D64 BOE Meeting 11.13

001We have a pretty packed agenda for this evening, but I understand we have a musician or two with us today. >> Yeah. Uh, welcome everybody. This is the best board meeting of the year because we get to celebrate all of our music students and the great work that they do. So, I'd like to introduce Mr. Helerman and the Lincoln Chamber Orchestra who's going to serenate us and then we'll have a presentation for all of our district and uh other students uh for the things that they're doing with the A. So, You're That was excellent. Why don't you guys just hang tight for two more seconds here and we'll invite Miss Fall Habber up to present some district awards with the rest of our fantastic music staff. and then we'll do a picture at the end

002parents for everybody. Okay, >> congratulations Lincoln Chamber. You guys sounded wonderful. Another round of applause. They were fantastic. [applause] Um, good evening. My name is Erikica Falhabber. I am the curriculum specialist for instrumental music. And I would also like to take the opportunity to introduce our other music teachers here tonight, Mr. Max Hollerman, Mr. Alex Teter, Miss Alyssa Latrana, and we're very happy to be here. Thank you for having us. Um, again, congratulations to the Lincoln Chamber. You guys sounded terrific, and thank you for sharing your talents and for being here with us tonight. I know it was a busy week. We had a great day today and we enjoyed your music. Um, additionally, we're excited to recognize 14 outstanding District 64 musicians. These students auditioned and were selected to participate in the Illinois Music

003Educators Association Festival, one of the most competitive and prestigious music opportunities in the state. More than 800 of the finest band and orchestra students from over 50 middle schools in the North Suburban area auditioned for a position in these all-star groups. This was a tremendous opportunity for our students to meet and perform with talented students from other schools. Students also had the opportunity to work with esteemed conductors. The festivals took place on November 1st at Shamberg High School and they were absolutely incredible. The students did a remarkable job representing District 64. We are also looking forward to the ILMEA Jazz Festival that's taking place on Saturday, November 15th. We are so proud of our students. And students, when we call your name, please come on up. We have a very special fancy certificate. You could

004say a uh and to accept the uh certificate of achievement. We'll gather together for a picture afterwards. So, please don't go too far. Okay. Tommy B. >> [applause] >> Clarice, Jonathan, Ella, Ellie, Lucia, Evan, Lexie, Lexi, Olivia, Zophia, Evelyn, Wyatt, Gabriel, and Charlie. Congratulations to all of our musicians. Nice. We certainly know why everybody was here. Um, as as a parent who had three boys go through the music program, Mhab and Mr. and Mr. Bachman back in the day. Um, just it is an amazing program and just it's one of the highlights of their elementary and middle school time. So, I'm always thrilled to see them here. All right, moving on. Public comments point in the meeting where we welcome public comments. Each speaker is given three minutes to address the board. Comments may be

005made on almost any matter related to operation schools, but we ask you refrain from making comments concerning students or staff members. used this timeless community questions and concerns but will not respond immediately to request or information. Additionally, the board cannot take formal action on non-aggenda items. Contact board president by email to discuss your traffic topic further. Please come forward to the microphone and state your name and if comfortable your address for the public financial update. Yeah, we have um this time of the year that we'll start talking about the bond issuance and we have the two greatest people in the history of the universe when it comes to uh public finance and um it'll tail nicely into some of the other stuff that we have in the agenda as well. But um let them kind

006of get situated with everything they have. So feels like Groundhog Day. We were here a year ago talking about the same thing. So, this is uh Liz and Tammy and I'll let them introduce themselves to the board and maybe just give a little bit of like what you do for us uh for our new board members and then they'll walk through this and I'm sure they can answer literally any question. There's no question you can throw at them that they won't know. So, about anything ever. So, this is your shot. This is your chance. We were talking about trivia earlier. Yeah. Yeah. They're like your best trivia partners in the world. So, anyway, okay. Without further ado, thanks for being here. I've uh since actually the late 90s and um so I act as underwriter

007when it comes to selling bonds in the public market. >> Thank you. And I'm Tammy Beck with Shammo from PMA Securities. Our firm serves as municipal advisor to the district when you issue municipal securities. Okay. Tonight, Tammy and I are going to take you through an update on the referendum bonds. As you recall, we sold the first last January. Um, and we're up to sell the remaining portion of the bonds um this January 26. So, let's jump right in. I'm going to start with a market update. Okay, so there's a lot going on in this slide and it is uh dated a couple weeks ago, but we did just end the shutdown today. Okay, so anyway, uh the big news is that chairman cut rates basis point in November as widely expected. Much of that

008decrease in rates was built in. However, he stated that a December cut is not a foregone conclusion, which put a little uncertainty in the market for what's coming up. So, rates actually bumped up a little bit after that announcement. Um, so we've also had uncertainty through this government shut down and a lack of data because of course none of that information is being released. So, as we go forward, we start to learn what's going on from a data point of view. the unemployment rate and those various things. We'll see how uh markets are going to be impacted. But if you recall, bad news in the economy is good news for the bond market and we tend to have seen a good amount of that. So the graph on the top speaks to demand and supply.

009We've got record breaking issuance in calendar 2025 municipal bonds. The good news is it's being really absorbed very well by the bond market. And the graph on the bottom looks at what we call fund inflows and outflows. So when you see green bars above the line, that means there are more buyers than sellers. And when you see the red bars going down, that means there's more sellers. So the good news, if you look at the very far right side, you can see that we've had the green bars are above the And we've got strong demand for municipal bonds even going here. This next slide is the historical AAA municipal market data interest rate. So this looks ata rated bonds which is the highest rating of bonds for some of the largest issuers in the nation

010and on the x ais is the year of maturity on the y ais is the current yield and the dark line for each point on that curve. So typically it starts at a little lower rates and then as you go out the curve you see higher rates. The red line is where we are now. If we looked at this graph last year, we would have seen the shortterm rates much higher, but they have come down with some of the Fed decreases. Um, and importantly, the red line is below the blue line in years through 18. So, that's where we're looking at rates that are lower than that 30-year average. We also have a high and a low since 1993 and where we are currently. This next slide looks at the changes in the municipal market

011data index between January 1 and 25 and October 31 of 25. As you can see, the shorter maturities have come down quite a bit as the Fed talked about rates cuts more anticipated in the future. So, you know, looking at rates coming down, 493 basis points through 10 is really great because the next bond issue is going to be paid off in those short maturities over the first 10 years. We this purposefully. The first trunch we locked in the longer term rates when they were low last year and this year or it nailed it because they really come down. So, we're very excited about that. So, next I'm gonna turn it over to Tammy to talk about the referendum financing. >> Thank you. So, a year ago when we were here, we talked about a

012relatively really new law that was enacted in the summer of 24 that said if you passed a building bond referendum uh on and after November of 24, whatever amount of that referendum was, you didn't have to count that bond issue that capacity against your statutory debt limit as long as you held a public hearing before the sale of the bonds, which you did. So, as a result, you can see in that box on the right hand side, the district uh continues to to have a very significant debt capacity listed there of over $118 million. So, you were your timing was great and that you had your referendum uh last year and you were able to take advantage of that that new law just as a reminder. So, just wanted to revisit a little bit of

013history and talk about the tax rate promise during the referendum campaign. So, um it did make conservative uh assumptions about where interest rates might be when you sold the bonds eventually. Uh which makes a lot of sense because while uh Elizabeth has talked out have a really good handle on the market, things can change by the time from when you are going to referendum in your campaign to when it passes and when you actually sell bonds. So, uh during the campaign, you can see there's a number shaded one line in yellow that shows a tax rate of 41 So that was the estimated tax rate for bond and interest as a result of the referendum. And just to give you one point of reference, we estimated at the time that um that would be about

014a 29 cent increase to the tax rate. And for a $350,000 market value home, it would increase their property tax bills by $279. And you may also recall that during the referendum uh campaign, uh taxpayers, voters had the ability to go on your website, look at your tax and understand how the referendum might impact their personal tax bill. So this is a just a graphic of what the estimated impact would be on the taxpayer. So just in terms of debt service payments, so the darker blue and the bright green bars that are below the red line represent the district's existing non-referendum debt service payments that are on file with the county clerk. Bonds you've sold previously. Those lighter blue bars that go above the red line, those are the estimated debt service payments when the

015referendum was underway. And you can see the the relative, you know, slight increases each year, but overall relatively flat um for the next roughly eight or nine years. And then there's a bit of a drop and a further drop a few years later. And that's really built that way so that if you want to sell more non-referendum debt in the future when you do so it would bring the aggregate bars kind of pretty much consistent from year to year. So that was again by design during the referendum plan. So we wanted to give you an update on where things are now. So uh some of the things that Elizabeth talked about with improvement in the market. So the estimated um actual tax rate increase in levy year 24. So impacting tax bills payable in calendar

016year 25 was an increase of about 28 cents. So increased that tax rate to 40 cents. So that same $350,000 market value home I mentioned a couple slides ago that impact is about $11 less than what had been estimated during the referendum campaign. Um so very very pleased by by the results and being conservative during that referendum effort was certainly appropriate. Another thing I wanted to mention, I know it's very very hard to see um up on the slide, but just further reinforcing what Elizabeth said about interest rates, particularly with preserving the shorter end of the yield curve for this next sale. So when we were here with you a year ago, part of what we were talking about was should you sell all the referendum bonds at once? Should we break it up into

017a couple series based on anticipated changes in the market based on estimated interest earnings from bond proceeds? All those things put together, we ultimately recommended and you as a board approved the plan to sell most the bonds then earlier this calendar year and then we have the balance the approximately 24 million to sell in early 2026. So just to give you some context, we were estimating when we were with you a year ago that the estimated all in true interest on the remaining issue in 26 was a 3.3% and based on the most current analysis we've put together uh that estimated true interest cost is a 3.15%. So just further reinforcing uh that the the skill maybe a little bit right maybe more the opposite but anyway uh very very fortunate in how the timing

018has worked out. So we're we're very very pleased with with where things are at for your next and then here is an updated uh barraph for you. The difference here really is is now you've got those green bars inserted within those lighter blue bars. So that represents the 2026 bonds where we're filling in on the shorter end of your debt service. One other thing we wanted to touch upon, I mentioned this a minute ago, is the estimated interest earnings from your bond proceeds. So when we were with you uh last year, we talked about as part of the analysis estimated interest. So you invested when you sold your bonds earlier this year roughly 65 million. You immediately invested that based on the anticipated draw schedule for the project. And what you can see on that

019call out box on the left hand side is your estimated interest earnings on those 20 25 bond seats is about 2,65,000 and that's based on an average investment rate of 4.17%. So looking at the remainder of the draw schedule for this 4 million, investing it out as kind of at the long end of the draw schedule. That was by design because we know you're going to continue to spend series 2025 proceeds and these new proceeds will layer in with the demands of your construction schedule. But the estimated interest earnings right now from the series 2026 proceeds be about 580,000 at an average investment rate of 3.67%. So that of course is subject to change um between now and when you actually get those dollars invested you spend in your project that the actual monthly spend

020schedule could could vary a little bit. So these numbers could change but in aggregate we estimate right now your total earnings on your bond proceeds from both series of bonds would be just under $2.75 million. So that's additive in terms of additional work you can do on the projects buildings and Elizabeth's gonna finish up with the timeline. >> Thank you. So um tonight we're reviewing the financing plan impact investment scenarios and also in your packets I think you got the parameters bond resolution draft that is the uh item that you will be looking at your regular meeting in December and that authorizes the sale of the bonds within certain parameters and subject to approval by the board delegates typically uh the CSBO and the board president and the superintendent. So, we're going to be meeting

021with the rating agencies on December 10th. The district currently has a very strong A1 bond rating. No expectation that that will change. Um, so we're excited about that. Uh, and then we're looking at selling the bonds right in that first week of January, right around January 6 once everyone gets back from vacation. And the reason we like sales because there's a lot of bonds maturing. So there's a lot of January one maturities, December one maturities and that money's looking to be reinvested. So we think that timing will work very well if everything else kind of stays stable. Then we would close the bond issue January 26. That's when you get the remaining 24 million proceeds. Go ahead and get those invested according to your draw schedule and that would be it. So, we're happy to

022take any questions. Thank you so much as always. The interest earned on the bond is that subject to the same restrictions on project salaries be related to it or salaries. It's got to still be approve resolution author This is the just in case piece. This is the tax anticipation warrants. So we are hoping that property taxes do actually go out tomorrow. Everybody will be clicking refresh refresh refresh to see if text us at midnight. Let us know [laughter] that's the way. Many people will be curious. Um this is just in case. Uh we're glad that the county that they were issuing them. Now, um we have prepared for what might come if we we don't have that, but this is hopefully this is something we never have to use. >> Can you provide a little

023bit more background about when we should have expected property tax bills to be >> Yeah. Brian? So, typically, um what we hope happens is they come out in July. So, they did not come out July 1st. had come out yet. So, you know, our our cash our balances our fund balances have been drawing on the fund balances and with um the tax the tax revenues our revenue streams 84% of that is coming from local tax revenue. So, we have not gotten that from the county uh for the second property installment property tax installment yet. So, our fund balances were drawing down and as of a few weeks ago up until last Friday, we did not have a timeline yet for the county. So, we're preparing these uh resolutions just in case we have to issue

024tax anticipation warrants. Our hope is that we do not have to issue them at all now that they're being uh the bills are going to get mailed tomorrow, but because of the timing of this, we want to make sure that if something does happen that don't go out tomorrow or something else happens that we're ready if we need to um issue these, but we are hopeful that we will not have to actually issue these at this point. >> The bills are going out tomorrow with payment due December 15th. How quickly do we get >> Yeah, we looked at that today. We looked at the trends over the last few years. It looks like it takes about three weeks until you start to get significant funds from the county. >> Um, mid January. >> No, three

025weeks from from when the bills are mailed. Sorry. When the bills are mailed, you start to see money trickle in. Yes. Three weeks from mailed. So, our hope is by the first week of December, we start to see those significant contributions from the county. Um, which will be perfect um for the timing that we need. So, County hasn't given any indication that that will get hung up somewhere. >> Not no not they have not given any indication. Um I actually reached out to uh Dr. Grossy today to see if he had you know what his read was on because I know he's very close to a lot of people and he said he has not heard otherwise. He anticipates it will go out tomorrow. So that's the latest information I have. >> And just for

026everybody's knowledge, can we talk about why the property tax bills did not get issued by Cook County on time? Yeah, it was a software issue. They ported over the software is what it sounds like. That's um kind of what we have heard from them. So, they have not been able to there's probably a lot of different factors in that, but that is what they're citing as the >> office. >> What was that? >> Office new software. >> Yeah. Yeah. The the accounting software they use, they switched software programs this year. So, and in two years ago, they were delayed as well. They weren't doing a software change over, but those were issued a month earlier than now. a little bit different because we had the money a little bit sooner. We weren't in this position

027a couple years ago. >> And if like it sounds like we're not going to have to end up issuing these and I probably should have asked when um we're still up here, but do we see if we did have to issue these that it would impact our bond sale at all? >> No, please. >> Great. I didn't think so, but I just wanted to make sure that that would not >> change any of the predictions. just >> questions. Motion for day four, please. I move that the board approve resolution number 1,370 authorizing the issuance of not to exceed $9,250,000 taxable tax anticipation warrants in anticipation of the collection of taxes levied for the year 2024 for educational purposes and authorizing the sale of said warrants to the purchaser thereof. Andrew with the motion second. Any

028questions? >> Vote, please. >> Double Day. >> Yes. Klein, yes. George, yes. Kemple, >> yes. >> Ranken, yes. Yes. >> All right. Next piece. >> Yeah. Next we have I don't have in front of me, but next we have the the resolution for the uh inter fund loan for working cash um into our debt services to make sure that we can meet our our debt payment for our bonds. Um our debt payment is due December 1st. This is something we need to do um you know regardless of the tax bills going out tomorrow just to make sure we can meet that. So we are able to to loan that money and then as soon as we get the tax dollars back it will go directly back into that working cash account. I move that the

029board approve resolution number 1,371, loaning funds from the working cash fund to the bond and interest fund in anticipation of the collection of taxes levied by the district for such purposes for the year 2024 and such monies so transferred to be reimbursed from such taxes upon their collection. Second >> with a motion. Rich second. Any questions or discussion? >> Vote, please. >> Louise, >> yes. Kemple, >> yes. >> George, yes. Ranken, yes. Klein, yes. Milligan, yes. Double Day, >> yes. Thank you. All right. Still you, Brian. Still me. I'm gonna actually ask Phoebe come up as well. Phoebe would director of business services. All right. Thank you again for your time. We're going to keep rolling here with the financials. Um, now we're going to kind of transition into the tenative uh levy presentation uh

030for this year. So, kind of broken into three parts. The first is just a really quick school finance timeline review. look very familiar to what you saw in the budget meeting, the budget presentation. Then we're going to go over just um Phoe's actually going to go over a basic overview of the assessment levy process, just really high level what that process looks like. And then at the end, we will present um our levy recommendation for uh this year. So this timeline looks very familiar to you. It should. This is the same timeline I presented in um August at the budget meeting. just highlighting in, you know, yellow there that right now we're in the November phase, which is when we're presenting the tenative levy to the board of education, um, and recommending that we do

031a truth and taxation hearing. You'll hear later that we're actually not required to do a truth and taxation hearing. Um, in the spirit of um, district 64 and transparency. We've always done one traditionally anyway, so we'll be continuing that. We'll talk about that a little bit more uh, later on down the line. We'll talk about next steps kind of at the end, but that's kind of where we're at in the process. than December, we would come back for that levy hearing and board approval for the tax levy. Just a reminder of why this is so important, I actually cite this number just a little bit ago. Um, in terms of real estate taxes, that accounts for 84% of our revenue. So, right now, I mentioned before, our fund balances are low right now because, um,

032you know, we've been spending that money and not bringing anything in. And um I think also like the one thing that you're going to hear a couple times is the levy process is tricky because a lot of these numbers typically we don't hear you don't find out until the second tax bill comes out which is typically July. So there's a lot of things even from last year that are not solidified yet. So um just keep that in mind kind of as we go through this that a lot of this is estimating and doing the best we can and capturing what we can um in terms of revenue. So, there's a new public act that went out um that came to play last year, 103-0394, that requires that we present at a public meeting this information

033on this slide. You actually saw some of this data in the budget presentation. Um there was one little piece that we didn't really have in there, but it requires us to show operational fund, three-year trends for the ED fund, operations maintenance fund, and transportation fund. Um so, we have the audited numbers for fiscal year 23 and 24, unudedited for 25. not finished yet. Just showing that three-year average and then the un unudited fund balances for that as well. This those two blue boxes were the ones that you you saw that data in the budget presentation. The one that we did not have specifically that we need to make sure we cover today was just making sure that we present the that right now or as of June 30th, we had 42.69% of our operational fund

034balance to the three-year average of expenditure. So, this is just to fulfill um kind of that obligation for us to present that number to you and the community. And now I'm going to pass it over to Phoebe to >> Good evening. Um I'm going to take a few minutes to talk about the levy process in Illinois um and in particular in Cook County. We're going to start by reviewing some terms that we talk about a lot, but sometimes people don't know exactly what they mean. The the levy is actually our ask. It's what we're asking the public to provide to us. Um something interesting is the levy isn't a percent. It's actually a dollar amount. We're act we're asking for a dollar amount. Um and the percentage that we talk about is calculated later. Um

035the extension is the actual amount that we bill to the taxpayers in the district. And as you can see in this sort of graph, that amount is always a little bit smaller than the levy. We try to overestimate the levy because we don't know many of these factors until after the fact. And if we don't levy, we can't go back and get it capture it later. So we always try to overestimate the levy a bit. Um that extension is what we bill and then the collection is the important part right this is the amount we actually take in. We're very fortunate in this community that our collection rate is over 90 98% every year. So that is that is a very positive thing. The average in Cook County is about 93 and a half% but

036we're at like a 98%. So the next thing I want to talk about is the process. Um, it starts with the assessment process. The Cook County Assessor's Office establishes a market value for every property within the county. Cook County is enormous. We do a reassessment every three years based on what area of the county you live in. North Cook did their assessment this year. So, you've probably all been just through this process. Um, property owners get a letter saying what their new assessed value is in in Main Township. It would happen sometime over the summer. You have about 30 days to appeal that valuation if you don't agree with it. Um, all of that information goes to the county board of review. They deter make determinations and all of that information then for the entire

037county is consolidated and that's what they use to create this state equalization value. Now on the next slide, so every other county in the state assesses their property at 33 and a3% of the market value. So, a $300,000 house, their taxes are assessed on $100,000. Cook County doesn't do it that way. We like to be different in Cook County, right? Um, so for Cook County, commercial and industrial market is more heavily weighted and residential is only at 10%, commercial is at 25. Now, as you can see, those don't equal each other. So all of the information from Cook County is then collapsed and they have to come up with an equalization factor to make the 10 and the 25% equivalent to the 33 and a3%. For um Cook County that factor last year was 3.03.

038So they take your 10%, you multiply it by the equalization factor to get our total taxes. As you Oh, sorry. Um, as you can see, every other county it the equal equalizer is 1.0. Ours is some determined number. Those numbers that EAV and the equalization factor, we don't know until after we have to present the levy. So those that's yet another factor of why we overestimate the levy ask even though it will be capped because we are a tax cap district. We won't ever get more than we can but we don't want to underestimate that. So next step is that all taxing bodies present their levy request to the board. Um, then they have to do that at least 20 days before it's actually voted on. Um, and then once that oh, if it's more

039than five, if somebody's asking for more than 5% increase over their previous year's extension, they have to do that truth and taxation hearing that we talked about. Um, that's a public hearing where we allow for public input. Um, and then once the levies are approved, they have to be filed with the county. no later than the last Tuesday in December. This year it's December 30th. Um then the extension is calculated. Then the county begins the process of printing and distributing bills. And while this usually happens in February and July, sometimes it happens much later like this year. Um, so I'm gonna talk turn it back over to Brian who and he'll he's going to talk about our specific levy request. >> Yeah, thank you Phoebe. So just a reminder about that the property tax extension

040limitation law. Just wanted to just provide a little context with this that we're technically a tax cap district. That's what a lot of people refer to. This law was enacted in the Coller counties around Cook County in 1991 and took place in Cook County in 1994. And essentially what it does is it limits um the year-over-year property tax increase to um 5% of the previous year's extension or the percent increase of the national CPI index plus new property. So new property you can always capture in addition to that. Um so this year the CPI value was 2.9%. That number actually was determined last January and it's the number that was from last December. So actually the one for next year we'll know here in a couple months uh in mid January. So that is the

041cap that we have. So no matter what we we do, we cannot have over 2.9% plus new property of the levy for next year. Just a little trend of CPI. I just wanted to show this because you can see in 21 and 22 um that was the first time the only time it had reached that 5% cap. Um that was because of the inflation related to COVID coming out of COVID. Um so that was the only time the 5% tax cap came into play. The 30-year average is 2.43%. So, we are now kind of normalizing and coming back down to where the normal numbers are with that 2.9. We'll see where we're at here in a couple months for next year as well. Just in terms of new taxable property growth, um the rule of

042thumb is for every $1 million that you have of new AV uh you typically get about $38,000 of additional revenues um with that. So, next year uh we are estimating that to be around $12 million. This shows the kind of the trend and um we want to make sure that we this doesn't get determined till that till July typically. So we want to make sure that you know we go a little bit higher so we make sure we can capture all that new property because as Pho said before the number that we request for the levy is actually a dollar amount. So you want to make sure you can capture everything um with the revenue source. So overall, our recommendation um for next year is um to go with the the max amount allowed by

043the tax cap, which is that 2.9% plus our new taxable property growth. When you take that into consideration um and calculate that out, the total tax levy request is 4.17 above the prior year tax extension, which is below that 5%. Um just a couple things to to one thing I just want to point out in here. I know we talked about the budget meeting um in August, but just like that transportation fund for example, if you look at that fund, you will see that we are reallocating those funds to a different um account this year just because that number was getting too high and we were living too much for that. So, we are making those adjustments like we promised back in uh August. So, I just wanted to point that out. In terms of

044timeline, um, today we're presenting, uh, and then obviously we're going to post for the truth and taxation hearing in the newspaper when appropriate. Um, and make sure that we have the truth and taxation hearing December 18th and it will go to the board for approval. If it is approved, um, then we would file it by December 30th, hopefully much sooner because of the holiday break. We'll make sure that we file them with the county clerk by the end of December. That wraps up the presentation on the tax. questions. >> The 5% cap is that 5% plus new property or just 5%. >> That is 5% plus new property. It's 5% or CPI plus new property. So, whatever's lower the two. Yeah. Thank you. Thank you, please. I move that the board approve the 2025 tax

045levy estimate, establishment of the date and time of the truth and taxation hearing for December 19th, 2025 at 7 p.m. and publication of notice of truth and taxation hearing. >> Second. >> Andrew is a motion to go with a second. Um any questions or comments before? >> Sorry. Is it December 19th or 18? >> December 19th. Oh. 19 or 18. >> Good catch. It was December 18th, but in the motion it says December 19th. So, which should it be? >> Okay. I offer a friendly amendment to have the truth and taxation hearing for December 18th, 2025 at 7 p.m. >> Second. people motioned and seconded the friendly amendment. Okay. Um let's vote. >> George, >> yes. Kemple, >> yes. >> Milligan, yes. Ranken, yes. Klein, >> yes. Double Day, >> yes. >> Just when you

046thought you were done, >> this is the school maintenance grant. >> That's so many things I Thank you. I don't have the Yeah. So, this is just to uh we're we're applying for the school maintenance grant through um Illinois State Board of Education. It requires the board to authorize that. It's a dollar for-doll match. Um so, they want to make sure that we're committing to spending that money on building improvements. Um what we'll do is we're working to identify the exact project. Right now, we have till January 30th to submit the application, but that is something that we would like to pursue again this year. >> So, you said pursue again this year. So, I assume we've done this before. Can you >> Yeah, it's been I don't know. I don't know what the history

047is. I know for the the last few years at least we've done it. Um, you know, I know I looked at last year's uh to make sure, but yeah, we've done it for at least last couple years and it's something that um is a great opportunity for us to do projects that we need to do and help you a little bit of support with that when we do those. >> How much has it been typically? >> What was that? >> How much? >> It's 50,000 match for match. So, you know, obviously you want to try to maximize that and you don't want to do a project that's substantially less than $100,000 because you're not going to maximize your >> And are we successful every time? >> So, so right now we're approving to apply for

048the grant and by the time you actually do apply you will have identified. >> Yeah. When you when you actually apply for the grant, one of the steps is to submit the board authorization to apply for the grant. So, To that end, I move that the board approve the school maintenance grant application, which allows ISB to match a permanent improvement project up to $50,000. >> Second, motion with a second. Questions or comments? >> All right, let's vote on that, please. >> Kemple, >> yes. >> Klein, >> yes. >> Lui, >> yes. >> Ranken, yes. Double Day, >> yes. >> Jacus, >> yes. Milligan, >> yes. Thank you. >> All right. Thank you. >> Thank you, Brian. It's a lot of items. All right. We're going to talk briefly about the strategic plan and the process

049uh leading into that. Um, while we're doing that, um, it is board member appreciation day slashmonth, and I know I'm speaking on behalf of over 4,000 students, uh, 45,000 residents, and over 600 staff with a massive thank you to all of you. I know you spend a lot of time, um, listening to the community, trying to figure out what the school needs. You spend a lot of time hearing us out as the administrative team for all of the things that we're trying to do to bring to you. Um, you have to delve into finance, you have to delve into construction, you have to delve into labor relations, you have to delve into really uh teaching and learning, you name it. You have to know it all. Um, and it's a significant amount of time um

050by which you get paid zero dollars for. And um the best we can do is um just say thank you and know that uh your work really does impact kids. And I think if you think about maybe the referendum in particular and just some of the other decisions that you've had a chance to make, you can actually see it come alive now in the schools and the classrooms and when you drive by the buildings know that like I did that. I I contributed to that. Um and uh our kids are nothing without all of the support that are behind them and that includes all of our staff and and all of our community members and the hours it takes to make those schools run. but your time is extremely valuable towards those ends. And so

051we just want to say uh thank you for all that you do and this is a fantastic school board. I think our district and you're going to hear more about this in particular from Samantha's presentation. There's a lot of celebration there. We are in a really really great trajectory and we're just getting started. So uh the future is very bright in our school district and we have many things and many challenges that we have to figure out what we're going to um to do to overcome them. But uh with this team here and the great dialogue that we have and uh when we debate items and really try to figure out like what the best answer is to a question um it's really an honor uh to be able to work for all of you

052and I know I'm speaking on behalf of all my colleagues in that regard. Uh you're very professional uh very dignified extremely prepared and you just take all the work that we do very seriously so that we can make sure that our staff and our students have what they need. my long way of saying thank you for all of your work. And now you get to sit through another slide presentation. It does. I thought it was a good picture. So Chris took a great picture here. All right. So we're going to talk through just the process of what it's going to look like to kind of chart out our future. Um Beth uh got a chance to see a a sneak peek of this today. We had our community coffee and had some really good moments

053I thought of of a stop and dialogue. So that was that was excellent. Um I'm going to go faster than I did at the community coffee. I thought this was going to be a 10-minute presentation turned a little over an hour uh based on some of the conversations. So I promise it's not going to be an hour. Um there are four aspects to this that we're looking at. We're looking at reviewing the mission. We're looking at rebuilding the vision, creating the values and then we're going to do a little word smithing on titles for the goal areas at some point but then also connect it to the vision that we're going to set forth. That work will start on in earnest on Monday with our team. Just as a reminder, these were the five goal

054areas that this board and the cabinet team established last year uh in January I believe with that IASB um workshop which was really helpful for us. So we could live with these categories as they are that's fine. We might get a little different you know as they move out but what they are essentially and that'll help us guide our work. The values are going to be what we don't have right now. They're going to be like how we make decisions and those things that we have to just always keep in mind. They're the the filter that you run your decisions through moving forward. Our staff in particular, this will help them probably the most out of anybody. Um our staff and our I think our school board and administrators. So you've seen this slide multiple

055times. I just even put it up for my own edification some points but a lot this is what we're trying to avoid and by trying to avoid this we want to move into more of a model that we have a better establishment of current reality we're certainly doing the mission vision values but it's not buffing in the in the grand scheme of things and then in terms of the plan the plan's going to be flexible enough because we don't know what it's going to look like years down the road that once we establish those those guiding posts that we're looking for to let us know what our metrics are we still have to have some flexibility to make adjustments. Some things have to be turned off and on. Some things are going to have to

056potentially be started, but we'll have a process unto that end later. Right now, this is just what we're looking for, you know, for the next four or five years. So, we're really excited about that. Actually seeing some of the things in the purple. Um, I was at the uh elementary principles association conference and many of our principles were down there. I was presenting with Courtney and she was talking about the ways that she's used uh the the leadership development working now. Our principles right now after seeing some of the work that they've done in particular on their buildings on the still pretty new continuous improvement work like they're ready to actually go out and start sharing the word on that. There's there's some really really good stuff. Samantha and her team with Allison, Matt have

057just been doing wonderful things and again we are just at the start of this. So it's cool to see all of that stuff manifest itself and we'll talk more about that probably at a future board meeting sometime in the spring. We have more instances of going through our cycles with our principles. So, this is just shows like a magnitude scale of what are we're going to be looking at um from now until May. The mission vision values piece is pretty traditional. The internal auditing and external benchmarking pretty traditional, but I think we'll be pretty aggressive on that. I was just telling Kurt when we were walking uh down the hallways is like an obsession of mine and I know a lot of our teams just how how are we doing compared to other school districts.

058The green is the thing that's always missing. And I did a terrible job at the last board meeting of describing this. I apologize because nobody is ever going to get that time back. But um what I was trying to say is that at the end of the day, we are going to be faced with a decision and a lot of organizations do not actually make the choice. And by making by not making a choice, you are essentially still making a choice. And so we have to decide are we going to go route A or route B? because we cannot continue to do both. When you take a look at our resources, uh when you take a look at our staff and what they're able to to handle, the more we can focus the work at

059the top, the more they can improve at um towards their ends in the classroom. So those board decisions, those strategic decisions, those decisions from the steering team can really start to impact student learning um and manifest itself. And eventually, if you do that well, then you can get to the planning piece. We had a video that our admin team watched. They were actually watching again on Monday. Our coach was like, "Have you seen this video?" I was like, "Oh, yeah. We just watched it. It's perfect." Um, talking about this and the sense that a lot of organizations, they skip the planning piece and they put strategic planning together when they're actually two different things. Um, strategy and planning are actually not synonymous. And so, planning is comfortable. We all like to plan. We like to

060follow recipes. We like to follow designs. We like to follow chapters. Strategy is more complicated. It's more theoretical. Um, and a lot of times we like to remain open to possibility and strategy is actually saying you've got to pick. And so that's hard. But I think those will be really good conversations um as we go about this work. This is what the steering team looks like. So Kurt is up there in the upper leftand corner. Everybody in green is uh a certified staff member. Our non-certified staff members are in the dark purple. And then whatever color is left there on the bottom are the administrators. That's what is that Barbie pink. All right, we'll go with that. So that's that's what that's what we are. But I I will say this, it's a good mix

061of a of a team. We actually have a lot of people, too, that um have put their name in that have worked in other school districts, which will be good because I think they can use that experience to really help us out. Um I mean we've got some people who are have worked in this district for a long time and some people who have just recently come to this district too. So it's a good mix. This is what the work will look like more from a magnitude piece and just a sequence. So the mission vision values piece will come up on Monday with our first draft multiple drafts of it. Then we're going to means test it through focus groups. um internal auditing and benchmarking that's going to be more up to our cabinet team

062and we're still trying to figure out what that's going to look like. We do some of that now. There's just more of that that we need to do and kind of come up with eventually that'll lead us to those strategic decisions in green and then which will lead into the final document. Then how we get there underneath that is how we're interacting with all the people. So we'll have a survey that'll come out sometime Decemberish. It could go out in January. Um, one of the conversations I thought, uh, Beth, and feel free to jump in here. What was interesting is people were referring back to a strategic planning process they had just been in with another district that's in our area. Um, and it was just too open-ended. They were like, they were asking these

063questions that, you know, anybody could respond to about literally anything. Um, and we're trying to we're trying to go away from that and not have that. So, we we just want to ask very crisp questions that are to the point on things that we think the feedback can actually impact. We plenty of feedback on a whole host of things all of our administrators do about everything going on in the school district. Our community is fantastic at telling us what they think about what's going on. So, um if there was a trophy for that, we would win it every year. Uh but what's tough for us is trying to figure out how we can make that actionable operational, right? And so, um and what what is the whole thing compared to somebody individual? Because ultimately, that's

064what we're trying to go after the focus groups will be and I'll show you a slide in a moment of how that's structured. Um we'll be moving through same thing we're gonna ask more targeted questions more things that are specific to the things that our steering team is interested in and looking at. So it's not going to be a come one come all tell us anything that you want. Um the community goal even means I'll explain those in a moment and then the steering team needs you see kind of how those will overlay and overlap. So the community goal areas I've talked about this before but really trying to build five evenings with community members who either have expertise, experience or sincere interest in these areas. So this would be five different groups with steering

065team groups as well. So this is a great a great thing that we could do is spread board members out amongst these, right? Yeah. So we keep it under two. We're good. Um but that would be wonderful. So if you want to start start looking at your calendars, I was thinking December we could isolate those. We'll talk more about them, but we would be posing questions that are more strategic in nature to the to the room. My guess is if you maybe a two and a half hour with some food at the beginning, just like we ran the community session for um the facilities plan and the the potential referendum, there'd be some um instance of where are we now? Also imagine Samantha for the student learning evening doing a 20 minute uh presentation of

066this is where we stand right now. This is where we stand compared to our partners and other school districts. Then if everybody's sitting at table groups, we would probably post some questions and start to means test them through those questions and then open it up for further dialogue. Certainly these can all look different. We need to get to the planning of this that'll come. But um just to get your own minds thinking about what those potentially could look like. So it's not going to be what do you think kids need to learn? What do you think how do how do students learn best? So it's not what we're interested in from families. What we're interested in is if we were going to focus somewhere which would also mean that we were not going to focus

067other places. Where do you want us to actually move the work? Which is hard. So those are the things that we would start to pose. And then the hard This is more of my charge is how do you actually build this cohesively. So all of these things are going to be happening um apart from each other but how we allocate resources has to support student learning. So the resource allocation is last in design so that the student learning piece, the educator excellence piece, the student behavior and culture and everything else can happen first and then from there how do you actually support it um through the resource piece um and then you're going to doing things and the aims for for instance for student learning all of that costs money right so all of these

068things have to have to come together and support each other and I think a lot of times in planning projects you don't have that cohesion and some some things work together but some things just naturally oppose each other and uh we can do I say this all the time we can do anything but we can't do everything and that's the aspects that we need to make sure that we're reinforcing with our community as much as possible These are what the focus groups will look like. I think the one of the ones I'm really excited about is we are going on December 4th, I believe, to Maine East and Main South. We are going to interview some of our students who have just graduated from us. So, we're in a unique position. Um, we did that

069for high school students when I was principal at South where during their winter break they would come back. We would ask them questions about what made them successful, what they thought we could do better, more of, all those things. So, we're going to be asking our students who have just graduated from our school districts and things like that. Talking to our central office staff about how they work with a lot of the procedures and their practices here, too. I mean, they they're own little culture here. So, we want to talk through that and you can see how we would move to the different staffs. Also, we're going to be talking to our middle school students. I'm not sure yet what kinds of interviews would look like for elementary students. I've talked to a lot of

070superintendent that have done strategic planning and they said really school focus groups are 10x times in terms of what they get out of them compared to asking the fourth grader or fifth grader. So, we'll see. And I think that'll be something that we could This is very flexible, right? It's the first draft. So, we'll see what we might design to do with that. There also going to be a couple of parent groups that will target specifically um some of their special interests. And then during our community forums, um our community coffees, excuse me, and probably some PTO meets, we'll do some more targeted parent group work as well. So, all of that will be happening while the while the focus group uh excuse me, the community meetings are happening, too. So, that's where we're at

071right now. Uh, Monday is going to be our kind of first blush at the Mission Vision values. Uh, we're looking forward to it. Our coach Pan Northrep will be flying in. She is in Florida. She's flying in on Sunday. She was like shocked. She's like, "So, where's your school district in relation to O'Hare?" I was like, "Take your driver out and go down Fairway. We're right there." She's like, "Oh, wow. It's amazing." So, that'll be great. Um, and she's going to be leading most of that work. That's what she does. So, this is like her bread and butter. and then she'll kind of move more into a support role once we start doing the community evenings and after every community evening we have a steering um meeting specifically only about that topic. So we'll do

072the community engagement piece steering group to get together really make meaning of what was what was said. So the ultimate decisions on the strategic part will be made by the actual employees here which I think is really important because they're the experts. They're the ones that actually know hey A is great, B is great, C is great. There's just no the capacity to do all three. We've got to cut it down to two or something that that's the report. That's what we're looking at. Um questions, comments. Beth, did you want to add anything um from what you saw earlier? >> Any other thoughts? Can you talk a little bit more about the survey and can I recommend preemptively that it doesn't go out until January? >> Sure. >> I just think with the holidays that

073you're going to get a better response. >> Um the survey is gonna be very brief. Five questions would be my max questions maybe. There's just so many other opportunities for us to get better. >> And are we going to have student help with crafting that? >> Yes. >> Okay. >> They they do the whole platform. Um we can write our own questions. They have question banks. will show us some examples but they recommended keep it >> and the results the responses go directly to us not them >> don't know how the actual data works from but it's an it's not a >> okay um I did think of one thing that we um that you talked about about these like subject matter experts um in the community and I know that you have a strong

074network of people that you know I think it never to have an open call for people who are um not known to you necessarily, either new to the district or they've never raised their hand before. So, I understand that we want those people in the room for sure. And you have, you know, you know, some it's possible there are more. >> Yeah, absolutely. >> In the spirit of inclusion, >> do that for sure. How um how interested would we be in a vision that would be really a clarifying bar for what we would and wouldn't do that does not make sense to me. Okay. Um, I've seen visions that are so general that you could do anything and it offers no way to uh help you parse out what you'll do or don't do, which

075is fine and you don't have to use the visual for that. Um, but you have to then create a different set of criteria by which you valuate all the ideas that come. I've also seen um teams or organizations go through a vision exercise um and get really tight around student outcomes, for example, um where they have to rank order whether they care more about all students progressing as fast as they can or students um all progressing to grade level even if it means more resourcing going to students who are below grade level or other things that kind of almost in the fourth ranking like getting really really crystal clear on like what you care the most about. Is it equity? Is it about fastest growth possible? Is it about different slight different intersections? And when

076you do that kind of exercise and that kind of visioning once you have it, it helps you determine what is in balance. Um and so if that type of thing is helpful I think like that's a question of like do we want that or not either in the formal vision or something and if so just in response to that most visions are very big world in 20 years. And then what I've seen a lot of groups do is what you're talking about are in the value statements. Then you do make every decision up against those values and it gives I think more flexibility because you can have a value statement rather than trying to create a vision that's >> I And I hear you both saying I think some of this comes down to everything.

077You were talking in the presentation. I think you were using the example around the parent focus groups and talking about what's really important that data we know then that means if we do those things won't happen that same us >> yeah I want to be really straightforward with them about that >> because I think that's not if I could criticize the current plan that we have right now that we're working in. It's just it's so big. It's too much going on. Um there are certain things in there that actually kind of counteract other things. It's not that drastic, but there's times when our team has sat there and like really tried to make and it's been really hard. So, I'd rather have a room kind of like we did today, have a room full of

078parents and say if we were going to do um I'm going to take a good example. If we are going to have instruction grouping for students take place, is it better to have the instruction grouping for students from staff members who are teaching their current um a current group of kids that they already know? So they're a classroom teacher with a home room in the elementary grades. And if we want that direction, that's actually different than what we're doing now. Or do you want us to continue to have students leave the teacher that they have a relationship and know or a teacher that teaches students in that same manner, go to a special teacher who's then going to give them additional instruction. You know, those are two different forms and ways and they both cost

079different, right? And so I'd rather I I don't think a lot of our community members, they're not going to have that level of knowledge. So that's why the explanation point for us is going to be really critical to kind of lay those lay those pieces out because we are going to get more specific about that. But we're getting more specific by telling them it's one or the other. And right now we've already made a choice um unconsciously potentially that this is what we've been doing or we've been doing it for 20 30 years and we haven't reexamined it as a practice which is So, I Yes. lay it all out. Tell them exactly what's going on. Tell them the benefits of what we're seeing. Be real with them about the drawbacks, too. Um, I think

080in the middle school review, Samantha did a great job of those meetings kind of explaining to the staff, if you guys want this, then we cannot have this other thing. Like, it just doesn't work. And so, we would be doing the same thing to all of our families. um especially in those like subject matter. It's a long answer, but I think it's helpful to kind of frame it like that. >> Are we making decisions in the middle school review that like preclude a different direction in the strategic plan? >> I don't think so, Samantha. I don't I don't think so. >> So, for I'm gonna make up something. I don't know. But like if we said we want to become a district that is known for preparing students to um be uber successful in the

081you know world of tomorrow. >> And by that what we mean is We're going to have flexible um everchanging electives and it's going to be more tech focused. I'm making up stuff that I don't necessarily keep saying should be the right thing, but X Y and Z. Um, and that's where we landed six months or seven months from now or whenever this ends. I don't know because it's happening in parallel what decisions are being made in the middle school that would then delay or prevent that vision from happening that comes up. Again, I'm making up a vision that So that's a that's a good point and I I think about that for even outside of strategic planning. How does that impact students in 10 years from now, right? Because the last time we changed the

082schedule was 30 years ago. um think of our new schedule as as that new house we've just built, but we decide what appliances go in it or what furniture we put in it. So, what you're talking about, I think, is more of a curricular or program review of our electives, and we can do that in any given year. I mean, even some of the things of phase two of middle school review that we're working on right now, uh for example, our industrial technology curriculum review, we just met on Tuesday and we said this might be a two-year process even though the is going into effect next year. What we change isn't dependent upon that schedule. Does that make sense? >> Yeah. Um, yes. I think it's more because we can fill that schedule however we

083deem necessary or important for students. >> Yeah, I understand that structurally it's um [snorts] structure is in place. Totally uh agree with that. I think it's more are we maybe it's more of are we spending are we spending the time on the things that we think are going to be most things that are coming? >> Sure. >> Um like will those goals be in tandem with that work that's already happening? >> Yeah. which is hard to know because they're happening in parallel. So maybe that's an unfair >> I I want to say everything that we're doing is strategic, but I understand your question. Right. >> Right. Because my right I think we're just talking about how in a surgic plan we want to be able to say no to something. I'm just making an assumption

084that there's going to be a conflict of some sort that comes up where we say again I'm making lots of assumptions of this process where like >> well we can't stop what we're doing to wait for the strategic planning process we've got to operate under what we know we did the expansion we bu second We did pretty quick, but we didn't know that at the time. All you can do is really operate under what you know now think we have to make tweaks or changes based on what the future is and we do >> not. And there's some overlap I think if I and it I could be wrong but it looks like there's overlap of some people on middle school review and on the strategic planning team. Correct. Correct. And so I think that'll

085assist in that too because it's not happening in siloed spaces. I do think there will be conversations out of this that will be parallel and there might be those moments where Samantha and I are sitting in the back of the room after everyone's left. Okay, so you're being tomorrow with the middle school team. You've got to go that direction now or like we need like that's just going to happen. We talked about this last year be better had we known that we would have been in the strategic plan process last year than the middle school review process this year. But that's just a plan we were done. So, >> and just so the board knows, we're we call it phase two of middle school review. But one thing that we keep talking about in that

086cycle of inquiry is that we're assessing and reflecting in almost in tandem but continuously. So, I don't know if this process will be done this year, right? there's more that we have to keep thinking about as we go through that reflect and assess piece. Um, and our committee continues to meet. We just met last week for a half day just to think about how everything's going, give updates, talk about what we need to do next. We even brought in a new item that we didn't discuss last year in middle school review. So, I think there's there's still room for evol evolment. Is that the right word? Evolution. Thank you. I would imagine that in the January meeting we would come forward with more updates. I think some draft pieces some the f first kind of

087round of focus groups. So that's kind of what I was imagining from a timeline perspective of reporting out and then I think the next few um meetings after that you know we could report out on what the conversations were like as opposed to like waiting all the way till the end and then here's this massive 4hour long meeting when we're going over everything because there's going to be some questions that come up along the way that we just need to make sure we're keep wondering too and I know um because we're going to talk about it next month of what evening community sessions that different board members might go to if we want to think about the ones that might fall into certain board committees like resource allocation >> if like facilities people who are

088really in the weeds on some more of those issues. Um, and just thinking about if you want to think about like what committees if there's some that align better >> and where it would be helpful to have representation from people on the board of those specifically on um just a reminder next week the joint annual conference is upon us. So, looking through the conference planner. I actually think the sessions look better this year than they did last year. There's a lot of ones that we can go to. Uh Brian and I will be joining you. Phoebe will be there, too. Actually, so will Chris. So, we'll have a a fun gang down there. And um it's good for us to maybe figure out what sessions you're going to go to through the conference because sometimes

089we like to um tag along and then it's the conversation during the session and afterwards that [clears throat] really help with that. And then I also wanted to make mention that Alicia Schmeiser or Alicia Schmeiser is presenting um tomorrow I believe at the Illinois Association for of Administrators of special ed. I always get that acronym incorrect. Uh and her um presentation is on leadership and just the tough challenges in leadership and how um you know sometimes you need to step up to the plate and and and really make some tough calls. It's called from avoidance to action and I think in particular when you're dealing with students special needs. Um, those those conversations are very delicate. Um, they can be certainly just a lot of a lot of emotions kind of running high and and

090I think Alicia does a great job of really working through that constantly through the day with her staff and and her own and her own work too. So, we're excited for her doing that work. Um so that is everything else is in good shape with the agenda for next week and foy next month but it'll be excited to spend more time with all of you all at the conference. >> Thank you Samantha. You're up with card I'm gonna switch it up and stand today if that's okay. Chris and I looked up the definition of involvement. It is a word. I just wanted to go on the record for my husband who's watching and the whole district 64 community. Um I promise it's in the dictionary at least online. Um we Yes, right right next to

091it. We really did save the best for last. I know that Ben mentioned this before, but we have so much to celebrate in terms of our Illinois school report card. Um, if anyone is not familiar with this, it is published annually. Uh, typically October, October 30th, it goes live for everyone to see online. The Illinois State Board of Education publishes this uh report card for all of us. So, it is a year in review of last year of 2025. Uh just to give you some highlights before we jump in, one of our major successes that all of our schools are commendable or exemplary this year. And we actually have three schools that fall into the exemplary category, which we have never had in my 10 years here in district 64. And our very own Roosevelt

092was only one point away from meeting exemplary, which is okay, but it just shows how wonderful we really are doing that we're so close to that threshold. Um you'll here. Such a high percentage of A proficiency rates, especially in the area of ELA. So much to celebrate. And then finally, chronic absenteeism levels have reduced at some schools where they were very elevated last year or the year before, such as Franklin, and you'll see that in a second. And that really is through some targeted MTSS that the building principles are doing in terms of attendance. Some areas that are for us to look at and think about in terms of growth, but still ones that I would say are major areas of concern for us is our growth percentiles. This is always a moving target with

093the Illinois State Board of Education and they're actually changing this um growth measure for next year and removing some of it. So kind of keep that in mind as we go through. Science proficiency cut scores have changed. So our data looks lower than it has in the past, but I will explain that in just a minute. And then finally, two things that we need to continue to do is monitor our EEL progress to proficiency. So our multilingual learners, how are we progressing them to exit from that continuum services in our district? And then finally, you'll notice uh through our equity continuum that ISBY gives us that we need to continue assessing our subgroups and our cohort data because our students who fall under special education or MTSS have some barriers that we haven't fully addressed.

094So all fun stuff to stay tuned for. So ISBY gives us a summitive designation, an overall score and as I mentioned we are we fall in the commendable or exemplary rating and there are eight different facets of this and each is rated with a different percentage. Here you see the indicator score out of a 100. Um but I'll kind of give you the breakdown of the percentages. So ELA proficiency, math proficiency, ELA growth and math growth are the heaviest. It's about 60 um 65% of our rating. And then the other four categories is that EL progress to proficiency. So the multilingual learner proficiency, chronic abs, absenteeism, science proficiency, and then the climate survey. Um and those fall in between the 5 to 10% range of the full makeup of the report card. So as I

095mentioned, all of our schools fall into commendable or exemplary. Um last it was just Franklin and this year we're adding Field and Lincoln. Lincoln, this is the first time a middle school has fallen into this category, especially um with some of the increases that Lincoln has seen in terms of proficiency and growth in ELA. That really boosted them up um and made them jump into that category. So, it's amazing to see. What's that? Yes, huge deal. Um Isby will be changing these performance levels next year. I'll show that to you at the end of the slide. So keep that in mind. These won't be named the same the next time we report this. So just to start, I data the Illinois assessment of readiness makes up the biggest component of the Illinois report card. We

096give it to our students one time a year in the spring. There's ELA and math components and there are three to six test sessions. It's a rigorous and long process for our students and our staff. Um, we embed these types of practices into our everyday routines with students, especially the written responses so that they're understanding what's expected of them, but then we can also meet these state standards. And each school really does take about 3 to five days to complete. Very different than the MAP assessment that's given in one 60 to 90 minute chunk. So, just to keep in mind, is changed the cut scores and actually released these in August. They were board approved in August even after we took the tests last year and then were published. So the ELA and math scores

097have actually decreased and you can see the table here an old proficiency would have been a scale score of 750 and now all of those have been lowered where the science scores the Illinois science assessment those cut scores have been increased. So if a student was uh previously reaching proficiency at a 799, the new proficiency level is an 812. So keep that in mind when you take a look at some of our percentages. >> Samantha, real quick question. That didn't impact though when we're thinking about like growth percentile. It's just impacting >> the achievement for individual students and like what percent are >> achieving that. >> Correct. This only impacts proficiency, not GP, the student growth percentile. And just one other fun data fact with this, this impacted our percentages here by uh 10%. So

098if the old cut scores were still um in turn, ELA would actually be 69% meeting proficiency and math would be 58% meeting proficiency. So just to give you what the impact is if you're interested in that. So you can see here that our uh percentage of students meeting proficiency for ELA is 79% math 69%. So quite a jump there. But we still see an increase even with the old cut scores which is really really awesome. Our students are showing growth. Our teachers are making that impact in the classroom and that's a lot of area for celebration. Here for science you will notice from last year we were in at 80%. This shows 68%. This is primarily a dip for fifth grade. Um I know it's not broken down here, but in some of the slides

099on the continued data set, you will see that. So that is something that we will talk about for fifth grade science specifically of why did that dip and we won't know that for a few years. We have to kind of work out some of those kinks, but we didn't see as big of a dip for middle school. Just FYI. Did that dip if we used the old cut scores since the science cut scores increased? >> I did not calculate that. I was actually thinking about that when I was sitting there. Um the ISA raw data comes out later than the AR. So I haven't calculated it, but I totally can when I go sit down and tell you what that would be. >> Thinking of this year as like a new benchmarking year then moving

100forward. >> Correct. >> And that was that was consistent across our benchmarks. >> Yes. and I will show that slide in a second where you can see our comp districts. Um, >> what's the reasoning for the state? >> It's a good question. Um, they the state did a lot of profiling of individual students across the state of Illinois and found that by the time students get to high school, their profile of a graduate or profile of who they are as individual students is not matching the IER proficiency that's coming out. So, a student may graduate from high school with a 4.0 and be in AP classes, but their AR proficiency was never shown. They were always below proficiency. So, they they're finding that those were not matching the rest of a profile of a student.

101Does that make sense? >> So, they had to cut scores on English, math, too high, >> Correct. Yes. So it was a lot of case study data that they did within their research um that was presented before they presented to the state board of education for approval. Some interesting literatur >> This is the first time they've changed. >> Yeah, a lot of evolution with I in terms of what the test looks like but never cut scores. >> Good question. But I can pull the science um ratio the science data of what it would be with the old cut scores versus the new. Um so here is uh the slide Ben was referencing with our comp districts in terms of our proficiency. Um these are the districts that we uh approved as comparables a few years

102ago. And in the gray these are any of the districts that have proficiency above us. So, just to give you context, last year when I did this presentation, we were we were at the bottom, stark at the bottom. Very um big differences in terms of our proficiency and the rest of these districts. And as you can see now with ELA, we rank second. With math, we rank third. So, those are major areas of celebration for us in terms of those increasements for proficiency. But you will notice not too far off for science. Again, the fifth grade brings it a little bit lower of an outlier, but from what I'm seeing with other districts, that is very common, the fifth grade science versus eighth grade, which makes sense. We we are content heavy in eighth grade

103for science. Kids have it every day. There's a bigger rotation of it. We go through all of the content areas for science between sixth, seventh, and eighth grade by the time they rotate through. So, these are our district growth percentiles, those SGPS. Um and these are percentile ranks and these have not been affected by the new cut scores but you will see that we have uh witnessed increases so other areas of growth for for ourselves. Um and this really tracks students from third to 8th grade and how their scale score is growing. So not only are they proficient but have they grown throughout the years. One thing I'm always amazed by is that our students with IEPs really do follow the same data in terms of growth. So while those students may not be hitting

104proficiency, we have the same rates of data as the rest of our students, which means that we're we're showing progress in that area for that subgroup. And that's the same for MAP as well. >> As we get more and more students at proficiency, do we see declines in growth? >> We do. um typically at the top six%. So, uh it's typically our students that are our most high achieving um from the 94th percentile to the 99th percentile. And we typically see that in ELA the most. And that's because the standards spiral. Um whereas math, it's a different standard that's growing every year. It's interesting. I'd be happy to talk about it over coffee if anyone ever wants to. um for our comp districts. You can see the growth by district here as well. Um and

105how these have changed throughout the throughout the years. So again, showing that we've had some really nice growth, but also keeping track with our comp districts and we really were at the bottom of the pack last year as well. So this is really amazing to see. It matches our proficiency. So not only are kids proficient, but they're growing with that scale of proficiency. This is our progress to proficiency. So this is the percent of students who are meeting their access score level every year and whether they're on track to exit from our multilingual programming, which is always the goal really for any MTSS programming, right? Um Carpenter does not report progress to proficiency on the Illinois report card because they do not have enough students to meet that threshold for that 5%. So just keep

106that in mind that is eliminated from their report card. But our our elementary students is where we see the biggest growth in terms of access levels. And that's really because their fluency, accuracy, and um ability to decode, especially in the area of English language arts becomes better and better every year between the grades of one to three. And then at middle school, we're really keeping an eye on this as one of our cohort and subgroups because students tend to um level out and become almost lifers in the EL program, which is never our goal. We want them to exit and not need those services anymore. So while 50% is always an average and what we aim for, we want that to be more than 50% who are on track to exit. I mentioned this before

107for chronic absenteeism. And this is one that although the percentages seem low, um two to three% is a major difference for students, especially when you think of how many that fall into chronic absenteeism. So, for example, at Franklin, I know Kristen Williams and her APS have worked really hard to think about some families that are always out of the country and how they can help them retain and and continue learning even when they're not here or help them um figure out those travels after the school year ends. So, seen some really nice growth with that. Same with field. Courtney Goodman and Christa Donnelly have looked at their absenteeism rates daily and have really done some targeted meetings with parents and communication. So huge kudos to them. They have large buildings but are making an impact

108on smaller scales for families. >> Can I say one thing? This is one of the hardest metrics to actually move as Samantha was alluding to. So when you think about every day if there's 400 kids coming into a school that counts as um attendances and if you're going to move at 1% it's 400 times the number of days of school right that you have. So you think about what 1% is of that huge number it's it's tremendous. So to have it go down in any way shape or form is really hard. And in my counterpart meetings I know in Samantha's we about this at the state level. We say this is also one of the areas that we can do a lot. This is where we have to have partnership with the families because at

109the end of the day a lot of times it's the families bringing the kids actually to the building. Um certainly works different with younger students compared to older students. So high school is a whole another complex to talk about uh with exit exitism. But um so when you see any school go have any ability in the sphere of what they were before, but even to lower is is really remarkable. So, just want to pause because how big of a deal that is. >> And just to give you context, as of December 1st, any student who's missed more than three and a half days really fall into this category. So, I mean, I know my kids have been absent three and a half days. They've been sick. That happens really quick. Obviously, we're looking at this

110marker throughout the whole year, but that's how small of a threshold it is. So to really watch that and monitor it and work with families is tough. >> How does this compare with precoid number? >> Um pretty stable actually. Um obviously we saw a huge increase in chronic absenteeism during COVID and then right after. But I do I do believe we've stapled um these numbers. >> So like seven to eight% kind of where you expect it to settle or >> um with in our history in the past 10 years, I would say anywhere between 7 to 11% has been the average depending on which school it is and the population. Um, and then also middle school versus elementary. So, for example, Field, Franklin, and Emerson because of their population in some of the travel that

111has to happen for families who still live in other countries. We see that in Field, Franklin, and Emerson a lot. those tend to spike and then kind of dip up and down, but I would say on average eight, nine, 10% is is where we've typically remained. >> Um, our comp districts, yes. Our township districts like 62, 63, and Penoyer. Uh, no, theirs are higher than that. I think they have um some more movement and more absences due to some other family issues, illness, etc. Vacation. Um, I don't know. If you I I would say 62 and 63 definitely have some higher um percentages and more work to do than we do. Um ISBY also gives out an equity journey continuum and this looks at a a huge facet of data kids which is our readiness

112scores for incoming kindergarteners. Um it's not a data set that they publish. It's one that we submit internally and then ISBY uses to give us a rating for student learning. Um, algebra one rates in ninth grade A and DM proficiency and growth. Um, DM is dynam dynamic learning maps. It is a substitution of assessment for those learners who are not able to complete the AR or any other assessment. Um, so some students who may be in our most exclusive special education programming would take DM as opposed to AR and then our EL performance. And then it rates us on these four categories of large gap, moderate gaps, small gaps, and minimal gaps. This has been very stable since 2018. It hasn't moved too much left or right. Our biggest area for growth though is under

113student learning with subgroups and some of those cohorts, specifically our students with IEPs in terms of proficiency. as compared to our general education students. And then finally, the last 5% of the Illinois report card is the five essential survey, which you may be familiar with as a parent or as an educator. Um, we ask families, teachers, and students in grades three through eight to fill out these surveys. And then the University of Chicago publishes survey results and gives a formal rating to each school. Um, so this just gives a little bit of a summary, some of our strengths, teacher and parent trust, student engagement. Our parents enjoy being with us. They're involved in our schools. There's a lot of communication that's going on back and forth. And that definitely shows in our five essential survey,

114which is amazing. And I even imagine with the um evolution of parent square and the introduction of that district-wide that it'll only become better and better. And then supportive environment for teachers and effective leadership also fall into that strength. Um our teachers do report that the professional development that they're given, the autonomy in their the teaching tools that they're given are strong and help them do the best they can. Um, you'll notice effective leadership as a strength and an area for growth depending on what building you're in, what level you're at, and what your job is. So, um, for example, we may have students in certain subgroups such as special education not feeling fully supported, whereas Jenna teachers think they have all the resources in the world. I'm just using that as an example, but

115if you really break down the data, you'll notice that certain groups of staff have different um opinions about effective leadership. And then finally, two other are ambitious instruction and teacher collaboration. Um teacher collaboration really comes down to the our teachers at grade levels and on teams being able to come together, share ideas, and have those conversations in a timely manner. So, some areas of growth for us that we're really thinking about, especially in terms of teacher and staff planning. >> Samantha, before you go on, um are the opportunities for growth uh consistent from previous years or these new ones? >> Um teacher collaboration is a new one and that's definitely something that we're thinking about as we continue to plan. um I am at least under strategic planning, but also um some of the pieces

116that we're putting into our MTSS structure for teacher collaboration time. That's something that's been really important to the MTSS academic and behavior committee. Allison and I are talking to staff a lot about that. So that that is one that is definitely new. >> Any other questions? I can answer that question about where we rank chronic absenteeism compared to our comp district. So of the eight comp districts we have, one of them has a lower percentage than us and the other seven have a higher percent of us. So we're actually good shape there. >> The state average is 25%. And that also state average I think includes secondary includes high school. So it's not a a pure like apples to oranges just as a but just as a benchmark. And our number at the end of

117the year is 10 school days. So as of June 3 if a student has missed 10 or more days they're in that category of chronic absentism. >> Does the state have a standard definition or each district makes their own? >> Nope. The state has a standard definition. >> Um I'm sorry. >> And it's 10. >> Um it's a percentage based on how many school days you have, but ours always comes out somewhere between nine and 10. And that's going to be pretty static across the state of Illinois. Um chronic absenteeism is falls under the definition of truency, but it is an absence with or without a valid excuse. So even if a student is sick, it falls into that definition of chronic absenteeism, which is hard for us to combat sometimes if a student is

118out for five days with the flu, right? There's nothing we can do. We don't want parents to send their kids to school sick. But then we have to be proactive to educate families on why they need to come to school every single day after that unless they're sick again, right? Like please don't take another vacation. Don't take your kiddo out for X, Y, and Z. Bring them to school because they just missed five valuable days. So it's tricky and it's really hard. Um >> no hockey tournaments. >> Yes. [laughter] no soccer tournament. So, yeah, >> unless you didn't have the flu, in which case So, so the letter that some uh some uh parents may have received in the last week or so was [laughter] um to be taken with um taken seriously, taken an

119acknowledgement that you know, your child may have been sick and the district is doing due diligence. You're not being punished. You're being notified that should this continue, you may find yourself in trouble. But Again, the district doesn't want sick kids coming to school either. >> We want our parents to be aware. I think sometimes we don't even realize to Ben's point, right? A one to two day hockey trip 10 times a year adds up as a hockey family. We we would get calls from the principal of Jimmy's been absent 22 days, but we were in Detroit or Canada, right? My parents thought that that was no big deal, but the principal at Notre Dame High School thought it was the biggest deal in the world. So, there there's, you know, just kind of this communication

120that we have to do as well. >> And there's a lot of times where parents will come to us and say, "How come our schools aren't ranked higher?" Say, "Well, can you please have your kid come to school?" Because that is one of the major factors that we have. >> It all takes a village. >> So, take it with a grain of salt, but take it very seriously. [laughter] >> Very serious. >> As someone who just took their kid out to go to a pumpkin patch for two days, like I I totally get it. If we were here already, we'd be getting the same letter. It's easy. But um so looking ahead, I mentioned this in the beginning. The state is actually changing these performance levels or is proposing to change these performance levels. It

121has just one level of um permission, so to speak, with the board to enact these. Um there will now be five levels of distinction for the Illinois report card. Exemplary, commendable, approaching, developing, and comprehensive. So, I just wanted to put this on the board's radar as we continue to look at this and then plan for um the Illinois report card next year, so to speak. So, what the state is finding that many districts fall in that commendable area, but some could be an approaching and some could be an exemplary. So, right now only the top 10% is an exemplary, although the state is finding that their data shows they should be bumped up or down. So, more to come on that, but I just wanted to kind of put that out there. Um, districts are

122currently exemp >> um honestly many different ones but it comes down to the school level. So even if a district has five schools maybe only one >> always school level. Yes. Yes. Um and never an early childhood center. Jefferson doesn't get a rating because they don't have this data composition. So just keep that in mind. It's only a K through eight structure six through eight or a high school structure. Those are the three units that would be there. And then finally, um the indicators are being redesigned into those six categories. So ELA, math, and science will be combined for one proficiency rating, one growth rating, graduation rate will be its own. We don't have to worry about that. We're not a high school district. Um and then our EL progress to proficiency, consistent attendance, and

123our climate survey will also be a bigger piece of that rating. So more to come on that as we kind of develop that story, but just an FYI for now. Any questions? Anything we didn't hit that you would like to discuss? >> So, we got to talk about fifth grade science. >> Yes. Yes. Yes. That that is something that we'll have to dive into of why and how can we support that especially with those new cut scores. Um, also on so when we have I'm looking at uh slide 18 where we've got elementary school data for math and we've got uh one of our schools in third grade is really a home run. Um is there a way that we identify what is going on there that's um that's working and duplicated? >> It's a

124good question. Um th this team, this third grade team at Carpenter is phenomenal. So if they ever watch this, I'm going to give them a a huge shout out. Um it's Beth Norman, Joan Hoffman, and Pam Johnson. Um their data has always been really really well um reported, excuse me. Um but one thing that we have been trying to do is that when we come together for PD, we are creating mixed groups. um which can be a little uncomfortable sometimes when staff first walk in and they want to sit with their own school, but we say we're going to mix together so that we can go through this professional development and share ideas. So that is one piece that the curriculum specialists and I have been talking about as well as the building principles. Um

125one thing that I will say is our building principles at the elementary level do a phenomenal job of looking at their cohort data per grade level and and really targeting groups of students that need um um either MTSS or tier one support in the classroom and having those conversations with teachers. Um this group of teachers at Carpenter really dive into student data and have really great instructional conversations which is what we're now trying to replicate in those cross school conversations. >> One thing to keep in mind too is that AR data is given once a year. So it's not really hard to use structurally. >> It's really for just the whole process of understanding how how the schools are doing which is more of a public interest and a public map data is where that

126the usability piece for us goes into play. So teachers would we wouldn't necessarily be sending teacher I think Samantha's point is 100% accurate in in the sense of like the carpenter team third grade is awesome. You'd see that the data we would be looking at though is the map data. We wouldn't necessarily put this like we certainly need to keep this in mind but that is something that we always have to kind of balance. So we get this data months after the kids take it. They're usually gone by that point. And that includes all [snorts] of this data. That includes the crimeism, even the survey data. It's a huge that's a whole another thing we could talk about the five essentials. Um, it's not well liked. So, um, because of that, if you're asking people

127how they feel, usually at the worst month of the year, and then you don't get it until months later. So, it just, this work that Samantha's team does, which is fantastic, is always tough for us to like kind of figure out like how use it towards it. So the map stuff that you saw earlier is actually the more actionable piece of just what you're seeing. >> Yeah, map is always our benchmark data. But one thing I will say with A that teams have really taken to heart is the rigor of the test item types. So our teams will look at what does a question look like? What are what is I asking students because it is so rigorous and they will try to replicate that in their instruction. So, a lot of these questions are

128extended responses that are so difficult for third grade students to answer because they're just becoming fluid writers, but our teachers are replicating that with their core instruction, which is really powerful. So, then students are getting mastery in those skills. So, that is one piece that I think I is very valuable. >> Thank you. That's amazing. >> Thanks. No board committee reports. I move that the board of education of community consolidated school district 64, Park Ridge, Niles, Illinois, approved resolution number 1,374 authorizing the issuance of a notice of remedial warning for Kirsten Bubble. >> Second. Any questions or comments? Vote, please. >> Ranken, yes. Milligan, >> yes. Kemple, >> yes. >> Klein, >> yes. Double Day, >> yes. >> Jacus, yes. >> Yes. >> Um, consent agenda. Before we look at this, anybody need anything pulled

129out? >> Nothing pulled out. I just have a question about the O'Hare Noise Compatibility Commission. Um, are we just authorizing to extend the deadline of that for another five years? That was a little legal. >> Yeah. So, every every member district or public township that's a part of that every five years. Um, it's led by Chicago. The IGA has to be renewed. So, the intergovernmental agreement is up for renewal. So, for us to stay a part of that, we need to accept this to be part of that. >> What's the benefit for us? Well, they have provided funding for um for schools. They they have a program where they offer, you know, window insulation, things like that, building installation to make them quieter because we're within proximity to all here. I think we have received

130some of those benefits. I don't know the exact history of that in the district, but um so I think it's just it doesn't cost us anything to be a part of it. Um it's a great way to be engaged with our community. There's meetings once a month that either I or Phoebe will go to if I'm not available. um where we just kind of learn about, you know, what's going on in the community with that. And then um like I said, they offer they have a school a quiet schools program that you can apply to be a part of and try to get some support and making your buildings quieter. >> And you get to see all the runway the data. >> Yeah, it's super interesting actually. The first time I went I was like

131it was astounding to me the way that the runways shift when the wind shift and the it's quite interesting actually. I know when >> you can tell. >> I move that the board approved the consent agenda for November 13, 2025 as presented. >> Second. >> Andrew motion. Rachel second. Questions, comments? >> Vote, please. >> Klein, >> yes. George, yes. Double Day, >> yes. >> Kemple, >> yes. >> Milligan, >> yes. Granken, yes. Yes. >> Any business? >> So moved. >> Second. >> All in favor? >> I thank you everyone. >> [laughter] >> That's really good. That's really