again this is in the interim before the new facility is built and uh ms trish i don't know if you want to add anything to that you know i know your team has taken a look at some of the rooms you've designated some of those rooms do you want to just talk briefly about the rooms and how many they could hold ms trish would you mind going to the podium please for the microphone our friends at home might want to hear so we've already began looking at space
062at the high school for can you hear me yeah designation for um middle mec students so we're already looking at uh one classroom for middle school and we're looking at two classrooms for mec all right so a theoretic theoretically you could handle uh you know 10 middle school students in one classroom and maybe yeah with the other two so you have room to grow most definitely right because right now we would be starting with zero middle school students but we'll still have that space allocated and we're having three right three high school students coming over and that's in one classroom and then we'll have an extra classroom so then there's plenty of room of growth for that entire year until the new facility is built and we're going to provide them with the staff necessary
063depending on the growth that is that is correct we already have the mec staff on hand and we will start the year with as many mec staff members as would be necessary to grow that program right and they they would be obviously the instructors for those students okay so thank you i'm sorry so miss trish don't worry i'm sorry so you did so miss trish you have oversight not only of the high school but the middle school as well for disciplinary you know for potential students being in a alternative program um you mean in the interim when they yeah so right now so right now you're projecting three classrooms three classrooms or three students high school students we would have three high school students however we would have three classrooms available for the mec students
064that's the best part of high okay so for our seventh and eighth graders what we're projecting one student a two student for seventh and eighth grader we don't have any we don't have any however we are setting aside a classroom just in case just in case that's my point because again you you you know you we know the knowns right now but we don't know the unknowns and it can happen anytime throughout the year and we need to be prepared for that and we will be okay okay great now the staff if we close nec down for this upcoming year we have staff members and we can absorb those staff members into our system right yes without anybody nobody's losing their job right that is correct nobody ever and these are positions that they feel
065pretty comfortable with taking right that they're certified so there's not going to be disruption there okay and the last question i guess to you eric which is the the house bill 1175 do we have to follow that through this process yes so um hospital uh i believe this is 11 17. i have the statute number which is section 10-22.13 of the school club [Laughter] so yeah it was passed last year and it references a few different procedural requirements that the district's going to have to follow in order to ultimately shut down a school building so specifically the board must hold at least three public hearings the sole purpose of which must be to discuss the decision to close the school building and to receive input from the community the board has to provide notice of
066the hearing or each of those hearings at least 10 days in advance on its website and that notice needs to set forth the time date place and name or description of the school building that the school board is considering closing the new statute like i said so there obviously has not been a lot of interpretation of it but certainly as long as the hearing itself is confined to discussing um the decision to close the building as well as receiving input from the community we believe that you could hold that hearing within the context of a normal board meeting as long as it's a specific you know set aside portion of the meeting that said if you want to take a more conservative approach you could certainly choose to have a special board meeting and solely
067devoted to that issue as well i think either of those would be acceptable so just as we have a public hearing on the levy adjacent you know at the beginning of a regular board meeting we could do the same here where you open the public hearing you start the meeting have the pledge all that good stuff you open a public hearing you have the presentation opportunity for public comment close public hearing and then move on with your regular meeting exactly and you have to do that three times you have to do that three times and you have to provide notice for each of them at least 10 days in advance so as opposed to 48 hours for our meeting correct so if you know you're going to have it for example um i know you're
068not going to do this at your next board being on on march 22nd but if you were going to you would want to make sure you put that notice out by march so 12th might make sense to do say a special meeting three times at six o'clock so we could separate out the notice from our regular board agenda you might want to think about having one in a different time because we do have people who work evenings as we found out today that couldn't make it to an earlier meeting so we might manage to make sure that one of those is morning afternoon something like that not all three of them not at six o'clock at night because i think you might get well you still have to have a quorum from the board members
069don't right so we'd have to plan that in advance but i i truly think that we need to remember that people work different hours now and especially now more people going to remote jobs they're working at night when their spouse is home to help with the kids or whatever so i just think we need to be cognizant that one of those might need to be at a different time that's all and i was just wondering if miss pappas or mr wartell would mind just um for those that are at home what our mec program entails from what i've understood it's changed from back when i remember it so i just kind of want to know what the program now is what it does what it offers and for those at home that don't know what
070we're talking about with mec it might just be good information for them well brian you have 25 minutes i was going to see well it has changed over the years you know we used to be mainly for discipline issues over the last few years with the district thinking about for more of the kids that had social emotional issues and that's why i think you see the numbers changing too because uh with the you know the committees that have been pro brought upon us and all that that we've done a lot more restorative justice in our schools at the middle school in high school so that's why you're seeing the enrolling numbers going down so it's kind of been especially with kova too so it's kind of like a perfect storm for this building closing with
071numbers but what we've really excelled on these last five years is working with the kids that were ready to drop out of school foster kids kids that just weren't fitting in at the middle school or the high school and over the last five years we've graduated over 38 kids those 38 kids would have surely dropped out of school if we were not there so it's a fantastic program i think this is a great opportunity for the district to move forward at the high school because they're going to be able to provide a lot more resources for them so does that answer your question yes thank you thank you it does so so we went from a disciplined kind of you know school into a social emotion okay and i think today in society that's probably
072the most important part of it is the social emotional part of it um just because i think uh before kovit i do i visited there and the kids there were [Music] they just you're right they didn't know where they fit in the school but they still were able to graduate and and become you know what we preach in here we want them to empower each student to positively impact the world right and that's what they were doing yeah it was a great opportunity for us and i do think with the pandemic and all that's going on in society it's it's great i think we do have a lot more social emotional needs out there so yeah and for our 15 students in our building we got about 65 in the high school you could probably
073find with the same issues and probably the same thing more than you think right yes exactly well and that was going to be kind of lead to my question which is if we think we have three students identified going into next year how do we justify building the addition we're not building that for three students we we feel like there's a greater need correct yes and right now ms reilly is in the middle of working with uh coming up with an identification tool to help um kid find i guess students that have experienced trauma so that we can go out there and collectively find that we are looking to also have this be a choice program this isn't a program that you know you and you have to go to we are designing it to
074be a very progressive enticing program with a lot of choices and freedom that come along with it so when students think about going to you know we haven't named it yet you know the the wing they're they're choosing to go there because there will be smaller class sizes there'll be more opportunities such as compacted curriculum for earlier graduation student-to-work programs more opportunities for online options students that have anxiety about going to a regular classroom with 20 kids now they have an opportunity to say hey i choose to have a very small environment or i choose to take a particular class online and we also are looking to have additional resources with social worker psychologists career counselors we're going to beef up that portion of it because our goal is no matter who comes through our
075doors our goals at the time they walk at graduation they're going to have a cord that either is going to show that they are graduating with a degree for getting ready for tech you know and the trades out there or perhaps looking for going on to junior college or four-year college but everybody will know where they're going so that we can continue that graduation rate because like i said you know we've seen it out there too the students are different than they were two years ago and the social emotional needs is considerable out there so i think we are doing a complete pivot now and so the students that we had two years ago three years ago there were some certainly but we think we know just by looking at our data that it is
076exponential out there for the number of needs so as we start to define and identify them for a screening tool and giving students and families choices to pathways that are smaller more supportive you know in order for them to graduate that is that that is where we're shifting this and a lot of people say you know is this exactly like mec it's going to have to be a blend it's a blend yes that was my question it's going to evolve like everything else i think i think you've probably understood that all the work that's been done eight years ago was you know disciplinary right so you had a stigma or something about it but in the last five years or however long you've been there you've changed and how it's evolved into what it is
077today and i think it may be in a different building but maybe the opportunity is better for more for more opportunity yeah yeah we used to have kids couldn't wait to get out of there now we have students that prefer to stay at mec then go back to the high school just because the attention of the smaller class size of the staff ratio all those things that you can't you know mimic in a school of 1600 students and so that wing will give them opportunity more students opportunity because right now it's still based on discipline not choice and i think that's a big key word is choice there's a bunch of kids out there that need this kind of programming that we just can't do right now so we're going to have we're going to
078have a component that says choice obviously and we're going to have that component that says really you don't have a choice right there'll be a component of that i'm sure yes and with those kids that have a component with the choice involved are they going to be able to co-mingle or hybrid somehow where they could go back and forth from this new building over to the high school and participate in some classes there or is it all or nothing no the the the program follows our equity statement about being inclusive okay and not um exclusive you know in in the way that it looks and so we are working with designing a format that creates some flexibility but also creates you know for students that need a little bit more of they prefer kind of
079being off by themselves that they they don't want to be in the mix we will be able to provide that but again i think the key about going into this program is we want to make sure that our students have access to the career opportunities that we have we are looking to grow them as i had said we are looking at some partnerships with some other districts such as barber cosmetology we are looking at drones for airline pilots we are looking to grow those pieces and yes mr brown if we're looking for that because many of the students want to be able to have that to look forward to we are looking again the manufacturing program has just exploded and so many of our students will be graduating before they leave here they're going to
080have jobs and that's the idea so again students at this point before did not have access they could not travel over to get those classes before so it became restrictive by opening this up it becomes more inclusive and gives them more pathways and more again additional supports because we are going to continue to invest in trauma and forum instruction we have said that we would uh provide uh training and certification for those teachers that are working with students that um to help train them in that um as well so again um this is the big concept that we have like i said we're starting with three we're almost rebuilding the program here but build it and they will come we know that there are students that would benefit from this and um so we are
081going out to identify them and offer choices and our career counselors will help guide students into making those choices so so eric we would have three hearings and then at a subsequent board meeting we would have a vote to close the school based on the feedback that we got from those three hearings is that the way that kind of procedurally this would work yes you have the three hearings at those three hearings you listen to what the community has to say and then ultimately it's up to the board's determination as to whether or not they want to you know close the school or not you would do that at separate meetings yes okay i have a question how does this look if we close the building and we move three high school students into these
082classrooms at the high school for the period of time in between and then we also get a couple of middle school students in one of the classrooms how does this look regarding pe lunch when we have middle schoolers in the high school how are we going to handle this until that wing is theirs and and i'm not sure how you're going to handle it then if they're going to have their separate facilities or because you're going to have middle schoolers and and i'm really concerned how we're going to integrate all this an hour in just for the next year only are you talking just for next year well and then what are you going to do when you do have that wing because you're still going to have middle schoolers so you're not going to
083put them in high school classes correct so i'm going to let ms trish talk about the interim and then i can talk about the the building plans that have their own gym their own bathrooms their own wing their own cafeteria okay okay and their own entrance that's what i was getting to gotcha all right and buses so currently um as i shared with you before we'd have the three classrooms we'd have the one classroom for middle school students and then we'll have the two classrooms for high school students we're currently working on schedules so that they would have pe and that they would have lunch um at times when our the high school students are in the classroom and they would be able to have movement so this would not be a situation where they
084are sequestered in a classroom and they have to stay there we are working on a schedule where they would have movement to use all of the areas in the high school so you actually have open times where the gym would be open or the lunch room would be open and and they would still be segregated per se at this time just because of the situation right if they were middle school i would just say they would be segregated we would just have scheduled times for movement so that we would not have any conflicts so when the high school the high school students are in the classroom that's when the other students the three classrooms would have movement a different bell schedule right okay so are you going to have a mixed pe no no we
085could we we're working it out where they would have pe by themselves okay so is that what schoolers were separate from high schools you had some yes okay so that's what i'm concerned about that's how we're treating the middle school oh yeah most definitely right we're very cognizant that they're middle school students so okay but i think the public needed to hear how we were doing this right right we're very cognizant that these are middle school students and so we are setting up a schedule where we're very mindful of that so that they would also have that movement but they would not be involved with the high school mec students nor with the other high school students and again their their current pe teacher from what i understand would be traveling there with them and
086currently right now they have a very small gym class with the one pe teacher that would be replicated at the high school okay thank you for that so you know it's not unusual to have middle schoolers at a high school we just don't typically do it in this area do we do it on turf all right that was a good one but for example when i worked at morgan park we had seventh and eighth grade there did it kind of like mr church said alternate schedule kenwood is another school whitney young is a school that does so there are schools that have middle schoolers i don't know if you ever heard of mark hall mark hall won state in seventh grade that was the first time he was high school state so he won the
087seventh eighth right all the way through so there it happens um are you talking about regular students though or i i get what you're saying i'm just saying for the sake of having me yeah it's not too long i don't want to throw them in an environment that's going to ruin everything we've fixed or built and you know what's funny about this he just said when he was at morgan park right and you were saying about some classes or whatever you were saying i can say when i was in a i took some classes at morgan park when i was in eighth grade yeah i know that's 50 years ago it was two generations right 50 years ago to that i would say that we are we've had many conversations and we are having ongoing
088conversations about the safety of the students because obviously they are middle school students but we don't have heightened concerns about that we do not worried about the safety i was worried more about ages a sixth grader is way off from a senior when it comes to their right right but we're talking seventh if i'm not mistaken seventh and eighth graders don't we get sixth graders too yeah sometimes you know some of those kids are pretty young really mentally right right you know and you're putting them that's why i wanted to make sure that we weren't right yeah they would not be co-mingled we would never put any of the middle school students um in any of the classrooms with high school students or vice versa and so that's why we're adamant about having a separate
089facility for the middle school students because obviously they're middle school students right in their classroom as a matter of fact would be further away from the other classrooms okay any other questions so so what would you like me to do well what i would suggest is perhaps you and i look at the calendar when we could schedule these hearings and then maybe have two associated with our regular meetings one and off time and then the community um on our schedule so yeah and then um we'll go from there okay is that okay with everybody in this mr this aligns with our long-term facility plan right it i mean it it's going towards our goals that we talked about probably a year you know six months ago that at some point we have to address that
090so this is a positive step towards our a long-term plan it does it aligns you know also with our short-term plan too and that we weren't going to invest any money into nvc at all too so both short and long-term yes yeah remember i mean our short-term plan to put air conditioning in these schools that would have been 6 million dollars to go into nbc that we're not we're not spending so it's it's meaningful so so so when we do have these public opportunities what we are going to be prepared to do is share with the public her whole plan including programming and all that would be prepared to do that right well as opposed to just you know you know how you do the presentation on tax levies and all of that we're going
091to grab all of this be ready have our programming have our i guess like the president said we already did our short term this is kind of the addition to the high school is part of this process i don't know if it's considered short-term i don't know maybe not but whatever term it is we're going to include that as part of the presentation to the public saying the reason why we're closing mec we're taking this these students from here over here adding more dotted data we'll be able to verbalize and socialize that right that's exactly what i would be sharing with similar to what i just shared today with perhaps more specificity yes and visually and visually i'll do my best with the visuals so be able to test boom boom boom boom boom and
092give the public all they need to know to know what we're doing so this is good information that i'm learning too from miss trish and and brian and his team and things like that so it's good stuff we've been working very strategically to make sure that this is what we need to do yeah these are big steps they are very big steps and you know we want to make sure that we're doing it right okay so i would take it like one last thing so i would take if you're talking about having three different meetings is that like over three different months three different board meetings as a special or so so what time frame are we looking before we could we could do same month you could do a committee the whole meeting and
093you could do a regular board meeting and then have a third meeting at an off time okay we could do it pretty so do we want to try to our goal is to try to try to do it before the end of the school year are we going to go into the summer i don't know i know some uncertainties there i think we have to have some decisions before the end of the school year okay this ain't here correct yeah yeah because you don't want to get too late before you know next you know school our staff and our families and our students need to know we need to know what what we're doing okay okay i just have one last thought a big thank you to mr rotell and ms pappas for i know
094change is hard and just recognize all the great work that you've done at mec and hopefully you're as excited as we are about kind of what the future holds so thank you mr wartil is retiring so so well no nothing let's get a big adventure ahead good night denied change change is good as long as it's positive okay so so thank you very much um any old business we do we will have a need for a brief closed session tonight so i have one quick question that i was asked to ask so that it's on the video are we still checking residency as tough as we do or what we did because i'm getting claims from constituents that when their child is involved in something it appears that many times the other child doesn't live
095in our district but we don't do anything about it i've told them that's incorrect they must be able to supply documentation but i'm hearing more and more that some local districts are cleaning house per se and they're running before they get expelled and they're ending up in our district so i just want to put that to you face first i said i don't believe it i believe that we're still as strict as we were about registration and verifying things but i would like to hear it from you please oh mr surma i'm so sorry i was trying to give it to her i know you were that's okay though she was doing registration right now yeah we are checking registration every new student is we are checking registration they're required to put the appropriate documents
096in if there's any question about that it comes to my desk and i review all the documents i don't review every single case but um you know they have to have the required amount of documents along with transfer forms if the student is transferring in uh from the illinois school so we still are checking that on a regular basis and as strictly as we were before are we no longer using that firm we were using the investigations firm we use them on special cases i will tell you that we have not used them that much this year at all it's national investigations is the company we're referring to but we really haven't used them that much this year there's a special case that i need somebody to investigate i will normally you know if there's
097a situation that has come up that there's a question about things you know i usually call first you know and that and have a discussion with the parent of that try and take it from there but if we need to do some investigating the news national investigation i think in the most part we probably have only spent i wouldn't even say a thousand dollars this year okay any other old business the only other question i had mr sherman is do you know if you'll when you may be able to provide an update on your program for work orders and stuff just to see where i knew i threw some information in one of the fyis bill yeah i don't remember but i can do that i i guess i i should ask do you want
098that on a on a monthly basis at a board meeting yeah i prefer that if you can and if you put it in the fyi that'd be great just to glaze through it one of the things i was actually thinking of doing is making it as part of the board financial report even or i can keep it separate i can do no that way yeah that's fine either way whatever it is included is part of that so it's actually in the consent agenda and you've got it and it's public for everyone okay excellent thank you okay any new business okay um can i have a motion to go into closed session for for the purpose of the appointment employment compensation discipline performance or dismissal of the specific employees moved this is closed session number two
099three three uh two in this yes okay so we had bill bill 72nd okay roll call please brown is and i dr hall hi mrs galbraith hi mrs walters hi mr sowalis aye vice president rule aye president albrecht aye motion carries we are in closed session at eight o'clock and uh what do you think about half an hour about a half an hour we won't have the only business we'll have when we come back is adjournment so thank you all righty [Music] can i have a motion to we are