D64 BOE Meeting 5.21

001Yes. One nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. >> All right. Well, I'm not as effective at getting everybody quiet down as that one young man was a few minutes ago, but um you can call our meeting to order anytime. All right. Um I don't have any opening remarks. We've got a lot of stuff to handle today, so Ben, what do we got? >> We have some special student recognitions this month. We're very excited, and we are first going to begin with our Special Olympians, so please queue the entrance of the athletes. Please give a hand for our athletes. All right, and as our athletes are getting situated, I'd like to introduce to the podium Miss Karen Hess. >> Good evening, everyone. Every year, I say Special Olympics Track and Field is

002my favorite day. There is nothing different about this year. And for those of you that have not been there, I'd like to tell you a couple of reasons why. First, many of us face challenges that make life difficult at times. And this is no different for our athletes. However, if you have ever attended a Special Olympics event, challenges that we might see daily quickly fade away. And what is left is the joy, the determination, and the unique light each athlete brings as they shine on their own way on competition day. I am proud to say that in 2015 with the guidance from Kathleen McCarthy, Emerson started a Special Olympics team. A few years later, Lincoln joined. A few more years later, Field came to play. This year, I am so excited to say that we

003have athletes from Emerson, Lincoln, Field, Franklin, Roosevelt, and Washington. It's pretty remarkable. The second thing that makes it such a memorable day, and if you look up at this screen, you will see the amount of family, friends, teachers, support staff, and administrators is just huge coming out to cheer on our athletes. I want to thank all of you for coming out to support them on this special day. I'd also like to give a shout out to one of our administrators who isn't here, Tony Bins, because she did a lot of the behind-the-work scenes to make the event a success. Another thing that is truly remarkable and different compared to other teams is that District 64 has volunteers. These volunteers come to practices and spend several hours on the day of the event supporting our athletes.

004At this time, I'd like to announce our volunteers. And if you're here, if you want to stand or give a quick wave, that would be great. First we have Mary Chapman, Leah Daley, Casey Fitzgerald, Michaela Fletcher, Julie Flyke, Nicole Golbiowski, Val Halston, Gracie Harper, Marta Judge, Jules Cashell, Nikki Lowens, Joe Mathey, Lisa Nelson, Kate O'Brien, Debbie O'Donnell, Debbie Royce, Emma Siebold, Julia Sheen, Emma Shine, Snezhana Cesnik, Beth Snyder, Ethan Tate, Teresa Versace, and Tiffany Witt. Thank you for supporting our athletes. We could not do this without any of you. And finally, the reason for it all, the athletes. Here to announce D64 Special Olympics team is our head coach, Amanda. Amanda has spent countless hours sending emails, coordinating practices, organizing the t-shirt ordering, and being an amazing partner in this process. Thank you, Amanda. Wow,

005as Karen said, it was an amazing season for our Special Olympics team. Uh this year I have the privilege of introducing the 24 athletes that we had compete this year at Huffman Estates School. Together our team earned seven bronze medals, six silver medals, and 11 gold medals. I'm going to call each athlete individually, and if you are here, please come on up. Family and volunteers, please help as needed. Our first athlete from Washington School is Alden. All right. Our next athlete from Emerson School, uh who is not with us today, but is Maya. Our next athlete from Emerson is Kimmy. Next up from Emerson is Noah. Next up from Emerson is Cece. Next up is Yafit. And also from Emerson who are not here tonight are Seth and Ben. All right. Next up we have

006from Field School, Henry. All right. Now from Franklin School we have Aiden. Next up from Franklin we have Killian. All right. Also from Franklin, we have Atticus. And a few additional Franklin athletes that are not here tonight, we have Liam, Brian, and Jesse. Our first Lincoln athlete is Augie. Next up from Lincoln, we have Maxine. Next up from Lincoln, we have Mahad. Next up from Lincoln is Kyle. And then we have one final Lincoln athlete, Peter, who is not here tonight. All right, we have two um athletes from Roosevelt School that are not here with us, but we have Harper and Lewin. And from Washington, we have Reed and Matvey. Wonderful job, athletes. We couldn't be more proud of everything that you did this season. It was an incredible season, and your hard work did

007not go unnoticed. In addition to this year's games at Hoffman Estates High School, uh District 64 has three athletes going to the Summer State Games at Illinois State University. Going to the State Games, we wish Kimmy, Noah, and Atticus the best of luck. Thank you. >> Congratulations athletes. I think we're going to try to take a photo. Why don't we Mr. Lilly is going to come back there and we'll try to take a picture with those that are able. >> All right, special thank you to our families of all the athletes for everything you do to get them to their practices and all the competitions. And athletes, have a good rest of your night. Thank you so much. We are now going to transition to the recognition for the Science Olympiad. I'd like to invite

008up Dina Pappas. >> Good evening board members, Dr. Collins, and D64 community. The Science Olympiad is a powerful complement to our next generation science standards, bringing science, engineering, real-world applications to life. This year, we're proud to have 170 students from across the district participate. But our D64 Science Olympiad goes far beyond competition. It's about curiosity, creativity, and collaboration. Students learn by doing. They adapt, they test, they redesign, and problem-solve working side-by-side with their peers in a supportive, high-energy environment. An event of this scale takes a village. It simply would not be possible without the incredible efforts of our event coordinators, Katie Janney, I think I saw you there, raise your hand. There you are. Elena Apostle, Renee Fath, Jamie Bojichek, Lisa Lynch, and Greg Napolski. I also want to thank our parent coaches, parent judges,

009custodial staff, administrators, support staff, Chris Lilly, who's always there with the camera, and a special thank you to Carissa Atkins and Lynn Berbas, who meticulously organized all of our event kits, and do so much vital work behind the scenes. Thank you all for your commitment, organization, and passion for student learning. And now, the best part, I'd love to recognize the students who excelled in each event. I'm going to call everyone up by event, and if you could just line up right over here. Aerodynamics, each team member built and launched a paper airplane aiming to stop as close to possible to a target 8 m away. In third place from Carpenter School, grade four, Cade Berman, Nicholas Trudy, and Gavin St. John, 99 in. In second place from Field in grades four and five combo team,

010Mason Smith and Karim Saleh at 95 in. And in first place from Field School, grade five, Joy Keen and Jeff Wilson at 73 in. Egg drop was our next event, and always the largest event, so harder to win. Teams designed and built egg catchers that successfully cushioned the drop of an egg from increasing heights. In third place, it was a two-way tie. From Franklin, grade four, Juliana Virgilio, Vivian Barnett, and Laura Hass at 9 ft. And from Washington, grade five, Sean Lipman and Chase Hammond, 9 ft. Some students couldn't be here tonight because of our Washington um graduation. In second place from Field School, grade five, Maryann Gomez, Colleen Cannon, and Nina Burke at 10 ft high. And in first place, another two-way tie, 12 ft, from Franklin School, Serena Cohen and Jackson Gigliotti from

011Franklin School. And from Field School, first place in grade four, August Lazzaro, Keegan Moran, and Parker Hunte at 12 ft. They always uh aim to impress with their dress, and they have excellent t-shirts every year. Mystery Box, students use senses other than sight to identify the characteristics of hidden objects, recording weight, length, texture, and material type. Harder than it seems. In third place from Carpenter School, grade five, Charlotte Milligan, Kaya Bins, and Emma Wilson. Just come in front. In second place from Field School, grade five, Lyriana Duca and Daisy Cole. In first place from Carpenter School, grade five, Aristidis Rivero, Sawyer Lee Wong, and John McNellis. In Rubber Band Catapult, teams built a catapult device at home to launch a rubber band toward a target. So, this took extra work at home. In third place,

012a Carpenter and Roosevelt duo team, five and four Emily Verobichek and Andrew Pacetti. In second place from Carpenter School grade four Logan Filo, Duncan Lewis and Anthony Kopack. And in first place from Franklin School grade five Juliet Giannini, Claire Palmagier and Rosina Gallo. And our last event structures using only 250 round wooden toothpicks and one stick of modeling clay students constructed the tallest free standing structure they could in 30 minutes. In third place from Field School a grade four and five team Levi Schroeder, Alexander Misura and Edgar Hernandez Guerra 24.25 inches. In second place from Carpenter School grade four Stasi Winagowski and Matthew Rusecki at 25 inches. And in first place from Franklin School grade four Sophia Tavares and Safia Amin at 30 inches. A huge congratulations once again to our fourth and fifth grade

013participants for their creativity, teamwork and problem solving in the District 64 2026 Science Olympiad. Great job guys. >> Uh parents, while these students are scientifically figuring out how to get this picture in order, uh we will make sure that you all have access to the actual images that Mr. Lilly has taken, but you're welcome to come up here right around where he is, too, and take any pictures on your own phones, as well. Congratulations, students. >> Congrat- congratulations all our Olympians. Very cool. Um Now the fun part. Uh public comments. This is the point of the meeting where we welcome public comments. Each speaker is given 3 minutes to address the board. Comments may be made on almost any matter related to the operations of schools, but we ask that you refrain from making comments

014concerning individual students or staff members. The board uses this time to listen to community questions and concerns, but will not respond immediately to questions for information. Additionally, the board cannot take formal action on non-agenda items. Contact the board president by email if you wish to discuss your topic further. Please come forward to the microphone and state your name and if comfortable your address for the minutes. If anybody has public comments. All right. No public comments. We got tenure. Yep. I'd like to invite up Dr. Martin for the recognition of tenure teachers. All right. Thanks for having me this uh tonight. I have the honor of recognizing those probationary teachers who at the end of this year, the beginning of next year, uh we will now call them tenure teachers in school district 64. Um this

015is always kind of a special night for me because of the fact that I see them at the very beginning through the entire process of hiring all the way to where they become tenure. Um but this is a really long journey. The three years may seem quick. Um but it's long for them. There is a lot of evaluation. There's a lot of really looking at their practice, looking at their organization, uh their flexibility, the social emotional components of their classroom. And what we're really measuring them against when I thought about it over the years is we're measuring them against the standard of our tenure teachers. We have a phenomenal product here in district 64 and we're lucky to have a lot of our teachers here with us today, um who are excellent tenure teachers in

016district 64. But what this is about is really keeping that train moving. We keep bringing on excellent teachers. So, as many of my colleagues here will move on in years to come and enjoy the retirement that they well deserve, we will have great teachers to replace them and extremely high standard for which our kids and our families will be proud and an excellence that our students will continue to achieve. And I'm so very proud of them. We will recognize them at a building meeting. They will be giving a certificate. Why we would like to do it there is so many of their colleagues are a part of their growth and their mentors that get them from the probationary to the tenured and we want them to enjoy and to be able to participate and celebrate

017with everybody together as a team. So, with that, I'm going to recognize them by name and by school. Um and if we can just give them a round of applause even though they're not here uh when I'm done. But, from Emerson, we have Kathleen Conway, Richard Drake, Kevin Garcia, Jocelyn Gillespie, Pauline Miller, Cecily Roldan, Alona Sapp, Chloe Suhajda. From Field, we have Margaret Carabine, Corey Davis, Bridget Van Etten. From Franklin, we have Maddie Atwood, Nicole Golbiowski, Vanessa Leone, Kate O'Brien, and Victoria Wilson. From Jefferson, we have Michelle Troy. From Lincoln, we have Elizabeth Bollinger, Mary Chapman, Lauren Martin, Julie Parikh, Trisha Walton, Jordan Za Zasina. Sorry, I struggle with that one. Um from Washington, Julie Dorrance, Lori Paxton, Angela Pontikes, and Madeline Spalding. Congratulations to all of them. Thank you, Joel. Um moving on to

018ratification of the PRA agreement. >> Yeah, I'd like to invite um to either the podium and or um the other microphone at the table all of our uh PRA negotiation team members and just I'll I'll say a uh little uh brief um kind of opening for the reason that we're here tonight and before you is the uh ratification of um the agreement that would last through school year 31, so the next 5 years. But um we had a great process of collaborative discussion and trying to make this district's working conditions the best they can possibly be for the heart of our school, which is our teachers and our and all all of our employees. Um but in this case, you know, just working with um the the people that spend the most time with our

019students and uh the great work that they do and just trying to recognize that work. Um at the end of the day, this is a job and we have to figure out ways that we can um have a a working environment for all of our staff that um holds the high standards that our community expects while also the high support that we want to have for our educators so we can continue to attract the very best. And um the process that we had was a little different than I think we've had um in in years prior and I think you guys can speak to that, too. But um we had a lot of conversations and discussions throughout the entirety of the contract where we were able to recognize some staff members who maybe have not

020been as highlighted in the contract. Um we were able to um I think put a competitive package out there so we can continue to try to attract the best talent we possibly can. Um a lot has been said about the teacher shortage. And we're very lucky in the sense that from the vast majority of our positions, we can remain um, extremely competitive with our compensation package. When Joel is at job fairs, he's the most hated person in the room often, um, just because of what he can show that our community, um, is able to give to our educators. And, uh, that definitely helps us on that end. But, there are certainly positions that are still going to remain hard to fill just because of the number of people that are going into the field. So,

021we're not exempt from a lot of those challenges depending on, uh, the actual positions that we're discussing and talking about. But, I do think the thing that I wanted to say the most about tonight, and you're going to hear me just mention it in my remarks later, is the sense that to build trust with the administrative team and the leadership team from the union side, it takes a number of years. And I think there are some things that we took, uh, I think, uh, some concerted efforts to do that would hopefully edge us in a very positive direction. And it's on us to keep it there, um, and something that I've thought a lot about. I know Dr. Martin has thought a lot about in his time cuz he spends, uh, a lot of time

022speaking to, um, a lot of our our labor teams. But, um, we have an excellent negotiation team before you today that are filled with very caring and dedicated professionals who spend a lot of time doing a lot of listening, um, to their, uh, colleagues to make sure that they really understand the issues before them so that as they're coming into our conversations, we can try to solve these problems together and try to make their situation, um, as as best as we possibly can given the the general resources and constraints that we all operate under, um, within a school year. Um, there are many things that I think all of us would wish we could just wave a wand with and fix about education and schools, but um that's for another time. So, um but the

023the contract that we have before you, we think retains our great staff and puts us in a competitive advantage, frankly, um in the area, and um I think puts a great and clear working conditions out for our staff. So, I'll turn it over to anybody from the the team that wants to also remark, and and we just so appreciate all of their time and effort, and they do this all volunteer. So, thank you for everything. >> Sure. >> We also learned a lot about condiments, mustard, mayonnaise, all those things. Um that's an inside joke, but yeah, we had some we had some fun. So. >> Um thanks for having us here tonight. I'm Erin Breen, I'm the president of PREA, and behind me here, I wish they would stand next to me, is our negotiations

024team. Um we have Tony Belmonte from Franklin School. Uh Mike Taglia from Lincoln. Karen Haas from Emerson. Nikki Lowens from Washington. Colleen Carlson from Franklin, and Christie Holt from Jefferson. Um as you listen to me introduce them, we have a very diverse team. We represent most of the schools um in the district, and we also represent a variety of specials, specialties, um age that we teach. Uh Jefferson early childhood. Um special education. Fifth grade. Um Mike, what do you teach again? >> Just to clarify. >> On the on the basement of >> He's in the basement at Lincoln, yeah. >> But Mike and Tony and myself have negotiated multiple contracts, and we have also those that are first-timers, and the experience we just wanted to say was a very positive. As Ben referenced, it was

025a very concerted effort to make it that way. It was very transparent. I think we both did a great job listening, being available to listen, and really truly understand the um topics that were discussed. Um this is the first time in all of my negotiating that we have had a tentative agreement before the start of the school year. So, that's a very positive thing. >> That's a big deal. >> Yes, it's a very big thing. Go ahead, Tony, if you want to say something. >> Hello, Tony Belmonte. This is This was my fifth contract that I negotiated. Oh, no, I'm sorry, my fourth contract. Fourth. Oh, yeah, yeah. Yeah, my fourth contract. And I will say that this was a the process overall was a great process. I think going into number four, I was

026a little hesitant about this commitment again, but it was great process. There was mutual respect on both sides. There was give and take on both sides, and I think that it was nice that we were working towards a common goal. And you really saw that in how quickly we were able to get this done, and uh you know, with our finished product. And it's great. >> Um Mike Tagliere, I teach the technology at Lincoln. Thank you, Matthew. Um I'm here to talk about the transparency of it, because, you know, my fourth contract as well. A lot of times there's gamesmanship, and you know, you kind of in the end it kind of waste time. I think we alleviated some of that. Um not only in the language, but when we got to the financials, we

027all were just amazed at how transparent it was, how believable it was for us to understand where you were on your end, what you needed to have on your end. It made it easy for us to you know, understand, and and bring down expectations, but in the end, um we think it was fair both for both sides, and uh that seems pretty apparent. Um and we do want to give a special shout out to Brian Harlan, who's behind us, who made that super, super transparent. He would come in after offers to go back and forth, and uh proposals, and he would put up, you know, this is what we need, this is where we're at, and it just made so much sense that um it made it actually easy and so pleasant actually for the

028first and it's so so thank you Brian and thanks to everyone who was on the team on your end. It was it was it was a nice experience and we're glad that we're here and we have summer to be free. >> Karen Estes again. Um, this was my first time being a part of the negotiation process and from years past I was a little nervous um, because it's been kind of tough but I'm a special ed teacher so I like tough stuff. So I thought I'm I'm going to give it a go and I think one of the things that makes this process or for me made this process um, good, efficient was our subcommittees. So we have these subcommittees and we we met often. Everyone came prepared but I think what was so key

029was that the people at each of those subcommittees were so well versed in what was going on that we could really have good dialogue. You know, being in special ed there's just a few challenges but being able to have the right people at the table to really talk about what are the challenges, what do we need to do? Like everybody's got to compromise, what compromises can we all live with? It was it was such a positive experience and I think that really helped. I know in my subcommittee it really streamlined some things. We got things done pretty quickly. So I I appreciated it. I said I I'd do it again. So I mean, awesome. >> Colleen Carlson, I'm music at Franklin and this was also my first time negotiating and I have to agree with

030Karen on the streamlined process. I think that it was extremely well organized um, on our end. Thank you to Christie Holtz on that one. Um, and I think that it just made things so much easier going back and forth um, when everything was so organized and I think that it really helped keep things running and moving quickly so that we could get to a a really great deal. Thank you. >> I am Christie Holtz, early childhood teacher here at Jefferson. I am the secretary for the union. I do like organization. I do like order. I like color coordinating and keeping things, but as my first year negotiator, it was really great to work with administration to have set times to be able to work during the day as well as at night to do it

031cuz we do teach full-time as you guys have jobs as well. So, it was really a great experience to work with everyone and have the opportunity. I look forward to doing it again, hopefully a few years down the road, but thank you everyone for your time as well. >> Finally. >> Wait, I forgot the most important thing. I love public speaking. Um, I will say thank you that Jefferson's finally in the contract provided this goes. I have been here, this is now my 19th year teaching. I was first part-time. Jefferson has never been in the contract. It's always been past practice. So, I really appreciate time for subcommittees and also just getting contract that includes the early childhood, which we start off the district and then feed into all the other schools. So, thank you.

032>> And finally, I'm Nikki Lowens. I'm fifth grade over at Washington and all of this is my first year negotiating. I'm actually a second generation negotiator because my mom negotiated 30 years ago. So, I was ready for late nights and not sleeping and going straight to work. And the new program or the new way you did it with we had to skip some school, but we were fresh and ready. You know, I really think it helped us everyone to have their best foot forward as we did it and we all learned a lot and we thank you very much. >> That's everyone. >> Okay. All right. I also want to thank Joel because he did a lot of work between I think all of our negotiation team after and before meetings. Uh, and definitely with

033the board attorney just trying to organize things on sometimes for both sides when we were trying to draft language and have examples. So, thank you to Joel for that for all the work you did for that. And and the rest of the team. It was just a it was a team effort all around from everybody and hopefully that's what I think that the vibe is right now. So, things are headed in the right direction in terms of like our our our relationship and making sure that we're doing everything right by our students and staff and community. So, now we want to take a brief recess and eat some cake together just to celebrate. What's that? Yeah, but I want to talk about the cake. Yes, we need to vote. No, we need to vote. >>

034I move that the Board of Education ratify the 5-year contract between the Park Ridge Education Association and the Board of Education. >> Second. >> Andrew the motion, Rachel the second. Any comments or questions? >> I just want to say that I really appreciate the people that have done the negotiation before and coming back and doing it again, but I also really appreciate and hope to see the newbies return again. I I think it's a great experience and now you've done it before and it's time to do it again and pass on the torch. So, thank you for your time. >> I concur. We had some updates periodically and I think that when you hear negotiations, I think a lot of people tend to think the worst or you've heard things or you know, we're right

035next door to CPS. Um, things can go sideways, um, but every time we got an update, it was uh, refreshing that things were moving in a different direction. It doesn't have to be contentious. It doesn't have to be painful and I think that everyone was uh, like like you said earlier, everyone was working towards a common goal. Um, and I I applaud everybody who participated in this in any way. And I'm glad we got where we are. >> All right, let me take a vote. >> Campbell. >> Yes. >> Doubleday. >> Yes. >> Klein. >> Yes. >> Rankin. Yes. >> Georgeakis. >> Yes. >> Milligan. >> Yes. >> All right. >> Now we get to eat cake. >> Congrats. >> So, we'll take a a brief recess and if our friends from McKinstry want to

036go ahead and get set up, that would be great. >> Going to have some cake, too. >> All right. So, >> All right, so our guests >> Yeah, um I'd like to introduce our friends from McKinstry and I'll let them um introduce themselves individually, but just before um they get kind of going into their presentation, a little bit of background. So, every district or probably entity on a certain level usually does some type of facility planning. And facility planning for a long time has generally been done by people who gen- will have a vested interest, sometimes financially, in that. So, for instance, the architects a lot of times will will in and do like a master facilities plan. Well, it's great except the architects ultimately want your work and so they're not a third party

037that um you know, doesn't have any type of skin in the game. Um and one of the things that I think we've instituted the last few years is working with Rob Grossi on the financial end who who comes in and tells us this is where I think you are financially and this is what your financial position looks like. Have a good day and he's able to walk away from it. And so we're interested in doing the same thing essentially at the facility side um and we're very lucky that we've got um what we believe and Mike and Brian have been working very closely with this group what we believe is going to be a home run. Um this is a very impressive uh system that they're going to show you. Um and this is also

038extremely aligned to our new strategic plan that I'm about to speak on, too. This is one of the strategic priorities that's in the resource allocation piece. So, but because of timing and everything to do with where we are with our construction process, we were originally going to do this in June. We moved this up to tonight so I want to thank our friends for being flexible in that regard. And um they're here to present their work, have a conversation and dialogue about where things stand. Mike and Brian are also available um as well and so I'll turn it over um to Dr. Barnhardt to introduce McKinstry and take it away. >> Thank you, Dr. Collins. We'll uh we'll do intros starting with Jason. We'll move this way and we'll tell you a little bit about

039McKinstry and then dive right into things. Thank you for having us here this evening. >> My name is Jason Jones. I'm a senior program manager with McKinstry and I've been working with uh Mike on the commissioning and the referendum work that was going on last summer and this summer and also on the energy efficiency program that we're doing through the utility and I'm here to support uh the rest of the team in the process. >> Hi, it's nice to meet y'all. My name is Claire. I've been with McKinstry about 3 years as a project manager. I work closely with our strategic facility planning department and lead several of those projects. So, excited to show you what we have. >> And I'm Brian Barnhart. I'm the account executive with McKinstry. This is career number two. I've

040been with the company about 18 months. Prior to that, I ran a few of these or co-ran a few of these board meetings. I was in Western Springs 101 for 25 years, the last 22 as superintendent. So, first of all, congratulations. I've negotiated five contracts. They all went really, really well. I never had a testimonial like that. That is that that that really does speak to culture. So, congratulations to all of you. You've got some great things going here. As Jason alluded to, we already have a partnership with District 64, commissioned four of the buildings starting last summer, three additional starting this summer, and then the retro-commissioning project that will just be money back to District 64 and will cost you $0 as we move forward with the strategic facility assessment. So, had a great

041relationship over the last year plus, and we're very excited to talk to you about our capital planning and strategic facility assessment process. So, as Dr. Collins noted, there are a lot of folks who do a facility assessment. We talk about ours as a strategic facility assessment because we do think it's very different. I like to parallel it to what I think great instruction looks like because it makes a lot of sense to me and with that kind of parallel and approach. Great instruction starts with having great data about kids. Data that you can actually see and use on a regular basis to to think about what is next step thinking and next step processes process with with children aimed at a at a target that you get regular formative feedback on so you know what

042those next steps are. We think that our strategic facility assessment process does the same thing. So, with that in mind, uh we'll we'll talk about our process and then we'll really talk to the screens quite a bit because I think this is where some of the magic is easy to see. So, our process starts in a very qualitative way. Already we know your buildings fairly well. Uh we will get to our our on-site people will get to know your buildings even better because what we will do is we will send out either a team of two engineers or four engineers and they will start and they will talk with Mr. Browning, they will talk to the team, and they will learn uh everything there is to know about the buildings, kind of where the bodies

043uh might be, what's working well, what are those things not working particularly well, and really get the qualitative from the folks who know the buildings the best. Then they will look at all your building plans, maps, and that sort of thing and get a a very detailed feel from that regard, but then the part that is um where all the good stuff starts to happen after getting getting all that qualitative data is our engineers walk and look at the assets that make up your building. And this is a demo site that we have up here. Um you will have a site that will look just like this as a result of um the process that we put in place. Um Let's You're all looking different directions. I'm going to try to point to that. Uh

044this is a demo site, but this is real data from a partner of ours, a partner district of ours in Wisconsin. And uh we will start The heat map is as intuitive as it looks, and we'll get to that in a second, but if you look at that top bar, and Clara's going to try to help me with the with the cursor. Uh that top bar kind of tells the story macro of what we did with this district. First of all, uh they have seven sites, if you look there in the middle, seven sites. We We assessed 825 different building assets that make up their buildings. You can see 122 million dollars of net present value is is right now that cost for replacing those 825 assets. And if you see over to the far

045right, that's over a 30-year period. All of that is fairly detailed 10,000-ft information that helps you and your executive team from a capital planning starting point. But one of the things that we provide that is I've only seen it from McKinstry is is the top right. Industry remaining life. Uh pretty much everybody else we know that does a facility assessment, they go to book value and they say this asset needs to be replaced in 2 years or 3 years, whatever the book value says. Our engineers consider that. They consider the the qualitative feedback they get from the team, and then they assess it with their own uh professional eyes, and they determine an observed remaining life. And the observed remaining life with our many partners across the across the nation, 400-plus um K-12 uh partners

046across the the country, that observed remaining life is is sort of the gospel on where your assets are. In this case with uh the district in Wisconsin, you can see almost 5 years of additional um life in the 825 assets that were uh reviewed. I love to tell the story because it didn't happen too long ago and too far from here. Uh we were presenting our final report um to the executive team, and their um their facilities team had done a great job and and had created nine years. They thought they had to start tearing buildings down and start replacing everything that made up their buildings. And then our observed remaining life gave them nine years. The observed remaining life was one 1.2 years was the book value on the average asset that they had.

047Ours was nine years higher than that. And in the middle of presenting just this part, which was early in the presentation, the CSBO stopped me and said, "Brian, are you telling me that you just saved me a hundred million dollars worth of time? They have twelve million dollars a year in facility budget and with nine extra years he goes, you just saved us a hundred million dollars in time. Because the things we thought we had to start after right now, we have way more time and I never heard it put that way, but that's a great way and I kind of tell that story to anybody that I can with this because I think it's the right way to do it. So, uh 30 years, a hundred and twenty-two million dollars in net present value.

048One of the things that we talked about is not just having the data, but being being able to be actionable about the data is what you really need both from a capital planning standpoint and from a maintenance and prioritization standpoint. Our tool, uh we call this Reveal, does pretty much everything you could ever want to know uh what to do with your data. So, along the way, I'm sure you'll have questions at the end, but if you have a question in the middle of things, please ask us because we think Reveal does all the things and can provide the answers to any questions we might have. We'll start with first of all, a hundred twenty-two million dollars of net present value over a thirty-year period. Let's talk about inflation. So, one of the tools that

049we have up there, Clara put in four percent inflation. What's four percent inflation on a hundred twenty-two million dollars over thirty years? It doubles. Kind of what we can expect over thirty years. Good to know. Thirty years, hopefully we can all plan for thirty years. We don't see too many thirty-year plans, but we see a lot of ten-year plans. So, we're going to adjust that thirty years. Clara's going to adjust the thirty-year for us down to ten years and now those eight hundred and twenty-five assets have gone down to three hundred and fifty assets. If you look right there with the cursor. Those three hundred and fifty assets are the assets we have to address over the next decade, the next ten-year period. And you can see instead of with the with the inflationary still

050built into that, we have thirty-three million dollars worth of assets that will need to be replaced and addressed over the next decade. Uh if you look to the top right, again that observed remaining life versus industry remaining life, this tells another story. The average asset of those 350 assets we're looking at over the next 10 years are actually by book value 1.2 years past their useful life. We think they have 6.8 more years in them than what the book value says. The average asset has 5.6 years of life. Matters a ton from a facility planning standpoint, a financial standpoint, and a capital planning standpoint. So, we think it helps um all those pieces. If we go uh down and look at the heat map, the heat map is uh the thing that we think really

051makes this very intuitive and very easy to move forward. If If Claire goes back up, I think we have 350 350 assets. If we look at the heat map, those boxes, each one of those boxes represents one of those assets. So, if we count, there are 350 boxes up there, and just as you might think, red means it that's an asset that we need to address right now. And down in the greens, those are something that'll be in the back half of the decade. Claire's going to jump on one of these, and we're going to look at the when we talk about data's king, this is what you get for every one of the building assets that we um assess. You can see um it connects with your CMMS system. So, there's an asset tag

052involved. You know when the when it was uh installed, you know what the size is, you know what the manufacturer is, you know what the um serial model number is. So, if you if a maintenance um question comes up, there it's a one-stop shop to know exactly uh what you have from an asset standpoint. And you can see that she picked a boiler, and even though we have about 6-plus years of more life in the actual um observed overall in those 350 assets. In this case, this boiler, the industry remaining life says 21 years left in it. Our folks have said one year. There's a major problem going on with this piece of equipment. And down at the bottom, the field notes will talk about what we have seen. And field notes can go anywhere

053from this kind of uh-oh, look what's going on here, down to um that same district that I talked about the $100 million worth of time, their team told us about they had they had assets that were like subsystems of major components that were from the '90s, but they had they had done all sorts of internal component changes in 2009. So, the field notes cap- capture that history so that it doesn't it doesn't exist in the mind of your director of facilities or the person who is here. It creates what we heard from your team is it creates the system that will outlast the people if need to be. It's creating the system, which I've heard about District 64 time and time again, only in the best ways. All right, we'll pick this up a little

054bit, a few more things to show you. Claire, we'll pick >> before we go off this one, >> Sure. >> um do you ever track what uh the accuracy of the observed life remaining? Um and do you have like a an average where right 90% of the time or 80% of the time? >> think we have a statistic on that, but um in almost every one of our test cases, especially we we because we keep your data updated regularly, that'll be part of what we get to, we track uh how accurate our initial assessment is relative to the industry life. I don't have a summary set of data, but that's a great thing for us to gather and use. It's a good question. Look at one more asset, and then we'll kind of dive into

055some of the macro and get to your questions. Another another boiler, different asset. You can see in this one again uh same sort of detail as far as your installed industry remaining life, all those kind of things. Over on the left-hand side, the location, again this is uh from Mr. Browning and his team. It says this asset, here's where you can go find it. And then part of the really important piece of all this is the scoring. So not only do you get tons and tons of data, uh drill down data, each of the assets is rated on five on five different sub variables. In this case, and and you have the district will have uh lots of control over this, asset condition, classroom impact. What we mean by classroom impact is you might have

056lousy carpeting, you can walk around lousy carpeting, but if a boiler goes down, you're sending kids home in the winter, those kind of things. So it gets rated on classroom impact, energy impact. We're seeing all sorts of um importance with that with the with the electrical rates going where they're going right now. Um base asset replacement cost, how expensive it is, and observed remaining life. Those five variables create a score, and it's just like golf, the higher the score, the redder it's going to going to be. Um and that sort of thing. And every one of your assets will get scored on these five variables. Uh that's kind of the macro, helps for capital planning, gives objective third-party data for where to spend our money in what order. Um at the top there, not only

057does it give that 10,000-ft data, it also gives the right now kind of data. If we look at the equipment subsystems there in the middle, again the flexibility of the tool, right now all sorts of assets are all of our assets are or clear, we'll uncheck all of those. Let's say of the $33 million, we want to know how much was HVAC. All the 3,000s get clicked. That's HVAC. And very quickly, we know of about a third of it, about $11 million is specific to HVAC. And you can do it with roofing, you can do it, you know, with with any sort of asset. If you have a leaky roof and you're bringing a roofing contractor, you can check your roofs roofs. And I'm saying roofs like I'm from Ohio, which I am. Um and

058now we might get some bang bang for buck because we can have the roofer look at the three red sections that we have. Uh in the top left, just to um with time of the essence, we we can also select by site. So, we this is district view, but we can also go and look at those things from an elementary view. We'll go back. >> Can you just show too how you toggle for some of the conditions like um classroom impact? >> Yeah. Um in fact, let's go let's use let's go to energy. Um so, each of the variables based on a five-point scale, 25 is the the worst number you can get. So, all the variables weigh on those five variables. However, again, the flexibility of the tool, let's say from an investment standpoint,

059we wanted to know what's our fastest what's our shortest return on investment. So, if we go to the energy impact one, we can overweight um any one of the variables. Let's make that 500%. And now it takes the same 350 assets and it reconfigures in order what's your quickest return on investment or the those that have the biggest energy impact. Um it's another way to look at how you address your needs and how you budget towards that. And you can do that with all the variables. Okay. Uh last piece of the and this is the mini tour. This is usually a 35 to 45-minute tour, so hence the speed. So, if we scroll down, it also builds in um some budgeting tools. So, over the 10 years, this is if you take all the assets

060and replace those in the years upon which their useful life is done with observed remaining life, this is um this is what the expenditures would look like for each of those 10 years. So, there's a macro where we'll scroll down for us, but it also allows you to budget. So, $33 million over a 10-year period, average of $3.3 million. Um but let's say let's say right now we're in a good position financially. If we put $5 million a year for 3 years, what happens? And while Claire's doing that, what I have told um another local close by district partner is um they're just they just announced a referendum run. And um when we talked to them about this, we're like, "You could be with 150 interested voters in uh the audience and you could run

061various scenarios because it's objective data and what just happened with this $5 million a year for 3 year approach, you can see we get through the reds, get to the light reds, we're starting to get to that next level. And then Claire will scroll down a little bit more and it will prioritize from first to last until you run through the $15 million. These are the projects you should attack first just based on um that the sort of objective scoring and data. And um we won't do this right now, but you also have override capability. You can take out a chiller um at field and push it off to exteriors because we're going to do the roof the same year. So, let's let's put let's put the chiller in the in the roof or the

062rooftop unit in the roof the same year. It allows you to take a project out, reorganize, move the project to a different year, that sort of thing. Um that is the general high-level functionality of Reveal, and it does a whole lot more, uh but that's the main part of the capital planning uh portion. Uh one other sort of comment, one of the things that we've learned in some of our uh workings with the district is maybe in the past uh facility budgets somewhere in the 2% range. Um one of the things that we advocate for kind of industry standard is kind of a baseline of 4% of overall budget when possible towards facilities allows for that sort of upkeep uh and addressing um staying in front of your facility projects. Last thing that I'll say

063about this, turn it over to my partners on the things that I totally forgot, and that is um twice a year you will let us know which projects you've addressed, you send us the data, we update Reveal so that the things in upper red that you've addressed, those now move to green, and then each year everything gets a year closer to the uh end of useful life. And that's the part that makes this the that's the system. This thing will be good for you as a district for 10 or 15 years because the data stays timely, and you know what's next. You can short-term plan, and you can long-term plan, and you can do it for a decade plus. Jason and Claire, what did I miss? >> Nothing. >> I'm not her boss, so she's

064not getting paid to say that. >> That's that's the best one you've done, right? Thanks. >> Um Jason knows your buildings, Claire will be your project manager. She's our Wheaton um we've just started with Wheaton 200, she's doing that project with us. Um that's the quick tour on Reveal. I'll stop. What sort of questions or comments? >> I'll make one comment before um getting in any questions anybody has, but my my first year and second year we were at that 2% level with capital expenditures and budgeting and then we moved it up to 4% of about about $4 million. So, we're at least now at what Dr. Bernhardt was saying with the industry standard, but we have not been for a long time. And so, even with the referendum closing the gap on many of

065our items, there is still a lot of work that has not been accomplished um with even just some of the other budget pieces that we have. And I think one of the reasons why we wanted to isolate this in our strategic plan is just because of how important it can be for our finances, number one, but also just making sure that we meet all of our educational goals, too. So, um that's one of the reasons why I wanted to bring it for you today. I could also see, you know, um Chris is starting to work on some things with the website that's going to basically showcase where the construction work sits right now, um and where we hope it's going to sit at the end of the summer, but also just be really transparent about

066where things are still at moving forward and having something like this that we could potentially, you know, every maybe every 12 months probably like post it as a parent knowing like what's going on in my school, my my kids' school, would just be really helpful for for a long time to come. So, um wish we had this, you know, 3 years ago, but um I I definitely feel like it's something that um we we feel it could have a lot of value for us and for our community. >> It uh it's I I get the reaction from superintendents all the time. Like, where was this? Partners and people who are soon to be partners. Uh the one um I and I went and talked to my district immediately. The very first district I talked to

067was 101 because I just believe it's the best thing I've seen. A major area I did not uh speak to is the proposal that's in front of you that you're considering also includes a full 360° preventive maintenance plan, which again will extend the life of your new components as well as your old components and fits with that sort of strategy and system that your team is building right now and the preventive maintenance will will assess what you're doing right now, compare that gap analysis with best practices, um make those recommendations, feed that into your CMMS so it's automated, we'll do an assessment of your team and the skills that they need to keep your equipment up, do a gap analysis there so it'll allow Mike the chance for what's professional development look like for our

068team. Um it it's a nice component that will support all of us. That's the piece I know I forgot. >> Can you remind us of the timeline between if the if we go forward with the proposal tonight to when we would get the first round of data that we could look at? >> Yeah, assuming we get there tonight, uh Claire will um get our team on site June 8th. So we think you finish the 4th with students, we'll we'll give Friday for everybody to breathe, we'll be out on site Monday the 8th, and our deliverable would be about a 3-month turnaround, so early September would be our target. >> Yeah, so we'd be able to bring it to a board meeting sometime in the fall. Okay. >> I think from everything you've said and we've

069looked at, it you know, when we did the referendum, one of the things that we said is we're going to have this facilities plan long-term to talk about how we won't have to come to the community again. Um and we haven't like gotten that down to like the level of detail that I think we kind of wanted to um when we ran the referendum. And I think this from looking at it, it it seems like this would allow us to really do that. Um Mike and Brian and Ben, is there anything you think we would be missing to really be able to like from this to make that happen for kind of what we promised that we would do in fulfilling that commitment. Other than money, like at some point, you know. >> I mean,

070there's always going to be maybe some outdoor work that needs to happen that can be timely. Um Does concrete go into this? >> Yeah. Also, like site paving, parking lots, sidewalks. Um we also include playgrounds, kitchen equipment, and then building exteriors. So, masonry work, those kinds of things are included. >> furniture? >> Uh that is not included in that. >> Yeah, that would be We would have to I mean, I know Brian and Mike have talked about putting a furniture furniture plan together. >> Okay. >> A little less complicated, thank thank god, but yeah. That would probably be one that we would have to >> Like furniture is in like the few vehicles that we own and like like those would be the kind of assets that would not be included. Okay. >> It's a

071good question. >> Um and then the only other thing I would say is like with that three or question I have is with that three-month timeline and the work that we are having like done this summer, would we be able to like evaluate all of that work um while it is going on in the buildings or would that need to, you know, go a little bit into September when work is completed? >> Such a good question, and that's one of the beautiful pieces of us being your commissioning agent. Like, we're viewing that while it's happening. We'll have that information. So, in a lot of situations, we'd say we'd prefer to wait, but not because we're going to be on site. And we're also That also works because we're doing the retro-commissioning assessment at the at

072the same time. So, in that case, it does work. Usually, we would say, "Yep, let's wait until the fall." >> Okay. >> Random question. Um is there a system like this available for cars and furniture and technology? >> So, um nicely done. Uh you're It was beautifully teed up. Uh we will include If you have IT infrastructure, we we actually do do that assessment with a group that's not in the Midwest and it's expensive, so we won't recommend it to you, but if you have IT infrastructure and we can recommend some folks locally, we will include that into reveal, which is nice because now you have a one-stop shop to go look at that. Uh a district um not too far from here that just announced referendum partnered with us and uh we're doing a

073fleet assessment for them because they requested that. So, we can that that is not included in the scope, but it's it's also not a not a big add-on. >> It would be nice to have those, you know, assets all in one one place, but that's up to Brian and Matt and team. How often is the state once it's all done and, you know, how often then do you come back in and update it or review it to to Monica's question earlier to ensure that it's all still on the same track? >> Yeah, we'll we will update the data every uh twice a year and the contract is for the first three years. Then there's a really small maintenance fee that's just our time to continue to um update the data. We think you have the

074team to just really provide us the data. That's what that's what keeps it next to zero um after the initial um outlay. >> What's involved in the the update though? So, you get to full three-month assessment or you go and look at everything and then, you know, in a year you do you come back in and look at like all the boilers and chillers and like all the >> We don't. We We generally do not come back on site. Now, we can. We can build that in. We don't think um we actually don't think that's money well spent for you. Like, we we really do believe that front-end assessment and the data upkeep with the right team works well and that's our recommendation right now, but if you, you know, two years down the way

075if you want us to come in and reassess or that sort of thing, we certainly would. We don't typically for districts that have the right team in place, we don't have to do that and it's we we your money goes other ways other places. >> I'll speak to that a bit, too, because what happens is twice a year, um we will talk with your team and we have a standard process for going through did you complete projects in this area? We talked about this at our last meeting. Did that get done? And making sure that we're capturing these projects as they go on. Um And the beauty of this, too, is it's 350 assets as we're looking at now in this 10-year plan, but it might be that, you know, you replace five or six

076of them in the 6-month span. So, it's not like we have to refresh all 350 assets based on your data then, but the entire portfolio gets refreshed based on pricing updates. Um we update update all of the years to align with where we are currently. So, 5 years from now it won't still say 5.6 years, it'll be changing over time. And we can also highlight real quick in this overview module. Um This demo site doesn't show it, but you can track date ranges. So, we can see, you know, if you guys start this now, this summer, and then 5 years from now you want to see how did these scores change over time? How have we done? That is a metric that you can share with your uh constituents. >> Thank you. >> So, you

077mentioned a small maintenance fee. What is the small maintenance fee? >> Probably for a district to say like uh and that that'll start in 2030, probably about $8,000 a year. >> And as long as we have that maintenance um contract with you, we'll have access to Reveal. And then if we did not continue the contract, that would go away. >> Uh you uh yes, that that would go away. >> You You would still have All of this data is yours, though. So, if Reveal did go away, you can completely export it. You can have everything that you see here in an Excel format. Um, you don't lose your data when it goes away. >> And every like all of those scenarios you run, they can be saved. So, if you have four or five different

078users in the district, they can all run their same scenarios and all of those can everything um is CSV. >> In terms of data um updates, just so that I understand correctly. Um So, if we're looking at a I'm going to try my best to use a real example, but please correct me if I totally butcher this example. So, if we're looking at a roof of a elementary school building, you're going to go and assess it on all the different conditions. And um uh expected versus real uh life expec- expectancy and the replacement value as of the summer. And let's say it's not red, and so we're not going to touch it for a couple you know, at least a couple of years. Three years from now, the va- the information the data that's going

079to be associated with that roof um would still have the data from the summer in terms of um the impact on the classroom, the impact on energy, the cost associated with replacing it. Um because nothing in the da- in the data associated with that roof would be changed. Is that Am I correct, or would something about the data fields associated with that roof be changed? I just want to make sure I understand what's changed and not changed about the roof >> Yeah, good question. >> Yeah. Yeah, so as far as like an asset like a roof, we would go in and update the pricing. Um, we want that to be current. We want our inflation calculators to be current as well. Um we'd also capture in those conversations with your staff when we're doing those

080data updates, if they came in and they were like "We noticed that, you know, it was leaking more. We had to repair it this year." Um things like that that your staff would bring up in those meetings would get added to that asset. We'd want to capture that ongoing change in the notes that Brian had highlighted. Um and then classroom impact and energy impact, I think Brian had mentioned those are kind of yours to decide, so we can also move those in the future as well. So, if roofing is really important to your classroom, which it is, um but then you're like, "Actually, we don't want to weight it as much." We can update that in one of those ongoing updates as well. >> And related to that, um we didn't really spend much time

081on McKinstry. We have a a a large bench behind us. They're a billion and a half-dollar company, um privately owned since and for 65 years out of the Pacific Northwest. So, the price the pricing updating, that sort of thing now all comes out of the Seattle um main office. So, we've got got a lot of personnel uh that assist with those kind of topics. >> All right. Any other questions? Anything else, Brent? No. No. We're good. All right. >> Please. >> I move that the Board of Education approve the strategic facility planning partnership proposal with McKinstry. >> Second. >> Andrew, the motion raised all the second. Any further questions or discussion? All right. Spoke, please. >> Georgikas? Yes. Rankin? Yes. Klein? Yes. Doubleday? >> Yes. >> Campbell? >> Yes. >> Milligan? >> Yes. >> All

082right. We're good. >> All right. Thanks, everybody. Yeah. Look for your time. Looking forward to working with you guys. Yes, yes. Take a Montini. Thank you. >> All right, superintendent update? >> Yeah, um while we're getting the deck uploaded, um just a couple of shout outs. First of all, Chris Lilly has been elected to the Inspira board. Um which has been >> Uh his his professional organization. >> So his his great work will continue to influence others across our our area and region. And I'm sure just provide more opportunities for learning, so congratulations to Chris. And then also wanted to send um a note of thanks and congratulations to Matt because their COSN, the organization that um is part of his professional network has a a number of awards, and one of them is the

083Trusted Learning Environment Award, and we were just awarded that. That speaks to um the safety measures and data procedures that we put in place and just like how we make sure that ensure we're caring for all of our students more on the digital technology end. So, congratulations to Matt. There's a lot of work that you have to do to receive those awards. So, uh we're very proud of of the work that his he and his team have done as well. All right. Well, let's have some fun and do the annual how are we doing presentation of my work and our team's work and the update on community engagement, which is part of the 8000 series in our board policy. So, and I'm going to talk a little bit about the last 3 years, too, at

084the end because to me this is kind of an interesting moment. Um it feels like an end to my introduction with all of you, so this will be a little personal um in that regard, too. All right, so I had three goals and I'm going to move pretty quickly through these because you're actually seeing some of this like play out as we go and I want to get have spend more time on the strategic plan in a moment, but we have some good news to share. So, from the KPI side on the goals end, uh in particular on all of our students meeting their map growth targets, we set the goal out for all of our principals at 60% across the district. Good news is we met that goal. We're seeing a very good trajectory

085on our map growth targets. Um Samantha, who can't be here tonight, and I have been talking quite a bit uh over the weekend. We just closed the testing window on Friday. So, on Saturday and Sunday and and Monday, we were kind of pull putting everything together and looking at trends. So, we'll have more updates, you know, as we get into next year, but one of the couple of the things that we're seeing that are interesting is we're seeing the second grade numbers actually go higher. We're wondering if if especially recently that's uh due to full day kindergarten. So, that's interesting. So, that's going to be something that we're going to look at. Um we've always seen a dip in performance as students get to eighth grade. That is a national normal trend, but we're seeing

086our eighth grade numbers start to rise closer to that 60% threshold and the numbers across the board are rising, too. So, obviously, this is grade-based. When you take a look at some grades, they come in and they just do really well as a whole and they continue to do well, but we're still seeing some of the same trends as they age, but the the doing well part is getting better and better. So, more to more to come later uh in the fall as we start presenting this and continue to look at trend data. Um in terms of how we improve, one of the things that we've been working on this year is having the building principals work on some continuous improvement models, which we call the cycle of inquiry. So, they all just completed that.

087I've been having all of my summative meetings this week and um next week on on that. So, it's been interesting like listening to the principals think out loud about their process and how in some cases it's really pushing their work with their staff or themselves. And then, I know Samantha, Alicia, Matt, um Allison have spent a lot of time in this room doing a lot of instructional practices with our middle school teachers as we move to that new middle school schedule. I don't even know if we could quantify how much time you guys have spent in there, but it's been a lot of conversation around instruction, which we've spent a lot of most of our training in years past on curriculum. So this is interesting as we start to get more into that mode and

088you're going to hear that as a theme as we get into the plan. So here's what the percentages look like. This is fresh off the presses. We just got this back on Friday and looked at it over the weekend, but our goal was 60. So from a math perspective, we were at 68%. So we definitely met that. And from a reading perspective, we met that as well. But this has also helped us align all the buildings. My first year, about halfway through, the principals were telling me what their goals were. And it just kind of felt interesting to me. So I took all of their goals and put them on sheets of paper and had them do a you know, a gallery walk. And sure enough, all the principals were like, "We are all working

089on very different things." So now we are all trying to strive and align towards the same thing. It's taken a few years and a lot of organizational alignment. And I know even just on like for instance, the special education side, Alicia and her team, they're looking at math performance with all of our students with IEPs now as well. So I want to commend her for starting to lead that work in in those regards. So good things happening. I put the eighth graders in yellow cuz we're going to we're going to keep talking about them and try to figure out how those numbers can adjust and and get higher as students are going through middle school. But that'll that'll take years to try to move academic performance. It's really hard. Most districts don't move it at

090all. So we're trying to to push everything in the right direction here. All right. My second goal was about the district strategic plan. You're going to hear a lot about that in just a moment, but definitely very happy with where we landed with that. The reason that there's an orange checkmark on the KPI and benchmarks is just we slowed a number of things down once we got to the iterations of the strategic plan. And we also had a union contract that we were trying to do at the exact same time. I'm never doing those two things in the same year again. So, that's one of the reasons why we moved the strategic plan to a four-year plan, so we can at least just offset. Even like other people that I was talking to, colleagues, they're

091like, "How's your year going?" I was like, "Great. You know, we've got strategic planning going right now. I've also got labor negotiations." They're like, "Wait, what? Like, why are you doing those two things at the same time?" So, now I understand. Um but, um a lot of our planning in terms of how we're going to progress monitor, which I'm really excited about for next year, but we're still doing a lot of conversation on. Uh we spent last Wednesday with the Winnetka team and their school their school district and their their cabinet, and we were even asking them, like, "How do you actually progress monitor this? What are What are the things that you're doing publicly? What are the things that you're doing um behind the scenes um inside your buildings in your with your priorities?"

092So, there's there's not a lot of districts that I can point to that say do this really well. On Tuesday, I was up in Burlington, Wisconsin, spending some time with their superintendent. I was amazed. It was one of the few times where I was like, "Okay, she has this figured out." So, it was nice to see how she takes the plan and the board actions and then drills it all the way down to the classroom. So, I have a better idea from how we can make this work, but I think our team has a lot of conversations. We really want to try to get this right. So, everybody that we've talked to that gets into the benchmarking piece are like, "It takes you at least a year to even do that once you get the

093plan established." But, I also didn't want to rush to the plan cuz I you've heard me say this before, like, that happens quite a bit, where people want to get to the work because that's what they know as opposed to just pausing, pausing, pausing, and keep asking yourself, "Is this the right stuff?" So, um we will definitely get there. So, I I I'm actually very excited about where that is. And then, the same time that we're doing continuous improvement work in the buildings, we're trying to figure out how that works in the district's office, which is sometimes actually harder to uh determine. And again, not something that we have a lot of other districts that we can point to. So, um but the cabinet team did a really good job with that as well. So,

094very excited about that and we'll talk about that more later. In terms of the financial structuring and facility planning, you just heard one of the things that we were looking at. That's why that orange check mark is on the 30-year capital maintenance plan. It's really trying to bring in some expertise, um working with Brian and Mike and the rest of their team and putting together some information that we think is going to be very solid for our community. Um we're happy with where we are with the budgeting. Um trending very well this year. So, again, we'll that'll be 3 years of surpluses for us, which will be great. Uh obviously, we need to increase our fund balance. I can't believe how much time I've spent talking about the Cook County fund balance. I'm still talking

095about that. Two, we are hearing that fall um installments of taxes are going to be late again. So, that'll be fun. Uh their contract went great. You heard about that. And one of the things that I think we did a great job with, but we probably don't celebrate enough, is like we eliminated full-day kindergarten until we should move in next year. So, for families who have now a Jefferson student and a kindergartner, there are significant savings because they are not paying anything. Um so, that's wonderful. Um so, we're very happy with where we stand from a financial perspective. Um I had the opportunity to meet Rob my first year and bring him to you for your consideration. So, I think his work with us is has been great. He is awesome. I could text him

096right now a question and he would text me back in 2 seconds. So, I don't know what he does during the day, but it probably just stare at his phone and uh text clients back. All right. So, this is more turning to me and just like my own my own work because all of you are my bosses and um I want to make sure I'm doing right by all of you. I love the end of the year in December when it's like, "This is all the stuff you watched and this is all the books that you read and here's here's like the summation of your year. Yeah. Here's all the music you listened to." And so, I just kind of make this little thing. It kind of helps me track stuff and and and be

097mindful of um you know just what the job is. It's a weird job. I'll be like really frank with really frank with all of you. There were times where I don't know how Tuesday works sometimes. It's just it's it's awkward. But I think in my third year now getting my feet underneath me and being the fourth person that we've had in 10 years um one of the things I can point to is the work of the team has been exceptional. And I get to basically stand in a lot of times say all of the great things happening but it's all of the group that you see before you. And our wonderful principals and our wonderful staff and our wonderful parents. And most importantly our awesome kids. And so we've got a great school district. Our

098trajectory is really strong right now. I'll talk about that in a moment too but this is just kind of from my perspective what happens. In the green is the one thing I did not expect but so be it. That's the way it goes. Yes. Trying to be positive. So >> more contacts with the board than with parents. >> Yeah, that's pretty normal. Yeah. So this is parent community communication. Um these are the things that I track. I would say with the referendum being a big year those were really high for for all of those reasons but I think things are settling into more of a normal peace too. Also the other thing I would say is when I was brought in my first year it was pretty normal for parents to come right superintendent. So

099I've been working the last couple years of just trying to build the capacity of everybody else so that they could get answers much faster. Um and delegate more to the cabinet team and ultimately the principals. Cuz at the end of the day really if if no one's talked to the teacher no one's talked to the principal it's just going to make it really hard for us to resolve things that parents want answers to or need information on. >> What are the three colors? >> It's just the years. I'm just keeping it simple so everything on the left is my first year. Purple the most purple is this year. >> I figured. >> This is just parent community. This is this is you. So, the most recent's going to be all the bars on the right.

100Um just kind of tracking that and being transparent about all of that stuff works and goes, but yeah, I would I to to Andrea's point like most of my communication is from a usually from a cabinet member to me then to you. Which is No, we only we only we only did one or two call arounds the first year and I was like, you know, there's a better way to do that. So, uh we changed that a little bit. But anyway, that works. So, I want to make sure people know what's going on with that. I also think it's important to know where is this guy and is he actually going into the schools and helps me track this too. I just pulled this from my mileage that I submit. Um so, you can see

101obviously this is adjust every year that the percentages were a little bit different. I was at field a lot in particular because of some of the situations that were going on with the delay in the second floor and then the water. I was at field like four or five times in August alone just because of that water spillage that we had. Um and so I this will shift and adjust every year as it should, but it helps, you know, keep me honest for, you know, where I'm spending my time and trying to take a look at that. All right, so in most cases what ends up happening is you hire a superintendent on a starter contract for 3 years. You decide whether or not you want to continue the relationship and then you move into

102like a second contract. So, really at the end of like a 3-year cycle is kind of every superintendent's like introduction, I would say, to the community. And so, one of the things I was thinking about like have things actually gotten better, you know, in 3 years? So, when this is just a this is me on my couch 2 weeks ago trying to put this together. But, when you look across the board and there could be a lot of other things that were up here that are not, I think things are trending in a really great manner. There are a million things I would do differently. There are a million things that I wish I would have done, and there's a lot of mistakes that I've made. But, I do feel like the work of the

103team and where we're headed is really great. So, just a couple of things I want to point out. We've obviously had a lot of curriculum that we've included that I think is still is still being worked through, like how good we can be at it, but it's definitely seen changes in our instruction for our students in math and ELA in particular. And we're seeing increased math growth because of that. Also, the ACCESS test, which is given to our English learners, Allison just shared some 3-year trend data for that. Our our exit rate for that, which you want it to be high, is growing every year. So, that's excellent. Allison's done a lot of work with the ML team um in improving those types of things. Our suspensions are down. I would say there's a much

104more consistent response from staff about behaviors and the things that we can do to do use more restorative practices, but also be really consistent with when we are issuing discipline. That's been great. Alicia's done a wonderful job with getting all the specialized programs either that are currently running in good shape and also just a really good setup for next year. Uh you saw the improved labor relations. A lot of people talked to me about that when I took the job and that things have sometimes not been in good shape and you even hearing Aaron say that it's been almost 20 years since we've started school with a contract actually done, which creates like a cloud over the entire institution. If you've ever been in a circumstance or know someone who's been in a circumstance like

105that, pretty much everything comes to a screeching halt. Um so, I think getting on the other side of that now and moving forward is is really great. Um has done a great job changing our instructional coaching model and actually giving it a model and a backbone, which is actually going to really help us once we get into the model classroom and instructional framework pieces. So, we're excited about where that's headed and Matt's also done a great job with a lot of our our cybersecurity and work with the technology department and everything that they're doing with learning. Um I got all this this improved reputation amongst amongst educators. Real quick story. So, I go down to the new superintendent conference in Springfield. It was 2 weeks into July. The director of IAS A walks in and

106he goes, "What's your name?" I say, "My name is Ben Collins. I'm a I'm at Park Ridge Niles District 64." He goes, "You're the guy. We heard somebody took that job." And he didn't mean that in a positive sense. He's like, "That was a tough it's a tough job, buddy." He's like, "So, why don't you call me if you ever need anything?" And then I walked down into my ISO program for like our quote unquote graduation. Um my party is next week and I have Portillo's, so come to that. I'm kidding. Anyway, um for for our for our for our graduation ceremony and and Dr. Clark walked in and he goes, "I am I'm not kidding." He goes, "I am hearing great things." He's like, "Word on the street is like you're doing a great

107job and Park Ridge is just on is on fire." And I was like, "Yeah, the team's been awesome." So, um he doesn't That that means a lot to just know he he's kind of got this weird uncanny ability to know how all 800 and some school districts are going and just what's what's what's good and what's not. He kind of knows that there's all trend lines everywhere, right? Um so, that's great. I think the leadership team in particular has been wonderful. We've got a great team. I think we all work well together. We all enjoy talking about restaurants and a lot of other things. Mike has the cleanest car you've ever seen in your life if you ever need detailing. Um and just everything else that that that comes from that. But, I think the

108good news is when we're to look when we're talking about the strategic plan, we're ready and primed to solve some really hard stuff together and get really aggressive to make us the best in the state. So, that's going to be exciting. Um when you take a look at the facilities, obviously the referendum piece was wonderful. I think bringing Rob Grossi in has been fantastic. He's going to really help out our team um do that work. Brian's been awesome with trying to take everything from that aspect and just turn it into a 10. We've got new safety protocols for I love you guys. The preschool for all grants been wonderful for Jefferson. It's saved us a lot of money and allowed us to do some really cool things with the staff. We're seeing Jefferson actually do

109some things on an instructional side that I wish the other schools were doing because they have a dedicated model that they all train on and adhere to and like talk about instruction in the same way. So, we're maybe trying to leverage that in some ways, too. Um I want to commend the board, too. I mean, look at the board protocols that you developed over the last couple of years. The norms, the goals, none of that stuff existed. In fact, sometimes it was resisted a little bit. Um so, that's great in terms of just working well with the community. That the board trainings, the triple I work. Uh newsflash, our our strategic plan session got approved for triple I. So, get jacks for that. That'll be fun. Um and then we started the community coffees. I

110started the parent advisory council, took a break this year, but I had it the first 2 years. That's going to fire back up again. That's been a great group to kind of come together and talk and like really like lean on interesting ideas that we haven't either decided yet or we're trying to figure out how it's going to work. We've got the parent you fired back up. That's happening um quite a bit. I think there's a lot of great work that we continue to do that. And then you're going to hear everything about the strategic plan. And that's just a very small sampling of the last 3 years. So, when you take just a step back and say like, is it better? I would say, heck yes. It's a lot better. And so, we don't

111get a chance to I think pat ourselves on the back enough in in schools and education and um this is just one of those moments where it's good to just go up to a bird's eye view and and take a look at where we are organizationally. We have a lot of work to do. We have a lot of challenges ahead. There's no doubt about that. But, um I'm really happy and excited for the trajectory of the school district. So, that is the state of the school district and my own personal report that I give to you guys in my update on my goals. So, now I'd like to transition, if it's okay, to the strategic plan. And I'm going to pass out this draft um from Chris Lilly that has And you can change the

112deck, too. Yeah, thank you. Just this is just the very beginnings of what we're going to be working on um with uh the strategic plan and just how we're going to start to market this. We've got a lot of work to do um on the marketing end, too. That'll be a lot of summer work. So, the good news is you've all been really heavily involved in the strategic planning process. And I still remember um Andrea, your comment when you said like we don't want to we don't want a plan that's handed to us. We want to be really invested and involved with it. So, we made some changes and adjustments and did those community of the wholes together along with the cabinet team that I think actually have some really cool legs for how we

113can do some work next year with progress monitoring. You know, I'll get to that in a moment. But, you've all been involved in the process. It started back in January 2025 when um the board then named those five goal areas which helped us just kind of organize our work from a cabinet side underneath that and then laid leads us all the way to the board presentation today as we're starting now to get into really the execution planning side of the work. Want to commend the steering committee. Thank you to Kurt um for being the board representative on that. Monica was also able to do attend um one of the meetings, but the community uh the steering committee members were fantastic. They were not afraid to shy away from some conversations about change, about what our

114district could look like, and ways that we can move forward in um a manner that I think uh brings a lot of pride to our community. This was one of the more, I would say, innovative things that we pushed and something that I just haven't seen before, but it hearkens back to the fact that when you bring communities together in a in a community that's so sophisticated as ours, um we really want to make sure we're valuing their expertise and their knowledge. And so, instead of having catch-all groups that some of you have been a part of with other, you know, districts and strategic plans where it just kind of turns into a like every direction from a conversation, we had the five focus areas, each had a community night, and allowed our cabinet team

115to do presentation of data. Also allowed us to have a lot of conversation around like what kinds of data are we tracking? What kinds of What kinds of data do we have to track from a compliance standpoint? And then, how do we build that out and be transparent about that? Um I'd love to see, and I know Brian's going to um Brian's going to be working on this, some of the community nights actually continuing every year. Maybe just once a year on the especially on the finance and facilities piece. I just think that we had some really good conversations in particular in that one where you had a lot of people who don't have kids in the school district, but they're taxpayers and they've got a vested interest and they want to know what's going

116on. And they would they would come to that. They won't come to a board meeting per se, but that that'll that we can fill a room easily and just talk about where we're at from a financial standpoint. And then having the community as a whole sit the board so it acted like a ping pong back and forth of here's the information we had, here's the feedback that we had, we did some visioning in each area, what do you all think? Back and forth and back and forth. And so, it gave us a better product. Um so then moving into the actual work that we did, our mission and vision of why we exist and who we want to become are now revised. So, to start with the mission, our new mission is together we learn,

117grow, connect, and care. A slight variation on what used to be called our motto. So, we had a motto that everybody said was the vision. We had a Excuse me, a mission. We had a mission, which was longer, but nobody knew what it was, per se. And so, we decided to collapse everything and turn it into this. And then, when you look at what the four elements of that are, learning, connecting, caring, and growing, they mean something slightly different. And you'll see those colors present in the vision slide cuz we're trying to make connections between the two as we move forward. Right now, one of the things that we have to kind of figure out is how we're going to operationalize the mission, the vision, and the values that you're about to see. From the

118vision standpoint, this was by far the hardest part of the work. This gone This went in a million different ways. I Chris Lilly probably drafted this from feedback 18,000 times. And there was a lot of thoughts and feelings about every word that's up here, but this is this is a little bit more of an aggressive vision, and I love it. So, ultimately, we're trying to empower every child to number one, discover their voice, number two, reach their full potential, and number three, make a positive impact on the world. And then, we talk a little bit about the how. Student growth driven by number one, rigorous curriculum, and number two, effective instruction makes District 64 one of the best pre-K school districts in the state. And gosh darn it, we're going to do that. So, I

119think it's I think it just kind of sets forth some aggression in the work that we would do in a good way because I think our community expects that. So, when you break it down, you're talking about empowering children and doing it through those three ways of discovering their voice, reaching their full potential, and making a positive impact on the world. We still have to figure out how we're going to do each one of those things. And then, when we're talking about students, what we're really interested in is student total student growth done by a rigorous curriculum and effective instruction. And those two words, rigorous and effective, are very, very, very specific on purpose. So, we're not talking about we just are going to teach kids things. We're talking about the things that we're teaching

120them are going to be really powerful, and the way that we're going to do it is going to be the highest yield possible. It's a very different way to kind of put that forth. And that what that leads to is we're doing it because we want people to all want to move here because we have the best school district in the state. Values are new for us. We didn't have that. You can take a look at that. You've seen that quite a bit as well, but those were developed through the conversations and processes, and now we have to kind of figure out how we're going to operationalize that with the staff. I think the values live a lot more with at the staff level, but it helps us make sure that we're taking the the

121social net inside the school district and really codifying and being intentional about the culture. We did visioning in each one of these goal areas. You were all part of that and know that and talk about that. And then ultimately, when you get into the goal areas, we came up with strategic priorities. So, how are we actually going to carry this out? So, we're enacting the vision. Um from the student learning strategic priorities, there's four. An instructional framework that helps us guide and develop classrooms across the district. A district-wide MTSS framework that helps support students from their academic learning so that there's tiered supports when students aren't learning, we can activate varying degrees of more intensive services for students, and we can monitor their progress using data. A portrait of a learner that's developed in identifying

122durable skills that students will learn throughout their districts and District 64. That's probably the most aggressive one on there and the newest one that is going to be something that we're going to be tackling. And then implementing the specialized programs in the school district as well that serve a lot of our special education students. In terms of student culture and behavior, there's three. The Stoic framework and Champs that's making ex- uh expectations, behavior, and responses very clear for students and teachers across the district in the classroom so that students have a con- consistent day. Um that's really, really important for students so they can be successful. We've already done some of that work. We want to double down on that and do a better job with that. We've also done a little bit in the

123second one, which is a continuum of services for level two and level three behaviors. Those are behaviors as they escalate beyond what a classroom teacher would necessarily be handling. But again, handling those with consistency with a lot of uh care for the student and to make sure that we can get the behaviors to actually change towards the positive directions that we want to see so students can learn effectively. And then the last part on there is the one that's also new, the model classroom framework that's developed and implemented and embedded um across all of our our schools and our classrooms. In terms of the educator excellence strategic priorities, the first one is the new one, the portrait of an educator. Um we're going to be working on that next year. Um comprehensive onboarding and training

124for classified staff aligned to the portrait of an educator. How do we actually take it and make it all live? And then the process for interviewing, mentoring, and training for non-tenured uh certified staff and the work that they would do as well. So we had a lot of good conversations about that, how we can ultimately help the staff. There's no chance for our students to have any shot at change and improvement unless the educators get better. So this is going to be the work that we're um ultimately going to be really um digging into from the educator side. And then finally, resource allocation and maintenance. Um there's four of these. You already heard one of them, which is that long-term facilities plan. And then also part of that is that um the implementing of the

125routine maintenance and assessment replacements across the district. We're going to be spending a lot of time on the fund balance um for the next the next four to five years trying to make sure that we can get that target up to 50% especially given the situations with Cook County. And then implementing systematic uh systematic procurement and review processes we can optimize our value and ROI. So, um oh, sorry. And then community engagement. Um implementing district-wide, this is like at the staff level communication procedures. So, if you're in one building um part of your day in another building the other part of the day, you don't have drastically different communication um practices happening, which right now we kind of do. So, we want to make sure that we codify that. It's an easy win for us.

126Um the harder one is the second one that's new, creating implementing communication requirements from instructional staff to families that clearly provide whole child progress. I hear this a lot during my community coffees and I've had a lot of conversations with parents about this. This would be a really good thing for our families so we can help make sure that they're partnering with our staff and that families know exactly how their child is doing um all the way through the school year. And it's not just I get more information because I have this teacher. Um obviously this is something that we also do too. So, Chris and I will I continuously be on the road. Um it's been described as the the greatest presentation in the history of uh Park Ridge and Niles. So, please come

127to any of our uh community coffees or any of the parent universities that a lot of our staff hold. Chris has been doing the annual manual uh annual mailer now um beyond the referendum. We just did that our first year realtor launch all the things. So, really trying to double down on the um telling the great stories across the district and making sure our community has a way to get access to to all of us. Um I want to highlight this. So, this is probably the core of the plan. And this is this idea of District 64 coherence and it starts with the student in the middle and the things that we would expect a student by the time they're done with eighth grade to be able to know, do, and accomplish um as they

128work with others. And then from that it's going to drive decisions about what the classroom environment is to be for those students to be able to do those things both from a moves that the adults are making that are the highest yield possible and the learning environment so that students can really see themselves going back to the mission and vision and find their own voice in the work that they're doing. And then finally, to do all that, you have to have the educators doing the right thing. So, that means they need the right type of training, they need the right type of dispositions, and they need the right type of belief system. So, how do we hire for, train, and then eventually hold those educators accountable so that they're doing that work so we can

129drive student performance to its highest degree possible. Cuz ultimately, we're going to keep looking back at this at this new vision and say, is this actually accomplishing those things in the vision as we move this work forward. All right. So, the next couple of months will be working on an execution plan. This is just a very rough visualization. We're having a lot of conversations right now. We have to figure out what's going to be turned on, what's going to be turned off. We're not going to be doing this all next year. I would imagine sometime in August or probably Yeah, probably August, the August board meeting, we will have a plan that we can share with all of you and and talk through how that year will look and go. That's what we're going to

130be working on here next month at our We've got a retreat, two-day retreat on June 9th and June 10th. And looking at logic models, work plans, scorecards, all of those type of types of things, and how the calendar can, you know, help help drive that. And we've got a lot of learning to do in some of this work, too. There are things that we're doing here that are very aggressive that we're going to need to figure out. Are there districts doing this? Are there other places we can go and learn um who's really the trendsetter in some of this work that is very aggressive. So, I'm imagining something like this. As opposed to um Samantha's great big presentation in September on student achievement, and then the uh the the uh the Elna report card presentation

131in November, and then the rest of the year just kind of goes uh I think it would be better from a progress monitoring standpoint is after we're getting to the end of some type of da- data pulls from either talking to staff and doing that in some focused areas. That's the staff rounding piece or for us retreats in our progress monitoring that we would bring that information to the board and do another community of the whole. So, three or four of those every year. I think we'll just be much better for us to really dig. And you know, there's that analogy of the dance floor versus the balcony. The DJ booth is a good place to be, too. Speaking from experience. So, like I think there are moments where bringing everybody together at the DJ

132booth, using that same metaphor, is actually going to be really powerful us to figure out like what types of moves we want to make in the future. So, that you're not getting a once a year kind of update on things. It'll take us a couple of years to kind of get this right. We have to build the calendar out based on when data is going to be available to us and then bring it to you in a way that I think we can all kind of process together, too. But, that's what I'm looking forward to and kind of building what board meetings would look like. And then eventually we will have a public-facing scorecard. Ours is not going to be this long next year. I just wanted to pull just one quick example from one

133of our partner districts and actually one of the districts that we look at quite a bit. They're also student partners. This is one at a and you can see a lot of this data. They just pull it every quarter. They throw it on their public-facing scorecard and they move forward. So, we have to figure out what our measures are going to be. Every place has their own sauce for how they do that. And I think at the end of the day and I know Monica mentioned this to me in a conversation. We want a We want a parent to go to this and know, "Why do I care about this? Like what is this measure here? And why is it important?" And so, there's going to We want something that I think provides a little

134bit more detail as people are looking through things. And also, I would love something that's more at the school level, too. Because as a parent, I'm naturally going to say to myself for my own kids' school, "How does my kids' school compare against other kids' schools in the district?" And I think that should be publicly available. So, um that's going to be a change for us, but I think moving forward in the right direction on that will be positive. All right. So, I think this might be one of the most important um things to mention and talk about, but how can this all go wrong? And I think there's some lessons learned from prior strategic plans in our district and other districts, but the first one's going to be just if there's a lack of

135leadership and follow through. I mean, at the end of the day, we want to make sure that all of us are staying here as long as we can to con- continue the work and and keep it going. So, um but a lack when you have leadership changes or you have just lacks of leadership or lapses of leadership, that can certainly just derail this work. You can also have too many things happening. That's one of the things that I think was a theme this year. We had a lot of the training on middle school happening all the time where we had a um the contract negotiation happening at the same time. We had the strategic planning happening at the same time with construction. Oh, by the way, we're doing all this construction in the schools, too,

136which is a massive amount of work. All at the same time. And it makes it really hard to focus. So, I think staying very focused on the things annually that we decide are going to be going is going to be It's going to be hard. And we're not necessarily used to that, I would say, as a cabinet team. We're used to executing as much as we possibly can um without maybe being really intentional for the things that are really going to drive uh performance. So, then at the end of the day, all the things that I just mentioned, w- they are bets. They are bets that they are the right levers to move the work forward. And there are going to be probably some of them that either aren't as impactful as they thought they

137were, other things that crop up as we go through the plan that we might need to add to it or turn some things off. So, we want to build in flexibility as we go into this. So, that's why I don't want to say, "In 4 years, we're going to do all 20 of those." It's right now, that's the list. But, every year, we're going to take a look at that list and say, "Based on where we're at, are we ready to either move forward on some of these things, sunset some of these things, or maybe add some of these things that we think are more powerful. There's always going to be political disputes. That's going to be something that we have to be mindful of, but it also when you're trying to change systems naturally

138comes into play. And education systems fall prey to this all the time. It's one of my biggest frustrations with just society in general when people say, "We want to have great schools, but please don't change a thing." And I have had countless conversations with parents about that. Um it's really easy to speak from the business side when a new iPhone comes out or something and people try something and it doesn't work very well cuz it's not a student. Right? So, businesses have the opportunity to innovate in a way sometimes that does not have the consequences associated from the human side. I think we're actually closer to medicine in that regard. And so, that's one of the things that I I know as we move some of this work it's going to just be a challenge

139and I'd rather just name it out loud and like go into it um as opposed to pretending it's not there and it just turns into an elephant in the room. And then finally, the last one. Is it bold enough? I don't want to work in a place and I know our cabinet team wants to wants to know work in a place that's highly regarded in the sense of the aggression that we're taking towards um the work for our kids. And I know all of our families want us thinking about that. They want us thinking what's the best possible way that we can get our students to the best possible level of performance. Not good enough. What's the best? And so, at the end of the day, and this is where the visioning piece became hard,

140even Chris and I when we were rounding with staff in particular, we had that line of like the best in the state. That was hard for a lot of a lot of adults to read. They're like, "Well, what if we're not? What does that mean?" And I'm like, "No, we're striving to be that. We will get there only if we strive." So, that's going to be a challenge for us and also a challenge just culturally for the district to talk about things in the way of like trying to strive for this when we've got a lot of people who are very very vested in always feeling they're accomplishing things, right? And so, I'd rather be in the world of like we're trying for a 100, landing at 90, than always getting to our 100, but

141our 100 is only 80% of what we're trying to do. So, can we can we be bold in this? You know, I want people when they come hear about this, they're like, "Man, that's really aggressive." I'll be like, "Yes, awesome. We got it right." Um so, that's that's uh important work. This is going to absolutely shift some principals' work, especially the way that they're held accountable for building outcomes and process, and also the way that they would retrieve uh feedback. It's also going to shift our I think our cabinet teams' work. Um we have a lot of learning to do in some of these areas. There's a lot of things that we're not sure how they're going to go. We're not sure if we could look at other school districts, but um we know we

142need to learn pretty fast. Um and then I think the the the second one on there is probably the most important for a cabinet. It's like the most important things have to be first. And we can get bogged down on what I would consider more day-to-day stuff. All of us can. But, that this has to be the North Star. We We schedule this stuff first. This has to go into the the day first. We have to always be thinking about this first. And then we also have to run a school district. Um so, making sure that stuff works, too. But, we're being really aggressive about the effectiveness and all these things. And then also it's going to shift the board work, too. So, I think the biggest thing from the board side that I could

143see maybe going wrong is getting to a point sometimes where maybe like things that become out out out in the world um more discussed like creeping into our conversations more so than they probably should and not talking about the strategic plan enough and like the things that were were moving and doing. And so, there are a lot of elements of this. Um there's a lot of like a book will be published. People will start talking about a topic. That author goes on every podcast um out there. All of a sudden, they're presenting at all the conferences that we go to. And that's the pendulum swings. And welcome to education. And so, I I just want to be really careful and conscientious about that. We've had a couple of requests already from even some of our

144building leaders, "Hey, can we talk about this this summer?" And I was like, "You didn't mention it during the strategic plan. I don't think it's going to drive performance. I'll put it on a shelf, and we can talk about it in 2027." All right? So, I think that's the right thing to do. It's disciplined. But it's hard. It's really, really hard. But I think the board Maybe a board workshop. We have a free one still. So, um So, doing something about maybe progress monitoring or something around this work, I think could be really cool. It'll set us up for next year. So, I think those those three committee of the wholes um will be really helpful. So, that is where the strategic plan lies right now. Uh Chris is going to be working on um

145basically building the web the web-facing piece and the public-facing piece over the summer. And we're set to do like a big launch, I would say sometime uh when the kids are coming back to school and the staff are coming back. We talked about it in the steering committee piece. Everybody agreed that at the end of the year, people's focus is closing out the year and not what's happening in the future. It'll just fall on deaf ears from everybody. Um and we want to make sure that we get This is just a draft, so your feedback's welcome. But we want to make sure that we get kind of everything right here. Um I also want to say thank you um not only Kurt to coming to the meetings, but also thank you to Monica cuz she

146did a lot of um of work to help, I think, get our thinking in the right place. She has a lot of experience with this kind of work. Um and it's wonderful that we can have a board that has so much different areas of expertise. So, thank you, Monica. I think we've got a better product because of it. Um So, that is the strategic plan that's before you to present tonight. I know I was thorough and long, but I wanted to make sure that in case anybody ever you know, goes back and wants to hear this presentation that they kind of get the full kitten caboodle of it out right now. And then once we get everything up on the website and start pushing things out, I think it'll help everybody understand it. So, any

147comments, questions, or thoughts? >> Can I make a request? When we put stuff on the website, can we make sure that we define all acronyms? So, like things like MTSS need to be defined for the general public. Okay, I've got one more. Um I like the flyer. I think it's a good summary of the strategic plan in a one-pager. There's one sentence that I don't like because I think I don't like we're building towards district coherence. I think the way I heard you talk about it tonight has a different meaning than what this sentence means to me. So, what this sentence means to me is that we're trying to align all schools. And I don't think that that's what we're trying to say here. I don't know what to say differently, but if I'm just

148reading this sentence, we're building towards district coherence. It gets to the conversation that where should I move in District 64? And to me, and I know you said something about school report cards, meaning like each school, but I I think that the entire district is great. The entire district is under the strategic plan. And And the strategic plan is not trying to level out the schools. >> All right, anything else? You got a few more things in your update, right? >> There's a motion. Um >> Yeah, he's still going over his updates. Oh, yes. Yes. Uh the III joining our conference is this heads-up that registration begins on June 1st, so we'll be registering all of you for that. And if you can't make it, please let us know. But obviously we've got that uh

149presentation piece that our district will be uh doing as well. Um and then the June meeting will be pretty brief. Uh we just need to make sure that we do our our regular approvals. Um especially now that we kids read it tonight and not then. And then we've fulfilled all the FOIA requests that have come in, you know, between the last meeting. So, that's it. All right. Just thank you. Now we have an action item. >> I have uh just one thing before we go off the strategic plan. Um the four-year part of the strategic plan um trying to just interlace that with the uh board uh election cycles. Um and I know why we moved it from five years to four years so that it's not on the same cycle as the um uh

150negotiations, which makes total sense to me. But I think when we do that, um what will end up happening is the next time that the and the fourth year of the strategic plan uh it'll be similar to like the situation where Matt, Rachel, and I are ending our term and participating in the strategic plan and may cycle off. Which I think is fine. versus new folks cycling on and participating in the strategic plan. But I just wanted to say it just so that we're conscious of >> Do we go to six years? >> Um where we are in the cycle and making a conscious choice about it versus not making a conscious choice about it. So. I guess, yeah. No change needed, but just wanted us to make a conscious choice. >> Because you would

151in year four would you be This is the other thing with the four versus five-year question. Would you be developing a new strategic plan during year four or after? And then in year five, does that accidentally line up with negotiations fun? >> It wouldn't line up with negotiations. >> Um I don't know. >> Do you know what I mean in terms of like if it's like we're doing these four years, we're monitoring the data, then we're going to take a break because we're developing our new strategic plan in year five. >> Oh, no. I think we would >> Or do you develop the new one in year four while you're tracking it? >> Yeah, and I I think year four would be the year that we would either be developing, quote unquote, a new one

152or what a lot of districts that I've talked to that really like where theirs is at, they just do like a refresh update. And they said that's kind of the the districts that get really good performance, that's the gold standard. Is like they're like, yeah, they're like, your biggest process should be down, which we just went through. Now, can you can you put some things in place so that it just kind of seems like a natural extension? And then the year the annual thing where you're trying to say four or five years is really just what types of things you're trying to change during this time period. >> Yeah. If you if you do it Ben's exactly right. Like the folks that I've seen do it well, they'll continue just doing the annual process for

153another 2 years or another 4 years and then they'll do So, in essence, you end up doing a 6- or 8-year plan, but you commit to a 4-year plan just on the off chance that you're you need to totally redo something. Um and so, I'm going to make this up, but you could in that fourth year end up just saying we're going to do a 2-year extension and just do two more annual year plans because we like the overarching frame and we just have strategic annual priorities that we need to keep on doing. That probably is the most likely if we're on the right track. Um or we're totally off and it's very clear and we just need to redo. Or you do a 2-year extension another another 2-year extension, but you kind of just

154buy yourself time. So, I think that makes sense. >> Okay. >> All right. All right. We got a motion to approve the plan. >> I move that the Board of Education approve the 2026 through 2030 District 64 Strategic Plan. >> Second. >> Andrew with the motion, Monica with the second. Any further discussion or questions? >> No, just I know Ben thanked everyone, but thank everyone for all their work, especially with narrowing the goals. I know that when we would have the Committee of the Whole, sometimes it was a a larger list of very ambitious things um to focus in, but to see the coherence, especially with the portrait of a learner at the center of the model classroom and the portrait of an educator. We talked a lot about how we didn't want them to

155be separate things and doing different things and not connected and I think this really landed in the right place. So, thank you. >> Yeah, and I will say that I I I brag about you all to different folks across the K-12 sector because it has been one of the most collaborative processes that I've seen where the committee of whole meetings like truly feel like we are rolling up our sleeves and just getting into the real meat of the work together and I hope you all feel the same, but where we can really say what we need to say to do what's right for students and really push the thinking and really challenge one another. And so, I've just been so grateful for all of the work that you've done behind the scenes as well as

156done in the community meetings as well as in the steering committee meetings and in the committee of the wholes. It's just it's been pretty impressive to see the amount of work and movement from I don't even know when we started like October? January? January. Oh my gosh. January? >> January well, October is when we kind of started but January 2025. With the goal like establishing the goal areas, but October was >> Yeah, okay. That was like yeah. October from from October until until now. so. Um very very impressed and very very grateful. >> All right. >> Milligan. >> Yes. >> Rankin. >> Yes. >> Klein. >> Yes. >> Georgeakis. >> Yes. >> Kempel. >> Yes. >> Doubleday. >> Yes. >> All right. Uh no board committee reports um before we look at the consent agenda,

157anybody need to pull anything out or have any issues with anything? All right, let's clear that. >> I move that the board approve the consent agenda for May 21st, 2026 as presented. >> Second. >> Questions, comments? >> Klein. >> Yes. >> Milligan. >> Yes. >> Rankin. >> Yes. >> Doubleday. >> Yes. >> Kempel. >> Yes. >> Georgeakis. >> Yes. >> All right. New business? >> Motion to adjourn. Sorry, that was fast. >> Got somewhere to be? >> No. I move to adjourn. >> So moved. Um that was a second. >> Yeah. >> Okay. She moved, that was a second. >> Oh. Second. I second that. >> So, Andrew with the motion, Monica with the second. Uh vote to get out of here. >> Doubleday. >> Yes. >> Klein. >> Yes. >> Kempel. >> Yes. >>

158Georgeakis. >> Yes. >> Rankin. >> Yes. >> Milligan. >> Yes. >> All right, thank you everyone. >> All right, I got to write my thank you. I'm sorry. Failed at Robert