001out of here. >> Then we schedule another 30. We just We don't have enough people for a quarum right So, we're going to let you guys present. As long as we think there's somebody coming, we'll just let you guys present here. >> Yeah. >> But if Zach's going to be here in two minutes, then we'll wait. Otherwise, we'll >> tech answer two minutes. >> Oh, it wasn't anyway. That's why I need that one. You guys stand with us and do the pledge. >> I aliance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for it stands one nation under God indivisible with liberty and justice for all. anybody wants to uh volunteer to pray for us, we can do that, too. I'm not joking. If you really did want, that's We
002used to do that all the time. We just >> I'm not prepared, but if anyone is That's it. Yeah. >> Yeah. Yes. >> Yeah. It's Hello. >> Yeah, we need him. >> We can't start. Okay, I guess we're going to call the meeting to order. >> 637 here. Now, we're going to have public comment. And I've got a new uh description for public comment, and I'm not going to read it because it basically says you have all the time you want. You can say anything you want. I'm going to add that we be uh just reasonable, respectful, and if you have a public comment because it takes about 10 minutes to read what the new public but it basically says you can do whatever you want. So public didn't sign up. >> Nobody was easy.
003Any more comments? >> No more comments. >> Mr. Rice did a wonderful job orchestrating and Mr. Petri does a great job of keeping your high school graduation under an hour. >> Nice job. >> So don't tell me >> keep that's sort of been the the standard for a while. >> What a great app. >> Good time. I guessoston. >> Oh, okay. Yeah, >> I am teacher. I teach seventh grade. >> My name is I just and we brought a few toys to show you. And I also brought my um I had a couple boys at the beginning of the year that I felt like really needed this year. And so I talked to Miss and we kind of brainstormed some ideas to challenge three of my boys. Rayon being one of them. My other and
004my friends that also want to see my children are Hank and River and River. Uh so they I talked to St. I to the boys and their parents. They were all in and so they got started. They named their business. Say your business name again. >> Three. And they meet every >> Wednesday from 9:15 and the store ends at 9:45. >> Mr. Y. Uh, so we'll go ahead and play the video and then can answer any questions before he get started. He has some fidgets for you all to have that they made in their store. This is like a little thing. >> So, in the video you'll see how the boys uh decided to run their business. Uhhuh. very much hands on. Uh the first thing they did was they collected data. They went around
005the school and asked kids like what kind of toys would you like to have? They went back with Miss Duncan and they did tallies and looked at their data and determined what toys the kids would want. And then they decided to look at filament, how much that cost, and then decided ultimately how much to sell a toy. So, we'll go ahead and play the video. That's as far as I got. Hi, my name is There's a ring there's inside. That's not all of this, but Why don't we have all our stuff? One example is a greenish blue and like this dragon egg. And another chicken. And then we got this. >> What do you have to do to get it to print? So if there's something like this >> and then it just starts burning.
006>> Yeah. So take that take out the filament. >> Yep. And then it prints out right here. Right. >> Yep. >> Very cool. Like I said in the cost to make two of the to $12. >> You figured out how much filament you used to make each toy. And then you put a price to them. >> Yeah. >> If they printed a chicken and it filament, we probably Is that how much it costs or how much it weighs? >> Okay. So, that's how much it weighs. have so much fun. >> And what mask are you? We have made 1,600 total sales $1,000 to continue next year and sell to other schools to get more money. So if you want like say a clean and purple chicken, you got yourself So that's all and we would
007like to keep schools next year like a little. Okay, as you can tell uh in the cute adorable video, uh they had some data collecting and graphing, decision making, problem solving, teamwork and communication, budgeting and pricing. Um do you have any questions for everyone? >> I do. >> Okay. >> When you these toys, it's just something that you have a program that you buy and then I'm assuming that part, but then can you custom make something? Can you write your own program? >> Um Yeah, you can. And we also have these 3D printed pens which might get sold but not that much. And so if you want to print something of your own in it and it doesn't have any sort of file, just take a 3D printed pen and you can make that. >>
008So we have pens as well as a 3D printer. >> So if you just if you wanted to make a Then you could make your own file or you could buy that file to to make a say a ring to fit on your finger. >> So it really gave them an opportunity and challenged them this year. I mean they're seventh graders. Uh what they're doing is definitely third, fourth, fifth grade material. really present. >> Any other questions? So, hello everyone. I am Hannah Lindstrom, a teacher at the high school. Um, along with me, I have Ann, another teacher with us and three of our officers in your board. Did it get sent out to their packet or linked or somewhere? Um you have the annual report for the FFA chapter for the year. Um where
009you can see numbers and scholarships, accomplishments, all things we have done as a chapter this year. Um in there you'll also see this summer we have four students getting their state degree. Um and then this fall we'll have two getting their American degree. Um so I'm very proud that we can continue to do that and our students are stillum excelling above the chapter level. Um so that's always good as well. Um I want to thank you for allowing us to all that we do. Um, I know things have been challenging, but your support means a lot to us. So, we appreciate that and hope that continues down the road. I don't know if the kids talk and Mrs. Hank, she would like as well. Hello. I'm the current mess of my life always. I met
010many people throughout Hi, I'm currently serving as your first year and um As I wrapped up the end of my two years at Mera County, I am grateful for the opportunity um of being the ACT teacher and taking care of like the greenhouse and all the plant sales and stuff like that. I've had a lot of memories with the kids. We're going to go to state convention in June. That will kind of be my my last harra the FFA members. Um but I plan to step into the alumni role um to continue to support the kids. And I just hope that you guys also continue to keep our FFA chapter and the ACT department in mind um when you make decisions going forward. These kids need um the opportunities that we provide in an ad
011community. Um and we have so many members uh that we are going to potentially lose losing an A teacher. Um but I hope in the future that can come back because this is a great opportunity for these kids to be able to continue to do things. So, thank you so much for always looking out for us and hopefully in the future. Do you have any questions for us while we're here? >> Do you have the names for your degrees winners? >> Yeah, this summer will be Elena Mitchell, Nap Gray, and Ella getting their state. And then this fall, it'll be Aurora Fitchner and Ella Hayes. last year to get it this fall. >> Thank you. Does anyone want to pull anything out? Nelson. >> Yes. >> Gates. >> Yes. passes. There is no finance committee
012report. We were unable to meet this month. One thing I would like to point out is that our selfinsured health insurance fund has has been growing the last couple months and the balance is a little over $417,000 that hasn't been trend in the past several years as high as nearly a million dollars and has fallen to lows at times of only 15,000. We like to like to stay in that5 to $600,000 range if possible and hopefully we continue to have some good experience as the school year rounds out. And what were you telling? >> We have two foyer requests related to businesses that want vendor lists or purchase orders for things that we've bought over the last school year. We also have a couple continuations of media requests for information related to the ongoing personal.
013>> So you got budget amendments changes. >> Yeah. And u if if you want to look at that uh link in your packet, one of the first things I'd like to point out is that the original budget that that you adopted last September was predicting a deficit in the ED fund of about $2.2 million and by finding some additional revenues and u getting rid of of some older expenses that we had as as well as moving money from working cash and reclassifying some expenses of torque that you made possible through update to the risk management plan a few months ago. We still continue to see a large deficit, but the amended budget predicts a deficit in the ad fund of only 555,000. So that's considerably better than than where we were last fall. In addition
014to that, issues with the on and fund have been corrected. Transportation continues to be an issue for us and that's based on the failure of the state of Illinois to fulfill the reimbursement that are supposed to reverse 80% of those costs for us and unfortunately the general assembly continues to allocate too little money for that and so it's prorated and the proration this year is 62%. So what that means is we get 62% of 80% which is less than half. so that's uh that's causing us some issues there. And and I mean we had some large onetime expenses too. You purchased two new school bus relatively new school buses this year as as well as some other vehicles for the district's use. But overall the the balance um looks much better. How much of that
015was shifted towards the the majority of the expenses related to administrators on leave and interim superintendent was about $300,000. >> But we're looking at fund balances at the at the end of the year. A healthy fund balance of almost $3 million in the ED fund. Uh about one and a half million in O and M. One area that you know, like I said, we've got to continue to work on is is transportation because that's going to be a problem going forward. Buses be expensive and if the board wants to move forward with their three-year lease purchase agreement, there's a large lump sum buyout that will come in FY28 for those that you currently fund to meet. But the best piece of news is that due to the fund balances in your three main operating funds,
016there will be no deficit reduction plan required. high school course offerings. And I don't know if if uh Mr. Zer or Miss Dornan would like to speak to that. But I I think that the big takeaway is that we were able to offer all the classes that we would normally offer just fewer sections and we reduce study halls to seven where we have I think 13 to 14 study halls. So we're down to about seven or eight. With the current stacking that we have, we try to stay away from first and 8 hour study halls beginning, end of day. We try to stay away from those and that. So the the issue is choosing who gets those study halls of course to be fair. So course offerings primarily we can offer just about everything. There
017was one or two of her classes that will not be offered in a rotational basis. And then she obviously is pretty close to everything but not quite. What are the programs? >> The junior high will be junior high school and then of course there will be no landscaping class next year. Mrs. class that business will never be able to rotate Okay, you have a copy and this is just discussion tonight. We'll be actually looking at adopting any changes next month. Uh, one of the things upon review, we're going to have to raise our our milk prices and you'll see when we talk about our milk the 40 cents for milk doesn't cover our cost right now. So, we'll have a recommendation to raise that by a dime. And the other items that we've got to
018make some adjustments on the PE uniforms we're selling PE shirts in particular at Boss and so those prices need to go up. The shorts were We're pretty good on the pricing we have set there. And one thing we've talked about as well are an increase in the high school parking fee and the high school band uniform cleaning fee. Those have been I think they've been the same for over 10 years now. participation. Yeah. So, we're not losing money. This is just a little report from Blackhawk College. Mr. Ziger, M. and I met with representatives and that's really just anformational piece for you so you can see the number of dual credit offerings that that we have and the number of students that participate in those opportunities and uh those those have been some some great
019numbers and u hopefully we're able to continue to keep those numbers high for next year. One of the things that we'll be able to do is to go back to paying those fees for dual credit associated fees and AP fees for our students. The title four dollars that have paid for that previously are pretty restricted. And I know I think the board talked about trying to combine title two and title four dollars with their title one money, but we are not a reef eligible district and we are not allowed to do that. Those dollars have to stay in their own silos with a lot of restrictions on how they can be spent and I think by paying those fees because I know talking with Mr. Hart this year I mean what brought that about was
020his dual credit welding classes that we've got kids in the same class they do exactly the same thing and these kids get dual credit because they paid the fee and these kids don't get dual credit because they couldn't afford to pay the fee. So that's that's that we tried to eliminate in the past and now that we have the ability to go back to that because this year I believe was the first year that didn't happen and and we've we've seen the same things happen that we did in the past students are losing out on credit I unfamiliar with it. When he completed high school credit, I just want you guys We are not because we only sign up to rebound next year. So I just want to see it the following year. So it's
021just a down year sort of >> sometimes there is >> I don't know if you can say is there is there a like oh the sophomores once taking that >> I mean a lot of times it kind of comes and goes with just their interest and what they want to do afterwards. Sometimes it's a little more heavy and they need that's more geared towards their interest and what they're headed into and other times it's not for that class. It kind of depends. You know what I mean? Like sometimes >> I just didn't want you to think that that was like mixed on art like it was because of like it's just not enough class. So, but they will be numbers through their meetings with each one and it should be there next year. So, just
022wanted Yeah. And the finance committee had talked about this a couple times in the past. Uh fund60 is your sales tax dollars and those are typically committed for construction kinds of projects, capital projects. But there are some other allowable uses for that. They can be used for technology purposes. They can be used for school resource officers and they can also be used for mental health professionals in schools. And in particular, we talked about um possible for meal health professionals or for school resource officers. U school resource officers we currently take out of our to fund and that's that's a healthy fund right now and so there be no reason to move that. But the mental health professionals, those are people like our u school social work, those are people like our MAP coordinator that we
023have for the junior and senior high. And so those salaries which currently come out of the ED fund could be moved to fund 60, the capital projects fund. But I don't think that's something that that we need to consider at the moment because those fund balances do look much healthier than they did in the original budget. Those are things that that you might want to keep in mind moving forward is that some of those expenses could be used. That capital projects fund generates about $600,000 maybe $650,000 a year. And so if you were to designate part of those dollars to pay the salary of one or two employees, there would still be significant dollars being generated for construction. Yeah, that's that final report is in in your packet and I don't that's that's really just
024anformational item there for you guys unless you've got any additional questions for here. action. We have actually three bids here that we need to accept. One for bread, one for milk, and one for fuel. Unfortunately, it's increasingly easier to do that each year as we usually have only a single bidder in almost all categories. This year, we see received a single bid for milk from Prairie Farms and Those those prices for the different varieties of milk range from 40 cents per half pint to 46 cents per half pint with gallons coming in at just about $5.90. >> So I would recommend that we accept the bid from Prairie Farms. They are current Well, I I think I think we can do that if we if we're the motion carefully. We can either we can either
025do a motion from all three. >> Yeah, I'll talk about that when we get there. >> We'll just make recommendation for each one. Ann's just got to make sure she makes the motion correct. Um for bread, um we actually did receive a bid for bread this year. We have not for a few years. We've been buying frozen bread through Kohl's, our food service provider. Uh but this year we received a bid for fresh bread from Pan Gold Baking. And so I would recommend that we accept the bid from Pan Gold Baking Company. And on the the fuel, we received two bids. one from Halcom Oil and one from Blick and Blick. Halcom is our current supplier. Blick did not complete a bid that that we could prepare. In their bid, they said the low average,
026the OPIS, which is a commercial site for fuel pricing. It's a subscriptionbased site. I can't without without subscribing to it in order to see what fuel regional fuel prices are. And so we have no comparison from that whole thing with Chris. >> Yeah. and Blick and Blake has been our fuel supplier at different times and I've I've met uh on a number of occasions in the past with them on fuel. So based on the information that we received, I recommend that we retain help from oiler our fuel supplier 27. Nelson. >> Yes. >> Yates. >> Yes. 2026 wellness plan. This was anformational item last month. The wellness committee met a little over a month ago and discussed some minor changes with that policy. We're required to review and update that at least every three years.
027And that was actually one of the findings on our food service audit this year because it hadn't been updated since 2022. And So you can see the changes that we made are in red and are mostly minor tweaks to the policy that we developed at that time. I would recommend we approve the changes to the 2026 wellness policy. Okay. I >> three move the July board meeting to July 22nd. There are five Wednesdays in July and the first falls on Wednesday which means our July board meeting would be on the 15th and we also have a later June board meeting this year with the amended budget hearing and and so the recommendation is to move that back to the fourth Wednesday of that month on the 22nd. Also gives Mrs. a little more time to
028get her feet underneath her before her first July. All >> in favor say I. Approve the audit firm for FY26. Lawrence has been our audit firm for several years here and recommending that we continue to use Warren at this point moving forward and that's for the FY26 which they'll be starting very very soon here next month. I don't know if it's it seems like it used to be standard every so often change and we haven't done that something should be thought about in the future or I think that is a good idea and typically when districts are ready to do that they they put out requests for proposals so that different audit firms might might bid on that a number of our neighboring districts use. There are a number that have have moved to another
029firm out of city area. It just seems like that's standard procedure to move around because everybody gets comfortable sometimes with how everything goes. I'm just saying I don't know for the FI27 you'd want to be doing that next fall or next fall or early winter. I just don't know how to note it or remember it when it's time or it's always too late. >> Yeah, because we switched last FY FY19 was probably used at that time. We just need a motion. I'll make a motion roll call that >> yes >> Nelson. >> Yes. Yes, we're already changing the FY2 calendar. Uh the calendar that the board approved earlier this year was rejected by ESBY and part of that was main reason for that was because of the number of institute days that we scheduled as
030we go back to the full day institute that the regional office schedules. We went away from that several years ago and that's when we moved to two institute days at the beginning of the school year. What we can't do two days at the beginning of the school year if we go to the to the regional institute that the RO hosts and continue to have the contraction required is two days at the day after the day we come back from Christmas break and one at the end of the school year. So we'll need to amend our calendar that we approved just a few months ago and Start the school year. One institute. All in >> favor. >> We currently belong to cooperative for food that is administered by the Sherard School District, but we are a
031small cooperative with only a handful of member districts. So we have been searching for a larger cooperative and our cooperative that we're part of is actually going to merge with this larger RO35 that increases the buying power for all of the districts that are in our smaller and lean has researched some of that and worked with Mara Miller school district and uh we believe we can realize significant savings on on volume food purchasing. Right now the the food vendor for this cooperative is Kohl's as well but their pricing on that volume is better than the pricing that we just No, this is a one time membership to join. They have annual meetings and I know they have a scheduled a special meeting for the new cooperative members June 10th. I know she's looking forward to
032Whenever you're ready, >> yes. >> Nelson, >> yes. Sam transportation. Oh, first for those of you that were at the transportation committee meeting a month ago that this is the system that Terry Swanson, our transportation supervisor, came and discussed. This is a a system whereby we can can monitor our our buses that gives us information about maintenance that's routine maintenance that's needed. It also gives us live telemetrics on the bus as well. And this proposal has a has a onetime cost of $7,524 and then a recurring annual cost of 2500. These are good EV readers that that plug in and read the computer off the bus on a on a regular basis and reports it over the internet then to our transportation department or our bus mechanic if we have one that would be able
033to monitor that equipment. >> Is it doing so it's doing all the and all that. Trouble. >> What are what are you concerned about using punitive? >> Just buses are starting. I think those are those are things that I'd argue were protections for the drivers just like the cameras we put on the bus because a lot of times it's we get some accusations about things that may or may not have happened. >> Many many of our neighboring districts do do use this system as well. said total license. >> Are we paying that75? That's that's the the 36 month. >> So total say first invoice is 255 reoccurring. >> Okay. So it's not 75. >> No, that's a total cost 36 months. >> I think I was there. probably just small connector. Yeah. OBS connector smaller
034smaller than this mouse that all the insurance companies use for just to make sure you're not speeding all the time. That makes sense. They may part of insurance. So we don't >> I think I think the insurance company probably just records but it's not just access >> discount They might ask the insurance business. It's worth an ass system. Nelson. >> Yes. district. >> Yeah, consolidated district plan is basically a road map that the state's required since 2019 that explains to the district and the and the public about how we blend our our federal grant loans together to get the biggest bang for our buck. And part of that process is of the federal grants that we utilize. It's like our IDA money that's geared towards special education. It's all of our title dollars for atrisisk
035students, class size reduction for for enhanced opportunities for kids like we're paying dual credit costs and a number of other smaller grants. the school improvement grant that the junior high will be working with for next year as well as a handful of others and we're required as part of that to hold some public meetings. In the past, one of the meetings that we always used was our community forum that we had where we gathered a lot of feedback on different things. That didn't happen this year, but the ROE and and the district did host kind of a needs assessment for the Mercer County School District on the 14th of April. And Black Rock Area Special Education District connects an annual needs assessment for us. And the district also held their timely and meaningful consultation on
036May 6th this month to talk about how we utilize those dollars. And so what you have is just a a snapshot of of what that looks like because of how the online system is set up, I can't print out a complete copy for you because it's it's really like a hyperlink document and the the little screenshot you have of all the tabs. If if you try to print those out, then they're all disjointed and you don't know which ones go with which piece or how they walk together. Like I said, it just explains how how we those together do the best job that we can for our kids recommend that we approve that. It's required for us to get the other All in favor? Say ghost administrative report on that. pick goes first. >> Um
037I just wanted to highlight two things. One, last week we were able to give a shout out to our counselor. The leg works that she puts in each awesome volunteers simulation. Here's your paycheck for the month. The other one would be our land conference honor two of our leaders in our building. They send out to the kids. takes a lot of money. >> All right, I'll go next. The regional office of education had an excellence in education night. Paula Riddle first grade teacher was nominated that our building 17 years set to retire after next year. So welld deserved for her. Also, the ROE had a little Facebook thing on teacher appreciation week. People post comments on their favorite teacher and then they picked seventh or winners throughout the the area. And another first grade teacher
038in our building, Alison Fever got that publicity for that. We were able to raise $826.76 for the Champions for Children County Family Crisis Center. to get back to that. We had our wax museum the other day with our fourth grade dress up as historical current and past figures speech a lot of research pretty cool posters community in our building and then we have field day tomorrow from 12:40 to 2 play for the high school graduation as you guys know it's past Sunday very well attended. Um, and record time apparently weren't trying for it, but at the same time the much appreciated with the the weather was nice and like I said very very very touching and very special at times. Um, over here she happened to be our excellent education for the high school. I
039appreciate what she does for our school and our students um and fellow teachers. She's had a heck of a year. allar in our book for sure. So we we definitely appreciate that. And then uh what else? Um we had dual credit night um with Blackhawk so that kids could come in and get all that giving year awards night was awesome. The the it w to me the the when the concerts were going on at the same time as the uh auto restoration wound up being like a community night in essence on that day and it was pretty cool. uh basically very the art show was was very neat, very some very artistic, very creative students and some great teachers in each one of those programs. Uh so it was pretty neat. Pretty awesome teacher appreciation
040week >> movie themed. They were all stars rock star as easily as they would. So that's my summer project before I leave to use the heat gun. Try that. Miss McCann is dealing with student issue late this afternoon and this evening. So, she's unable to be here right now. And Mrs. McPe is watching her son at the track section on the other side of town. And and I'd like to to note that in addition to the two certified members that the district is able to recognize, also allowed to recognize a non-eing staff member at the regional office excellence in education bank and we recognized Steph Kerry from the district office as our longtime bookkeeper, district secretary, former West employee in many capacities. supposed to go into close session call. Yes. >> Yes. >> Nelson. >>
041Yes. >> Randy, last meeting. 45.