001Okay, we're ready to go. Are you ready? Good evening. I'm going to call the meeting to order. Tonight we have some special guests. Our superintendents for the day, Grace, who is in first grade at Elementary North, and Michael, both brother and sister, last name Mackie, in third grade at Elementary North. Grace and Michael earned this opportunity through the silent auction at the 2025 key to 73 PTO golf outing. Welcome superintendents Grace and Michael. We're happy to have you here tonight. At this time, Grace is going to lead us in the pledge of allegiance. Please rise. 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. Thank you so much, Grace. Okay, Julie, can I
002have attendance please? Here. Here. Here. Here. Here. Julie Clifford, here. That's seven present, zero absent. I'm going to move on to public comment. Is there anybody from the public who wishes to comment at this time? Please state your name for the record. Hi, my name is Cora Wright, and I am a freshman at Vernon Hills High School. I was an eighth grader at Middle North last year, and I wanted to bring the foreign language department to the attention to the board. I started Spanish in seventh grade, and while I'm grateful for the opportunity to have a background knowledge of the language, my passion lies in German, a language two of my older siblings took, so when it came time to register for freshman classes, there's no doubt that I was registering for German 1. It
003was to my dismay, however, that German 1 was canceled due to low enrollment. Because of my older siblings, I had the opportunity to study German 1 over the summer and test into German 2. While I was able to do that, it affects my entire trajectory of foreign language, and an even deeper concern is that of the future of the program. During registration, when we took the AAPPL test, the Spanish teacher told us to register for the level we tested into. They did not give us all of our options, and while many of the students will continue in Spanish, it is imperative that they are told all of their options for foreign language. If this trend of low enrollment continues, we will eventually lose the options of German and French. Opportunity is what makes D128 exceptional,
004and it also affects rankings. I also know that German is a global leader in engineering, and therefore the best language to learn for those planning is to enter into the field. The students need a chance to explore their options and find where their passion lies. I'm requesting that the administration require the foreign language teachers to make sure the students are aware of all of their options when it comes to foreign language. At the high school, they are attending before registration takes place. Thank you for listening and ensuring the future of our students' options. Thank you so much. I'm sorry. Okay, Dr. Hannigan will follow up with D128. Is there anybody else from the public who wishes to comment at this time? Going once, going twice, gone. Okay, I'm going to turn it over to the
005recognition committee, Carl and George. I assume there's recognition tonight? Yes, there is, despite despite George's opinion. Thanks, George. So good evening and welcome everyone. Tonight's recognition is a special one, as some of the students who will be celebrating have already moved on to high school, but their achievements while at Hawthorne are always still worth celebrating. So first, we're excited to begin tonight's recognition by celebrating Sarah Shigedav, also known as Sarah, a student at Middle School North. Sarah proudly represented Middle North at the IESA State Girls Golf Tournament in Metamora, Illinois. It was her first ever state appearance in golf. Competing against 87 golfers from across the state, she finished 32nd with an impressive score of 96. Coach Stewart reached out to us to say, it has been a pleasure coaching Sarah at sectionals over the
006past two years. Last year, she battled through an early injury at sectionals and didn't finish as well as she had hoped. After that round, she told me she wanted another opportunity. This year, she followed through, putting together a strong performance at sectionals to earn a spot at state. I'm incredibly proud of Sarah for her perseverance and for representing Hawthorne with class, determination, and dedication. On behalf of the Hawthorne Board of Education, Sarah, thank you. Please walk over to Ms. Flores to receive your certificate in medal and then for Ms. Cook to take a photo. Next, we proudly recognize a group of outstanding athletes from Hawthorne Middle School South who qualified for and competed in the IESA State Track and Field Meet. To tell us more about this group's accomplishments, I'd like to invite Coach Mike
007Becker or Mrs. Harris to say a few words about the team. Hello everyone. Welcome our Southies track team. We had several girls who competed in the IESA State Tournament. So we had Violet, Eva, Lily, Samantha, Maddie, and Summer. You want to stand up if you're here? So this is part of the team. They actually competed in two races. They were in the four by two relay and the four by four relay. Then we had Lily, who was our solo female. So she ran the 800 at state, which was awesome and nerve-racking, right? But you're excited. And then we had Alex, who I don't think is here. Alex ran the hurdles and he actually placed 11th in the state in the hurdles. So they all did a great job. And I'll speak for both North and
008South. We had a lot of record breakers. So some of the kids in here have their name on our record board and both of the gyms. So I'd just like to congratulate both, all sets of athletes on breaking records too. So congratulations Middle South. And I think probably the same thing. Step over that way. Yeah. Okay. So we'll go over here. Thank you, Coach Harris for pinch hitting. And congratulations again to our Middle South state track athletes. Carl? And so to close out tonight's recognition, we'll move to the other side of town line to celebrate Middle School North track and field athletes who qualified for and competed at the IESA state track and field beat. To share more words about their outstanding achievements, I'd like to invite Coach Chase Leonardo to come say a few
009words. Coach? All right. First and foremost, congratulations to everybody, South and North. I apologize. I have a long list of accomplishments. I think that's a good thing though. So first and foremost, I'm going to go through the runs and the places that they got at state. So first of all, let's start with the ladies. Gemma Waters, Evelyn Lye, Isabella McDonald and Dylan Schulman with alternates Liliana Morris and Nicole Moros. They ran the four by 200 and they got 14th place at state, which is outstanding. Continuing on, we had singles Arush Attali in the long jump. He got on the podium for seventh place. Outstanding job, Arush. Omari Miller with a fifth place for high jump. Outstanding job. And now onto our record breakers. For our four by 200, we got a second place, Ryan Cruz,
010Jonas Jackson, Andre Horlenko and Ethan Chang. And for our four by four, we got a fifth place podium. Again, a school record. Jonas, Jonas Jackson, Ryan Cruz, Arseny Ilyesh and Ethan Chang with alternates Carmelo and Tyler. And then finally, another school record, Ethan Chang in the 400 meter dash with a time of 55.12 seconds. Outstanding. And then going back to Ryan Cruz, Ryan Cruz also got a fourth place podium finish in the 200 meter dash. And then of course, I cannot forget Mason Ferch, our ninth place discus and our state champion in the shot put with a throw of 12.98 meters. Once again, congratulations to everyone. I'm going to call your name out again because a lot of people here and then you can walk over to Ms. Flores and receive your certificate. Gemma Waters,
011Evelyn Lye, Isabella McDonald, Dylan Shulman, Lilliana Morris, Nicole Moros, Mason Ferch, Arush Attali, Omari Miller, Ryan Cruz, Jonas Jackson, Andre Horlenko, Ethan Chang, Arseny Ilyesh, Carmelo Ferro and Tyler Grober. Congratulations all. I apologize because of course I don't know how to do things in order. I should also point out that the eighth grade boys won the conference and the sectionals meet. So they are sectional champions and conference champions. So once again, congratulations. Does that conclude recognition for this evening? Did I take the words out of your mouth? I'm sorry. That does conclude the recognition portion of tonight's meeting. I didn't mean to steal your thunder. Congratulations again to all of our outstanding students and thank you to the families, coaches and staff who supported them along the way. Back to you Robin. Okay, that was
012awesome and I'm so happy to have the students back in the boardroom. Really makes a difference. I'm going to move on to announcements at this time. Anybody who does not want to stay for the rest of the meeting is more than welcome to exit quietly and have a good evening and happy winter break and happy holidays. Yeah, you're good. Please. Mr. Angle, you have to stay. I mean, we do have quorum, but please stay. Okay, so I'm going to move on to announcements. My only announcement is for everybody to wish Dr. Hannigan a happy early birthday that is coming up this weekend and he hates when I do that, but I'm going to do it anyway because he deserves to have a little recognition of his own. So happy birthday. We hope you enjoy. And
013this is a little something for you from the board to open later. Okay. 39 again. Okay. Would you settle for 49 again? Okay. I'm going to move on. Oh, does anybody else have any announcements? Yeah, I'm just asking if anybody else has an announcement. Yes. Okay. I'm going to move on to the president's report. Um, first I'm going to open it up to people to offer their summaries who attended triple I of what they learned, what they saw. Anybody want to begin? Well, shoot, why not? All right. So I, I attended a couple of sessions that I wanted to come back and tell you all about. Uh, the first was with the state board of education and it was on understanding school improvement process for board members. It was a nice refresher of a lot
014of things we're doing already. So maybe a little pat on the back for the board and the district for the things that we do, but did take some time to share with the folks in the room on resources, tools and practices that exist at the state level to guide a district through starting an improvement process. Um, a lot of attention was paid to the data, uh, that you should be collecting constantly and a reminder to not just wait until you need to improve to follow the process. It will help improve a well-performing district. I then spent some time with Dr. Hannigan in a session titled what your superintendent wants to tell you, but can't, um, he has an agent, by the way, really charismatic guy. Um, but reminding us that superintendents are, believe it or
015not, people. They like to be told when they're doing things well and when they're not doing so well so that they can address it and improve. Um, and a reminder that should you not like your superintendent, somebody else will. So care and feeding of your said superintendent is very important. Um, and then I did attend the delegate assembly on behalf of the board. Uh, we did pass everything that had been discussed prior to the, uh, convention. Um, there was a bit more debate than you might expect on some of these items, but still, um, they all passed as expected. We have a new IASB president and vice president. The biggest difference there is that instead of it being two one-year terms, it's now one two-year term. So we have, uh, that that won't have to
016be go up next year. Um, the IASB folks what are, we're very happy to also embark on their first ever, um, survey to the whole to get ideas of where they want the group to go. Um, and if there are additional details you guys want to know about, I've got the annual report and such I can share, but things are fine financially and the like. So that about sums it up. Thank you so much and thanks again for being our delegate. They gave me a pin. I know. Add it to your collection. Um, anybody else have a summary they would like to share? Um, I can go. Uh, so I sat in a few different sessions. Two of them were surrounding AI, um, and taking some different, taking some different perspectives. So, um, one was
017about teachers leveraging it within the classroom. Um, as far as creating ways to automate, um, common practices or repetitive practices that they do. Um, another one was how it can be integrated into the classroom. So something that was really cool is taking curriculum and through AI, it'll just turn it into a podcast, right? Maybe not necessarily always applicable to our students. Um, but I'd say some key takeaways though, is that though I am not just so we're clear endorsing the use of students using AI to write papers or even do their research, um, or for teachers to be sharing any kind of student information through that platform, just so we're clear. But we should still be focusing or thinking about how we want to educate our teachers and our students because quite frankly, AI is
018here to stay. So how do we then harness its power for good? Um, the second session I sat on was, uh, about creating, um, engaged community engagement. Um, so two big takeaways from that one is career planning can happen even when the kids are younger, meaning, you know, a way to engage your community is seeing if there are local businesses that kids can take field trips to, uh, reaching out to your parent network and seeing who wants to come and speak to these kids about the career path that they took, um, you know, in that, uh, you know, make sure that we are representing all kids through all these walks of life just so that way they can start thinking about it earlier on. And, uh, another one was that there are a lot of
019great ideas and though we don't want to prohibit any kind of feedback or, you know, being that we truly do appreciate and embrace community engagement, however, uh, it is also just a reminder, something that I know we already practice is not just to have a knee-jerk reaction to all feedback that, you know, make sure that everything that we do and continue to focus our energy on really ladders up to our overall mission. Thank you. Um, anybody else have a summary? Oh, oh, we can't, sorry, we can't shut the door. Open meetings act. Um, okay. Oh, sorry. I'd actually love to share. I went to a couple of sessions. Um, one of the ones I went to was related to recruiting, hiring, and retaining diverse leadership. It was, it was really fascinating. Uh, one of the
020things I took away though, it was really, it was about the leadership team within the district, but it really also talked about how we need to be focusing a lot on ensuring that we are promoting ourselves as much as an employer, as we are, um, you know, a great place for students to learn and families to move to. And it talked a lot about making sure that our websites are representative of the students that we have, um, making sure that the folks who are working in the schools in some way reflect the demographic of the students. Um, it was, it was a really interesting, uh, round table. And then the other one I went to was more efficient superintendent evaluations. They showed a couple of different software tools. Uh, it, it was a little bit
021leaning towards one of the software tools. It was clearly a little bit of a sales pitch, but it was, it was an interesting, it was interesting conversation. Uh, and really it looked at a couple of different ways to do the superintendent evaluations. Um, I think it's, it's always worth looking at how we do things, making sure that we're focusing on the right things and making sure that we're making the tools work for all of us. So it was, I had a really great first triple I conference. Great. Thank you so much. That was it right for who attended? Okay. Thank you all. Um, for the rest of my president's report, one I'm going to save because I have a feeling Joel will mention an upcoming Ed Redd event when he, oh, okay. I'm really trying
022not to steal anybody's thunder here. Uh, there is an upcoming Ed Redd dinner, correct Pete? January 26th. Um, I believe five o'clock start. So you can let Jessica know if you want to attend that. Um, and then I sit on the D one 28, what was formerly known as the mental health committee. Um, it has morphed into what is now considered the Green Oaks Liberty ville Vernon Hills networking community, uh, committee still largely focused a lot on mental health and the resources that are available in the area. Um, this was a juicy meeting. I'm going to kind of just hit some highlights here. One I'm going to say for January, because it's really not appropriate for, um, young children to hear some of this, but, um, one, uh, one interesting resource that I was previously
023unaware of is, um, kids rank. It is help for the children of military families to address their unique social emotional concerns. Um, that is currently being facilitated by a practice right here in Libertyville. So can definitely pass along more information if people need it. Um, there is also a cooler closet in Vernon Hills high school that is sort of like our pantry. They need donations, but they are really requesting that if people donate things like clothing, that they provide new items. Um, people even in need really deserve to have fresh things that are not always hand me downs. And, um, the other two interesting things were, there is a new facility in Libertyville called Caravelle. Um, it's specifically aimed at children from 12 months until school age. So approximately five or six years old. Um,
024it's services to help autistic students better integrate into the public school system when they start kindergarten. Um, so that's pretty exciting. And the keynote speaker that day was from Illinois doc assist, which is a provider to provider resource. So what Illinois doc assist would do would be like if our school psychologists or coast social workers, um, wanted to get some help on how to better screen or how to better, um, treat or make a behavior plan or something like that, they can contact this resource. They'll work with them. Um, you can sign up for their newsletter on their website. They can consult around other therapeutic interventions. So they don't need any private health information. So there's actually no requirement to get approval from anybody's family because they're not supposed to be using the student's name
025or identifying information. It's really just, Hey, I have this case. Here's some of the description and they will hook you up with help. Um, the, the website is illinoisdocassist.uic.edu slash registration. Um, but I can definitely put that all in writing and that is about it for me and happy holidays. And I hope everybody has a great winter break. Um, I'm going to move on to the ed red report, Mr. Finfer. Just a brief comment on the June 26th dinner. If you're at all interested, sign up quickly. It'll sell out. It just, it has the last couple of years. Thank you. I also wanted to mention, and it's very difficult to do these reports and not be cynical. One of the hot bills on the floor is Senate bill 1873. It's a cell phone ban and
026it's going to pass because the governor's in favor of it. And it's flawed. Okay. Policies outline reasonable consequences, but you, you can't suspend or expel. So there's no consequences. And if you take a look at, at the last bullet point there, provides liability protection for school staff, acting good and good faith. I have no idea what that means. So what you're going to have is a new bill entitled cell phone ban that will be impossible to enforce and impossible to please. And this is not a typical for the legislature. And actually a bill like this is the reason that an organization like ed red exists to, to just say, okay, can we be reasonable here? And instead of having somebody who's a legislator, not an educator say, this would be a good idea. The goal
027is to try and inject some sensibility, some reasonability in the process. That said, it'll never happen. It's going to pass but that's just me. This is a great bill. It's a great exercise in civics as it is, not civics as we, as we learn it. Yeah. I personally don't love loss of local control over any of that stuff, but, okay. I'm going to move on to the seat. All report, Mr. Engel, is there a seat all report? Yes. Our last executive board meeting was November 13th. The last governing board meeting was December 3rd. Really two, two main topics. So the first one was the governing board approved the executive board's recommendation to employ Dr. Jennifer Thomas as the new superintendent of CDAL. That will be effective July 1st, 2026. And then the second item on
028October 23rd, 2025, the CDAL executive board unanimously agreed with the advisory and steering committee's recommendation that beginning in the 2026, 2027 school year, the direct and indirect tuition costs of CDAL programs will be paid by the districts based on actual usage, reflecting the number of students in each program. And the administrative costs of the tuition bill will be paid using the following formula, district EAV 25%, district enrollment 25% and ADE 25%. Draft numbers are projected to be shared in April and June. And the governing board approved that recommendation to move forward with that new tuition model. So that will be going into effect. The next executive board meeting is December 18th. And the next governing board meeting, it will be March 4th. Thank you. I have a question and I'm not sure if you know
029the answer. Since tuition bills fluctuate based upon enrollment under this model, but enrollment fluctuates throughout the school year, how does that keep getting worked out in a way that's going to sustain them? So I might defer a little bit to Pete and Alicia maybe on this, but I don't know if that's going to be taken into consideration with those at all with those draft projections in April and June, or if that's something more real time. A couple of things. So the first thing is tuition based. So we do pay a flat tuition rate based on the number of students we have in the program and they bill us monthly, much like a private therapeutic day school would do. What the average daily attendance will focus into is the administrative costs. And so that will be
030that 25, 30, 30%. And my understanding is it will be our average daily attendance over the course of quarters. It shouldn't fluctuate very much. We don't have a very mobile population. Gotcha. Okay. Thanks. Thanks, Alicia. Is there a site and facilities report tonight? There sure is. We met on December 8th and we had a bunch of topics to cover. Mr. Labay has been working with ComEd on an energy review. They've worked through the North Campus already. They'll work through the South Campus next. The biggest takeaway is that all of the work that we've been doing and his team has been doing with the BAS and all of the energy efficiency work has been worthwhile. They had very little feedback for us. Really all of the things they asked for or gave recommendations on were really
031minor and would cause impact to comfort and things that we needed to keep. They will be moving to the South Campuses next. Construction process for Middle South Library and office area is in the bid process. We're looking to have bids completed on January 14th and we want them to review on January 15th. I think the next topic we're going to talk about later in the meeting, we're going to talk about the copier replacement process. Let's see. Oh, we got a new head chef with Quest. That was really exciting. So we now have a new permanent head chef, Chef Anita. We're really excited to have her on board. Finally, we have had some follow-up conversations with Lakeside regarding the bus routes over the last month. We are still struggling a little bit with some of the
032iPad deployment. We've had some follow-up issues. We want to have an in-person conversation with Lakeside next month. I'd like to talk about where we're at with some of the improvements we were looking for. We have increased our spend on the aids again from last month. So we are continuing to have aids on the buses because we're continuing to have some behavior issues that need to be managed. Okay. Thank you so much. Ms. Clifford, is there a wellness committee report? There is not. We will be meeting again January 27th here in this room from 3 to 4 30. So open to the public. Okay. Thank you. Back to you. Is there a key to 73 foundation report? Yeah. So we continue to be in full swing. The foundation did agree on donating money to maintain Eagle
033Net, which is the hotspot given to our students who do not have access to internet. We are also looking to fund scholarships as we look forward to Hawthorne summer programs. Just a reminder, this foundation does exist to support our school district students and families. So I do want to urge any community members who do want to help or volunteer, maybe they want to donate financially or even just their time to visit us at key to 73.org and contact us and still lots of opportunities to contribute as we look forward to our golf outing on June 5th. Always looking for sponsors, volunteers, and people willing to gift any kind of local business. I don't know what trips or anything along those lines. So just know we would be open to really any types of donations. Okay.
034Thank you. Next, I'm going to turn it over to our Assistant Superintendent of Finance and Business Operations Ms. Jennifer Aiken to discuss the copier refresh. Good evening. The business office has one item to discuss for board consideration this evening. The district's current fleet of multifunctional copiers was purchased and installed in November 2021 under a three-year maintenance agreement. With that agreement now expired and the equipment requiring increased service, the business office initiated a formal request for proposal or RFP to identify a long-term copier solution. As part of that RFP, the district established a standardized copier deployment model to promote consistency, operational efficiency, and equitable access across schools. The model allocates three copiers to each elementary school and four copiers to each middle school. This approach provided vendors a common set of requirements and allowed the district
035to more effectively evaluate proposals based on comparable pricing, service levels, and overall value. The RFP was widely distributed to encourage participation. While three vendors initially expressed interest during the inquiry phase, seven vendors ultimately submitted formal proposals for evaluation. A committee of seven district staff members conducted a structured evaluation of the proposals with established criteria including cost, functionality, service provisions, and overall value to the district. In accordance with the RFP process, the award determination was not solely based on the lowest cost proposal but rather a comprehensive assessment of overall value. This assessment included the summary scoring results, alignment with district 73 operational and instructional requirements, service and support capabilities, total cost of ownership, and input from relevant district stakeholders. Based on this holistic evaluation and the criteria outlined in the RFP, the proposal submitted by IMPACT
036was determined to represent the best overall value to the district. At this time, the business office is seeking board consideration to enter into a three-year copier lease agreement with a four-year maintenance agreement with IMPACT. Does the board have any questions about the proposal? I don't, but does anybody else? I just have a general question. Within that contract, is it them who would be installing these into our network? Yes, they would install them and maintain them. Okay, and then would our IT then work with them to ensure safety with firewalls and anything else that could be potentially? So that is the nice thing with IMPACT because they are our managed service provider for our network and our cyber security. That was one of the drivers that ultimately led us to IMPACT. In review of the materials,
037I didn't see a financial incremental cost comparison to the last time we went to bid or what our ongoing costs outside have been. Was that completed? Are you talking about the maintenance agreement or the equipment itself? We know how much it's going to cost going forward. Was that compared to what we currently have either budgeted or had done three years ago or when the previous lease was done? Some type of comparison about what the change is. So we did not lease the equipment last time. We purchased it outright and it was $200,000 for 38 machines. When we did an inventory, we actually have 41 machines and I don't have a good reason why we have more machines than what we originally purchased in 2021. As far as the maintenance fees go, right now we're paying
038about $8,000 a month. We are not paying exactly what the original service maintenance was. It was supposed to be three cents a copy, but over time it has incrementally gone up and then when we got outside of that service agreement, it skyrocketed. Now the machines are failing. So the costs, the maintenance costs are about $8,000 a month. What IMPACT is suggesting, they had the lowest maintenance costs. I believe it was $4,200 a month in maintenance cost. So that's half of what we're paying right now. We decided to go with the lease just because like we do our MacBook Airs and our iPads. We won't own them, but if they break they're under warranty and it just makes it easier for us to swap that out and get a new machine. The warranty on the machines
039is also three years, which helps. We did the maintenance agreement for four to give us a little flexibility. If we do own them after three and they're working well and we want to do one more year maintenance, we can. It gives us flexibility. Okay and I apologize, the link to the solution didn't work. I had to request access, so I had delayed review to not be able to prep you in advance. So I'll probably just have follow-up questions on the financials once I can fully digest the materials. I apologize for that. Next time we'll make sure the PDF. You're not the internet. Don't apologize. Then I can better articulate me trying to understand the financial implications of where we stand today on ongoing maintenance and cost compared to what we're investing in the future and
040how we can budget that and make sure in consideration we have transparency in that for anybody who might be interested. Thank you. Anybody else? Okay, thank you. I'm going to now turn it over to our guest superintendent Michael Mackie for the superintendent's report this evening. Michael? Good evening. Today, Grace and I had the opportunity to be superintendents for the day with Dr. Hannigan. As superintendents for the day, we walked around the schools and visited classrooms looking for good behavior. After that, we went to lunch. Dr. Hannigan got a bacon pizza. I got chicken tenders and lemonade and garlic bread and my sister got a cheese pizza. We learned that being a superintendent means you need to have strong legs because you walk a lot. We walked over 10,000 steps. We also learned that when you
041visit schools as a superintendent, you look for good behavior and how students are doing. We also learned that superintendents get to see secret rooms that students don't get to see and catch students in the secret room. My favorite part of the day was yelling at Dr. Hannigan through the intercom at south or middle north and when we said, Dr. Hannigan, please report to the office immediately, everybody in the cafeteria went, ooh. If I were superintendent, one rule I would make is pajama day every day. Back to you, President Klick. Thank you so much. Oh yeah, Mr. Frederichens said he wanted to raise one million dollars. I don't believe that's in budget at this time. It'll come with your unicorn. Okay. Thank you so much. Okay, Grace's turn. Me and Michael did it because he was
042like, we lost him while Michael did it. It's mostly his fault. Thank you. Me and Michael got a badge to open all the doors by ourselves. That's awesome. I'm glad you guys had a good day and I'm thank you for the very informative and entertaining superintendent's report. That was awesome. All right. We're going to excuse Michael and Grace now. Enjoy your winter breaks. Sure. One for the road. We're not going to share. All right. Awesome buddy now. All right. Okay. I am going to move on to the consent agenda. Tonight's consent agenda consists of board meeting minutes from November 13th, 2025, the expenditure report from December 17th, 2025, the Amazon expense report from December 17th, 2025, the mastercard report of October 21st, 2025, the treasurer's report of October 2025, disposal of surplus property, and the
043personnel report consisting of four new hires, three resignations, and eight leaves of absence. Does anybody need anything taken out to be voted on separately? Okay. And can I get a motion to approve the consent agenda items as presented? So moved. Second. Motion by Michael, seconded by Stephanie. Can I get a roll call vote, please? George Pivot. Aye. Carl Borchers. Aye. Stephanie Peters. Aye. Michael Engel. Aye. Joel Finfer. Aye. Julie Clifford. Aye. Robin Clique. Aye. Motion passes seven ayes, zero nays. I'm going to turn it over to Dr. Hannigan to review the 2026-2027 school calendar. Thank you, Robin. As I shared during our last board meeting, the calendar committee met to create the 26-27 school year calendar, setting 174 student attendance days, two parent-teacher conferences, and four institute days. The key dates include a staff start
044on August 17th with students starting on August 20th, and a tentative last day of May 28th, or June 7th for emergency days. So all of our staff need to make sure they plan until June 7th before they take a vacation. Again, more details will be forthcoming regarding Lincoln's student-specific attendance calendar due to screening dates and institute days. And then lastly, I shared that in the event that the state legislature requires us to take off election day, we will simply swap Casimir Plasky day. So at this point in time, Casimir Plasky day is off, but in the spring, if we do have to take election day, we'll just swap those two days. Any questions? Thank you. All right, I'm going to turn it back over to Ms. Jennifer Aiken to review the action items on tonight's
045agenda related to the business department. Hello again. The first item we have for board approval this evening is the student fees for 2026-2027. As discussed in November, Hawthorne utilizes four categories of student fees to help streamline costs for families. Those would be registration fees, optional fees, meal fees, and technology fees. These fee structures help offset program expenses not covered by the general operating budget and ensure equitable access to a broad range of student services and experiences. The proposed fee adjustments aim to maintain an equitable, transparent, and sustainable fee model while supporting responsible resource management and the continuation of high quality programs across the district. The business office requests board approval of the 2026-2027 student fees as outlined in detail in the memo included with the board docs. Are there any questions about the student fees
046for 2026-2027? Okay. The second item we have this evening is the summer school fees for 2026. At the November meeting, we reviewed proposed updates to our summer programs including a condensed three-week schedule and corresponding fee adjustments. Since that time, the summer leadership team has finalized the schedule and confirmed that both band camp and volleyball camp will remain a two-week program, separately not together. Accordingly, the business office recommends setting the participation fee for each program at $259, which is the consistent pricing for the comparable two-week offering in 2025. Summer learning programs provide important opportunities for student growth and enrichment beyond the regular school year to support the continued quality and accessibility of these programs. The business office seeks board approval of the 2026 summer fees as detailed in the revised memo included in the board documents.
047Are there any questions about summer fees? Thank you. Okay, that said, can I get a motion to approve the 2026-2027 school calendar? So moved. Second. Motion by George, seconded by Michael. Can I get a roll call vote, please? Carl Borchers. Aye. Michael Angle. Aye. Joel Finfer. Aye. George Pivot. Aye. Stephanie Peters. Aye. Julie Clifford. Aye. Robin Clique. Aye. Motion passes, seven ayes, zero nays. Thank you to everybody who worked on that calendar. I'm sure people will be glad to get it before winter break this year, so that's good. Can I get a motion to approve the 2026-2027 student fees? So moved. Second. Motion by Stephanie, seconded by George. Can I get a roll call vote, please? Michael Angle. Aye. Joel Finfer. Aye. Carl Borchers. Aye. Julie Clifford. Aye. George Pivot. Aye. Stephanie Peters. Aye. Robin
048Clique. Aye. Motion passes, seven ayes, zero nays. Can I get a motion to approve the 2026 summer school fees? So moved. Second. Motion by Carl, seconded by George. Can I get a roll call vote, please? Stephanie Peters. Aye. Joel Finfer. Aye. Michael Angle. Aye. Julie Clifford. Aye. George Pivot. Aye. Carl Borchers. Aye. Robin Clique. Aye. Motion passes, seven ayes, zero nays. At this point, I'm going to turn it back over to Dr. Hannigan. Thanks. We've received four FOIA requests since our last Board of Education meeting, which has been identified in section 8.2 of the board agenda. Thank you. Are there any topics the board would like to discuss at a future meeting? I have one I'd like to propose. Going back to IIII and AI, just would like to hear more about how our schools
049plan to, again, educate and create guardrails for our teachers and students on the use around AI. Is there a consensus to have the administrators work on that? Putting that together? Yes. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. I mean, realistically, that would take time, I assume. That's not going to be a January thing. Okay. What if they ask AI to do it? I'm going to run it through a scanner and see. That's funny. Okay. I have a future topic as well. I'd like to get an overview on the activities we offer across our elementary schools across the district to get a sense of the process for how those activities are determined, how they're staffed, and kind of compare that across the buildings to look at equity and opportunity across all of our buildings for elementary students. Perhaps that's embedded
050into it, so we can dive into that, but just getting an overview of the activities that are offered in the different elementary schools. So this would just be like an FYI, right? An overview on, yes, what's offered, what's the process, how's it determined when there's enough critical mass to actually hold a program, if there's considerations to make that a program that's offered across all the elementary schools. Okay. I'm just saying that because contractually, there's other stuff in the schedule. Then we can strike it out if it's going to cross into the contract threshold and we're just trying to get a better understanding. I just want to make sure that we're not. Yeah. Yeah. Extracurriculars, yeah. Okay. Is there a consensus to have Pete work on that? Yes. Okay. All right. I assume that's also not
051a January presentation. And that's fine. Okay. So that's February usually. Okay. Gotcha. Okay. Anybody else have a topic for a future meeting? Okay. With no further business, can I get a motion to adjourn? So moved. Second. Motion by Michael, seconded by Carl. All in favor? Aye. Any opposed? All right. We are adjourned at 7.51 p.m. Thank you. Happy holidays.