001Okay, we're gonna get the meeting started. This is the Oral School District 135 Board of Education Advisory Committee Meeting for Finance and Operations on Wednesday, April 8th at 6 p.m. Can I get a roll call, please, Lisa? Ms. Peckham-Dodge? Here. Mr. Moretti? Here. Mr. Burnett? Here. Ms. Brown? Ms. Fransen? Ms. Coughran? Here. Ms. Kuzminski? Here. Ms. Lee? Mr. Mohamed? Here. Mr. Schultz? Here. All right. First thing we're gonna do is look to approve the minutes. I move that the minutes of the March 4th, 2026 Finance and Operations Board Advisory Committee meeting be approved. Second. Any discussion? Can I get another roll call? Ms. Peckham-Dodge? Aye. Mr. Morandy? Aye. Mr. Burnett? Aye. Ms. Coughran? Aye. Ms. Kuzminski? Aye. Mr. Mohamed? Aye. Mr. Schultz? Aye. All right, let's go to the committee reports and discussions. We do
002a staff loss first. So it's time for our stop loss insurance renewal just to kind of go back over what is stop loss on it. This is a policy for self-funded health plans that protect against catastrophic medical expenses. It helps protect the district on claims that go over a certain threshold on it. It is a requirement by Blue Cross Blue Shield to have a stop loss policy as part of your plan. Just like we did last year, we had our broker look at the 160 threshold, the 170 threshold, and the 180 threshold. And of course, wanted to look at our past history of all of our employees who are on the insurance, our high claimants. For 24, 25, we did have four claimants hit the 160 or go over. We had four that hit the
003170 and went over, and three that went over the 180. These are what they're looking at when they take it out to the new brokers for this year to get pricing on it. They're looking at our claim history. So tracking in 25, 26, we already have two people that have gone over the 160, the 170, and the 180. They would have gone all through it. And then in the pipeline on it, people who are at 50% of the current stop loss and up to 159 were at seven people out of those seven. I could easily see another three of them probably going to hit the 160 stop loss on it. So with the pricing, we kind of threw out the 170 and the 180. Any of the savings that you would have had for a
004lower premium would have been gobbled up by paying the additional premium up to those dollar amounts on it. So when it all came back with the renewals at 160, we had renewals from 3.6 all the way up to 19.9%. Our current provider that we have is Berkeley Stealth. They came back at 3.6 on it, roughly a $47,820 increase on it. The recommendation that will be going to the board on Monday is to continue with Berkeley Stealth, our current provider for our stop loss at 160, because there is really no savings if you look at the other thresholds on it. It just would have been gobbled up by the claims. And overall, like you said, at a 3.6, especially with a couple of the high claimants that we have, not bad for overall stop loss increase
005for the upcoming year. So how long is it going to require? So I remember having a conversation a bunch of years ago that moved for that not taking stop loss. Somebody was saying. Oh, they were saying that you can raise the thresholds on it just to have more liability on it before it gets out of it. I'm just curious. But in general, 160 is probably the most common, and then they really don't want you going any more over the 180 on it. I mean, you could check with them and see if they would do it, but this is kind of like, so each individual, you pretty much go up to 160 per each individual on your insurance that you would be on the hook for with it. It is through Blue Cross Blue Shield required.
006Just because I'm not familiar with this. So do they pick up after a certain amount? 160,000 per each individual. Anything after that on it, we get reimbursed back on it. You're on the hook for the first 160,000 worth of the claims that are on that one particular individual that's each individual has that. And then anything above and beyond stop loss, you pay for that premium and then they get back the claims covered over 160. Do you know if any other districts like, do they have the same insurance providers? Are they required to have that stop loss coverage? If you are self-insured, that's what you have to have. So there are cooperatives that have as many as 110 districts in it, and it's done a little different. The whole entire cooperative has a stop loss in
007it, but it doesn't work the same way. You're just basically, they're going to come up with what your actual claim amount is and then say, this is what we need to collect for the pool. Whereas we're anticipating what our claims are going to be and we base then our premium off of what our anticipated claims are. You either hit it or you don't, depending on if you have a good year with the insurance or if you have a bad year, you're going to be deficit spending because you didn't plan for some of those catastrophic claims that come in. So a little different with if you're self-insured versus a cooperative on it. But yes, they do have stop losses on it because everyone puts it in layered on it so that you're not on the hook
008up to a super high threshold. They always have it where it's layered in with stop losses. Any other questions? Moving on to intercom and school security. Ted's going to start it off and then Chris will add to it. Okay, you can probably just go ahead. Oh, go right to it. Yeah, go ahead. So last year we started, or 2024 we started with our door access, updating our door access. We had several buildings that only had two doors. None of the outside doors were truly monitored. So that was kind of the first process of updating our facilities, making them more secure. And so that had all been completed. Now we're kind of working along into our clocks and intercoms, and Chris can talk a little bit more about it, but what we're working towards is for
009all of our systems to talk to each other. Our old analog systems truly were isolated to each individual systems. Even though we were able to patch some things together to kind of have them talk to each other, it didn't work very well. Where we were trying to patch our phone system into our intercom system so that staff could make all calls from anywhere in the building, if need be, and because our intercoms are getting extremely old, some of the intercoms are even almost original to the building. I can tell you that PARC is almost original to when those various additions had gone on. So that wiring is all original. So some of the infrastructure with the wiring and stuff is starting to fail. We're having a harder time getting call buttons in the classrooms. And
010then when you get to the main unit, they're not supporting any of the main units anymore as of January of 2017. So even though we have a real good company that works on those, they just aren't supporting them anymore and it's harder and harder to get the hardware for it. So we've patched and pieced and have really done about as much as we can do with that. Currently, all of our intercoms, everyone's able to make an all call from the office. But as we get further along, again, some of the parts of the system are failing. Our emergency alert system, we've had a lot of reliability issues with that also in the last few years. So we started exploring other options. And again, that system is standalone from all of our other systems. So it
011really wasn't essentially made to talk to each other. And again, that's what I'm stressing. We're trying to bring everything kind of together. Part of our goal at some point way down the road is work on more interior doors, having key fob, key card access and trying to get rid of physical keys. But that is many, many years down the road. Right now we have server rooms that are currently on key fobs. But we would like to work as we progress further. That is one goal that we have is to try and start eliminating more and more keys and just having fobs to get into the different accesses. So again, currently analog intercom systems are failing. They've notified us, the manufacturer, that really they're at the end of life. Parts are going to even be harder
012to come by going forward. That little picture there is one of the buildings, as you can see how old that intercom speaker is. Still working, but it's definitely showing its age. And our current emergency alert panic buttons, we've had a lot of reliability issues with them in the last several years. So as we transition and make these updates, Chris can talk a little more, I think, on how it can really tie all of our systems together. This will kind of, just because of the volume of this project, it will be working, Billions and Grounds will be working closely with the tech department. We've already identified some stuff that we can, some wiring that we can reuse, and some stuff that we can pull in-house and see a definite savings there. We did go and looked
013at 33C and some of their stuff so we could get physical eyes on what these new clocks look like, how some of this stuff actually functions. Although their system is a little bit different, they did some, they did more building of it in-house, but they're still running the same, the same basic system and clock system that we would, intercom that we would be looking at. Just to add on to that, we did go to Homer, but I meet regularly with tech directors from around Chicago, and by far, we're all kind of in the same situation with these old analog systems. And by far, the districts that have this solution in place can't say enough good things about it, right? It really connects everything together, like talking about the door swipes, that's now connected to our
014Skyward and will soon to be Tyler Tech. So if the HR department disables somebody or somebody leaves the district, that automatically removes their key fob, right? The more things can talk, the easier it is for us to manage all these different things that we have going on. So for example, these clocks, instead of just being an analog signal, all of these components are connected through network wiring as opposed to just a speaker wire. In one of these projects, the largest cost is pulling that network wire, and that's the biggest cost. But in all of our buildings, because we used to have computers in every classroom, we do have network wiring that's running to every classroom. So as we're budgeting this out, that's the largest component that we can save on. And again, most of our
015classrooms already have wiring that we can use that's not the 60-year-old wiring, but we'll run this equipment. The other thing is every one of our buildings is isolated. The current intercoms are isolated, right? But there was a scenario last fall, I believe, when there was a tornado warning after the time the secretaries were out of the buildings, but we had a lot of people in the buildings. And we couldn't make an all-call throughout all of our buildings that allowed us to notify everybody in the building. And there wasn't somebody in the building in the office that could take that and make that. So with this system, certain administrators, from their phone, will be able to initiate a lockdown, a tornado warning, any of those things, as well as this system will integrate with some of
016the other security systems that we have in place. So currently with those systems, it does require a person to get that message and then trigger an all-call or an announcement, and these tie in directly, so. And one nice thing about the new clocks is they do have strobe lights built. You know, they have strobe lights built into all different alerts and messaging, as you can see in the picture there, which some of that, even not in an emergency situation, we run into where you got, the band room, it's very loud in there. They can't always hear the announcements if the instruments are playing. You know, some of the cafeterias, gym spaces, and it'll at least give a strobe light, maybe a different color strobe, if it's just a regular announcement. But just one other feature
017that I thought was nice about moving to a new system. This would be district-wide. We would have to implement this, which is a pretty big undertaking, and we would start the system that's in there. Next slide. Okay. And I can let Chris talk about the software. So obviously, talking about replacing every clock, every intercom in the district is a pretty big task. But what we could get done, and it's needed at least one building right now, right? One building, we are having some issues where I would not, you know, it just has to be done. So phase one of this would be to get the software in place at all of the buildings, right? We can do that over the summer. And then using that software, we can, you know, working with the vendor, we
018can actually pipe that audio through our current systems that we have in place while we're going around physically, or, you know, we're going around having those clocks switched out. You know, the summer is the busiest time for all school districts, as you know, and so getting a company that could come and do all of our schools over the summer, it's just not practical. We can get those, there's one or two buildings we'd really like to get done over the summer, but then because we're having this where they're kind of overlaying, we could work, we could have the vendor come in second shift similar to what they did with security cameras two years ago, or except second shift. And as they're working through the building, it will work on the new system and the old system
019at the same time. So when students aren't in the building, we can get the work done and get this, and get some of this work done over the course of the school year without impacting our students or our clocks or the ability for our principals to make announcements. We project this to be around 1.5 million for the entire district with all the new hardware, all the software that is needed. As far as funding that, I mean, you know, again, Scott can talk a little bit on that, but because we're, you know, we think that between the tech department buildings and grounds, we can, you know, look, we can just use our, what else, say our local funds within our own budgets. And because it's going to stretch over almost, it'll stretch really over to budget,
020you know, periods, it's not as much of a hit. And we'll just adjust some other things, you know, within our own, within our own, within our own budgets. Will that mean that a few other, you know, projects for us, maybe we'll have to, you know, we'll just get delayed a little bit? Yes, nothing critical. This we feel is, you know, a little bit more of a critical thing that we, you know, we don't want to be without, we don't want to be without clocks and intercoms, you know, at any point for multiple reasons. And does that price include updating the whole security system? Like when you say security, like, so. Like you're talking about, is it, can I say the name of the company that you're talking about? Yeah. Wave, right? Yeah, so this would
021include, in this system would be the wave push buttons around plungers. And to alleviate some of the issues that we've had, which have been wireless issues that have caused, that have fortunately caused the system, unfortunately caused them to false activate. Fortunately, it was when school students weren't in the building, we've had that a couple of times. These would be hard run wired in to the system. So they still have the same properties that we have with. We'd still have the push button, the plungers. We would have notification to the police department as well as all of the, as well as all of the, yes, so somebody hits a button, police department is notified to their, to their 911 center, you know, pretty much instantly. And as well as the building goes into lockdown and administrators
022and, you know, and eventually we'd be able to, eventually we look at tying in, you know, some of our door locks and swipes so that in, if the building's in lockdown, only certain badges would be able to swipe into the building. So if we were in a lockdown, staff member were coming from another building, they couldn't get into the building if there was a, you know, a scenario like that, so. And as Ted said, it's over two budget years. They do only bill for completion on it. So as they would complete a building, you'd get the bill similar to pay applications for our construction projects on it. So it will end up taking, you know, two summers really to get everything kind of tidied up with it. So which, like as Ted was saying, we
023can manage to fit this into two different budget cycles on it and just move some money around with it, which helps. And like you said, obviously, as soon as they complete it, they're gonna invoice us and that would go on for payment. So is this an update to all the schools in the district? Yes, yeah. So is there any, and somebody mentioned there was just one, I think that was mentioned. We have one current system that we, that intercom system that is giving us, that is giving us more problems than the other ones. And it's not supported anymore. It hasn't been reliable over the past couple of months. And we've tried to replace components inside. We've had ITR, the company that works on it, come out and troubleshoot it. It really is just a 20
024year old system that just, you know, if you think of a computer that's 20 years old, it just, sometimes it just doesn't work as needed. So are the other schools then working okay? They have the same hardware. And they're not, they are functioning, but because we were notified last November that the hardware that we have is end of life, that starting, they're only making parts for it up and through January 27th. Then they stopped making parts. And at that point, you know, it becomes problematic. You know, if you're having to go to eBay to get the parts for something, that that's not where you wanna be. And I think, you know, with the new intercom systems and everything talking, it just, it's a lot more user friendly. You know, our principals oftentimes want multiple different
025bell schedules in because they're running a certain, you know, maybe it's a PL day or they're running, you know, for, you know, maybe an assembly or various things. To program in different programs into it is like, you know, you're scrolling like you have to on your remote. You know, it's very time consuming. And that, you know. Actually, it's like a telephone. It's a telephone you pick up and it has a little screen. And so you've got to push all these sequence of numbers. So it's like texting back when you had to hit like five, five, five, two, two, right? Like, and then you've got to set that time, you know, every bell at a different time. And so you're, it really, I mean, it's just, it's just technology from 30 years ago. It is, yeah,
026yeah. And, you know, I mean, heaven forbid a time change. I mean, that's a, no, I mean, that's sometimes it doesn't, you know, and sometimes the system doesn't take it. Well, then the clocks are off for, you know, for almost a 12 hour cycle. And the bells could be different. And then the bells are off all day long. You know, so it's just, and it's, again, it's getting all the systems, you know, all the systems to talk, to talk together, be the same district wide. There's just, you know, a lot of, you know, new features with, you know, with new hardware. Would they be coming in and then like training of the folks here on the use of it or? Yeah, yes. So, yes. And so, which brings up a good point. So the vendor
027that we're, the software programming vendor, the support vendor is Sentinel. And we currently use those. They're the ones who kind of helped us as we set up the phone system and as we've upgraded the phone system in the past. That's the same vendor as that. The Informacast software, which is where we are to use a component of that right now, if any, and that's already tied into our system now. And so we have some familiarity with it, but the company that would be in charge of actually programming every single clock to work the way you want it to do, yes, they would definitely be, you know, training our team on how to manage that, manage that here. And because these are all network device, they're not, I mean, we can, you could almost infinitely add
028different components to it. So as long as the device can plug into our network, as new devices come out or new features come out or new, we put new systems in a place where the security systems, they can integrate into this. So it's expandable, both on the number of components that really isn't the limit, and then also, and as new things come out, they will integrate into the system because you're integrating in a software, not hardware specific. Chris, I had a question on what you mentioned previously that you had other peer districts that, you know, have used it and can speak really highly of it. Does this get us, I would say, like then on the same level of our peers in terms of our security and the alerts and all that, is there like
029more, like is there more that we could be doing, right? Obviously as a parent, I'm extremely interested in this topic. So I can say in many aspects, I mean, we meet pretty regularly with other districts and there's emails, we've got email groups that probably get two or three different emails a day about different topics. I can say that we are, when it comes to security, we were probably one of the first districts I know of to get any sort of emergency alert, right? But that just means ours was the oldest and now new stuff has come out. As far as some of the things, some other things that we have invested in, we are very much ahead of the game, ahead of, and there are districts that are talking to us about those things. It's
030just this, you know, when it comes to this particular thing, there are other districts that are ahead of us. You know, if you're talking about other, are there other things that are out there that we haven't yet? The internal door swipes, right? Getting rid of the physical keys and having that. That is something that, over the past five years, districts have been investing in and that's why it's on a roadmap, but we're prioritizing, you know, just the biggest bang for the buck and then also safety, what's needed. Thanks. Yeah. Obviously, you don't want to hear as a parent, you don't want to hear faulty or inconsistent when it comes to like emergency alert stuff. No, yeah. That doesn't feel great, but also like, it sounds like you've got a great plan moving forward and a
031great way to approach it. I think that we are, most, in under most circumstances, other districts are looking to us and more times people are calling me about, how did you do this? What are you doing here? And so I don't like saying those words either. Yeah, fair, totally fair, but yeah, so I'm fully supportive of this, I hope this, yeah, moves forward quickly. 1-33-C upgrade to this. This has been like a 12, I think all in all, this is like a 10 or 12 year project for them, but theirs was, as a whole, you know, implementing cameras. They were a district that, they didn't have any cameras, so we had security cameras way before they did. They had no card access, even on the exterior of their buildings. They had all key access. So
032I think this is like a 10 to, at least 10 to 12, 10 to 15 year that they've built this over. The reason for us going there is, our architects that we use on our projects are also their architect of record. And they set that up for us to see really the devices, because that's what, my main thing was getting my eyes on, like what do these devices, what do the clocks actually look like? What do these buttons on the wall look like? How does this stuff, you know, this stuff function? You know, I want to see more of that. Chris might want to know more about the software. Well, I want to know about both, yeah, you know. So that is kind of how we ended up going there and looking at what they
033had. But they really were starting from a zero point of stuff because, you know, their buildings were, you know, because they went through the whole, like really through the whole story with us on how their buildings are used a lot by outside activities like ours are, you know, and not having at the time, not having any type of security cameras or any type of monitoring. They knew that they were lacking in that, you know. And their thing, like what we are trying to do is just get all these systems, if all these systems are talking together, you know, when you have, you know, your camera's picking up on a door swipe, you know, it just, it's what we needed to move to for security, you know, really for security reasons. And then Homer also did
034a massive project on it and they got funding and tied the whole thing together with it and made sure that the most reliable way of having all this stuff tied in together was hardwired in. That was one thing that they have on it because they did find inconsistencies if you didn't have it hardwired as Chris talked with networking and all on it. So that's gonna push us to a different level with it too. And that's what has the best response time as far as working to send messages back and forth through it by being hardwired. So that really kind of tied Homer when they did the huge renovation, we got a tightening up and do that. So this is just like a one time, one approximately $0.5 million charge. It's not like a monthly, $19.99
035fee. Yeah, so I mean, for the most part, yeah. The majority of this is an investment in hardware and obviously, you know, labor to put it in. There is a, I mean, there is licensing fee with this software, but it is pretty nominal. It's not 1.5 every year. No, no, no. And for the base, what we're going for, for clocks, the plungers, you know, probably it's gonna come in around $30,000 for a five year. So that puts it around $6,000 a year subscription, which is, you have to see one of the less expensive subscriptions that we pay for every year. And I mean, just knowing from the media center, you're like, well, you pay, but it's like, $6,000. But it's not that, we will have some, but it's very minimal. That's your question. Any other
036questions? We didn't have enough going on this summer. We thought we had a few more things. I was sitting in the stack. All right, any other non-agenda items? Highlight Innovator Expo. Yes, oh, so exciting, next Tuesday. If you're, yeah, maybe I'll be the one to talk. Absolutely, that's why it's turned to me. All right, so if you didn't go last year, you really missed out something. Last year was our first year. And the point of this is to highlight the innovative things that we're doing. And so the Innovator Expo, the innovators are the students. The students are the ones that are presenting. The students are the ones that are speaking. The teacher is more there just for, you know, just to make sure that, you know, the kids stay at their table, right? And it
037really is showing all the different innovative things that we're doing. Most of them involve technology, but there are some that are innovative things that are happening without technology, which I enjoyed just as much and I'm just as proud of. But it's really showing the different ways that we're being innovative in the district with technology. I mean, it really shows you what the students are doing. And it really shows that, you know, a lot of people have a perception of what, how students use devices and mostly it's consumption, right? If you see your student using a device at home, they're probably just consuming something, they're watching videos or whatever. And this really kind of showcases different ways that technology is, whether it's coding, problem solving, creation of content. And just about all of these, and also
038the purpose was when we had this idea, we like, we wanted to showcase what's happening in our schools on a daily basis. We don't want somebody to come up with this elaborate project that they're doing just so that they can showcase there. This really is what our students are doing every day. And so my favorite quote last year was a parent came up to me and she goes, oh my goodness, I had no idea it was like this. I had to call so-and-so's father to come up here. He had to get up here to see this because this is nothing what I expected. And so you'll be able to get your hands on, try some of these things, you know, podcast a little bit yourself. It really is something. It's an hour and a half,
039it's packed. We had to move it, it was our, again, last year was our first year and we had to move it to a different site just because we couldn't fit the parking for the people that came. And we've had people calling district office that went last year that don't have children in the district that want to make sure they don't miss out on it again this year. So, you know, if really it's a century from six to 7.30 next Tuesday, you know, just kind of drive by, you can get through there. You win a prize, we have bingo. So if you go around and get enough stamps, you can put it in a drawing for a little robot or logitech crayon that's personalized or a 3D pen, you got some good prizes. So come
040out and try to. Our autonomous floor cleaner will be there. Yes. We did a practice, we did a little practice run today with the kids. And I'll tell you, I couldn't figure out what, I could not figure it out. They, I'm like, I'm gonna get this set up before the kids get there, you know, so we kind of, because they did the initial mapping, but now we gotta put in like a temporary map so that we can, you know, they can map the temporary spot there at the expo. And I told Katie, I said, you know what, maybe we shouldn't have done this. I said, I can't figure this out, you know? And the kids came down, just like that. I'm like. So they're very excited about that because they'll be able to show the
041mapping that they do with that and how they, you know, how they programmed, you know, that to run on the first floor at Germany. So. Is that a name, did the kids name it? Norby. Norby. Yeah, Norby. And really what the technology has allowed us to do in the district is kind of have, I don't wanna say throw problems at students, but much like you had, and then they have to problem solve, right? They have to try. And really, okay, this doesn't work. They're working, they're collaborating in groups, trying to get things to work, right? So these are not isolated, you know, they're not working isolated by themselves. They are, okay, this works. Okay, this didn't work. Why don't you think it worked? Okay, let's try it again. And whether you're using, you know, that's
042a skill that we're trying to develop in our students, whether it's for a tech or anything else, and, you know, it really is a skill set that employers are looking for, parents are looking for, teachers are looking for. So, it should be good, it should be exciting. Okay, anything else? Promotions or adjourn? I move that April 8th, 2026, Finance and Operations Board Advisory Committee meetings are adjourned. Second, and all in favor? Aye. Aye. Thank you. Next meeting is Monday, April, that's our board meeting. Six, 37.