001Okay, welcome everybody. We um started early at 5:30. We called roll order, did our pledge and we moved to executive session uh for personnel and litigation uh to kind of expedite everything tonight. Uh so that's why we started and we're running a couple minutes late coming back in. So the next thing on the item on the agenda is example of educ educational excellence. Who wants to introduce whatever? I can um we have Dr. Farmer here from Marian High School and they have been doing the great goldfish taste off and um she has a student with her and we're going to hear all about their process what they what they've done. Well, do you want to We can move on. That's fine. Without him. Thank you. Thank you. We've done this enough to go on without
002him here. So, you sure? Yeah, I'm good. Okay. So, I'm Dr. Farnest, Calli Wallace, and she's one of my marketing students. I have to use this thing. Yeah, you need to speak that Facebook Land. Okay. All right. So, um, our marketing class, I'm same to say, we snack a lot. So, Goldfish is what they snack on. And the conversation kind of started with, well, we wonder what, you know, everybody's favorite goldfish flavor is. Well, what's the high schools? Well, I wonder what the cities is. So, we reached out to Mayor Abshire said, we really wanted to do this, you know, real scientific research project and try to figure out the city's favorite goldfish flavor if they would sponsor us and let us do it. Are there different flavors of goldfish? Well, yes, there are more
003than 10. Really? Yes. So, in the process of that, he said, "Do what you need to do and then they'll work with us to reveal what the favorite flavor is." So, we just kind of realigned all of our curriculum. So, all research that they've done now has been with Pepperage Farm, how to do the assessment, how to create surveys, how to market it. They're in the process now of doing the um social media campaign for it, which we'll which Callie will kind of talk about. She's going to let you know where we're at. What you do have in front of you though is a bag that has 10 samples in it. Okay. Yep. You can go right ahead. So, there are 10 different flavors in there. You do have a little color-coded survey and we'll
004kind of talk a little bit why they're colorcoded for that purpose. You can either pencil your vote in or you have a QR code that you can scan and vote. So, if you don't want to sit here and taste all 10 tonight, you can scan the QR code and then you're going to vote. Our pallet after each. Oh, you got water. That's all I That's all we could afford after all the goldfish. Well, and the Harry Potter ones are not here. I know Harry Potter hit the market afterwards, but on the survey there's a spot for other. So you can write in these were the top 10 that are on the market. It tells us what flavor they are before we taste them. Well, you're supposed Well, they got a color code on the bottom
005so you'll be able to line it to see what they are. Oh, okay. We had we uh we started the color coding system with our elementary schools. So, um I will tell you that the students the students have literally what you have in front of you packed 10,000 samples like that. That's sweet. So, we packed a thousand samples of all 10 colors. We did not take Frank's Red Hot to the elementary school. Okay. So, its voting rank kind of went down the day we went there, but we're trying to get it back up in the ranks for that. So, so right now I'm going to let Callie just go ahead and talk to you about the rest, but feel free to taste if you want to as you go on, but we'll turn it to
006her. Some of them I got a question. One's color coded, but it's got two different colors in it. Does that mean they're both the same? That's the colors. It's rainbow. Rainbow color. It's purple. This kind of started with Oh, she needs a microphone. Yes. It started in third hour when she bought us goldfish one day cuz we mentioned it and we were like, man, it would really be nice to have some goldfish in here. And so the next day we came back to like three cartons of goldfish ready for us to snack on. And then we got to thinking like what would the high school's favorite goldfish flavor be? And then it just escalated to like what would all of Marian's favorite goldfish flavor be? So that's what kind of inspired us to start this
007project, which has been so much fun throughout the whole thing so far. Franks is hot. So this is our overview. Um, it's teaching us a lot. I know personally I have learned so much about getting up here, talking to people, talking to businesses, reaching out to like different places and asking for sponsorships and donations and everything like that. Um, it's definitely got us engaged with our community partners. We worked with Granny Puckets, Black Diamond, Pure Pet, and the City Hall. and they've been all of everything that we've partnered with has been really great so far. The whole way through they've all been super cooperative and it's just been they've made it really easy. So, this is kind of our timeline. On the 6th, we went to all the elementary schools and we hosted our taste
008test there, which is why they're coordinated because it was a lot easier for the kindergarters to say, "Hey, if you liked the green one, raise your hand." And then just tally them all like that. And then on se on the seventh we went to those three locations and we kind of divided and conquered and hosted a bunch of samples there and we got a ton of samples at Granny Puckets. That's where I was at. I know Pure Pet wasn't as popular but the city hall had the fire department and the police department come in and sample which was awesome. And then on the 8th we went to Black Diamond and got a ton more surveys there. On the 18th, we're here and then tomorrow we'll be finishing up our samples at the high school and
009getting those out of the way. And then on the 24th, we're going to the city of Marian council meeting and doing the same thing there. So, these are all of the flavors. I had no idea there was this many flavors and so we started looking into it and there's even more than this, but they're like limited edition, but these are like the top 10. So, we have been doing our pencil pencil paper surveys, our online surveys, and we're just now starting our social media surveys. So, those will be pushed out with links and everything in order to get some more surveys online. Our results and outcomes will be filed into a a report and then we'll be presenting that hopefully with city hall or something like that and making it like a big thing to
010find out, you know, what's the city of Marian's favorite flavor. Um, we're going to share our results on social media once we do our big reveal. And then I mean, yeah, this is again just talking about everything it's taught us, which is a lot more than you actually think. I think that's everything. I would love for you to partner with like Kroger or Walmart with your answers and see if they will for say a month change their marketing like their you know their display and see if that impacts their sales because you have provided them specific community data of what is preferred in the city and see if they increase their sales. That's only one track that yeah can only vote for one. Can we vote as many times as we want? We did reach
011out to um to Pepperage Farms as far as trying to get a hold of corporate that was impossible. So went social media got in contact with our local the route owner. Okay. Um and he did stop by Black Diamond on Saturday and did give us some leave us some more sample product and things. Um he said as far as the him passing it up the chain, everybody thought it was a great idea till it got to legal. Um, and then legal had the concerns of promoting it. I know of promoting it through the schools and being kind of affiliated with it, which we completely understand. So, um, you know, we'd love for like Walmart, Target stuff to be able to to do that, but Pepper Farms couldn't really stand behind and say like, "Oh, we're
012doing this whole schoolwide campaign." However, Kylie's mom did make us all those nice t-shirts that they all that they got to wear to all of their events for that. So, um, but we've had fun with it. Um, did the learning along the way. So, more than what they realized with that one. Are there only 10 flavors? Is that Are there more that we didn't test or There's only those are like the 10 basics. There's a lot more. That's the reason there's another thing for other on there because there's a lot of seasonal like samores is on your survey. Samors is seasonal. So, it's hard to it was hard to get survey samples for that one. They just came out with that new butterbeer nut whatever. Harry Potter's. It's like a butterscotch thing. Strawberry shortcake. There
013are so many Goldfish flavors. We didn't even know that there was an original. We all thought the original was the cheddar. Yeah. And it is technically an original like an oyster cracker type thing. Well, you know, you're supposed to go through life and learn one thing every day. And I've learned something today. You've learned something about that. So, but yeah, if you don't care, go ahead and you can put your uh you can scan the QR code to vote. I already voted and then you can put your I voted sticker on there. So, we involved the art department. They actually kind of helped create the stickers with one of our students that is an art student. And um and actually uh then Mrs. Wolford's they got to print our posters and stuff that we had
014done for it. And um so we're about to wrap it up. We will plan on um ending social media on April the 12th and then we'll work with the city towards the end of it. And we should say this is their final project. So this is kind of what they voted on it to be. So they'll progress to the end of the semester and do a reflective type exercise on it. So they'll they'll continue the the voting until closer to the end of the semester. Well, April 12th is where we'll shut off all voting. So, but they're right now they're in the process of creating social media videos promoting each different flavor and we're going to start releasing those over the next 10 days and then April 12th we'll shut down social media voting and
015then we'll do our results, get our charts made and then work with the city on a date to reveal it. We may forgo going to the council meeting next week because we're having some conflicts with the students and stuff and actually just go to the city council meeting when we reveal the actual flavor that we're going to do. So, so share it out on social media when you see it. Okay. So, we can get people to vote. Push it back a few more days. I think third Thursday. Oh, yeah. Yeah. They mentioned that, didn't they? Third Thursday. Way to like really get some community feedback. Yeah. And we can push it. We can we can push it back. So, how long did it take you to put all in them 10 thou 10,000 cups? Yeah.
016And then they went back through and put all the stickers on them. So, and I'd say that is one thing that it's been fun to watch that they haven't really picked up on is from the outside looking in is seeing which students kind of arise to the leadership part of it and which students are into the process parts of it of saying this is how he should does it quicker and doing that one and which one can go gather students out in the hall that are supposed to be on lunch someplace and get them to do it without having anything delegating delegating you know bringing in people it's like they're going to come down and pack during their lunch and they're getting nothing out of it and stuff. So, um, it's been fun to kind
017of watch that, see who can re who can recruit people and get more people on board to do it. So, any other questions for us? It's a great project. That's all. So, you're going to come back and tell us what it is or provide us? Well, it'll be everywhere. It'll be everywhere. It's everywhere. Is there social media link now? Is there what is there a social media link now? Um, if you go out to the high school's page, it's been shared on the business department page and then it's actually the high school sharing and stuff out there, too. Okay. So, um, what I do tonight is I can share it back out onto the business department's page and stuff. So, if you want to come look at that and then you guys can share it
018out. Their goal is to get at least 500 more votes before we close it out on April 12th. Right now, we're close to a little over 900. Um, we have some more going on tomorrow. We've got three classes to finish up at the high school. Um, and then we'll have to sh shut off the high school ones because they're literally like creeping in the room like, "Hey, can we test goldfish?" It's like, "No, we've got to shut it off." Okay. Okay. Tell them it's only marrying. Otherwise, you skew your results. Yeah. Vote on social media. Are you doing revealing the vote along the way or only going to reveal at the end? At the end. Only the class knows right now. So, where they're at. Okay. Teach political science. Then you get some of them.
019Then they can show how to try to Well, I I will say that the sports and business uh class asked if they could get on it and start placing bets. Buds. told I couldn't not officially tell them that. The legal department didn't approve that one either. So, uh, anyway, so they may have some side gigs going on with it. All right. Any other questions? Thanks very much. I enjoyed my gold finish and I already voted. So, you voted. Did you vote for Franks? It was a close second. Anybody vote Franks? I cannot be will. But I got the next best thing. Cinn Cinnamon. The cinnamon roll. Yeah, that's one I It was tough though. It was a close call. They were neck and neck. Okay. But I thought about and what made my decision was
020having to eat about four handfuls of the hot ones compared to the cinnamon. I might I figured that out. That's what we're going to leave those bags there. So you got some other people or some adults whatever you don't have to taste. Yeah. I'm saying I've got some kids. I'm taking I didn't know there was Thank you. I didn't know there was pretty impressed as soon as I did it. Oh, you you're supposed to bite them. It looked like you swallowed them. I still got one of each. I didn't know you were supposed to buy them. I thought you just swallowed them like Phil. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you very much. Thank you. God bless him. Next item on the agenda that was you know it's very interesting and uplifting when this education excellence
021all the examples of what's going on and I'm glad it's on Facebook that people in the community get to see what's going on with these exceptional students and clubs and classrooms and teachers and uh classrooms and things. It's very nice. So, uh, next moving right along. Uh, audience, the visitors, you two ladies want to get up and speak. You sure? Going once, twice, three times. We'll move right along. Anony's not here. Do you have any You're a sir. I know that, but maybe you could be a surrogate or something. I thought maybe, you know, surrogate. Okay. Uh, Mr. Scar, you want to move along to motion on the consent agenda? Mr. President, I make the recommendation that we approve the consent agenda as presented. Minutes, the minutes from the February 18th, 2025 regular meeting, bills,
022the February supplementary bills and the March bills for payment as presented. Donations, I'll let Mrs. Moss read those. and the IHSA membership. Second. Second. Miss Moss, you want to talk about our donations for the month? We have Benton Verizon to Marian Junior High School for teacher supplies valued at $75 and a memorial donation in memory of Mary Landis to Marian High School for nursing program needs valued at $4,90. That's very nice. Very nice. Any other questions or comments? Madam Secretary, hearing none, will you call roll, please? Moore, yes. Bundren, yes. Garrison, yes. Waller, yes. Wesley, yes. Moving right along. Uh, to the board policy adoption. If anybody wants to make that motion, it can say as presented. If you don't feel like reading two lines of number dot or colon numbers, Mr. Mr. President, I
023make the recommendation to approve the following policies as presented. Do I have a second? Second. Have any other discussion? Hearing none. Madam Secretary, we call roll. Bundan, yes. Garrison, yes. Waller, yes. Wesley, yes. Moore, yes. Yes. And we're going to table item B under old business. And uh Bryce, will you do your favorite motion regarding personnel recommendations this morning? Yep. Mr. President, I'd like to make the recommendation to approve the following first, second, third, and fourth year teacher list as presented. You You don't have to necessarily read them all. They'll get a copy of this tomorrow. So, if you just want to say as presented, that's fine. But you could uh you say you would I'll be nice. I'll read them in case somebody wants to hear their name. Okay. Uh employment fourth year teachers
024current assignment Bailey Anderson, Morgan Brave, Elizabeth Graph, Jill Morland, Haley Russian. Third year teachers current assignment Nicole Allen, Abby Bayer, Carrie Beck, Pton FY, Amanda Gates, Slea Cassim, Alli Por, Olivia Plot, Madison Presswood, Kyle Schmidt, Madison Roland, Alicia Stacy, Heather Webb. Second year teachers, uh, Gabriel Farner, Riley Gu, Megan Hail, Lexi Shadowins, Lauren Loose, Luci, however you pronounce that, Rex Manfredo, Heather Sanders. First year teachers, Jennifer Anderson, Andrea Francis, Jacob Rice, Janice Bilman, Spillian, Kyle Guyer, Haley Van Horn, Christian York, Graham Young, JC Giles, Megan Sage, Amanda Spanel, Stephen Pagandorf, Sophia Boswell, Kaylee Evans, part-time teachers, Courtney Sullivan, Joanna Samples. You want us to take Give your voice? You have a second on that part of it? Well, do we want to split it or keep going? Let's split it. That way we can I'll
025second. Okay. Any discussion? We do this every March when we remploy the teachers, first, second, third, fourth year teachers regarding tenure. Uh, any other questions hearing? None. Madam Secretary, Garrison, yes. Waller, yes. Wesley, yes. Moore, yes. Bundren, yes. Liar, yes. Want to continue on? Mr. President, I'd like to make the recommendation to approve the following personnel items as presented. Non-certified. Non-certified Angel Harding Cook assigned to Adams effective March 18, 2025. coaching Marian High School volunteer bass boat captains Thomas Miller Hayden Snder Greg Miller John Baker Steve Gabby Aaron Henry Kevin Williams John Owens and Brian Bruner effective for the 2025 season Amy Buchanan Adams girls assistant track and field coach effective for the 2025 season reassignments Brandy Stanley assigned from nurse float assigned to Mar unit 2 to school nurse at Mary Junior High School
026effective for the 2025 2026 school resignations. Morgan Brave, first grade teacher, assigned to Long Fellow, effective at the end of the 2024 2025 school year. Courtney Sullivan, school nurse, assigned to Mar Junior High School and nursing instructor, assigned to Maran High School, effective May 23rd, 2025. Adam McKenna, science teacher, assigned to Maran High School, effective July 31st, 2025. Christian York, art teacher, assigned to Mar High School, effective July 31st, 2025. Uh, retirements. Jennifer. Nenz. Yes. Secretary assigned to Washington effective June 3rd, 2025. I have a second. Second. Any questions or comments? Hearing none. Madam Secretary, we call roll, please. Waller, yes. Wesley, yes. Moore, yes. Bundren, yes. Garrison, yes. Wire, yes. Cherry, can we have a motion on inter fund loans, please? Mr. President, I make the recommendation to authorize Superintendent Becky Moss to direct
027Treasurer Kim Watson to loan, if necessary, amounts between existing funds is provided in the Illinois school code for customary expenditures, including but not limited to payroll, utilities, and regular monthly expenditures. I have a second. Second. Becky, do you want to I know we do this every year. Briefly explain what we're doing there. Um, one of the two funds are operating. We haven't done this, but we just do it in case you le. With that explanation, any other questions? Hearing none. Madam Secretary, will you call roll, please? Wesley. Yes. Moore. Yes. Yes. Garrison. Yes. Waller. Yes. Liar. Yes. Next item is no action. Looks like the buyers we approved last month the building trades house fell through. Can you have any insight on that, Becky? Or um Yes. So, we had a buyer uh they ended
028up rescending their offer. We have a new offer. Um and it's actually a little bit more. Sale price is I think 303,000. Um and so but we're waiting on that to sort of firm up and then we will most likely have that on the next board agenda. Okay. So any comments or questions since there's no action needed on that? Okay. Shannon, will you give us a motion on the audit? Yep. Engagement letter. Uh Mr. President, I make the recommendation to approve the auditor engagement letter from Keer CPA Group for the following three years. Fiscal year 25 35 550 fiscal year 26 $37,325 and fiscal year 27 215 $525. I have a second. How's that? I have a question. Why do we get such a break in year three? We don't. That is incorrect. Okay, that's
029what I was It should be 39,195. Okay, so Shannon, you want to amend your motion for that, please? I'm going to amend the motion to include fiscal year 27. What' you say? 39,000. $195. Darn. I thought we were going to get a break there. Thought we were getting a three-year discount with that amendment. Chair, did you make which one of you second? Um, Waller second. Okay. Any other questions or comments? Hearing none. Madam Secretary, will you call roll, please? Mo, yes. Bund, yes. Garrison, yes. Waller, yes. Wesley, yes. Wire, yes, Jerome. Uh oh, he's got a report. Couple extra things this time. This is the our technology committee meeting. Is it created by AI or did you do it? I actually typed this manually. Manual. So that's what you call your version of AI manually.
030Yeah. Well, instead of like dragon or something like that. Also, one other thing that come in the past, all of our Facebook live videos get posted on the district page and they're there forever for review. If you want to go back and the community wants to go back, effective February 19th, Facebook has changed their policies and they will be deleting all of those uh Facebook live videos. Everything prior to February will be deleted starting in June and then following that each month that we post like I'll post tonight. It'll be available for three days. Is there any way you can store it on our server or make it available? I mean, I'm just asking. We can we can try to figure out if there's a way to download it and find a place to put
031it, but it would be wouldn't be available to the public. Okay. just means they'll have to watch live be like live from New York City Saturday. It's Marion Unit 2 board meeting, right? They they watch it live or they got 30 days to watch it or they come and join us in person. Is the you is streaming through YouTube is is their policy any different? Um it probably would be. I don't know YouTube channel. I don't know how much space they provide. Okay. As far as how much data you can store, for how long? Something I can look at. From there, you could download if you stream live from YouTube, you can download. But can you download forever or Well, yeah. Would you would have a copy of it? Oh, you mean the each person
032would have if you wanted to download it? No. If we created an account, streamed it live, it would save it and then we could download it and have a hard copy. Yes. See the text? She's shaking. How much storage is there? But if we download it, we it would be on our server. That's why I mean I guess to Jerry I mean it would but we don't we don't have a server. Yeah. Google it wouldn't be publicly accessible. Okay. Okay. I just have to watch live for 30 days. This just came out from Facebook. Is that different than Facebook and see what kind of come and see? Gotcha. Any comments on your meeting or you just hand these out to us on your minutes? That was just a little rundown of our last meeting. Our
033next meeting is 26th of March of this month. U the the committee members have been assigned different AI applications and we'll try to get closer to narrowing down the possibilities. What is magic school? It's what? No. What is it? website or activities prompts. There's all kinds of slideshow presentations with prompts that you put in a topic revolution for your class. That's pretty neat. That's different than school AI. They're all different. They're all different. So all the ones listed, we listed Chat, G, GPT, Magic School, Con, MIGO, Class Companion, Gemini, and School AI. And the committee members all took one app to review or one program to review, and then we're going to come back to the table um at March 26th and sort of narrow it down. So a lot of these you use the
034free version and you get some features and some but if you do a purchase version you get more features that's part of what so they just dibble at you to make you think oh this is good so now you buy to give you money right that's part of what the committee look at and the committee created a survey to send out to staff as well to get an idea of what everybody likes to use or if they have no clue even what really an AI generator is. So, we're getting an idea. Cool. Aon is not here tonight. Uh Miss Smoss, do you have anything to report? Um no, but he was outside all day at the complex getting ready for baseball. First baseball game was today and helping the guys. Um and then he was
035also installing some huddle cameras for the baseball and softball fields. Um and His allergies were really getting to him after being out there in the wind all day. So, I told him to go home. So, well, you want to enlighten us and the public of what our fantastic uh screen around the track at the junior high, what it cost to defense last Saturday night or Friday morning or Friday Saturday morning. Friday night the fence down here along Russ. They're coming on Thursday. Well, I mean, some people might not have driven by it. I guess the wind the wind caught the Yes. The the screen was like a sail in the wind and took the fence with it. So, not all of it, just not all of it. A portion of it. So, we have the
036fence company, we have it roped off, caution tape right now and uh we will be repairing it on Thursday. So we decided and I will say we when we did this one this one was first and so it was sort of the guinea pig if you will the other uh since then we've done more research on the screens and the one like at Longfellow in Lincoln we had no zero issues with so in the as we move forward if we buy more screens it will be the same ones we have at Longfellow and Lincoln and not the one at the junior high have more flaps in this one's heavier and it carries so Okay. Any questions? Lesson learned. Learn from our mistakes, right? Madame assistant superintendent. Um, all I have is to announce that we
037do have kindergarten registration happening soon. We would love all of our students that will be five by September 1st to attend. Um, it will be Friday, April 4th here at the unit office from 8:00 a.m. to 3 p.m. or Monday, April 7th, and it from 400 p.m. to 7 p.m. So, I said every every incoming kindergartener, we would love to have you on those days. And their parents, too, or just kindly just their parents and their documents, their proof of their residency, their fees. Um, I thought you were going to run the daycare and just let everybody drop their four-year-old. We don't have them here for that. Okay. Thank you, Miss Watson. You get your exploded on it. It has exploded. Okay. February 28 report. Uh we ended the month with 38,211,99560. We did get
038our third extension payment on the 21st of February along with interest. So the total amount we received in property tax extensions plus interest was 33 million481,239.7575. Um that's 99.65% compared to last year without putting you on the spot. It's about the same percentise, but I mean the amount that's fine. I'm sorry. I'm just curious if it's gone up a little or it has gone up but it's the same percentage about 99% of our extensions. Um our fiscal year is 2/3 of the way through which is 66.67%. Our revenues are at 86.13%. budget and exp. I asked you this week or a week or so ago about all the news about getting rid of the Department of Education, how kids would suffer and everything. Do you remember what you told me about how much money we
039get from the Department of Education? So 4.8 billion is what we have budgeted this year from federal funds. 800,000 is the money. So about $4 million out of our budget five5 and what's our total budget? 50 50 58 58. So 4 million out of 58 is what we get from US and and a lot of the money um was coming to the district. prior to the development of the department of education. So even if they do away with the department of education that shouldn't fund food service that's us agriculture department so I just asked that because people had heard in the news hey you know department of education will go away all the kids aren't going to get educated I just but that's why I asked you that question it's 4 million out of 58
040million and part of that 4 million is 4. We're getting 4.8 and eight was eight is the estimate. So 4 million out of 58 million and that 4 million is roughly divided like what funds what does that fundit title one is a big piece lunch and idea which flows through special ed thank you. That's why I asked you so I wouldn't put you on the spot red. Yeah. Any other questions for Miss Watson? Hearing none. Uh any other miscellaneous or discussion before we go back? We've already uh we're still in close session. We just recessed. I'll let everybody know that we're not going to take any action after we come out of close session. So, you're free to stay until we get finished or or you're free to leave. So, uh anything else to be
041uh If not, the school year's fast approaching like our next meeting is April 15th, just two meetings before graduation. Uh, man, will we will everyone be done with testing by the time we have our next meeting, the A and all that stuff? That's for the most part wrapping up, maybe some makeups, but for the most part, yes. Any other questions or comments? See y'all next month, April 15th, same place. Thank you, Jerome. What's that? Thank you all.