Crete Monee School District 201u Board Meeting 2/15/22

001okay you ready done okay uh hereby call this meeting to order uh roll call please brown is here mrs galbraith here dr hall here mr swalish here mrs walters here vice president root here president albert here please stand and join me for the pledge of allegiance i pledge allegiance to the flag of the united states of america and to the republic for which it stands one nation under god indivisible with liberty and justice for all and ms roop would you please read the mission statement sure our mission is to empower each student to positively impact the world for a bright new future thank you terry are the only comments submitted via email okay uh the first one i can't determine it the email address is star gm84 so hello i would like to know why

002our district is not going mask optional a lot of schools around us are and are doing just fine when you when will you be reviewing this order again how do i make a vote against the masks thanks um the second public comment is from bobby walters on behalf of all students attending district 201u i'm asking the district to remove the mask policy immediately when judge grishkau ordered the temporary restraining order against the districts named in the lawsuit she also said that all other districts should act accordingly meaning that if the judge said it was illegal to master students without due process all other districts are knowingly knowingly breaking the law there are already over 500 schools in illinois that went mask optional and most are not even included in the lawsuits thomas devore the attorney

003who filed the tro is now accepting nuke accepting new cases against school districts that continue to enforce the mass policy parents and staff groups can now bring independent action against the district the governor idph and isbe i would hate for the school district to waste taxpayer money on a lawsuit however i am already in contact with other parents who are considering taking legal action please make masks optional for the students the third public comment is from mary jars or shari's good evening as a parent of a student at crete elementary and at the early learning center i was wondering when will the school district reevaluate holding indoor events for the students and parents of children's at these levels i continue to see events being held at high school level and i can't help but wonder

004when these when will these restrictions be lifted at the lower grade levels thank you mary oller and the fourth public comment um it's from kathy seifert titled cmea public comment excuse me good evening my comment is on behalf of cmea in regards to the closing of mec i would like to note that i did share these concerns with dr cara and had a brief conversation regarding this but our members felt it was important for the board to hear our concerns as well when news got out that mec would be closing at the end of the school year i received many emails and messages from concerned members from elementary through high school it comes as no surprise that many of our students are struggling as a result of the pandemic those struggles come in the form

005of academics social emotional and behavior our educators have worked relentlessly to meet students needs but due to lack of resources they're often falling short closing mec is taking away yet another much needed resource while there are plans for a new mec in the future that does nothing to help our teachers in the present in previous board meetings it has been discussed that there are a small student and teacher population at mec and that is serving as a therapeutic school the reality is that we have a dire need for an expanded alternative program to meet our students needs therapeutic and otherwise data paints one picture walking the halls of our schools each day paints another i was informed that the district is looking into virtual schools as well as out of district placements for some students

006which comes at an additional cost for the taxpayers to add to that many out of district placements are reaching or at capacity leaving our struggling students with no other option too many resources have been taken away from our teachers staffing time resources access to interventions to name a few we simply cannot afford to have a valuable resource such as mec taken away thank you kathy and is that it okay thank you uh next up is board updates any board members have any updates yeah the only thing i want to bring up which i didn't know if this was the time but obviously we got the email regarding what happened this afternoon and somewhat of a ruling so at some point i'm just wondering if we're going to adapt um you know our mass policy with

007you know everybody else and and say anything you can hear some of the public comments you know i think it's time to maybe change it look at it adjust it i mean the governor is going to relieve us of our mass policy in the state the 28th so at that point you know do we do we make a res if we have to make a resolution to change it do we adjust it do we change it to 28th like he is if they're going to open up this state so i don't know when the right time is to discuss it but i figured at some point we were going to talk about it this week with the ruling coming out so to me maybe it's two questions for eric is since he's here uh one

008any update on the appeal that we talked appeal process that we talked about last week and then just before the meeting we got this news that the illinois legislators voted against extending the mask mandates for schools so in which i understand to mean that the prior mandate expired and was has not been renewed or something to that effect can you speak to either of those things it's a little more nuanced to that so the first thing answering your first question directly is he needs his microphone thank you all right so i i began to say it's a little more nuanced and that's answering your first question directly there's no news yet from the appellate court um it's consistent with what i said last week we expect a ruling tomorrow or thursday okay um that's still

009on the same timeline both both parties have filed their appellate briefs now it's in the judge's appellate court judge's hand so was that today from legislation down in springfield where the lawmakers said that they're not going to allow so what happened today is that if you recall last week i talked about how the rules that the judge thought that the rules that were underlying the tro were passed in violation of the joint committee's protocols and because they hadn't been done in that way she invalidated them the rules were emergency rules that were passed by isbe and the department of public health is be with respect to vaccinations department of public health with respect to masking and those rules expired february 13th there they were emergency rules and they're only in place for a certain amount

010of time and so jay carr today the joint committee said we're not going to renew those rules the rules themselves are the ones that like sort of give definition to the the governor's executive order uh on masking on vaccinations but the executive order is still in place right now and we're still waiting on the appellate court to determine whether the executive order in and of itself is valid and so right now i would say that um the ground under which the executive order stands is is thinning okay i think it's fair to say it's thinning but the executive order is still in place and we're still waiting to hear whether the appellate court believes that the executive order is valid and if the appellate court believes the executive order is still valid then school districts

011are still bound by the executive order and so i would say my recommendation would be hold off for a day or two let's see what the appellate court does and worst case scenario you are uh mandating mass for the next day or two and the vietnam court says um like i said last week if the thought part says um the this executive order is is invalid then you'll no longer be able to enforce math squaring at other schools okay and to the extent that the court validates the executive order then you'll be able to continue mandating math so so the question i have is is if they uphold it and and we let's again correct me if i'm wrong if we create a resolution and change it and make it optional what what consequences do

012we have from the state of illinois if you were to make it optional and not like if they uphold governor pritzker's mandate i think that playing out that hypothetical i think you may not bear any consequences unless there are rules that are re-implemented okay yes i have heard that's why districts have gone with resolutions because they feel that there won't be any consequences because it's been adopted my other point that i have regarding the masks is i'm getting emails from people asking if we do go to optional will we continue to clean and do everything we're doing that we're doing today if we would go to optional they're concerned about would we clean as well as we clean would we you know that type of thing so i'm just putting that out there for you

013too yeah i don't see how that why would that change we would probably continue cleaning as we have been is that correct mr cernell yes so as thoroughly as we're doing now we will continue if we went to optional that's what they're asking me and i i don't know i wouldn't think anything would change other than that it would just be optional for the people who want to wear it right none of our planning phone calls would change thank you what would why why is this different if you say there's no consequences if our district chose not to abide by a mandate why would this mandate be any difference than any other mandate which there are consequences if we do not buy a mandate there's other mandates out there because because right now mandate in

014and of itself mean you have to do it as of right now there's no enforcement mechanism and that's not and that's what's not being renewed is that the legislator voted today not to renew they're indicating that they're they're not they're not renewing it right now we're not renewing it right now today okay as of today they've indicated they're not going to renew it but we'll see what the what happens with the questions so am i correct in understanding then it's the rules of enforcement that expired correct okay correct so we could meet and say have a resolution no more masks but if they put while a mandate still exists but if the legislature goes back and puts these enforcement mechanisms back in place we're back to where we are now yes that's right oh sorry

015sorry i have a process question because if i recall correctly before the governor's mandate we had said dr cara could make the call as to whether or not we were going to make masks mandatory that's that's how we were going to do it and then the governor did his mandate and then it kind of you know just answered the question there so if if we don't have to have masks anymore does the board have to formally do something or is that that just dr kara makes a call again right well well i think you're gay i think you may get a ruling from the court that says you're not allowed if you want to have mass i think you may get a ruling from the court that says you're not permitted right to have mass

016in which case your board would not need to do it so we don't need to do anything right so okay that's what i wanted to see because we're talking about resolutions or something and i didn't i think we talked about that because i think when it first happened people were doing that right away to protect themselves right but if it comes down to the next day or so then you're right we probably wouldn't but it's really a gray area i think there's so many different ways to go i just want to know if we have that option i mean making something optional i mean another thing is we had a survey well right was so i think it was 50.3 one way 49.7 which is pretty much as even as it gets that's of the

017staff the survey this is correct so if we do so if you do an optional then the people that it's essentially the people that want to wear it can and the people that don't wouldn't i mean i don't it's not it wasn't clear cut that was one way or the other but it was really divided which was good am i correct in saying that on the 28th though the governor is we don't after the 28th the public is not mandated to wear mask in illinois correct after the 28th isn't that mandate that's what he's saying with respect to public places other than schools okay right and i guess from for me then if the public is not required why in goodness sake would we require them in schools i mean that's just my feeling if

018the public's not doing it why would our children who have been at the least risk still be required to so i guess my vote would be optional if we come to that but if the public is free from you know then why would the kids still have to do it that's just my thought on that dr r woody answered that on on the news today and i don't remember exactly what she said but there was a reasoning behind the schools and i can't remember exactly what she said but if you look at like any of the news stations that little tape that they did with our woody and and the mayor she gives an answer to why the school i would be really interested to see why kids who have been the least risk would

019be a you know yeah if the rest of uh public is able to not have masks right i think i think a clarification when you say the public that's not the entire public is that i thought it was things like you still have to wait where masks on public transportation airports and things of that nature is that a correct statement i don't i don't know that's the specifics of the revocation yeah on february 28th yeah so there was something i don't know how to address it airports they train you know transportation schools obviously so we i thought dr kaglins was being driven by the law you said he was going and the law was was being shared by the pundits political punders as they direct the law and so you're saying that or i haven't

020heard you say anything yet but what's being said here with this board have you had any type of discussion with anyone saying that you were not you would deviate from a director from the law or mandate from the law you're open to that is that what you say is that what i'm hearing from what i'm hearing from other districts similar to us in the area similar to us giving us an example so some of our local communities that around here um give us an example i believe the rich school district would be wicked rich rich okay for would be for example i think everyone's waiting to see what happens after this appellate makes their decision because every many of the school districts feel that that will make the deciding factor either way okay and eric

021correct me if i'm wrong a mandate is not necessarily a law correct oh well i think i think you should i think you could consider that binding i mean a mandate you should consider binding upon you the same way that a law is binding upon you okay um and until such point as it becomes completely invalidated or a court says it's not okay on you okay thank you so basically and by the way i i one of the things that you were picking up on what i've heard this is not a legal opinion at all but what i've heard i've heard the director of the cdc saying that schools are still areas uh because there's a higher concentration of people that are are together that there's still a higher likelihood of transmission in those types

022of areas as opposed to [Music] my office for example that's what i've heard the cdc is rationale for continuing to express you know mass requirements in schools and again again totally hypothetical which i really do not want to go down that path but if it was an option if we as a board or i guess we would not even have to pose a resolution that dr congress can make that decision so again it looks as if we got 50 50 split with the staff at least the teachers and and non uh acme we haven't heard anything from the public a general you know we had a couple people here and there but i don't think a survey was taken from the public at large right so i guess my question would be that and again

023i'm not trying to pose as a scientist we got enough scientists out there but the mask in and of itself is to protect me and it's to protect others so if we have students or staff that decided it's my option to wear a mask it basically said i'm not protecting you in any any in any way shape or form and i chose to take the consequences of myself to get sick or whatever so they said what about those again i think i asked this question i gave it a scenario at our last meeting what about those parents that says there's just too much going on at our district i don't want to see my kid in that environment or a staff member that says i don't want to come here in that environment so how

024do we handle that not saying we answer that but i had a few people email me regarding just that what are our options and i'm not citing one either way i just want to make the right decision to keep everybody as safe as possible that's the whole i think that's the whole adjust that's what we're here right and hypothetically to the other side of it sure is what if parents get together yeah or a student like in our thing and file a lawsuit against a district for their rights right then it can go both ways that's correct so i said this is a no-win situation well if it's the appeal if the governor loses the appeal we can't mandate mass right no it's not even a it's not even an option it's not enough so

025then people just have to make their own personal decisions yeah absolutely absolutely so there's really nothing no i'm saying if if if it was a law still the mandate was out there if the appeal appellate court comes back and say no the government had all within its right to execute his executive order and business as usual he knocked down the district court uh you know standing on that and now we're back to square one so do we continue business as usual and i'm hearing that you know some board members is maybe alluding to that maybe we can should go optional and i'm saying if we go that way these parents over here is on this side obviously these parents over here is on this side what do we do i will see the parents that

026wants to go option they get you know what they want and now the other parents to say no i don't want to go that way i don't feel safe that way i think we're wasting a lot of time talking about something until we know what the app i'm just saying i mean we have thrown a lot of hypothetical stuff out there okay any other comments or questions for eric on this topic any other board updates okay administrative updates i'll turn it over to dr cara thank you there are just a couple of points that i wanted to remind the community of number one the board will be receiving their board training on february 19th that's the saturday at 9 00 a.m it will be all day and it will be given by our isb trust

027edge and lori grant will be doing that training for us and that will be at the tinley convention center and i believe miss tobin gave everyone directions to that and we will have a light breakfast there on that day and we will have lunch there as well so how do you get there well i think you know somebody that might assist you in your end i will not be attending due to a family emergency um and i did take that at the triple i conference that that's right you did so um i i cannot attend okay thank you um the next item i just wanted to make sure that we had it for the public is that we will be changing the board meeting the regular scheduling board meeting from march 15th of 2022 to

028march 22nd and that is due to make the arrangements for the bid process and make sure those bids are can be approved at that meeting item three this was carried over from last board meeting was the discussion of do we have a special boarding board need to discuss the mask litigation and i think we've kind of discussed that here i think a lot of it depends on what we hear in the next two days president albrecht you can let me know if the board wishes okay after that time to do that and then our last item here is just to kind of revisit the discussion of board policy 7190 that was the one board policy that embedded the use of cell phones and we needed to kind of revisit the idea of having it powered

029off or silenced and the board question was also here was it during could they have it during lunch and then there was one question our cell phones required to be out of sight we just needed a yes or no on that i've got copies here hard copies if anyone wanted to look at those otherwise i think they're included in your board packet and then ms rube also brought to our attention uh policy seven one nine three electronic signaling cell cellular communication devices this was a policy that was written by the board some years ago i think it was adopted first in 2010 it had some revisions and this was kind of the beginning of the cell phone policy press plus has embedded it in this policy now we have two policies are somewhat redundant so

030we may want to revisit the 7193 and perhaps think about maybe next board meeting taking action yes at the next board meeting i believe 7193 was supposed to be deleted and it was incorporated in 7190 and somehow that may not have gotten um passed on when rachelle and ivory did them okay that's i believe that's what happened okay perfect all right and i do have a question on this we're having a discussion is that yes absolutely okay so i get the gist of it i understand what the high school is asking for but dr hall made an excellent point last week in our discussion about we need to let our children know what our expectations are in the classroom and a suggestion was made high school i'm saying no we start children young with what

031the expectations are when you're in a classroom in school i mean i remember when i went to school the teacher had him up on the board you know you sit quietly you raise your hand blah blah blah i think that part of this problem is is that one class and one school allows this one class allows that and i think we're not doing our kids any favor by confusing them okay whose class am i in can i have my phone on my desk or can't i can i do this can i do that so dr hall i i do think that what you were saying made me think a lot more about what you had brought to light and i think at some point we need to talk about how we can incorporate something like

032that so that we we don't expect them to know what's expected of them without telling them what's expected and i know that there you walk through the high school every teacher allows whatever they want to in their classroom and that's fine but then when you go to the next one you have to remember what that teacher allows and and i think at some point we need to figure out how to address that to help our children understand what we're expecting of them when they come to our buildings all right thank you if you want to elaborate doctor all you can oh yeah no i was just going to say that that's a good point it's not so much even classroom the classroom that it has to be uniform but it has to be taught what's

033expected in each classroom because kids know a a student todd can go into mr brown's class and cut a rug but then he goes to mrs walters class and he's sitting there because he knows what was expected and it's been taught what's expected so uh similar to the old well i don't know if it's old but pbis it's no different they they have had certain days where you went over expectations you taught what's expected you you they went through what's expected in the hall how you should perform in the bathroom how you should performing in mr hall's class however and i just think that it's important to continue to teach these expectations and segments and just reinforce to teachers to add this into their curriculum as they go along and teach because routine is important

034kids will come to a classroom and they'll have a routine you know do certain things and you know and you can deviate of course but that routine and just teaching what's expected like we we as adults but we know how to perform because we know what's expected when we go to certain places like i wouldn't just come to your house and go on your refrigerator some other well yes and i i certainly understand that i had gone back and talked with the administration again on this because there was some discussion on that to see you know where they were at with this and the way the board press policy was originally written is what they would you know they would feel comfortable moving on with was again allowing it to the phones to be powered

035off or silenced as presented and then also allowing cell phones to be used during lunch hour so that's again that will be our that would be our recommendation for you to consider okay i have to say i don't remember replacing 7.193 i remember a large disc a long discussion when we originally did that one i guess it was 2018 because i had two kids in school at the time who were very upset what's that it was i looked i looked i watched the meeting that's yeah i that's because when we were talking about the policy something wasn't setting right with me i'm like we made we had this huge discussion my two high schoolers were really mad at me like why would you vote for something that we can never have our phones out not

036even in lunch and now we were discussing about that and i'm like something's not making sense so here we had this policy that said you couldn't use your phone from the start of school to the end of school we had that policy and obviously it was never enforced that's my point we didn't they didn't even know we had that policy right if we're talking now about this we didn't even know that policy existed they were following the policy again we're talking about pre-covered i think this has been two years later they were following the policy at the time and now yes because i do know that they and now they're asking for a policy that that is not as strict well they're willing uh press plus presented a policy that was less strict you know

037and i think at this point two years later they were they uh agreed to accept and and uh felt that this was uh adequate to meet what was going on in the schools at this point when you say we they are we building administration administration correct i'll take your word for it i guess the question is enforcement if if the teachers are spending more than two minutes a minute and a half two minutes a day working worrying about this they're not they're not teaching a lesson they're not doing what they want to do right so we just got to make sure that if it's coming from administration we got to make sure the administration and the teachers are supporting the teachers on what the policy or what the rules are going to be just because

038the example is if you if kids aren't listening and the teacher sends them down they have to support what the teacher did because they're not following rule we can't have we got to make sure that they're they're not on separate pages they have to be on the same page they have to support each other because we want the teacher to teach the children that's what they want to do they don't want to be enforcing and again i understand that their expectations should be taught but if it goes on more than a minute and a half two minutes it to me is wasting time from other students in instructional time on something that some of the things that they had talked about remember i talked about the yonder bags i sent you a link to see

039what that looks like this is new than what it was a couple years ago and some of the conversations have been you know we do want to teach students how to use them appropriately and so forth and when they are misusing them what do we do about it teachers would be provided yonder bags in the classroom to hand to that child within less than a minute to put their phone in the bag and take care of it right there so these are some of the changes that we have that what we would be able to implement for next year okay any other i guess i just need just the question number one isb just need for pres excuse me press plus just need our cell phones required to be kept out of sight and we

040were recommending that to be yes they can still be used if the teacher is having that incorporated of course but at least we were recommending that it would be for them to be out of sight put away and they can be you said in here that they can be used in the cafeteria during lunch they could be used during lunch they would be brought out during lunch they can turn them back on they can use them at that time and what do we do when teachers or staff members don't enforce it again that's administratively we're putting a policy together to help us um kind of control some of these pieces um to make it easier for teachers to use in the classroom i think the policy does so that it grants permission where it needs

041to be my own concern was that they were vehement vehemently vehemently against being allowing them to use min lunch because they felt that the next class they went to they would spend way too much time reminding the kids who came from lunch that they can't have their phones anymore so it looks like they've changed their mind i just hope that that's not going to be a problem because they said that they felt that was going to be a huge problem in high school really came after us about that the lunch period using it from what i heard from my discussion these gender bags you know have already been ordered and they would be available we had two options for next year we had either younger bags in all day you know time you get into

042the time you leave or a little bit of that flexibility kind of that teaching piece allow them to have them at lunch then when they go to the next period tell them to put away yonder bags are in the classroom for students that aren't listening handed that through the underbags to not punish everyone else that is putting them away so this is what the tentative plan is you know they're they're still working through those some of those pieces and again this is not a perfect scenario at all because we do know that you know students have these phones and so forth but again we are trying to minimize as best we can we want to have policies that are there to support our staff and teachers to minimize the disruptions as much as possible right

043and i think that's why we ended up with the start of school to end the school or something because they felt they were going to be do fighting after each lunch period to get them to put it away so hopefully it works out that's all i'm pointing out is that they were really against it before yes okay that's all i've got next stop under business i'm sorry so is it my understanding that we'll bring back uh press uh the policy 7193 next month for uh for retirement for retirement yep okay we'll do that you've got that terry thank you all right so turn it over to ken that's our facility assessment survey we're excited about this piece and dave was able to come today i told you he might not be able to and he

044so good evening board dr cara to the public we're going to go through a page by page the uh assessment not just kid uh the the plan that we're gonna be talking about we did put up on board docs so it is out there for the public um oh okay other system i'm sorry i'm talking to myself okay i think board book yeah something for dies that's another place yeah um so we put that out there um i just want to give you an overview of the booklet that you have there so it is the full assessment plan it is a 15-year plan that we commissioned the board commission healey bender patent and dean to do i believe back in spring of 21 it was completed november 21 as you'll see so this is a

045culmination of it it's a 15-year plan it's set up you have the very first page is a summary a spreadsheet summary that will show uh all the different buildings different costs and all that and then each building is divided up with a narrative that you know dave is kind of going to explain what his process was in that and at the end of that narrative there's another spreadsheet for each building that looks at all the mechanicals this really becomes the i'm going to say the bible for a long range capital improvement preventative maintenance plan it is a working live breathing document that is used by our department of building and grounds and updated on an annual basis as we move forward i think the big thing is going to be and the one question that

046the board may have is all right how do we pay for all of this and so i would hold that question until really i present the budget next august so that i can talk to you about that when it comes to tip rolls off and all of that stuff in order to pay for a lot of these things all right so i'm going to turn it over to dave we are going to project what we have put on the projection screen is really the summary page and then the first section of belmoral so dave can kind of have an example to go through we are not going to go through the entire uh 285 pages with you it is a lot of information a lot of data but it's some good stuff so dave i'm

047going to turn it over to you and you can take it from there just okay well what i want to do is just kind of explain tonight is maybe the process that we use to develop these assessments we've actually done a couple of assessments for the district over the years we certainly used some of the findings that we had from those previous assessments as a starting point but we sent architects and engineers out to your buildings mainly during the summer of 2021 ken mentioned the process kind of started in spring of 2021. so during that summer of 2021 we spent uh time uh days and days within each of the facilities looking at each of the components of your buildings again it was done by architects from our office and then our our consulting engineers

048millie's associates they sent out electrical plumbing uh mechanical contractors to take a look at those systems as well and to assemble uh findings we also had tremco roofing is a partner that we used at different times to assess roofs they we asked them to provide a thorough assessment of the roofs at the district to get their opinion of those so those those findings are also included in each of these books so what you'll find is there's a kind of a a written narrative for each of the buildings that kind of goes through and defines the different components it starts with kind of just a general introduction we get into kind of a building and site overview of each of the buildings we kind of get more involved in the site components of the building with

049the the paving and the landscaping and the sidewalks [Music] the report then moves into the building envelope where we talk about the foundations and the exterior walls and again the roofing windows doors even lentils that are over those doors and windows again i mentioned that there's a separate section on roofing that has a bunch of photographs of each of the the buildings and the roofing systems that are out there we get into interior construction we talking we talk about ceilings and walls and floors doors frames and hardware some of the glass that you use in the building for fire reasons uh and then the the last pages of the of each of the reports for each of the schools is uh talks about the mechanical electrical and plumbing systems for those buildings and again they

050go into depth on each of the the systems and the components that are currently in your building this this approach we've used in the past but it's it for us it's kind of a static assessment of what we saw in the summer of 2021 it kind of gives them suggestions on what you should do moving forward we've actually taken this [Music] the information here and kind of put it in more of a digital format with a giant spreadsheet format for each of the buildings and again when we're when we're doing that we we went through and we we actually did a kind of a con assigned a condition number to each of the the components of a building so you know doors for instance or windows they had a condition reading we we estimated what

051we felt was the remaining life expectancy on those components in your building so we had some idea of when you might be in a position to replace those we assigned a [Music] a category factor for each of those components so certain things you know we looked at safety and security is probably a number one priority in your schools the exterior envelope general maintenance of your building is probably high uh probably down the down that list would be like for instance aesthetics uh if you know just you know like the color of the carpet in a room so you want to have it replaced well that's you know that might be a a reason to replace it but it's there's probably a lot of other issues relating to the building envelope and safety and security that

052you probably would want to do first before you get to replacing carpeting so this this uh the review of the the condition the category and we also looked at the the impact if something were to fail on that building and if it would impact multiple people in that building so again for instance like a boiler if a boiler were to fail you may have to close school and it would certainly impact that building for potentially you know a while until a replacement was put in there so those kinds of things kind of drive when we started looking at when you might want to be replacing um different components in a building so that's where that that 15-year spreadsheet kind of starts to move things in different categories it's really based upon those different factors we

053also assign dollars to those so we can kind of track that this is something that we will be working with keith and his crew kind of on a on a regular basis trying to keep that up to date you know if he goes through for instance we're doing obviously a bunch of work at the schools you know last summer and this summer and you know summers beyond we want to make sure that those um those components are being updated realizing that you know if we were to put a new boiler in it you know it'll be 40 years before you would have to replace it again we want that documented in this plan so we can see you know that it's way down the road before you start having to look at having to spend

054money on those components moving forward so it's a this the spreadsheet approach is just a something that we've used with other districts it's just a it's a tool to help the district kind of prioritize different needs from a deferred maintenance point of view and uh i think it's something that you know i know ken's kind of excited about it and he has been working with the bng department to make sure that they're using this kind of as a guideline moving forward and so we can serve the the district for years to come so i think what you'll see up on the screen is is the spreadsheet that's at the end of the balmoral written section and i know it's it's really tough to read i understand that because of all the data that's on here

055but there are categories that are here from mechanical playground areas uh concrete work all of that there's two pages of this actually uh that you will see we also go into security devices fire alarms lighting all of that so our process right now and and dave and i and b and g leadership have met already on this plan and so keith's job right now is to go through this and is there anything we want to add into this plan from a capital project standpoint i'll give you an example i shared with the board last week about electronic signs in our buildings that's a capital project we're going to put that into this plan so that this is the document that we're going to use so this in combination with our short-term facility plan that we

056have are the two documents that we're going to look at for all of our facilities then so again as david mentioned this becomes a breathing living document so what will happen let's just say at the end of this summer so in september of 22 keith and i and dave and keith's leadership team will meet and we'll go through this and say okay what did we do this summer in the list and that's when we're going to start moving things around and you'll see all of these things all these numbers here well there may be something out here that we were able to do in this fiscal year so that'll just kind of everything will start moving around so that then we get an idea of what's left on the plan and then we start planning

057for the next summer what we're going to do now the next summer you know we're pretty well set with our short-term facility plan but again we'll do the same thing every year so every year you go through this plan and you update it as you go and that what i've shared with keith and he knows this because you know i get very direct there shouldn't be anything that we do that isn't on this plan you know unless it's an emergency i should say but you know this is now becomes the bible of our long-range plan and this is a 15-year plan that goes out is it adjustable yes is it movable yes is it life is it breathing yes so it's something that is that is just constant amen so questions from the board or

058yeah i have one so the 15 years that you have here listed that's not including anything from the short-term facility plan it does there are things on the short-term facility plan that are in here i was going to say because this high school has two big ones you know 7.7 and 8.9 million yeah i i it with it being only 14 years old am i assuming that's part of the addition or is that like a roof or no the addition isn't in here uh we'd have to look maybe parking lot paving work yeah i don't remember okay you have a lot of you have a lot of square footage of paving and it's it's in pretty bad shape yeah there may be you know some roofing in there too and some mechanical things in there

059we'd have to look at the section in there you know the specific spreadsheet to see what is in there so 122 you have you know 29.4 million i would imagine some of that is part of the short term but yes okay i mean i was going to say yes yes so that's why you know again i you know this is easy for me to say don't don't really panic at the numbers here i mean because things are going to be moving around now you know you have to imagine i think we're going to be spending about 20 million dollars this summer all together i think off top my head i think that's what i think so again there are a lot of items when you look at the small spreadsheet or the spreadsheet at the

060end but it looks like we're gonna do that over the next three years or whatever the time frame so if you look it's heavy loaded in the front yeah but the numbers get really really good as you go meaning right and i would say maintaining preventative maintenance is in in this too right i mean yes maintaining absolutely yes everything roof structure talk point whatever it is yes all of that is all exploring doors it's pretty comprehensive so yeah when you look at this dollar number here this 111 million dollars you know figure on we're spending about 60 million there's about 60s i think it's 67 or something like that that money is in the short-term facility plan and that's kind of all in here and that so you know it doesn't look that shocking especially

061when you're talking about eight or nine buildings you know and that is that so so again you know it's just something that again is a working document for us it gives us some template is that we start moving forward here uh that i think is is a is a really cool document i've done this in another district where you know dave has worked dave and i have worked together and we've done this in another district and it really is a neat tool to use yeah i was going to see what is that seven if you divide it out it's like what seven million a year seven and a half million a year that's yeah so so can if you went back to that balmoral exam the spreadsheet that nobody can read the numbers on yes

062[Laughter] yeah he does that on purpose you know i do yeah there you go so i know nobody watching at home but i mean i can since i have the book and sure it's still small print but but if i look at a line for example roofing restoration for balmoral yes so the first two columns are are the lifespan min and max so that's saying a roof should last 20 to 25 years right and then you across and it says the rating currently it's in fair condition and with a remaining life span of five years is so as you're planning you know now that balmoral's roof needs to be addressed in the next five years is that and that's how you'll prioritize the work that's exactly that's exactly what that's used for and you know

063we're looking actually looking at some different options with roofing where we can maybe restore the current roof rather than a complete tariff and replacement just because it's a the cost is much less and it can still provide a 20-year warranty going forward so and then as you go across the weighted total there's it's color-coded so that would be in red so that's kind of what it i'm assuming red is uh you should address it probably in the next five years right okay i i have a couple questions when we it looked like this is dated october of last year so i guess the referendum had failed in april of last year was it yeah april of last year all right so when we came up with this plan this physical assessment did we take into

064consideration it sounds like we probably did not because the borrowing and the selling of bonds for installing new hvac systems and adjusting all of that was later on it was after this october date so did we take into consideration the possibility of going back and revisiting a referendum to build new schools because no okay that's what i thought not at all okay because if that was the case i believe the president asked the question about future boards having the opportunity without having some borrowing power to revisit that the building of new schools and if that's the case this plan again we have addressed over the next couple over the next year so life safety issues these big guns out there piping and all of that coupled with hvacs yes right i see you've got upgrades

065of electrical we're doing that right for hbx right yes so we have our life safety survey our next one in 20 in 2023 right life safety i believe so yeah 2023 yes so if we go and implement i know we have to stay up on maintenance we do we have to catch it before it fell best we could which we haven't been doing in this district for years so i'm glad to see there's a robust plan up there but my i guess my big question is and you did answered i guess you didn't take into consideration a possibility of a future referendum to build a couple schools to replace these aging schools and it sounds like if you go forward with this that's completely out the picture well because again what i will say mr

066brown is that a board can make a decision to do right what they want i agree i agree but i agree for this assessment our assessment was about our current buildings not looking at any future type of buildings or anything like that i agree i just want to put that out there yes because if we get you know get caught up and say oh you know we're going to put a roof on for three million dollars or whatever right and we just continue to bleed the district right i mean we have looking to expand millions and millions and millions of dollars and again i don't want to go back in a path but i'm moving forward here so taking this plan and a possibility of still building new schools and how much do we want

067to continue to spend on these old schools well yeah and again you only you only got the hand you know play the hand that you're dealt with that's it that's what we're here to say and again as i i think i shared this maybe last meeting is that the district is is in a good position right to get some additional revenue coming in when that short-term facility plan ends yeah that you can pick this up and you can go with it yes and i'll be i'll be able to share that when probably in august when i present the next budget because i'm going to share that with the board as we look into the future and all that stuff as we prepare for that but right now we're okay in the next couple years of

068getting our short-term facility plan is we just closed the yeah crazy anything because we just closed the financing on uh the last set of bonds that we sold that was today was a closing day so we got all that taken care of today so the money is there for the short-term facility plan and that's what's going to carry us for the next you know two summers and then after that this is going to go into effect now again there are a lot of things like you said mr brown there are a lot of things on here that are in the short-term facility so those things will be falling off but then again when we probably get out to fiscal year probably around 25 here you know we won't have the short-term facility plan that'll be

069all done and then we'll be going into this okay now dave when you conducted the last physical assessment when you conducted dave the last physical assessment for the district i believe it was 2013 they're about with the life safety they're about right so you categorize the physical assessment it wasn't the life safety issues you categorized it as renovation i believe enhancements right so when this is all said and done would this be considered a renovation enhancements are included in this or what i'm trying or just p.m just looking at things that need it's it's more of a preventative maintenance okay okay so the aesthetics per se is not we're not looking to do any robust spending on aesthetics here those comments are in the reports the written reports and again that'll be something that we'll

070have to work with the district but it's really intended to uh track the components of your buildings and and realize that you know they don't last forever so you have to plan to replace them when they're at the end of their life and sure that's really what this is doing and you know it just takes into account different other other factors like i mentioned the risk so again you might not want to put boilers off to the bitter end because again if they fail you're in a position where you may have to cancel school oh absolutely we did that in bone marrow we have to spend 250 000 per boiler over there a few years back so but nonetheless i i just want to make sure i understand it you're going to bring some monetary

071value some dollar amounts the next time uh well i mean again you've got dollar amounts here but yeah but but in august i'll we'll talk about funding this okay that's okay as far as funny yes okay and again you know again i don't want to go back but i'm just using it for the sake of trying to have a better understanding of what you're presenting today is that when you're talking about building new abilities and here's the reason why it was going to cost x amount of dollars to bring this building up to snuff so on and so forth and i want to know at the end of the day we're going to see those values which you do have i just haven't had a chance to dissect it sure okay so okay i'm good

072thank you oh one more time i'm always thinking about dollars how much did we expend on this assessment the physical assessment how much you do to get it done yeah completed uh i think it's about 90 000. i think something yeah we talked about i think that's what you said okay you came you came under budget i think you said a hundred thousand yeah yeah i think i think there's around 90 000. i was checking you guys he builds me already so okay he already built good job thank you i mean i mean you you as a district you have over nine you have about 900 000 square feet of buildings so you know you think about that that's like 20 acres of buildings so the realization that you have a you know a lot

073of dollars here it shouldn't you know it really shouldn't be surprising did that include 116 000 square feet for the old high school and eighty three thousand no square feet that's your current your current stock and and i think this will change slightly if we decide to move forward with decommissioning nbc yes that will change those figures right because that's coming out of there and whatever dollars we've allocated for that could go somewhere else you're correct right yes because we do have mec in here right yeah i saw that in there yeah so that isn't so yes and what we heard tonight we better may want to keep mec ken first of all is this on the website or is it going on the website we are going to be putting on a website the

074whole thing yes i can put the whole thing on there we have it as one big pdf so we can put it on the website yes your facilities and i just want to confirm something i think i heard but i want to make sure we still continue to get comments from the public that we never maintained our buildings and are we maintaining them now my understanding from a couple years ago was that there were specific plans for each building that the janitorial was responsible for this different things had to be checked the filters and the in the yes furnaces things do we still have those plans are we still checking them religiously are we making sure that the things that need to be done are being done those and i'm just going to kind of

075call those everyday preventative maintenance things things whatever the filters and you know making sure the soap dispensers are you know all of those type of things are done on a regular basis and continue to be maintained by our custodial and maintenance staff these type of things are what i would call capital project maintenance right that's what these things are but i want to make sure that every day is because we took a big hit when i came on the board there there were no every day no no of continuing to maintain that um you know even i mean i'll give you another example even the hepa filters that we have in classrooms you know he has a plan and where they they're changed out every i think four to six months and someone is checking

076to make sure we're really doing it correct that's how i want to make sure that the public hears that they know that we have changed our ways yes thank you so to jump jump on that a little bit do you have an i didn't if this is not the right place i'll bring it up under old business is this have you have any updates on that invoicing or work order system which helps uh what ms galbraith is saying that it will help double check that that someone's actually doing that i do i do and again keith and i and his administrative team meet on a weekly basis so that is up and running and we're utilizing that in order to monitor now again i will tell you this i've been last giving that information but

077i'll get that information to the board on a regular basis so that you have that so you can see that but yes we have that they have inputted all the life safety projects into there we won't be doing this there's actually another module that they have for capital forecasting i think it's called keith is what it is there's a capital forecasting that you can put capital projects in but we could use the current system to put some of the projects in i just don't want to mix it up too much you know another but yes we are utilizing that um we have a system in place for it and it is working really well so is there any possibility by march you could have like a report just to see what the average time a

078work order takes stuff like that outstanding stuff that's outstanding okay yes so and within this where does the athletic field i haven't inputted that into there yet uh and i'll tell you dr hall one of the reasons not i have not yet is i want to have a conversation with bond council on when we could borrow to do that because we're going to have to borrow to do that facility a lot of this i don't think we're going to have to borrow i'll just tell you that right now i don't think we will but i want to have a conversation with bond council on that the uh with borrowing before i give you an idea when we can put this put that into play i actually thought it was 2024. you know um see that

079number having that conversation that was told here's what i i'm gonna i'm gonna say this and that's that's what my goal is and again i want to talk to bond council because i could do my goal a lot of what if i the money i can't or else i'll be shoveling i'm sure you know so um you know that's my goal and please understand it's it's one of my priorities and i'll stay on top of that okay dave's ready to dave is chopping up we're ready right now [Laughter] so there you go ready i know you are okay no matter what um i do ask the question and no disrespect to dr hall but in regards to this athletic field you're talking about next time around has the board had any discussion on that i

080think they will are you just jiving or is this a serious kind of like well i think it's just discussion that we've talked about but nothing's been approved or talked just yeah just obviously you just got you're trying to make dr hall feel good he's serious in a heart attack i think everybody has a wish list hey i think i think it's just part of a discussion that would come up in the future yeah i want to make sure mr brown before i have the discussion with the board to have a lot of the answers for you that that's what i want to make sure of before i have that so so i just i just want to do that uh you know it's something that i know is um at the top of the

081list for dr hall you know he has not been bashful in saying that i understand that can i share what's on the top of my list in addition at the middle school okay i need not say anymore i know i know that too yes yep okay thank you lord and i i do want to thank dave and his crew and staff too also thanks dave again thank you thank you glad to see everyone okay next up is consent agenda approval um dr caglilanis could you read the items on the consent agenda i can item number one proof regular meeting minutes of january 18 2022 item two approved committee of the whole meeting minutes of february 8 2022 item 3 approved committee of the whole closed session meeting minutes of february 8 2022 and number 4

082approved press plus issue 108 policies under business number one approved board of education financial report item three under teaching learning is the cmhs naval junior reserves officer training corp drill team competition and item two is the ihsa's state tournament and that is it for consent okay before i get a motion to approve the consent agenda is there any item on here that the board would like to have taken off as a for a separate vote i don't want to take nothing i have a question in regards to the uh which state tournament is this wrestling is this is this are we forecasting for a track what is it uh john tell do you have any comments on that for us please this was a chess tournament that the high schoolers um played in it was

083two weeks ago and our team for the first time in history i believe placed in 10th place overall this is the first time that our students have placed in 10th place and if i remember correctly mr noble told me that we've had a couple of freshmen that were just shy of going to overall state so so kudos to mr noble and our chess students oh thanks for letting us know so we're we're being asked to approve something kind of post they've already participated in this yes we received the request late but because it was overnight trip we had to still submit it so you said you said this activity already taking place yes it was february 10th was the date and you want us to prove something that already occurred [Music] yes how did that

084happen it seems like this should have been on the january and uh and i think that's why i asked that question because for example we know that state happens and when it's going to happen is there any way to pre-approve these items just in case for example track is coming up we have softball we have baseball you know we have things that are coming up in the spring like maybe we can pre-approve them now or pre-approve them at the beginning of the year so that we don't run into situations like this it's up to the board but it's just the question that i have to try to get ahead so we so we're not approving something you know a month or two later yeah because i'm looking at the uh in in jr otc that's

085coming up the 25th and 26th so we are approving that in advance okay so or if we can't is this something that we can throw it over to you if we can't get it to the board in time and have you proven you just let the board know is that something that you can do or does this necessarily have to come to the board you know having a proper document certificate of insurance so on and so forth is this something that we can give over to dr khan at least and say you know what in cases that it cannot come to the border in time i think we'd have to adjust policy six colon two four oh okay so that's a policy driven i i don't have the policy open but that's i know on

086the okay in jrotc that's what we're asking that's the move well i guess i would like i mean something like that so that we're not doing this myself in this i think this does i think this has happened before years ago do we have any wrestlers going down state thursday because i i haven't heard anything that's what i said wait who is it an overnight trip no was it another bedside yeah i don't know if it's arabella or related to them okay yeah if so then they're like but they just had some because it's been all over the website they won first and this and third in this they just had it so i don't i don't know if that yeah i don't know if that was stayed i don't know what yeah state is

087thursday or november oh it starts thursday thursday friday saturday the timeout this only applies to overnight trips so if it's not an overnight yeah it's an overnight state is thursday friday saturday board policy does state that overnight trips have to be approved by the war right so that's what the situation is just a reminder to the high school to try to give us stuff in advance so that we can get it on in time just a slight reminder the chess one yeah but they know about the wrestling and that's this thursday i don't know though yeah but we don't know if we're going yeah but that's why i say if we could get it approved just in case i think they go because we know that this is a possibility we're probably going to modify

088the policy right to allow dr cogan is to make that decision if it's in between meetings right even or even if it could be like for example we we know that wrestling is thursday friday saturday in february it always falls on kennedy's birthday because she would go down state every year with her brothers on her birthday and so you can pre-plan for that we know that maybe the chess tournament changed this year i don't know but you knew they knew it in advance that this was a possibility they may not know that they would have somebody but you can kind of pre-plan for it and have us vote you know have it on the agenda just in case okay all right i've added that to my to-do list i'm going to follow mr bias on

089this and also take a look at our policy to see if maybe there's something might want to present to you guys next month okay okay can i have a motion to approve the consent agenda second so i just i have a question just on so on item number four approving the press plus issue so the cell phone policy that's in there that we're approving is as which one yeah oh you pulled it out that's not ins that's not under the consent yeah yeah we pulled it out you approved okay okay okay got it okay yep any other questions or comments on the consent agenda i would just uh ken you know this is the kind of one page i always look at so you're forecasting about a 3.5 million dollar surplus yes for this year

090great yes right now yes and it looks like almost entirely driven by additional revenue it is uh but you also see that selling benefits are way down too about 1.3 million so is that all for offset by purchase services yeah offset by purchase services yes okay in addition to working cash gaining working cash for surplus no this is just uh this really is uh the working cash is listed under other financing options okay okay uh roll call i'm brown brown is an eye dr hall aye mr smallish hi this is walters aye mrs gilbert aye vice president rupert aye president over aye motion carries okay next up for under action reports superintendent first one is can i get a motion to approve board policy 7 colon 190 student behavior second so now i can ask

091my question so we're approving it as the building has requested so cell phones can be students can have them as long as they're turned off or silent during the day during class time unless as the policy gives teachers flexibility to use them in in the curriculum or they can use them at lunch time is that and they can okay okay okay any other questions or okay did we get them maurice we got a motion yes sir okay um roll calvin brown isn't i mrs galbraith hi mr sualish hi dr hall uh i have a question who motioned and who's second for this one um bill and galbraith promotions okay mrs walters aye vice president rupert aye president albert aye motion carries the next item teach under teaching and learning um superintendent has asked us to

092pull that from the agenda and we'll bring it back in march we had some other uh adjustments that came that we need to take a look at so we'll bring it back next month okay good i had a couple questions anyways okay yes please do there was some remember usually you guys tell us when things are going to be different and there's some differences on there that i think you should indulge i wasn't sure if it was construction driven you know like starting a little later going into gym you know we usually get a heads up if we're gonna do something like that okay it just seems later yeah like this year i think we're getting out by memorial day right this year but next year students set well i mean i know it could

093change but june 7th that seems very late again this was brought back to this was back at committee and so much of this was driven by the testing schedules right at committee of the whole maybe we could just have uh explanation because i know we used to get that yeah yeah always saying this is what you know this is what the committee wanted or this is why we're doing it this way yeah gentle do you want to have any comments there before um yes so um i will make sure that i give that address i thought that i do it on this evening and tell you why we're starting later it is because of construction so i will do that at committee of the whole and answer any questions that you have thank you okay

094okay okay next stop on your business can i get a motion to accept and approve the base bid and addendum number one in the amount of twenty two thousand dollars for a total contract amount of twenty two thousand dollars for maverick lighting solutions of chicago illinois for the installation of led lighting on the exterior of creepmoney high school and crete elementary school second any questions or comments this is the exterior and we just did some led lighting in the interior of the building so both of these the this one and then the next one this is for the exterior the next one is for the interior at the high school the first one is for the exterior of the high school and the exterior of crete elementary right we had we had a couple of

095light poles over there so we decided to include that and that's what a definite one is what you're voting on is really the only thing in the bid was the installation of the fixtures we are behind the district is buying the fixtures themselves just because we get better incentives on the rebates at the led lights and all that so you'll see in the board report we budgeted this part of the short-term facility plan so we budgeted 442 000 it came in with the bids all the incentives and everything at 328 000 plus we did receive 50 000 in the isb uh maintenance grant so everything came in about a hundred sixty three thousand under budget i remember that i just thought the work had already been completed no no okay that was obviously it's gonna

096be planning for the summit okay okay a quick question can with these beards these are sealed bits yes and you have a bed opening we have a bit opening yes okay yes has any of the potential bidders actually come to the opening or you inform them no they they've come together they come to the open is that hell held in your office it's held actually in a board room okay if we only have a couple then we'll hold it in my office it's a public opening so they can still come in they can still come in but we had i think we had four at the at the bid opening and uh so they they were all here so we headed in there yes okay all right any other questions or comments okay roll call

097please dr hall hi browners and i mrs galbraith mr sualish aye mrs walters aye vice president rupert aye president albrecht aye okay next up can i have a motion to accept and approve the base bid and the amount of 166 thousand dollars in addendum number one in the amount of twenty five thousand seven hundred dollars for a total contract amount of 191 thousand seven hundred dollars for maverick lighting solutions of chicago illinois for the installation of led lighting on the interior of creekmoney high school so moved second any questions or comments for ken on this okay roll call as soon as you're ready brown is and i mr swalish hi mrs galbraith mrs walters aye dr hall aye vice president rupert aye president albrecht aye motion carries next up is personnel and culture can i

098get a motion to approve the personnel report including approved certified staff leave of absence return from leave of absence resignation and reassignment and educational support staff employment reassignment leave of absence and resignation sorry any questions or comments okay roll call please mrs walters aye brown is an eye mr swallows hi mrs galbert dr hall aye vice president rupert aye president albert aye motion carries um does anyone have any old business good mr oh just this being black history that would be new business i'll wait the new business i'm sorry the only question i had is do with the decision coming in the next day or so do we do we have a plan to get together or how we would discuss that like at least inform the public i mean i know we talked about

099it last week but so we're all so if the seven of us if we are gonna have an emergency just be prepared either tomorrow or thursday to come in right i mean i just wanna make sure we're all on the same page that is that is that what we're gonna do or let's see let's see how it comes out and let me i'll consult with carrot and consult with each of you and then i'll i'll come out with a recommendation whether we need us emergency meeting or not and then we i'll make sure everybody's included though in that final decision so then we would do something quickly if that's the case okay um mr on new business mr brown before you go i know ken had something he wanted to sure a new business item

100he's older than i am so you can i'm just saying i just know you had a birthday not too early before beauty age before yes definitely well that hurts [Laughter] yeah i think he received four aarp cards oh i'm sorry um two things board that i wanted to share with you under new business uh one has to do with the public comments came in about our facilities and reopening our facilities uh as we start moving forward here um so i've got we're putting we put a plan together don's gonna pull it up but uh in essence starting um at spring break uh which is the last week of march right after that which is august or august april 4th bless you april 4th what we will do is we're going to allow school sponsored events

101at all of our buildings so so that'll start on april 4th and then in addition to that on april 4th we are going to allow facility rentals at the high school the middle school and moni elementary school the reason we're not going to allow that at the other schools is because we're going to be doing a lot of pre-construction work at night and weekends at those buildings so uh thanks don i appreciate it um and so i'm flipping through this real quick so i can you can see this because i just put this together there we go here we go at the conclusion of spring break the district will allow school-sponsored events in all buildings with the use of any kova 19 mitigations in place at the time based on cdc and idph guidelines so

102whatever that means whatever guidelines are there at that time recommended by cdc will allow school sponsored events at the conclusion of spring break which is april 4th the district will allow outside organizations to use our facilities on a rental basis at the following buildings monae elementary school crete moni middle school and crete monee high school our rental policies and guidelines for this will include the implementation of any covet 19 mitigations in place at that time based on cdc and idph guidelines and lastly as i mentioned additional buildings will not be allowed to have rentals by outside organizations due to pre-construction work that will be taking place in the evenings and on weekends starting march 26 2022 you can see the buildings that i've included there and then lastly our legal counsel has reviewed and updated

103our facility rental agreement and we will be posting the new one to our website so they've gone through to make sure it meets all the guidelines we have included some things in there about current uh cdc and idph guidelines having to be and all of that too so that's our that's our plan now moving forward so those six buildings right there uh just spring break so they'll be cleaned and sanitized and ready to go for when the kids come back after your pre-construction whatever you're doing right well let me let me explain that pre-construction is going to take place for the rest of the school year at those buildings it's going to be off hours and on weekends so in those buildings contractors will be coming in but everything will be cleaned you know they

104they have um and you know this is part of keith's responsibility they have things in their contract that they have to clean up and make sure everything is spotless so the kids are ready to come in either the next day or on monday or whatever yeah because we don't want the teachers oh no don't worry about that or you know and most of that pre-work constantly goes a lot of that's in the hallways okay and they really won't be getting into the classrooms until school is really out enough but it does give them a head start i think also that i mentioned to the board that at creed elementary we're shutting down the east wing right at uh spring break so we can do a special abatement there and then they'll be working that'll be

105shut down for the rest of year so they can work on the mechanical room but again i've made it very clear the contractors know that that work is done after hours and on weekends it's not done while the children are there yes that's right i'll repeat your question go ahead can i try it again my question on that is if they put the rental form in february 28th and it's for a march 19th and in between the guidelines change they have to follow the curve what was about what they signed the agreement on okay just wanted to make sure that that was clear and and will we make that clear to the people thank you okay okay so that's number one the second one a little bit more confusing so it's illinois public act 102-0519

106which is senate bill 508 so this is something that came up this is a brand new law that has come into effect and it created a new section of the property tax code and what it says is that it automatically increases the taxing district's levy to make the taxing body whole for all refunds as a result of property tax appeal board decisions circuit court orders and certificates of error so let me try and kind of explain that in simple terms whatever that means you know so um what the state legislator legislation attempt to do is to say okay when you do our when we do our loving we collect and get our extension we start collecting funding money there are some people that appeal their assessment their assessed value and all that and that lowers

107the money this law went into effect for the district to recoup that money that is out there okay and every texting body that money is added to the levy automatically we don't request it they automatically put it on there okay so that's what you'll see and at one point here that i say it requires the county clerk to automatically increase each taxing district's levy by the total amount lost due to refunds from the prior year our amount is 307 000 and some change there okay now what that does do it puts an additional burden on the taxpayer because that money has to be spread out amongst the other taxpayers and collect that money over and above our levy okay so it's the law i know i know mr brown it's the law that and eric

108can correct me if i'm wrong on this but that's what the law is now now here's what i will say the district has the right to say no we don't want the money all right the district has that right they can say that the county clerk will automatically put it on and if you don't say anything they're going after the money what i did down here is i tried doing a little bit of a calculation to let you know this would be the additional cost to each homeowner based on the home value of their tax bill that would increase that much okay so for somebody that has 150 000 home it will increase an additional 22.6 you know 22.69 over and above what i've already estimated the increase is going to be okay so i

109just need direction from the board if you want my recommendation i'm going to i'm going to give it to you because i always do anybody i would say you say no to this money that would be my recommendation so so if i understand this the state of illinois is putting this burden on the rest of the taxpayers and not compensating this themselves well the taxing district is and that the taxing district the legislation because what happened was taxing bodies went to the legislative legislators and said listen we're losing some of this money that we're counting on in our budgets and that in essence three hundred seven thousand dollars last year we're kind of you know that so how do we make this up you know and all that stuff most of that money is from

110a lot of commercial properties they're usually the ones that you know there's some residential but it's mostly commercial properties and so what happens then is that when when they get less in their assessment everything now it's spread out amongst the residential property tax owners so we've been surviving with without that right we have been surviving that uh without that uh this is on a year-to-year basis so every year we would have to make that decision the board would have to make that decision i mean and honestly i could make it we don't even need ford action but i do think it is important for the board to take action on that as um you know as letting the public know that we don't want that this is from a year ago okay yes so i

111just need direction from the board if you want to go that way i will have a resolution prepared i already talked to john izzo uh and john and uh eric's firm will prepare a resolution to bring to the board in march to approve that so that then i will take that then to the county clerk when i do the extension and say no we don't want this money so do we need a consensus or just go around and vote or i just need direction no i can't wait this is a question yeah we would vote when he brings a resolution i think the question is do you want him to bring that resolution to the next i definitely do personally yeah i agree yeah this is this is brutal on the taxpayers so so if

112we do that then the county does not collect that money exactly okay okay they have to buy law collect the money unless the tax taxing body says no okay got it based on this new law based on this new law and it'd be something that we would revisit every year every year we were and i i i will tell you this i want to thank john izzo and his firm because i never got any notification on this and john called me the one day and says hey have you gotten anything from the county clerk saying what your amount is and i said no because they're supposed to notify us and so john did some digging he found the amount and you know he sent me over an email saying it was 307 000 is this

113for this coming up december when we vote on the levy this this is no this is for the current tax extension that we're going to get so it'd be for the tax bills that go out in may yes okay yes let's say this comes back some year it's 15 million right and it's going to make a i mean yeah yeah okay i mean that'd be a huge appeal but the good the good news about saying no to this is the fact that it will not affect uh tax caps or any of that stuff it doesn't affect any of those things so you know this again is just additional money but again i think it's in the best interest of our district okay so you have the direction you need i do okay thank you very

114much i appreciate it thanks again okay other new business well i guess this is a combination of new new and old uh back on martin luther king's birthday i shared with dr kagla niece and our assistant superintendent of curriculum i got it right this time i she set me straight because i called her director last time about acknowledging dr martin luther king's birthday in some manner from a district or the school level i went around all the schools on a sunday i had nothing better to do and just did a drive-by and looked at the marquis and saw maybe one or two that actually acknowledged that and doctor cognition got on it and she assured me they had measures in place to do that and that was built then into the curriculum and she wrote

115a nice article i read that uh on the district website thank you so much for the beautiful article he wrote so being said black history month my wife stays out of my business when it comes to school board okay but she again she just drove past mec looked at the marquee it was nothing pertaining to black history month even though we still got to have a little less than half of a month ago and she decided she said who can i write to i understand she wrote to our communication director i don't know if she responded as a couple yesterday she had not so and she said again she looked on the website i have not i cannot validate this but i'm just asking in public what are we doing as a district i remember

116there was something on mec today was it today well i drove by it today and it was i pulled from nelson mandela okay as i'm driving uh eastward okay great it was facing westward i didn't i didn't see it until i saw it i looked to turn around okay good good thanks thank you i mean great great and again i'm not knocking the district i remember when i first got on the board the board members used to do what we call board bits we used to have each board member had an opportunity to write a little article every month we took turns we rotated you know you had your time coming up in a six or seven month and we just write whatever we thought was appropriate at that time so i don't know if

117the again not just black history month i'm talking about you know asian american month hispanic american or whatever things are recognized out there in the world or at least the state or united states i don't know if anything is there is there anything there on black history for the district or can our president just kind of you know he you're doing a good job nelson just representing our board responding to concerns out there the parent maybe you can write a a little two two sentence of whatever it is in honor of black history month there's old saying it's a biblical saying it says it's the little fox that destroys the vine the little things can have a big impact or it can have a little impact and i'm telling you as an african-american to see

118our district or the villages put little blurs up that it goes a long way let's say just you know the district recognized black history month boom not labor intense but it goes a long way so do you want to add to any of that please yes so um mr brown in response to the marquis i'll start with that we do know that some of them cannot be updated because they're old i don't know if we talked about this before but they're frozen and locked and ken is working on a plan for that um but in terms of instruction and what's happening in classes and we certainly can be more culturally responsive where we dedicate something to every month and just not black history month but in all of the classrooms across the district and i

119shared this in the january fyi of all of the projects and activities that are going on throughout the district in every building for instance in most of the buildings part of their morning announcements is project wisdom with quotes from famous or african americans throughout history elc has reading corners elementary every classroom teacher is indulging in instruction around that and kids are doing starting to write essays at the middle school they just announced yesterday in conjunction with amazon there's an annual mlk poetry writing original work and those students were recognized yesterday from amazon and then at the high school level again those students are working on their research skills and promoting that work there and mec is also doing project wisdom and announcements on a daily basis and thank you for that i appreciate it it's

120more the old same public uh perception is reality so if it's not seen by the public that's what i'm looking for and a great kudos to dr cogwinnis and your staff but just i personally will might again my wife will be very invisible when it comes to the school board and things like that and what i do but when she came to me she said what can i do to bring awareness of black history month from the school district as a whole somewhere so she would have drove past maybe again i i don't know if that quote came was up there you know maybe i'll tell her go back and tell her you just you know what happened you just have your glasses on or something no no i'll tell her just where i saw

121it today driving here okay and just so you're if you're aware i sent dr kagunis an email on monday february 7th expressing are all the marquees at the schools reflecting something about black history month thank you so much that that means a lot that wasn't a q a log i didn't add that it wasn't it was yeah and because and that's why when i drove by today you'd mention that but there was something on there a quote from that i think if i remember it right backwards it was nelson mandela but again i missed it on the way heading east but i turned around and looked and saw that on the back i think my wife was looking stuff maybe the different direction because at one point nbc said thank you school board or something

122they had something on there but yeah thank you for the school board yeah it was now we're in the february so yeah i think that was there since last june i know so and i did uh talk with mr mclean as well to make sure that um any of our things that were frozen uh the maintenance was out there helping any buildings uh to open those to make sure and again this is why we are really needing to have electronic marquees because it is much easier for us to send out an electronic piece that can be like that because we're a little bit more current up to date and we can put more on them so i cannot wait until we can have these marquees up there in the meantime we're going to struggle to

123keep struggling through with our with our little letters to put them up to make sure that we're not missing important events like this but you will see even in the hallway here make sure that you see the um we have a digital display out here yes right there and it has the same thing on it because we've got rotations on them because we do value that right for any any community members on facebook and stuff there are pl there are a lot of posts about what the kids are doing and yeah yeah there's there's a lot of social media i think my wife knows how to get on for facebook i know yeah i i'm not on facebook yeah the elementary especially well that's good but a little snapshot as from the district that'll be

124great if that's not what you're already doing and and again uh from a board perspective nelson if you think that's appropriate i wouldn't mind you just from the board from you know we recognize this group this group inclusion that's where about diversity inclusion and i heard you hop on it a couple times as things have been presented up there again it's these little things you know those are gaps out there that these are the little things that's going to continue to br bridge us together merge us together and i'm going to say this and that's going to be it it did my heart well for whatever reason people of different ethnicity came together a couple years ago on the corner right there in exchange in main street in crete over in moani join hands and

125lock arms together for whatever cause they came to do it that did me well when i drove past and saw people of all ethnicity come together for a cause and i just see that at some point i can see our board and our communities continue to come together and these little things i think just have a tremendous impact to make that happen okay that's all i have i would like to add to that i think it's a great idea but let's be careful that we are all inclusive on what we're recognizing yeah absolutely you know there are a lot of like you're talking about federal holidays whatever if we're going to recognize one we better make sure that we're recognized that's okay and i'm all for it so i think we need to just uh

126like i said i'm not asking and invent the will and you know and and put a dissertation out there on it you know just you know in honor of this month and our lincoln birthday or whatever it is right i'm just saying we have to make sure that we are all inclusive so maybe we need to make a list and plan this or whatever but in order to make sure that somebody doesn't have hurt feelings and that's going to happen if we skip some major thing to somebody we just need to make sure that we're we're covering all our bases personally that's what i feel because maybe something is very important to me and it's not important to dr hall but we didn't do something and now i have hurt feelings and he doesn't even

127know it because he didn't know it was something i mean are we going to recognize state are we going to recognize federal are we just going to recognize what we choose to recognize i'm just asking us to be very careful on how we plan this i totally agree that's a morale booster i love seeing all that little stuff in it and it means that somebody's paying attention but we need to pay attention to everything across the board i mean maybe one thing about it but i can tell you i can tell you deep within with recognition of black history month it's more than a moral booster for me but okay maybe i use the wrong tab i think you're after me tonight mr brown i'm just trying to express my feelings maybe i don't use

128the word you want me to use i'm really sorry about that no no i'm gonna no no i'm sure you there was no no bad intent on that but i'm just saying that you need to be careful okay okay thank you any other new business uh no need for closed session tonight can i get a motion to adjourn so moved all in favor say aye aye all opposed