Crete Monee School District 201u COTW Meeting 12/7/21

001started hereby call this meeting to order roll call please brown is here mrs galbert here dr hall here mr swalish here mrs walters here vice president here president albrecht here all please rise for the pledge thank you 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 imposes for all and ms rupert 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 okay uh the first order business tonight is we have our truth and taxation um public hearing for the 2021 tax levy could i get a motion to open the hearing for the truth and taxation law hearing for the 2021 tax levy

002galbraith moved sandy second roll call please brown is an eye dr hall aye mr s sewallis aye mrs walters aye mrs galbraith aye vice president ruth aye president albrecht aye motion carries um so with that i'll turn it over to mr cirma thank you president albrecht good evening board uh dr cara staff public and also those that are out there watching uh we do have the presentation i have given the board and dr cara a hard copy of the presentation if you want to follow along that way we have posted this also out there under the board agenda so it is out there for the public to also view and follow on at the same time this is the truth and taxation hearing for the 21 2021 levy so it is a requirement that we

003have and so we want to share with the public and see if there's any comment about it concerning the amount of money that would be levity levy for property taxes so i am going to talk about two things tonight though uh one is the actual levy itself for property taxes that are going to be paid in 2022 but i also am going to talk about the property tax relief grant because it may have an effect on our district this coming year um i don't know that i don't know what the chance is well i should say the chances are going to be a little bit slim but it's something i want to share and talk about and i'll get into that a little bit later than that so again we'll talk about the tax levy

004and there's a couple of things again this presentation is very similar to what i've done in previous years but again i want to put some definitions out there because there's some terms i'm going to be talking about so that everybody really understands first is equalize assessed value or eav what we refer to which is really the result of the state legalization factor of assessed value on a part piece of property in world county usually it's a third of what the property is valued at so if you have a house that is worth approximately 150 000 divided by a third your eav is 50 000 that's an important amount because that's used in the calculation of determining what a person's property taxes are the second term is tax levy and this really is the amount that

005the school district requests in property taxes in our operating funds it's not all of our funds it's just our operating funds which is really five funds uh doesn't really include our debt service and that and you'll see the five the funds listed there there's actually six funds so you'll see all of those listed there and um it's the amount of money requested that does not mean we're going to get all that money and there's things such as ballooning i'm going to talk about and all of that because there's a lot of estimations that go on when we do the tax levy especially when it talks about easy the third term is a tax extension so the levy is what we ask for the extension is really the money that we get and it's the it's

006the county clerk determines actually the tax rate by using all these calculations and then that determines what the money we get we know this amount in usually around the end of march is when we finally know this amount because it's based a lot on your eav that isn't determined yet we're only estimating kind of what the end year eav is going to be the tax assessor does not have all of that until about february and that so again we're doing a lot of estimating so that when we talk about tax extension that you'll see it's really again something that i'm estimating in that but it's going to be the actual money that we get in march and then the last term is your tax rate and that's the multiplier that's used on your tax bill

007that's determined by the county clerk and that's the multiplier that's used on your eap to determine how much property taxes you're paying to the school district now keep in mind there are a variety of entities that you pay taxes on it's not just the school district the school district is the largest part of your tax bill however there are a whole bunch of entities if you look at your tax bill you'll see a number of entities municipalities maybe library districts maybe fire departments uh townships that you pay taxes too but the tax rate determines all that and each entity municipality net has their own tax rate and determines their own way by a lot of these same calculations so these are some of the requirements for the tax limit i'm just going to go through

008the tax extension again which is the money that received can only be a maximum of five percent or cpi over the previous year's extension whichever is less so again cpi uh is 1.4 it's based on last year's cpi which is 1.4 so in essence taxes can only go up 1.4 percent can't go up any higher because that's a lesser amount however there is new construction i'm going to talk about dissolving tips there are no dissolving tips this year but there are some new construction that i'll talk about those are in addition to that requirement it's one of the things in the law that allows you to have new construction in addition too if the levy is more than five percent of the previous year's extension the truth and taxation hearing must be held that's what

009we're doing right now our levy is more than five percent again it's because we ballooned the levy in order to capture everything and i'll talk about that a little bit later uh we have published notification in our school newspaper it has to be within 15 days of levy adoption so we published that notification of this hearing on november 30th in the chicago tribune hey can i ask yes for you for a little clarification you said on that cpi which is 1.4 percent that the homeowner's taxes would not go up no more than 1.4 percent i'm not sure if that's a i know what you're saying we cannot get no more from the taxpayers more than 1.4 percent that's a good point mr brown and that it's not that they necessarily won't go up only 1.4

010they could go up a little bit more based on new construction and all of that yes but again the money that the extension that we get cannot be more than one point the overall pot of money cannot be more than 1.4 because in the past a statement like that was made and citizens and taxpayers came here and said you know you told me my taxes was not going to go up past this point but in reality if cpi was two percent my taxes went up seven percent and eight percent and they came after the school board and said hey what's going on sure just wanted to throw it out you're right on that yes okay thank you and then the last point is once approved the tax levy must be filed with the county court

011by the last uh tuesday of december which is december 28th again this is going to be on for approval on the 14th which is at the regular meeting next week will be the approval levy if that is done i usually take it out there on the 15th so just to make sure we're covered on the whole thing okay and one more thing uh with the cpi you said last year this is a cpi for last year or was it actually from this january it was from it was from this january but it's the previous 12 months got it so it ended in december of what am i in here 2020 it ended in december of 20 but you don't get that until january okay and do we expect cpi what is it trending it's it's

012probably much more than what this is now it is a lot more and i'll tell you i i did not look at it but i'll have that number for you next tuesday so okay i think it's about four it's almost five percent i think it's going to be four or five percent i agree with you mr brown yes yeah i think it's gonna be pretty so i mean it could realistically be where first time i've seen in a while where it could possibly go where we levy the the five percent right because cpi could be possibly high it's a possibility and you know saying that and that's why this whole property tax relief grant is going to be very important and i'll talk about that a little bit later mr brown but i agree sure

013you know in that that you know as that number goes up that means you know we can we can bring in more revenue you know that which which hurts the taxpayers quite honestly yes yes yes okay so these are the questions i'm hopefully going to ask is first off how much should we levy to capture all property which is again the tax levy if property if all property is captured how much tax revenue will we receive in the district which is the tax extension again i'm estimating those numbers and lastly what's the impact on the district property owner which is really the tax rate times the eav so i'm going to try and answer those questions i think i can and i'm going to try to answer that as well this is just a historical

014chart that i wanted to share with you and kind of the way things work and so what you'll see in this chart is over the last five six years you'll see eav here that steadily increases and this is the way the tax system in the state of illinois should work as eav increases your tax rate should be going down on that and that's what this shows so historically last year our actual tax rate ended up 8.11 or you know under the previous year under under under so that's really the way it should work and that all right so in creating the tax levy these are the things that i have to look at and the information that i gather you'll see first up on the top here all of the levy tax extension and tax

015rate from 2020 a year ago i need to look at that i need to see that so i can see how the cpi or five percent is going to be affecting us i also have to estimate the equalized assessed value you will see here last year's equalized assessed value of 676 million dollars i'm estimating it out at 691 i believe that's about a two to two and a half percent increase from that again i'm just estimating and i'm just using numbers now go ahead no no brian had given me a number of 890 000 roughly for our eav that was just a month ago so 890 i mean 898 million okay that sounds high to me that sounds right yeah because i thought it was about well well here's what i'll say mr brown here's

016what i'll say that may include tips also it could include tips yeah so that does include all your tips and you you won't include your tips in this because you're not collecting all of the revenue if you remember right you're not collecting that includes your incremental eav and your tips so you're not collecting that the the district is not collecting that nor is this determined on that amount so you have to be careful with that okay okay do you understand that do you understand what i'm saying mr brown on that okay all right so so this eav when you said with the homes and i think i'm i think i know the answer here but with the homes the eav is a third of the fair market value equalize assist value is a third of

017the exact so in this particular case really the fair market value of our homes i'm just using i'll run it off to 700 700 million so that's a third of point one about a third of that yeah so the fair market value is about 2.1 billion they're about so so the eav is applicable overall right and it's the same as we use for homes is when you determine when you determine the revenue that's coming into the district you just got to make sure you don't use the incremental eav in your tiffs that's all okay which again will increase the overall eav you know like brian said the amount is 800 and some million dollars and that includes your incremental eav okay which number did we use to calculate how much we could borrow lending power

018we have for working cash you take a percentage of eav is that this number no you use the total eav which is what it's in our bond documents so in our bond it's an 800 and whatever brian amount is that's the amount that you can use for your debt service because you include that as part of it however in determining your levy you can't include your incremental eav because you're not collecting the revenue on that okay that's what these numbers are see yeah it is it is a little bit confusing i agree i agree with you mr brown and that so that's when for the purposes of the levy you're using this number that number yes okay okay thanks for the clarity yep down at the bottom here you're going to see new construction so

019there's an estimated new construction in our school district of a little over a million dollars that came right from the assessor's office in september i think that's going to be a little effect i know it's probably going to be a little bit higher but for calculation purposes i really just use that number because that's the definite number that i know and then again cpi consumer price index you'll see last year the 2020 cpi uh you'll see the 2.3 percent and now it's as i said the 1.4 percent so here is a chart and i put in yellow the levy of ballooning of levy and that but you'll see the comparison of years of all of our levies starting in 2016 all the way to this this current year of what our levy is so i'm

020recommending our levy to be 48 million 120 thousand dollars that's actually the levy amount this is bond and interest which uh the county clerk does that automatically so we're only levying in these areas now we're doing a thing called what again and i'm going to go back to this term when i say balloon the levy because you are estimating all of your eav and that it is wise and it has been the district's policy to over levy and that to make sure you capture everything because again if you don't do that you're going to you're going to do what's called leaving money on the table and that has a compounding effect from year to year and that of leaving that so you continue to leave that on the table you can never recapture that in

021the future that's all right but being said you said earlier that we as a district cannot go more than two cpi or five percent whichever one is less okay so when you just say cpi is 2.5 and you go ahead and do a balloon out there and you end up capturing the new construction and all of that that two point whatever the cpi could it could eventually be higher than is that correct so so let me let me go back to 77 mr brown the 1.4 which is cpi yes on the tax extension not your levy you can levy whatever you want okay i can love you 100 million dollars if i wanted but at the end of the day that percentage could be higher than cpi it could be higher than cpi because of

022new construction and tif dissolution grabbing being able to capture exactly right yes okay and most times but that's based on the tax extension not the levy it's the tax extension yes okay yes exactly right okay yes that's what we're looking for that's what we're looking to levy yes okay it's all right i didn't have my mic on that's right from 2020 to 2021 we're only going with six thousand dollars more in the levee is that right yes that's all we're going in the lobby yes okay and that that that's plenty and what you'll see on the next page is what the extension what i'm estimating the extension is going to be so the extension on the next page is 43.5 million dollars and that that's what i think that's what i'm estimating we're going to

023get but we're levying 48 so in essence we're over we're ballooning by 5 million dollars which i think is completely adequate so that's the the real number that i want to pay attention to then is the extension the extension is the real number that you're going to want to pay not the levy not the levy okay thank you didn't get that thank you yep yes and the previous year without what i will tell you on this previous year of this balloon is because there was a i believe there was a tif that did roll off in one of our communities and so i'm just going to use this term and you want to over over balloon to make sure you capture all of that and so i think this number was a little bit high

024and i think this one is is i i like this number and and that too and that that's why you don't have to i don't have to do a lot more because like you'll see a difference here about million dollars i don't think we need that because there's no tips rolling off at this point so again the next page what you'll see is the actual extension and again this is the money that would be coming into the school district on property taxes you'll see a little bit over 43.5 million dollars and you'll see historically what has come in in previous years again this is an estimate on my part through my calculations uh but it'll just kind of give you an idea ken have we gotten all the tax money now because there were the

025four payments right we actually have ryan and i were we were looking at that today and i i do i'm just going to take a little sidetrack here it's one of the reasons why i love our financials now is that brian and i you know he came to me today after he just kind of ran we just closed november up and uh we just ran some numbers and so we were looking and there are still two um disbursements of property taxes in december that we're going to be getting uh we're short of about a million dollars on our projections uh and you'll see that when you get your financials next week but we already analyzed and looked at it there's two more that we're going to get so we should we should be spot-on yeah

026yeah there's two more yet i haven't heard anything about how they're going to collect in 22 yet i don't know i haven't i haven't heard if they're going to have uh the four payments or not mr have you heard anything about that about four payments or anything and anything no okay yeah so i i haven't heard anything yeah um and then you'll you'll also see tax rates and again remember what i said on how tax rates continue to go down you will see that i'm estimating the tax rate to be 8.0357 which again is going to be uh lower than what it was than that and this is this is a this is the key number along with eav and that's what determines your bill so we want to try and get this as well

027as possible and and can point out here that our tax rate has gone down every year since 2017. it has gone down every year since 2017. yes yes so if all things being equal if a person's uh assessed value did not change they should have seen a reduction they should have seen reduction if it goes up it's for reasons outside of the school board's control right exactly you know and even you you know you'll see a little bit of a bump here but now you're what you're going to see as you start going out here even in bonded interest you're going to see that going down too and that's so there's there's a continuation of it of it going down on that which is which is a good sign yeah your rate can go down

028but that doesn't necessarily mean the people taxes are going to go down with it no but that's what i was saying i mean if if the tax assessor increases the value of the property they're going to pay more but from what we've done we've got if all things being equal and if they're if their assessed value doesn't go on up they're paying less in property taxes for the school district that is correct i do have one other question here looking at this what happened to all of our working cash why is it only showing here our working cash it's been only like 500 000 because that's the new money that you're going to be getting in it's under the old money it's not a balance it's not a balance mr brown it's just the tax

029extension of the money we're getting in coming in additional additional got it okay okay good um this chart you'll see on the next page it's just kind of a comparison i just just put this in from historical standpoint the blue is the levee the gold is the actual extension so this is what we request this is what we i use for this year estimated that we're going to be getting in so again you'll see historically the balloon of the levy um as as we have done that through over a year so just to kind of share that i think this is probably the biggest chart that's out there and you know again what's the impact of the homeowner and so what you'll see i'll go over here by the 100 000 home for a hundred

030thousand dollar home yeah [Laughter] all right i'll take it but but again from a hundred thousand dollar home you'll see again what what so what you see again from uh levy year 20 which was last year you'll see what the taxes were based on the uh tax rate and again this is a two percent increase in eav and then with our tax rate you'll see an increase of 28.54 and then you'll see that on each home so you know i have thousand hundred fifty two hundred thousand two hundred fifty thousand dollar home what the increase is now again i wanna be very clear on this is that this is just the district's portion of your tax bill there are other entities there that will either raise or lower your taxes that have a lot of

031bearing on this so again this is this is again just the just the district's portion of the tax bill okay but again back on that slide you're estimating that the home value went up two percent yes and that's driving the tax increase not our the district's rate right not the district's right okay want to keep counting that home sure so again this is just a summary chart that i have here of the 2021 tax levy compared to the tax extension comparing what the tax rate is going to be and again the estimated tax increase on each on each value of the home equalize assessed value of each of the homes you know and that okay comments questions suggestions okay i think but maybe that's okay which one on what does it mean to a property

032owner and you did the hundred thousand hundred fifty whatever it says decreased on each one of those decreased well i put increase or decrease because sometimes it may decrease so it's just increasing all right so that line by decrease didn't mean it decreased no that's why i was confused on the next page there was a minus sign here would be a decrease so i just put increase the equation okay so they really yeah that line next to it didn't mean that that okay that's why i was confused thank you sure okay let me talk about the property tax relief grant and this is something that came up actually a couple years ago it did not take place last year but again this was established as part of the evidence-based funding model and what the state

033does is state sets aside 50 million dollars to assist those districts that have low etvs and high tax rates and that and you have to apply for it uh school districts you'll see the second point school districts with high tax rates an opportunity to lower tax burden by replacing the portion of transportation state funds which in essence means you're abating property taxes and that and i and i can talk a little bit about that for you to try and understand that we currently rank there's a ranking that came out that we are the 40th district on the list to get the money if you total up all the money that can be gotten with the other 39 districts it's 56 million dollars now they only have 50 million dollars so the only way we can

034get something next year is that maybe somebody doesn't apply or you know they say no to them or something like that however i believe it's worth applying for that okay so uh you'll see the maximum amount we can get is 4.15 million dollars or we could get a portion of it you know and then more of it the following year hey can you say that and there are 40 school districts yes in the state of illinois there's 40 above us yes 40 above us well 39 of us we're four 39 above us mr brown oh okay but it's like 860 school districts it's about 860. yes so this is this is a ranking oh for the grants yeah and they've already awarded two years ago i think they awarded about 37 districts so we we're

035actually like 70th or 80th on the list which is mind-boggling to me but you know that's what the calculations are but again uh and you'll see one of the agenda items that's coming up that we're going to talk about tonight is submitting the application and all that stuff and so uh i i think it's worth submitting the application it's not a very long one it's it's real easy you know and all that stuff but i think it's important that we do this and you know again if we get something that'll be great and that and so what that would mean to kind of give you an idea so if we got this 4.1 million dollars we are required to abate taxes for two years and so what that means is that the property when you

036when you look at that tax extension it would be four million dollars less and we would actually pay that with the grant money so it's almost like we get the money it just kind of goes into our fund balances and then when we pay our bills we kind of use that okay so so with that being said so you do not go after the taxpayers for another four million dollars for two years or whatever that is right and we levy the third year and it's not being compound so do we not lose out no because what you do mr brown is you you abate your bonded interest fund okay so that's that's where you're going to obey that that's what you're going to bait at okay that's where you're going to abate so what happens

037with that money uh is this then becomes part of our evidence-based funding so we will continue to get this money forever however the requirement is you have to abate for two years after the second year it's up to the board whether they want to continue to abate now i i my recommendation i'll just say this because you know i'm going to say this i think you should continue to obey if that's what the money is for because we don't lose that long as long as you go to the debt part right that we are collecting on right you don't lose out on the compounding of the levy portion and i believe this amount would probably save the taxpayers somewhere between i think 200 and 220 dollars in taxes that is correct i think we when

038we abated about 750 000 several years ago that was about 73 dollars that has saved the taxpayers on average so i you know again i don't i don't know i'm not real sure that we're going to get it this year but i think again it's going to set us up for the following year and which is really important especially if cpi is up higher you know it'll allow us then to to obey which would be which would be great oh that that should be something that i know we can't talk about solve it here but that should be it should be a priority well it will be i you know i'm pretty sure we're going to get it the following year you know again because we'll move up to number one or two and so

039we'll be fine you know and all that so the following year but again it just i just think it's important that at least the public knows that we're doing everything within our power to try and lower the taxes and that and you know this is a simple application so ken that would be that amount every year forever yeah yes yeah so that that's why it's real important you know again you know from board to board knowing that or from business manager the business manager knowing that so that you continue i think it's important so you continue to abate you know and again i think that's what the purpose of this grant is and i know i do know of school districts that only have abated for two years and that's it yeah i i just

040don't think that's the way to go so i think yes so so ken that when they ranked the districts but the ones that got the money in the past they fall off because they're getting it yes so then it's a re-rank every year and so yeah we should move up into the zone next year yes exactly right that's what i'm saying so they they've all fallen off because again this money becomes part of your evidence-based funding automatically so like this year we get 17 million if we had that now we'll start getting 21 million you know and then that that keeps on forever got it yeah that's one of the purposes of evidence-based funding is you know one of the goals of this is to wean school districts off of using property taxes to fund

041school and try and get more of its state now it's a little bit but every little bit helps as far as i'm concerned you know okay so our next steps again i'll just i'll just go through this is the password resolution authorizing the submission of the application for the property tax relief can i have this all ready to go it'll be on the docket we're going to talk about it tonight but again i'm talking about it here um the determination is made in january so they'll send us whether we know or whether we're on the list or not that we're going to get money and then if approved we would abate the property taxes in march that's through board action i'll take care of all of that with legal and all of that stuff so

042and just kind of let you know that i vote yes all right so any other questions you know thanks ken that was uh you're welcome thank you very much uh terry is there any public comment on the property tax levy only no sure okay therefore can i get a motion to close the truth in taxation law hearing moved second brown is an eye dr hall aye mrs gilbert aye mr smallish hi mrs walters aye vice president rupert aye president albert aye motion carries okay we have uh three public comments tonight one in person so we'll start with that mr young and the topic is transparency and community part two uh thank you president albert members of the board dr congolese staff and to the public you know sometimes when people question the status quo or

043the power structure they are often viewed with suspicion they are often viewed as being a troublemaker i want you to know that's not the case here we want you to understand that the reason there is the circulation of the petition to challenge the 45.5 million dollar bond issuance is to hold you as public officials more accountable okay i believe that we got more in common than we want to recognize okay so with that being said how much time do i have president albert uh four more minutes four more minutes okay cool we know since the last time i was here a couple of weeks ago that someone in the district allowed the local fire department to come into the dome and we believe it was to conduct training but in the process the roof of

044the dome was destroyed now we know that the board voted six to one and yes i've been told that president albert signed a contract the following day to destroy the dome but if you allow the local police to local fire department to come in there and conduct and train that's one of the reasons why we want to preserve the dome our resources and our community being utilized for our benefit train it it will make sense it's that dome is one of a kind well the damage was done you do realize that you can rebuild it also as you tear it down you can rebuild it because we've been told you got a six million dollar savings account sounds like a down payment on rebuilding the dome okay now a lot has been said about air

045conditioning this movement is going to stop air conditioning that's not true we've been knowing that air conditioning was needed in these buildings as far back as dr robert berry when she was our superintendent as early as when dr nathaniel cunningham was our superintendent so let's stop using that as an excuse okay we've been knowing for a long time the fact of the matter is that you guys got caught holding the bag that's all it was so you might as well just face it you got busted and the pandemic aggravated the situation that's all it was in addition to the 2013 life safety study you only got 10 years to satisfy unless you get an extension the third point is that i've been told it was not printed on the petition 45.5 million dollars all it

046said is that claims paid against the school district okay but later i've been told that the 45.5 million dollars is going to be used to upgrade facilities it makes absolutely no sense that you take that kind of money and put into these old buildings when our students our teachers and our support staff deserve better and we can do better we need to build new facilities and give them the best that our money can afford it's plain and simple as that air conditioning is the preferred method but it's not the only way of keeping these classrooms cool and creating an environment that's conducive to learning this is a school district we don't teach people how to accept defeat we don't we teach them how to succeed we identify the problem and teach them how to overcome

047the problem we need to give them the best that our money can afford only this time everybody needs to be on board to support it it would make sense we got a new battle statement in the community that you need to be made aware of and that battle statement is that whenever you hear the word warriors you're responsible we deserve more warriors we deserve more warriors we deserve more warriors we deserve more thank you doctor president albert those are my comments thank you okay the next stop are a series of two public comments both from tim peepenbrink regarding the dome i will read them in succession here the first is from an email sent on friday november 26th and mr piepenbring goes on to say an interesting discussion occurred at the crete monique football game

048on november 20th as our save the dome group was gathering signatures for our petition a group of people came by and asked if we were registered voters residing the same school district it turned out they were still students and not quite old enough to vote here was an opportunity for a civics lesson so it was explained that we as americans have the right to challenge the actions and policies of any governing bodies and to present our concerns they were shown the petitions being circulated and we explained that due process will be followed in coming to a final decision we heard many comments from the folks we talked with many were in favor of not tearing down the dome and had no idea that was in the works a few were concerned that a successful petition

049would hold up needed repairs to schools in the district when we spoke at the school board meeting and to those questions at the football game we made it abundantly clear that our intentions were not to stall or delay the badly needed repairs and renovations at our schools we've always said that we wanted to save the dome for use for use in the district and for other community groups activities and events no more no less the district's plans are for repairs and upgrades and also include building demolition we specifically asked them to take the dome out of the equation and let it be in this situation a petition has to be drawn up by the district they know full well what our intentions are but the petitions only dealt with the challenging the bond sales those

050are their written petitions and that's what we had to work with as a group we discussed what the petition stated and that we would go with what they gave us at the school board meeting several board members asked if a successful petition drive would stop the repairs that would be paid for with the funds from the bond sales the administration confirmed that it would indeed hold things up the petitions were also said that borrowing the 53 million dollars would have to wait to go on a possible referendum no earlier than june of 22. so with the petition drive just a week old we were given 30 days to complete a petition drive somehow there was permission given to the crete fire department to hold their training drill at the dome on the evening of november

05123. they had they have had training sessions there before nothing was ever damaged damage was done to the roof this time the fire department said they were not aware of the discussion petition debate about the dome curiously the next day beecher's fire department showed up and they were chopping another hole in the roof we would welcome an explanation as to how this came about we would like an answer from the school board or through a foia inquiry the cm school district is sending out the wrong message to the residents in the cm 201u district this is not the way to bolster support for the community from the community from which their amazing number of dome supporters the district says they want to be transparent but allowing us to happen in the middle of a petition

052drive really brings into question their credibility who is responsible for this the school board members will have to take the heat for this and they need to look within and at who is administering their decisions the dome supporters all support the dis school district's efforts and responsibilities to do their duties we've appreciated we've approached this dome situation in a respectful formal and legal way the american way we have gotten the same we have not gotten the same in return most sincerely the cm dome supporters okay the second public comment that mr piepenbring submitted is a series of emails going back and forth between he and i and i will read those the first is oh he introduces this to the cm201u school board committee of the whole meeting thank you for reading these communications regarding

053the dome this would be for the public to hear and understand the status of our discussions so on saturday december 4th at 8 18 a.m mr peepin brink uh wrote the board um or he wrote it to me excuse me hi mr albrecht thanks again for the conversations we've had in the past few days we wanted to make a reasonable request that you would ask the demo company to hold off on doing any further work on the dome the building has not passed point of no return if it would come to a successful petition to save the dome we never expected that any work would have commenced with the petition drive just getting started and many residents are flabbergasted to see what has occurred again the building is still intact enough that damages done can

054be repaired the option is also out there for you to halt the demo keep the dome in exchange for us dropping the petition our group does not want to cause any grief or delay in district building repairs we totally support that work most sincerely citizens in support of saving the dome here was my response to mr peep and brent which was sent again on december 4th at 12 50 p.m as i explained yesterday the board approved the contract for the demolition the sixth grade center in the dome at our october regular meeting i signed the binding contract the following day as you observe the demolition work has begun and so there is no misunderstanding it will continue through completion per the contract anytime a school district seeks to issue non-referendum bonds the process is subject

055to a 30-day petition period where i think there may still be some confusion is the notion that the district should have circulated a petition separately on the disposition of the dome no petition of this nature is required that is why the petition available from the district only addresses the bond issuance the board's preference is to pay for the demolition work with a small portion of the bond proceeds but the district has sufficient funds to pay for the demolition work and the unfortunate circumstance we would find ourselves if your petition drive is successful when i saw you last evening at the crete crete country christmas event i noticed you are still gathering signatures please be clear to those signing your petition that it will not save the dome it will only disadvantage the students and staff

056in those buildings in need of urgent upgrade to hvac and other repairs work you say you support our conversation yesterday was very cordial which i appreciated if you find this email to be more blunt it is only for maximum clarity and that was coming from me and then since then mr piepenbrink has replied thank you for trying to explain the petition question the district fully knew our intentions by way of comments at board meetings in an and in our letter requesting such petition to sit for saving the dome when writing the petitions that did not directly include the dome the discrepancy should have been addressed at that time anyone we saved the dome was because it was stated at the board meeting several times the demolition would be stopped by way of successful petition drive

057we have stated that publicly as well therefore we are using petitions that were issued to us because the dome was tied into the bond sale as it has been explained and he references the video that school board meeting who whomever wrote out the petition should have known of our intentions and also how the entire scenario had been explained it is unfortunate that this has turned into a struggle of semantics and hopefully the result will be something everyone is pleased with again citizens in support of saving the dome so that's it terry is there any more public comment okay the time uh board updates that was just if any of the board members uh had anything to share at this time we sometimes will use the old business or new business so i put that in

058there if they had any um information to share i had a question yes mr sherman can you do me a favor and just clear something up if you could and our bond council is here or i mean our council is here right so we we made a resolution in november and in the resolution it states exactly what we're doing with the money correct so that does not include building a brand new elementary school in crete correct it does not and so there are two separate bond issues that we're talking about one is 45.5 million dollars and the other one is 7.5 million the 45.5 million dollars are funding bonds to pay off the debt certificates that is the purpose of those bonds it is not to repair things that was the debt certificates okay now

059you can make a correlation with equal signs on all of that if you want however the legal purpose of those bonds is to pay off the debt and that debt is the debt certificate the 7.5 million dollars and that's what it states in the resolution which is a legal document which is a legal document the 7.5 is to increase the working cash fund to pay for some of the repairs and we listed those in the resolution so so that is there too and the 7.5 is a legal document as well 7.5 is a legal document now let me let me address the petitions those are and and i can refer to our council here too but those are statutory requirements that are created by a legal entity to meet the statutory requirements of selling the

060bonds we are required by state statute to have those available with that wording so we cannot put into a petition save the dome we can't and then there is nothing in any of those documents that says we are going to build a new school or two schools or three schools nothing today all of those resolutions whether they are the debt certificates or the 7.5 million have listed those projects that we plan to do and that's all based on the short-term facility plan they all go together it's all there so it's the short-term facility plan never at one time included a new building because they're gonna have to go to a referendum to do that which we did in april right unfortunately it did not pass exactly exactly right well i i i just want to

061clarify that uh again playing with words here i think i mentioned a new building has been attached it's still a building still a new building that's attached it talks about an addition to the high school which is a new building attachment it's not considered illegal okay well i think i think the clarity is that we're accused of they're going to put a crete elementary bill right in the district which is not the same as putting an addition on the high school right but people have heard it that's too i've i've talked to a couple people out there and i told them i said yeah you can see there's a new build it's not a stand-alone building this is an attachment some people may be seeing that as being a new school stand-alone school so again

062you know you can say it's not a building or whatever but that's just a misunderstanding absolutely it's a new building and attached is different than a stand-alone building so i think that um and that too um it was clear from the presentations what what the expectation was and what this new building was supposed to be if people read or paid attention to the presentation it was clear that it was going to be an addition to the high school for the purposes of moving cme and creating the uh what is the program called nbc and the uh manufacturing program i don't think that it was a misunderstanding it was people saying that it was a conspiracy theorist concept because it was clear it wasn't we're going to build a new building it wasn't any of that

063it was clear we're going to put the attachment so we could say yeah play with words and say all of this stuff for me yes everybody knows what i what i desire for our athletes they go out there bust their butts nobody most people wouldn't even know what crete money was if it wasn't for our for our athletes but they go out there bust their butts we have one of the best football teams in the state and we're fighting over whether or not they might put a elementary school in crete or university park university parks not even fighting you don't see any of their are people coming here to say our village manager or anything saying hey we need a new school do would i love to see a new school of course if we

064could but i would like to see those young men and women who are probably playing on some of the worst fields in the state but being one of the top teams in the state have facilities for them for themselves because as we know schools drive could help drive tax bases but if you have if you have good facilities you have good programs people are going to say you have a good school many people because most people don't really look at all the other stuff did we get a new elementary school in university park or crete or no that's not going to drive anything it's not even going to really help university park but having a good high school in a district uh some place that people look up to yes that'll drive our tax base

065do i think do i think that it's important for everybody to be held accountable yes is it important for people to pay attention to make sure that the money is spent correctly yes i agree with that um wholeheartedly um do i know what's going to happen will we get the athletic facilities i don't know i don't know what's going to come all i am willing to do is fight for our young men and women from that standpoint and then move to the next fight i'm not willing to i mean i'm still not willing to i don't i don't really care about any of the other small stuff i'm not here as a politician i'm not here to get re-elected i have my goal is to help our young men and women first get the athletic

066facilities um continue to continue to when we talk about facilities number one is education point plank we have to get our men our young men and women educated we have to get our young men and women the best teachers possible in front of them we have to use equity and diversification i believe but when we start talking about facilities i definitely believe that our athletic facilities have to have to change i always live by the motto only the best tradition as a winning tradition if we talk about keeping traditions i don't have a lot of history with the dong other than what i told some of you all um that you might know the story but other than that i'm not saying that the dome is a bad thing i wish we could have it

067in our plans i wish we could do like hf and create like an indoor facility for our athletes to what whether it's football or softball or whatever not in the plans um fight to save if it's saved to save if it's not let's move forward that's my take on it okay very well dr hollies want to thank you for those comments and i agree 100 and i find it very unfortunate sad whatever it might be that this district we will never move forward with the mentality of a tit-for-tat and any addition added to the high school will benefit all of our kids in this district and we have to go forward with that it doesn't matter if it's a mile this way a mile that way it happens to fall in crete but it's an

068addition that's going to service all of our kids it's not like it's so the problem is this tit-for-tat mentality everyone keeps losing all the kids keep losing and we never move forward and we stay on the same hamster reel so thank you for your comment yeah and we'll be 10 years from now with that dome still sitting there with nothing done with the same buildings and no air conditioning that and that's why i told the board a long time ago we have to move forward everybody people get be mad at us yes but then once it's done and it looks beautiful and all the kids benefit from it oh yeah look i live in crete this is great look so and that's not to go against anybody any group it's just what i believe is

069best for our um students and student athletes it's the same thing with the life safety they're from 2013. it's 2021 gonna be 2022 and we've addressed some of them in our last summer and we're going to address the rest of them this summer and clean that up i've been here two years two and a half years i mean there isn't much more we can do and the next round is coming so we clean these up and you're right you move on to the next whatever it is whatever is needed for our students and our staff to be successful and grow is what's next okay i have a couple of things um i want to say thank you to all of you you took the words out of my mouth you said much better we're here

070to educate our children number one we have to put our children our staff and our are going forward number one we've sat here i'm on this board six and a half years now we're still talking about the dome we were talking about it for 10 years before that we do have to move forward so i agree with your comments i do want to give a highlight of my weekend creek country christmas took place i guess we never thought about walking in it as a board of education so i was able to walk with our nj rotc group is anybody from the high school here besides mr hillary okay i was thrilled to walk with this group and i have to tell you that we walk about a mile i think it is would you say

071it's a mile from the church town about a mile they probably got the most applause of anybody in the parade those young people people were screaming to them how happy they were to see them they put uh all we did was march and i tried to keep left right left right but you know i have to stop and talk to people so i don't know my left my right um i was so so proud of our group and how many people came to me afterward and talked about how proud they are of that program and how far it's come and when i sat back i thank peel reed and i believe is the other young man p.o smith smith okay um they work so well with those students and the students just they're they're attracted

072to them there's a special relationship there and i thought if only we could work our four communities could work like that mrs mrs walters and i were able to go to their award ceremony two months ago three months ago and saw their drill teams saw all of their precision and how hard they work and they do it as a team if one fails they all fail and they have that mentality of we have to go we have to do the right thing we're all in this together so i sat back on saturday night and i thought i would love to be a member of rotc because they're all working as a unit for the same goal and i hope that that's what we continue to do on this board is we work together for everybody

073in all four of our communities and it's not easy but we have to do what we think is right for the majority of our teachers our students our community whatever we think is the right thing and right now i think we're doing the right thing so kudos to njrotc to their leadership to those young people who also came friday night or i'm sorry thursday night and friday after school helped set up all of the booths where they sell food and things like that they did a bunch of community service for us also they're always always there peel readers always signing them up for something so please get that back to the high school that the community was just enamored with our students again thank you janine if i could thank all the board members they

074made comments and i again the buck stopped here at the board and you know i'm trying to be in consensus with the board the best i could and if you notice i haven't been as argumentative as i was in the past you know i want to be inconsistent the best i could but i think if you don't agree but i think we ought to agree that something just didn't go right with this dome as far as the citizens and the taxpayers and even with the plan or whatever is a petition drive out there we can always do better as a board and i think we had an opportunity to regardless on how we was going to vote as a board i don't think our ears was listening enough and gave the opportunity to hear the

075taxpayers just have a listening ear sometimes that's all they want regardless on we made up our mind to demolish the board to sell these bonds and sell these bonds at the end of the day i think taxpayers and the consensus out there they just want to be heard and listened to and i think when we embark upon such a big project and selling such numerous amounts of bonds that it lends itself to have some type of form to listen to the community and listen to them with a listening ear that's all he asks i think and i don't know if we did our best here not knocking the board because i'm part of the board but i think it just lends itself for another opportunity when it presents itself again to have a listening ear

076not just a couple people coming and making public comments but we initiate the process and say we are about to embark on this we are about to embark on something regardless on how long it's been talked about like the demolition of the dome now it's come to the forefront we're looking to take action on it let's have let's have us some dialogue or let's listen to you out there that's all i think they want to hear us to tell them that that we will listen to you so i would suggest highly if this ever comes across something like this come across the board table again that we assemble ourselves in a manner where we're going to give the public a good opportunity enough some type of format a form of some nature like that to

077listen to them have some coffee cookies and things like that spill your beans what do you what how do you feel about it you know going back to that young man tim who obtained a thousand petitions signatures regardless if they were no longer in the district but they had some type of sentiment sentiment value to the dome that means something still means something and we cannot just totally disregard that so again we still that was not going to take away from how we voted probably we still say hey you know we heard you we listen to you but nonetheless we feel that this is the best thing to do for the district and i think we would not have a lot of this noise that's out there right now that's my opinion okay any other

078board updates okay if not let's move on to administrative updates and i'll turn it over to the superintendent um i just wanted to uh update the board as you know the board will be putting out a letter to the community um we have finished working with our editor and making sure that it's ready to go out to the post office um so that should be hitting the community uh this week and again this is a letter from the from the board to the community that basically tries to give all the information about the bond and what it's going to be used for to make sure that we're very clear that we've not reached out to just our our school community but we're reaching out to all the residents by mail to make sure that they're

079aware of this this is english and spanish yes you do know it's out right it's already been twisted on facebook people have read facebook already look at that people are posting it on facebook so great so it's out we've got there the post office got it delivered oh well i'm glad to hear it and you said it's in english and spanish i believe so i think so i'm not sure i don't know i think on the website i'm not sure yeah thank you and that's all my updates okay um so next up mr cerma on business i'm sure uh i'll just go through a few things here uh one is at the next meeting you'll get the final copy of the audit the audit is done it is complete it has been filed with the

080online state board of education the auditors have done that um everything that uh if you remember susan jones was here that she talked about that has remained the same our financial score is a 3.70 it is a recognition i did go back in history to kind of look at that that's not the top we had that before i i you didn't let me finish my stick okay just in case you tried to say something new there was one time in 2012 where there was a 3.7 that's right so it was the same score so um so so that is there uh you'll come i will have the actual audit as already is on the website uh i put it on the website uh and everything along with the annual financial report so if you want

081if you need a hard copy just let me know and i can get you a hard copy of that but that will come for approval at the next meeting the second thing that i have on there is a resolution concerning the adoption of the teachers retirement system at state of illinois supplemental savings plan a resolution to enter an agreement with them so trs that's commonly known as the teachers retirement system has come up with a supplemental 457 plan that they are mandating that schools um sign up for there is no cost to the district what it is is actually an additional plan that employees can make contributions to there's no matching by the district or anything like that um if there ever was that would have to be negotiated with unions and all of that

082stuff so it is just an opportunity for trs members if they want to contribute to what they can so it is going into an agreement the one thing i will tell you is i do have to talk to legal counsel about it i sent over to mr gleason this because i i have heard that some districts are not entering into this for a variety of reasons and i believe there are legal reasons i don't even know if eric knows about it probably not but i know bill does so i've sent it over so it may not be on the docket based on legal counsel and what their opinion is okay so i just want to let you know that but uh in everything that i have seen uh we're required to do this by state

083mandate and that is because it's part of trs so uh that will come before you at the next meeting and then uh the last one i have on there is the resolution authorizing the submission of the property tax relief pool fund application i talked about that during the tax levy so that will come before you next meeting also and again if that is approved along with the levy then i'll submit that application asu okay okay thanks ken you're welcome thank you any questions for ken on any of those items okay next up personnel and culture um we have a report on recruitment and retention of professional staff yes mr neil will be coming up and mr holyfield hollyfield will be coming up as you recall the board had asked us to do a presentation to

084kind of recap uh some of our our processes in particular looking at increasing our minority hiring but we also wanted to take this opportunity to just share with you our hiring process in general and certainly where we're moving forward and you'll see that we have some students from our high school here which we're very pleased to see by the way and we'll have mr hollyfield share why they're here all right mr neil okay okay just making sure i put together some information for us and the first part is my usual doom and gloom that you always get when you ask me to come in here to talk but uh as we go forward from there we have some exciting things coming and i think uh if we kind of keep that in mind as we

085go through uh we'll get through the doom and gloom a little better so just to get started we're going to talk about our current current status where we are this has been a couple of difficult years for recruitment and hiring uh very difficult years for some understandable reasons and uh they're kind of the culmination of a long standing nationwide even worldwide problem that has been growing and i think covid finally just brought it through fruition and then we're going to get into some of the solutions that we have that we're already doing and then some of the pipelines for the future so when we uh as we move forward we can kind of pull ourselves out of this and i'll get to that here in just a few minutes i wanted to start out with

086some of these structural pieces we already have in place in the district and part of this gets into our board policy on recruiting and hiring in particular on how we uh on our non-discrimination statement and then also more of our affirmative action piece so this is a very detailed statement i'm not going to read it all to you right now but this lists a whole wide variety of groups that we have to keep in mind as we're going through our hiring process and make sure that these are not reasons we're denying people employment okay and race is one of them but it is not it is obviously not all of it okay our focus here is largely going to be on race as far as talking about diversity and minority recruitment but there's all of

087these other pieces that go into this that we can't even describe you know we can i don't discriminate against you can't uh take into account with people uh unless there's certain specific things for example uh the newest one and probably the most fun one to talk about is the medical cannabis piece which didn't use that being a non-discrimination statement so that's uh it just adds a little something going forward we talk about the affirmative action piece we're really trying to recruit and hire minority employees that doesn't mean we don't hire exclude any group it means we're focused on hiring people who relate to and look like our students and try to increase those numbers and the policy goes on to suggest some activities i think what we do is going beyond this but these these

088are just what was listed in the policy so i wanted to make sure that that was pointed out here the other structures that we put in place were through our strategic plan and this was actually building some of the building blocks to make sure we're doing this first of all putting together a research-based recruiting and hiring system this uses some profile builders from humanx along with strategies that help to ensure that we are reaching out as far and wide as we can to get candidates and then we also have an applicant screening process that has uh put a more deliberate effort on the part of those who are responsible for the hiring on paying attention to some of the things that we haven't paid attention to as much in the past i had a predecessor

089in this position who did not want to provide demographic information to hiring administrators they wanted us solely to focus on skills abilities experience education all of those things should be a part of it but we can't focus on in increasing hiring of certain groups if we don't know who those groups are so we have to make some changes in how we go about that we've done over the last couple years i did not put 20 20 in here because that was such a an unusual year there were a lot of positions we did not fill and many of the positions we did fill we only had one candidate for there just wasn't a lot of data to go by so i went back to 2018-19 which like my last presentation was the last pre-covered full

090year with no issues like covet involved in it and then of course this year and what you can see is that there has been some movement in those two years toward increasing uh minority hiring and moving in that direction as we we've been trying to do so i wanted to kind of talk to you about this season and how this season went together we wanted just to look at certified hiring which is our teachers our certified administrators and our related services providers social workers counselors those groups we had 74 positions posted this year 30 of them have gone unfilled they've either gone unfilled because we had no applicants or they've gone unfilled because the applicants we did have ultimately declined the position or were not qualified for it we are still working to fill some

091of them some of them we've decided to leave unfilled and review later 44 of the 74 positions had five or fewer applicants 31 had two or fewer applicants 11 had none that's uh pretty shocking and i'll talk about that a little bit more in a few minutes one of the things that i'll point out is some of these numbers are even misleading because many of our applicants applied for multiple positions and i put up a couple examples of our elementary positions early in the hiring season we had three positions available we had 17 applicants apply for those three positions they all applied for all three so that wasn't 50 some applicants that was 17 applicants we hired we went on later in the season we had three more and those three had 11 applicants apply

092eight of those 11 were from the previous okay so we didn't have a tremendous number of applicants i think i shared this with you before my last year as a principal in the district i had two elementary teaching positions open i had 180 applicants that was in 1314. we've got this this is 10 of that so just so you kind of understand where this has been going over time and this just kind of this this recent situation brought us to this this is not a crete monet phenomenon and this is a nationwide issue i don't know of a single district that has was able to fill all their positions this year at least that i have had any interaction with so just to kind of give a little graphic representation we had you know 11

093positions no applicants 19 others that went unfilled we get into talking about minority recruitment in 17 of the positions we only had one race from which to select and in the remaining 27 we had more than one race okay out of those 27 you can see what we had hired we had seven black candidates hired we had two hispanic candidates one who was an individual who did not respond to the question and the remaining candidates selected were the white candidates and it doesn't look like we're improving minority hiring that way however part of the problem with a very small applicant pool is that we also have a very small number of minority candidates to choose from and when you're applying for more than one position once you hire that minority candidate they're not available for

094the other positions because they're already hired we had a number of positions with two candidates where that was the case we also had a number where the minority candidate was offered the job and declined it generally speaking due to a higher paying offer elsewhere so i'm just kind of laying out a picture here some of these pieces that we built these big recruiting systems and applicant screening procedures don't do you much good when you only have two or three candidates when you have 20 or 30 then you could do a lot more with it so our summary of our problems essentially it comes down to our pool is too small we just don't have enough people who are applying for our teaching positions obviously that also translates into insufficient diversity we have multiple districts competing

095for the same applicant pool which is especially true at the secondary level and one of the bigger ones that's really alarming is we have fewer graduates coming out of the university every year at one of our partner universities we get a file of student profiles and these are for the people who are getting ready to graduate so that we can start recruiting with them that university contacted us this year said they're not sending out the profiles because every one of their student teachers was offered a position in their district where the student taught so we don't even have that to go with on the other hand we had a couple of student teachers in our district we offered positions to and we lost them to higher paying districts so even that pipeline has been problematic

096for us so you can kind of see some of the other pieces i don't need to dwell on them but basically what we're seeing is more positions going unfilled okay so this kind of gets through the goom and gloom and i tried to rush through it and i apologize if that made it a little unpleasant but i wanted to get to the better part this is where we're actually going to be able to try to resolve some of this and we're really in particular excited about a couple of these things so our current focus right now we have several internal things we are doing involving job fairs in our recruitment committee we also for a future pipeline we have a lot of grow our own pieces going on here including partnerships with the universities and

097and a really cool program at our high school that mr holyfield's going to talk about here in a little bit so first of all the recruitment committee this was originally started i believe in and it brought about quite a few pieces that helped us recruit well that year one of the big things was a job and career fair that we put together it was specifically for crete money we also had a lot more organized recruiting effort at the college and university campuses and some of that nationwide and we've had a specific focus on increasing diversity of applicants and certainly updating our materials and recruitment pieces the one of the big things we did that year was we surveyed our employees for some ideas on what would help us attract new people coming into the district

098and what would help keep some of the ones who might consider staying even if another industry offered him more money and some of those things were hard to implement but they gave us a lot of insight into where people were thinking and we need to we've kind of begun to realize that that's even changed in that last few years we need to update that so this whole process was interrupted and uh we're getting back to it here this uh this spring so we'll look forward to some good information and some good ideas there we last had our career fair for cm201u this was just our specific job fair in 2018. we out of that hired quite a few teachers staff members i believe we got some custodians we've got some substitute teachers and we were

099able to fill some very hard to fill positions science special education mathematics and so forth things that we have trouble recruiting for and they just walked in our door and applied and we're excited to come here so just that outreach alone so we plan to try to do this again however what we are hearing is that job fairs again because the limited candidates aren't as successful as they have been in the past so we're gonna we're gonna be cautiously optimistic about this one and we're gonna move forward and try to plan it just so you have some idea what type of other recruiting efforts direct recruiting we've had going to the college university level this is not an exhaustive list i was trying to go back and find a good representative sample of some of

100the places we've gone we have tried marketing nationwide the problem is we get too much out of our area and it gets harder to find candidates that want to relocate here they kind of want to stay close to home or where they went to school so again the job fairs a lot of them are being cancelled at this point so i think i just saw one yesterday for eastern illinois that's probably the first one i've seen that's really seems to be flying right now so moving forward uh getting into our partnership universities i don't want to spend a lot of time going over this but essentially what we're doing is we are if we can't wait for the candidates to come to us we have to grow our own we have to find our own

101people and turn them into good teachers and good strong people who want to come back and give back to the school district so what we have done is we've worked with governor state one of our partner universities and the one just down the street from us and we put together a teacher assistant to teacher initiative and this is targeting our teacher assistants in the district to move into to go ahead and complete their degrees and become teachers and come back and work with us this focuses on hard to fill areas and it also focuses on allowing them to do it while maintaining their job they're paying their benefits and doing their field experience work on site so they can complete their degree with a little bit more ease and a little less traditionally as to

102student teach you have to stop working for a few months and that's become very hard for people to do this doesn't make them do that and and there's also some additional financial aid for those candidates so this is one effort we've had going this has been building we have we are doing this along with i think about eight other districts in our area who are working with gsu on this and i can't remember how many of our tas are moving into this uh the last count i believe was about eight so we are getting some people involved this next one i think dr carol wanted to talk a little bit about with lewis university i wasn't as directly involved in that so i'll let her take that well i'll just talk briefly about that and

103mr hollyfield as well as ms perkins were involved with this this is brand new i think i was just sharing with you in my last update and so forth the louis partnership they're looking to come out this way to the burbs and we are right there we met with them we are working with some of our parapro's we had at least eight or nine of our pair pros some have degrees in other areas but with the grant that's available they can get their endorsement for education in one year for free and i repeat for free 100 grant funded so this is a fabulous opportunity and they were so excited about this for some of our parapros that want to finish you know going from maybe a couple of classes to maybe a two-year degree to

104a four-year degree there is money available to help move them again grant money that doesn't have to be repaid so they were very very excited about these opportunities and so we have started to to work on that there's a cohort that's starting as early as january and for at least three of the members that were at our our meeting three of them will then are interested in participating that they will have their full teaching degree within the one year it's going to fast track them and the beauty behind that they do not have to quit their jobs to finish this it is at night it is online so it was they were just beaming when they left so we were really excited about that but more importantly is what we're doing at the high school

105and i don't want to steal mr hollyfield's thunder because that's coming um of how we're going to grow at our high school um so you know we'll talk a little bit about that later but just tons of great opportunities and yes mr brown there is aviation out there louis university is has a fabulous program over there and as soon as we get our grow your own for the teachers next is coming some of the other programs and these are the things that we would be adding on to the high school edition this is these are some of the great programs that we can extend to offer more career local career possibilities for our students because we want them to stay in our communities we want them to buy houses in our community and shop in

106our communities we are all in this together so and by you know helping to support this you know we are making a much more stable economy for all of us that live in the area so anyway super excited about this and it's up and up and going so we will be giving you updates as we move forward so i'll turn that back to you yeah one of the one of the best uh teachers one of the best special education teachers i ever had uh had started out as a ta in the classroom where she ended up as a teacher and she got so excited about it she went back to school while she was a teacher assistant when the teacher retired she basically just took over and she did a phenomenal job so i just

107this these are excellent opportunities to tap the people we already have and help them move forward so this next one is the one we're really excited about this gets into our high school and tapping our our ex incredible talent at the high school so i'm going to turn this over to mr hollow thank you mr neal and thank you to the board superintendent and all of the other staff members who are here i'm mr hollyfield i serve a dual role i'm the regional cte director for four high school districts and also division leader for mathematics and cte at the high school i specifically want to talk about cte and what we're doing to get our students who are in high school on track and enthused about becoming educators so upon entering the district in 2018

108this has been a dream number one i at junk i teach future teachers at uic and i'm also on the board of the advisory board at roosevelt university for the college of ed so that will also be a channel because i'm trying to tell people if you want to do great things come to crete so we're working on that so that's fast track but with our high school students upon entering the district it was said well no one's interested in teaching and i'm saying to myself really i'm excited about what i do and i'm sure there are other people that's excited about what they do and i had this idea i said why don't we try to get a career tech organization educated horizon to see what the interest would be we identified an advisor

109who was interested very enthusiastic teacher who is the reason you have these students and this parent out tonight as well as 31 people that sign up when we pitched it to four class periods imagine now that we're rolling it out to the high school we hope to have people knocking the door down to get into this organization to uh get on track to become future teachers just to give you a little bit and i will be succinct because i want you to hear from the students number one educated rising one of the goals is to attract students to embrace the calling of teaching i believe teaching is not a career it's a calling you get into it not because you're going to become a millionaire but because you have the ability to be a change

110agent and change the trajectory for individuals who are coming behind in addition they will learn the techniques and get clinical experience as accomplished teachers even before college as well as get recognized as student leaders and advocates for education what this entails they will be involved in national competitions not just in the illinois area they will be involved in national competitions they will be able to earn five micro credentials and we are thoughtful in that crete will be the first school district whose work with educator rising and married educator rising to practera which will afford our students the ability to engage in virtual work based learning before they submit their projects we've enlisted various deans at colleges of eds who will give them feedback and they will go back and forth we will be able to

111track the work that they're doing to ensure that all of our students will get these five micro credentials in addition there's an honor society attached to it where graduation they'll have their courts and be ready for the high school component what we're most excited about lewis university upon hearing our plans because educated horizon was brought in to gauge the interest starting next year 10th and 11th graders will be able as well as seniors will be able to enroll in a college level course called foundations of teaching and receive not only a high school credit but dual credit with lewis university so that's great they signed on right away isbe closed out the educator pathway grant but when i spoke at one of the isb board meetings the next day i got an email we want

112to open it up and if you can get crete and another school district to sign on together i'm regional got homewood flossmoor to sign on we will get a sepi grant to help infuse some money so that this initiative be will stay alive we have to do what we have to do because what we have to realize students don't know what they don't know i told them first field trip we need to come to the district office a lot of people think miss trish is the highest you can go in education there's finance positions like ken cerma how many of our students know him we have to take field trips to help them understand that teaching is an entry way but the levels that you can accomplish in education are magnificent i'm going to leave

113this caveat with you tell me one occupation where you didn't need a teacher any occupation a plumber has to have a teacher we have legal counsel he had to have a teacher teaching is one of the greatest careers and i'm so proud that these students they not only want to teach but at least 80 percent of them said i want to teach at crete because i know what kids at crete needs so let me look in i think i've covered all of it i want to be succinct because i've learned when you're short you might get invited back another time so i want to open it up in case you have questions for these young people i i have something for you for me okay sir first i'm asking next time before you go to

114hf can you come to me about a opportunity like they they have all kinds of stuff over there at hf so can you come to me first and then i can see i'm at thornton township oh yeah i work with your efc she's going to be reaching out to you so she's learning from me okay and then the other thing is just an idea and i mean it may have to go through the board but i was at a presentation where a school district what they give their students when they go out is they give them like a coin or certificate which guarantees them an opportunity for at least the interview doesn't guarantee them a job now if they received the job they because they were former students and they came back they receive a

115five thousand dollar bond signing bonus that's already you're speaking our language okay okay so that was it okay so there we go i don't have any questions but i want to say you're extremely inspiring i i mean really you almost made me want to be a teacher well yes i love the profession i love crete i'm finishing a ph.d and i'm telling dr cochlear so i'm not leaving i want to see these young people become all that they're intended to be because we are diamond in the rough it looks like the high school is doing nothing we are grooming future educators future business people so i guess for the students what is it that drew you all to this program thank you miss thompson my teacher she's very enthusiastic this she's why i joined the

116program um she made me want to join the program she was talking about it in class and i was like you know what i might come back and be educated at my school you know the program helps us you know young teenagers and you know my generation on the path to become a teacher what grade are you in i'm a sophomore thank you hi um i'm a junior what's your name um i'm lauren powell i'm a junior at crete i joined the educator because i felt as though most of i can say that majority of my teachers they are great teachers but you know there's always a teacher that you cling on to more or that shows you more and you know is there under your wing or you're under their wing better yet and

117when i speak of i wasn't going to join any programs at crete just being honest but the way that miss thompson is very yeah she's very convincing and you know she's like just try it if you don't like it you can always you know step down but teaching is not something that i thought i would be interested in but it's growing on me and i feel like educators horizon is definitely something that should be implicated into the schools or just nationwide in general because it's something that makes you want to say okay this is something that i might want to do this is something that i can see myself doing because now you see yourself sitting in a seat and you see that you want to help more instead of taking a step back like

118oh this isn't me or this isn't something i see myself doing when really this is something that you can see yourself doing so that is my thing thank you thank you okay hi i am a layla i was also introduced to educators rising club by miss thompson she's a very like you know it's that one teacher who makes you want to keep going and you know go to her class and talk to her ask her how her weekend was and what she did and how her break was and what she's going to do the next day and she's like always there you know you know sometimes you can't always like trust other teachers you know feel like they're going to go talk about it with other people but she's like someone you can trust and

119in my family teachers run all the way down the bloodline and teachers run down the front line and when ms thompson talked about this program i already wanted to be a teacher i want to be a biology teacher and she teaches ap seminar and just the way that she teaches it's not about just the subject it's the way that she incorporates everything into it and makes you you know even if you don't like the subject she makes sure you understand it and horribly but okay back to the program but when she's the type of teacher you want to be and you want all of your classmates to experience and my other teachers i want them to be like that like to be enthusiastic and make the class want to learn the subject and not even

120just just teaching the subject but actually getting to know the students and putting it into their life that's what ms thompson does and to know that she will be helping raise other teachers like her so that other generations can have teachers like that is a really good thing and i'd like to be a part of her group i am a sophomore thank you thank you my last comment is that we have males in the program teaching is non-traditional so i know my cte and we are intentionally putting up posters in the high school with men in front of classes to let the males know you are welcome and we have quite a few males that are part of it and it's a diverse group you see african americans but we have hispanics we have caucasians

121we we want to encompass everyone because it takes a village to raise our children thank you for your time thank you and i look forward to talking to you all at another time thank you [Applause] so if any of you would like to sign on to the program you talked to mr paul thank you very much that's our presentation thank you thank you thank you lyle i just yeah just one comment and just what i observed tonight i mean to me i think the key and why getting diversity in our teaching our staff is so important is because students that we've heard likely for tonight all students see teachers as role models and they see that you know people like them have succeeded entering and uh i think that's so important so keep up the

122efforts and uh you know we'll look back for hopefully it won't be as much doom and gloom next year yeah we will do our best for no more doom and gloom yeah and i want to thank you dr coglinnis for following up on this this is this was fantastic and and lyle all of the work that you did to put this presentation together and i know i'm going to get it wrong i heard holyfield i [Laughter] but great job and great job with our our students homegrown here that have the propensity and the mindset to want to be something such as a teacher all right at this point that is dynamic that is extra extraordinary that is great because we're gonna have a ribbon cutting when we roll out the dual credits excellent awesome yeah

123keep us posted give us updates we'd love to see where our staff is going where our students are going this is very good good job good job good job i really please stick with it if i can help in any way i'm seriously serious support it talk to students let me know and i just want to say thank you to our students for coming tonight i know it was a last-minute invite but thank you so much we really want to hear from you and listen to your voices yeah we want to see you back here in four years yeah now go home and do your homework thanks for coming everybody feel free to go ahead and go thank you you got school tomorrow thank you okay um next up is um old business and i

124think we did have a follow-up item eric's here to talk about we well i'll turn it over to yes as you recall at our last meeting uh mr brown posed the question uh just some clarification on this term backdoor referendum um there's some terms that were been thrown around and i think it was left that we had asked council to give give a legal update a legal opinion on this as you know attorney gleason did provide the board members with a legal update but for our community i wanted to make sure that um we provided that you know in our open session as well so i'm going to turn this over to our attorney to just give a quick update on what that is thank you so just to clarify and i think it's i

125i could pick up on where we left off the conversation earlier part of the meeting mr sturm was giving an excellent explanation to cersei wallace on the different concepts with respect to referendums issuances of bonds to cover debts and then of course the vector referendum colloquial term that's used here so if i if i could just to isolate all these concepts um and then and continuing the discussion of backdoor referendum so so first as mr uh surma explained that there's a section uh under the school code that permits the building of new school buildings right and that's only pursuant to referendum and mr sperma explained it to mr swales that's what we attempted back in april pursuant to referendum to to build a new school building that failed okay um and so the school district

126has transitioned to a um a issuance of bonds right to cover debt and that's for the purposes of rehabilitation of buildings purchases of property and that's pursuant to section 27 20-7 of the school code and also and also in compliance with the local government debt reform act okay and as mr albrecht explained in response to the public commenter that pursuant to that section section 20-7 a um the public is permitted to file a petition okay uh and there are as you as you explain there is nothing in there about a dome uh it doesn't say that the specific purposes of the uh of the purposes of issuing the debt needs to be clarified in that petition are four specific things that need to be laid out in the petition it doesn't have to necessarily say

127you know this is for a dome or anything like that um and mr albrecht explained that if 10 of the voting public um successfully pursues a petition then then then that needs to go to referendum okay and that is essentially what a backdoor referendum means is that after you have 10 of the voting population petition the school district then we need to hold off and then those whether we can go forward with the the bonds needs to be postponed until after the referendum this decision is uh put out to the voting public that is what is truly a backdoor referendum okay um and that oftentimes gets confused with another process that's permitted in the in the school code which is essentially the process whereby debt is incurred under and a building is purchased through installment

128contracts okay and the debt is paid off in installments okay it's essentially uh leasing the building through the purchaser releasing the building through those leasing the building and then paying off the lease and then you would own you would own the building after all those and so after that installment contract is paid off okay that is colloquially colloquially known as a backdoor referendum but is not truly a backdoor referendum the backdoor referendum process exists pursuant to section section 20-7 which is the petition that follows the issuance of debt as the school district has done here okay i hope that mr sterma is shaking his head and he's in agreement with what i have to say um and this aligns with what mr albeck's explanation was to to our our public commenter any questions and that

129petition period and the amount the 10 there is another but again it's not relevant to what uh uh what we're talking about here but yeah there's another backdoor referendum when it comes to alternate bonds or revenue bonds where you only need 7.5 percent and that's a backdoor referendum as well when you are dealing with those type of bonds so i don't want people to think hey it's 10 percent some board members may come across that it's always 10 percent but it's 7.5 percent and it used to be ten percent because i don't know i i just i just took a liking to bonds years ago okay and that's all i did instead of watching a movie with the wife at night i just read on bonds okay so but yeah you spawned never always [Laughter]

130essentially putting to referendum the question of whether we can continue to uh pay off the debt certificates with bots okay so to understand if if we get the 10 then that i'm just trying to understand that stops everything no not necessarily because the district has as mr albrecht alluded to in the public temperature there are other revenue streams under which the working could continue so it doesn't necessarily need to stop the work what it does is it stops you from issuing the bonds to pay off the debt certificates until a referendum decision until a referendum vote is taken okay so then and essentially we could still do that work but when it said that that possibly the air conditioning was stopped would that we don't have the money for that okay that's what i'm trying

131so we might still have the money to tear down the dome but not money for air conditioning that's right okay that's correct but we also have the opportunity to appeal that petition if we feel there there's an issue a problem with signatures or whatever we still have a certain period of time to i don't know if that's the right term appeal or whatever it doesn't mean that it's it's set in stone just because that amount of signatures was gathered correct correct just like with any other election so can you explain that so so say enough signatures were gathered what does the district what can the district do from that point on everything that's a section of the school court i have to look further okay because there is something right i mean it's not that's

132not the end of things i mean i believe you're correct yes my understanding was that there was some discussion that there's an appeal process the district could go through so can we get that checked out and just know everything so it's everybody has the same information absolutely thank you and and one thing i would like to add uh attorney is that we embark the board embark on borrowing working cash quite often and the process of again correct me if i'm wrong the process of the back door referendum could come into play as well any time we borrow working cash so i think the board should look at it i'm almost certain on that okay on a working cash i don't know if i don't think there's a specific amount but a working cash too i

133believe that's correct so we borrow that all the time so it usually is not challenged but it's it's good for the board to be aware of that well if you remember mr brown too because we're borrowing working cash here right here we got a petition period two we got two petitions all right right well when we borrowed the money back in and last year of 20 yes there was also at the bottom we had another but nobody nobody challenged right there and that was working i think to say that we do it all the time though is incorrect i mean i've been on the board now five years we've done we've had one issuance of working cap working capital ponds okay well so i'm just saying that's the way i've seen at least uh well

134i've been on the board even when i don't want to mislead the public well well we borrow we borrowed that's a that's the way we typically borrowed to you know gain funds i'm just saying typically you know that's a process when i got on the board the previous board had passed a resolution to borrow or to sell 30 million dollars of bonds and they sold 14 15 million and then they put the other 15 that there's a time frame that you can sell the other so they didn't sell all of the bonds at the one time but that's a that was a petitionary period then it was 30 million dollars but the public did not petition during that time so i just want to let the board know anytime we sell working cash to my

135knowledge there's that backdoor referenda process that could come into play i believe it's anytime you sell any type of bonds that are not approved per referendum there is a petition period that has to take place through a binary hearing now that picks up the debt system as life safety bonds and the debt that certificates are completely different that's right but they're still general obligation bots right those are those are not uh a bond those are investigations so you don't need a binder here right yeah but in life safety like like ibp right so but again i think what you're alluding to is the fact that if we do sell bonds whenever it is yes if they're not referendum for the most part you have to have a final hearing and there's a death period yes

136that's correct yes that is correct to my knowledge okay so i just thought that was good for the board to know and and and president elbert you're correct i mean yeah we're not selling working cash every day but typically i've seen when we're working cash we need money to hear the furries working cash we're going down in our working cash funds okay we need to we need to beef it up and typically what boards do they go out there and sell bonds working cash bonds i just want the board to be aware that there's a period if the public come out you know don't be surprised you know so we have to be transparent out there and go through the process that you have the hearing so just don't be surprised anywhere down the future

137that that occurred okay any other old business just one note exactly what dr hall brought up this i just wanted to make it you know that miss roop brought that up at the last meeting at the end of the business meeting that you know what was the result if the uh petition area was successful so okay uh any new business oh i'm gonna fix new business doctor cogniz looked like she gave us some rights for our fob to get in a couple doors i i don't know if you could explain what's what how did our privilege get taken away to have accessibility to the school well we're concerned about your safety mr brown okay all right so um when uh we hired on patrick and we were looking at the security of our buildings we

138wanted to make sure that all of our buildings we had people coming in the same doors we had we knew who was coming in the doors as well as the time stamps that we only had people coming in certain doors so when we we brought him on we put together a process to standardize the doors the times the hours for everybody in the district all including myself and so forth and so when we had it for here we and certainly with covet we were having everybody come in the front door and the reason why is we want to be able to have our security guards see who's coming in and who's coming out as you know our security guards are excellent when the board leaves at the end of the night they walk us all

139out and so i wanted to make sure that we weren't having the back doors access because i'm concerned about my safety of my board members i don't you know as you're going to the back i don't want anything to happen to you so our security guards watch you know the board members in and out and making sure that everything looks safe out in the parking lot i've opened up the side door because certainly the winter coming in and certainly at the ease of the board i know you need to come in from the parking lot instead of coming in the front door so we went ahead and opened that side door i extended the hours because certainly on days like this when we might be meeting later if you've had something in your car you

140need to come back and get we've extended that hours so that was uh the the idea behind this um and just you know fine-tuning our own procedures here okay um i just want to relinquish my five if that's it i'll just come through the standard way i'm okay with that so it's no sense for me to have the liability of having that product filed that there could be a security breach so i'll be giving mines back up okay yeah i know a lot of board members don't use their phones no to the parking lot to the parking lot down the first hallway yeah okay i'm trying to understand how does that protect our safety like if we go somewhere we're adult enough to know well i'm thinking in particular on board nights i think that's

141what i'm thinking about instead of having you go out the elc door down there or going out the back door where the garbage cans are and it's dark there's no lights out there for your security we have our security guards try to walk everybody out every night they scan the parking lot making sure that there's people there nobody there that we don't know and just for their own security if i've got people going out through the doors my security guards so really is that for us because as adults we understand clearly what dangers could possibly lie out if we choose to go out a back door side door whatever door and i think most i'm assuming most people go out the front door it may be a board member or two that does that but

142i'm still not understanding how that is for our sake now if you tell me you just want to streamline the process then i i believe that when you tell me that you're doing this for our safety and security it's for both it's for you know honestly i'm doing this for everybody all our employees have the same rules and guidelines and it is about streamlining a process and creating consistency and honestly it is about your safety i i worry about my board members you know making sure everyone's safe whether you're a man or a woman or if you've been here a long time i we just want to make sure people get in back to the car safely that was all i think she's saying like this back door i think some people were coming in

143and out of this back door and it's dark out there at night so if you fell how would anybody know until they found you the next day i i mean i think i don't know i'm just trying to interpret what she was saying there it's very dark out there i've gone out that back door with pam panza when i've worked events and it's dark you can't unless you turn your flashlight on on your phone you can't see out back unless they've changed the lighting so to me that's a very unsafe way to exit the building in the dark no i i i get that okay i'm saying if todd hall decides that he wants to go out that back door going out that back door is it locked like where you can't get out because

144going out there going out going out doesn't it coming in no you don't use a cart or a reader or a bag to go out i i i get coming in but if it's about my safety then going out coming in i just think that there's another aspect though that sounds harsh i think liability for liability purposes they don't care if todd hall made the decision they're going to say what are your protocols and what's your policy i go through this even at a community center that makes more sense to me than to say i'm worried about your safety if you say it's about the protocols that's but i know running in an organization i get people mad at me and it's like but if it happens i'm the one to blame and i understand

145you're an adult but i'm going to be the one not that i don't care about the people but you you when you're at a certain level you have to think about the liability too but see we all interpreted that differently thank you mr simpson do you have anything to add to that since uh the security officers we're talking about adult we're talking about um students which is far more difficult when we talk about how many students we have there both times they were able to be identified one just last week they didn't even get past they were caught in the foyer because the security guards watch the same people come in there every day and they're familiar with faces clothing all that even with masks on so i think that's a very important component of

146this when we talk about entrance ways for a lot of reasons but when we have uh specifically the high school we have a large amount of people entering there you know the security guards may appear that they're not doing nothing but clearly they are they're really they're really looking at a lot of different things and when we restrict that that entrance it to specific points and we have the same security guards there all the time getting to know those people that's really going to assist us in identifying problems and resolving them i don't know again i when we had our meetings at the high school i quite often drove around the back parking lot and came in through the back i thought that was very conducive it was it was safe that i thought and

147just to cut the privileges i i get it if there's truly a safety component involved with this i get it but i think it was more of a unsafe for me to park in the front than it was for me to park in a bag so i would continue to park in the back i parked in the back back there and i walked around so that's on me that's on me but i just you know i don't understand that if a board member comes through a door everybody knows that that board member came through the door those who have access to the system if they need to figure out who went through that door and for me to have someone tailgate behind me then those privileges should be taken because i'm not responsible to have

148a file and not using the right that i allow another person to come in so if it's only me coming through the door and i get it about light and all of that i mean we can the whole parking lot is dark out there so no matter which door you go out the whole parking lot there's a risk of falling and slipping and getting stuck up out there you know by a by a perpetrator so i'm not going to argue i just thought it was a little uh micromanaging when they came to that you know at the high school though i mean we used to park in the back also and a security guard always walked us out back and made sure we got in the car and the car pulled away just like they

149do out front i mean we had two security guards at the high school so one would always i mean there were many times when mrs gas barrel parked back there and they never let us go out that door alone they walked us to the car just about and once we pulled away then they had it back in the building well you had some special privilege it didn't not once walked me back there okay and uh also i just want to know what is the protocol for board members going to schools i know we sign in there's a couple times i'm not often in these schools i you know i very rarely going to go to the school but a couple times i noticed when i went to the schools i knew i had to sign

150in but i waited i waited quite a while for the principal to come is that the is that the protocol well generally even even in our front office here i know i've had board members that have come to see me and they wait in the lobby until somebody comes to get them we we have formalized things things were maybe very informal before and we have formalized things uh over the years and especially lately i've been told that if you're going to a school you let them know ahead of time so they're prepared for you if you show up now if they're busy you're gonna you know wait obviously until they get time to so what if what if we don't want to see the principle or whatever do we not have as board members to

151have you know again i understand letting the i know we signed in we're there and maybe we want to just walk the school down what what happened to those i think if you have a specific concern talk to dr carroll yeah because you know i usually will just make sure that even even myself when i go to my buildings i'm not a concern what if i just want to walk i mean what what happened here i'm lost i'm we can't just go and check and and just do a non-schedule walk down out of school not that i'm doing it but that's not something i would do that's then that's what i said that's that's that's it yeah please let mr trish know i'm in the school i'll be heading to a wing or whatever i'm

152just saying hi to some teachers absolutely i think that that's that's all i've done before especially we did it all the time and it is a board member's prerogative i don't think there's there's uh i mean we are board members and we just want to come in and walk and see how things are going for whatever reason not to be destructive there loves to see you so you are definitely welcome absolutely i guess i couldn't imagine in my district telling the board member no you can't go you have to wait until the principal see i i couldn't i couldn't imagine it and then i also underst this could be rumor and i wasn't going to bring it up but since we're talking about that i guess at the high school there's a code for when

153i come in a building according to security to let them know that i'm in a building a case and this is supposed to have something to do with athletics and i've heard this from several people but i wasn't going to even say anything about it but i don't know i think that i'm not aware i don't think i don't i mean i don't know if that's true it's a i i i mean is that true you may not know but it may be just amongst the high school leaders oh yeah they're not telling them no they wouldn't they probably wouldn't tell you that there's i i mean i get uh because i understand how these systems work if there is i've been at schools where they've had codes for certain people who come in they're

154not going to be like go tell them whatever is here but they might no they really like rahm emanuel they used to like if he was going somewhere i do know that the security had code for him not his name so people wouldn't know and and but that's different than if he comes in the building let us know use this code so that this person can and i'm not saying any names about who they're trying to protect them protect me or protect them who they're trying to protect from me but i just heard that it was and i mean i guess it would be something to look into bottom line our board members are very welcome in our buildings every time that i've been out with board members i know ms galbraith i've gone out

155several times with you people love to see our board members and i i encourage you to do that you know and that's why i said if you want to go you can you can go to the buildings anytime that's just the process it's just yeah absolutely yeah and i get going to the door to the front desk to let them know i get that that's what i heard from from from the board the previous board how the board was to follow a certain protocol in a process and i that was the last i heard but again when i went i expected to sign in hello maurice i'm just going to just um just walk up and down the hall whatever okay so sit down on the principal huh okay oh man the last two times

156i've went it has happened and i'm like oh man i'm on the clock it's been 15 minutes i have to run well you should have let me know i didn't even know you were out there so i don't know if we get a standard we can have an internal talk about this with the board and have a standard because i don't want to go against the grain but i do want to not have my my hands tied you know can i make a suggestion though i want you in on this i probably won't i don't know if maurice still has his but they used to give us oh shoot sorry terry thank you they used to give us ids just like you guys have ids so nobody we always had to wear our id when

157we were in a building i still wear my id i think you have one but i think it ended with me because i don't think any of the rest of the board members got ids so you know i don't know if that also makes the staff because the staff doesn't know who i am i mean there's 200 people in a building they don't all know who i am so i always i got in my bag here i always wore it when i went to a building so maybe that's a thought that we have i i don't know i'm just saying and we also got passes for football games we had to wear a different idea at a football game and i have that still in my in my tote bag oh mr brown you're very

158wonderful okay let's move on that's it we do have a need for closed session tonight can i get a motion to go into closed session for the purpose of student disciplinary cases rocco roll call please franz and i mrs gilbert aye aye mr swanless mrs walters aye miss uh dr hall aye vice president rule aye president albert aye motion carries we are in closed session at 8 45. all in favor say aye all opposed we are adjourned