Board of Education Meeting: 8.15

001okay as far as opening remarks this is our first meeting of the 2024 25 school year so it's exciting to see the buzz of the schools opening and um I have older children but my daughter was driving to Main South she said it's so cute to see all the little kids going to school and so um in their first day is school outfit so it was a successful start so thanks to everyone who made that possible for the district uh why don't we um at this point of the meeting uh we will open up the floor for public comments each speaker is given three minutes to address the board comments can be made in almost any matter related to the operation of schools but we ask that you refrain from making comments regarding individual students

002or staff members the board uses this time to listen to community questions or concerns but will not respond immediately to request for information Additionally the board cannot take formal action on non-agenda items contact the board president by email if you wish to discuss the topic further uh I have a list of folks who would like to speak so I'll go through those and then open it up to anyone else um so we can come forward to the microphone state your name and if comfortable your address for the minutes um so let's first go with Nicole I believe it's herik did I say that correctly close yeah but really not Denise so okay and we'll start the timer for three minutes thank you um hi everyone my name is Nel risk um and I have a

003second and fourth grader in field um I saw that you'd be voting on The referendum tonight so I want to speak to thank you all for the work you've done so far on putting that together and to share my support for the referendum um I hope we'll see unanimous support from the board um I think that will be a really strong message for the community our students deserve high quality facilities that are safe inclusive to all promote good health and are enjoyable places to learn um I listen to the last meeting I wasn't able to attend um but it was a little disheartened to see some of the cuts that were made to the original proposal because I think there is the need to have all that in the district um so I hope you

004all will vote Yes tonight on the referendum as it stands um and won't make any further thank you okay thank you next we have Ellen Anderson if you want to come to the microphone state your name and if comfortable your add us thank you hi I am Ellen Anderson I have two kids at Rosa Elementary School um I've been following all of the potential referendum discussions and I just want to say thank you thank you for taking your distri needs seriously and I appreciate Dr carin's laying out his plans and his ideas of how to give our kids a safe and healthy learning environment I fully support referendum I hope to see all of you support that tonight too to give all of our children just a wonderful place to learn we want them to

005have the best of everything we all move to Parkridge to have the best and we want that um parents should feel safe first of all sending their kids to school right now I cannot say that I feel safe sending my kids every day based on the facilities we have I don't think that they are up to the standards that they should be for where we are in our world today um I'm not pleased already have been cuts and that everything is a little bit disappointing to think about that you want to kind of maybe make some more Cuts tonight specifically the playgrounds I want to urge you please don't do that all areas of our school inside and out need to be safe and inclusive um as a past PTO board member I hear that

006the activities and the supplies that the PTO currently support at our schools will have to be significantly cut for many years in order to fund these playgrounds that you may want the pdos to fund um some things I know that Rosevelt might have to cut would be potentially um grants for staff members or assemblies or student rewards like the stock book to vend mission that is a big hit in my he um financial support for international night and numer school activities like the back to school bash or dances or V show these enrich our children's School experiences and shape a strong community that we already have by cutting this referendum even more we're only hurting the students and just as a reminder playgrounds are not just for playing they increase our social to development of

007our kids they build self-esteem and confidence and create um give them creativity and grow motor skills playgrounds provide our students with opportunities to develop life skills socializing overcoming challenges all of these skills translate into the classroom all of those will help our students every day as they begin to learn playround playgrounds are essential for holistic development and of our elementary students and our district should support this need all of the components of the current referendum are essential to our school and important to continue to build a strong and desirable Community I hope tonight that the entire board will vote to put the current referendum on the November ballot thank you thank you uh next we have Beth Ranken come up to the podium hi my name is Beth Franken I have two uh children at

008Franklin go falcon um I'm here tonight to generally support the uh proposal I would love to see it moved forward as proposed without uh further cuts um I appreciate the fact that you know student focused expenditures have been the focus from previous boards I do appreciate that um but these proposals are also student focused we can't have um learning environments that aren't safe we can't have learning environments where uh instruction is taking place in a whole way um no instruction should be taking place in the hallway no matter if it's um students with special needs or anybody else I would say that if it were my children your children anybody I think we can all agree on that um so we can't we can't change the fact that these things weren't dealt with in the

009past but we can stop putting it forward now we can stop postponing what needs to be done and take care of what needs to be done now it may be tough if we don't have unanimous support we will you know we'll get there hopefully um I wanted to just make a note that rewatch The videos today which are very powerful um and shocking and I think in the time that you're board was in private meeting the urinals in four schools would have flushed five times for no reason and that's the kind of thing that sounds funny and silly but it is so immensely wasteful I think we can all get behind uh stopping the waste now okay thank you uh next we have uh Zoom I hope I said it correctly close maybe hi I'm

010zulie Stone um I have a child at Carpenter and um for those of you who don't know she is visually impaired for those of us that watch the gymnastics um in the Olympics this year her condition is very similar to um Steven adors she has depth perception and Camp filter light um just to name a few of her symptoms but watching his accomplishments with the p horse in gy in men's gymnastics reinvigorated my drive to advocate for inclusivity like many families we lived in Chicago and we're encouraged to relocate to a city that would provide the services my daughter needs and looking for those places to wear it to set Roots we notice Park Rage has something other districts can compete with and that is location for those of us who have children that will

011probably never drive uh parkage has access to trains and public transportation having accessible playground seems to be a minor ass and yet will have such an impact um my daughter did a vision camp this summer where we got to meet a lot of families that had kids that were blind and didn't have a place where that with a lot of resources so we became very prideful to park gge um as an accessible community having the playgrounds included in this referendum will only Elevate park range as an accessible Community I know CA has been a concern but as we all know playgrounds are a core piece to our children's experience to move to a town for their services having access to the playground is worth any increase to a PR Tex okay thank you and also

012on uh the list of speak Maria arula come to the podium please good evening I'm Maria Rula and I live at 223 North Aline Avenue as co-chair of the carpenter playground committee I would like to share some basic numbers with you $215,000 in equipment $100,000 in labor an annual increase of 5% until equipment is order the order is placed and an unknown number for possible drainage under the new playground over $300,000 and with drainage who knows what it could become this does not include the poured flooring rubber tiles or Port Pathways $43,000 is a pathway $223,700 is 12298 sare Ft of standard color Perma plane flooring our order contains 4526 excuse me 5 4,526 square fet of equipment our total before Co-op pricing for equipment only is $274,600 alt together this is a half a

013million dollar project and asking this of our pto's or any PTO is too much Washington's replacement in 2017 cost $80,000 and was raised in one year prior to this PTO did not and had not funded the playgrounds in d64 PTO did help pay to fix broken equipment swings and slides I was the president of PTO as we were paying to help with all of these items Carpenter Elementary has raised almost $80,000 already but our footprint is 12,000 square fet and our vision is inclusivity the cost is more Ada compliancy costs more larger Footprints with ramps cost more in 2024 from a business perspective the district will get better pricing for playgrounds and competitive bids if we stay together as d64 and not individual OS your buying power and negotiating power is stronger you can get

014the best most competitive pricing from companies all of the warranties will stay with d64 when you replace equipment at the same time you also create an aging process that can be managed better we can maintain the new playgrounds at the same rate and keep them in better condition there are so many benefits from d64 managing the purchase of playgrounds over PT I'm almost out of time and I apologize I'll try to go quick we are finally with the right leadership board members and administration who will Elevate our schools let the community vote in November pass the vote and see new playgrounds as a thank you for their confidence in the future of Park rdge and the education of the children let the PTO get back to work planning seasonal events teacher and administrator appreciation fun

015runs and pizza days thank you thank you okay I think those are the folks who had want signed up uh for public comment any other public comments feel free to come to the podium all right come to the podium sit your name and UPC comfortable your address sure and Lauren rasan 705 souad Delphia Avenue in Park Ridge I am a parent with two stud at Washington Elementary and I have a whole speech planned but after hearing several of the other parents I don't want to repeat myself I don't want to repeat some of those thoughts but I would like to put one thought in your head that hasn't been brought up and that is I listen a lot to my colleagues my friends in the community I am pushing so hard for this referendum because

016I want to make sure our schools I can be proud of our schools and I want my kids to feel proud of their schools I also want to note that I don't want to have to explain in five or 10 years why we didn't do improvements that need to happen later I am also a the Parkridge Public Library I said on their board I've been on their board for six years and things got cut from that referendum that they did that we didn't end up doing and now we're having to figure out how the budget for those big items I don't want to see The District in that position again I know that the past boards have had a lot of feedback like why did they push this this far why are we in this

017position and I want to make sure that that doesn't happen again so please don't cut anything else from this referendum thank you thank you okay other comments okay all right all right let us look at our next on the agenda is the superintendent update and so Ben this is you yeah um while we get the Strategic plan slides up um I just want to first thank all of our parents our our teachers our teaching assistants our custodians our bus drivers our um administrative assistants our um people who work here at district office in the technology department our maintenance team you name it it takes so so many people to make sure that we have a great start to the school year and the biggest thank you goes to our kids they have had a great

018two days uh just getting everything started we've got um we've got some stuff that you'll see coming out soon that are wonderful um director of communications Chris Lily uh and I were able to um interview some some students um during their first day of school and uh just see the The Shining faces of them and you see especially the kindergarten classes as they're going into the building um I had to do that last year drop off my daughter I turned around I'm not a crier at all I'm like balling um you see these parents like stepping aside and you know letting their little precious one into the school and like we we get to care for them um and do everything we can to make sure they have a great experience and then they grow

019up in these amazing adults who do wonderful things for others and and really contribute to society so um we we've had a great start to the school year starts to the school year can always be challenged in um and certainly we are still dealing with some Transportation issues that I know we communicated to our bus riders today um Adam pesi our uh School uh business official has been working um with the bus company which is new um new to us at least um and trying to make sure that we're going to have improvements immediately on all of that so um working hard on that because we certainly uh do not want that to continue to be a problem I would love to not talk about when buses are picking up kids so so as I'm

020sure parents would as well so uh moving forward um from that though what what I did want to do is tonight briefly we told the board last year that we would be doing three updates here at the board meetings to the community about on the Strategic plan um given the nature of the rest of the agenda I wanted to make tonight pretty brief and then we'll have longer ones um when we have uh more to say coming up that when we're not uh faced with the potential for a referendum so um but a lot of what we're going to talk about in the referendum is absolutely part of the Strategic plan another part of the Strategic plan is getting a clicker that works so hang on I might need an assist on this it's on

021all right so Chris is going to or you guys can just run it thanks okay so we are um in the last two years of the Strategic plan which is a fiveyear plan there are these five areas that we try to encapsulate everything in our work and I'm just going to very briefly take you through the highest end of what's going on at all of them with our cabinet team why don't you guys just run the slides thanks so in terms of strengthening relationships and communication um one of the things that we've discussed and talked about is doing a districtwide listening session from the district and and making sure that all of our staff have say in our further Direction so we're going to be doing that we're excited about that obviously the second piece

022of this is um existing Community relationships I think our relationships with the in particular the police department and the fire department are at a really really good spot we we spent a lot of time last year trying to strengthen that we've got a safety week this year coming out because we red all of our safety protocols so parents are going to hear about that soon I would say within the next week because it's two weeks from now and every day we're going to play out a new piece of the safety protocols and parents will get live information about in in the event that we might be in this this is what the communication would look like here's what your responsibilities might be here's what's going on inside the school and uh our police department and

023fire departments are actually tagging along with us all week to then give us feedback and make sure that we're doing everything the right way um in terms of promoting the positive reputation of District 64 I do that every single chance I possibly can um both in the district and out of the district so that we can do everything we can to recruit the best staff possible and our staff has started to take on uh more instances where they can go out and be be presenters at conferences and talk about all the exciting things and wonderful things they're doing so people want to come work here and learn from our amazing staff so whatever we can do to just have this really great image and this brand of we're we're 64 and we're the best we're

024going to try to continue to do that in terms of enhancing diversity equity and inclusion um ensuring that all of our materials are cultural responsive Samantha does that as part of her curriculum review process and everything that we have we did talk this year about um how we could acknowledge better holidays what that many of our families have and then some of our families who maybe don't celebrate it we want our kids to learn about those things too because it's the student that's their friend who's sitting next to them in class the entire time um and so we did get some feedback on this from parents last year just about hey just just even just a heads up and acknowledgement just goes a long way so we're going to be doing more on that this

025year to help also um make sure our staff know and understand that sometimes because of kids missing is because maybe their holiday is actually during a school attendance day so I think that'll be good in terms of everybody understanding everything going on in our school community and exploring program expansion um we are one more year deeper into standards based reporting I want to commend Samantha and her staff for how well this has gone so all K5 report cards will be reporting on standards and all 68 electives will be 49 standards this year so we'll continue to slowly roll out year to year learn more and change more you'll be hearing more later on about our student services action plan everything you're going to hear about the potential referendum fits into that as well you've been

026updated a lot on that so there's many changes happening there but that group is meeting soon to continue to refine and figure out how that's going to going to move forward and then the Middle School review that'll be exciting for the next two years there's a lot that goes into that too again I want to commend Samantha and her staff um for all the work that they've already put into it we spoke to all of our Middle School teachers yesterday in both buildings and talked about um the future for that so there will be a lot more to come but not necessarily anything new as of today thank you Chris Ren best practices uh we have a new Behavior MTS committee that's starting this year um towards the end of the last calendar year in

027our with our board meetings we had a a moment where we could bring in families and we shared our Behavior data so we're really trying to figure out how our system can be the same no matter what's happening no matter what's going on with the student no matter what school they're at because there's a lot of differences right now where um we want to make sure that they aren't frankly so there'll be a lot of work on that this year to try to make sure that our data is as clean as possible and then therefore we can make better decisions on practices and what's moving forward with that um we did have our teaching assistant at new staff orientation this year we got a lot of positive feedback on that so anything we can do

028to try to involve our non-certified staff and find training for them and I know uh both from the tech department Lea's Department Samantha's Department there's a lot of things happening to ensure that they feel included and that they're um as uh as professionally trained as possible one more Maxim iing resources you're going to hear a lot about the 5year facility plan uh just in a moment um we're also going to be refining our staffing models and trying to Define roles I think last year a lot of questions that were really great from the school board were how do we know we're getting the maximum bank for our buck um with all of these programs that we run so taking a look at all of our programs with a really fine eye and making sure that

029our students are being best served and then also um I put on here you know our facilities plan plus the financial projections um that we're doing plus our Middle School review which has a lot to do with what happens financially and our staffing Ms all hopefully uh build this kind of picture of what the future of our district not only for the next five years but 10 years 25 30 years looks like so we can do right by all of our taxpayers um and everything it's a very quick overview of everything in our strategic plan but I do think things are going very well our team has kind of got into this nice rhythm of making sure that we're talking about these things at the high level but then also trying to really start to

030explore the potential for starting to look at indicators for for how these things are actually working which I know we're going to talk about later on this school year with all of you um and we're excited for the next phase and then in the spring you get to hear me talk about the next strategic plan I can't believe we're already there because next year we're going to have to get a whole another committee together and go through this whole Community engagement process and figure out what the next five to 10 years of our school district are going to look like so I'm excited about that so um definitely you know be happy to take any questions on the Strategic plan but I wanted to give you a very very brief high level overview as quickly

031as I could over a lot of topics any questions comments from the board all right um our up cutting me meeting agenda we're going to move the September meeting to Lincoln um with the hope for some some tours and showing off the not so great build bu of Lincoln great school not a great building uh but also showing off the construction work that has been done this summer just so you could all walk through it and see it because I think there's some really cool things to see there all and uh finally all of our foer requests have been filled thank you sure we get a remind next meeting be linoln here I know iend to be autopilot we will we'll make we'll pick you up rent a car just a small point but should

032the school celebration for Lincoln be in September then since it'll be at Lincoln yeah we've moved it I didn't move it on that sheet because I'm sorry that's my fault I printed that later all right good point thanks Monica all right okay next we have on the agenda board committee reports are there any committee reports I think there's committee meetings coming up for the different committees um soon yeah I think the I finan facilities I think it's Thursday the 29th we'll be meeting at around I think it's 400 p.m. I think we agreed to yeah something around that time so that should be it'll be publicly noticed and then pH us and I man and we're still we're waiting for ISB to give me a date so we're we're getting close okay all right sounds

033good thank you and just a note um the board uh just like the whole board does for committee you'll be reviewing minutes just like we do here just the same process okay all right let's move on to A3 the adoption of the resolution for providing clickers all right so let's check this out all right let me just are you doing that or am I doing okay now you you go ahead I'm about ready to throw this up okay we're good all right so we wanted to go ahead and go to facility goals thank you all right so um and reflecting on where we are tonight I again I just want to point out that everything that we have before you and have been showing you is in um that's in this plan meets these goals

034and certainly heard it tonight reflected in um some of the earlier comments like we just want our schools to be safe we want them to be healthy for our students and staff we want them to function in a way that reflects the pride in the community and makes people continue to want to send their school their their students to our schools um we want our schools to work for our staff in the ways that when they're trying to do Innovation and they're trying to meet 21st century needs they have those resources too um and we want them to be energy efficient and fiscally responsible in the fact that we're not taking resources and continuously spending them on maintenance or other unnecessary things and so um just keeping those goals in mind I think is really

035important as we move move forward our process it's hard to believe that we're we're at this moment um but we have spoken and talked about this repeatedly uh we've done so far I would say with our pre-referendum engagement the community coffees that we did before that the community talks that we did The Joint PTO meeting back in January I mean just feedback feedback feedback feedback uh from our parents from our staff uh feedback from our students trying to figure out what we can do to design the next iteration of these buildings for hopefully the next decades to come uh we checked all of our plans across all of our schools to make sure that they met all of the school's needs uh we consulted uh with a professional who's worked repeatedly in this community and

036helped to make sure that great facilities exist both at the high school and the park district um he's helped us through that process and also making sure that we were transparent with our community our task force want to again thank you all those members who spent that evening with us in March and just gave us feedback on on everything there as well um so looking forward right now just to kind of remind everybody of where we're at go to the next slide our current level is just over 92 million um we do want to propose one adjustment in particular that would not cut anything but it would just essentially move the funding source from the referendum dollars that we would um hopefully get if a referend P to the capital Improvement fund you can go

037on the next one I talked about this uh last month and um no matter what we're still trying to figure out um if a referend were to pass exactly what the pricing would be we still have to go out to bid we don't know where interest rates are going to be the news right now is very positive though in terms of our favor on that and um we already collect and budget we collect taxes we budget for this in our in our plan so it still takes um elements right now in the plan that could certainly change depending on how pricing looks and how bidding looks too and then what it does is dedicates that funding to those those projects which are all part of the referendum process and then if we took that $

0383.28 million um it would dedicate that funding to the next three years which would be about the years of construction that we would be have have happened um and put put towards those and then you see a new number go to the next slide which is at 89 million so that would be the proposal ask with that change um and if that's the way that the board decides to go this evening one of the things that um Chris and I talking about this that I want to remind everybody about is just where we came from and how we are where we are today so go ahead and go to the next slide Chris you can see our initial initial plan when we talked about this we said we want to build a community plan that

039is if you were going to do everything everything all at once with the absolute highest level what would it be at and that was north of $145 million and through months and months of conversation feedback dedication polling name it that's where the number would be at and the reason I bring that up is because that represents about a 39% decrease um in in the tax that would that that somebody would need to pay and it's it's significant in the sense that while we want make sure that we have the absolute best facilities possible they have to remain within a budget for what our taxpayers um hardworking taxpayers give us and what what we think the community uh can make work and when I say the community there's so many different ways that people have their

040finances set up and it's it's it's definitely not something that we ever take lightly when people um you know who who earn the money that they do and pay taxes to make sure that we have great schools um um you know they trust us to to to ensure that we're doing right by them so I think this shows that we've listened we've cared we've done everything we possibly can and at the end of the day um that number on the bottom represents still just an amazing amount of work that would bring our schools into the 21st century make sure that they're incredibly safe as safe as we can possibly make buildings that they're healthy and that they're energy efficient in a way that's actually saving us money in the long run um um so that's

041really the big question I have tonight and I know the larger question is whether or not you want to put a referendum on the ballot in general but if the the first piece is deciding whether or not you'd want to just shift funding from fund 60 future fund 60s into um those projects which again they might change based on how bidding works but the way we have it designed there's a lot of flexibility in that so it doesn't change anything with referendum or um or the fun 6 pieces in general so that's the that's the first piece and then we would move to um whether or not we would put a referendum on the pallet and there's still a potential for like federal or state grants for Energy Efficiency or anything else that we haven't

042applied for yet or explored that you know could be additional funding that you outside of this yeah so how about questions comments at this point yeah I mean I think overall I think I uh appreciate the thoughtfulness um that it took to get us from the 145 to the 89 um I think it's it's difficult um to weigh all of the I think desires and wants and needs of everybody in the entire community and and balance that with um a real need to be fiscally responsible on behalf of not only the district but the taxpayers and the community and I think where we've landed is a place that allows us to have a set of improvements that sets up our school buildings our school um grounds are um kind of yeah school grounds and school

043buildings um up for uh really successful learning environments for our students uh one that we can be really proud of and one that allows us to be um I know really thoughtful and really inclusive for all of our students um and I really I like the idea aide of thinking flexibly about the funding sources not only in terms of leveraging the cap the the $2 million each year but also as mat said continuing to think about other funding sources um like grants that we could think about um so supportive of the overall referendum and supportive of the 89 million amount um because I think I think it's what our students deserve Rachel did you have something yeah I I agree I'm supportive of the referandum at this amount I'm fine with us moving the funds

044um and putting our fund 60 towards that um like we made that decision for one year and adding some additional funds and still leaving a little bit of a cushion in fund 60 as well I appreciate you doing that um just in case something were to come up that was needed um I think we've really you know um the District should say meant to say you know you and your team then like Noel and um Architects and everyone have worked really hard um to make sure that our like most important needs and things that are in the Strategic plan um are happening here and I think it's really important to know like components of our strategic plan are dependent on this referendum passing what we want to do with student services and serving our special

045education students is dependent on this referendum passing um and so I I don't think there's anything else that we can cut um without losing things that are goals in our strategic plan or setting us up to be in a situation that we were in now to have years of deferred maintenance and not knowing how we're going to take care of things um in the future and so I know this may not include every single thing that we may have wanted or that everyone in the community may have wanted um but I think it includes the right things to help our buildings be safe our students um have the maximum resources to learn and our teachers have the supports that they need to serve our students so I'm fully in support with where we stand other

046questions or comments before we go to the motion so I'm just gonna say I am 100% fully in support of this referendum I do appreciate all the work that's gone into it within the community and the teachers and B and everybody put their work into it but I would like to leave the numbers a little bit I would like to see it a little bit lower I for a few reasons I don't like tying the hands of future boards maintenance comes up things happen also I would like to all of the taxpayers in mind I mean it's not just this referendum that's going to add to us but it's also the par we just had a Park District referendum so that's a chunk of money um so I'm just trying to keep all parties in

047mind not just the people who have kids in school so I would like to see the number lower but I am in favor of it 100% our schools do need to be they need to be fixed whether it's now with this referendum or we PC mail it together they do need to be fixed but also I would just like to say I'm sorry that the maintenance has been pushed down and kicked down it wasn't this board it was Prior boards but at the same time I have to give credit to those boards because they had the money and they kept it there and that was how we were able to put our full day kindergarten together so I mean you people can say oh other boards didn't do it and the previous administration didn't do

048it but they're what they they didn't spend our money just willy-nilly they kept it and we ended up with the full day kindergarten so I think we I may make friendly amendment to just go down but but I am in support of it 100% I thankful for everybody's hard work into it but for me in good conscience I feel like I have to keep all taxpayers all parties uh I have to keep their pocketbooks in check I like I can't live knowing that I didn't at least try and like you can't squeeze lemon juice from a rock I mean if we don't have the money we don't have the money it's not like Rachel said it doesn't have everything that we want but we need $145 million to do that um but it has everything

049that we need to keep our kids safe healthy learning educated our staff together so I'm in support of it I'm still thinking about it I may make a friendly Amendment but I will vote for the full am is there a number you were thinking about and how do you get that I mean just GNA just help the board out um like 82 84 million and what is that like help us out how what does that look like in for the proposal what do you mean what have we takeen out or yeah sure well I think we take some of the furniture we were talking about we take out I think we take out some of the park stuff we take out um I would rather see our buildings not leaking not full of mold our

050I would like to see that stuff fixed our parks are going to be worked on they are getting new stuff they're just not getting as much stuff as we would like so you say Parks you mean playgrounds so you would decrease the playgrounds or and then decrease the furniture just just so that yeah I mean I think our furniture could be recycled and reused for a little bit more because we talked about that I think at the Cow meeting didn't we cut a bunch of furniture already I'm just saying I am in support of it you want to put me on the spot go ahead but I'm saying I want to keep all taxpayers putting you on the spot it's a like we we know that I'm sorry um you know we know that you

051know the 92 were at we came through with discussions and we knew you where those cuts came from and the 89 that Ben and his team got to we know exactly how they got there by mov three and and and there may be some additional you know that we can make up whether it's you through lower interest rates or Grant so no one's saying no you're 824 we need to understand how you got there like where the extra where did that extra seven or you know six million in Cuts come from because that's I me we're looking at it's close to a 10% cut we are now it is but I'm looking at the taxpayers pocket I mean it's not just we're not adding three or $400 for just this project we just had a

052Park District referendum so now we're at like five or $600 and not all families in park Bridge can afford it that's all I'm saying but I will vote for the 80 not what did we at here 92 million because I do think our schools need to be safe I think we're looking at the 89 I think we're versus the 92 we're at 89 but that does tie up the future boards no no no you're right but I you know so which I think is kind of unfair if you're a new I mean four of us may not be here at the next for the there's an election in April four of us may not be here so now you have four new people who really can't do much or stra yeah and I don't I

053don't like living like that I don't like being strapped for three years if well 2025 is already the way that yeah I mean the way that I would understand it and why I'm comfortable recommending it is because I think in the long run we do want to be probably planning Out Construction much further than we have been because if we've got if we're in that shape we're in really good shape right because we've got a good plan we we're we're working towards it so um I think the other piece is that if if a renom if a referendum were to go to ballot and not pass everything starts back to SCH square one but does pass it all kind of starts to square one but in a very positive square one like because you start

054to going to bid in a m experience with even the 207 referendum when the bids start coming back you were going to see things at prices I mean you know this de you're going to see things at prices that you're like there's no way that is going to be that expensive but that's that's where it's at or the opposite there other things will come back it's great we just saved a ton of money so a lot of this stuff evens out or things move around or there's the macroeconomy that certainly has forces andure pressures um that come to it that's where the interest rate piece can be just really really important so I don't think it I I see what you're saying in terms of um putting future boards at a spot where they're gonna

055probably have to make decisions at with less options but the bid process unto itself is a really really extensive and timec consuming process where a lot could change through it and so um we could decide you know to not do that and no matter what because of the way bids are coming back it's all it's pretty much tying our hands anyway so I'm just putting it out there as and if I could just interject I think there's lots of other levers that the future board could have both in terms of how the bids come in and then decision making within that process obviously guard rails within that but also the remainder of the budget and how decisions can be made about the remainder of the budget right so it's not that there's no other decision

056making that can be made about the entire budget and so appreciate like it does you're right like lock up some decision making for sure but I I wouldn't want that to be the only I mean you should vote however you want to vote but I will vote for the referendum 100% I stand behind it I stand equally behind it as hard as I did for the full day kindergarten no question about it I'm just simply saying for my own conscience and for I have to take in all taxpayers I mean it's a lot for some it's not a lot of money but for other households with the inflation and cost of groceries I mean for others it's a lot of money I'd just like to keep them into take them into consideration do you have

057I don't have it in front of me like the information on if it's 82 million what that means for the taxes for the $500,000 no and I think it's I think it's there there's some difference yeah no no no and I just want to take that in consideration and I think you know kind of what you were saying I do think each board is trying to do the best thing they at that moment with the information they have right I mean with the information of that time the place that we're at and that's what we're trying to do too that's a different for sure GTH would you have something yeah I have just a few questions really um just as I look at you know the resolution we talked last time that is this the

058formal in the resolution this is the formal word and that will appear on the ballot as we approve it because I know we we haven't got quite to the motion yet but I want to make before we get to that motion that the resolution and the lineup which is very textual and very long there is language about the ballot statement and the ballot state that that statement is is when we pass it tonight it says nothing about Playgrounds does say stuff about accessibility under the Ada um and about stuff to special life it doesn't say anything about Playgrounds see correct yeah the the the ballot statement only had you only have so many characters that you could put into the ballot statement and so everything that you put into the ballot statement you have to

059do right that's what I remember from the last meeting yeah so when we were working with the attorneys on the ballot statement we we buildt it in a way to make sure that depending on how things are you know depending how bids are coming back or other aspects of that that gives us maximum flexibility with with with projects there's a lot of crazy stories out there from ballot statements that have been voted on from other school districts one that I used to be a student in and the ballot language was wrong or something got messed up or mixed up and then they actually couldn't move forward on some aspects or sometimes all of the projects so our attorneys have been um very very very concerned about how we worded this you know taking all of

060this from them um and just you know working through this specific language but you've such a small space on the on the literal ballot to put in there so there's a lot of other things that when we were talking about that we say well this isn't in there either they're saying it's prettyy much covered by that and so the Ada piece is what would cover any kind of playground work that gives us the piece for that so but you can do other things that aren't on the ballot statement too because it's just to Impossible when you think about you know the referendums that are out there for the amount of work that might come my well ours is large there's other referendums that are you know four or five times the size so yeah yeah

061so we sent all of our documents to our lawyers and they took a look at everything and then they came out and said this is basically what we think is going to work to Encompass everything irregardless of what stuff eventually you know happens because you you just don't know that's the problem we just don't know what the pricing is actually gonna come back at right they estimates of estimates and and that leads maybe to my second question was uh there is a contingency amount right that we as part of you know we haven't talked about it for a while yeah but I just want to remind us that in that 89 yeah down to doll um roughly is that like five times building about five it's usually what they do yeah and and absolutely on

062some of the items they'll build in a little bit more depending on kind of how what the market variability looks like so um yeah and that's that's why the bidding process unto itself I the facilities and finance commit is going to have a lot of conversations and probably discussions of how to figure out to put this together and just a remind everybody we don't necessarily need to if we get if 89 is ultimately what get approved we don't necessarily need to issue it if it comes in less the problem we will have is if we had like all the K G it comes to right okay and the final thing was um there been any discussions around the playgrounds um in terms of the size and the um and it's that is is there a

063anything that's been reduced in that 89 yeah do you wanna step up and address this because you had some good conversations with the companies that I think gives us more flexibility to so there are a couple of playgrounds that we do have that are pretty large to to the equipment that we have uh reducing the square footage um we would probably be able to reduce maybe like $80,000 max if we were to reduce the square footage of the playgrounds um there's two playgrounds in particular um would be the Carpenter and then a field one that we would try to reduce the square footage to work around uh any proposed equipment that we would do and is that in this 89 this not right now the reason we didn't take it out right now because of

064our with our conversations is one of the biggest question marks is what is Water Reclamation going to ask us to do that could save us a ton of money if they ask us to not do much could also cost us a lot of money if they come back to us and they say no this is what the this is what the pricing is going to be at um it is one of the biggest question marks in any kind of construction project right now for our area in particular um so when we were talking we were thinking know any contingency to your point that we can just have to build in if it comes in less great but um one of the things that we could talk about when Water Reclamation comes out and says this

065is what it would cost you we could say what if we took 10% off of the footprint does that take 10% off the Water Reclamation cost too so just trying to build flexibility and from a pricing perspective um with that and when you talk about the square footage you're talking about the square footage for the port surface cor we would just shrink how much the port surface would be on yeah because that's approximately like 35 to $38 a square foot got you got and and and the Water Reclamation District did invol because that's an impermeable surface I'm assuming and therefore it requires greater water retention so it's not very going back to and is that yeah yeah um it was one of the hardest parts of the 207 construction process so um just working even

066just working through the layers of of that um that unto itself is really expensive um do you want to really quickly just say what you learned about the difference between which is a wash the difference between the tiles and complete Port surface sure uh so with the tiles that um I found with the park district what they used um they they pretty much have 13 to 15 years of service on the tiles and they've had a zero maintenance cost on them um it's a non-permeable um uh flooring so the water will not penetrate through it so we really got to see um with mwrd and the Water Reclamation to see um how that's going to affect and what that price would be to put in tile versus to put in a ported Place surface which

067is perable um to see what that is for pricewise it's pretty much going to be the same price um per square foot it's about that 35 to $38 square foot price but if it changes what Water Reclamation does for us right that could significantly change the price correct so and we won't know that until everything gets submitted to the city all right Noel thanks for your additional work thanks um all right are we ready for the motion mon yeah just to be clear I'm gonna say the motion with the 89 million I think you hav't I move that the Board of Education approve resolution 1346 providing for and requiring the submission of the proposition of issuing not to exceed $ 89,1 6,629 School building bonds to the voters of the district at the general election

068to be held on the 5th day of November 2024 second all right Monica had the motion Rachel had the second Is there further discussion yeah yeah I'd like to move an amendment to um reduce the number by $4 million to 85 mil1 6,629 to reflect um is it okay I can talk to him a second what let's wait for the second is there a second all right so GTH had the amended motion Phyllis had the second so let's go to further discussion thanks no I think uh you know some of this could be you know but me I want this referend to pass which is you know I think we all want that and we're all in agreement with that and I want to give it the best odds that I can to do that

069um I feel that in the poll in playgrounds was was was pretty was the second worst ped item um and we did take action on the worst ped item so I think I feel like we need to do a reduction to reflect that but I also recognize that places like Jefferson never had a PTO that was able to defund or never able to have a good playground so I'm you know I didn't reduce it by five million I reduceed it by the to try to reflect that I'm also concerned just chearing again about this is an impermeable surface which creates that Water Reclamation District risk that it actually could be a multiple of that um of that form million if we decide to put in those pable services and that that that is that is

070very concerning that that that risk exists however if this amendment doesn't pass I'm I'm in favor of put giving the voters a choice and and in favor or put it in front of them I hope that it passes either way um I really believe that we can't afford to let Lincoln continue the way it is we can't afford to have children heart of hurin having services in the corridor in Franklin um those things are just terrible and we need to we need to we need to correct for that we we got a lot of safety issues throughout the district we need to make sure those doors are secure um in each of the classrooms across the district it's not just in the the new all they K Gard um construction rooms that we that we've

071had or new extensions that are more recent so there's a lot of things we need to do and I just want to see us have the best odds of passing this um and you know I'm I'm in favor either way even if the amendment fails any discussion on the amended amended motion all right so now let's vote on the amended motion proposed by Gary Pearl no Milligan no tuos Linsky yes GE jakus no double day no Kennedy yes okay so that amended motion does not carry and so now we go back to the original motion that Monica uh had out Rachel approved and so now we need to vote on that motion all right Milligan yes double yes Kennedy yes Pearl yes Linsky yes tuos yes Geor Aus yes motion carries all right all right

072thank you uh and this is an exciting moment so um our schools are really a source of pride in the community we've heard that tonight um three of the schools are over a 100 years old uh you know others are over 60 years old and so we've all agreed that our buildings have health and safety concerns and outdated infrastructure in spaces that no longer serve the needs of all of our students so I really want to thank the board uh for supporting this recommendation for a bond referendum and by doing so we're really keeping our kids healthy and safe and on improving their learning experience with this infrastructure and you know this board believes that this is the critical time to do these upgrades and improvements and our schools desperately need them um and just

073you as a board I mean this has been 27 years since the district has asked the community for a referendum for Capital Improvements and so um this was not a decision made lately as we know we've talked about this for certainly a long time but and conversations were difficult but I really appreciate how the board has handled it everyone's perspective throughout the process and you know we were collaborative along the way and um it's it's put us in a in a great financial position and we're really I think being um good stewards of the community un funds so really thank you all right next now it's like the next item on the agenda we're really excited about this presentation Adam now we go to the budget this is like deflated so try to beat that

074ad I'm talking about the budget um you know and just to this is our first presentation on the budget there will be others there's a um a public hearing and just so the board knows you know since we have our committees in Place certainly further discussion as GTH mentioned on the 29th will happen in finance and Facilities not at you know our whole board meeting so with that introduction Adam you are on thank you so we're here tonight to spend a few minutes talking about the tended budget um we'll go through a few of the slides and then have an opportunity for questions so just some high level information first so um this is going to be a balanced budget by the ice spe definition balance budget being that um we're using fund balance to

075balance the budget when we look at the total amount we're looking at about 100 million revenues versus 98 million from last year and 103 million in expenditures as opposed to 98 million from last year uh however we're looking at about 12.1 million capital projects now just a quick reminder from what happened last year so we sold $10 million in working cash bonds which we we banked it's sitting in our fund balance we used you know we have about 9.4 million of that which is what we're using to fund this budget so when we talk about you know a a a not true balanced budget it's because of just the timing of us selling the bonds last year and the money to do the work over Lincoln is going to be coming out of this budget

076so just just to be clear on that and again no red flags no concerns we have the money fund balances in a good spot it's just how we're sping the money and how it's going to appear just some uh high level Revenue assumptions so because of the CPI um with being over 5% property tax receipts we're going to see that 5% uh the Corp corporate personal property tax that's going to decrease this year and decrease by about a million dollars on the revenue side we talked a little bit about interest rates before interest rates are definitely going to come down so we want to be able to factor that into our revenu being some of the revenue decrease all the fees in this budget are maintained including kindergarten and kindergarten to stre on the expenditure

077side we see the final use of eser going away it'll be going away by the end of September um hiring is ongoing um we Dr Martin will talk about this a little bit later but we've probably hired more people than we have over the last several years so all of those positions are not yet finalized in this budget when we come back with the final we're going to see some definite differences as we look at we'll take a look at those positions the department budgets have been maintained at this time and then um at this moment uh the Cook County paid ordinance has not been factored in yet we haven't really talked about that too much detail there is still some uh you know some questions about how that's going to be implemented school districts

078in Cook County it's going to be implemented January 1st of 2025 essentially what we need to do is we need to um we have to provide one paid hour for 40 hours of work that takes into consideration all of our sub substitute teachers lunch supervisors and supper workers right now any members uh covered by current collective bargaining units are not impacted but this is something that we're watching is far as you know putting in the budget and as we move forward with um collective bargaining negotiations and just want to be mindful of that so this doesn't uh become a major hit to our budget we'll definitely come back to this a little bit in our committee yes I was yeah I was going to ask if the if if if if by the time we

079get to the committee because I don't expect an answer on this Spar because it might be IL legal is you know if Park Ridge ex you know opts out of this would we have to do it then or or or because I think par rdge has opted out under home rules of stuff before and I think that saved us from having to do stuff so I'm just curious if you could helped by the committee me find definitely thank you for that question and definitely a good thing to can I just also remind everybody because this is turning into a pretty hot topic uh pretty quickly with uh superintendent and park Port so just the the state passes this um law that with what you can see there with one paid hour uh for every 40

080hours worked the state law exempts school districts and park districts Cook County be happy to talk to any of cook Commissioners who are watching uh decides we don't like the state's law so we're going to make up our own law and school districts and districts you're in this and so there's a lot of political stuff going on um on the backside I this is something that we can Lobby against and I would say that every school district in our area is has been hard at work I've sent motions out U if things as they progress start to heat up I'll bring most of you in to all of that too at red with those conversations oh yeah so because it just for us you know it just makes no sense I mean you you're giving

081people paid leave who already have a lot of leave built into their schedule um so we this isn't the point of the meeting but at least to your point Adam this is a good moment to just pause and talk about it because it could see it future uh instances where we go and actually Lobby against this and try to get it changed so that we're exempt out of it my our understanding and we'll talk about this in the committee is that we would not be exempt in regardless of Park Rich does because Cook County has um has local rle they can supersede that so but it's there's so many situations where the attorneys are saying we're not sure but this is what we think okay so so the other option open to us is to

082give is to decrease or to to take a 39 or 40 and apply it to all the current uh daily rates that we have or ourly rates that we have those non non exemp um there's a lot of different ways we could do it like a lot of groups are in the bargaining process they're putting a stipulation in there like where the actual contract itself excludes them um it's one of the things that we're be talking to our our contractual employees about um so there's just a whole lot more to talk about on this but at least just want to take to pause and Edam did a good job of just making sure that he stopped here on it so it's important because it could impact us budgetarily in a way that would impact some

083major things we have to do with Staffing thanks sorry um I think for me it would be helpful not right now but at some point just to understand the order of magnitude of how it could impact us budget wise um just to understand I mean are we talking about like what's the size and right right now if we're taking a look at those those groups up there that are mentioned in a year we're looking at about 157,000 in a fiscal year and we're taking a look at some of those other bargaining units in addition to that we're we're looking at more like about 385,000 so it's it's substantial dollars when you factor all of those in and so that's why we're we're you know something uh to to a few of your points we want

084to keep an eye on I mean really we're looking at a 2 and a half% increase in salary expense that no one sees no it's it that's why all the conversations and you know advocacy so again we're we're now at again high level we're just going to spend a few minutes going through the funds and taking a look where we are now again keeping in mind that while I'm happy seeing some of these numbers I'm cautious because it's it's the Ted budget education fund the largest fund the instructional fund looking at almost 79 million in revenue and about 74 million in expenses onm which is our um you know our cleaning um and our repair budget also all salaries and benefits for custodian maintenance come out of this fund almost 10 million in revenues right

085now about 7 m million expenditures around final budget time we'll take a look at this also meet with the you know newel and IC see if there's ways that we can you know improve ourselves prepping for the referendum or not just want to be mindful of that Debt Service about three million in revenues about 3.6 in expenditures and we had some transfers that we you know utilize with The Debt Service fund this takes into consideration not only our bonds our debt certificates but also our Capital leases on our copers that's all comes out of this fund Transportation fund is a standalone revenues looking uh this fund looks okay right now about 4.6 in revenues about 3.6 in expenses imrf that is the retirement fund for the support staff people that don't have education license about

086800 in Revenue about 780 in expenses social SEC Social Security sorry went too fast Social Security about one 1.6 in revenues about 1.3 in expenditures all those again individuals that pay in the system who do not have educational licenses capital projects expenses are I mentioned before about 12.1 all of this money you know most of it's coming in through our fund balance we may still transfer any excess funds from many of our either education fund or onm fund to be able to make make uh you know make these cut in the line and again we want to be as cautious as we can with our our budget as we can possible working cash fund or savings account have about 825,000 this is usually used to transfer to other funds in need and then finally our

087tour fund Tor immunity a little over 700,000 in Revenue just about 703 in expenses I hope to see this one better as we get into um the final budget T and then just kind of looking ahead plan next steps uh beginning tomorrow budget will be on public display set up on the website so anyone who wants to view could view it we've discussed you know multiple times in August 29th finance and Facilities committee will really kind of dig into some of these numbers and you know go a little deeper than we're going right now and then we'll be back up here on September 19th for the public hearing and the final budg fin final budget approval any additional questions for this evening questions for Adam okay all right why don't we take thank you Adam

088all right why don't we take the motion I move that the board adopt resolution 1347 to approve the fiscal year 25 tenative budget and establish the public hearing date second all right so Monica the motion Gareth had the second any further discussion from the board all right let's take a vote Jorge jakus yes Milligan yes Kennedy yes Linsky yes Pearl yes double yesos yes okay motion carries all right thank you okay next we have um the borders en closed session about the sale of a property and so why don't we uh take the motion first I move that the board adopt resolution 1348 authorizing the sale of real property okay is there a second second okay all right so Monica the motion Demetria the second all right let's we'll get further discussion girth I think

089you had a question there yeah I just want to make sure that the you know I'm looking at the resolution where's the number at um that'll be filled in after the board decides on comes to consensus on what that number is that minimum do we need to say the number um as a part of part of the motion yes okay all the parts of the resolution will be filled in after the board approves the motion so so the resolution can I offer a friendly Amendment all right thank you g that we that we say and at the end of the the resolution for the sale of real property at no less than $47,500 okay good okay so now with Garrett's friendly Amendment we can vote on that with the the sale I'll second okay so

090with the friendly Amendment Gareth had the motion and Rachel have the second okay correct okay uh if it's friendly then there's not then we're not voting moniker accepts my friendly amendment I accept the friendly Amendment with Grace okay thank you for the friendly knowledge of Robert RS our Roberts RS uh expert in Resident Gareth okay so um any further discussion on the amendment as it was amended and friendly way so right all right so why don't we take a vote two yes Milligan yes double day yes Linsky yes Kennedy yes Pearl no yes okay all right motion carries all right okay next we have we had the update on the Strategic plan and now we have presentation and approval of Ben's goals for this year and go through this hopefully this works and if it

091doesn't thank you Chris if not we have Chris Fink it need to change a scenery anyway okay um tonight I'm going to talk about my goals which are going to Cascade down through the organization I'm going talk a little bit about how that's going to work as well um the first one is the most important one which is trying to improve academic achievement from the superintendent standpoint something I think about a lot I don't necessarily work directly with students I don't necessarily work directly with staff I don't even necessarily sometimes work directly with principles there's a lot of um my internal understanding of my own job and how it can be most effective is really trying to get everybody aligned and making sure that there's room and uh for these conversations and that these conversations

092are the priority so because at the end of the day when we're working with all of our administrators I have a lot of say if probably the most say over what our priorities are in those conversations and discussions so in terms of looking at our kpis I'll just briefly talk about this and this is absolutely gonna uh tea up Samantha for the education committee conversation and eventually the board update in September because we've been talking a lot about where we want to focus our academic uh performance and what we're going to double down on is map growth and Ela in particular because a lot of the things that are going on right now with map and math is a little bit more up in the air but in terms of putting this out there for

093the first time which the principles are going to adopt and then our schools and staff are going to learn about is really trying to get 60% of our elementary students being in their math growth targets right now it's underneath that if we reach this this year that would be amazing but it's also a stretch goal in our reach um that's also not something that we're necessarily used to in terms of having a District student achievement goal on everybody working towards 50% of our middle school students me in their math growth targets again that's well below what it is right now but we think that's a number that we should at least achieve to and then start to monitor progress towards um those are going to be pretty big um instruments that we try to push

094all of our teachers um in that direction our administrators and our principls in particular my conversations with them are going to focus on what they're doing with unwrapping standards what they're doing with individual teamwork uh one brief story I'll tell you that I think highlights this is last year one of the principles I was working with they said um when you take a look at all my performance data my third grade team is the one that needs the most help in work and the most um for me to push everything and that's where I'm going to spend most of my time so just by by pushing on and working with and supporting that one team their growth was much higher than it had been so imagine what that's going to do if all of our

095leaders are kind of working in that same kind of capacity and really trying to isolate the things that aren't going as well as they should be and spending the vast majority of their time there when I was doing a lot of the goal setting with the principles last year I was new I was taking everything in didn't want to you know upset the apple cart and kind of learn what was going on but the the goals were kind of all over the place um and so this year we're really trying to focus in a line and get everybody moving in that direction the Middle School review into itself this isn't like the most perfect kpi if I was presenting at a conference right now it's more of a task but it's a huge task that

096we're trying to figure out what we're going to do for the future of the middle schools and how that can impact so many things from an academic standpoint it absolutely has operational strategic plan um Financial other implications as well but in terms of a student performance we want to make sure that that really drives that work in terms of leading executing the major area strategic plan you saw me do a real greenw to hear more throughout the year that's making sure um you know when you're when you're flying a plane and you want to and something goes wrong when you pull up the checklist the first thing it says is continue to fly the plane and I think a lot of times that's a lot of this is a lot of the Strategic plan work

097is that we can get lofty all we want but at the end of the day we want to make sure we have a balanced budget we've got safety procedures that work really well we've got new ones this year you're going to hear a lot about safety week coming up as parents um we've got a student services action plan that has been working very hard on with her team that I am really excited about and especially now with the referendum I don't to say potential anymore um that'll be something that we can hopefully look forward to uh Chris Lily who's amazing you know developing that communication strategy across the board with him some expectations for when teachers communicate um when they reach out to families what that even looks like all the way down to the

098classroom level and then one of the things that we working on internally is trying to get that organizational alignment is building that internal board policy so that all of our administrators and leaders are supported with when this happens I do the exact same thing as everybody else more to share as we build that out through the year this is me presenting at the city council meeting where I thought everybody was staring at my shoes little did I know that the actual screen was at my shoes so um in terms of making sure that all of these things go I mean at the end of the day honestly the referendum is going to be where the focus is for the next two months of this of my life that's going to be my top priority everything

099I'm trying to do uh we have a very aggressive event schedule uh just over 40 events that we'll be sharing with the community tomorrow um and some of those are virtual some of those are in person um we are trying to basically get in front of every single existing group to that we possibly can that exists in n and park rdge um so we're excited to share all of that District mailers to households I also see this as a major excuse me a major um trust building exercise with us with our Community for the next two to three decades if this goes well even just in the engagement process irregardless of how a referendum would go people will at least say I know what the district is about I understand what the district's about and

100I want to continue to be supportive in that um we're doing a lot of work with our transparency page we'll continue to add things to that that helps us refer community members back to it when they have questions I think that just brings a lot of people into our process which is great um my parent transition team will now become my parent advisory team so a Rebrand there that starts mean in a couple of weeks so we're excited about the work as well and then obviously I track everything I possibly can you guys have seen my pie charts um I'll continue to do that the work in the schools U my communication with you my communication with families so that I'm transparent to all of you and accountable for the things that um you hired

101me to do and at the end of the day when you combine all three of those goals I think it's going to make for a really exciting year I definitely feel like um Dorothy walks out when she lands in eyes for the first time when she can see in color I can't see all the colors yet but I've got a few more than I have last year so everything's starting to make a lot of sense and um I would be I would be really remiss if I did stand here and and just say the only reason that there's any success um has everything to do with the people that are behind me in these chairs um they're unbelievably hard workers they spent a lot of hours making sure that all of our kids have what

102they need our staff was what they need um you see the work that goes into the budget from Adam you see the amazing things that Chris Lily does um and making sure that we've got just wonderful Communications um Noel with the facilities Frank with the facilities and everything in our schools I mean even our spaces they're they're they're beautiful the ones that have been turned over and and taken up and now we're excited to possibly do it with all of our spaces um Matt has been just amazing with all of our technology I say this all the time we've got a wonderful technology department uh and everything that I know he's pushing forward not only just on the tech side but also the learning side and his instructional coaching process um Joel with his his

103commitment to making sure that he's just a person of Integrity with all of the things with HR we awarded him you know the is award last year and we would award him again if they allowed us to do two two years in a row sorry Joel they won't us do that um but then um Samantha with all of her work with teach and learning she's just done a great job transitioning from Emerson to that and Alicia with her work too with our student services team and all the things that she has to uh makes sure happen on a daily basis she's got a a really hard job because it changes every second of every day and she does a great job with that and I really also want to thank Chris berari because she keeps

104me on task and on point all the time um and she's just she's wonderful because she actually interfaces with a lot of our families when they call the district office or they call want you to talk to me or understand something um and I'm often you know my door open if I'm in my office I can hear you know bits and pieces of conversation she does it with a lot of care she also knows a lot of people in this community too so it's it's great that she can understand you know what people need and she'll give feedback on to our whole District team on the processes that she thinks need to improve and get better as well so they they do the work I sometimes get to stand on their shoulders and say these

105great things but it's not me that gets to do that so I want to acknowledge their work too and just thank them for all that they do and those are my goals and I'll sit back down and if anybody has any questions or wants to hear more i' be happy to talk about and Dan does a great job with all of our board means thank you Dan you know Ben I think doesn't isn't I can wait till you sit down but I think the next slide talked about your typical week oh yeah no no no it's it's okay I I just wondered how different that was because I know last year you set out with that similar and is it sort of the same setup or is it different yeah sorry um yes so that

106the week works the same way and that Monday I'll typically be at district office uh essentially the entire day Tuesday Wednesday in the schools that worked well uh Thursday kind of a mix and then Fridays are kind of my out and about that's what most of my organizational meetings are those are starting they started this week some of them are virtual a lot of them are not Ed R meets a lot on on Fridays my ASA meetings on Fridays I'll try to get any superintendent who'll give me five minutes to have coffee or something like that just so I can learn something about what they do too so that's the same U that worked well and then um in terms of other import Tas I just put this on there uh we got the contract

107negotiations which we'll hear more about um in September we've had really good preliminary conversations with the SSC Union the strategic planning does begin soon believe it or not so we this year we've got referendum contract negotiations probably starting in October and then strategic planning probably starting in May april-ish but I have to do a lot of pre-work to figure out like what the our process could look like and then we'll have discussions on that as well and then in the long run we have to figure out out a plan to eliminate the fee for full day kindergarten so that's one of the things that Adam and I are going to be working on from a financial standpoint and we'll be talking a lot about facilities and finance to take a look at that I think

108that would be a really great thing for our families so um but we've got to make it work within the budget so those are just larger conversations that are not necessarily part of my goals but it will absolutely take a lot of time and effort just wanted to make you guys aware of that all right a questions comments for Ben and just is um I in the spring Ben shared the list of informational events he was doing up with facilities he'll share the referendum events and board members if they'd like to join are certainly welcome too um and then the one other thing we talked about this at the last board meeting we have the Strategic plan and aligned with that we talking about board goals and so those all you know align together and

109so that'll be coming up and really continue till um our iasb Workshop in January yeah I'd also like to go on the Rock and thank Ben for providing these uh but also you know the kpis and having something that's you know measurable and attainable um maybe having some putting in some stretch goals and that's really positive um and also just you know um you know running running see that more of that data driven mindset um is is embedded even in your goals that's that's great so thank you that anything else all right all right thanks Ben thanks as always for your work all right let's go on to um oh yeah we have an action item there thank you all right so let's do the motion I moveed that the Board of Education approve the

110superintendent goals as present Ed tonight and agreed upon second all right to Monica had the motion Gareth had the second any further discussion all right let us vote tuos Yes Pearl yes forjas yes kendi yes double yes Linsky yes mil again yes all right motion carries okay next A7 we have our consent agenda and one of the things you'll know is nexts on the agenda or minutes came out of that consent agenda just because not you know if a board member misses then it becomes a little more complicated with the vote so we just pulled that out and and then I vote on that separately so with the consent agenda as it's presented anything that we need to pull out of there before we take a motion as a package okay all right why don't

111we take the motion and then we'll see if there's further discussion I move to approve the consent agenda for August 15 2024 as presented all right so Monica the Phil is had the second okay how about discussion from the board anything on there I guess the only question I had was the agreement that IGA um for using Andy frame that contract didn't have to have there didn't have to be new oh is I did never mind I retract and it's the same exact same price you which is good our price did not go up and no just a clarification that's just for nil it's just for the Niles Crossings okay that's we still have the we still have the agreement um cauer agreement with the city of park rdge for the park rdge stops these

112are just for the three Crossings in Niles that were previously um uh organized by the village of vs okay there is no I I guess I had pulled up the wrong one so I was looking at the other IG but this one it's the same price but it doesn't have a price on the contract in the information yeah I I asked Adam the question if you want to know the price I asked Adam the question it's $ 38635 36 oh that's fine I just didn't know if did we need it in there I guess was my question no we have the yeah we have the full contract with the with the breakdown okay that's just that to to approve the contract okay that's a good question all right anything else it's good to see parents

113community members the district is hiring so that parents are interested in working for the district and the district is interested in that as well so that was that's nice to see all right why don't we take a vote Linsky yes Pearl yes candy did we take the motion yeah we did yes thank you yes yesan yes all right motion carries thank you all right so next on the agenda uh is the approval of meeting minutes um from the June 27th regular meeting the June 27th Clos meeting and then the last meeting the committee of the H on July 17th I was and I wasn't here on the July 17th meeting so maybe we can separate the June and the July one okay perfect yes okay okay so we can June first okay okay perfect I

114moved that the Board of Education approve the minut from the regular meeting on June 27th 2024 and the closed meeting on June 27th 2024 is there a second second all right Monica the motion Gareth had the second how about further discussion on those Ms okay let's take a vote Milligan yes tuos Linsky Pearl yes Cy yesj yes double day yes all right that motion carries so now we'll have the second motion for the July 17th I moved at the Board of Education approve the minutes from the committee of the whole meeting on July 17th 2024 all right Monica the motion Phyllis had the second any further discussion from the board okay let's vote Milligan present buos yes double day yes Kennedy yes Linsky yes jakus yesl yes okay all right uh next and last on

115the agenda is new business um Ben already mentioned that our next board meeting will be at lincol so we see the construction project and we talked about even a following meeting at the other schools that have had some work done and so we'll keep you posted on that uh January um arlanta who has been here before with IB we scheduled um a time with her on the date is January 25th 5 th um so just if you can right now that's the tentative date um it is a Saturday and the reason why it's a Saturday uh we were we were looking at when we met with our Atlanta for the last time we talked about the um measuring performance you know we talked about those outputs um and we were um they we would want

116the administration to join us then and so that was we came up with that date so does anyone know at this time that that date does not work January and February is out for me with but I don't I'm not gonna that's a tough time for you at work very okay all right so yeah just let us know if that if that doesn't work for anyone um for me right now yeah and I know it's further out but then if we can hold it you know it's kind of it's helpful then you know if we can um uh I don't know if we talked about in time for that so I don't know if a morning start like a nine o'clock start works for folks okay right for me too all right so let's think

117about that um all right thank you because we want to continue our development as a board um and Ben you want to look at the committee meeting dates yeah if on your table on the back side where it says board committee schedule this is the tenative schedule I just put everything on a Thursday we would need to come up with final times um and this is based on the board calendar for when conversations and discussions happen I think everybody on the team would prefer to try to get these scheduled sooner so that everything's on the calendar helps us obviously with uh just regular stuff going on at home and um so just to show you guys this if you're if medable to to keeping everything on Thursdays I'll start to schedule with all of you

118and the different committee chairs with when things would work so I know people have different work schedules and things of that nature so um we can certainly do everything we can to work around that but wanted to put out to you now that's the one that we're waiting to hear back from iasb on for the Press plus so I've got your the deaths the dates that you gave me you can do them once Tammy gets me back with me we'll have that so she still hasn't back okay no this is great I think how the committee schedule works with the uh whole board meeting schedule so thanks for putting this together welcome I was just gonna say okay I'll be in touch all right thanks for doing that um other new business just um we

119the board has done this before uh we were asked if we'd like to um join the Farmers Market at the community booth and so um we were given the dates of and so just want to know who can come and so you don't have to let me know now if you can but the two dates are October 5th and October 19th both 10 to 11:30 so yeah so those are Saturdays um and then uh we um IB asked for a governing rep from our district and Phyllis was um uh kind enough to said she would fill that role so thank you for her and she worked with the resolution so it really seems amaz sense so thank you for that fellis all right um and then I think B is going to send uh information

120about what the board can and cannot do with the referendum that will be coming so we can have that yeah that'll be coming out okay all right any other new business okay is there a motion to adjourn is there a second all right so Phyllis had the motion Matt had the second all in favor I all opposed it's 8:44 and the board is adjourned thank you