Crete Monee School District 201u COTW Meeting 7/13/21

001okay we're good to go okay i hereby call this meeting to order roll call please brown is here [Music] mrs galbraith here dr hall vice president root here mr sowalis here mrs walters here president auburn here okay please please rise for the pledge of allegiance i pledge allegiance to the flag of the united states of america and to the republic for which it stands one nation under god indivisible with liberty and justice for all and ms roop would you please read the mission statement yes our mission is to empower each student to positively impact the world for a bright new future thank you terry any public comment tonight okay so with that i will turn it over to the superintendent great thank you uh including your board packet this evening we included a draft of

002the letter that was uh composed by attorney izzo in looking at the discussion or to have a uh hope to have a discussion on the correspondence to village of university park regarding the tiff loans so i turn that over for any discussion if if if the letter was okay then we could go ahead and send it then tomorrow i personally think the letter was to the point okay clear concise [Music] and what they had agreed to and what we're looking to obtain from them so good job okay and it is address you are the singer yes i saw your name it was a president it's right here any other comments i agree i think it was fine um exactly what he said we made our point without going overboard we spelled out what they did

003what we expected and what we hope to get from them so i thought it was very good letter okay all right no other discussion then i will go ahead and have this sent out in mail tomorrow great next up is the preliminary budget discussion ken thank you president albrecht i do have hard copies i thought that would probably be easier uh instead of trying to look at the you might have a problem looking at the fine print anyway but at least looking at the fine print um thank you it's not too fine where i can't did you get your glasses fixed from last meeting or your write glasses i did that's between you and i yeah so good evening board superintendent good evening um tonight i want to do i'd like to do three things

004with you one is i'll give you an idea of how we finished up the fiscal year this past year um brian was able to excuse me close the month even though i will tell you he just had his third child so uh he was able to do that it might have helped him a little bit get out of being daddy for a little while and that uh so i want to thank brian for that to do that so i'm going to give you an idea of that the second part is i want to go through a little bit of budget development with you so you can kind of see how the budget has been developed and is being developed and then i'll give you a preliminary idea also of where it is at this point

005what the deficit is i ask you at this point please do not panic when you see the number all right um and uh and that is why you'll see draft all over this because this is still a work in progress there are still a lot of things i have to do the budget itself is about 75 done so there's a lot of things that still need to go into this and then the third part of this is going to be i have some comments and record recommendations at the end that i just would like to talk to the board about especially about some construction projects as we move forward as we start preparing for summer of 22. um so i'm going to do that so let me start first i'm going to skip through and

006we do have the presentation out there for the public that they can pull so it's the same presentation if they want to follow along i'm going to direct you to page 4 of the budget of this of the packet and that and so what this is is again this is a part of our financial package that we pulled together but these are the operation funds and where we end up and so you're going to want to direct your attention to the green column there excuse me in about two-thirds down the way you're going to see a surplus of 2.399 million dollars so approximately 3 million dollars of a surplus we ended up the year in our operating funds if you remember last month uh when i when we presented the financials in the forecast i

007think the forecast was looking at a projection of about seven hundred thousand dollars i said i thought we were going to get more property taxes in than the system it said and we did do that and that so so in our operating funds you will see again a surplus of 2.3 million dollars the last figure down at the bottom there an ending fund balance of 43 million dollars is for is is going to be the final number which is approximately 61 percent of our expenditures and that that does take into consideration the money that we have in the bank from the bonds that were sold back in december so that includes all of that which is in the previous figures and everything so those are the operating funds and then the next page is the

008same chart taking a look at all funds and that so you'll see in all funds and when i say off funds that now includes capital projects it includes our debt service and it also includes fire prevention and safety you'll see in offlines there's going to be a surplus of 1.3 million dollars which is kind of the same line with a fund balance of a little over 50 million dollars which is approximately 59 60 of our expenditures so the year is going to end up positively for us i don't foresee and as brian as close a month we don't perceive foresee any other transactions taking place in the previous fiscal year everything now is being booked in the current fiscal year the auditor will probably make some adjustments um as we go but that's going to

009all be as part of the audit as part of the afr and that the one thing i do want you i want to [Music] focus your attention also is there's a number up at the top on the very first line of this chart which is says local the local revenue all the way on the right hand side you'll see a deficit of 1.5 million dollars i believe that's tax money that we will probably get because again if you remember will county is splitting their tax payments between june and august into four payments really june august september and november i believe they are and so i believe we're still going to get some money in uh from taxes so just just keep that in mind because i'm going to bring that up a little bit later

010also ken can i ask a quick question sure do these numbers include all of our grant money everything everything that we've when we did when brian closes the month we close it for everything we reconcile all of our accounts all of our accounts are reconciled through june 30th of this year so everything is reconciled we're closed i i we don't perceive that so it's all included so nothing is hanging out there unless we get it new correct if we get it new then we post it in the current month that we already just want to make sure that the public understood that we're not guessing what we're going to get this is every dollar that we've got this is every dollar and again you'll see the i guess that's salmon almond yeah salmon that color

011that column is all zero so so we're not making any predictions or any of any anticipated revenue or expenditures coming forward okay thanks i just wanted to make sure that anybody watching this understood that are there any questions i'm just going to stop there any questions about that at all is is the debt service embedded in other objects it is and that's why that number is large yeah and that because that's where debt service is okay yep that's the way you book it okay so let me move forward now let me talk a little bit about the budget and this is where we're going to talk a little bit about i i wanted to give you and the public a little flavor of how the budget is developed and how i do this so this

012first page you see now let me let me also preface by saying this the full budget that i have is about 180 pages long because of the detail that's provided and that's i'm going to give you a sample of this i know that i've done this exercise with mr swalis and mr albrecht when they first came on the board i share this i've also shared this now with uh mrs rupp in our operations meeting so i i but i want to give the whole board an idea of how we get to the numbers that we get to and then so this is the revenue side so you're going to see four different categories of revenues you're going to see property taxes local sources state sources and federal sources and then please ignore the columns for

0132223 23 24. i've done some preliminary work then but just ignore those for now we're going to concentrate on 2122 because that's the budget we're looking at okay so you're going to see how i now am predicting that our revenue is going to be a little over 92 million dollars that's how it's broken down the next page though has the detail of how i came up with and it's small print i'm going to tell you that but how i came up with the property taxes for 55 million dollars and these are calculations behind the scene so you're going to see the very first number there is 13 million 461 965 i'm estimating that those are the tax property taxes that we're going to receive in spring of 2022 but only in the ed fund because

014again we do what's called fund accounting and so when our property taxes come in they're dispersed amongst our various funds so that entire column there you'll see and you'll see the next one is 13 million those are what i'm estimating our proprietor coming in for fall of 2021 and then so you total all that up when you go to the next page you'll see a total of 55 million 2989 123. that's how i come up with the property taxes and estimating what the property taxes are now i will tell you there are some calculations behind the scenes that i have to do and some other spreadsheets but i wanted to give you a flavor of how that works and so as i project out also in future years when i start developing a three-year budget

015i also have to look at eavs i have to look at cpis and estimate a lot of that stuff and so that's how those numbers are all developed so it gives you a flavor of how the budget is developed on the revenue side and the same thing happens also when we have when i have those other categories each category has its own breakdown like this and that's where it gets to be 180 pages because in local sources i have a breakdown for that in our state sources which is our grants i have a breakdown for that and for all of that so we get a lot of detail okay so then let's go on the expense side so if you turn to page nine then this is a summary page of all the various areas

016that i budget in based on really the afr the annual financial report which is some program areas and there are four basic areas one is schools one is program areas one is the benefits and one is grants so there's really four different areas that i kind of separate the budget into and then sub categorize it school things when you see the schools up there those are really expenses that are instructionally based that don't fit into the program areas that down at the bottom so like the first program area you'll see is called special ed so under special ed that's where we have all that's where i uh account for all of our special ed teachers all of our special ed tas all of our special ed supplies so that's all there but regular ed teachers

017are up in the upper area because they don't fit down there so you're going to see a number of different areas down there whether it is summer school whether it's social workers guidance health services and all of those have in their salaries supplies purchase services all of those things and again if you look at paige and i know i'm going to be jumping around but on page 12 is a detail sheet of early childhood program now i've blackened out the names on salaries there but you'll see what i do and it's unique what i do no businessman i would just tell you this no business manager in the state does what i do on a budget i literally input everybody's salary into into the spreadsheet and then i calculate out raises in the future to

018get as close to a budget and actual as possible for the board and for the community as i project out so you will see a lot of detail here when it comes to salaries those are actual salaries what their actual salaries are going to be for 21.22 a lot of business managers will just add a percentage it's called percentage budget you know or you just add a percentage i don't do that i actually go through that and then you know when it comes to supplies and that will i meet with some department heads and ask them what their needs are based on their needs and then i put those in so you're going to see that in early childhood there the question is is that all we spend in early childhood no you'll see again

019back to page nine under early childhood program area there's an expense of 1.4 million dollars 1 million thirty thousand dollars for 74. that does not include the grant we get in so that's under grants and then so it's confusing and it takes time to kind of understand the system but again i wanted to give you a flare of how the budget is detail is developed to understand the detail that goes into it awesome okay so a real quick question ken yes yes why did you redact the salaries when that's public information it is public information and the public can get it i just didn't want to if i were representing the entire budget in all of my details and everybody's salary i would put their names in there but because i was just doing one

020area as a sample i just decided to redact it that's all that makes sense you know and yeah but i agree with you it is public information and that and be happy to share it it just said you know when i was just picking one i didn't want to do that okay great thank you sure so let me turn you now to page 15. okay before we go to yes i'm sorry so on on page 11 the grants so this is the money that we're spending under those grant programs yes okay because i think of grants i think of money coming in right but this is what you're spending under those right and so and that's a great great question uh president albrecht so on the revenue side there's there's the same uh revenue that

021matches the expense so it's evened out and it may if it's a and i'll just tell you this on the coding side so when you look at the grant code anything with that starts in the 3000 series is a state grant anything at 4 000 is a federal grant so that corresponds to the numbers that we have over on the revenue side in state sources and federal sources okay so let me again take you back to the summary page so so you can get an idea right now and again please don't panic when you see this number all right too late i know i i know i'm sorry but let me let me explain so give me some time here so again revenues 92 million dollars right now expenditures 98 million dollars it gives us

022a deficit of 6.3 million dollars included in there though is 3.6 million dollars in construction projects that we will pay for out of this year because we got the money last year and so i have to book it this year but i don't have an offsetting revenue which gives us really an adjusted surplus adjusted deficit of 2.7 million dollars now i have not gone into the budget and tweaked it yet and and i use that term that that's a ken serma term that's not an official accounting term and brian gets crazy when i use that term but i haven't tweaked it yet and let me give you an example i do know that in the budget there are some salaries that i have double entered such as and i'm going to give examples such as

023special ed because we take some salaries out of grants i've got it in the grant expense and i also have it in the regular special ed side the reason i do that is i i top heavy the budget i put everything into the budget and then i start going in and then i start maneuvering things because that's what you do in accounting so there are going to be this number is going to come way down the other thing i will tell you is when i mentioned that 1.5 million dollars in revenue that we have not gotten yet that will probably go against this 2.7 million dollars so now i've already knocked that down okay so i'm going to give you another budget in august that's going to be completely different than this number but again

024this is just a preliminary number right now that i just wanted to get together and this is my starting point and now i start tweaking it does that mean i start cutting things no it doesn't mean i start cutting things right now it just means i need to start manipulating the budget you know and that to make sure that the expenses are appropriate expenses and it's mostly on the expense side is reducing expenses it's really not on the revenue side i'm not one of those that over budgets on the revenue side i do not like doing that i would rather over budget on the expense side than that okay so i'm going to stop there in questions right now so is tweaking and sharpening your pencil kind of the same thing yes it is yes

025it is yes and please know there there are expenditures in there that are going to come out i i know that already i'm not going to show this right now how do you see the i know we you know we've talked in our meetings about the the timing difference in transportation and that given the fact that we spent less in transportation last year we'll get less in transportation next year but we'll be back well we'll hear later that we're going to be back and everybody's going to be coming to school and sure that you know so our expense on transportation will be a little higher this coming year do we know kind of what the net you know if you just isolated the deficit on that i i don't know that yet and and i'm

026not avoiding the question i honestly don't because our claim for transportation isn't due until august 15th so we're beginning to work on that to make sure we got all the invoices i will have a better i will have an actual idea of that come august okay i'll know that when i when i present to you the next version of the budget because i guess i guess in my mind what i'm looking for is if if you kind of set that that deficit aside that we know as a timing issue uh we had reserve excess we had a surplus this past year to kind of cushion that you know if we look at kind of a net zero budget after that that to me is kind of from a philosophical standpoint what i kind of and

027i agree with that and that's that's my goal is to look at it that way also i think the other part of that if there is a deficit to number one let you know where that deficit is coming from and what is needed i think nelson you have always said this before what do we need to do to balance it then what would have to happen so that that's my goal coming in august okay and then that would be my goal okay all right so let me then take you to the last page which is page 16 and i want to go through a little bit of some comments and recommendations um again i think the top part i've kind of talked about already i do plan on submitting to you another tentative budget or

028draft budget that it will not be at the community the whole meeting will probably be because i believe you have some board training at that time so it'll probably be at the regular meeting the following week but i will tell you that both lyle and i dr cara and gentel are going to begin going through a process of evaluating staff to get more efficient with our staff you know i'm going to leave it in high terms like that but just looking at efficiencies as we start moving forward so that's going to be part of our process i still believe that we need to evaluate staff i i believe that you know there there are and i'm going to use the word efficient i think we can get more efficient i'm going to use my department

029as an example i think that we have gotten a lot more efficient in our department and we've lessened an fte we're down one fte from when i started and i think you know it doesn't mean that i'm just we're just going to go out and get rid of people but again i think we need to look at efficiencies in what we do and then that translates into personnel so whether that is through attrition or whatever it is i think looking at the systems that we have so that's going to be part of our goal and part of our process over the next couple years the second part of that i wanted to share with you the the 3.625 million dollars in construction projects um the life safety and asbestos abatement which was about approximately 3.2

030million dollars right now i will let you know that that is on schedule um it is probably going to be a little bit over budget uh because of some more asbestos that they found however i think i can pay for that out of esser funds and it won't cost us anything so but i'll have a better uh handle on that by the next meeting in that um i i will say this publicly that i have been very pleased with soul whole construction as the general contractor uh i have uh in overseeing it keith has done a great job in working with them and keeping them on track in that so it has gone really well they know that the key is getting the kids back in school on time substantial completion is set for august

0316th which is a friday so that we can get back into the buildings on the 9th so that's what the goal is right now just for everybody out there that's watching when you say over budget i know we talked about it you're not over budget a million you're you said about 150 000 i think about 150 000 just so everybody understands the dollar value that's what it is thanks uh so it's just extra asbestos that they found there are some other change orders that we did i'll just give you an idea one of the things that we did do when when the plumbing inspector came out and keith correct me if i'm wrong when the plumbing inspector came out we should have floor drains in the bathrooms those are code now we really didn't have

032to have them but we figured since it's torn up let's do it right so we put floor drains in it's going to help again when i talk about efficiencies it's going to help then the custodians from a cleaning standpoint and all that because you now have floor drains in there so there's those type of things they did find some things when they knocked on the wall i will tell you that we found at palala i laughed about it but it was we knocked down the wall and we found a drain pipe coming from the ceiling into a sewer pipe and the connection was duct taped behind the wall yeah so those are kind of things we found um you know again but again uh i will say i have been very happy with the with

033the construction uh the general contractor and the work that they've done uh we meet every week um you know here at the high school and go over things and then we toured the facilities i did take my drone into the buildings i will let you know that so i do have some pictures just so we can see what it was like because nobody will believe what it was like it's kind of a war zone so ken are they working um like nights and weekends and stuff because there's a lot of cars over there when i came to the meeting there were a lot of cars in the parking lot at central office yeah they're working double ships so the answer to the public is seeing all those cars there is the people who are working

034in the building on the pipes and all that kind of stuff because i have had people say why are all those cars there and i keep telling them it's either for the the electrical whatever all the stuff because you've got so much going on there yeah but i was surprised at how many cars were there tonight there had to be 12 or 15 cars there yeah and i credit solo for that i you know that's great they have they have scheduled it the right way and they know you know they're under the gun on this yeah oh i think it's great and so it's it's working very well sure um the gym floor refinishing uh project that was approved by the board uh i believe keith they started the sanding today uh so that was

035yeah it started yesterday so so that is on schedule and and that is being worked on the football field light replacement uh we've gotten word from the contractor that that will be done by august 9th and our football first football game is until the end of august so we'll be good there the cooling tower maintenance the 75 000 contract that has been completed already so that is done um the other thing i will let you know that we have done is we have switched out all the lights in the gymnasium here uh to led lighting and that so that now is all switched out too and uh so that that was also good um recommendations and these are things i'd like the board to just kind of think about because i like to think about

036what we're going to be doing summer of 22 and that because we have to start planning and doing some things so my recommendation to the board is starting to look at life safety projects at csk which total about a little over a million dollars and life-saving projects at mec for 492 000 we do have that money in the bank right now that's part of the bond sale that we have so that that's kind of my recommendation and then um i was also thinking about uh going to next step and putting air conditioning in hva system hv hvac systems in both elc and talala and those are the total about 2.5 million dollars each i got preliminary uh numbers from our architect on that proposals i can get details for you it also includes some electrical

037upgrades in those upgrades in those buildings that we would need to do too if we did that we would have to sell bonds for that i would recommend selling bonds for that but that that's just a couple things i want to just kind of put out on the plate the reason i say that is because the hvac hvac systems there's there's a lot of uh prep work that has to be done by the architect for the bid documents and the sooner we get on that the better off we are i will also tell you that there is a possibility and i'm talking to the architect about this there is a possibility that we could do hvac and the water the life safety projects at csk at the same time it is a possibility so i'll

038have that better answer next month well i i would prefer i mean as far as priority is concerned that we are quickly and fastly approaching our next life safety survey and i did not hear you mention crete i i haven't mentioned them yet and i think that's discussion we want to have about what we're going to be doing with those buildings i think that's just something uh you know we've talked about that a little bit at our operations committee and so it's something that we need to talk about and i need the board to make the connection i'm not sure what you mean as far as what what are we going going to be doing with those buildings we said that the referendum didn't move forward we were going to address the life safety issues

039we i mean unless i missed something here that's what we had borrowed the money for and mr brown we're also going to mention that healy bender is going to have our facility audit ready for september and i think that will give us a little bit more information for priorities okay but i'm a little taken by not capturing all those big guns a life safety issue as soon as possible i i can do that and i can i can i can make that recommendation next month but some problem again i'm just i don't know if it's just me out here like that uh i thought that's what we borrowed the 17.5 million or whatever and 10 million was for the life safety issues and the referendum didn't pass we was going to move forward with the

040life safety issues okay that's maybe i'm missing something here i don't know we are i like i said i think we were looking to see which order to put them in that was all well again when you mention putting in air conditioning and things of that nature which is not considered a life safety issue and potentially borrowing more money to pay for those expenditures of air conditioning and all of that i think the importance of expanding money right at this point is to address our life safety issues and then we can address the other issues i do i i have no issue with that if that's the board's pleasure my recommendation though is i i think we have found that there are some issues with our hvac system hvac systems in our buildings i think

041the pandemic has shown that the air quality is the most important thing not touching the surfaces and so and i think also the learning environment would be better if we put air conditioning in buildings i think we need to do that i think that needs to be a priority uh of the board of the school district that that that's all i'm saying and i think you know so let me let me make sure i understand you're saying the air conditions which hvac systems which have not been identified in the past has life safety issues correct no no no i'm not saying but i'm just saying that i'm just saying i'm throwing a comment out there and slash a question right right and you're saying now there's a maybe a sense of urgency to address some

042locations with hvac issues that could cause problems in the learning environment now that's what you're basically saying is it's a hvac system out there in a building or whatever that could cause problems with the learning of our kids what i'm saying is that it will be a better learning environment if you had air conditioning in all your buildings that's what i i don't think anybody disagree with that right but again we have life safety issues which dominates right these issues right now again we're going to be coming back up in another year or so and perform this life safety survey by law real soon and i'm not saying and we're going to capture we're going to have these same components which we already identify as life safety issues repeat itself again but i'm not saying

043do not do the life safety issues what i'm saying is do a two or three year approach on each of our buildings as we start moving forward the first step is to do life safety that's step one we've done that in talala and elc that's correct now the second step in those two buildings i believe is we should put air conditioning in those buildings it's ready for it we've done the piping now for it and everything at the same time you can address life safety in other buildings too so what i'm saying is that all next summer you can do life safety at csk you can do live state then you see you can live safety agree with your lifestyle belmoro and do air conditioning at the other two buildings that have already had their

044life safety done yeah i'm just saying take care life safety issues we already have the money for it and you're saying that we would have to sell bonds to address the hvac systems and things like that i think i'm all for plan to do that but not in that order you know i think we should move full steam ahead and address the life safety issues that's right mr brown what we can do i think for the next board meeting or the committee of the whole i think we need to put together this list that we're saying so that we can have clear understanding of how we would sequence it and then you can have your input maybe with the priorities maybe that will help address this okay all right thank you all right yeah i

045don't want to be late all this any longer okay okay any other questions or comments just a clarification so the target date is august 9th for to move back in but prior to that who inspects who has to come and inspect there are there are a couple entities one is uh the uh the plumbing inspector and all of that the state does that but then the big one is the roi and so just explain why the roe comes in here to do that they want to make sure that the building is safe for the children to come back okay so and to be occupied not only by adults but by children and because there's specific standards that because we're school and there's children there we have to follow yes so i want that to be

046clear because when we were having discussions about the dome that people were telling me that and telling me i was wrong but the harley's going to come in here and inspect that yes to make sure that we're following state mandated guidelines and codes yes because a year ago or a year and a half ago i was told i was wrong on that but that is true okay every property yes yes i have a quick question when you're talking about hvac is is there any way to use any esser funds for stuff like that you were talking about air quality there is there there is a way to use that um you know you're um if you do some of the funds that i'm utilizing in order to pay for some operating things then becomes a

047wider or makes a bigger deficit out of your regular budget i'm a believer that in a lot of capital projects that we should uh take out debt for them and then i don't i don't know if using esser funds would be because the question comes up is you won't have enough to do all your buildings which ones do you pick disaster but you could i mean you can use some of them if you want you know i know the ticket the ticket price is like 2.5 million right now you know that so well what a so what are you using the answer funds for already budgeted items there are some as as we mentioned on the staffing there's some money that we're using for staffing about 1.5 million dollars a year it escalates a little

048bit 1.5 1.6 1.7 million um and then we're using uh some for technology we're able to use technology um so a lot of our chromebooks that we get for the kids and all that on an annual basis we're able to use ester funds that's about 800 000 a year uh and then there's some other odds and ends i know from uh curriculum we're using it also for uh increased teachers to assist with the kids and all of that for worrying loss and all that all right so you're saying it's helping us with our operating budget helping us with our operating budget you also have to remember that with the s3 funds 20 of it has to go towards learning loss so you need to take 20 of it off off the top right off the

049top so so that lessens your amount right there too okay thanks so can i have a question um you lift list life safety projects at elc and talala and but we don't say anything about the other schools and we know that there are things that still need to be done at other schools so this is you're recommending this for summer of 22 summer 22. the one thing for talala and elc are being done this summer right so that's why you're suggesting heac for them because they'll be done with life safety okay so we still have crete and balmoral that need a lot of help so are you saying then that your your suggestion would then be that their address 22 to 23 the summer of 23. they can be yes i mean because i guess

050i i understand what mr brown is saying where is the life safety for other schools getting done when and what is the cost and that type of thing right i guess i'm lost like he is because we're saying we'll put together a plan so everyone can see it i think he's showing bits and pieces and it's not showing the big picture i think that's what you're saying we have to remember about our facilities now let me just share this and i'm gonna i'm gonna push a little bit on this okay when you get the facility assessment you're gonna find and i don't i i haven't talked to haley bender about this but i'm just gonna tell you you're gonna find that there are things in our building that you need to get done because they've

051been neglected for years a roof those things are going to need to get done your hvac hvac systems are going to need to be done right you know because they are not good right they need to be upgraded in that you know um so i think you're gonna find that when you when you get this facility assessment so it's gonna cost you more to say i think we're just going to do live safety we're past that point now with some of our buildings as you well know with korean balmoral i mean right and that's why i was wondering because we i know there's a lot of life safety that still needs to be addressed and it's not on here so i i wasn't following what was going on i'm like where is that piece yeah

052i i i wrestle with crete and bill morrow i'm just i'm just telling you that i i have a balmoral only has a hundred and sixty three thousand dollars in life safety issues you have nbc only have four hundred thousand in life safety issues so we're attacking cs we're looking to attack csk we are attacking talala and elc those those have some big guns there as far as money value okay so and the only really outstanding one is creed elementary now which is the big the big gun to say the least so you know we need to chop away i do not want to downplay life safety issues no matter say we pass that we're not past that we're not past that this board agreed to borrow money which we did to address those life

053safety issues if the referendum did not pass so i understand dr coghlanis is going to come back and bring to the board unless so i'm all for that but i don't want to downplay life safety issues and i don't think that's your intent but it sounds like that's how it's coming across to me right thanks thank you ken thank you okay next up is the discussion on the student handbook revisions testing testing all righty good evening to the board can you hear me yes okay good evening to the board to my colleagues and to the community um today i wanted to go over director riley i might ask you to come to the podium so everyone can see you as well as our viewers at home yeah come to the hot seat sure thank you

054[Applause] good evening again okay so today i wanted to take the time to go over the revisions to the student handbook for the upcoming school year 21 22. many of most of the revisions are things that we already have in practice for instance in the student dress code i just wanted to update to make sure that we include items that students currently are not to wear in schools such as hoods we mentioned head coverings but we didn't actually explicitly say hoods so just adding little pieces like that or when it talks about rips to include slits because you know with the current fashion that we have right now we have some slits in some places that you know are not necessarily school appropriate so just spelling things out that we already already currently do not

055allow in regards to uh the range of interventions and consequences there's a section that introduces pbis and restorative practices and talk about how we are district who that have adopted both practices so there's just some changes in regards to the ordering of how those paragraphs are to make sure that it flows correctly for instance pbis is introduced before restorative practices is so we want to make sure that it flows in the reading as such also there's a section in there that explicitly talks about in the past how each year we had certain goals well due for instance to this recent pandemic we weren't able to actually meet some of those goals so what we wanted to do which was also a discussion this year we had with the district discipline review committee is to just

056take out the annual goal because we have schools in different we have schools i'm sorry that are different levels of implementing restorative practices although we are all as a district implementing them some are at different levels than others in terms of where they are um with actually practicing them in the building so we wanted to take away the the actual just saying the verbiage of this year we're going to focus on this because it's a constant uh practice that we're doing so instead of holding everybody to the same exact focus we have to actually trigger it we have to scaffold it as needed in each building also for that section we want to clearly explain to to students and parents and the community who reads the student code of conduct what our actual discipline approach

057is and how we're moving forward with more being more of a progressive district that actually is implementing restorative practices we're following um senate bill 100 and the steps that were taken to that so we just wanted to add a little extra verbiage in there to fully explain our goals in terms of making sure that we're left less on zero tolerance and more on restorative we have a new intervention that we're introducing which is the therapy dogs intervention which is for more seo support there was no mentioning of that in the student code of conduct so i had to ensure that that was actually added so we added a paragraph a little section in there to explain also you have to also have parent consent so added to the student code of conduct would be a

058consent page where parents will have to let us know whether or not if it's okay for their uh child to interact with that particular intervention because they may not kids may be allergic we don't know so we got to make sure we have that on foul also there are some practices that we did have in place for instance like a signed bus seating but it actually wasn't in the student hand book so we had to make sure that we included it because those are practices that a lot of our buildings actually do use so we just wanted to make sure we had it listed see what else a section to ensure that alcohol influenced possession and marijuana actually closely matches to what senate bill 100 says we just wanted to make sure our verbiage was

059more in link in sync with that and technology based on our experiences this past year we want to just add a little extra base of what we saw our kiddos do this year to ensure that we have something in place for instances like what we actually experienced this year any questions i do i think it would have been a lot easier i didn't i didn't quite see it but i think it would have been a lot easier if we would have shown the revisions did we actually show the revisited to the agenda oh in the board okay i missed it but anyway going back to the hood yes now what about for athletes who have warm-up uniforms with hoods on and things like that well when they're at the building um because it says in

060the building right in the building uh yeah hoods mostly came from uh with the due to like during the time period with columbine shootings and things of that sort so that's a policy that most schools boards don't allow we don't allow the hoods we want them we want to be able to physically see their face and hoods kind of sort of uh takes away from being able to see who the student is okay is is a hood the same as a hoodie the and that's my point i actually have a creep only sweat that was given to me and it has a hood on it and i know i understand i cannot wear that in the building even though i'm not a student we just don't want you to have your hair covered that's again

061athletes usually you know wrestlers and things like that they they have a hoodie on or the hood on for being warm so you see that all the time track indoor track things like that so i don't think we have any indoor track going on but practicing so i just want to caution you on that if that ever comes across that athletes wear their hoods with their sweats with their warm-up uniforms and that's to keep them warm so i just want to throw that out so everybody kind of sort of needs to abide by that um and then when if you do that distinction then that's going to cause a will you allow this student to do it that's what i'm saying did we did we talk to the athletic athletic director on this issue well

062he has access to this uh handbook but when i was reviewing the handbook i did ask him if to look through it and if there was any revisions that he would have liked to add he didn't have that opportunity okay could you if just for my sake before we vote on it next week or next week just to get clarification from an athletic point of view and i'm good with that okay and the next thing i had i believe it was under csk about maybe it was applicable to all of the students here about backpacks only approved backpacks can be brought to school what are what's considered approved um so approved backpacks should be clear backpacks where you can see through them or mesh is that documented somewhere it should be in the student listen

063there okay okay i didn't see it okay long as it's documented and clarified i just did a speed reading there and saw that only approved backpacks could be brought to school okay and the last question i had it was on hair hair can be you know no hairstyle could be worn in school if it poses a safety hazard that's kind of vague so i don't know i think we may have some issues or have we had any issues with that you know i've seen you know all right different schools on the news and all of that wearing different hairstyles that was considered inappropriate and then there was some friction among parents and of their child not being able to wear certain hairstyles so i think it just says no hairstyle could be worn that is

064deemed inappropriate or unsafe so i don't know i don't know i just think we maybe want to revisit that look at it and put more clarity on what type of styles or something i don't know that's just my opinion that's all thank you you're welcome thank you okay thank you thank you ms riley mr neal did you have any comments regarding the employee handbook very slight revisions if any turn off the mute part it works better that way so the employee handbook for a number of reasons hasn't been brought to the board for approval for several years and just feeling much better about the idea that the board is aware of what's in the handbook and approves it we wanted to bring that back annually starting this year uh on page four of the document

065that's in board book uh there is a brief list of changes that were made from this year from past year mainly the changes are updating for example just some language and some of the regulations to match up with the law for example the uh 403 b's the tax sheltered annuities there are new limit limits on those so we just updated the limits we had to update the pandemic operational considerations to match what's in place right now as opposed to what was in place beginning of last year update our complaint managers and a couple of brief updates to expense reimbursement and fmla just to match the process that's being followed right now other than a few other typos and things that were discovered there weren't any other significant changes made over the past year so what

066we would like to do is bring this next week just to have the board give their approval to the handbook and verify the practices we're following and that would establish that that process again on an annual basis so if there are any questions i can take those otherwise you can move on to the next item you just you posted the draft but do you have a red line that just shows highlights the changes i can i can give you one for the next meeting i thought i had sent it i must not have so i will just make sure that's in for the regular meeting that'd be great yes thank you mr neil thank you okay and then next up is teaching and learning ms perkins she will be sharing with the board as well

067as the community our return to in-person learning and continuity of services we will be scheduled to have a public hearing on this topic for next tuesday in the meantime she's going to give an update of our anticipated reopening guidelines we'll see how it works good evening to the board to our public and to our staff we wanted to give an update on the return to in-person learning before we are allowed to spend any of our s or three funds we must have a public hearing and like dr kara said we will have that next week as we are aware there we go the superintendent of schools has mandated that we open a return to in-person full-person learning five days a week and knowing that we are going to have a gap in our work and

068that there's work ahead to be done hence the sr3 funds to help support and close gaps that we would have seen because of the pandemic and we are still waiting on any other further directions from cdc idph and isbe and as those directions and guidance and recommendations come up we will keep all of our documents updated i will tell you that this is already out of date based on what cdc came out with last friday this thursday i will be attending a meeting with the u.s department of ed and cdc and so we will see if there are any other further updates and changes there but this is a draft and then the board will get an updated copy once we have new information we do have a couple of timelines here tonight committee of

069the whole then we have a public hearing next week the 9th and 10th we will bring new staff back for orientation the 11th and 12th we're bringing staff for cmea for our certified staff for professional development institute days opening day is on the 16th and then the first day to have students back is on the 18th again dr ayala these changes will take effect for the 21 22 school year the isb board unanimously voted to have the resolution to bring school back in person five days a week at the beginning of the year she will have a declaration that she will sign and that will be based on local health department any updates that they have that we will be able to reopen as well as the governor with his temporary close of schools and

070we will get that declaration up once it is um once the superintendent gives that to us so one of the biggest pieces that the state has said they're calling it they went from mitigation measures to prevention strategies is what they're calling it and they're asking us to think about all of the areas where we can as we bring in students especially students who have not been able to be vaccinated meaning 12 and under that we are putting in layers and we continue to put in some of the layers as we brought students back in hybrid and so this chart shows i will tell you there has been an update in terms of social distancing on buses when we were coming back last year we were able to bring back students about 50 percent capacity they

071realized that is a challenge for us this year and so they have said social distancing doesn't have to be the same on the buses however students will be required to wear masks on buses so again we will update this chart with the check marks and x's as that information becomes available to us so this is one that will have to be updated based on cdc's guidance from friday and so that you are aware idph did take on all of the recommendations that cdc offered we know that mask and face coverings would create barriers and challenges that we are going to have to work through but they did give their recommendations and guidance again cafeteria social distancing the recommendation is as much as possible and that changes at different grade levels because obviously at the elementary

072those students have not been able to be vaccinated but at the high school we have had the opportunity to be vaccinated and crete money is not saying or the state is not saying that students need to be vaccinated but it is a recommendation school buses again social distancing that has changed to if possible one of the other challenges that we're still working through is the contact tracing quarantining and then is idph has put in some guidance for free coping 19 testing and i'm going to have nurse kate come up and talk about the recommendations of testing a quick question about the mask and face covering so what what are the recommendations i know what the cdc's recommendations were what are we going to do uh that we will be talking with dr kara to talk

073about what what our recommendation is going to be again all students age 12 and under the recommendation is that they wear masks all right thank you and gentile can i just ask i've been contacted i've been seeing on the internet in different stories that many school districts are taking votes on what they want to do like are they going to allow the parents to make the decision is the school going to make it how are they following through so are we looking at at those options also like whatever we decide how do we enforce that i guess is the term well and i will say that the state has said that the district needs to do what is in the best interest for the students in terms of preventing and being able to be in

074person five days a week the recommendation is that we do whatever needs the academics come first and that everything else um not that everything else is not important but the most important part that we know is that uh we've had some learning laws um and that students need to be in and that that's the priority so we need to do whatever we need to do to make sure that kids can come to school five days a week and to keep them safe and our staff safe so i guess the question is people are asking me are the parents or the community going to have any input on this or is this going to be a specific um decision by dr cara are you in dr cara yeah it's a decision by by dr cara okay

075so there will be no import from parents or anything like that and the reason why is we have to figure out how to administer it and it's very and it is very difficult because uh with the guidelines that they've suggested they are recommending triple coverage if we're going to relax the three foot of social distancing especially in our cafeterias where we're having the most problem they're recommending mask wearing um so it it becomes very difficult and so we've got to figure out how we would administrate this in a large cafeteria all the time it becomes very difficult so it is an administrative decision um at least i'm looking at it that way certainly people can give it some input but as far as board but we have to figure how we're going to administer it

076well there's that hearing next week is that when parents can give input if they correct right so we should let parents know that they should come right and so you could have different guidelines i mean maybe in the classroom you're not requiring masks at certain ages but in the cafeteria you are i mean there could be different circumstances it may not be that they have to wear a mask from the minute they walk in the door to the minute they walk out of the door is that correct there could be different situations and again we have to figure out who's vaccinated and who's not back vaccinated who is not and who's in the hallways and who is it becomes a heavy monitoring system right and then what is the dis what is the um the

077accountability for that monitoring and i think the parents are already nervous and they're when will we know when will we know when will we know you know and so i just think that there have been districts already that have had meetings and taken votes and stuff so they're seeing that and they're wondering what we're doing right and we will have that ready for it on tuesday we were just finishing our discussions literally this week okay unfortunately oh go ahead i'm just maybe i don't know for people to know that there's a public hearing they the only reason the only way they would know is if they went on our website is there a suggestion out there maybe that i could make to make a robocall or something if there's a concern or or some way

078to let them know that they have a voice because there are parents who are already concerned about different things absolutely um i think not everybody reaches out i mean you know some people they will reach out but there are lots of people in our community that don't know how to reach out or won't do it so i'm just wondering how we're going to get this information out and get input and hopefully you're correct and we'll be following up with uh ms nash as far as you know the best way to push out that information because we do want people to attend public hearing that's the purpose of the public or at least be able to send a comment yes and do a public comment and if they don't know that's happening then they've missed their

079opportunity correct so that's what i'm concerned about is that we need to have our community know this is going on good point we will make sure that we have some communication thank you and i will let the board know what we're doing awesome thank you very much and mr skalbroth i will say that we followed all protocol for public hearings so it did go in our our newspaper and get published any other way that we would publicize a public hearing and of course the public is allowed to send in their comments to terry tobin as they always have right and i don't i mean we do normal public hearings for budgets and things like that but this is out of the ordinary and i don't think they'd know to look for that is is all

080i'm saying is that i know to look because i'm on the board now and i've learned a lot but if i was just out in the public there are many things that i never knew were going on in the school so i think there's so much concern about how we're handling it when they will know that if we can somehow push that information out and let them know this is taking place i think it would be great okay thank you nurse kate thank you ms galbraith not nearly as tall as perkins to pull that off uh so of um how we're calling the preventative strategies and having as dr kara said like that triple layer of um strategies so by that it's you know how many so you have masking social distancing vaccine those are

081you know that's one triple layer another triple a you know so part of it is um the kova testing in school so there are currently two um tests that are available i have them up there shield versus bionx now the shield testing that is kind of like your gold standard that's your you know your pcr test it's the saliva base it's the one that u of i developed and released and so all the u of i students were doing it it's a very good test you know the kids we would get for any testing we would do we need uh parental consent before we do it on-site with the shield test we send the samples out to a lab to get run and then we get the results and they report it to the health

082department you know positive and negative so no further testing is required the bionx now that's one of the nasal swabs you see them at the walgreens all the time now on the cvs and the tools um that's the nasal swab not the one that goes up to your brain swab just like a regular flu swab one but that's the antigen test so that's just detecting probable current infection so it's just testing for the antigen itself the results are done on site it you know it's kind of well yeah so you get it within the 15 minutes the problem drawback not a problem drawback is that it's not considered diagnostic so it's just a way to kind of flag so if you know there's there's situations where further testing such as this shield testing would be

083required to get an actual result to determine whether or not somebody is probable for having coveted needs to follow any type of quarantine or isolation um so that's just the difference between the two you could do the next one do you have the clicker oh okay um so the states both the health department and isb is really working hard to try and bring these programs into the schools to be educated uh executed through um the school there are three cur options that idh idph offer weekly testing with a third party collection team now that is really only with the shield people um right now they say that they can bring in a third party to do it every week for all the students whose parents sign consent um you could do weekly testing with our

084staff collection i don't have staff uh the and then the one that isb is saying that we really idph is saying all schools must consider and regardless of your interest of doing an actual testing program is option three which is emergency outbreak testing um so this again parental consent required anybody in the event that we have an outbreak so it's where it gets tricky and we don't have the idph guidelines i was really hoping it was coming today it might not come till next tuesday or friday good lord willing this friday um to get clarification but right now if we are not a testing program an outbreak is going to be classified as the you know five cases that can be linked together whether on a bus in a classroom you know same thing as

085it was before over the course of 14 days and no other outside influences so in that event then idph would say that we would have to do four weeks of two times a week two times a week screening kids with consent to prevent them from having to quarantine or to limit any type of classroom or you know sectional closings pods you know cohorts however the case may be um that's just kind of where they're at right now again it's very preliminary i really wanted to have more information for you but i can't make it up so i mean i could like to but there's not a whole lot i can offer these are just our choices like you said my personal preference would just be the option three in the event that we have an

086outbreak we can reach out to shields they say that they should be able to deploy somebody to come out run you know run the testing in all the buildings get the samples to where they need to go uh being that we are a tier one school then it's at no cost to us there's a little bit of caveat in there that says that we need to be doing this um and they could get us started is you know their most recent little blurb red update on their last one was you always be like oh if you need outbreak testing won't come out don't worry about it now it's like well we could come out maybe for the first week and get you started so again i'm not sure staffing wise number wise the only thing

087i could really say is we didn't have any outbreaks you know like actual true outbreaks and that is defined and identified through the health department that's not yeah yeah thank you perkins um you know that's we've you know kind of unofficially you know made decisions just based on but the health department never came to us and said this is an outbreak situation so i'm willing to roll the dice on that personally so any questions thoughts concerns thank you okay all right so here we go so here is where we talk about again before we um the application for sr3 just opened up in the last couple of weeks so before we can submit that application and spend any funding we have to have the public hearing to talk about how what is our plan for

088spending those funds and again 20 must be accounted for with learning loss and taking into focus um our students academic health and social emotional needs as well as any marginalized subgroups that we have this chart displays the percentages of how we are spending how we've spent um sr1 funds which was the cares grant as her2 and then our projections for esther 3 and the funds will go through 2024 at the bottom it talks about how we are kind of blending our funds with title funds and idea funds to make sure that we are able to support the initiatives that we have as we return back to school one of the big things that we know that we need some human capacity we need individuals to help support us and so we have a partnership with

089governor state where we are hiring on a temporary basis we're calling them transition to teaching teacher interns and so they will be we're trying to get at least two in each building that would serve as interventionist to help support the initiatives that the building principals would like the support for with the academics of students we need to make sure that we have a continuity of services because of the pandemic we cannot go backwards on what we were offering to our students and our families and so as we develop the guide each assistant superintendent with dr cara is working on the reference guide as we return to in-person learning and we will address all of the issues related here for the academic and social emotional piece we are putting in place continuing our academics at each

090of our sites and that's from what we're offering in the curriculum to the way that we plan and collaboration with our teams and teachers to the practices that we have in place including having a strong core curriculum and any interventions that our students need as well as the return of assessments and making sure that we are doing that on a continuous basis and we are monitoring that work again taking a strong look at what our students needs are as they return and what those social and emotional needs are and each building principle will be working with their teams on their individual site plans as they return and so again it's for the elementary school planning the middle school nbc and the high school uh one of the things that we do have to offer is

091that any student who is under 12 and not vaccinated there are two parts to this they have to be quarantined and under the age of 12 and under if they meet those qualifications and they are unable to attend school again under quarantine and under the age of 12 then those students we have to have a remote option we are currently working with cmea to determine what our remote options would look like one of the options is that even though it was taxing our teachers did a wonderful job of simultaneously teaching and so we would offer that if a student is out we would have district-wide teachers and those two students i'm sorry would google into those classroom and get their lesson for the day again under quarantine and under age 12. another option is to

092have students remote in to [Music] kind of like permanent guest teachers and again we are working with cmea to see what that would look like you know it could be zero students on one day and then it could be 50 students on another day so we will continue to work with our membership on that the other option is that for our students who are medically fragile and would follow under homebound those students could receive up to five hours of instruction a week questions so again as we get updates from thursday through the weekend we will make sure this is updated before the public hearing next week doctor there we i think we all received an um update from house of rizzo this afternoon is that with isb adopts cdc guidance for covert nineteen prevention in

093katy through twelve schools so is that the most recent update or i don't know if you've had a chance to look at it i haven't yet i've been on my email today i believe i can speak to that yeah i was not the person that our firm that wrote that but i believe that was based on guidance that came out on the eighth yeah so okay yeah so is that more recent guidance and what this presentation was saying okay okay um do we have any old business yet can i just try and before we get off this topic go ahead so just want to backtrack a little bit to uh the business side of like ken um just so we're on the same page we miss roop and i had fortunately we had a meeting

094earlier and i know on the last page you guys are a little off on the life safety and and i just want to clarify i think a discussion that we had earlier is it let's just backtrack a little bit we did the life safety in elc and talala we started that back in december because we were basing our our our future forward with the other stuff the other buildings on the referendum so and that's why all that work's getting done now that all that works getting done and seeing the amount of construction that is being done in those buildings i think ken was just we talked earlier we were just you know uh the five of us were talking but i think the premise there is it's not that he's trying to forget the life

095safety on the other buildings i think what he's trying to do is once he gets the assessment can is there anything else that's what is important along with the life safety to couple it together the construction going on in those buildings is pretty invasive so if we're going to do an invasive it's it's csk or crete elementary or balmoral if there is something else that's going to be that evasive to try to couple together we did approve the money for the life safety and i'm all for that that now that we're today in the referendum pass i would assume the bids would go out in december like they did this past year and we could get all the life safety done in all the buildings next year but at least now from now until we

096get our assessment just correct me if i'm wrong then if there's anything major on there we might as well i think what he's trying to do is if we if we have the opportunity it might be a good time to do them both together instead of let's just say we we do a lot of demo with csk i'm going to use that as an example or crete elementary and then a and then a year later we're going to go back in there put air conditioning or roof or whatever we're going to do and we're going to do a whole bunch more construction i think that was the premise he wasn't trying again i'm not speaking for mr cerma but just more or less that our time frame changed when the referendum didn't pass so i

097that's it because we did we are going to spend the money on the life safety and all the buildings i would assume between the seven of us we've agreed to that but i think he's just i think in another month or so we're going to get that assessment we have until december to get the bid documents out correct which gives us a little window to figure out if we're going to borrow more money or if we're just going to stick straight with life safety which is okay but i think that i'm just i just want to clarify that because i just don't think the premise was to eliminate life safety altogether okay are we still an old business yes okay i don't think we ever started oh that wasn't so that was just an end

098okay can we start old business sure okay um i i've had people question me because they know that i've been touting this about the therapy dog program is it possible that we could get somebody to do like a two or three minute explanation of exactly what the therapy dog program is in a school i don't think they understand um and you know we're talking about it but they're like well what do you mean you're going to have dogs what's going to happen so is is there a way that at some point we can have a little presentation and this is galbraith you are you are you're my spoiler here oh geez i i probably should have said that when uh ms riley was uh discussing it actually we are inviting our dogs in our program

099to uh highlight the program elevate it uh we wanted to present it in the handbook first we're going to spend some time at a regular board meeting next week we're going to have our dogs here we're going to have an explanation of the program and we're going to spend some more time talking about the dogs are talking next week they are okay good so yes okay and they're getting their picture taken and they they have a bio that's going to be coming on our website because there's a little bit of an extra to that therapy dog story correct you know yes there is yes there is okay can i just pounce on that as well [Laughter] okay a service is a therapy dog the same as a service dog pet therapy dog is the same

100as a service dog i think they're a little bit different but because i guess the question i have is that do we have other service animals of any type do we have other service animals of any type within our district being utilized in our district we do not no that does not mean therapy dogs are covered under law covered under there's a lot of regulations for that which is totally different than therapy dogs we currently do not have any students that is addressed in some of the documents i created but if a student did show up with them that we we would be required by ada to allow them in yes okay could in some manner a service or therapy dog if it was to be utilized can that be disruptive to another service animal

101um i guess there's always a possibility can we just take it case by case yes but both dogs would be trained the therapy dogs have a lot more training we've already introduced the dogs to a lot of the staff members we're continuing to train with the dogs over the summer the dogs received months and months of training and a large portion of that training was involved involving different scenarios everything from water features to escalators and elevators just to see how the dogs react differently so they're very familiar in the class i was just down in another class 70 dogs all in the same room another class there was 50 dogs in the same room my dog was with four other dogs today so they are very that doesn't mean the other dogs may be but

102they're very very comfortable being around the other dogs i do believe that moving down it's kind of difficult and i believe this would be uh some questions for our attorney and ada because we don't want to violate that but i do believe that we could probably implement some policies and procedures for service dogs that come in here and that would maybe be length the length of the leash and for us i've identified where the dog goes in the bathroom locations they can't go science labs food food areas things like that i believe that we could probably do that for a service dog but uh those are gonna be questions for the attorney uh with the therapy dog it's easier because we can just decide that that's what we want we present it to the administration

103and the board and then you guys approve it okay there is a policy for service dogs but i don't remember how in depth it goes because rochelle and i had to write very limited yeah that we have a student that was going to a board policy yes because we had a student at one point we thought was going to need to have a service dog so we were quick notified to write it and it's i think it's pretty spectrum but it then it didn't work out because that i don't think the student came or something like that but it was like a on the spot thing we had to do so it was very broad it's still in the book it is correct yeah and it aligns with ada you know we need to be

104tribulations uh take a look at that there are some school districts where uh they had a girl showed up with a therapy horse and they had to allow the horse in the school district so we'll be implementing that next month surprise you know that's my case in point yeah so but you know those are those are service dogs and therapy dogs are that's why they have different titles so yeah those are those those restrictions and how you apply those are going to be that's going to have to be for the for the attorneys thank you thank you sir appreciate it any other old business items i have two the first one is we wanted to come firs full circle i believe at the last meeting uh we were asking um to get some appraisals for

105mec in the dome and the board had asked how much that was going to be so we do have those numbers so for mec the appraisal was going to cost five thousand dollars and for the dome it was going to be 6500 so we would just need to find out from the board if you would like us to have some consensus to move forward on on that or not i mean mec there's interest of someone buying it correct sort of there's been talk right that money would would like mec so would there be interest of getting an appraisal i would say yes to put a dollar value to it okay i would as far as the dome i think in my opinion uh which is only one of seven that i you know i thought

106it was part of the sixth grade center being demo and i i personally would not want to approve spending any more money and get an appraisal i agree with bill i also agree i also agree i mean on the same premise you said someone was interested in mec to purchase nbc which justify getting a an appraisal so i believe it was last week someone uh was it last week last last regular board meeting someone was interested in in a dome as well so i would i would say again to do it yeah i mean i think the consensus was that we were not interested in selling the dome if we're not interested in selling the dome i don't see the purpose of getting an appraisal until that would change but i agree i think with

107him he sees a little different situation so i agree nelson we decided we were interested in selling so why pay for an appraisal when we're not interested in selling i agree and what was the inter who was the interested party again for mec i'm sorry it was uh the village omoni the village of money yes and i reported that in my newsletter okay so my understanding then with the direction we'll go ahead and move forward and pursue an appraisal of mec and then my other short item was just to alert remind the board in the community that in august we should be going back to our regular meeting spot over at the district office for committee of the whole as well as our regular board meetings so unless anything changes we'll plan to meet back

108over there and that was correct okay are you done with old business okay i do have one more question on old business was i had asked that we seek out the contractor that was doing the big scope of work on mec not nbc but elc and talala to see just what they're hiring of minority contractors and minority-owned businesses and local businesses and i think you sent that document to us and i believe it was just one person that was considered a woman business enterprise business business and out of like three million dollars that was that we approved that person that construction company contract i believe the one business was expending 40 000 galaxy enterprise memory serves me right so that was just a small token i think is galaxy enterprise that deals with lighting some

109some sort of lighting so i just say moving forward i think we need a better handle and better set the narrative on what we expect the contractor maybe right in the bid spec or whatever if we want one percent to go to local vendors or what i don't know exact verbiage to put in there but i think this board said we wanted to try to get vendors of a local nature involved with these big projects so so that was i was a little disappointing when they shared a whole chart and it had all these no's nose nose nose and just one yes and that resulted in forty thousand dollars which is less than one percent of the contract we don't have to have no quota but i think the intent again is we are expanding

110taxpayers money and i think qualified vendors and minorities should have an opportunity to get a piece of the pie and i agree 100 with that we do have in all of our bid documents uh verbiage uh for minority owned and uh women-owned businesses so that verbiage is in there um it is some legal um i can refer to eric on this but um you know it has been uh verified by the attorneys of the type of language that is in there i will have to say i i do have to i will have to consult with the attorneys on what we can or can't do or what we can demand or not demanded bid documents so i'll work with the attorneys on that mr brown and and you know to see if we can get

111more definite on our language in there if we can consider a percentage or not i'm not sure that and i'll just have to rely on our attorneys for that yeah all within the law sure no i i always can allow i'll be happy to do that so the next go around with these big ticket items and these proposed contracts that we can do a little bit better on that yeah and be assured there was verbiage in the original documents it was in there that is in all of our contracts uh or all of our uh rfps or rfqs that's all in there but again i'll work with our attorneys to see what how we can make that language better excellent i appreciate it dr cognitives for supplying aboard that information too thank you thanks ken

112do we have any other old business any new business okay we do have a need for closed session tonight can i get a motion to go into closed session for and we have two purposes one for the appointment employment compensation discipline performance or dismissal of specific employee of the public body and two litigation when an action against affecting or on behalf of a particular body has been filed and is pending before a court or administrative tribunal moved second roll call please brown is an eye mrs galbraith aye mr smallish aye mrs walters aye president roo aye president albrecht aye so we are in closed session at 806. i have hard copies can can i get a motion to adjourn second all all in favor say aye aye all opposed galbraith moved smaller second galbraith galbraith