001I call the October 9th, 2025 regular meeting of the Board of Education to order. Kate, will you please call the roll? Mr. Aitken? Here. Ms. Timm? Here. Mrs. Danniger? Here. Mr. Goldberg? Here. Mrs. Warren? Here. Ms. Maloney? Here. Dr. Pinter? Here. Please rise for the Pledge of Allegiance. I pledge allegiance. Good evening and welcome. I'd like to begin our meeting tonight with something that is personally very important to me and I know to this entire board. Our profound commitment to the social and emotional wellness of every learner in our district. The adults in District 95 strive every day to create schools where students don't feel just safe to learn but also safe to grow into the best versions of themselves and I am grateful for their efforts. A huge part of that growth is learning
002to navigate the world with courage and to make positive choices for their own well-being. Red Ribbon Week provides a dedicated time for our entire community, our educators, our families, and our leaders to stand together in support of that goal. It is a promise to our children that we are here to guide and support them as they commit to a healthy, vibrant future. So it is my honor to present our annual Red Ribbon Week Proclamation. Whereas children face decisions about using alcohol, tobacco, and other drugs as early as their elementary school years and whereas it is critical to reach youth with anti-drug messages and encourage them to choose healthy lifestyles and whereas parents, teachers, and community leaders play an important role in providing positive activities which give youth the opportunity to channel their creative energies in
003positive directions and whereas Community Unit School District 95 is taking a leadership and active role in the Red Ribbon Program and whereas the most precious resource we have and our future leaders are the children we see daily in our classrooms. Now therefore, the Board of Education of Community Unit School District 95 does hereby proclaim October 20th through 24th, 2025 as Red Ribbon Week in our school district and urges all citizens to do what they can to help our youth make a commitment to a drug-free life. Additionally, I want to take a moment to ask board members if they have any shout-outs that they would like to give before we begin our formal agenda items. As I know, we do not have any challenge coins to recognize this evening. Yes, President Maloney, thank you very much.
004As Dr. Gold shared in her letter to the community, we did have one of our schools, Sarah Adams, who met all the requirements for a blue ribbon and it's just a fantastic accomplishment. They were very, very hard over years to get there. It's an amazing accomplishment. Sadly enough, obviously the Department of Education chose a couple weeks before to not formally recognize them but I understand the district and others are working to look at ways where we could appropriately recognize the great work, the families, the stewards, the teachers, and the administrators at Sarah Adams and all the great work that they have accomplished to get such a high honor and to get such a high accomplishment. So congratulations to Sarah Adams. Thank you. Ditto. Anybody else? Go Cubs. 808. Kate, is there anyone signed up for
005public comment? There is not. All right, the next item on the agenda is the consent agenda. Dr. Gold? Thank you. I have the approval of the open and closed minutes from the Board of Education meetings held on September 11th and September 18th, 2025, the approval of payrolls, the approval of the 2025-26 new course level, approval of the personnel report, which includes employment of certified staff, employment of non-certified staff, and termination of non-certified staff, and then the extracurricular and co-curricular stipend assignments for the 2025-26 school year. May I have a motion to approve the consent agenda as prepared and presented by the administration? So moved. Second. Thank you, Doug, and thank you, Natasha. Are there any questions? All right, Kate, please call the roll. Mrs. Danniger? Yes. Mrs. Maloney? Yes. Mr. Aitken? Yes. Mrs. Warren? Yes.
006Dr. Pinter? Yes. Mrs. Tim? Yes. Mr. Goldberg? Yes. The next item on the agenda is the superintendent's report. Dr. Galtz? Thank you, Mrs. Maloney. Tonight, I have several items to share with the Board of Education. The first is, as always, we've included the FOIA information within the board agenda, so please note that. Additionally, no new communication to note. We did have two committees that met this evening, so we had the Teaching and Learning Committee meeting, and we also had our Facilities and Business Services meeting. We don't typically have two meetings in one night, however, we did this evening, and so as we think about the Teaching and Learning Committee, I do want to turn things over to Mrs. Stallion as she attended that meeting and I attended the Facilities and Business Services meeting. Thank you,
007Dr. Galtz. So very quickly, we had a very robust conversation about some important topics at teaching and learning, as we always do, so I want to thank the team, the curriculum instruction team, for designing and presenting all this information. We did talk about APA, again, hot topic. We're talking about that because it is fast approaching that time for which we will be talking to our families about automatic acceleration. So this year, we have done something a little bit different than we've done in the past, and as you know or may not remember, though, the state has changed some of the requirements over the years, and we started in one place, and then we changed to one place, and I think this year, the district decided that we would use our data and our students' achievement
008to determine what's best for our students, and I feel really good about where we landed. So this year, and very shortly, parents will be receiving those letters. Students who are in the top 50% of the meets category and all exceed students will be automatically placed in the next most rigorous course. All students who are in the bottom of the meets will receive outreach from someone in the district several different ways through communication and email, but also through communication with our counselors, encouraging our families to strongly consider accelerating their student in the next most rigorous course, as our data does indicate that our students who are proficient in math and in ELA do very well when they are engaged in those rigorous courses. So we're excited to implement this year. We will be monitoring all of
009that data once again, so we'll probably have several years of data as we watch these students who partake in these rigorous courses. We have the utmost faith in our students. We believe in our students, and our data indicates that our students are very successful when they take a risk and they enter into courses that are challenging and rigorous. So parents, be prepared. You're going to get some information and some outreach from us talking about opportunities for your students at the high school level. Step by step, we won't go over every one, but placement letters will be distributed in November, as well as taking opportunity at parent-teacher conferences to have those conversations with families. So we really were strategic about this, thinking about when do we have access to our families that we can have these
010conversations. From November 24th to December 12th, that will be in adjustment windows, so families can say, I want this for my student, I want that for my student. What choices do I want to make? What folks do I need to talk to that will help us make these decisions? December and January, counselors will be consulting with our families and our students about what the best path is for them individually. And then in January, we'll make those final course selections. We feel very good about this plan, and I think after three years, we land at some place where our students and our teachers feel very comfortable. Thank you. We also talked about AI. Lots of AI work happening this year, and I did appreciate some of the feedback that we got regarding what some of our
011colleagues across the state are doing, and that we continue to be leading in this area, not to say that there isn't more work to do. I do want to thank Ms. Finn and Ms. Syke for leading out this work, and I can tell you there's some really fabulous things happening. You can see up here the scope of the year. They have some robust opportunities to introduce some new tools to our students, one of which is Notebook LM, which we talked a little bit about, and one which is Gemini, which will be some great opportunities for our high school students and some secure AI platforms that will allow them more access to some tools. So we'll be doing some training on that. We'll be talking a lot about ethical use, academic integrity. We will be creating
012learning banks and lesson banks for our teachers, taking more data from our students and surveying them on where they are in their journey and what we can do to continue to support them, and then clearly at the end of the year, designing the next steps for what District 95 will do to support our students and staff with AI. Can I ask a question? So right now we have the students have access to school AI. Correct. And you're now going to allow access to Gemini as well? Gemini is a Google platform. It is secure, yes, and we will continue to have school AI, but school AI is a little bit more limited, a little bit more locked down, and the feedback we've heard from our teachers is that they would like us to consider some other
013platforms for high school students that give them a little bit more access to AI that they need for their work. So we will be introducing Gemini. I love that. Most of them are using it. Yeah, I love it. Thank you. Thank you. We talked a lot about the school report card. It's coming up soon. Right now everything is still encumbered. We can't share our data. Any data you do see up on these slides is made up data. It is not ours. We will be getting our designations. You can see up again, we talk about this every year. What does that mean? How are those designations decided? These two screenshots capture how those are determined. It is different from elementary and middle school to high school, and you can see just that subtle difference. You can
014see ninth grade on track is part of the high school designation as well as graduation rates. Growth is a big part of the elementary K-8. So we have our preliminary, but again it's encumbered. This is not necessarily where we will land at the end of the month, but so far we're looking pretty good. So we're excited for October 30th to come and for those designations and the rest of that school report card data to be finalized. We do have, there'll be a different look, and what I'm really excited about the look, and we'll share this with you when we bring you back the school report card memo and report, is that it's going to be a more robust site, and we're going to be able to go in and drill down a little bit more.
015So our community and our teachers will be able to use that site a little bit better. You're going to have proficiency. You're going to have achievement gaps like we always have, but there'll be ELA participation on all the assessments that we take. There'll be a little bit more ability for us to click and drill down into specific things. So we're excited about some of the changes that are coming, but mostly we're excited to have our data finalized so that we can share with the board and community all the wonderful things our teachers and students are doing. Finally, there was a day school general update, and Dr. McArdle provided that. So I'm going to turn it over to her so she can give a brief update on that work. Thank you. So we launched on the
01613th, the first day of school. We started with two students. We have already added another learner to that program. We're also continuing to monitor student needs throughout our system for other potential students that might be candidates. We are noting positive academic, social, emotional, as well as attendance outcomes thus far, and continuing to work individually for students who need more support. Of note, previously when we've done presentations on this program leading up to the launch, there were questions around coverage and ensuring that we were not utilizing other personnel resources in our shared space with the Young Adult Center. And so for the full board's reference, our summary of coverage needs to date are provided there. In some, we have not had to tap into any of our Young Adult Center staff for any of our coverage
017needs. Our biggest areas were actually in the areas of health office coverage and administrative, not on the teacher end. And so that was a brief overview of what was shared in the teaching and learning committee. Okay, before I move on, any questions, any further questions for the teaching and learning team? Okay. I also then had an opportunity to attend the Board of Education facilities and business service meeting. And essentially the first agenda item was the electric utility costs. We had just a brief conversation about reminding the Board of Education that we do have an increase that we are expecting, and this was based on some negotiated amounts previous. And so please note that those costs were planned. They start in January. However, we also talked about how that cost, the power cost, is fixed with
018the exception of the cost of delivery. And so we are anticipating another 20% increase as it relates to the cost of delivery. So please note that it is continuing to be substantial. Additionally, we had some conversation related to the long-range facilities plan and some recent adjustments. We are going to talk about that later in the agenda, and so I am not going to spend time right now discussing it. And both of our members of the Board, members of that team will be able to share some insights as you walk through those agenda items later. Additionally, I wanted to just take a moment to give some more information about some of our students. The Board is well aware of our awesome programming at our high school, and one of those programs is the Accelerator EDU program.
019So we have some teams that have been highlighted recently. So the first one is SheSafe team, and they were live on 98.3, the life in Round Lake, and super proud of them. You'll notice that Mrs. Dannegar has a picture of her son near that particular item because he's a part of SheSafe. And so congratulations, Mrs. Dannegar. They're doing an awesome job. And then you'll note that it was recorded. There's a podcast recording, and if the Board wants to, you can hear all about that and hear our students speak. There was another group that also was recently highlighted with the Infinity Group Business Seminar at Doubletree Hotel in Mundelein. I don't have the name of that group, but I will be getting that. They're working on getting that for me. And then additionally, members of the
020Ghost Tech team pitched their product at the Board of Directors Chamber meeting, which was held at the YMCA, and Mrs. Finn was there in my place this time because I had conflicting meetings scheduled for that day. So thank you to her for attending, but the team did an awesome job. There's a couple of pictures that she snapped for me as well. And Mr. Goldberg, I'm not sure if that's a team that you're working with. Yes, Ghost Tech is one of my teams. I thought maybe it was. An awesome group, yeah. They've got a great product, and I believe they're going to be very successful. Great. And then I wanted to give just some information. I do think that when staff members and administration are able to share the great things that are going on in
021District 95, it continues to brand us in the most positive way. And so I want you to know that across the state, different districts and educators and administrators are learning from District 95. So the first shout out goes to Ms. Eberly and Ms. Richardson from MSS. They presented on Writer's Week for Middle School Memories Made Through Literacy and Creativity. I know Mr. Dangler brags about them all the time and is really excited about the work that they're doing with our students on an annual basis, specifically related to this. But I also wanted to just highlight Ms. Richardson. She was able to attend the conference, not only, and I say that with the greatest amount of respect as an educator, but also as a published author. And so that's just a quick copy of her book.
022And so congratulations to both of them and thank you so much to their efforts to highlight our district and the work that they're doing with our students. And then Ms. Biesich and myself are presenting at Luda tomorrow in Naperville, and I'm excited to have that opportunity with Ms. Biesich. We'll be sharing our hiring practices, so hiring for success, and then leadership rounding, which the board is well aware of. So I'm excited to have that opportunity. And was there part of today learning more about AI? And then we also had an opportunity to learn from IFT and IEA leadership, so that was an exciting opportunity as well. And then just some important dates, reminding the Board of Education to please set aside October 17th if you are able. Remember that is our night to honor our
023community partners, first responders, as well as you as board members. So looking forward to that event. And then again, the joint annual conference. Please note at the next meeting, Kate and I are working on putting together some information for you as it relates to the resolutions that will be considered as well as one individual who's typically been Mrs. Maloney being able to represent you and cast that vote for you at the annual conference. And so that will be forthcoming. And that's all I have for this evening, Mrs. Maloney. Thank you. Thank you, Dr. Gault. The next item on the agenda is reports to the board. Are there any questions for Dr. McCardell on school day? Moving on, the next item is the long range facilities plan. Dr. Romano, please provide an overview of your report.
024And I suspect it's on. It's his AI. Yeah. Well, or at least his presentation is. Good evening, Madam President, board members, and Dr. Kelly Gault. Tonight, we present the updated long range facilities plan, reflecting a thorough review to ensure sustainable capital improvements for our district. Our team conducted an in-depth review of all long range facilities plan projects, focusing on total cost of ownership. We've extended project timelines while ensuring to avoid premature failures or costly repairs. A key change is the elimination of the low priority category. All projects are now designated high priority within the plan's data set with specific completion years, ensuring clarity in project timelines. We've also introduced a new category to track future projects, allowing flexibility if additional funding becomes available. This approach supports financially sustainable planning while prioritizing facility needs. To maximize
025efficiency, we've grouped projects by type when possible, such as roofing and flooring within the long range facilities plan timeline. This strategy enables economies of scale through competitive bid packaging, optimizing our resources. When looking at funding for projects, the issuance of debt service extension based bonds as anticipated additional funding is considered in 2029 at $6.5 million, 2034 at $7.5 million, and finally in 2039 at $8.5 million. Unscheduled but planned projects are captured within the plan data set in year 2040, totaling approximately $41 million. These projects will be distributed to specific years in the future. This structure ensures cost effective execution aligned with available funding. The long range facilities plan is primarily funded by an annual $3 million transfer from the operations and maintenance fund to the capital projects fund, supplemented by debt service extension based bonds.
026Additional sources of funding for capital projects include recapture tax levies, fund transfers, impact fees, and $500,000 in projected interest earnings for the 2026 fiscal year. We sincerely thank the board for your thoughtful attention to this significant update of the long range facilities plan. Madam President, I return the meeting to you. Do any board members have questions for Dr. Romano? You know, I just have a couple of comments. Dean, I want to thank you and Lyle. You guys have done a ton of work on this, and I really want to express my appreciation to you and your teams for I know the amount of effort that went into getting us to this point that we're at. I really think that we're finally at a point where we have a really good comprehensive look at our facilities
027needs going forward, at least from a maintenance standpoint. I think that's something that Eileen's been asking about for a long time, and I think we're in a really good spot. The two things that I think are worth pointing out are one of that, you know, 41-ish million dollars in the plan. About half of that is debt, half that's DCEB bonds, and it's important to realize for the board members that, you know, weren't around. DCEB didn't exist in our lingo until the referendum. We used DCEB, and it was actually brought to our attention by our bond authority, Elizabeth, that we could access these funds, and we used that as one of the three principal funding sources for the referendum, primary one being, you know, GO bonds that we issued in the tune of 77 million, the
028DCEB funding, and then of course fund balance. So the intent that the board at that time had was when the referendum projects were over, we would no longer have to access the DCEB bonds and obviously encumber our taxpayers by having to pay for those and their financing costs. So it's a conversation that the board needs to have about whether or not when we come due in a couple years to reissue and whether or not it's the right thing to do or not, but just as a little bit of look at history, at least the intent at the time was to not reissue those bonds. We would remove that burden from the taxpayer. So while this is a good plan, I've got some issues with putting all the work in the final year, and I think
029we can do some more work to smooth that out over time, but the conversation really needs to be about whether or not the board wants to continue to issue that additional debt to fund it. Again, it's an option the board has, but I just want to point out that that was not the original intent of issuing that debt to begin with, but once again, you guys have done a phenomenal job putting this together for us. I know Dean and I have had very lengthy conversations about the details and drilling into this, and I'm very confident the data that we have in front of us is very accurate, but I do think we just need to think about the funding sources we use for it and whether or not the DCEB is the right way to
030do that or not. So thank you again, both of you, for the work you put into this. Natasha? I just want to, as part of the committee, add on to what Doug said that I'm very grateful for this, and I think the community should be made aware that our facilities and our finance team has now created this extremely detailed plan that can be carried on past our board that really lays out how to maintain and the cost of that maintenance so that we don't run into a situation like Zerg did years ago where we had a building that ended up costing us so much money and in the end having to be leveled. We are ensuring that the future of our facilities will be maintained and funded. Thank you. And Lisa? I want to echo
031Doug's comments. Thank you, because I know we kept throwing more scenarios at you guys and appreciate you receiving them graciously and figuring it all out. I think this really does shed light on a different priority that I would argue this board has than perhaps was held by a board 20 plus years ago of really prioritizing maintenance and really wanting to do it thoughtfully and proactively thinking about it as opposed to reactively and to the conversation I think it becomes the different priorities that we have. We've already committed three million dollars every year in the operational budget to go towards this. What we're seeing is the reality is when you now have a 10, at least 10 plus building district, there's a lot of maintenance costs that go into that. And so we have to be
032looking at can it come out of operating funds? Is it possible? Because there's a lot of other demands on those operating educational funds to do four million or five million. But I think this sort of definitely shows us that the D sub is somewhat needed and it's going to be a priority question I think for future boards of where you put your money and how it comes. So I appreciate that the assumption you made is we would continue the way we're operating today. The reality is are we going to operate differently? Can we operate differently? And what I do love is you had the sources of income and there's probably five or six and you really can only predict two. So there's four other sources of income when they come in it helps make some
033of those decisions a little bit easier too. So thank you very much. I think this was incredibly eye-opening for everyone and it was very well put together. So I'm very glad we have this document. I think it's definitely helping the board in years to come. I'll come back to you. This is just a small minor, I don't know, as I was reading it I was just thinking so we're getting rid of low priority? Does that make sense? Do you think it makes sense? Yeah so here was the thought process on it. So Lyle and I had an opportunity to kind of dig in and you know this was a new process for us and we had identified like here are the high priorities, these are things we need to do and they've been scheduled and
034we know where they are and then we have these lower priority items which if we have the funds available we'll plan to do those but over the years that we've been doing this they're never being done and so ideally what was happening is that when we would bring the budget and we were taking a look at the long range facilities plan what we would see is that there were no low priority items for the budget year that we were presenting and presenting to the board for consideration and so we decided is you know what those low priorities just need to go into future years and they need to sit there and since we will on an annual basis as a district at least structurally we're going to review the long range facilities plan and say
035okay something need to move up because it's now a bigger priority and we'll just adjust it and so nothing was removed everything was just captured and then it was placed in a year that we felt was was was best and that other component of the total cost of ownership the longer that we go let's say without having to replace a roof the lower the total cost of ownership and so I or Lyle we went round and round and round about all right Lyle how far can we go and you tell me that it's safe for us to not have to do the project if you don't feel it's safe then we need to put it into that year up until that point and so we did that with all over 600 projects and and we
036went back and forth and then we tried to take and layer on top of that our anticipated available funds and yes we did utilize the DCEP funding as part of that analysis and so that's that's why we did that okay so there's so there still is the category of like high priority everything is a high priority so why have the cat I know this is dumb it seems like a dumb question but no it's not and and let me see if I can explain it in the back end of the database we have it listed as high priority as a category and so inside the database structure that's how we called it so that's why it's there and it's just for the database behind what runs it when you start to see this in the
037future you're going to say here are all the projects for us on the back end I probably should have there's just one category now okay yeah there's just one category like just this is the way my brain thinks okay so I'm like thinking I'm like all right this is like we have children and adults we're just going to call the children adults because it will eventually grow you know it makes no sense to me you're 100 for all adults by the way that's true but it makes sense to you and there's a reason why you did it so that's then then keep it but I was just trying to understand that okay and so one of the things that we also did which was articulated in the report was around the fact that there are
038some items in the future mostly those low priority items that if we have funding we've identified that we should look at those first yeah and so that was what we added when we removed that lower classification so okay all right thank you that was a great answer thank you Peter oh thanks again for the great work on this I know there are a couple of members and particularly Miss Maloney for for championing the need to make sure that our our maintenance be well founded and we look you know towards the future and making sure that that is maintained year after year so I know it took a lot of work to do this and a lot of work to keep it updated and revised from year to year so thank you very much for the
039work thank you very much thank you and I just want to say the combined effort between facilities and finance was immense and it's a a passion project and such a useful tool and I I take it back to my very first conversation my very first week on the board with the then superintendent and I very naively said how much does it cost to maintain our facilities and shocked to find out that there wasn't a good answer I just thought there would be a dollar amount and so that was the genesis of we need a long-range facilities plan and so I really am so grateful this is like it's it's a fabulous tool for us but what it really is is our gift to future boards and so thank you and the immense amount of work
040that you guys have put into it is the not even can't capture it and works that it's so much but so valuable so thank you so much for all of that all right there are no items for discussion without action so we move on from balance analysis right where did I miss it oh sorry all right the last report to the board is also from dr romano the fund balance analysis projections dr romano please provide an overview of your report good evening madam president board members and dr kelly gault tonight we present the 2025 fund balance analysis projection modeling to guide strategic capital investments while ensuring fiscal stability please reference the report found within the board packet for more detailed data this analysis provides a transparent view of the district's fiscal health aligned with board
041policy 4 colon 20 requiring a 50 percent to 75 fund balance across education operations and maintenance transportation and working cash funds based on unaudited 2024 to 2025 data adjusted for a 1.35 million dollar unrealized transportation fleet expense our current financial position is strong however a 1.79 million dollar spend down is needed to stay within the 75 policy limit which is planned through the LZHS second floor renovation this analysis built on the 2024 to 2025 treasurer's report and capital projects fund data support strategic investments like solar projects and facility upgrades while maintaining fiscal responsibility the long-range facilities plan is our top priority for fund balance allocation with a detailed review to minimize total cost of ownership key projects include in 2026 to 2027 the LZHS second floor renovation at six point five million dollars and the
042Isaac Fox and middle school south solar project at five million dollars in 2027 2027 to 2028 LZHS PAC and MSS theatrical lighting at two point zero million dollars and operational capital investments at six point six five million dollars and in 2028 to 2029 the LZHS solar and roofing project at five point seven million dollars assumptions include a balanced operating budget with no fund balance growth and exclude variable revenues like recapture levies impact fees or solar utility savings for conservative planning our 2026 to 2029 projections incorporate all long-range facilities plan projects solar incentives and capital investments maintaining compliance with the 50 to 75 fund balance policy funding includes an annual three million dollar transfer from operations and maintenance to the capital projects fund debt service extension base bonds of six point five million dollars in 2029
043seven point five million dollars in 2034 and eight point five million dollars in 2039 plus recapture levies interfund transfers impact fees and five hundred thousand dollars in projected interest for 2025 to 2026 this conservative approach prioritizes student environments operational efficiency and empower 95 sustainability goals we seek board approval to leverage these funds for critical capital improvements we thank the board for your thoughtful consideration of this analysis which ensures fiscal stability and supports strategic investments madam president i return the meeting to you thanks again dean all right are there any questions once again just a comment dean you i know you work tirelessly on this i know you you slept in your rv here working on this i know that for a fact so i i can't tell you i know i asked you for multiple
044permutations of this that do do some sensitivity analysis on parameters and i again i sincerely appreciate it i think you've done a great job you know providing us with some insight into possible outcomes it's impossible to completely predict the future this is a really good place to start and and again my my only comment about it is it assumes that future boards will issue the dsep funding which may or may not be true right that's for future boards to decide but i think it allows i think eileen said a few minutes ago or actually was lisa there's a good blueprint for future boards to look at to make determinations and you know things are going to change right where we can't predict the future with a high degree of certainty but i do think that
045you've given us very good insight into what the possible outcomes are so once again thank you i'd like to echo that again um you graciously received all of our requests to can you think about this what would happen if we did this so obviously you're an excel expert right now and created a great model that you can change those inputs easily which i truly appreciate because you are very responsive in getting those new scenarios back to us i appreciate that and i do appreciate also being conservative where you needed to be conservative so this really is something that we can feel comfortable making decisions based on which is really what we're asking you that we just want to get comfortable that when we vote we vote with the way that we feel is appropriate and
046we're not setting a future board up for failure so thank you very much any other comments peter any other comments you're a rock star uh-huh the um i just want to say for um absolutely you're a rock star i i mean beyond that just the um the fund balance definitely and it's more i mean i think everyone here knows that i'm just saying it for the the our viewing audience our vast viewing audience that our fund balance analysis drives decisions and the assumptions that we make on our fund balance are so vitally important and that may seem simple and it is not and a whole lot of work and consternation goes into accurate solid reliable assumptions and so um that's really where we are with how we decide what funds are available to us so
047thank you we should also say thank you to your staff because you've been pulled away to do these nice little special projects but the business of the district needs to continue so thank you to your staff for stepping up and i mean everything's been running smoothly we have not seen any pickups or anything because you have been totally engaged in fund balance analysis and all the scenarios as well as working with lial on the long-range finance planning our team is amazing and i'm very very lucky to work with all of them truly yes some are much better at the administrative components of what happens in the business office so thank you for that yeah she's got a really steep learning curve here it's like throw you in dean can we buy you a cot or
048something so thank you guys thank you um now there are no items for discussion without action so we move to the next agenda item discussion with action our item for discussion with action is the approval of the amended energy savings contracts for solar phase two three and four dr romano please provide provide updated information on these potential products good evening madam president board members and dr kelly gault tonight we present recommendations for phases two three and four of the district's solar energy initiatives under the guaranteed energy savings contract with performance services incorporated these solar projects at isaac fox elementary phase two middle school south phase three and lake zurich high school phase four are strategically selected based on balanced financial metrics operational efficiency and facility readiness aligning with our empower 95 sustainability goals for isaac
049fox total cost of 1.33 million dollars offsetting 91.7 percent of electricity usage with a break-even point of less than eight years for middle school south 3.65 million dollars cost 88.5 offset with a break-even point of under nine years for lzhs 3.89 million dollars for the solar array offsetting 26.6 usage with a break-even point of less than eight years additionally the lake zurich high school project includes the field house roof replacement the total estimated investment is approximately 10.69 million dollars funding provided by a com ed rebate solar renewable energy credits and inflation reduction acts significant incentives provides for strong financial reasoning to engage in these sustainability projects to secure the largest of the incentives we must complete and pay for over five percent of project costs such as design engineering and procurement by december 31st 2025
050this builds on the success of the may whitney pilot which secured 633 thousand dollars in incentives exceeding projections and addresses the upcoming 22 percent increase in electricity capacity costs starting june 2026 we recommend a two-staged approach to optimize costs align with roof warranties and maintain flexibility while securing ira incentives the first set of projects are recommended to commence in the summer of 2026 and includes isaac fox and middle school south leveraging their existing roof warranties to maximize solar system lifespan and returns financial exposure includes an immediate safe harbor commitment at six percent or roughly three hundred thousand dollars rising to ten percent or nearly five hundred thousand dollars by february 2026 after february 2026 termination costs increase exponentially based on completed work the second project is set for summer 2028 for lake zurich high school
051with energization by december 2029 exposure starts at seven point five percent or four hundred thirty thousand dollars immediately then ten percent or roughly five hundred seventy thousand dollars by february 2028 with similar escalating termination costs thereafter the contract includes a termination for convenience clause which states that with 30 days notice psi is paid only for work performed including overhead and profit based on extensive analysis with psi and baker tilley including net present value profitability index and multi-year fund balance projections layered atop the fully updated long-range facilities plan these projects ensure energy saving offsets while adhering to our fund balance policy the administration recommends approval of the following motions first to approve installation contracts for phases two and three of school energy conservation and savings measures under a guaranteed energy savings contract with performance services inc
052authorizing the installation of solar energy systems at isaac fox elementary school phase two and middle school south phase three as presented second to approve installation contract for phase four of school energy conservation and savings measures under a guaranteed energy savings contract with performance services inc authorizing the installation of solar energy systems and related work at lake zurich high school as presented we sincerely thank the board for your thoughtful consideration of this initiative which positions the district for significant long-term energy savings and sustainability we acknowledge our partners at baker tilley who have provided ongoing advisement and the team at performance services who are prepared to bring these projects to life for our district performance services is here this evening and available to address any questions madam president i return the meeting to you thank you dr
053romano we need to put a motion on the table to discuss these items may i get a motion and a second to approve the following two motions and when we vote we will vote on them separately to approve the installation contracts for phases two and three of school energy conservation and savings measures under a guaranteed energy savings contract with performance services inc authorizing the installation of solar energy systems at isaac fox elementary school phase two and middle school south phase three as prevent as presented and to approve approve installation contract for phase four of school energy conservation and saving measures under a guaranteed energy savings contract with performance services inc authorizing the installation of solar energy systems and related work at lake zurich high school as presented may i have that motion so second thank
054you peter and thank you alicia and i'm going to go around the horn because i know there's conversation going to be had on this i'm going to start with natasha i don't have too much conversation because i feel like we have talked about solar for about 100 years at this point i will say that knowing what energy costs will be happening in the future and all the projections from pretty much every source that i have talked to it's only going to be going up the roof that'll be a big factor in my decision making because i want to make sure that we set up our future board and our community with the ability to save money as far as it comes to energy costs i know we personally we all understand that because we all
055get that comment bill so i don't and as a district we're already seeing a 50 increase in the next well the next four years from what we had been paying in the past and i can only imagine what that increase is going to be when that contract ends in four years so i'm excited that we are leaning forward into the future and making a value statement here along with being fiscally responsible and dean once again i want to thank you because you really made sure that we understood the financial choice we were making with this and pretty much played out every single scenario that we could think of so that we would make a responsibly financial choice so thank you again for continuously asking our questions i'll also do a shout out to psi for
056coming to about 100 board meetings as well and being gracious and answering all our questions as well thank you peter yes and thanks again to dean and the team too as i shared at the last time we discussed this topic a couple minutes ago the projects contemplated here today one is intended to take advantage of the window for these federal funds we don't know when we'll see this again we really don't and and i think we don't even know whether we'll ever see it again so we have to decide now this barely survived on the last bill this year under the current legislation federal legislature and and i spent quite a lot of time reading about the history and about the bill itself so i i think this is a moment for us to act
057now second we are making some reasonable investments for the future i want to stress these investments are not like others we get our money back i said that the last time i'll say it again it's not like going out and taking our money and going on a vacation really it's really not it's the the only the way i compare it is trying to decide whether we put our money in the bank maybe and you know and get like one percent or putting in a cd and get four percent or put it in someplace else so it's an investment choice it's not exactly like buying a depreciable asset or like taking the money and going out on a vacation so i wanted that to be clear when we talk about spending money this is not like
058spending other money um so so i think you know as as my colleague has shared with ai data center energy use it is not improbable that our returns will be even greater than model here we i would not be surprised if electricity cost goes up higher we know with may whitney our assumptions were conservative and we got more in rebates than we anticipated and then energy costs already 20 higher as as we just shared earlier in the meeting other school districts are taking advantage of this window that closes very soon and um we should we should take advantage of it now we know we have other priorities because i know that's in the mind of a lot of people and i just want to say again we get our money back i've said it 10
059times this is not the same and we want to be good financial stewards because of our financial resources are limited but we also want to be good stewards of the earth as well and the environment we will have to pursue these projects in good faith and that's important but you know of course if circumstances drastically change or contract allow us some flexibility on some of these projects so we're not locked in forever on this so we have some flexibility we know that there are some unknowns in the future and you know as reasonable stewards of taxpayers dollars when those if if we come across those times that we have to make those tough decisions i'll tell you i'll not hesitate to make them because this is if they're the right thing to do we will
060but right now i think we should um take the opportunity finally since being on this board really for five years a little more than five years the closest vote i could recall was deciding on may witness solar project 90 percent or more of the votes here we go seven zero so i mean the fact of the matter is these are not easy decisions but i'm glad i'm here i'm here today for a reason and i'm here today to vote on these projects for current stakeholders for students and for and for future generations so i support the administration proposals for phase two three and four now having said that i have a couple questions um first of all why did you have the safe harbor for six percent instead of the five percent i wanted to
061provide a conservatively high number to ensure that we're in a good place one of the things that will happen is that and if you remember the timeline that was presented that february time frame of 26 what will happen between now if the board chooses to move forward with the isaac fox and middle school south project with the timeline presented we will have psi working with their structural engineers and all of the other components of getting a good final bid out price structure and so the reason that we had put that dollar value in is i if because if you remember with the may whitney project we thought that we wouldn't need to attach the solar panels to the roof but in the end because of structural we couldn't put as much weight like just weights
062on it and so there was an additional cost and what i didn't want to do was be overly conservative on the low side so i went a little bit above that five percent to ensure that we would be in a good position right and that was the reason that i don't appreciate that and you know similarly too for the may whitney project since we got a little bit more a bit since the cost if the cost of electricity goes up higher so the assumptions are in fact you know we'll get our money back i forgot what we said nine years or somewhere in that regard uh it's it's less than eight years for the high school and nine years for the middle school so right i was thinking about may whitney oh um i think
063it was it was around 95 if my yeah so so if the cost of energy goes up and we get more rebate so that number goes down right same for those other projects thank you ah and and of course yes you showed the number you showed the number that we had um like next year and the year after depending upon how things turn out how much essentially what's a our song course are yes if if if if circumstances change in the future again we're we have to be pursuing this in good faith and because you know and we're conscious of the regulation that require continuity under the federal regs but you know if circumstances change next year we do have the option to um make different decisions on project um whatever the i think you
064have them two and three and four right yes uh well two and three are anticipated to move forward uh yes as they're listed that february date of 26 is the first component anything after that we're really moving at that point they've gone out to bid starting to buy the equipment and so that if you do something after that date it does go up exponentially the same thing holds true though once we've gone through that first safe harbor for the high school project which has to happen by december and you saw that seven and a half percent because again now we're projecting what labor costs might be out into the summer of 28 so i wanted again be conservative on that what'll happen is that that dollar value that's there will remain there through i believe
065it's august of 27 and then they'll start to ramp up to be prepared and then that again that february date in 28 will be that last moment where it gets up to about 10 percent of the cost of that project and then it goes up exponentially from there so basically at a high level we have certain points along the way if circumstances come up and i see all our colleagues are shaking their hands you're contracted there and then they know that you know things might happen but we have some gets along the way where we could make some choices so the decision today is to take advantage of the opportunity as i think we should move forward and do it boldly thank you doug thank you eileen come on up so first of all um
066dean once again thank you for being patient with us as we work through all the various parameters and i really appreciate the fact and and particularly to psi for you know i was i was kind of a stickler about having this termination for convenience cause in our contract that to me was a must have and i really appreciate the fact that psi you guys put that in i'm sure that wasn't your first choice but i really appreciate the fact that the board has now some decision gates that we can make that allow us to you know essentially terminate if it looks like things are going south so thank you so much for that and thank you for for hanging in there with us as we we work through this ourselves i think for me anyway
067last time or when this first came to us it didn't feel fully baked we just there was parameters that i didn't feel comfortable with that didn't have the information to make an informed decision i think we have that information now and again i appreciate everybody's patience on that particularly again to psi for hanging in there with us one question i had and i asked this to dean earlier he didn't have an answer perhaps you do you know we talked about in one of our meetings the need especially with the scope of solar that we're talking about to have critical spares on hand inverters switch gear you know whatever you guys deem is net is that currently anywhere in the contract to have those critical we always provide attic stock so you have extra panels and
068and and components for the may whitney project and we would do the same thing when we have to order panels they come on pallets so let's say we need 500 panels however the math works we end up having to order always a little extra anyways like buying tile or carpeting for your house right but the the issue is we ran into it may whitney was we had some inverter failures and we didn't have you know equipment in hand and we had to wait a bit are do you anticipate that you'll be buying extra inverters to have those on hand as well and not typically because can we absolutely i think we should consider a critical critical spares kit just because you know if we lose i'm making numbers up we lose 30 days of downtime
069waiting for a component that's 30 days of lost effectively revenue right from the system so in it really we'd look to you folks to tell us what those critical spares should be yeah but i'm guessing there's besides the panels which we apparently have there's probably inverters and and can you can you say the systems that are contemplated to be installed across the district for the new buildings are they going to share componentry like share the same panel share the same inverters etc okay that's good because we can have a common pool of spares then to address failures um so real quick to answer your first point we're a partner and i've said this a few times and yes i appreciate you guys and continue letting me come back um we were always willing and always
070will do what's best for the district so letting you out of a contract that you might be worried about it was never about forcing this down your throat we think it's a great opportunity for the district but i just want to make sure i stress that it there's whether it's written into the contract which it will be or it's just a verbal we're not making you do anything in the future that no one knows what happens so i i just you guys have been great partners there's no question but there's something about having it written down the contract that you know when both parties agreed to it i was i was very happy so we're talking about comment i'm actually feeling well having my story comment mug here that i got yeah as far as
071the component parts we can do we take the direction from you now i will say the more spares you have you've purchased if you're not using them you know so yes you would lose potentially uh downtime if the system were to go down it's hard to figure out what that else is but having a couple extra inverters isn't going to be a big deal those are the big things that would uh would when the inverter goes down it's the smallest piece but it's the most important piece no i typically the panels don't fail the racking is good it's the inverter that goes so having a few of those on stock for the district especially a project of this size that's not i remember actually dean and i visited graze lake and they were and they
072have their entire roof covered their high school and they were talking about how they were having significant inverter failures and that was causing them quite a bit of you know essentially lost revenue if you will and so i know we've had some inverter failures in may whitney as well and i think that we would clearly look to you folks you have a long history in monitoring the systems that you install in terms of failure rate of the components we would look to you guys to give us that list of critical spares so okay and again thanks for hanging in there with us yeah um i want to say just in general like i said you know i i'm a huge opponent of uh solar i think it's a great way to make power i think
073the decision for the board really is one of timing right when's the right time to do it um and to pull the trigger on it and like most things in life there's no one good answer right um i do think that we we have an opportunity certainly here with um that we believe the revenue will get back from the various credits that are available to us i i think they will come back in the future at some point i think you know we we live in the moments of time but i do think that they will come back there's too much benefit from this technology to not have the incentives going forward to do that having said that like i said i think you know we do have an opportunity here and you guys have
074proven yourselves with the may whitney installation to have done a great job and and um i think that the board will ultimately make the right decision so thank you again thank you thank you doug lisa so i i actually don't think this is a question of sustainability we have a fabulous three-year sustainability plan which this is only that much and actually the amount of manpower except what you've had to do to help us make our decision is minimal and i firmly believe when you have skin in the game you tend to be more effective and our sustainability plan includes quite a bit of education and learning how to do things with the composting with the recycling with so many different areas that really is keeping with what we do we're educating our students we're educating
075them how to be better citizens of the world and hopefully they can go home and share that knowledge and the family becomes better citizens of the world and it just spreads and goes on and on so in my mind this is really more a matter of competing interests and having limited resources and so that's sort of i think why we asked for so many iterations on this fund balance and the and the long-range facilities plan and and really it's a fund balance thing for me and i know quite a few entities say that you are in good stead if you have at least a 50 fund balance at the end of the year i guess is when we figure this out but everybody says you're a healthy financially stable responsible district and that's sort of
076the measure they use and when i look at these numbers and i see us getting really close to 50 is where my conservative part kicks in and says do i feel comfortable doing that and so that's in my mind is it's not a question of is solar the right thing to do is it right to be sustainable fill our plan yes it is but we also have to be fiscally responsible and we have a lot of competing interests coming forward and so that's sort of where i go when i'm looking at this so thank you lisa dr pinter i agree that we've been talking about this a lot to the point where i'm like we are not the school board committee we're like the solar board committee you know it really feels like that but
077um i i just want to make sure i'm understanding so phase two phase three phase four we break even after years eight nine and eight and then uh the solar panels last for 30 years so we would around i know i know you're not going to say exactly no no like truthfully average panel the first panels that ever made are still producing today they're 70 years old um the panels won't go away they just keep degrading a little each year they're definitely not going to work as well and they come with a 25 year warranty that says they'll work at least 80 percent in uh 25 years from now so yeah so yeah after years eight nine and eight then we would just be saving money on them so this to me seems to be
078obvious um so yeah and then also i do see this as a sustainability issue and i think in my view we have one sustainability expert like who's done this for their entire career and it was awesome to hear everything he was saying i know what i was going to vote on this like a while ago so i really don't have any questions for you but i just want to thank you for coming back time and time and time and time again not a problem thank you thank you dr pinter alicia thanks for being here and baker tilley and dr manu and all the staff that is pulling the weight of after being hyper focused on this since may of 24 apparently um uh i just want to look at a big picture situation just briefly
079um there's a gentleman by the name of eo wilson who was like the father of conservation biology and he passed away um not too long ago and he was an entomologist which is a scientist of insects and he wanted to set aside half of our earth and oceans by uh well for 50 percent and to to help us survive as a species too and to also help um 80 percent of the world species avoid extinction okay so then it was a moonshot goal he called it right so he passed away and then in 2022 there was a global effort to save 30 percent of the earth for insects and mammals and for freshwater and clean air so i have heard about climate change which was called global warming in the 90s and i am old
080now and i have been listening to this conversation for many many years so i just feel like it's uh we're talking about the future of for our kids we're talking about the future of our district we're talking about the future for taxpayers with a an investment that pays for itself from what i can tell i know there are competing interests people come first but if we are having an existential situation then this is important for people too and we are educating our children that this is a priority for our district a priority for our money um and we can't predict the future but it's i've been thinking about this since the 90s so it'd be really awesome to like do things and i think that every school district and every business and every homeowner and
081every non-profits and just every organization has the potential to do their part and i think if we have the money to do both parts of this project i would be in support of that because it's the right thing to do and um i just think that if everyone made small decisions like this since the 90s it would have made a bigger impact and if we have not all been making these small decisions because we've been kicking the can down the road so when is it an existential situation when is it a business decision when is it a money thing and i it seems like a big bigger picture but we are dealing with all of this reality now across the world so what everything that they have said would happen has happened um so i
082like to invest in a project that pays for itself um obviously when we we pay teachers they're investing in our kids and they are creating the future vital important staff administration support putting money in our facilities to support the staff teachers administration support the families by helping create a good educated society to move on and make good choices for our earth those are all important but i think this one is an obvious one we have the money we should um we should invest so thank you very much for everyone's hard work all the iterations the numbers i learned a lot through the process i greatly appreciate it so thank you thank you alicia um i am very supportive of solar i don't think it's a question of is it a good thing or is it
083not a good thing it is definitely a good thing um completely embrace the the timing obviously we want to avail ourselves of the incentives that are provided to use it or lose it now i do i absolutely believe that in the future there will be other opportunities they may they may not be as good they may be better we don't know that we can only operate with what we know today and we know that we have a very small timeline to address the incentives that are available for us today and those incentives that are available for us today are what make the return on the investment as good as it is and so that's that's absolutely a pro um i absolutely believe that the sustainability of the program is a vital part of why we
084would do it um i am however very concerned about competing priorities i do think that the district has several matters that we need to consider that are not readily apparent that we have to consider i'm i'm worried about those and that's weighing on me i do think an excellent compromise is to approve two and three and not four um so that's a thought but um i do want to say curt thank you so much you have come to this board meeting to our board meetings more times than anyone should have to and we greatly appreciate that you've been an excellent partner thus far completely believe that that will continue and that you will be a phenomenal apart partner going forward and once again dean and your team and lial and your team so much work
085went into this can't thank you guys enough so thank you first we're going to take the first motion first and that's the first motion is with respect to phase two and phase three and that is um isaac box in middle school south and so kate can you call that role dr pincher yes mrs danaker yes mrs warren yes ms tim yes mr atian yes mr goldberg yes ms maloney yes now the second motion which is phase four which is the high school exert high school so kate can you please call that role as well ms tim yes mr goldberg no mrs danager yes mrs warren no dr pincher yes ms maloney no mr atian yes that motion carries just in case anyone was not counting um i guess that's it we are going into closed
086session for the following one reason collective negotiating matters between the public body and its employees or the representatives or deliberations concerning salary schedules for one or more classes of employees may i have this motion so moved second thank you doug thank you natasha kate please call the role mr goldberg yes ms maloney yes mr atian yes ms warren yes dr pincher yes mrs tim yes mrs danager yep we will not be taking any action after closed session this evening