8-28-25 Regular School Board Meeting For C.U.S.D. 95

001I call the August 28, 2025 regular meeting of the Board of Education to order. Kate, will you please call the roll? Mrs. Danniger? Here. Ms. Maloney? Here. Mr. Aitken? Here. Mrs. Warren? Here. Dr. Pinter? Here. Ms. Tim? Here. Mr. Goldberg? Here. Please rise for the Pledge of Allegiance. I pledge allegiance. Good evening and thank you for joining us tonight. Before we begin our meeting this evening, I want to pause and acknowledge the heartbreaking tragedy that recently took place in Minnesota where two students lost their lives and several others were injured in a school shooting. Our thoughts are with the students, families, staff, and community as they navigate such an unimaginable loss. Turning to our own district, I am grateful to share that our school year is well underway and off to a strong start. Each

002of our schools has already begun building meaningful partnerships with families through curriculum nights which were very well attended. These events highlight the strong collaboration between our staff and families and we are thankful for the commitment and energy both bring to supporting our students. A huge thank you to all of our staff members and families for the work you've put into ensuring such a positive start. We are excited to see the many great things that lie ahead this school year. Kate, is there anyone signed up for public speaking? No, there is not. The next item on the agenda is the consent agenda. Dr. Gault? Thank you, Mrs. Maloney. This evening, I have for the board the approval of minutes from open and closed session meetings held on July 24, 2025, special board meeting held on August

0031, 2025, and open session meeting minutes from the special board meeting held on August 6, 2025. Acceptance of the treasurer's report, approval of the bill's payable list, approval of the district activity bill's payable list, approval of policy press issue 119, second read, approval of the personnel report including employment of certified staff, resignation of certified staff, employment of non-certified staff, resignation of non-certified staff. Thank you. 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. Board colleagues, are there any questions? Kate, please call the roll. Mr. Goldberg? Yes. Dr. Pinter? Yes. Mrs. Danniger? Yes. Mrs. Warren? Yes. Ms. Maloney? Yes. Mr. Atian? Yes. Ms. Timm? Yes. Next item on the agenda is a superintendent's report. Dr. Gault? Thank you.

004I have several items for the board this evening. I'll start with the FOIA, which is included within the agenda as typical. There was nothing noteworthy as it relates to communication to the board, and then I will head to the Board of Education Facilities and Business Services Committee meeting. We had some lengthy conversation this evening on several topics. The first we started with was some summer construction update. So Fieldhouse is looking great. I have a picture to share with you in a few moments. The Tinelli Gym, paint, LED lights, air conditioning, and there were a few board members who've already been able to tour, as well as Ms. Danniger was able to tour during curriculum night, so she was able to check out all of the awesome updates to our high school. New seating areas in

005the hallways, and even our staff are enjoying those new areas, especially because some of them have the best spots for sunlight, cafeteria updates, and then the culinary arts space, which looks absolutely amazing, and both students and staff are excited to be in there. Long-range facilities plan update, that was a pretty lengthy conversation as it relates to the work that's currently underway. Dr. Romano and Mr. Erstad are currently taking a comprehensive look at the plan and ensuring that it is accurate at some points, sometimes adding or deleting areas that are necessary at this point. So their goal is to have the next five years pretty well outlined for the Board of Education to see in the month of September, and that will go to our committee meeting, and so we'll have probably a pretty good conversation

006at the next committee meeting around that. Currently there's 25.5 million dollars in work that's been established for the next five years, but please note that that number could shift based on the work of our team, and so we appreciate their efforts in light. The life safety study will be completed by our financial workshop date, which we do not have yet on the books, but Mrs. Maloney and I will be working with you to establish that date. And then the solar project recommendations overview, we did have our partner with us this evening, PSI. He is still in the audience, and so he'll be joining us for that conversation. I'm not going to go into detail because you'll have an opportunity to do that soon. And then wanted to give you a heads up on the food

007service temporary hamburger surcharge. I'm sure many of you have recognized higher costs as it relates to beef, and so we are also feeling that. So our partner with Quest is requesting an additional surcharge, 60 cents per burger, and that will take place at the high school, and that is not a part of the traditional lunch that students are able to purchase. And so just note that that's coming. There's several reasons I outlined for that, and our next step is to ensure that our families understand that that's coming to them soon. And I believe that that was it for the meeting. I will turn to actually see if Mr. Goldberg or Mrs. Danniger has anything they would like to add about the facilities and business services meeting. Just a kudos to our facilities team for all

008the work over the summer, once again, to complete the projects. We're nearly wrapped up with a bunch of substantial projects, obviously fundamentally being the complete revision we did to culinary arts and, of course, the incredible work that was done in the main gym and the telenehly gym as well as the fieldhouse. So thank you very much to your team, Lyle. I know that's once again heavy lifting. We continue to pile it on for you guys over the summer, but as you mentioned, Dr. Galt, there'll be more conversation the next board meeting around the long-range facilities plan as it relates to what our investments are likely going to need to be once they complete the additional work we asked for. Thank you. I'll just echo what Doug said. Thank you. Thank you to both of you

009for a great committee meeting this evening. We have some field trips that I just needed to update you on that I have approved. So we have the boys cross-country team as well as the girls taking trips to Peoria and the dates are listed for you. And then some other upcoming dates. I had these on the last meeting that we discussed. So just a quick reminder about homecoming and the alumni event. We're excited. We've gone through our committee process of selecting our winners for the upcoming year, so that will be announced at that meeting or at that event, hoping that our board will be able to attend. And then community partners, first responders and board recognition event is on October 17th. And so please make sure that you make note of that. And then our one

010and only chance to come together for the sake of learning as an entire board is a joint annual conference. So please make sure you make note of that date. Next, I do want to acknowledge our D95 foundation. They have put together an opportunity to give back to not just district 95, but actually the greater community. And so they're putting forth an effort that would involve all of our schools in collecting items to create a birthday box for each individual who may have a need in that area that visits one of our food pantries. They're currently working right now to establish which food pantries they'll be partnering with, but this is coming soon. And so board members who have children that are in our schools, you'll be getting notification about which items we want you to

011consider sending in as a donation. But again, want to just make sure, and we'll be really clear about this when they send communication out, is that it really is going to a greater community. And I do want to point out to my left up here, our portrait of a graduate global and local community contributions. And so I love the fact that the foundation is connecting to our portrait of a graduate and appreciate those efforts. I believe they have a little sample for you this evening that they're going to just very quickly drop at your seat. So I'll just let you know that they're going to come around and give you just a sample of what it might look like. Please note it's a very small sample, so it doesn't have everything in it. But families

012will be able to choose between a box that has items that they could bake a homemade cake, but if they don't have a stove or refrigerator, et cetera, to keep those items or to make that cake, they're partnering with some organizations to help ensure maybe a gift card for a cupcake, et cetera. So that's why you're getting the cupcake as well. So thank you to them. I did want to let the board know I've had some initial conversations with Mrs. Warren and we'll have, Mrs. Maloney and I will have some greater conversations with the full board about the opportunity for you to participate in putting boxes together potentially as are coming together to do some good within the community. This would give the board of education an opportunity to one, partner with our board members

013from the foundation, but also potentially students who would be serving to put kits or boxes together. Is there, do we donate things in just like bring cake mixes or is it just? It's going to be per school, so we'll get you that information so that you have it and any board member who would like to donate will be excited to receive those donations as well. But thank you to our foundation and I really appreciate their partnership and especially connecting to our portrait of a graduate as we look to operationalize that during the school year. So excited for this opportunity. And then we did, as Mrs. Maloney shared earlier, we had Curriculum Night at all of our schools and so the one picture that I am going to just kind of point out and highlight, you'll

014see students who have signs that say ask me a question. I don't know about the few board members who are able to be at Curriculum Night, but it was pretty awesome to be able to go up to a student and say help me get to this location or help me understand where I can get this question answered. Our students were so excited as I walked in one of the students that was standing near the PAC, the Performing Arts Center, said I love this job. I love being here tonight. It is so fun to help parents be able to navigate our building and so just want to give a shout out to the high school. That was very, very well done and appreciated the student volunteers certainly. We also this week we had Middle School South

015had Whitson's pop-up and so they were able to experience Chef Cam, who was previously featured on Chopped. You'll notice Mr. Dangler up there having a really good time, but this was a special opportunity for middle school students to be able to order some wings and then have some specialty sauces created by Chef Cam. It was an awesome experience and Mr. Dangler definitely looks like he was having a lot of fun. And then this is the picture I promised about related to the Lake Syracke High School Field House. It is just coming along. It's absolutely stunning. The sound in the room is also impressive and I cannot wait for our students to be able to have their first pep assembly in that space. They're going to love it. And then lastly just going to give a

016shout out to Sarah Adams. They were mentioned in the Chicago Magazine as it relates to ratings as the as the number 10 best elementary school in Lake County. So congratulations to Sarah Adams. That's quite the accomplishment. That's all I have for you Mrs. Maloney. Thank you. Thank you. Moving on to the reports to the board. The first item is the 2025-2026 school day work. Ms. Stallion and Dr. McArdle please share a summary of the report that you have prepared for the board. Good evening. We are very excited to be here tonight to share with you a brief overview of the work that we are about to embark in. As you know a few years ago we did do some school day work aligned to Forward 95 and we did complete that work and brought recommendations

017to the Board of Education which were approved and enacted. It is timely and really purposeful that we begin to engage in that work once again. So to share with you just a little bit of the purpose of this work we certainly are aligning to our district values of Empower 95 as we work towards academic excellent collaboration and certainly equity for students access to support systems as well as guaranteed and viable curriculum and appropriate school day instruction. We will be working with a committee who has been selected and we want to thank our building level leaders who have given us some wonderful names of staff members and stakeholders who will be supporting that work. This committee will be analyzing stakeholder feedback that we will gain from surveys. We will also be doing some timely research again

018on appropriate school days across elementary middle and high schools and discuss options related to several aspects of the school day. Finally before we leave for winter break we will be bringing some of the recommendations all of the recommendations of the committee to the Board of Education. So there's much more that will come. Tonight is just to launch our work and to let you know that we feel we have a really strong committee. All of the outcomes and corresponding data sources are outlined in full in your memo so just by way of a brief overview we do have outcomes identified by level. At the elementary level as Mrs. Stallion alluded to we have done a previous iteration of school day work. There was a heavy amount done to instructional minutes and such the last time we

019went through this iteration. What we did not take a look at was our early childhood programming and specifically scheduling on our early release days and so we do have a small core team coming in to support with that work. They'll look at a couple of different options. They may opt to recommend maintaining status quo and providing some information around that. They may opt to suggest a different schedule so that will really depend on that committee work. Something of note while we are pulling in a smaller group of elementary representatives to start should the committee in its work find some things that are worth digging at a little bit deeper at the elementary level we would then fold in additional elementary representatives as well as include additional opportunities for that group to provide feedback. At the

020middle school level some of our core objectives identified are identifying an intervention or extension block accessible to all students. So currently the structure is such that there is not a block that is accessible daily to everyone because it's currently split between homeroom and band orchestra choir and so the committee work will be really focused around digging into what potential options there are around that particular objective and that is specifically aligned to our district value of equity and making sure that all students have access to that sort of support during their school day. The other piece at the middle school level that we're wanting to take a look at is the current structure for example elective scheduling around sixth grade. It looks different for anyone that has had a middle school student go through our system.

021Sixth grade looks a little bit different than seventh and eighth grade in terms of how students are selecting those options. There's a wide variety of the length of courses at that grade level and so the committee will be charged with taking a look at those pieces and seeing if any there are suggestions for updates or changes. At the high school level and again on the left there are our expected outcomes and then data sources on the right. One primary outcome is exploring options for increasing instructional minutes daily and so the board very recently heard our Loyola partners come and speak specific to math but really across all of our subject areas our instructional minutes are are limited and our teachers are working really hard to do a lot within that time frame but one of

022those recommendations specifically from Loyola was around looking at our instructional minutes daily and what our staff really are able to do within that time frame and so Dr. Walsh shortly here is going to speak to kind of where we sit compared to some of our surrounding neighbors and we would be looking to get to at least average within that as an intended outcome. We also want to look at a when or what I need type structure. We've gotten lots of feedback about the current structure which is office hours that is accessible to all students so taking a look at what that that might look like if we were to shift away from office hours but still maintaining a structure where students could access their teachers and get that support that they need of note when

023we look at the instructional minutes piece juxtaposed with the office hours piece if we were to simply redistribute office hours minutes within the existing periods of the school day that would not bring us up to average and so Dr. Walsh again will speak to that in just a moment here and then taking a look at what potential impacts there might be if start and end times were to stay the same office hours were to shift to another period that will be another key objective of the committee. Of note again question that we have gotten since we have rolled out to staff is is there a set schedule already established there is no set schedule established at any level elementary middle or high school there are intended outcomes established and it will be the work of

024the committee to dig into that and provide suggestions within those parameters. Over the last couple of weeks we've taken a look at schools around us to see what their period schedule look like if you look at the schools we looked at anything with an asterisk is currently a nine period schedule we did exclude any schools that have block schedules and as you can see from the graph above we are at 40 minutes per period 45 is the next up all the way up to 51 per period so even at an average it's 47 minutes and we are at the very low end of that. We will be looking at start and end times but before we do that we will still have transportation perimeters to work within so we will know what can be possible

025with start and end times before we even start our meetings. We don't want to get through our meetings and then find out that what we decided couldn't be done so we don't want to do that. There will also be things that we're going to discuss during this meeting that might have contractual issues as well so what we'll do is we'll flag those issues and put them off to the side because those can't be discussed without bargaining in them first. We'll also be seeking a lot of input from all the stakeholders involved including staff surveys, faculty surveys, student surveys. We'll have multiple focus group opportunities for families and students as well as various committee opportunities for stakeholder advisory input as we go along the process. As things emerge we can kind of continue that process in

026terms of seeking up stakeholder feedback and then as we communicate with the board we'll create a regular cadence of meetings that teaching and learning followed by board of education meetings that summarize the committee's work and then once those board meetings have occurred we'll share that information broadly with all the community stakeholders. So at this time Ms. Maloney we would turn it back to you. All right Alicia do you have any questions? I guess it's not the minutes per class but is the middle school start time still under discussion or is that come and gone hopefully forever? So the start and end times will be reviewed but to Dr. Walsh's point we do still operate within a three-tier bus system and so any sort of start end time considerations will be discussed within the context of

027our transportation system. And I think that's good just for the public to remember is that we are sharing buses and it is the most cost effective method of transporting our students so the you know 5 30 6 a.m wake up time is a little rough but it's three years and it's not you know k through five but it's not four years. So that stakeholder feedback has absolutely been received and it will absolutely be considered again within those parameters. Dr. Pinter? All right I just from a teacher perspective I have no idea how these teachers are taking 40 minutes and that's just amazing that they can keep something in that amount of time because the lowest I've ever taught is 50 and that was hard and this is sociology versus math like when I'm thinking about

028the high school that was in there that I think this is a fantastic idea to really look into because it seems like we should definitely increase those class periods. I do have a question about when it comes to stakeholder feedback and I know you all do a great job of looking at the staff, the faculty, the families, the students. It just it made me think of the census when people go to the different houses for the census if somebody doesn't answer they keep coming back because those are the people that there's something different about them you know. I always wonder about that because I know I'm guilty of that sometimes where you know it's like when we especially when we were in graduate school and we had little kids and they would pass out surveys

029you know people working a lot are going to school. Those folks are their voices aren't always heard because they're so busy so I'm just curious is there a way to get to those folks if they don't answer because if we don't then it's not a random sample and I'm just wondering. So we'll have a pretty good idea of what our survey response rate is that survey is going to go out tomorrow so we are going to start collecting feedback and to your point Dr. Pinter that's not everybody's preferred means of giving feedback and so once we see what those survey results look like and if we are missing certain pockets we would be able to tailor additional groups for targeting focus groups things of that nature. Awesome okay thank you so much Lisa. So first

030off thank you for taking this on. This is one of those unusual committees that you really can't ever make everyone happy because you are coming into this with a lot of sort of constrictions here that you have to work in but I think it's also brave of the district as we've been doing with curriculum to not go hey it's been working why should we look at it. We're looking at it we're constantly looking to self-improve we've seen that in many different areas so I do appreciate that. The only input I have is you know some of the impetus of looking at these period lengths and such came from a totally outside entity loyal to coming in and looking and I get that a lot of this should be related to the current stakeholders and what's

031working for them but I would also argue there are some recent grads or that kind of input that you're not going to reach in the groups that you talk to that actually might actually be able to provide some great input as well. So I don't I hate bringing it up because I don't know how to reach them. I don't know that we've done a great job of getting alum emails and such although I know we're doing better with that. We can start using school links we've got a couple years of student information in there now clearly they don't have to respond but they did volunteer to have their names in the database and if they still have the contact information then we absolutely could reach out to at least a couple years of graduates to

032see if they would engage in it. Well it'd be interesting to Dr. Penner's point there's no college class that's 40 minutes long ever so was that super hard for you to have to deal with that you had to sit still and learn for a longer amount of time? I don't know and and that's sort of interesting to hear and and get some feedback and I don't know if you have double class do you have double period classes ever? There are some because that's also something to sort of get more direct feedback on. I would also highlight Mrs. Warren that while I alluded to the Loyola math report there are several data sources in addition to that external entity where we have gotten feedback around the class period length students staff families we also looked at

033for example college board recommendations around AP length we're at the lower end certainly so there are a couple of different data sources converging telling us that it's time to take a look at that. It's time to take a look yeah but if that's just potentially another source of information that might be helpful. Thank you very much. Thank you Lisa. Doug? Thank you Eileen. Folks first of all thank you so much for taking this on as Lisa said I think it's a really important subject and and speaking as someone who's had the privilege of spending a lot of time in the classrooms in the high school I will tell you that you know myself and I would say the students that I've worked with as well think that the class period of 42 minutes is really

034challenging to get everything done so I'm I'm super thankful you guys are taking this on. You know there from what I've been able to gather in little research I've done there is a lot of research out there about optimal class length period so I'm interested to hear what you guys come up with in terms of you know using that research to make informed decisions obviously the stakeholder feedback is critically important as well but it sounds like a lot of people have been thinking about this subject it's something that's you know I think the forefront of many discussions so I would like to know what you guys come back with in terms of what the research says there's research that's based upon outcomes for example you know and again I don't think we have to optimize

035our classroom our class length for optimum test scores but I think it should be for student outcomes overall so I really think this is a great subject certainly there there's going to be some controversy around it because you're going to make changes and some people might changes may not be appreciated by all stakeholders but I think long term the goal of this whole thing is to benefit the students the most and I know you guys are fantastic at this and so I'm super anxious to hear the outcome of your work thank you very much. Thank you Doug. Peter? I'm going just before the teacher the other teacher I just have a thanks again for for the work I appreciate all of the good work that you're doing and I know this is something that has

036been percolating in the district for a couple years at least Dr. Gold has hinted about reviewing that topic for quite a while so I appreciate you going looking at it and getting stakeholders feedback I guess I have a couple of things a couple concerns ultimately in terms of minutes and class minutes and clearly if if this is some if expanding the period of time we have to teach math we'll have some relative corresponding better outcomes I'm all for it I we've always viewed that area as one of focus and and I think we have to do everything that we can to raise the math you know we are what how we're doing in math but but it comes at a cost every change that you make the minute is going to come from somewhere and

037so hopefully we'll be able to make the right balance and the right choices there and then on the middle school start time I know that might not be the primary focus that you're going to look at maybe you could also share with us maybe you have some of that information already because this is not a new topic for the board you've read it before we saw how the minutes compare across other schools maybe you could relook at the start times at the middle school compared to our neighboring schools I don't know whether you have some initial comments on that we have not dug into the most recent schedules around our middle school counterparts but we certainly will be considering those things when we look at this work and get into the committee yeah I mean

038I am you've this is an area that I think that we have to look at because I think the last time it was brought before the board we compare ourselves to Barrington and some other schools and we were and maybe I'm wrong and maybe things have changed but my recollection is our kids are starting very early compared to some other schools so so um and maybe something that you may want to think about because that that that have impacts on their ability to learn the ability to stay awake and the ability just to be nice kids we absolutely will look look at that and you alluded to cost and anything that the committee would be recommending that has an additional cost such as a significant transportation impact would also be brought forward for board consideration

039and I do want to remind the board that we have especially as we looked at cost when we just made some decisions to move away from one provider to several other providers I do want to make sure that the board knows that when we talk about cost increases and Alicia you alluded to this a little bit we're in a triple tier model to go to a double tier rather than triple would escalate costs quite considerably so don't be thinking about hundreds of thousands of dollars but think about millions of dollars and so that is always the board's option if we wanted to look at something like that that would be something that the board would need to give us as information as we proceed with our committee because that would potentially change things if the

040board wanted to designate more money towards transportation costs moving away from a triple tier model so I do want to make sure the board understands that piece I don't disagree that we should go ahead and take a look at start times I know that that's part of the plan because we do want to make sure that we're doing the best we can for our students within the dollars that we're currently spending but again if the board is willing to look at a different model as it relates to cost associated with transportation that's something we should the team should know yeah well I can't talk for the whole board but I do think it's something that we should look into and we should look into how other people are doing it because they are and so

041I mean we don't want to have a kind of catastrophic impact on our financial well-being but I do think we should we should look at it it will be reviewed thank you thank you Peter Natasha thank you I'm going to echo a few things but try to keep it short since I'm the last one I agree or I wanted to reiterate what Lisa said thank you I know this committee can be a difficult committee because you'll probably upset someone along the way and I'm sure you'll hear about it so I'm grateful because I know that you will be student focused on getting the best outcomes for our kids I also know just from speaking to you that while our focus is always on students that will also be really aware of our staff and how

042it'll affect them um along those lines I wanted to echo what Kelly said about the surveys and making sure that we are reaching some of those harder to reach families I think especially because a change in count or in times in dismissals and school day length could probably affect those families to a greater it could affect them at a greater level because of maybe their tighter schedules their reliance on child care and so I really hope that we really make and I know we do a concentrated effort on reaching every demographic in our community when it comes to this because every demographic will be affected lastly thank you for showing that chart on instructional time I think it's really powerful I think it's really powerful for our community to see um I have kids that

043take high-level math classes and it's really tough to fit it in but I also we talk so much about math in here I think it would be really hard to finish an art project in that time I think it'd be hard to set up and clean up I think it'd be really hard to get a group of choir students lined up warmed up and perform so I don't think while math is extremely important and we hear about it all the time in our community our arts our business classes they are important too and I think change is difficult but longer instructional minutes across the board will benefit all of our kids and all of our programming so thank you thank you Natasha I just have a few questions and I I apologize if I missed

044this but do you have a time frame when you believe that your recommendations will be concluded and where I'm going with this is just you know when we so much of this will be impacted by teacher negotiations and so where where does that fall and the first meeting in December will be the first read and then the second meeting in December for the board will be any final recommendations that might require board approval okay thank you Mrs. Maloney just know that that then the additional information we collect that would need to be a part of further consideration between the board and the teachers association would come outside of that so just know that that would be something then that we would discuss outside of those two meetings that they would bring that forward okay I

045understand that I was curious if this was end of the year we'll get this information or if it's okay no but I think one of the most important things to to note is that there is no intention of putting this into play next school year that would be impossible because we have students that will already be selecting classes getting registered etc prior to any type of real decisions being made and so just know that any work that's being done this year is not anticipated for next year but for the year following I'm sure though we will hear thoughts during oh yes you will 100% so yeah that was where I was going absolutely thank you this is hard work necessary work it's one of those things it's like we do a deep dive on our

046our long-range facilities plan this is similar it's just line of sight to these things that matter that if you don't do the deep dive you miss and so thank you for doing the deep dive and my condolences for the pain that it will cause in the meantime but the end result will be wonderful so thank you very much thank you thank you moving on to the next item fund balance analysis so we've seen the report are there questions for dr romano and i'm gonna start with doug he does have a uh oh he does have a presentation that he's it's very brief okay thank you sorry good evening everyone i'm excited to dive into our 2025 fund balance analysis as we see here the purpose of our fund balance is to champion student learning experiences

047promote equity ensure safe and innovative environments and steward our community's resources wisely this foundation empowers us to make impactful decisions that truly benefit our students and district our fund balance offers incredible benefits it mitigates cash flow risks without borrowing safeguards our triple a bond rating to keep interest costs low for smart borrowing and provides the flexibility we need for capital investments imagine enhancing student experiences boosting safety maintaining our buildings cutting costs and elevating service levels all made possible through this strong financial position now let's dive into the core of our strategy with these exciting scenarios scenario one projects a 71.01 fund balance centered on the lzhs second floor renovation a transformative project for teaching and learning scenario two projects a 57 fund balance incorporating the second floor three solar projects and additional potential future capital

048expenses with a projected increase to 62 within 24 months due to incentives these options enhance student experiences boost operational efficiency through sustainable investments and support operational improvements all while maintaining fund balance within policy limits please note that the board has the flexibility to pursue one all or a select combination of these capital investments moving forward and wrapping up this analysis lights the way for strategic investment consideration like the lzhs second floor renovation to elevate student environments solar projects that enhance the district's commitment to sustainability and reduce operating expenses and other initiatives that will enhance operations best of all every option maintains full policy compliance and our stellar triple a bond rating i now turn it back to you madam president and i look forward to the board's feedback and questions thank you dr romano doug

049do you have questions yes thank you eileen first of all dean you know thank you for your uh your patience over the last couple weeks as we've been going back and forth a lot on numerous questions you spent a lot of time and energy on this and certainly at our committee meeting this night as well appreciate that i think there's a couple of really important points that the board should give due consideration to one is and you said it here very well in your briefing is we have a policy that we enacted for a reason and the reason is to ensure number one that we're fiscally responsible and that should a crisis occur we have the funds available to manage that secondly to maintain our fund balance that when we go out and issue debt

050we can get it at the most favorable rates those are two sort of immutable things and we're not going to violate that in my mind then as it relates to you know how where we want to be inside that fund balance i think you showed us two scenarios tonight and i appreciate that i think there's a number of other ones which we have we talked about tonight we asked you to model and one of the most important considerations i believe as it relates to fund balance is the fact that our own analysis which we'll talk about later under the facilities plan item is you know we believe that we need to essentially double the amount of annual spending that we've been doing in facilities from three million to six million in order to cover the

051needs that we believe we have and so that scenario should be modeled as well i think and i don't want to speak ahead of ourselves but you know i think the board is reasonably well aligned as it relates to the second floor at the high school but the other projects that we would consider to use fund balance for i think they need a lot of other due consideration i do think the one in my mind anyway that is very important is to make sure that we're spending adequately on the facility so that's going to be you know substantial draw annually and we need to model that so we understand how that relates to fund balance the other projects that we're considering whether they be solar or other you know large capital expenses they're there i

052think discussions upstream i would i think the two most important considerations now are now are looking at our long-range facility plan as it relates to what we need to spend to address those and i think the upcoming discussion we're going to have here very shortly about the second floor because we're due to see those bids here i think in november so um i think it's really important to point out that we we're the district right now today stands in an excellent financial position that's because of the hard work of a whole bunch of boards that have come before us and we have a responsibility to fiduciary responsibility to all of our stakeholders to maintain that and i think i know the rest of the board members share the fact that this is a responsibility we

053take very seriously it's not our money it's everybody else's money and so you know we throw around millions of dollars but the reality of it is that's life-changing money to many people and so i think as we consider how to use and spend those dollars they need to be focused on making sure that they provide they protect the investments that we've made i.e. in our facilities and any investment beyond that has a measurable and demonstrable benefit to our students and to our staff that to me is those are the things that are most important i think again we're we're a few weeks away from having an improved analysis we've asked dean is team to do to look at updating the the facilities plan based upon newer data the current facilities plan is three years old

054and so the data is a little bit aged we've actually burned through some of those things some things are new now we're going to have a life safety study here that'll be done by the end of the year so there's more to come but i do think the board needs to have a very serious conversation about you know where we where we use our resources right now and i again i sitting here today i don't have the answer but i do think there's some additional modeling to do for us dean to show us some additional scenarios beyond those two that could help us with the decision-making process because i think this is a critically important and fundamentally important thing that the board should be considering so again thank you for the time you've spent to

055date but more to come thank you doug peter um thank you so much for working on this um you know i i understand this is this is an adjustment period for the district we're coming through a period in time when we uh rapidly um funded the renovations of various facilities based on referendum money so we had a momentum there and then the pandemic and we had some extra funds where we continue to have additional funds where you know we spend a lot of money and and those those were great choices that we made and so i i appreciate the concern about keeping making sure of fund balance is a is consistent to the policy that we have um i do think though that um i think you're a smart guy i think and you you

056you probably some president of uh of school board business something in this in the state of illinois so i i kind of trust your judgment here i trust the analysis that you make i i trust the great work that you and your team and the superintendent are making and i think for myself i think it's important that we we keep that in mind and we keep in mind also that the policy the policy is you know 50 percent and i think unless we have reason to think that um um and and and i think if it goes higher as you said in your document if it goes above a certain point we have to take certain steps so so i think we have some big decisions to make but um i'm very comfortable with um

057with with the information that you give and i'm sure all the board members will feel comfortable with the decision that they make with the information that you give i you know i i we can have a next topic coming up next and we have more in the future and those are large large sums of money so um i'm trusting you on the superintendent with a lot but but but i do trust your expertise and the superintendent and i and and as a board member i make decisions with that in my thanks thank you peter natasha thank you i i agree with many of the things peter just said and i also would like to say thank you for the transparency walking us through it um i don't have an mba background and you patiently and

058very explicitly lay lay it out in a way that is understandable and i think as far as a board we're very good at being transparent with our funds on the website so that the community as a whole has a good idea of the money that we have and the decisions that we make i also want to thank several board members who do have a stronger background in this area for asking many questions through emails and through committees to help i think the rest of our board the rest of the board members also wrap their heads around these big decisions um i would agree with doug a little bit more information that i know you're going to be providing to us in the next couple meetings will be helpful but um i'm excited for the possibilities

059thank you natasha lisa so thank you dean uh pretty much all my questions have been answered and that i sent beforehand and as well as attending the committee meeting i do want to assure the public this is not something we only look at once a year this is in the treasure report every single month we are constantly monitoring where our fund balances are we set the policy to focus on the number at june 30th because that's a consistent cutoff every school year at the end of the school year is pretty consistent where we are with you know property tax collections getting projects done etc etc so that's sort of that good mark but it's something that we have to pay attention to every single month not just the june 30th numbers which i appreciate that

060we do um i think this is coming to light more because we're being asked to make some big decisions we talked about the long-range facility plan those are things we all know about that you've told us about we know what those numbers look like these are special projects in addition to that and when you're looking at these large numbers of you know five plus million dollars we really have to be very careful because once again like we just said to the committee before not everybody's going to get a yes and not everybody's going to be happy and so it has to be a thoughtful decision maybe it can be everybody gets a yes but we have to very consciously make that decision that it's the right thing to do and it's looking long-range to mr

061itian's alluding you know we were able to do a lot of projects but we also got a referendum and that's not happening again next year or the next year we're looking at a couple you know a decade plus down the road before you can even think about doing that again and so you really have to be conscious with what we're doing and also making a concerted effort to not go back to the place where we not spending enough money on our facilities and there's problems and and we never want to go back to that arena again so thank you so much for all the work i know we keep asking for more and keep asking you but it's just we want to be super comfortable making this decision where the stewards of the taxpayer's money

062that's who we're here representing and so we just want to make sure we're making the right decision and we can explain it to everyone why we feel that's the right decision and that everybody can feel comfortable with our decision-making process as well so thank you thank you lisa dr pinter okay dr romano i just want to make sure that i'm interpreting this correctly because i think i am but i just want to double check before i make any decisions but so the policy that we keep talking about is that the school district will maintain a year-end fund balance representing a minimum of 50 percent of the district's annual operating expenses so i know that and then when i look at scenario one and two when you have the 71 percent the 57 percent that's what

063you're talking about right yes if i can give some clarification it's just not all of our operating funds it's four funds specifically so it's the education fund the operations and maintenance transportation and working cash okay yes i knew that okay and um but these 71 and 57 are showing that you are still within the policy that we've been discussing that's correct okay so both of them do cover that policy and then also i think you said in there that the triple a bond rating will you think it'll stay that way with either of these scenarios yeah so one of our long-term partners is elizabeth hennessey with raymond james they've been managing the bonds for the district for a long time uh had a conversation with her with regards to would this reduction in fund balance

064have a negative impact on the bond rating because that is something that's critical that we will continue to maintain her response was that due to the fact that the expenditures are not an ongoing repetitive expense they're one-time spend downs and the fact that we're maintaining adherence to the policy that the board has set forth that she sees no negative impact on our rating okay thank you for answering those and i also would like to reiterate that i think you are doing a fantastic job and you are definitely an expert in the field and i appreciate that you explain all of that to us without mbas with such clarity and intelligence thank you thank you dr pinter alicia thank you very much thank you all right my comments are you hit all the high points because

065we need to stay within our policy 75 to 50 absolutely want the triple a and our bookend of the long-range facilities plan so that's that's our data that's what we need to base our decisions on and i think ultimately the concern is that we have heartburn about the amount of money that we put in our budget for long-range facilities so that does impact dr pinter that that does impact if we were to up that where we think perhaps maybe we should be that could impact our fund balance number potentially maybe not but potentially the other concerns are things we have not budgeted for for instance if we have tier two funding that the school districts are required to add so there are like fund balance is there for the rainy day but we have clouds

066in the horizon that we see it may or may not rain and so therein lies the heart burn between the upper end and the lower end of the fund balance and so that's where we come in we have to make those decisions based on that information and i agree completely with everybody the dean you lay it out wonderfully so that we understand it and you know therein lies the information we need to make decisions so thank you moving on to the next item is discussion without action can you please share an update related to the consideration of the solar projects absolutely thank you so very much i'm going to invite our guest from performance services brian andiak who is got a really big and important title and more importantly he has been involved in supporting

067us both all the way back to the time that we implemented and we're even discussing solar at may whitney but with the fact that we're talking about may whitney we want to go back in time and say how did we do what's actually happening that was one of the things that came from the board quite clearly about you know how was the performance of what we expected did it turn out and so brian if if i may just go ahead and let you share i know that you have a very good and comprehensive report that's forthcoming but we're still working on getting the data from our electricity providers but i think you've got some stuff to share before that yes thank you uh dr romano and members of the board for having me tonight so

068just an update on may whitney as um as dr romano just said we are in progress of finalizing report we are awaiting some utility bill data from comed uh but to share an update on how the incentives have come in relative to expected and how the system has performed in terms of a kilowatt hour production relative to expected i can share some of those details so uh first on the incentives the there were three categories of incentives the comed rebate the inflation reduction act incentive and the solar renewable energy credits income so the comment rebate has come in as expected that was about 128 000 the inflation reduction act incentive which wasn't even initially contemplated when the board initially took action on the project and then it did come into play and we had projected

069that to be around 470 000 that did come in more recently at 634 000 approximately so very favorable results there that was about 135 percent of predicted on the inflation reduction act incentive so just with that 164 000 delta your way ahead over over projections and then the third incentive the solar renewable energy credit income that is the contract that the district has secured with comed to sell renewable energy credits to comed that income flows over the next six years and my understanding is that is in progress and coming in as expected as well so that's the incentive update on may whitney in terms of the performance of the arrays itself again that report will be forthcoming but preliminarily the the energy generation has been around 90 percent of predicted and there was a clarification

070made in committee that that prediction was 90 percent of the original projection so the board elected to take a conservative approach and assume that the system would perform of 90 percent of the original projection the actual was 90 percent of that so 90 percent of 90 percent if you're with me on that so so slightly below what we had hoped and expected um as i was explaining committee there was one particular bad month in april where some inverters went down and the lost production in that month explains the majority of the lost production over the 12 months so um we'll be working closely with the maintenance team to go talk about how these inverters when they go down the alerts they receive so that we can minimize any downtime moving forward working out some of

071those items is not uncommon in the first year of production so so on the energy saving side just for context the first year estimate of energy savings was around thirty thousand dollars which of course is a function of the energy production prediction and the utility rate so if the utility rate which is the information we're still waiting on comed is identical to what we had assumed then that 90 percent of the 30 000 would be what the energy savings is realized so approximately 27 000 however if the energy rate is above what we assumed then the savings could be in excess of 30 000 so we'll be forthcoming with that information hopefully that was fairly clear but if there are any questions i'm happy to answer those do you want to start again if you'd

072like me to ma'am of course brian thank you so much for coming this evening thank you for coming to the facilities committee as well we really appreciate your time and we certainly appreciate what a great partner psi has been to us in the past the solar project may whitney certainly is a great exemplar i think one thing to keep in mind as we talk about our return on investment the business case for solar may whitney we including the initial costs of of the structural changes infrastructure we've got about a two million dollar bill in that project that's what the districts put in and i i don't know how much exactly we've gotten back from s rex money so far but i think we were hoping to see an excess of around in a total over

073the six years including the inflation creation act money of excessive a million dollars which is great so that's you know essentially 50 percent of the project would come back to us in credits and which is lovely obviously at thirty thousand dollars a year the overall break even points you know many years in the future but i think there's um you know there's good reason to celebrate the you know the outcome of that project it's it's the array is working well as it relates to going forward you know we had a long discussion in the community tonight regarding you know one of the things that looks like the district may be able to take advantage of is part of the energy credits might be incremental improvements that we'd make to existing structures support solar beyond a

074base so for example at the high school if in fact we're able to take advantage of some roofing projects to get a partial rebate for that would be like a real windfall for the district those are roofs that are due to be replaced in the next handful of years anyway so i think there's there's some more work to be done to figure out if how practical that's going to be and whether or not those rebates would in fact come back to us there's also some concern about you know some of the structural things and one of the things that the board is going to have to make a decision on is as we understand the way the laws are currently structured if we were to commit to some set of projects and we had to

075spend nominally five percent of that money by the end of this calendar year that would be potentially engineering money to psi and potentially purchasing some raw materials like inverters and panels then it's possible that we could defer the implementation of some of those projects a year or two or three years down the road even so that's i think we've got a little more homework to do on that to make sure we understand the exact parameters around that but i think there is some potential flexibility for us i just want to say again and i'm a huge fan of of this i think solar is a wonderful thing um i think we just have to think about what is the best use of the resources that we have what is the best benefit the district and

076our taxpayers are going to get from these investments so i think we're we're a little bit away from having all the information that i think the board is going to need to make an informed decision on whether or not we're going to move forward and if so with what projects but but i do think it's really important the dean has done a lot of work we've run him around a lot on this and you know brian the psi folks have done a lot of work in the background i really sincerely appreciate all that work but i think it's important for us as decision makers again representing all of our stakeholders that we make you know the right decision it's and it's because it is potentially a major investment that has a relatively long payback interval

077and we've got to make a really big informed decision but i do think the potential to get some funding back for some very large roofing projects that we were going to have to do anyway that are on our current five-year plan and if we can pull that money in and we can actually get some of that back to us shoot that would be that would be a wonderful thing for us to consider so um again i think we're just a little bit away i think from having all of the information that we need to make an informed decision but i think it's going to be coming to it shortly so thank you again thank you doug natasha do you want to jump in from the committee yeah i think one of the things that i

078really came away with and doug said that was that we have potentially four maybe more roofs that are in our long-range facilities plan currently slated to be replaced so if we can take advantage advantage of that with doing the solar that would be kind of a win-win in some ways i also like the idea of solar but just like everything else we have a lot of interests a lot of potential projects i do appreciate performance and dean really laying this out i think with a few more details that doug has requested i'm not going to take credit for that doug has been very thorough in the meetings making sure that we are not jumping into a situation that we can't afford i think we are pretty close to being able to make a very good

079sound decision on this thank you natasha peter yes um you know this is an area near and dear to my heart um certainly i think i appreciate the work that we're doing both in terms as a district as a whole on sustainability and and and here on this solar project but nonetheless i'm very much aware that this is a significant investment um and and thanks a lot also for sharing the information on me with me if i understand that you know i think the break-even point i think i saw was was like five years or maybe five or six is that am i is that correct information that we got if we were to take into consideration the board's investment in advance while the building was being built of a half million dollars it's not

080quite there but it is still under the 10-year mark is my belief i would have to double check to be 100 but that would be my my ability to i think the note said eight years i'm pretty sure it's eight years projected for the three projects that are underway but from our original may whitney project it's under 10 years if we take into account the early investment okay so i think so i think yeah i mean the notes that said five and then there were some questions you're saying it's less than 10 right somewhere within 10 which but the point though is that um in contrast to some of the other projects that we are looking at we're going to get our money back like we have a couple big projects that we have in

081mind including at the high school and others so it's very different in that sense you know this project is different because those others we're not going to get the money back we'll get great benefits the students will have fantastic time and and and and so on but is that a fair characterization yes this is actually considered two-part first and foremost is sustainability and our commitment as a district to sustainability the secondary is the fact that it does have a return on the investment where there is a break-even point within a decade as a matter of fact again what was projected assuming all of those variables come to to fruition that we would be paid back in full for our investment with incentives and whatnot at the eight-year mark and of course you know we're projecting

082with someone knowns right we don't know energy cost totally in the future but but we're using the best information that we have now yeah and one of the things about the energy cost savings because that's a real component of the fact that we would be able to after that year eight any of the savings that is seen on utilities can be reallocated that's the part that's most unique about solar is that we can spend money break even but continue to save money on energy costs into the future that's the component where the long term because these arrays are anticipated to run 25 20 to 25 years this is where the projections at 30 on your on your chart you said 30 years right we usually run 30 year projections okay dr ramon is really conservative

083but 25 years out after it's paid for at eight years is is still an incredible return on investment and the 4.5 percent sorry i'm asking a lot of questions on the net present i think it was the 4.5 percent the rates you use um um where did that rate come from is that a federate or the 10-year treasury so on the net present value component that we use which was four and a half percent um that calculation and thank you for helping us run that uh that was based off of the federal uh reserve the federate yeah and that's the tenure is is that our normal way of calculating the within the enterprise the use of our dollar i will say mr goldberg had some feedback on that and then i absolutely agreed that that

084was a good rate for us to utilize okay so net present value is a generally accepted way of looking at how to make an investment with the turn investment so i think dean has embraced it the use of it and um i think he's done a marvelous job using that analysis tool to help us make financial decisions i love it yeah i know i agree with net present value it's just the rate you you you pick the way every i would just my question was not about whether net present value was a great idea it was the rates that you use you could use different rates when you do net present value you pick 4.5 is am i am i is that normal across the board it is the rate that you would use uh

085discount rate you would choose you would want to use a rate that you could reasonably earn that money on in some other investment project right right so the four and a half percent is the 10-year treasuries is it 10-year treasury you would instead put that cash in 10-year treasuries you could in four and a half percent so that's how that's the comparison you make for uh the investment got got it yeah it's basically the cost of the money right i got it otherwise it'd be in a bank account no i got it i just want to wear it for and some i think somebody asked the question earlier in the question that you have the rate in in all of the questions and then the 4.5 came up and i and i know it's the

086fed rate so i guess that's what we use i'm sorry about that i'm taking a long time but this is an historic opportunity it's 40 we don't know whether it's going to come back in our lifetime and and so i you know this rebate i mean it survived in in the new bill and and i think it's an opportunity that we should we should um um seriously consider and and because we just don't know when it's going to come back and i just have one more question under four years that but and i think doc alluded to that that we have some flexibility so next at the next body but meeting or soon thereafter we'll be voting on this and and but the commitment we're making is for the five percent at that point and

087then and then after that we there is a quest you know is it like four years i guess we have that flexibility about whether we continue with the project or not so baker tilley we had asked that question i did receive a response that as long as we've reached safe harbor which is more than five percent of the cost of the project in one of two areas in equipment purchased or in engineering and soft costs being completed and paid for by december 31st that we would be able to be eligible to complete the project have it fully implemented and live and initialized by december 31st of 29 which we would want to do before that but yeah but so but anytime after december we could make decisions one way or the other and within that

088window so we believe that to be true but but i would say we're going to ask baker tilley representative a representative to come into the next board meeting because we want to make sure that there's no yearly expectation toward we have a confirmation that he'll be joining us on the 11th thank you be able to be thank you live and in person that did come up your question came up in our committee meeting and we need we need to gain some more insight before moving forward with that okay thank you very much and thanks for the indulgence and the patience of the board with all those questions thank you so very much great job and i appreciate you all i read all of your material very helpful thank you thank you peter lisa thank you

089very much i think most of my questions were answered either before or in our committee meeting i appreciate you coming it's a wealth of information i guess when you're doing your analysis and i know we're focused on numbers and what actual is versus what we projected i would also ask that we look at timing because i think that's just as important i know we hit a snag with something not being available it took longer to get this project built to get it started and so just understanding that and did the rebates come in because i don't know that we totally contemplated baker tilly time frame and cost in doing all this which i know was the right way to go as evidenced by the fact that the return was 136,000 more than we thought it

090would be but i just want to make sure we understand that as well and and when you're saying the payback is year eight that's your eight of operation not year eight after the first dollar goes out the door that's correct so i think that's something too we need to be remembering because the timing of the cash flow we have cash going out in year negative two year negative one and then it goes live and then cash might start coming back but there's once again that gets into this cash and fund balance analysis of what truly is the timing of money is coming back but when is it coming back and understanding how the outflow versus the income works and and i'm going to put you on the spot just a little bit one of the

091things that we had intentionally done because all of our conversations here talked about a 24 month return and the reason that we used the 24 months was the fact that typically and this is the quiz question when is it that you would have the cyst if we were to start in the summer and the system was completed when would you typically expect a district to receive the reimbursement for the ira it's a good question simple answer is it depends right but the ira process starts when the system is completed and energized so if the project is primarily performed over the summer or the fall and comment can be a big variable in the completion of a solar project as well for interconnection it's it's not uncommon for us to energize either just before the winter

092or in the following spring it could be that big of a variance with regard to the ira timing and i think the gentleman from baker tilly it would be a great question for him next time he's here but some of that depends upon the timing that the consultant baker tilly chooses for your tax year so a typical you know there's obviously an election that baker tilly has flexibility in making for typically tax exempt entities to choose when their tax year is so if it's if it is june 30th the end of the tax year then those funds can be expected over the next quarter or so just for big picture timing considerations so hopefully that helps because the return would be filed after the tax year so if they elected june 30th we wouldn't be

093able to file for the refund until july that's my understanding and then you have the processing time at the irs until the check is cut and then comes correct although as i stated there is flexibility for when you can choose your tax year to end i've seen districts for example choose their tax year to end in august because their system didn't get completed until july so essentially our goal is that we would start the summer of 26 be ready to go and energized figures crossed i understand in the fall before the winter comes that would allow us to work with baker tilly so that when our june 30th comes we were already in a good position for us to be able to move forward and within three months of that so that technically would be

094inside of that 24 months we've we've added quite a bit of time but we believe that that's and that was that was intentional why we talked about the 24 months component so you do remember thank you thank you for coming excuse me dean one quick thing to go back on that is that true that you could do if we did the high school we could do the roof and the solar all in the same summer is that do you believe that to be true i will i'm going to hold off on that because in the conversations that we've had with the team sorry brian i know i was with some of the other team members that there might be an interest in making sure we get the roof completed then come back and do the

095solar so there may be it's more likely some structural component inside of that from a timing perspective which might play a part in thank you decision making i apologize just one more question what is the warranty life on the equipment the warranty on the panels there's a product warranty that's usually around 10 to 12 years they also provide a performance warranty so they're warranting against the output of the module over a period of time it's different for manufacturers that's usually around 25 years sometimes it's a linear warranty sometimes it's step down warranty so for example like in year 25 they guarantee 80 percent of the performance something like that so that's the panels on the inverters those are typically a 10 to 12 year product warranty as well those are the main components that warranties

096could come into play i believe there's some racking warranty as well which can vary by manufacturer i believe around 10 to 15 years but that's usually what we see is warranty claims if they come on the inverters that's the more sensitive so it's interesting because the question was asked why use 30 years is that truly the life of this system the reason we've used 30 years is because really related to the life of the panels inverters can be swapped out racking's you know not changing over a period of time the life of panels can be well beyond 30 years it's just a matter of them degrading over time so panels that were installed in the 70s are still producing just not nearly what they they were at the time thanks thank you lisa dr pincher

097um we have had i feel like so many conversations on this and i've read so much information i feel like i understand the data and i know where i stand on this so i do not have any questions for you thank you thank you dr pincher alicia i'm just thinking about us as stewards of taxpayer money and we are also stewards of this earth and this is a win-win for being good stewards so i'm excited about the numbers and how much we've dived into this like repeatedly and it's solid i'm really excited about it i hope we could go for it thank you um i guess to echo lisa's point i think just managing the float that just that's i'm not sure that that's calculated into the return um the negative one negative two year

098but irrespective of that that that's just something to manage um i also wanted to know and i think this is a piece of information you're working on um if we invested the five percent and then down the road we decided decided one or two of the projects we weren't going to move forward on i don't think we lose whatever we invested and we still have like whatever work was done that work was done but what's the downside like what what's the consequence of investing the five percent and then ultimately deciding no it's not the right move for our district to move forward with one project say so one of the things that i would think about in responding to that is is the district's appetite there to do a project a project the advantage of

099the current ira right in the timeline in and using doug's numbers of about a half million dollars if it was a ten million dollar project half of that would be committed to the thought process of committing to sort correct so the 250 000 or whatever that component is depending upon how the project splits up the risk there is that the board never chooses to move forward and that the that amount of money is simply lost in the incentives that we would receive for the portion that we did do in other words it's it's work that's done right it's always sitting on a shelf peter made a comment with regards to we don't know if it's going to ever come back but if it does we have engineering already completed and work done so that we

100could we could be shovel ready as they call it right if there's a small window to move forward we wouldn't have to do some of the things that we're working with the other thing is that with regards to guaranteed energy savings contract over which this is under it does allow us to do an addendum to that contract rather quickly i know that our conversation hasn't been quick but the the process to go through that is uh is easier at that point as well so sure those are my thoughts and then the other question i had is just confirming i believe what you said is that we have to be complete with these projects by december 31st 2029 not just started or energized completely done completely done so i would i would i would be extremely

101cautious that we don't move that up at least six months to ensure that if we were to do something that we had more than enough time to get through that right in case a hiccup yeah yeah okay all right well thank you for all this work i know it's a very exciting opportunity obviously return on investment is a key factor in the decision and the commitment to the sustainable solution thank you thanks prine thank you all right next item on the agenda our discussion with action mr ursted please share a brief overview of the administration's recommendation related to the district's waste and recycling bid approval thank you madam president again as we mentioned before at the previous meeting the we went out for bid again after the first session of our section of bids were

102were rejected by the board of education but after review by both the lowest and then the next lowest we found that the bids were non-conforming meaning that neither one submitted the contract appropriately so therefore in discussing this with legal representation we have the option of choosing either one so therefore madam president i'm recommending that we go with waste management for our waste recycling services one another reason why i'm excited about that option is the fact that they are the only company at this point in time that offered composting so okay thank you may i have a motion and a second for the approval to award waste management a contract for the waste and recycling services for three years in the amount of fifty two thousand two hundred and eighty four dollars for the first year

103with an option to extend it for two additional one year terms contingent upon mutual agreement may have that motion so moved second thank you doug and thank you dr pinter our all right we'll just alicia do you have questions i'm just happy there's composting because i didn't know if there was but awesome yay thank you dr pinter she said what exactly i was gonna say all right lisa am i allowed to ask we i have never been asked to approve a non-conforming bid is that anything we should be worried about it is not in this case because we've already sought legal approval and legal recommendation and they felt very strongly that we had the option to choose either one and mr erstad has had conversations with them and he's very comfortable with us okay i

104just so just wanted to know that's a great question red flag that was thank you lisa doug any questions no ma'am peter any questions no no ma'am natasha none for me either so kate can you call the vote miss tim yes mrs warren yes mrs danaker yes mr goldberg yes dr pinter yes ms meloni yes mr haitian yes thank you i'll and thank you all right the next item on the agenda is the long range sustainable sustainability plan report we spent a significant amount of time during the last meeting reviewing the board agenda item so let's get a motion and a second on the table so move thank you second thank you thank you natasha and thank you alicia are there any questions for dr gault or dr zar just one comment i'm so excited

105on awards thank you all right kate can you please call the roll mrs warren yes mr haitian yes mrs danaker yes mr goldberg yes ms meloni yes dr pinter yes ms tim yes all right this is a mouthful we are going into closed session for the following four reasons the appointment employment compensation discipline performance or dismissal of specific employees specific individuals who serve as independent contractors in a park recreational educational setting or specific volunteers of the public body or legal counsel for the public body including hearing testimony on a complaint lodged against an employee a specific individual who serves as an independent contractor in a park recreational or educational setting or a volunteer of the public body or against legal counsel for the public body to determine its validity however a meeting to consider an

106increase in compensation to a specific employee of a public body that is subject to a local government wage increase transparency act may not be enclosed and shall be open to the public and posted and held in accordance with the open meetings act five ilcs 122 c1 the purchase or lease of real property for the use of the public body including meetings held for the purpose of discussing whether a particular parcel should be acquired five ilcs 122 c5 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 five ilcs 122 c2 litigation when an action against affecting or on behalf of the particular public body has been filed and is pending before a court or administrative tribunal or when the public

107body finds that an action is probable or imminent in which case the basis for the finding shall be recorded and entered into the meetings of the closed meeting five ilcs 120 to c11 may i have this motion so moved second thank you doug and thank you natasha kate please call the roll mr atian yes miss tim yes mrs danneger yes mr goldberg yes mrs warren yes ms meloni yes dr pinter yes okay we will not be taking any action after closed session this evening