Crete Monee School District 201u COTW Meeting 11/9/21

001hereby call this meeting to order. Uh, roll call, please. Dr. Hall, Mrs. Galbert here, Brown is here, Mr. Wallish here. Mrs. Walters here. Vice President Rup here. President Albert here. Please join me for the pledge. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. And Miss Rup, would you please recite the mission statement? Sure. Our mission is to empower each student to positively impact the world for a bright new future. Okay. Next up is public comment. We have one in person and one came in via email. Uh first up in person is um James Young and topic is transparency in the community. The floor is yours, sir. Thank you, President Albert. Uh, before

002I begin, let me uh give a shout out to all the veterans, military veterans. Uh, thank you for your service. How much time do I have, President Aubrey? Five minutes. Okay, good. Dr. Congress, members of the board, staff, and community. Um, I want to talk about transparency in the community and it's in three different areas. The first area I want to talk about is that in order to for us to understand where we're going, we got to understand where we came from. Okay. Two years ago, school board voted in favor of purchasing a building on the northeast side of Creek to move the maintenance department in there. At that time that it was done, the school board ignored two possible resources closer to all our community schools that would have saved the school board thousands

003upon thousands of dollars. The decision was made. We continue to push forward. Just last week, you made the very same mistake. You voted six to one to destroy the dome, a building that could be used for the benefit of the entire district. And yes, I'm sorry I wasn't able to be here. My public comments was read. I was at home watching the vote. I heard all the comments about how it was a difficult decision. Again, we believe that you made a mistake and there's still hope for the donor. Our school district is very unique because we have a lot of active retired school teachers. We've have former school board members that go back as far as 40 years ago to current time. We believe that we're moving in the wrong direction. Okay? Okay. And I'm

004going to offer you several suggestions for recommendations for your consideration after I'm done. The decision was made about the dome. So again, let's continue to move forward, but I want to go down I want to take a trip down memory lane for a moment. Again, if you remember, this school board referendum did not pass. The majority of people that voted against that school board, that school board referendum came from Creek and Monae. They did not come from University Park. If you do, if you look at the numbers, you can fact check it. Creek shot it down. Monise shot it down. University Park voted in favor of it. Now, according to your agenda, you want to talk about some working cash bonds. The majority of those bonds are going to be used for schools in Creek.

005How much sense does that make? Creek voted down the referendum and now you want to use the working cash bonds to build up Creek. Doesn't make very much sense. What does Monae get out of it? I'm sure you're getting something out of it because you voted in favor of it. What does University Park get out of it? I wonder. Again, we believe we're moving in the wrong direction. Okay, but let's continue to move forward. I like to know the policy on posting of four years on the school's website. I looked for it, couldn't find it. Okay. I want to know why residents of a school district are treated differently. I submitted two foyers. One had to do with open meetings act when information was relayed about a letter that was sent to the mayor of

006university park about tiff funds. I forward the information. Yes, I did receive it within the time period but it wasn't posted on the website. I submitted another for you about the company that's demolishing the dome. Yes, I did receive the information in the time period allotted, but it wasn't posted on the website. What I did see post on the website was a big critic of the school district even during the days of the consent decree that wanted to know about information about a particular current school board member that had been redacted by the board attorney. So I want to know why why is it that we can post her information and her colleagues information but you can't post the information that I requested. So I'd like to know and this is the form in which

007we come to share our opinions. But let's again let's continue to move forward. Okay. Number three, there's been conversation open in open session about destroying the IB curriculum program at Ketta Scott King Magnet School. Please don't do that. That program has always been working. I was on the school board, excuse me, I was on the committee from the community that turned Hickory Elementary School into Kretta Scott King Magnet School. that school has always been performing academically. It was brought to my attention and I went online and I found an article from the US News and World Report and I want to say it's dated in October, but you can Google it. It's the US world US News and World Report that recognized Kretta Scott King magnet school as being a top performing IB elementary school

008in the state of Illinois. Now, if you remember correctly, the school board dumped millions of thousands of dollars to educate teachers, certify them, and certify the school as a IB curriculum school, middle grade, sixth, seventh, and eth. Ketta Scott King Magnet School is the only elementary school that feeds into that program. Our students are getting a head start. It would not make sense to try to destroy that program. Just last month, the school board agreed to release Dr. Condise from doing the evaluation that program. Well, you as far as this article is concerned, you can just take that off her plate. It's not even necessary. We know that the program is working. We know that it's the only elementary school that feeds into the middle school in which you wanted the middle school to be

009IB certified. Okay. So, here's my recommendations. Number one, leave the dome alone. The dome can benefit everybody in the school district, every interested party. It don't make sense. There's still hope for that dome. Number two, give the teachers at the middle school the classroom space they need. First thing tomorrow morning, you need to make a commitment about that. They need the space. They have to have the space in order to create the environment that's conducive to learning. Every teacher knows that. And number three, Ketta Scott King Magnet School has earned the right to have a new building. They deserve it. They've always performed academically. And that's what our school district is known for, academic excellence. I know because I got three children and two of them graduated from this district and both of them are

010doing exceptionally well. So I know what we're capable of doing. Ketta Scott King Magnet School has earned that right. The middle school has earned that right to have the what they need. Thank you. Those are my comments. Thank you. Okay. Next public comment um is from Micah B uh regarding um just as public comment uh to the board. I've been watching as the board has voted to borrow tens of millions of dollars, including to demolish the dome without giving people a chance to vote on it after the referendum failed. I am excited to get my friends out in the street starting November 17 to get signatures because the board should not be able to spend our money for so long without giving the people a chance to vote, especially after the referendum failed in 2021.

011A backdoor referendum is coming and thank you for that. So that's it for public comment tonight. Uh with that, I will turn it over to Dr. Kagwanise. Yes. Thank you, President Albert. Uh this evening we have um three presentations that we would like to present to you. One in particular uh I wanted to update the board on our district discipline presentation. We wanted to take a look at all of our school data. We've been working very hard. As you remember the board put a lot of resources in for our students coming back. We did anticipate some additional emotional and social emotional issues that would be coming back um after being um you know hybrid and remote for so long. So we have been uh working with our data working with our uh staff in order

012to give support to our students and tonight I've asked that uh Miss Riley who's our director of behavior intervention programs pull that data together and share that with you this evening. So, Miss Riley. Okay. To the board of education, the superintendent, to our community, and our colleagues. Good evening. Good evening. I am um Kiana Riley. I am the director of behavior intervention programs and I just wanted to uh briefly speak with you all to get you up to date as to the discipline data in our district. Okay, first I want to give thanks to the staff even though they're not here. Um the work that we're doing is very challenging because we're still working in a pandemic. um and and it takes a village to do this work. And so I'm very thankful to all

013that has had an impact in helping our students. So what's the issue at hand when it comes to school discipline? It's not a cre thing. It's actually a a national issue that we have right now. And there were a lot of reports that went out prior to the beginning of the school year and during the school year. We've have reports, one in particular, uh, came out in June of 2021 regarding the impact that CO 19 has had on our students and what they assumed was going to be an impact when the students come back and they were correct. A big issue that we have is schools in our district and across the nation are experiencing an increase and aggressive student behavior. Now, why is this happening? Well, they were in a pandemic. you have things

014that happen outside of the school and we're trying to reaclimate our students back into the building and teach them again the expectations that's needed. Recent data suggests that students who are newly returning to the buildings, they are experiencing higher levels of anxiety and lack of necessary coping skills, but it's just not the students because the pandemic impacted all of us. So you you're dealing with staff that have their own traumatic experience that they they're dealing with. Sorry, it's not that as well as our students. So, it really does take all of us to collectively come up with a solution to help our students. Some contributing factors, students are returning to school with high anxiety, aggressive behaviors, lack of coping skills, and lack of conflict resolution skills and strategies. 45% of our students in the entire

015district are either new to school itself or new to the building in which they actually go to school. What do I mean by this? If you have a kindergarten and a first grader, they're pretty much one and the same right now because we were either on hybrid or remote for the last what one and a half, two years. So those those babies, they're learning how to uh be in a structured environment. Sixth and seventh graders, a seventh grader is much like a sixth grader. They're new to their building. They don't understand or know the expectations of the middle school. So, they're learning them because the last place that they were pre- pandemic was where? In the elementary buildings. Same for the ninth and the tth graders. A 10th grader is pretty much the same as

016a nth grader in terms of being acclimated to the building because they were not there prior to. So, we're dealing with 45% of our students overall from K through 12th that's new to the environment. and we're working very hard to ensure that we either retach our expectations to them or introduce our expectations and teach them one or the other. And how are we doing this? We're doing this by rebuilding our climate and our culture. So, the great thing about working in central office and working with administrators across the district is we have a chance to chat with one another and problem solve, of course. And so we we had an idea of what was to come down the line for this school year and we were very proactive. What we did was we ensured that

017the SEAL supports that we actually enhance them a little bit more than what we did in the past because we already had supports but we wanted to make sure that we we enhance them. So for 202122 school year the office of behavior intervention programs has implemented the following core competencies to enhance social emotional learning for students. So SEAL strategies or competencies, there's five. Self-awareness, self-management, social awareness, relationship building, and responsible decision-m these are things that we already were teaching. We just needed a little bit more to enhance the strategies that we already had in place. SEAL within itself can actually be incorporated into the things that we already are doing. For instance, trauma-informed practices. I just finished saying we we're still in a pandemic and our babies are just getting back as well as our

018staff back acclimated to the building. There's something called adverse childhood um experiences that does impact the social skills of our students. And there are some studies out there. But one in particular is from the International Journal of Environment Research and Public Health that speaks to a student who have high ACES scores show more biased social information processing patterns which causes lower childhood social skills. So our job in addition in addition to teaching the academic skills is to make sure those students with those high uh ASUS scores that we're actually also teaching social skills. How do we do that? We do that through restorative practices. We're teaching them decision- making. We're teaching them self-awareness, accountability. All those pieces again are what? SEAL competencies, positive behavior supports. We have in place our um our cool tools that

019we teach. Within our cool tools, we make sure that SEAL strategies are in place. We uh teach in the IB uh learning profile. They incorporate PBIS with the IB learning uh profile because a lot of those still go hand in hand together. We have truency support. We have two new truency um um staff members. They've been working very diligently to make sure that the students that we have not seen come back so that we can actually support them and help them. And then we have our wonderful therapy program um with Biscuit and uh therapy dog program with Biscuit and Lucy which also helps with the traumainformed practices. It teaches the students how to cope better. It teaches them how to have some self-esteem. It helps them deescalate. So, we have all these different things that

020we some of them we already had in place and some that we actually just enhanced. I wanted to take time to highlight the newest members of our district support team. So, we have Don Sanders. Even though she's not here, I just want to go through this right quick. Don Sanders, she's the tryy specialist um of the overall district. She replaced Anthony Holmes. We have AJ Walker, which is our culture and climate liaison that's housed at the high school. We have Eric Green, which is our newest try uh officer. We have Bridget Tucker, who is our student advocate counselor at the middle school. Jennifer Barnes, some of you may have known her in her former role. Now she is also a student advocate at the high school. We have Michelle Cresto. Her position is called at

021promise facilitator, but in layman's terms, she's a restorative justice coordinator. So what she does is uh provide restorative practices to staff and students, staff and staff or student to student. Okay. She also goes into classrooms, helps with community circles. She uh does one-on-one uh mediation, whatever is needed restorative practices wise. Michelle Cresto is our go-to for the high school. Mrs. Sarah Gruber recently in October had an interview that she did with WBEZ in regards to the work that we're actually doing in the district. She's our student advocate at the high school. she has a um a lot of experience working in counseling of that for um such. So, she did a wonderful job with highlighting all of the work that we're doing. Then, of course, you have Lucy and Biscuit over there are some of

022our faves in terms of um helping the students and staff. Okay. So, top actions districtwide. So I took data from August of this year all the way through October for this year and the last four years following that. So because I wanted to take time to review and see where we were. So top actions district w August through October five-year review. If you notice the uh restorative practices and mediation um has increased at least doubled since 2019, 2018, 2017, 2020. You know, we really wasn't here. So, um, the data even though there's something there, it wasn't much to go off of. So, we have definitely improved and increased on our restorative practices. Our ID of school suspension rate is somewhat consistent overall across the border. Our detention overall has, if you noticed, everything for the

023most part is consistent in terms of not going higher than what it was previously. results for top offenses districtwide. I want to um have you all look at the defiance category. Defiance is a very subjective um action or offense. In 2011, the de the dear colleague letter, if you're familiar with that, it's been 10 years now. Um underneath the Obama administration, um took light of the disparities where they made note of the disparities of discipline across the nation. And one thing that they've noticed is a trend of defiance where defiance can be very confusing and biased at times. If you look at our d our data for the 2021 school year, you note that our defiance category has went down significantly. And I would like to think that one reason why that defiance category has

024decreased is because of the work that Dr. Carrie did when she first got here. Um to ensure that we have cultural uh cultural competencies training and that's needed when when you're dealing with students and trying to understand why they do what they do, how they do what they do. There sometimes is um a confusion or misunderstanding as to what the students are doing. So I think due to our cultural competency training, I think the administrators and the staff, the teachers have done an excellent job at ensuring that they really truly understand if a student is acting out, what does that mean to act out versus something else that could be happening. So overall I would like to just point out that if you notice across the board our discipline collectively has decreased from 2020 20

025um 2019 2018 and 2017 our staff is working really hard with these students and also if you as the other um slide showed with restorative practices doubling that may be also another reason as to why our discipline data is decreasing rather than increasing. all the discip discipline practices that we do in this district. Our goal is to make sure they're teachable moments for our students. We want to make sure that whatever the offense is that we're trying to prevent reoccurrences from happening. When we're looking at the student itself, we want to make sure we look at the whole child. We want to make sure we look at the student's age and maturity, the nature and severity, and the scope of the behavior itself because discipline is not one-sizefitit all. So you have to take the

026time to really figure out what is happening with the student. We look at circumstances and context in which the conduct occurred, frequency and duration, student record, previous records, also whether or not they um have received specialized services and the students like I said the students prior record. That's all of encompasses of what we do with discipline. I like to think of the action steps that we take for this district that we're doing it not top down but bottom up because the all the magic really truly happens in the buildings because those are the individuals that's working with our students. So what do we do? Continuous review of data trends at the building level. We have our PBIS teams. We have our support teams. We have our administrators. We look at the professional development and training

027that's needed for our staff overall to make sure they get the supports they need so that they can support our students. I hold building administration meetings quarterly. As a matter of fact, today I held uh a meeting with the AP and deans to go over the discipline data in the district as well as to do some problem solving and figure out what supports I can give them so that they can further help our students. And it's just a good way to speak with one another to make sure we know what's happening across the district. Right. And then we have the discipline review committee which we have two board members a part of that committee. Mr. Brown and Mrs. Walters who sits on the committee. Hello. And what we do there? Yes. And what we're doing

028is we look at the overall trends to make sure that there are no inconsistencies and if there are any policies that need updating. That is the current work that we're doing and I am so excited to see where we go with this because it's it's not easy, you know, but together we can make it happen. Magic. Any questions? Thank you. I just want to say turn on my mic here. Yeah, I'm I'm excited in the direction, the discipline, uh you overseeing the discipline and all the things that's involved with the discipline. You know, um you you run a heck of a meeting, a good meeting for the committee, I want to tell you. Thank you. You know, Cesy, you get me to know how to raise my hand on Zoom. That that's a feat in

029and of itself. So, I just want to say continue to do what you are doing. uh this board supports you, the administrators support you, and this this means a lot. This adds a lot of value to the success of our district. So, keep doing it. You have the support. Okay. Thank you very much. Good job. Thank you. All right. up next is is actually a companion to this and um that is going to be our um our high school SRO really an introduction and uh an evaluation process of this program. As you recall, this program has been in the district for several years, and getting an SRO in our district has been uh really an excellent partnership with our local uh service providers in building that trust, building those relationships with our students. But I

030think what we wanted to know is how is the program working? Uh earlier uh Chief Baritz over at the Creek Park uh police uh contacted me and said he was doing a research project for his master's thesis and he was doing an evaluation and wanted to know if we would like to participate in that. And of course I said absolutely. So he went ahead and uh interview or gave some surveys out to the community and then we followed up with doing surveys for our internal stakeholders and then we worked together to compare our data and then take a look at any recommendations um for the program. So tonight, um we've got a collaborative team here from the high school as well as uh the Creek Police will be here to share that presentation and um

031we will also introduce our um our therapy dogs. They are an integral part of that team and I both think both of them are here tonight as well. So anyway, the dogs they are so that you can be No, they do not. All right. So go ahead, our team. Why don't you go on up? So a lot of members here and then tonight you'll meet our uh two SRO officers. Yes. got the presentation. Dan, you got the presentation or no? It should should be up there. That was the one that we had. That's okay. Don't make him nervous. Good evening everyone. Uh while he's getting that up, I can start with some introductions. I'm uh my name is Patrick Simpson. I'm the director of safety and security here at the Cremon School District. Um I'll

032start off here with the most important people. Uh we'll start with uh the high school principal, Miss Trish, assistant principal, Lisa Miller. SRO officer Al Taylor, he's at the high school, Dean David Hall, SRO Officer Michael Cage, and Detective Sergeant Adam Gekk. And all the police officers are from obviously from the Creek Mooney are from Creek Police Department and the dogs. Okay, we can introduce the dogs. Um, I know uh most of the board members have been here and we we had a presentation about the dogs previous, but uh my dog here is Lucy. Uh Lucy is the district dog, so she goes around to all the different schools. She's a full uh fullbred Labrador. Dave Hall's dog is uh what is um yeah, Boston Tario. Boston Tarium. I always forget that. Both dogs came

033from the Bvard County Sheriff's Office. They were donated. Uh they have 12 more ready for us when we're ready to get them. So, just let me know. Um, I think we're going to talk more about the dogs here in a minute, but I'll get started. So, the focus tonight is on the school resource officer program, and a lot of this does align with what director Riley said, but a lot of our focus is on uh the program. It focuses on the social uh supporting social and emotional learning and the restorative practices. Um, so a lot of the success of the program is due to those professional and relationships that Dr. uh Cara talked about Dr. Collise um and the trust between uh everybody up here, the high school, the superintendent's office, uh the police department,

034and I I I can't say enough about how what an excellent partner the police department has been. They are so opening uh Chief Paritz and uh the SRO officers and uh Detective Sergeant Gekk, they're very opening to listening, to communicating, and understanding our needs. uh as a career police officer over 30 years as police officer, as a chief of police. Um I can tell you that's that's pretty rare that they're willing to cooperate that and collaborate that much with us. Um and I that says a lot about the police department and it makes our job a lot easier here that they're willing to to listen to us um and to listen to the needs of the school, listen to the needs of the the school district, listen to me, listen to the the principles, the

035deans, and everything like that. So, we we are very fortunate and I think that's what not only has made this program successful, but it's what's going to allow us to continue to be successful because we're going to have bumps in the road and when those come up, it's going to be it's very nice to be able to talk to them and that they listen and they communicate and we determine what the appropriate legal, ethical, and responsible action is and that, you know, make sure that it supports the vision of the school district. So, with that being said, we'll start here with the uh the SRO program evaluation. Um, go ahead. So, the program became uh began in 2018. That was before I was here. That was with uh Officer Walls. Uh, he started the program

036and then uh I believe right was Walls the first one. He got promoted to the to the rank of sergeant. He went out and then um Officer Taylor came in and then Officer Cage is a recent addition. So um the program was established to uh ensure a safe and secure educational environment for students and staff and visitors of the to the school district. It provides the opportunity for on-site collaboration with law enforcement on crisis and non-crisis related matters. I think that's really important to understand especially with the the climate of law enforcement that we're not just there to arrest people. there's many other um things that we can do that the SRO can be involved in and those things continue to evolve and we continue to come up with ideas uh as I think it's

037uh serve as an educational resource. One of the things we came up with that we're that we're going to look to as this program continues to evolve is how we can involve students and uh the police. And one of the one of the first things we came up with is some some involvement with driver's education. Like what do you do when you get pulled over? how do you act? And we talked about different scenarios, maybe putting them in a uh with the SRO, putting them in a squad car so they see what the officer sees, explain proper procedures, talk about laws, things like that. So, that's that's an educational resource that uh we talked about. Some of that came out of reviewing some of this data. Um act as an additional resource. Law enforcement has

038a lot of different resources that they can add that um may the school and the district may not be aware about. Those things are constantly changing, different social service program, who's the correct person to call, who's the right person to call, what where is the best contact? You know, a lot of things at the school because we're in a unified school district, it crosses juris jurisdictions and a lot of things that I deal with, you know, it's always uh talking to um Sergeant Gekk a lot, it's always where's the jurisdiction at and that's a big determination in law enforcement. So, who's going to investigate that? So, that's important. Uh serves as an opportunity to build positive and professional relationships. Obviously, that's a parent. Just them being at school and being around and being able to

039talk to the kids, interact with them. Uh, Officer Taylor's big in Special Olympics for us. We're going to continue to develop different programs to have them be involved with and hopefully, you know, get the return on that investment. And, uh, we want to have more involvement with them, with the community, the school district, and law enforcement in general. So, that that's our hope as this program continues to evolve. So, with this being said, an SRO handbook was created. Um, we're in the final stages of that. We just had an additional change. We made sure all our updates are there. We made sure it aligns with um ISBY. Uh Illinois school law, it's legal, it's responsible, it's ethical. Uh we made sure that the police department reviewed it. They had input. Uh the school district reviewed

040it, the high school reviewed it, the deans reviewed it. We've had a lot of input on this, but overall the the handbook provides overall guidance and direction for the SRO program. It defines terms, objectives, and procedures for the operation of the program, and it ensures compliance is m uh maintained with with those different agencies and organizations. There are some standards um for SRO officers, but we want to make sure that we have our own standards, which were created and established and presented in this book. And then uh there's quite a few changes that have been actually more than a few uh with law enforcement. There hasn't been too much focused on SRO, but there's been so many mandates that have come up with law enforcement. There was just a bunch that happened in uh July.

041I'm going to say that there's going to be more coming in January. So, this will allow us to make sure that we stay aligned with the standards uh uh with the Illinois Law Enforcement Trainings and Standards Board and Illinois Law. So, that's where we are with the handbook. Let's see what the next slide here is. And then uh this is going to be we're going to introduce uh Officer Michael Cage and Officer Al Taylor. I think I introduced them already. Again, this is uh Mike, you want to tell them a little about yourself? Sure. Good evening everybody to the superintendent to the board. My name is Officer Michael Cage. I've been a police officer almost 26 years, four years with the village of Creek. I live in Creek. I also did uh police leaison with

042Rich Township, Rich Central, Rich South, and Rich East for six years. Um also, uh I'm a graduate from Chicago State University with a degree in um Bachelor of Science, criminal justice. Um also I'm a juvenile officer, CIT trained. Also, I'm a DARE officer and uh School resource officer. Most importantly, that part is important. Yes, I'm glad to be here. Thank you for having me. Thank you. I'm Officer Al Taylor. Uh good evening everyone. Uh I've been with the Creek Police Department for 16 years. All my law enforcement career has been with the Creek Police Department. Uh prior to that, I was uh military active duty active duty Navy for eight and a half years. um started school resource officer back in 2019. Got trained was in the school uh in the later year of 2019

043um and continued when the school opened back I was there to the pandemic and continue with the school opening back up. Um I am big with Special Olympics. I'm the law enforcement torch run liaison which is a support and awareness effort for Special Olympics. I've seen I've done that for I think nine years, eight years or nine years, but I've seen with uh if you guys know Michelle Caleroni, uh I used to go to her classroom all the time and I've seen kids that were in her third grade class. They're now in high school now and I still recognize them. They still recognize me. So, uh have a really good relationship with them. I'm trying to build relationships also with the kids in the high school. There are uh uh certain individuals that come to

044me and talk to me, which is pretty cool. I have been in uh uh I have been in to the first half of the driver's education uh um classes and that was interesting. That was very very interesting. I went through uh uh traffic stops and stuff like that. But all the all of those classes came down to one simple question about the cannabis law. Why, you know, in the car, that type of thing. And I had to break it down. like by no means you guys are not going to be allowed to have it in the car period. You're not even 21 yet. But anyway, uh thanks for having me and have a good night. Thank you. Adam, you want uh uh Adam, you want to introduce yourself? Good evening everybody. I'm a detective sergeant

045with the uh Creek Police Department. Talking about building relationships, I've been here 15 years, been investigations in 10 years. I probably know less than uh what Mr. Hall conducted over 100 investigations uh within the school. Uh most of them have been good. Uh positive interactions. Uh I've been here a long time. As a uh parent, uh this is very uh this means a lot to me. Uh the schools, the kids, uh going back and forth with the police department. I've had great experiences here and uh thank you for having me. You're welcome. Adam, I think this is yours. Uh, Chief Peritz could not be here tonight, so uh, Detective Sergeant Gosill in for him. Again, as uh, Mr. Simpson said, uh, Chief Parrots cannot be here tonight. Uh, essentially uh, uh, what uh, Dr. Carrick

046Cognney said that uh, he worked on his master's program at the uh, Governor State University. Uh the SRO program is near and dear to his heart too. Uh he'd been wanting to bring this program back. Uh years ago we did have this program and it went uh cold for a long time and we finally brought it back and we want to make this program uh something that could be built upon and be very positive. So essentially uh the purpose of the study is to determine what a SRO is. School resource officer in the high school uh hat and crime gain reduction uh which was big uh with his project perception of safety and ability to build a positive relationship between the school and the police department. uh random sample uh sample population uh found 130

047individuals including teachers, parents, school administrators and the general public that he sent out the uh sample survey to who resided within the uh school district. uh the answer to the survey questions over are favorable and we're used in conjunction with the school survey to uh form new priorities, objectives, and protocol and changing the SRO program because it always needs to be changed. It needs to be updated fresh. There's always something new. What Mr. Simpson said, uh the safety act went into effect in July of 2021. Uh there's probably going to be more changes and they're always for the better. We're always evolving and moving on. So with that being said, uh many positive interactions between the SRO students and teachers, alternative methods other than to arrest, uh being a juvenile officer myself, uh it's about

048restorative justice. It's not just about making an arrest. Uh juvenile has a lot of time to uh learn who they are, uh go in the military, uh develop a job. Uh one uh simple mistake shouldn't be the uh downfall of their uh adulthood. So there's a lot of different uh a lot of different variables for a uh juvenile and juvenile officer relationship. That's why that relationship is so important. Uh minor school roles, greater involvement with teaching classes. We want to be uh more involved. We want to be seen. We want to be in the classes. Uh they had a great interaction with the kids talking about something as simple as cannabis, but that got the conversation flowing and and it's just going to be the beginning. All right. Now, Steve Ray, uh, respondents were given

04915 questions to answer. Uh, some of those questions, 93.8% of the, uh, participants, uh, supported allocating resource for an esro in high school compared to 6.3% that were opposed. 79.8% 28% believed having an escrow in the school reduced gang affiliation activity compared to 20.2% that did not. 89.3% strongly agreed or agreed that school staff and police working together closely is a deterrent to crime at the high school compared to 6.9% that were neutral and 3.8 that disagreed. 91.5% strongly agreed or agreed that the high school was safer when ethyl present compared to 4.6 that were neutral and 3.9 that disagreed. 94.6% believe that esro relationships with the student can erase negative stereotypes and eliminate behaviors between the police and the younger generation compared to 3.1% that were neutral and 2.3% that disagreed or strongly disagreed.

050That relationship, that barrier, removing that barrier is so important. If they don't know who they are, they don't know that they could come to them when they just find out that just a normal person with a uniform on that they could come to them with problems at home, anything that's going on in their life. Uh, Officer Walls did a really good job with this uh couple years ago. Uh, he played football here. Uh, the kids would come in and talk to him about sports and that would open up to what's going on at home. And then again, we're really trying to build on that and make this great. That's it. All right. 88.4% believe an SRO could help smaller student problems before they escalated into larger populations compared to 6.9% that were neutral in the

051question and 4.6% that disagreed or strongly disagreed. 83.8% believe that having an escrow in the school is a deterrent to those intending to commit violent acts in the school compared to 78% that were neutral in the question and eight and a half that disagreed or strongly disagreed. 59% believed that having an esro in the school led to a reduction in criminal deviant behavior compared to 29% that were neutral in the question and 10% that disagreed or strongly disagreed. 55% believe that they witnessed a positive change in the school since an AR role was assigned compared to 37% who were neutral on the question and 7% that disagreed or strongly disagreed. 49% believe SCU students felt comfortable confiding the SO problems that faced them again when I spoke recently uh compared to 50% who did not

052believe that the students felt comfortable when in their opinion that an SRO changed over the year regarding a police officer in the school 90% believed no other than 9% that believe yes then this brings to the next portion again thank you very much thank Good evening. My name is Marjorie Trish. I'm the principal at Creek Money High School. So, um during the summer, Miss Coglin, Dr. Coglin asked Lisa and I to um do a survey with our students, our parents, and our staff on um their ideals and their thoughts on having an SRO in the school. Um, so Lisa and I got together and we started researching some researchbased questions because it does no good if we just come up with questions off the cuff. So we looked at um Education uh week survey research

053center. We looked at uh Education Magazine. They did a national survey. We looked at the National Association of School Resource Officers. Um we looked at questions from the research gate from Northeastern University. Um and with all of those uh particular researchbased um surveys, we extracted some questions. So we extracted some questions for the parents, questions for the students and questions for our teachers. Um for this parent survey, there was 25 questions. For the student survey, we had 37 questions. A lot of those dealt with the demographics, and that's why they had so many for the student uh questions. And the teachers had 15 questions. All communities were represented in all of the um surveys and our staff participated. Over 1,000 students participated. As you can see, um 68% stated that they were aware that we

054had an SRO, which which is good. 78 uh 78% of the respondents stated they believe that having one enhances the safety of the school and the security. You want to finish, Miss Miller? I'll take it from here. Can everyone hear me? 71% of the respondents stated that the SRO deterred violence and crimes uh and improved the environment of our school. 79% of the students and staff stated that they feel safer with the presence of SRO's when they're in the building. None of the external respondents knew the SR's name. So, we know that we have to that's something we really need to work on, right? Who are they? 82% of the respondents have never interacted with the SRO. Uh, which is good. I know that sounds, you know, it may sound negative on some level, but

055that's why we said a part of the program that you heard Patrick talk about was we want the SRO to get into the classrooms because they're mainly in the hallway when they're present and just walking around saying hello. So if you don't happen to be in that hallway and you know the high school is pretty large then you won't ever interact with the SRO. So our reflections and recommendations and ensure that all of our stakeholders which includes the community are familiar with our SR's role and can identify our SRO at a game out in the public setting that they are aware that the SRO works with our school district. review and assist with updating the SRO's handbook created by the district safety team, which is we've had several meetings on that. And lastly, assist with

056creating programming that will make the SRO more visible to students and staff in our school. Any questions before I go to the next one? All right. Thank you. I'm going to add a couple things to that and then we'll get into therapy dog. Uh it was interesting that Chief Paritz did his survey and then uh I want to thank uh Miss Trish and Miss Miller for their survey as well and how they they were very similar and they came up with a lot of the same information. So that really helped us kind of uh target some of the things that uh we were planning on doing. Um today I had an incident where uh at the elementary school where I saw a need for possibly utilizing some um SRO resources there. So um as this

057program continues to evolve, I hope to um maybe even use them in outside the high school as well, but I think we we got a little ways to go with that. Um Dave is going to Mr. Hall is going to start and give the update on the therapy dog. No, go ahead. Good evening everybody. Uh thanks for uh having me come out today. Um real quick, I want the SRO program. Uh I've been here long enough where we had the SRO program uh and then the program went away. Um I'm glad to see it back uh in my role as a dean here. Uh I work with these guys very closely and it's just you'd be amazed about to see you know you they you saw a lot of uh qu um quantitative data but

058qualitative data tells me that I work with these guys and that uh there's a lot of things that we stop or we deter not just in our schools but our community because of what the SRO program does here. And that's why I think it's so important that it's just not about arresting kids. It's it's bigger than that. It's building a gap. Uh, you know, the the the way the students interact with the officers to me is is uh is really amazing and and kind of building that relationship and not that the badge means something bad. And uh and so I just wanted to say that though my working with them is is I don't want this program to go away obviously because and and the safety of it, you know, I do a lot of

059district safety and security stuff and having them in in the building is is uh it's almost kind of a a reassuring presence to have them here. Um so I I appreciate this program and I kind of don't want to see it go away. So, I I that's why I want to um uh wanted to tell you guys that because I work with these guys in a daily, you know. Um so, so we'll get to the therapy dog. That's that's my little uh quip there. But, um so I we got in front in July, we we came in front of you guys and we said that the board of education and we said that we're going to have these dogs in these schools and and we wanted to update you and let you know uh how

060things are going. Hey, behave. uh how things are going and uh um the success of the program now you know and you know Pat and I and thanks Miss Trish and Miss Miller you know for uh allowing the dogs to come in. Um it's really we put a lot of work into it beginning we did the handbooks and you know we went all why we have them. Um a lot I'm going to tell you though a lot of schools are jealous that we have them. Uh I I I have a lot of friends in education who are like well what what's this program? what are we doing? And then like um uh the special ed students were just playing um basketball and the homewood philosopher people were like why you guys got dogs. We want

061dogs like they say. So uh thank you Dr. Kagise too for pushing this program and and your the board support. So um so again the uh hour Biscuit uh Biscuit works uh three days a week. He's got the easy schedule Tuesday through Thursday uh from 6:00 to uh 6:00 to um 6:00 to 3:30. Uh you might be asking where he stays. Um he, you know, I have a I have a crate in my office. Uh if students don't want to be around him or they don't like dogs and I have to meet with a student, uh he has other people that will dogs uh that are that they'll handle them. Uh or I put them in the crate. Um so, but he's he's there. Lucy. Uh again, she's assigned throughout the district and works in

062different buildings and goes in different places as needed. Um every morning, uh the dogs are out at the high school and and you know, we're lucy at your early childhood center, uh meeting meeting staff and students, and I always get, "Oh, look at there's biscuit. There's biscuit." And then, "Hi, Mr. R." Like, you know, so I know where I rate and uh he's very popular at the high school. So, uh, and kids just just like coming, you know, we'll just sit on a bench every morning. Uh, you know, because sometimes it's harder for students to get down and pet them and they just come by and they just, you know, they love to say just a couple minutes just give them a little pet and it makes them, oh, thank you. You know, so there's

063uh that's amazing. Um, again, and then they're in in and out in the hallways. They're not Biscuit's not every pass he's not out every passing period. He's kind of a diva and likes to take naps. Uh so he uh he's not out but we do we get out as much as we can and and students appreciate it. Now um I've kept quantit um uh qualitative data on um on biscuit this year and the interactions with students. So every time uh student wants to meet with him or as uh for they'll ask uh I don't know if you guys are aware but some 504s and some IEPs do have uh the meeting with a therapy dog. So, uh, so he's there three days a week. Uh, he's had over, now it's over 30. When I wrote

064this, it was over 30. In fact, today there was another interaction with a student. Um, and those interactions are fif to 15 minutes. uh where students with anx and that's why I said we we've had students with anxiety um peer conflicts aggression uh you know um and you know I had a student came in oh I got this procedure I got tomorrow but can I come meet with biscuit because I'm really anxious and worried about my I have my teeth pulled how many people just every day well yeah that's why I said no I mean that's why well I think I told like 30 minutes 10 minutes or more. But every day, every morning, like Leia, there's students, like I said, that we sit on the bench and they come in and give the pet

065every morning. And staff, I mean, staff, um, they I don't know, the staff just love, you know, hug them and kiss him and whatever you got and they they like the visits and they come, you know, seek them out. Uh, students the same way like with anxiety and those kinds of things. So, um, we've also been out in the community. We've done things. We've gone to local law enfor uh Pat and I have gone to local law enforcement uh fire departments. Um so we've we've also been out and about uh with our our community with the dogs. So um we this this is a building program, right? We kind of developed it from scratch. Uh Pat and I and um some other people. Um if you ask me right now, it's a a success. It's

066a success. Um, it's been very positive. Uh, I've had a lot of I've only had one parent who was concerned in the beginning of the year. Uh, well, your dog's going to bite my child. And I said, well, that was that. So, that's what they emailed and I called her. I explained these dogs are highly trained. We're with them. We're these dogs are not just like roaming around and they're not like your own family dog, right? And after I explained that, she's like, "Oh, where's the paperwork? I forgot my sign so I can that we interact with them. So that was the only negative comment I had. Just lots and lots of positive comments. Also with parents, I mean I've multiple times I've had meetings that were stressful for parents obviously sometimes that when they're

067meeting with me um and they always appre, you know, I oh would you like to meet our therapy dog? And they're very thankful. I remember one parent uh that we we had quite a few issues with and that biscuit sat on her lap and she was crying and she was just like fell asleep in her lap like he knew that like he needed that. So I think it's a success. I think we still have you know we're we're not we're you know continue to grow in this program. Uh I think the district and I appreciate the district doing this and the school board kind of supporting us. Thank you. Thank you. Um, any more questions about the dog? I've had a lot of the same experiences Dave has had just throughout the district. Uh, my

068feelings have been hurt as well. More people know the dog's name than mine. Um, don't talk about, right? Yeah. Nobody can say my last name, right? But, um, very successful. I had a couple, uh, how what I characterize as extremely challenging parents that were very aggressive and angry, and for some reason the dog calmed them down. I don't know why. Uh part of it, some of it is is magic. It's it's happened a couple good times. I've had a lot of different uh situations with uh students 504. A lot of staff members I've had a lot of staff members come up and you know tears in their eyes for whatever they had going on and they really didn't want to talk to me. They just wanted to hug the dog and they did and they

069went about their day. So um I I also believe that this is a su very successful program. I believe it's going to continue to evolve and hopefully be beneficial throughout the district. I have one question for our SRO's curious. Do you find something very challenging? Are you finding one thing that's challenging you more than anything else or are we how is that working for you in your every day? Is there a certain challenge that you're trying to overcome or are you just taking it as it comes? Actually the challenge is trying to get this climate because you know that this this climate have changed us you know throughout the world especially our perception. So as I alluded and as I told the students when we uh greeted them we're not here to arrest we are

070here for a resource and we're here for a resource for everyone not just the students but staff. So for any questions, anything that's personal, myself, Al Taylor, Sergeant Grozik, we all family men and we are fathers. So we look at this as one big family. It's not a challenge. We embrace this. This is our heart. This is our bread and butter and we're going to do the best that we can. That was awesome. I would just like to say thank you to all of all of you Police Department. I know how hard we work to get this organized and how every day. I mean, I have a lot of interaction with Patrick at the beginning. I was trying to help them with the handbook, type it up and stuff like that to keep them going.

071And, uh, Lucy thinks she lives at my house part-time. But, um, I just want to say thank you. I know you guys are putting every effort in this. You're working with our students. I've gotten lots of kids who've come to me and said, "I just love that I can go and talk to them or I or the dogs." So, I know that it's working just because people are talking about it. They may not know your names, but they're talking about the SRO's, what's going on at the school, and the dogs. So, from me to you, thank you very much. Um, Lisa and Miss Trish, thank you for being so supportive. And I'm assuming that you do some of the dog sitting sometime, but um maybe that's not right. Uh, but thank you for letting this

072program start at the high school and and continue to help it grow. appreciate it very much. Yeah, I I thank you as well. And I I I see opportunities he even at the middle school level in some capacity. And I I heard some buzzwords that I really love to hear is deescalation, restorative justice and things of that nature, even a mental part. So again, this is a good thing here. And I do have one question. If a student was late to class because they stopped to pet the dogs or engaged with the dogs, do they get a pass? They do. Oh, really? Okay. Well, thank you. I I love it. And I want to publicly apologize to Dean Hall for completely ignoring him and going straight to biscuit. That was I love bus interiors. No,

073thank you. Thanks to all of you for the presentation. This is great. And u when's biscuits contract up? We need to work on the three days a week. So half days I think. Yeah. So yeah. Yeah. Thanks again guys. Um, with the way society is changing and evolving, this program is extremely important, especially coming out of the pandemic because the kids, not only the kids, the staff are trying to learn how to be together again. So, appreciate everything you guys are doing. Great job. Thank you. Uh, Mr. Hall and Mr. Seamson, could you just parade the dogs around so the board members can say hello and then I was gonna say no biscuit stealing. Thank you everybody. Yes. Okay. Come here, Lucy. So, you're you're the hard worker, huh, Lucy? Yeah. Excellent job. Yes. Very

074good. Thank you, Biscuit. Part part- timerr. Yeah. Thank you very much, guys. Thank you. Good night, guys. All right. Yeah. In just a few minutes, we'll continue with our presentations. As you know, so much about what goes on in So much that goes on in the school district is so much more than the academics. It is about the social emotional, the connections and so forth. Um, and I do believe that we're seeing the the change in our some of our uh disruptive behaviors is because of this multi-layering of programs. I I can't say that's one or the other. It's all of it together. And uh certainly we've got a fabulous staff that's highly committed to to working here uh with all of our students. He is he's got to go get an extra day off.

075But as we take a step back further, what brought this all about was our strategic plan, believe it or not. Um and we don't want to forget this is the anchor of all of our work. All the equity work, all the inclusiveness, all the really seeing our students came from this plan that we did as a community. And so we're really proud of the work that we're doing and we can see some of the fruits of this come together. Now, as you recall, our plan is set to res retire in 23. We are almost done with our plan and uh probably in um it'll be retired in June of 23. So we are going to have to start working on our next plan probably in spring of 22. So we're we've almost come full circle

076on this. But to make sure that you know we honor everything that we have said as you know we have a dashboard that is on our district website and every year all of our directors all of our principles we are all working on these components and they're all embedded with everyone's uh goal setting process. So, every year we kind of plug away. We have different priorities. And I've asked Miss Perkins tonight to really share where we're at in this plan. Some of the things we've already finished, some we're still working on, but I wanted you to see where we're coming, where we're at at this point. We'll give another presentation probably in the spring, and then we'll show you where we're we're closing up the plan. So, I'm going to turn this over to Miss

077Perkins now. Go ahead. Okay. Uh good evening um to our board, to Dr. Cognese, to our students, families, communities, and staff. Um before we get started on the strategic plan, um I do want to uh say thank you to our veterans. Um we will not be able to honor them this year as we normally would in our schools. And so they usually come out to our schools and the kids perform and do assemblies and they speak. Um but because of the pandemic this year, uh we will not be able to do that traditional honoring of them. Um now that I have to go after um Biscuit and Lucy, we will see if you can uh stay awake. So we do um like Dr. Coglin said, "Thank everyone involved in completing the task of the strategic

078plan. It truly takes the entire district. Everyone plays a role in this living and the delivery of this plan." This fall update um will give you how we're moving the needle and the metrics of our goals. Some strategic action plans are impacted by the pandemic. This means that we have either had to delay or make adjustments. However, we remain um on track to get everything completed in our target date of June of 23. And though these times are challenging and unprecedented, our teams of teachers, paras, service providers, central office administrators have worked tirelessly to create better outcomes for our students, communities, families, and staff. The strategics plan vision and objectives reflect academic, financial, and operational data. It views the objectives that serve as our guide to action and it allows staff members to consistently work

079towards specific and measurable performance goals. On the following pages from goals one to six from strategies A to Q, our metrics are updated and we use our feedback to adjust our course of action. So you'll see with strategy one um we're moving that needle again at 100% towards each of those strategies and I can go through there's 77 of them and I will not take you through 77 but if you would like for me um the board members receive this information and if you would like for to have some specific information um I will I will go back and uh give you that information. Um what I can say is what's next when you see that the needle hasn't completely reached 100%. Um I'll talk about you know what's next is that we will continue

080to work on that plan. Um for instance in strategy A we are going to continue our professional development of our school leadership teams our administrators and um analyzing our data. We will continue to monitor our school improvement plans towards our achievement and growth for our students. And where you see that 50% under strategy A um we will look to form a committee to look at standardsbased grading in the 22 23 school year. When you do see 100% that does that means that we are still continuing that work because it doesn't stop. Um, but we have reached all of the tasks and strategies that are listed there. And I know the board received a copy of this. The public, if the public is in interested in um looking at the dashboard, it's right on the front

081page. At the bottom of the page, it says dashboard. Um and then you will see the same um needles and goals um and metrics that you see here. I wanted to talk about um I'll talk about F um for a moment where it talks about foster awareness and respect for individuals and cultural differences to enhance relationships among between students and staff. Um and this will also go with uh strategic in uh where we are ensuring teaching culturally responsive responsively um by holding high expectations for all of our students. Uh we are using diverse resources and collaborating to ensure the success of our students and our staff. uh we are using and beginning to use our student voice and their feedback in our practices and depending on um students for their experiences and their interest as

082we connect to their learning. Um and this has a lot to do with our equity training and as the buildings are building their own equity plans that also feeds into uh strategy in uh that talks about providing um using a diverse staff to make sure that everyone is included. Any questions? That's it. Like we said, it's an enormous amount of information, so we didn't want to read to you, but we did want you to see that basically we are making tremendous progress on this and we will report back to you in spring um where we're at because next year then we will finish it off. Thank you, Miss Perkins. Thank you. Okay, I think we go into the business section. Yes. And uh we are very delighted to introduce item number one for you tonight,

083Mr. Surma. Well, good good evening board. Good evening, Dr. Cage, public staff, and everybody. Um I I'm just going to start right in because I know you're really excited about talking about the audit. So, uh we do have Susan Jones here who is from uh the firm of Miller Cooper. She is the lead auditor and principal at Miller Cooper. And so she's going to give you an update of where we're at with the audit, uh, a couple findings, and I'm going to distribute to you our estimated financial profile summary. So you have that also as Susan is talking. So Susan, I'm going to turn it over to you. Okay, great. Good evening, everybody. Good evening. So, um, as Ken mentioned, I just want to give you an overall status update of where we're at with

084the audit. Um, right now we're in our final phase. um all the deliverables that we will issue to the district is um in our final review and quality control phase and probably in a week or so we'll give Brian and Ken um what we call refer to as an incomplete work product so they couldn't review it. It's an extensive document over 100 pages. there's actually going to be uh four documents and um and then they'll be able to read through that and then that's where they'll create their management's discussion and analysis that goes in front of the financial statements. Um but you know we're here in November. Um I've been here in February and March. Um so you know the the business office has really made a lot of progress the last couple years um

085with improving processes. um when we started the audit um they were substantially ready with all our requests which um you know has never occurred since we've been the auditors. So um we really thank the business office team for all their cooperation um during the audit. Um Ken did pass out. Um we plan this is the anticipated results um after all our reviews go through. Um but the district um looks like it'll have a 3.7 um financial profile score which um that means that they'll get the uh designation of recognition which is the highest um designation the district can receive. Um the other designations are review, early warning and watch. Um, out of the five categories, all of them are a four, which is the highest, you know, numerical amount. The one that's really just bringing

086the average down from a four to 3.7 is the debt margin. There's obviously a lot of debt out there against um the statutory debt limit. Um, we plan to issue an unmodified opinion, which is the highest level of assurance the district can receive. Um there was one new Gazsby statement that was adopted um during this year's audit which is Gazsby 84 which all Illinois school districts all school districts had to adopt. And basically that what that did is just bring the student activities fund into the education account or the general fund. Um so that caused a restatement of the financial statements. Um that's not an error. It's just how the new accounting pronouncement had to be adopted. Um all significant accounting policies and um financial statement estimates are all recorded in the financial statements and

087we concur with management's methodologies. Um you know Miller Cooper is independent of the district. Um and um we are required to report to you any um differences that we identified that were not recorded. Um we did record an audit adjustment related to two voided checks that totaled um close to a million dollars and basically um those were written in 2020. Um because they were voided and there was a pickup of income during this fiscal year. Um it is a recorded audit adjustment but because that was revenue that should have been recorded last year um that's something that we have to disclose to you but we concur with management. It's it's immaterial and overall net position at the end of 2020 is properly stated. Um Ken did mention uh we do we will issue a management

088letter which is just a recommendation of enhanced procedures and controls. If you recall last year there was about eight material weaknesses. Um, one of the biggest ones was bank reconciliations weren't done on a timely basis. Um, for fiscal year 21, the bank reconciliations were done on a timely basis. So, that is no longer uh a material weakness. Um, when you receive the letter, we do have four material weaknesses um down from eight. So, um the business office staff is continuing to improve on um the processes. Um the most significant ones are just there's certain reconciliations of account balances that continue to need to be done on a timely basis related to property taxes and then reconciliation of federal and state revenue and making sure they're recorded in the proper accounts. Uh the other one relates

089to um segregation of duties. um because the business office is concentrated really in a couple individuals. Um there's not a lot of checks and balances. So um the the business manager has access to write checks, um access to the check stock, also prepares the bank reconciliations, um also has access to record journal entries. And so when you have access to the asset and also access to the general ledger to make changes, that's what we consider as segregation of duties issues. Um so the district should continue to work on kind of segregating some of those duties. So those conflicting duties um just to protect that there's no mistakes are caught or there's no um manipulation of um data. Um, we also did a single audit in in addition to the financial statement audit, we did do

090a single audit and as it relates to the single audit, there were no compliance findings. Um, and last year there were some findings. Um, that concludes the presentation. Does anybody have any questions? What What is a single audit? So, um, when the district expends more than $750,000 of federal re revenue, um, that triggers what's referred to as a single audit. Okay. Um, and we have to determine out of all the federal dollars and expenditures the district expends based on uh, an audit program provided to us by uh, the government, the OM. We have to select some of those programs and do specific testing on it. Okay. And does that get supplied back then to the federal government or agency? So after all the deliverables are issued, the financial statements, um the single audit, the management

091letter, and our required communications letter, um majority of those documents are put in the federal clearing house, which is a database that um the district has to upload. And then all the federal agencies that you receive money from has access to that information. Okay. And obviously with the ESR funds and things like that, um we actually tested an additional program this year because you had more federal expenditures um because of some of that um additional money the district received. And we'll probably have to test um similar programs next year because you're expected to receive some more federal dollars. Okay. I'm sorry. Um, the snapshot of this audit, what period, what year is this for? This is 2020 2020 for the year ended June 30th, 2021. Oh, 20. Okay. So, so has this been recorded on

092the state on the Illinois State website? No. So, this that's just a schedule. um we haven't issued any of our so the four deliverables that we will issue is the um audit of the financial statements and we perform the audit in accordance with generally accepted auditing standards and governmental auditing standards. So once it goes through all our quality reviews we will issue a final report. Um, we will also issue our required communications letter. Um, which I've that's what I'm talking about, the significant findings of the audit and then our management letter and the single audit. So, and that will be filed with ISBY and the federal clearing house um before December 15th. Okay, that's what I was going to ask. So, what's going to be reported? So, what's being shared on the website right now?

093Is it nothing related to 21 to so okay so we have until December the 15th to get this information to the state that's definitely saying okay so what I'm seeing here number two correct me if I'm wrong the number two is basically saying we have a balanced budget we had a balanced budget for the end of fiscal year 2021 is that what they're saying and what are you Um uh number two on the on the sheet here. Oh, I don't know if you have this. I'm sorry. Um Oh, yeah, I do. That's just a um so that's a this is a page out of the annual financial report, the AFR that's filed with ISBY, which is a a document that it's a template that ISBY um a format that ISBY requires the um district to

094file. And this is just a formula that the profile score is based on. Right. But but we're saying we are going to send this information to the state and we're saying that we have more revenues than expenditures. That's what that's what's being captured here. It is it is being captured. Mr. Brown, please keep in mind though that is only in certain funds. It's not across the board. So the the financial profile is only within your operating funds. Mhm. And so you'll see that there where it classifies talks about under number two that you'd mentioned the second column it talks about fund 10 20 and 40 are your expenditures but your revenues are from 10 20 40 and 70. So it doesn't include your capital outlay fund. It does not include your um debt service fund

095I believe. And it doesn't include any um sources and uses of funds either. It's just the revenues and the expenditures. But again it does show that there is a positive you know the debt service from a revenue to expenditure is really a wash. It is it's a one to one. So there there is a positive there will be a positive overall once the financial statements come out. But again please keep in mind this is just of your operating funds really is where your financial score is coming from. That's what your judge. So yep. Okay. Yeah. Good job. Y appreciate it. Yes. I'd love to see that 3.7. Yes. Highest score. So, so what's the timing from here to getting to December 15th? I'll leave that to Susan. So, um, right now all the deliverables are

096being sent to our quality control actually tomorrow morning and that's going to be probably a week or so turnaround and then we'll give it back to the district to review a couple hundred pages of information. Um, and then any edits they have or feedback, we'll incorporate. So, I would think that we would be going final early December and then um on or before December 15th, we'll finalize and get it uploaded to the ISBY site. Awesome. Yep. So, our our review will be very quick. We do have to present a management letter, but we're already starting to work on that. That's part of the audit. We all, you know, we just have a letter in there that summarizes everything. Um, so our our review will be pretty quick. I mean, um, we really don't change anything

097the auditor says to be honest with you. Um, so we'll do that. I will also want to update the board while Susan is here too. Um, on a couple of the findings that they had found we have already corrected and that uh, one of them was an IMRF posting uh, of funds. It was kind of a carryover from last year. We caught it during their audit but it happened when we caught it was like November of last year. So, we have already corrected that and so that has already been taken care of. When um Susan does talk about the separation of duties, uh Brian and I have already begun that discussion and are doing that with a lot of our new financial reports that we have. In the beginning, um I was really doing the

098financial reports and then submitting to the board and all that. Uh now what we're doing is Brian is actually creating those reports, sharing with me. I'm looking them over, approving them, making sure of everything, including all the bank reconciliations and that signing off, and then it goes to the board for approval on that. So those are just a couple things that we've already begun working on and taking care of and the findings. But for all four of those items, you'll prepare action plans for review by the board. Yes. Yes, I will do that. And um so those were the four material weaknesses. We did identify some significant deficiencies which are less material than a material weakness just related to making sure expenditures get captured in the right account so they're classified in the financial statements

099as well as um prior to this meeting Ken showed us the information from forecast five and the you know the bad budget to actual which is really great illustrative reporting. Um and one of the items you'll see in the management letter is just enhancing the budget process to make sure um the expenditures are captured in the right funds and at the proper amount. So then that information going into that forecast five is you know really representative of the budget to actual that you guys are reviewing on an interim basis. Okay. Okay. Thank you very much. Okay. Thank you. Sure. So, Ken, I think you're still up. I am. Okay. Yeah, that works. So, again, good evening everyone. Um, and again, Susan, thank you very much. Appreciate it. And Brian gets a night off, too. So,

100so I'm gonna I I am going to talk about the next three items kind of together because they do kind of go together. Um the first one is the discussion regarding the public hearing concerning the intent of the board of education to sell $7.5 million in cash fund working cash fund bonds for the purpose of increasing the working cash fund and $45.5 million in funding bonds for the purpose of paying claims against the district. So next week there will be a public hearing. It's called the Bina hearing uh that will take place prior to the meeting. It'll start at 6:30. We have publicized that. So that will be taking place next week and then uh the board will be presented with two resolutions to decide upon. The first one is a resolution for the issue

101of $45.5 million in funding bonds. The second one is for the issue of 7.5 million in working cash bonds. Again, this is part of if you recall part of the um financial uh plan presentation that I gave last week in uh paying off the debt certificates. The debt certificates were purchased on November 1st. They will be closing, which is $45 million. They will be closing on the 12th, which is this coming uh Friday. So, the money will be in the bank as of the 12th or 13th, something like that. So, uh then you have the funding bonds to pay those off along with the working cash bonds. Uh the actual close of these will be uh in February actually. Um, and coming out of the hearing, then there is a 30-day petition period that will

102take place that will start on the 17th of November. Okay. Yes. Going back to the working cash bonds, uh, we sold what, $17.5 million last year and about six of those million, six million was going to be for working cash. So what is your goal for because for for a while not saying it's good or bad for a while we was running basically with nothing in working cash. We pretty much didn't have much at all there which not a good thing. Right. So I haven't seen the latest uh I can't recall I don't know if you can recall offh hand roughly roughly what do we have in working cash now? Yeah I I I honestly don't know that offand I really don't. Okay. No no no worries. But what is your goal though for working

103cash? Because I know there is there is a process that you can borrow and the board can approve working cash, but you don't actually have to sell the bonds and you have a certain period, a time frame to sell the bonds. Could you explain that a little bit? Well, you have a time frame to sell the bonds. You also have a time frame on on some bonds to sell them depending if they're taxable or non-t taxable. Mhm. taxable ones you have to expend within three years. And so some of the bonds are 17.5 million. I don't know the exact number, but some were taxable, some were not taxable. Um and and so you also get different interest rates when you do those type of things, too. Uh at least the buyers do. Uh my goal

104overall is really that additional, let's just say it's $6 million, whatever it was, Mr. around, you know, that number there that uh is is just leave it in working cash until such time as either I would bring a recommendation to the board or the board would bring a recommendation to me to to spend that on something, you know, at this point, you know, and that uh to use it as cash on hand. um you you'll see that that money has allowed us to raise our financial profile, but it is money there that is uh the pleasure of the board to to spend as they want they want to spend it. I just I for simplicity purposes, my goal is just to hold it as a savings account. Quite honestly, I I don't I don't plan

105on spending it. That's not my goal. Okay. So, whatever we have in working cash now, we're going to pad it with the 7.5. It'll be padded. Now some of the money that is currently in working cash now that 17.5 million is going towards life safety project that so you know that will be transferred out of that fund at such time like going into next summer like we did this year going into next summer we'll transfer money out of there into&m then into capital projects to pay for those projects but that additional money of that six million or whatever my plan is to leave that there not touch it Well, overall that helps our financial score, you know, keeping that as cash on hand like you said. So, I was looking at we had 227 days

106of cash on hand which is 180 days is really good. So, we got the score before so that and usually that's where we kind of weak at having cash on hand. Again, working cash we have been in kind of floating with little or nothing there. So, right. Yeah. I was just curious again, you might have said it, but I uh you know last was it a couple weeks ago at our regular board meeting when the board passed the resolution to go ahead and move forward on this you know selling of these bonds. So So right now there's nothing specific that you're looking to do just have that as as a fund where we can borrow from as need be. Yeah I I I have I have not earmarked that money for anything. that money is

107just staying there and you know I I won't touch it unless you know I would come to you with something uh and that would have to have board approval for me to do any of that. Okay. So can the getting back to this the 227 days cash on hand that we have now if our target's 180 days roughly that the excess here is probably the funds the working cash that we have in the bank that hasn't been spent on the um life life safety projects yet. Yeah I I think so. Yes. Yeah. Looking at that absolutely right. All right. That's all I have. Thank you sir. No problem. Don't you have Oh, I'm sorry. I'm sorry. All right. Um, so those those items, the number three and number four on the agenda, those will be

108coming as resolutions and then we'll have the public hearing. Bob Lewis will be here from PMA to conduct the buy a hearing. Um, so he will be here, I'll be here also, of course, but Bob will be the one that'll be taking charge of that and overseeing that. Okay. All right. So now now comes a little bit of fun because um I I laugh about this because we're going to be doing some live data here. I'm going to do something live. Um I I sometimes don't like doing this, but uh I'm going to do it. Um and and one of the things I think that we have talked about and excuse me while I type because I'm logging in here as I go. So uh I'm just going to talk as I do this. I

109think, you know, we've all realized that there are some deficiencies in building a ground. I I you know, I think you know me well enough. I'm a straight shooter. There's some deficiencies there. And whenever I look at deficiencies, I look from a system standpoint. Is the system strong enough? Because I don't look at the people. I look at the system and make sure the system is strong. Then have the people work the system. And if you can't work the system, then we have we have a problem. All right. But we need that system strong. So, you know, as the board well knows, uh, you know, I've begun analyzing things that have going on in building and grounds and the system that is there, not the people, the system. And so, what I've analyzed is we

110have a system there called school dude. And school dude is the backbone of our work orders, our maintenance, all of that. but we haven't been using it right now. It's one of those softwares that you have and you know you're really not using it the right way. So, you know, my goal was to delve in here and to begin a process of setting this up and doing this the right way. So, I think I shared with the board in the last FYI some numbers on work orders out there on that because School Dude is a cloud-based system that was built and designed specifically for school maintenance. That's their goal. That's what they do. And it is nationwide. And it is a great great system. Some parts of it a little bit archaic. Uh but it

111is a good system. Now, if I can remember my password, I'm gonna I'm gonna get in here. Oh, yeah. I won't go into Zoom. Oh, here we go. So, what I'm going to show you here is these are some of the different areas that I'm not going to go into a lot of these, but some of the different areas that school dude has. They have different modules that you can purchase and all of that. Uh, maintenance direct is really the one I'm going to go into. There's some inventory. There's help desk. Uh, I believe Don in tech you use part of school dude. Am I right on that or not? Okay. So, so tech is using part of this too as part of their inventory. When when someone calls into the help desk, it's logged

112in here. Those type of things, too. All right. Not just maint. It's not just maintenance. It's other departments, too. All right. So, what I'm gonna what I'm pulling up now, I made this large enough. So, this is this is actually what I can see or what any administrator can see in the system. And it tells us and you and I'm just going to I'm not going to go through all this because there there's like a lot of data here, you know, and all that stuff. But you will see all the different work orders that are here. These are all work orders by status all and the different ones. And the nice great thing about this system is that you can start going down into levels and funneling down. So let's just look at a period

113of this fiscal year and it's automatically going to change. Our chart's going to change and you'll see where we completed 1896 orders. But now I've got two new requests here. I'm just going to click on this and it's going to pull those up and who it's requested by, what the location is, and all of this. So what happens in this system now is what we have done and what I have done now with building and grounds is every custodian every maintenance person has now gotten a new Chromebook and they are now directed that as they do their work they are to begin logging these things in you know just like Bill I'm going to take you as an example please just like when Bill goes out to a job and he has a work order

114that he has to go out and put in some new AC units and that he now logs what he did and he also puts pricing in there and then that goes probably back to the shop to do the invoice or you get somebody's credit card and you run it. The same thing is happen can happen here and this is where we're going to get. Now here's what I will say this doesn't happen overnight because this is a change of working because people get have to get used to doing this. You have to get used to carrying around an electronic device to do this. And that so I've begun a process where I've met with all of uh building and grounds all custodians all maintenance in one uh meeting and I've shared with them this is

115what we're doing. There is no exception. This is now the way you work in that what happens with a work order is anyone within the district can can submit a work order. They can go through our website and there's a link on our website that they go and submit a work order. It's a simple one. They just give us the location and what it does. It's directly routed over to building grounds office over to either Jeannie Gruin or it goes over to Linda Zurich. they then will assign that out to either a custodian or a maintenance person um or to one of the higher level administrators either Keith or Vince or Bruce and it's taken care of and then their responsibility is to follow up to make sure all you know the paperwork is done

116and everything is done and all that stuff too as we move forward in that. The other nice thing about this system is it it has and let me just show you again. If I want to see in all of our buildings, let's say the completed ones, well, let's just say the work in progress and you know, new requests. I want to see something about there's parts on order. What's on order? So, I can easily go in here. I'm just looking at my keys here. Pick some buildings. Uh, there's one I want to pick there. Okay. All right. Hit refresh chart. Oh, yeah. I got to have period. side will I hate when it's smarter than me. And now I get each building. This is overall. So, let me separate it by location. Now I get

117each building broken down into what are the cases and where is the status. Again, the other nice thing is I can click on one of these bar charts and it tells me right away what the work orders are. So, the system is in place now. It's in place and that and this is this is again we just need to um you know get it into a culture here in our district that everybody is utilizing it. The other thing I will tell you that we did and that I've had Keith start working on and I'm going to go to CSK here and you'll see here there's 14 it's called open extended but what we're actually doing is we're actually putting in the life safety violations in the projects. So what you'll see here is you'll see

118life safety LS number one you'll see the violation and all that stuff. So what Keith and I will now do along with the architect is at the end of you know coming up and we make our final payment and all that probably next month we'll probably do it. We're going to sit down and look at all of these and say okay so let me let me just pick one here. All right here the existing domestic galvanized piping is in poor condition has leaks blah blah recreation replace the existing. Well we know we did that. So we're now be able to go in and mark that as complete. So that it's going to be real easy for me to pull a report and say this is what done. This is not what's this is these are

119the things that are not done which is what Mr. Brown is asking for all the time. Not all the time but I'm just not quite right. But am I right Mr. Brown? You're right. Yeah. You need to but and that's what you need to know. And so so again utilizing the system that is there for the information. So it makes us more efficient. It makes us, you know, we can stay on top of things and I believe it'll save us money in the long run. Okay. Questions? Yes. Go ahead. I know you shared this with Miss RP and I at our meeting. This is a great start. Almost like two and a half to three years ago in your department where it was what it was and now look at where we're at today. I

120mean, efficient, it's done, it's on time. Sure. But this will, and you're right, this is going to figure out if the people in place are the ones that need to be there or how it needs to be adjusted, whether it's the system or the building or, you know, in janitorial or maintenance or the other thing too and you know that that's a great point. I appreciate that, Bill. I I really do. And and you know, because please know and it you know, some of these things take time because you have to change a culture. You you just do. And and you know when I say change of culture, I don't mean it was bad, but it may have been archaic. You know, it may have been paper and pencil and we've got to get to

121electronic. We we just really do because it makes things more efficient. The other thing I will tell you, there's another one uh there's one up here you'll see on the top that I got highlighted. It's called capital forecast. It allows you to put capital projects also in here and to forecast some things out. We don't own that module yet. something I want to look into, but it's something again for the future as we begin to do big capital projects too and all of that. So anyway, this this is kind of just an overview of school dude, where we're at now and and you know where we're going to continue to go with this, you know. So I just wanted to kind of share just some live things with you because I think it's a it's

122a um you're able to visualize it a lot better of what we're doing. One goal. Oh, go ahead. I'm sorry. It's okay. Go ahead. Yeah, I guess one goal that would be great to see in the long term is that kind of like when you're doing a fast food and you're doing a drive-through, you have a time, right? The goal is to have a time. So, I guess tracking the time to say that if someone submits a work order, depending on the severity, is it done in 3 days, 7 days, 10 days so that people don't feel like they're being forgotten? No. And I and I agree. I you know, one of the things that that I am doing now, I'm meeting with building and grounds. you know they there are there are five uh

123I I call them senior level people that I meet with you know every two weeks you know there's Janine there's Linda who are really running the office Keith and then Bruce and Vince we all meet together and one of our topic of conversations is looking at a a report of this because I already I already have created an automated report that they get on a daily basis that'll show them and it has the aging on here. you'll see days and all that stuff on here and everything like that or expected completion dates. These are kind of targeted days or the requested date has all that stuff on there. So, we can run agent reports also. But yeah, I think it's important that you know, you know, they need to stay on top of it and

124that and that's the, you know, those are the office people that need to do that, you know, and that's what I'm trying to teach them to do also is that, you know, the Vinces and the Keats and the Bruces sometimes don't have the time to look at a lot of this. So, you know, you need those people in the office to help with that and tell them, "Hey, you forgot about this one. you need to get this done right away, you know. So, there's a lot of teamwork that needs to take place and it's it started already and it's it's going to continue. I'm sorry. So, I guess maybe I can't see this because that print is damn small from here, but prioritizing how how are they being prioritized? Sure. So, that's my first question.

125I So, you'll see over here there's a priority that is assigned. So when someone submits a work order, they can put a priority on here. Who does? The the person that submits it. So let's say a teacher will submit says uh submits something that says, "Hey, I've got a rip in my carpet." Okay. So when they then when they do the submission, they can put a priority in here of low, medium, high, or like right away, you know, get your butt over there right away. When it comes then to Jeie or Linda once they review it, they will also they may change this priority. Okay, that was my question. Who decides that? They they can decide that. They can decide whether to change it or not. That's up to them. Okay. And that and then

126you know um if it's a high priority, they'll push it out to let's say you know maintenance guy uh and you know put it to the top of the list or something like that. Gotcha. Thanks for that. I was missing that. My second question is I believe when this mess first came to you uh two or three years ago and we said we had thousands of open work orders and things have been closed but didn't get knocked out or whatever. So now we close them out when they're done. Can you go back and look at a closed out order? Can I do that? Can any can somebody in management like if Sure. Say I report the lights. Um, they're flickering lights. They go in and they close it out and it goes to finished or

127wherever it goes. Yep. I then call you and say, "Hey, these lights are still flickering. Can you go back and look at that order and see like somebody closed it out that they sent?" So, so what you'll see here, Janine, this is my homepage. And so you see here completed work orders. Okay. Right there. Is that a forever? That's a forever. And so now again I Yeah, it's for I can you know for you it's a perfect Yeah. So I can click on this then and again it pulls up all the all the work orders. I can sort through this. Um or I could just you know there's a report part of this that you know you can do a data search and all that stuff. So I I can do all of that. Yes.

128Okay. I was just curious because a lot of times we think things are still sitting out there undone. somebody thinks they fixed it and maybe a different bulb went out in that fixture. So that's why I was wondering there's a way to track that. The one report that I have created for building and grounds u it includes all uh work orders that have not been completed. So if that went back 20 years it would have picked it up. Now it doesn't but you know and that so president do you have a question? Yeah. Well, I think Janine was kind of hitting on the question I have, but who marks it complete? So, so what should happen is that when the either custodian or maintenance person does it, finishes it, they will mark it as complete.

129Okay. And that and then it's then reviewed again by uh Jeannie or Linda in the office, you know, as they because we have another report that has like completed reports for the day. Does any communication go back to the person who requested it? Say I believe it does. I believe an email goes back, but I'm not sure. So, yes, they do. It does. So, so that person either can say it was completed or not. You marked it complete, but I'm not satisfied. That's what I'm trying to Yes. Yes. Okay. And then they they can, you know, if they're not satisfied, then they can contact or put another work order in or reply to that work order. Yes. Okay. Yep. Hey, Ken. Um, what I would recommend Yes. And good point. Uh Janine, I was going

130to comment on the priority. So, so you have a prioritization portion in this program, right? And you're saying that whoever writes up the work order could put the priority they want in there. And you have a couple people that kind of screens it and said, "No, that's not a priority. Whatever 30, it's a 20." Right. Okay. So I but you don't have a time frame with those priorities right that's what I would recommend you do say if it's a 10 a urgent one or whatever say we it should be completed in a couple weeks the best you could probably 30 you know 10 is urgent so on and so forth right and also to let that whoever could whoever any employee could write a work order that's what it sounds like so I would recommend

131that you also put disseminate the information to the staff and the employees. Here's a probably 20. These are some examples of what a 20 should be. Here's a probably 30. Here's examples of what you're not going to capture everything. So that'll keep them in look at it. You know what? This is what kind of what I have here. This is how I'm going to prioritize it. So they won't have they have real expectations and they might come back to you and say, "Why did you change my priority on there?" Right? I said it was a pride. It was a pride. you know 10 emergent urgent issue but someone changed my probably 10 to a probably 40 which is not urgent we can do it within the next two years or whatever so this will give

132them kind of what the expectations are on how that work is going to be accomplished I will do that thank you great okay good stuff thank you it's a great program it really is you know I'm glad that you found out yeah well that's all right now Ken, you're going to continue to update the board um through the FYIs. I can continue updating board through the FYI on on work orders and all of that. Um you know, the same way I did it in that I can put some, you know, actually what I'd like to do is start putting some charts in there because it's a little bit easier than the numbers and all. Plus, I like pictures. So, so board, you can expect to see some maybe some charts with pie charts. They're easy

133to look at. So you can see the ongoing things and then if you've got specific things then we can bring it up to the board again and open otherwise we'll just push it into the FYIs. Great. Okay. Thank you Ken. Thank you Ken before you leave. Oops. Well it's not really about that. It's kind of back to the bonds. I'm not sure if I should say it now but All right. So we're going to do the hearing. We're going to try to issue the bonds. There's a petition period. Yes. Okay. Can you explain like if there's a successful petition, could you explain what the consequences of that would be? The successful petition um would mean that uh the sale of the bond the sale So, all right, let let me let me back up there

134for a second before I go into that. So, what the board has done is um you have taken out debt certificates. You approved taking out debt certificates in the amount of $45 million. Okay. So on Friday we will get it's about $44.8 million after all the issuance costs. We're going to get that deposit into the bank. Then what this is doing now it is pay it is creating funding bonds to pay off those debt certificates and at the same time taking out 7.5 million I think it was the number of working cash bonds for a total of 52 I think $5 million something like that. Okay. If the petition period, if a petition comes and it is successful, then it stop it stops the process of selling the bonds of selling $52 million in bonds.

135What that means then is it would have to go out to referendum to do that. uh all your projects would be on hold and you would have to pay back the debt certificates because debt and explain the the major projects that we're doing with this that that would that a successful petition would put on hold projects are being put on hold. So all of the um air conditioning is put on hold. All the life safety projects put on hold. The reason is is because debt certificates have to be paid out of your operating funds and the district does not have the cash to pay those on the operating out of the operating funds. So it would have to pay back that including the cost of issuance too. So, you know, you're paying back an additional

136I think it's well about $2 to $250,000 along with that and then plus the cost of interest which I think is 6%. Okay. So, just to be clear that if there were a successful petition, they would be stopping us getting air conditioning in the schools. Yes. Until when? Good question. Well, until when's the next referendum? A refer referendum? Yes. It could be forever. I don't I don't know when the next referend I honestly don't know would be next fall or 23 right fall of 22 so delay the air conditioning all the projects for at least another year so yeah good question thank you I just I just wanted that to be clear for anybody anybody listening and again it be the air conditioning in Talala CSK Balmoral Creed Elementary that would stop that well and

137I I will share with you part of your your cooling cooling rooms are going to be paid out of that money too. Okay. So, the temporary cooling rooms that we would even be starting would have to be put on hold also. And what is the petition process? There is a um uh it has to be filed with the secretary of the board. Uh it is u a process that they have to get 10% of the registered voters to sign also of the district. Okay. Amen. Hey, you threw my name in there. What did you say? Secretary. I didn't throw your name in there. He said filed with the secretary of the boards. Well, the petition has to be filed with secretary. Oh, yes. I'm sorry. Will that would that stop the uh any demolition? Yes,

138it would stop that, too. Yes. But so if somebody does it because they want to stop the demolition, we will not have air conditioning in our schools. Stopping everything else. Okay. Thank you. Yeah. Thank you, Ken. Yep. You're welcome. Thank you. Okay. Uh, next up, old business. I've got one if nobody else. So, um, at our last board meeting, I mean, we talked about extensively about the, um, the projects that we just approved. And then there was some discussion about, um, you know, beyond that, kind of our wish list of completing the the buildout at uh, the middle school and then also athletic fields and that type of thing. And there's some requests from board members for, you know, how much would those additional things cost? And I would just I think we've, you know,

139we've made a commitment to do some very large projects here for the air conditioning in those four schools, plus the new wing at the high school to replace MEC. And I think we as a board are going to be judged on how we do that and make sure, you know, all our focus should be on making sure we get that done right. And so I just caution about starting to think about, you know, how much is this going to cost beyond that? I think we're we're putting too much on the taxpayers to start to think about things that are four or five years out. And um so that that's just my caution. So anyway, so so I don't need a reaction to it. I just say my piece. So under so So, well, and I

140think that came at a cost to the district, too. Anything that we would be doing um to get those estimates, it would be costing the district. And again, those estimates would change down the line anyway. So, it would kind of be irrelevant information. That's kind of my thought. So, and and I don't even think it's just that there. I think that we have to be very careful. years ago, we ran into an issue where we kept asking the assistant superintendent for information and they finally came back to the superintendent and said, "We can't do our jobs because we're filling in all these extra duties." So, I think that maybe, you know, there are times when somebody comes up with a really good idea and we say, "Hey, that would really help us make a decision."

141And I think maybe if we just make sure we're doing a consensus of the board, do we need this information now or can it wait down the line because uh business office is in the middle of doing something with the auditor, whatever it is, so that they're not stopping their everyday work that has to be done for something that we don't need right then and there. Well, I I think you have to balance. I mean, I think we as board members all have the the authority to ask the administration for some information. I mean, we used to ask for two people to do that. When I first came on the board, it had to be a request of two, but I don't know if anybody wants to throw that. I I think the issue is

142more if if the administration if if a request comes in and it's going to be much bigger exercise than maybe the intent of the question that they come back to the board or at least go back to that individual and say hey this is going to take 20 hours what you know do you really do you really need that much detail you know how are you going to do that and then if that can't be resolved maybe it comes back to the board for consensus or some resolution. Is there a number of hours that we would consider, you know, small? Are there a number of hours that we would consider within within range? You know, I I mean, I think that I think that in some parts kind of up to you and your staff

143to say, you know, I can complete this within, you know, or it's more how does it impact other priorities, I think. Yeah. Okay, if I may, I I think this conversation might be kind of involved with something that I requested of the business manager and I basically asked him for something that I thought was relatively easy to provide me. And I I think that's where the gap was just understanding one another. I I was a little and I I shared this with Dr. Coglin and the business manager. I was a little disappointed how the information was given to me and how long it took because I thought in myself what I asked for and what I was requesting should have basically only took five minutes. And when that did not happen and it took a

144whole month and I got the information and when I saw the amount of work I'm like there was a gap here. I was alluded to and shared with Dr. Cognley or she shared some things with me prior to me asking for that request. Just little bits here and there. I said, "Oh, sounds good." Basically, give me the rest of it, put it on paper, and let me have it in my back pocket. the waterhead had already went over the dam as far as the board voting on the addition to the high school. So, I just wanted this information for back pocket. Nothing I can do with it to prevent the building from being built or the addition from being built. Again, the board had already made a decision. So, that was not my intent. So,

145I was a little I was a little turned back when I believe I don't know if Dr. Chicago lenise or Ken got in contact with the board president and a flag went up could have easily gave me a call say what exactly do you want Mr. around when Ken said, "Hey, I haven't got it. I've been so busy." This and that. I'm like, "What's taking them so long?" I thought five minutes. You had given me a little bit of information up front. That's how I thought. And when I got when I opened up the document that Ken sent me and how he perceived was a return on investment, I didn't perceive it like that. So, and that's where the gap was. Ken said, "Mr. around. I'm tied up, you know. I'm like, "What are you

146doing, Ken? What are you trying to get?" Four four or five sentences. That would that would have been good for me. I had put that in my Q&A log because that was the question that came in and I didn't have an answer. So, that's why I pushed it out to the board with what the product was so that you could see and and the product was excellent. It's it was I mean that would have been good for the board to have extra you know but that's not what I actually some of the information in there is probably gonna cause more questions than you know when I look at like the the amount of expense per pupil by building is something you know I mean it was it was a lot of good for information that

147was good and and but can you and I he has given me information over the last couple months and I'm not just sitting here and and twing in my thumbs and I know the hard job that you have guys have. So when I request something, it's something that I believe I need and I'm just not doing it out of out of vengeance and all of that stuff. I think I need it for to do my job as a board member. So and again, I'm not trying to circumvent the process. I think all of us at one time or another has requested documents and information from the administrators and I think we should be able to continue to do that. But if it might be a problem or whatever, you know, I got some information that

148we can I'll share with you, president, that we can put into a board policy for information sharing. And if the administrators is overwhelmed, they will talk to a member that's requesting it and say, "Hey, this and that, get you engaged as a board president." And we just put in our in our policy. Yeah. And that's what I think I I think we just need to empower you to feel free to come back to us. Absolutely. Hey, you know. Yeah. And I don't know that we thought it was going to be the 20 hours that it was. Yeah. I mean, Ken, I think he thought it was going to be a lot less. And then when he and I started discussing the issues and I like data, don't get me wrong. I like information. I like

149that. Yes, it is. It is a rabbit hole. But that is that was not really I was just looking for three or four sentences. Yes, I understand that. Give me when I put him on assignments, he he digs in. When he dug and I was g Whoa. But now I understand because I was angry why it took a whole month. And that's why I was trying to tell you this is a bigger project than we had thought. And if we maybe talked to say hey this is oh stop put the brakes on. I don't need all of that. And that's I'm wondering is maybe we say you know two hours of pro two hours of time. It was it was basically I'm telling it was basically this is how much we're paying for to teach

150a kid over at MEC which you had already given me cuz you came up to me and say oh this is going to be a good project if we're going to get a good you actually told me this we're going to have a good return on investment I said oh okay and you started off Ken good hey we don't have to the president we don't have to spend 78 million on MEC great okay we spend $15 million on the new addition take that $7 million subtract that from MEC that we don't have to expend. And you have $8 million left right now. Then you start working there. And that's all start right there. Okay. Now we are we spending instead of 77 $75,000 per kid per year at MEC, we are spending now 12 million.

151That's uh 12,000 per kid. I I don't know what that number is, but that's all I was looking for. Yeah. Yeah. And like I said, you know, it's got a return of investment if it's a break even point. And then here's a, you know, I wasn't looking to to micromanage at all. And I don't think we didn't perceive it as that. It just took a lot. President gave me a call. I said, "Uhoh, there was a gap. There was a communication gap here." I think it was the project took a lot longer than we thought, right? And all I got to call is we I'm working on like and then I'll have it by six o'clock on Sunday. This was a Friday. I said, "Okay." I didn't know what he was going to deliver me.

152I thought it would be very simple. I I didn't know either. I didn't know until we saw it. And now So So I don't want my colleagues looking at me and saying, you know, who do you think you are? Asking for [Music] that certainly wasn't mine. No, I'm just throwing it out there. So that was what I requested. I felt was a fair, but it was a communication gap. how he perceived the ROE or ROI information that I requested was a little different than what I wanted. Okay. I just improving communication that's all. So, but we can't tie board members hands. So, hey, I' I'd like to clarify something else, too. Um when we originally when we talked about like a review of the elementary schools, my intent was never just um a single review

153of the IB curriculum. My intent was to look at everything in the context of what does this school have as opposed to other schools and and kind of do a whole review. Uh it was never with the thought of taking something away from anybody. Actually, it was more with the thought of adding to the other schools that might not have certain things. So, that was my intent. I know we released you from it last last month, but I just wanted to make that clear in old business that my intent was always to see what what's working, do a review, and then try to make it more equitable at all the schools. So if if one school has art or something like that, well maybe that's something we could bring to the other schools even if

154it's not under an IB umbrella. So I just really want to make that that clear and I want to echo that that was never our understanding was of that as well. We were never looking to take uh the IB curriculum from CSK. So I don't feel bad. Okay. Are there any other old business items? Any uh new business items? Okay, we do have a need for a quick close session tonight. Um, can I get a motion to go into close session for the purpose of litigation when an action against, affecting, or on behalf of the particular public body has been filed and is pending before a court or administrative tribunal, or when the public body finds that an action is probable or imminent, in which case the basis for the finding shall be recorded and

155entered into the minutes of the closed meeting. Moved. Oh, okay. Second. Cheryl moved. Well, you said it at the same time. I didn't hear her. So, who moved? Cheryl moves. Sandy second. Let's roll call. Brown is an I. Mrs. Galbreth, hi. Mr. Kalis, I Mrs. Walters. I, Vice President RP. I, President Albert, I. We are in close session at 8:43. So, we'll go down. Uh, we'll probably be about 20 minutes. Is that about right, Eric? Okay. They didn't take the other I get a motion to move. All in favor say I. All opposed.