SHSD161 Board Meeting 7/9/2025

001How you doing? Good. How was your trip? It was perfect. It is seven o'clock. I'd like to call this meeting of the Summit Hill School District, Summit Hill 161 School District to order. Please rise for the pledge. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. Can we get a roll call? Ron Petrie here. Melissa Ryan. Here. John Winter. Here. Patrick Oliphant. Here. Adrian Chavez. Here. Amy Burke. Here. Joy Murphy. Here. Freedom of Information Act. Okay, so we have appropriately addressed each of these foyers, some in conjunction with the board's attorney, some, like number six, if you take a look at the agenda, did not apply to us. It was a request about

002high school math teams, but all of these have been addressed. Moving on to public comments. Was there any public comments? No. Letters and communications appear at the end of the board book for a case in navigating. Number four, a consent agenda. Can I have a motion that we approve items on the consent agenda for this meeting as presented, including for a one, a regular session meeting minutes of June 11th, 2025, for a two, approval of May Treasurer's Report and Financial Report, for a three, approval of Bill's List of July 9th, 2025, for a four, approval of resignation, retirement of staff, and non-renewal of probationary staff, Kathleen Perkle effective June 9th, 2025, beta, CSOR, non-renewal or probationary staff, for a five, approval of family medical leave, none at this time, for a six, approval of employment

003of staff, Pamela Wanderson, district-wide gifted and talented coordinator, Nora Qasim, paraprofessional at Hilda Walker, Kelly Grinke, paraprofessional at Hilda Walker, Janet Carcelli, clerk at Hilda Walker, Amanda Dixon, paraprofessional at Hilda Walker, Conchita Hernandez-Ortega, night custodian at Hilda Walker, Esther Ortega-Morillo, night custodian at Hilda Walker, Diana Volkava, night custodian at Dr. Julian Rogas, Elizabeth Hernandez, night custodian at Summit Hill Junior High School. I am going to poll for A7 and for A8 for separate votes. So continuing on, for A9, approval of Summit Hill Junior High biannual trip to Springfield, for A10, approval of Blazer Works and Stepping Stones agreement for services, for A11, approval of independent agreement for services. Can we have a motion? It's on page 16 of your board book. So moved. Seconded. Roll call. John Winter. Aye. Ms. Orion. Aye. Joy Murphy. Aye.

004Adrienne Chavez. Aye. Patrick Oliphant. Aye. Ron Petrie. Aye. Amy Burke. Aye. Motion carried. Do we have any discussion at all on those further? For A7 and A8. I should have asked for that before the roll call. I apologize. Was there any discussion that I missed? Okay. So now we will go to for A7, approval of administrative assignments. Can I have a motion to approve the administrative assignments for this? So moved. Second. Okay, do we have any discussion? Yeah, I just have a concern that we had two administrators at the junior high last year, and this year we're adding one, and I'm gonna vote no to not support that. Any other comments, discussions, feedback? There were three admins there previous to last year, correct? Correct. For the most part? So it's not unprecedented, but yes. Right,

005due to enrollment though, we didn't see the need to hire a third administrator last year. Okay. Yeah, there was like discussion on that. But yes, correct. Previously, within the last few years, we had had three at the elevation. And this administrator would be coming from within our- That is correct. And it has nothing to do with the administrator, nothing to do with that. Just that the enrollment had gone down, we eliminated the position, now we're bringing it back. And I just have a concern with that. What's the concern? $130,000, and added to the administrative we already have when that enrollment has gone down. From at one point, it was like 880 kids, to like 580, 550. I don't even know where we're at right now. But it's gone down drastic. And when we had 880,

006we had two. And then we added a third along the way. And then last year, one left, we just decided to not fill it due to enrollment. If we were to move somebody from internally, would their position need to be filled? I believe so, yes. Okay. Would there be a case to not fill it? So I would say no. Great, yeah. I would think that we would need to fill that just based on the number of evaluations that need to be conducted at that particular building. But it's possible that we can fill it internally. Correct. That is also wonderful. Yeah, I mean, it's good to have options. It's good to know a little bit more of the depth to it. And obviously, I'm sure that, just a question, would the staff be very encouraged to

007fill it, right? I would assume. I would imagine so. And so, we've been pretty coy about what the assignments will be. And so, respectfully, I'd like to send a message to the staff tomorrow and let everybody know kind of where things are sitting. We've heard that feedback also, that people are just really curious about what's gonna happen in their buildings administratively next year. Sure. Yeah, no, I think that's wonderful. Yeah, all right, I'm good. Thank you. Any further? Yeah, Paul, this goes to you. Previously, when we had three administrators there at Summit Hill Junior High, was the flow better? It seems like things were able to get a little easier on the administration staff to be able to handle all the different things that go in and out of Summit Hill Junior High, which is

008a pretty big school itself. So, of course, more hands on deck makes the load a little bit lighter. I think that the administrators that we had last year did a good job with the hand that they were dealt. And we also started pulling other people in to help with some of the tasks that I thought maybe could be delegated out. But the administrative support is needed there. Any further? Can we have a roll call then? We have a motion to approve then the administrative assignments. Melissa Ryan. Aye. Patrick Oliphant. Aye. Joy Murphy. No. Adrian Chavez. Aye. John Winter. Aye. Ron Petrie. Aye. Amy Burke. Aye. Moving on to 4A8, approval of administrative contracts. Am I reading the whole thing? So we could have a motion for that and a second and then discussion. Okay, so

009I just wanna make sure I didn't. So if you look at 71 of your board book, can I have a motion that the Board of Education approve the administrative contracts as proposed? So moved. Second. Second. Do we have any discussion? Okay, can I have a roll call? Patrick Oliphant. Aye. John Winter. Aye. Amy Burke. Aye. Adrian Chavez. Aye. Joy Murphy. Present. Melissa Ryan. Aye. Ron Petrie. Aye. Motion carries. Moving on to 4B, old business, 4B1, approval of play area at Dr. Julian Rogus. So we're on page 97. Thank you. And I can give a little bit of background information on this. So the bidding process for the play area project at Dr. Julian Rogus School began in early June with a public notice in the newspaper. A pre-bid meeting was held on June 25th and

010bids were publicly opened on June 2nd, 2025. This timeline was established to align with the project schedule prepared by TRIA architecture. Following a comprehensive scope review conducted by TRIA, the lowest bidder was Schwartz Construction Group and the base bid was $155,905. The scope of work includes the installation of a 15,000 square foot asphalt play surface located behind the school, along with a small sidewalk connecting to the existing one. Completing this project will allow over 100 parking spaces, which are currently blocked off for student recess, to be reopened for staff and visitors during the day. An alternative was included in the bid documents, allowing contractors to propose a different substantial completion date. However, Schwartz Construction Group indicated no change to the specified date and submitted zero cost for the alternate. During the scope review, they confirmed

011their ability to meet the original substantial completion date of August 8th, 2025. After discussions with TRIA architecture, the administration recommends that the Board of Education award the construction contract inclusive of the base bid to Schwartz Construction in the total amount of $155,905 with substantial completion by August 8th, 2025. And then also at your places tonight, Walt has supplied some photos of DJR and then also the play surface for your consideration. So you should see some pictures that look like this one. So the large light green square is not the play surface. That's how we impose the play surface, which is not to scale necessarily onto this document. Just so you could take a look at where this was placed behind the building, which we think also increases the safety and security of our students, you'll

012see that there's a current white sidewalk that goes to the existing playground. So we would put a small sidewalk to the play surface as well. And then once completed, we would talk to the DJR administration and staff about how they would like to mark that. So do they want four square hopscotch basketball? Like what kinds of play activities would they like on this new surface? And again, with a school who's experienced a lot of traffic, especially during events, this would open up a piece of our parking lot that had been reserved on a daily basis for our students. So it accomplishes a lot of goals. And if you look at the very, very right-hand corner, that touches the property that we bought, but all of the play surface is in our existing property. So we

013put that behind the building just so it's adjacent to the playground. And Walt is here, if you have any questions, he's been working with the architect and the surveyors to make sure that this is put in correctly. Also, we're sheet draining this, so we're not necessarily putting in any inlets. And so there was a little bit of work to do with that. And then along the northern edge, we are going to put a small berm there with some of the spoils. And part of the reason for that is to ensure that any of the additional water does not go into our neighbor's property. And so all of that was approved, but we just wanted to be careful about how we designed it back there. So knowing that intro, do I have a motion? And then

014we can have discussion with Walt. Do I have a motion that the Board of Education award the construction contract inclusive of the base bed to Schwartz Construction Group incorporated in the total amount of $155,905 with substantial completion by August 8th, 2025. Do I have a motion? Amy, can I ask a question real quick before we make a motion for it? Yeah, absolutely. Something that Paul and I talked about a bit before, but I think it'd be good to state before we make the vote. Yeah. This possible addition is built into the budget, correct? So we're not asking for additional funds to do this. We're not going outside of our means or outside of our bounds. Because the functionality of this, I feel like, is a home run, you know, locking off the parking and having

015some of the students go for recess on one side of the building, some for the other. This way it kind of centralizes everything. I think it opens up the grass area to like kickball, you know, flag football, things like that. It just really opens up the avenues. But that's just my opinion. I just wanted to make sure that we got it out there, that we're not asking for additional funds for this. It's important for the people to know. The only question I have is the, it's Ash fault. Did you consider, or Walt, did you guys consider like that play surface? Yeah, we can discuss it. Don't we need to do a motion and then have all these questions and discussion? Yeah, so you just need a motion. Yeah, that would fall under that as motion.

016Correct. So can I have a motion? I got excited. And a second? Second. Okay, now, yeah, back to Joy's question. No, just I wondered if you considered like that rubberized play surface over the Ash fault. So before he gets to the microphone, I'm glad he's coming. That surface is very expensive. And so this was the least expensive alternative. But as far as that surface goes, in the event that in the future, we replace the playground in the courtyard, we are talking about taking all of the mulch out and putting in the surface that's behind Mary Drew in the playground area there. It's got the same kind of lifespan as the equipment itself, but it is very, very expensive. So now I'll turn it over to Walt. He can explain the rest of the good news.

017It's expensive. Is it? Yeah. I was looking it up online. Sorry, but it taught me how to talk, so I'm gonna beat you up. I was looking it up online and it sounded like it costed more, but there was like so many benefits to it. Yeah, there is for if you have play surface and writing. Right. But I mean, they should. I got a question. So because I want to familiarize myself with the process, what like, so what was the designing process like? How did you guys decide on that location specifically was there other options that you guys had considered? What kind of input went into kind of designing this? As always contact the administration first within the building, see what the needs are. They were always talking about congestion. They were talking about restriping

018the parking lot in different ways, shape or form to get more cars in there. So when it came to say, why don't we use some of this property? They liked the idea. They ran with talked about putting a camera on the outside of the building, which I believe been installed with Brian. So it's going to more centralize it. And then also the safety and security. When you come in off of 88th Avenue, you could go straight right back and they have these really nice orange cones to protect the kids, even though there's a big metal gate. So you would actually have to drive around. So that's why try to keep the kids as far away from. And the buses. So we said in the, in our little update here that it may offer a hundred

019more parking spots. Correct. Is that with the outer edge of Rogus parking lot? Just parking spots within that area. But what about in the morning? Like will teachers be able to park in those hundred spots? Yes. Even with the buses going back around? Okay. Okay, good. Thank you. So then I guess a question for the administration. So when we, when you decided on this location, what was the thought of the five years, 10 years down the road? Is there an expansion plan? How do you envision this kind of playing out? So much like Patrick had mentioned, we wanted to have it adjacent to the current existing playground. And we wanted the students out of the parking lot. So regardless of the safety issues, if there are no safety issues, if we close that part off,

020they're playing in a parking lot that is dirty. It has car traffic. There's things that come out of cars and it's where our students are playing. So we wanted it kind of tucked behind the building. If you think about Indian Trail, Indian Trail has a playground behind the building. And Frankfurt Square had one, Arbery had one. So this made sense to us. The size was based on our budget. So we anticipated that this would be about $100,000. That was our guesstimate. So in our initial conversation with the architect, it was how big can we make this within that budget that we can still get it approved so that they don't start asking for drainage. Now the price escalates exponentially. It did come in over budget. We had anticipated 100, it came in at 155. But

021conversely, the parking lot project that we estimated at 1.2 over at Walker came in substantially under. And so now you'll see shifting of resources to cover some of these other things that we wanted to get done. So yeah, my thought process was on the same line of his with long-term future, right? Are we thinking, can we, is this location selected in order to make additions later? Like, would be nice to have a basketball court up. Can we expand the blacktop if need be, you know? What is it? Upgrade the original. All of that. Yeah, what do you envision, I guess? Is there a gaga ball thing in the future? Who knows? There could be, I just need a good boy scout who needs an Eagle Scout project and then we'll have a gaga pit. So

022we have a lot of property there. Not just with the property that we purchased from the Archdiocese, but also all of the property that is behind DJR. So if you draw a line straight across the entire property, everything behind DJR, that already belongs to the district. So we have oodles of property there. If I'm thinking long-term, it's something that is gonna, it has fallen off kind of our goals list, but there is the potential for some solar energy. In the back, there's the potential for a walking path. In the event the Park District partners with us, they've casually mentioned that pickleball courts is something that they're interested in and they need some space for it. That would probably come with a small parking lot at some point in there. Now we're starting to drain water.

023So there would have to be some kind of a detention pond. I'd love to stock it. If we look at the success of the fishing club at Walker, I think that there's some opportunities for our younger students as well. And to turn that into a space that our residents can use. And so there are some plans. We talked a little bit about it in February at the board retreat, all kinds of ideas. So let's look a hundred years out from right now. So more than 10 years, we'll all be gone. I will not be the superintendent, you will not be the board in a hundred years. We have no idea what our community might need because we've already been here a hundred years. The needs are going to change. We may see a repopulation, we

024may not. It offers ample opportunity in the event at that point. One of our other buildings fails. You've got space to build there. Not that I think you need to, but I also don't know exactly what the needs are going to be in a hundred years. But it gives possibility. What I wouldn't necessarily want to do is put something that's irreversible on the property. So that in the event the needs change, the property could accommodate that. If you take a look geographically at our district, it's pretty close to the middle. It's kind of smack dab in the middle of our district. And so regardless of what that is, we've got opportunity. A portion of it is. So that is our one building that is served by the Frankfort Police Department, et cetera, et cetera. The

025other thing is we're a hundred years out from now and again, we are all gone. The district is in a financial bind. We own all of it, you could sell it. The reason that that front property couldn't sell is they did not have enough room to put like houses there and detain water and have an in and have an out. You really need it all. And so I talked to a couple of contractors who had poked around at that property. And that was the reason that the price kept coming down is that they were finding less and less people who could do something with it. But I know that there's opportunity out there. And as the needs change for the district, as long as we're not doing some kind of a permanent addition to any

026of that land, then the possibilities are out there. That's, thank you very much. That was a lot more than what I was kind of digging at. I was thinking just in the shorter term, something if we, you know, if the educators and the staff wanted, you know, to envision maybe a broader area directly surrounding there, that's something that we can plan in stages. Like just here's a 20,000 or a $30,000 adjustment in year one, a $40,000 in year two. That after five years, you look at it and it makes a substantial difference, but it would be a very much smaller hit to annual budgets that can be respectfully and properly planned for. 100%. The other thing that I'd like to add to that is in event this passes, I'd really like to take a look

027at what it's done to the traffic. What has it done to the traffic flow? Typically buses don't go back there except for our small buses who are picking up our full size school buses stay in front of the school. Is there enough room there? Is there enough parking? If all of those things are affirmative, we've got enough room, then we don't necessarily need to do anything else with parking structures or space or things like that. If we find that it continues to be overcrowded or if we have a big event, we still have cars out on the road and, you know, we're blocking traffic, there is the possibility now at a sidewalk in front of the property that we built and extend the bus lane, so if you're looking at your map, the bus lane

028right now comes right up at the edge of the old boundary line. There's nothing saying that we couldn't extend that a little further so that all of the buses could fit in front of the building. You could build a small parking lot there. That could be for our kindergarten teachers. That could be a kindergarten entrance. We could have buses drop there and so you're now dividing that student arrival into different pieces that would make it a little bit more manageable. So again, these are things that could be three, five, 10 or 100 years out. I do like having those things penciled in just for thought. So we're penciling in 100 years from now? 100 years, yes. So some, I forget who it was, but someone commented that they thought we were building. That wasn't necessarily

029the implication when I shared that map in February. We wanted to see with all that space, what could possibly go in there? Like what would it look like 25 years from now? Like what could we do with that land? And you just threw things in. I did. That was the best that I could get from our architect for free. So I am frugal, but we also talked, do we need another gym? Do we need a fine arts center? In the event that we did, the place to put them would be adjacent to kindergarten into that new space that we had purchased. Do I think that that's gonna happen anytime soon? I don't, but again, if the needs change, at least the possibility is there and future boards and future administrative teams can kind of weigh

030out what would be the best use of it. In the end, we could sit on all of this property for a decade or two and make a substantial amount of money if we sold it all. And again, depending on what the needs of the district are at that point, but that front piece can't sell without the back piece. So, and we own it all now. Everybody else was given this? Yes. Everybody out there, like they can see this? Is it in the public board packet? Probably not, but we can add it into the public board packet so if people are interested, they could look at it. And what we're looking at, what we're referencing is from Google Maps, it's looking down at Dr. Julian Rogus School, and then we've superimposed a little rectangle in the

031back where we proposed the place surface to be. I also remember last year when we took a tour around Rogus, you had said like there was like the ATV, the guys riding at night, like back and forth on the property. Do we have like signs up that say not permitted just so, cause now we're liable, not the archdiocese. Do we ever address that? I know it was kind of a small issue. I don't think we have signs up, but we probably should. And most of that chatter came in from residents who were repeatedly calling the police because people were driving around and disturbing them. And so we wanted it to be peaceful. I also know it's a great big piece of property. So if you have- But just to protect us though, like if the

032sign is up, does that protect us? Yeah. Okay. Yeah, it does. And then we would urge our residents if there's something going on out there that is inappropriate just to call the police. And we also have a lot of need for space as far as travel leagues and like as a community, as much as the school district owns it, I think it would be really fun for the whole community to be part of what that could look like someday because I really think there's huge interest in community, like building something that we can all go to, whether it's like a big open recreational center that travel teams could come in, practice, play games, a big, huge community pool. I mean, who knows what we can do, but there's a lot of potential there. So I

033think we just need to get some community input also. So I would want to work collaboratively with our park district. What I do know right now is with what they're doing at the old Frankfurt Square school site and with the park restoration just adjacent to Summit Hill Junior High. Right now they probably do not need more projects, but I would want to work collaboratively with them. They've done some really interesting ideas or have implemented some really interesting ideas like community gardens and things like that. And we've got the space for it. And so I think there is an opportunity there. I wouldn't necessarily want to put travel baseball right in the middle of all of those houses. Well, not travel baseball, but like if we need even more gym space, can then at night we

034rent that out or somehow just support the community with that open land? Yeah, I think so. My idea was Center Square Park, because we are Frankfurt Square. We don't necessarily have a local government because we're a piece of many different cities. And so the school district kind of stands in a place where we can be the tethering point for all of these different people and using a piece of property like that to help facilitate it, I think would be a great idea. I was wondering back to my original question of the park district. Like if you said partially, then how difficult is that gonna be? Would we need, is it two different park districts? Would it be Mokina and Frankfurt Square or how, how would, what is going on? Because I know it's really strange

035they got like Mokina, Fire, Frankfurt Police, Frankfurt Square Park District for part of it, but I was wondering the rest. We would have to look exactly where those lines are at and who serves who. But what I have found with our municipalities is they have been willing partners. And just about anything that we've thrown out there or vice versa, it seems like everyone is ready to pitch in and I'll use our libraries as evidence to that. We had the idea for summer reading and all of our public libraries are jointly working on that with the school district and we've had great, great success and great collaboration with them. So if we start to dream something like that, I think the earlier you can involve people so that they can be a part of the process

036also, the better impact it will have. Any further questions? Can we get a roll call? We have a motion to approve the bid to Schwartz construction in the amount of $155,905 with substantial completion by August 8th. John Winter. Hi. Patrick Goldfant. Hi. Joey Murphy. Hi. Melissa Ryan. Hi. Amy Burke. Hi. Ron Petrie. Hi. Motion carries. Moving on to 4B2 approval of 2025-2026 board goals. So once again, we'll motion to approve. Page again. 98. 98. It is 98. If you go to 98, and then 99 is the graphic. But do we have a motion that the board of education approve the board goals and action plans as presented? And then we can have discussion and modification. So moved. Second. Okay. So let's dig into these goals. Do we, if you look at 99, you can see

037the graphic and for the community, these are the ones that are always posted in the board agendas every week and that will be posted once it's approved by us, so you will see those. Hey Amy. And I will say that this is in draft form. So once the board has a chance to kind of work through it and it has been approved, then we'll post this for everyone to see. That way it'll be out there in the public. But so do I have suggestions, comments, modifications, positive things about the goals? I have a couple. One is goal one, student learning. And it's the fourth one. So it says increased resources for EC kindergarten readiness. I keep seeing the same worded the same for the last couple of years. And I just want a little bit

038more to it. I know Dr. McDermott, when you do your superintendent goals, you can add that, but I don't know what I want it to say, but I just want more. I want to start really. More clarity and clearness. Yep. So one piece that had been added to the superintendent kind of work list was within the next three years, what would our vision be for that building? And so we have a meeting set with Kim Zilka and Leslie DeBoer to sit down and start dreaming forward. Now that the park district is vacating the other third of the building, what do we want to use that portion of the building for? So I could write that in as developing like more of a plan, like a strategic plan for the full utilization of the building. That

039would be great. So developing a substantial plan. Yeah, or the strategic plan. Developing a substantial plan. Substantial or strategic. Thank you. I like that. Yeah, especially if it's been on there. It's, yeah. Let's get some metrics. Looking. Yeah, personally, we'll finish this part in October. As I say, I particularly like the section in the student learning about expanding, looking into expanding multilingual opportunities. I know I just had a neighbor frustrated because their daughter was told that they don't qualify to be and take Spanish class because their GPA wasn't high enough. And I think that I'm sure there's a good reason for that in functionality. But I think the optics and the reality is we're telling students if you're not good enough in other areas, you're not able to expand your mind and learn different languages.

040And I think we wanna make that inclusive to all student levels. Don't get me started. I think there's high interest, high need and our neighboring districts do it as well. Yeah, I was just very happy to see that. It's a step in the right direction. We've had this on the, we've had this last year, we had it on the goals. Correct, Paul? Like the EL. So EL support, yes. Multilingual learning, not necessarily. In the Friday report this week to the board, you'll see that there is movement in Springfield. You may see something heading to Governor Pritzker's desk about establishing some multilingual learning paths and so that's coming down the pike as well. So do we wanna add something like by increasing course offerings? I think that would be very helpful. I mean, it opens up

041the conversation but I think that would be very helpful. And then additional? Isn't there something though with like there's a rubric to get into Spanish? I think that was the point that I was bringing up is one of the rubrics is if your GPA isn't high enough, you're not allowed to get in. That's what they were told and I don't agree with that. But I know for years we've addressed this issue and I can't remember what it is verbatim, so. We had a Spanish program before? Did we have a Spanish program before? No, not that I know. So we didn't have a rubric before? Wait, what? So you're saying we had a rubric before for a Spanish program? To get in, yeah. Did we have a Spanish program before? Well, there's academic cuts. Yeah, there's

042academic cuts. Yeah, there's jobs. For other things is what you're saying. But we didn't have a Spanish program though before. Yeah, we have. We've had a Spanish program. We've had it, okay. That was my question. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So I think some of the rationale, and then I'll let John jump in. He's probably better versed at this than I am, is that the correlation to your ELA scores, what kind of grades you're getting in English, there is some transfer of skills over into learning another language. So there is a rubric. We don't have enough sections for every single student at this point. So the course offering comment that you made would be something that would address that. But there is a rubric that determines whether you're eligible to participate in Spanish. And really it's an

043acceleration program. It lines up with the high school so that if you take Spanish one and Spanish two here, it gives you the opportunity to advance more quickly at the high school. Just giving students additional opportunities there as well. All right, John, jump in. Just want to clarify too. We use the word multilingual kind of interchangeably. The state's probably looking at that as our English learners. So be cautious when you're reading the new update from the governor's office. They're probably considering what enhancements or supports you can offer to your multilingual students, but not speaking of adding world languages as an elective. It sounds like we're talking about both of those here. Like we want to support our students that have language needs, but we also want to offer opportunities for students to learn a new

044language. So those are two different things in our eyes. And we have offered world language as Spanish for quite some time now. Back in the day before my time, there was more of an exploratory version of Spanish. And then now we have what Dr. McDermott mentioned. It leads into completion of Spanish one for the high school level. So it doesn't give you high school credit, but it allows you to bypass Spanish one and jump into Spanish two when you get to one of the cycles. Yeah, I would just like to add maybe the language of expanding access, right? Because then it includes of several different avenues, expanding access to multilingual programs. I like that. Yeah. I mean, because we're not just talking about the possibility of expanding for the curriculum like an actual, like in

045the junior high or like, but also like, if didn't we at one point talk about maybe like an extracurricular, like, or the clubs, like if there was any possibility of, and then to introduce that earlier. And down the line immersion, different immersion courses or experiences. I'd be remiss if I didn't say anything, but. So, you know, definitely keeping in mind that we want to work towards, you know, getting accreditation and working towards our high school, but it's just the nature of the world right now that we have much more Spanish speaking. We have much more other languages. And anytime you do learn another language, it kind of just opens up so many other pathways to different careers, to different income brackets, to different experiences, exposure around the world outside of our district. So I think

046there's so much more of a benefit other than just getting grades. So I understand the focus on qualifying to get into it and then also making sure that there's a focus and a pathway into the high school. However, I'm kind of, me personally, obviously, I'm looking at more of like a holistic approach where it's not just about the grades and it's not just about qualifying into it. Lord knows I didn't do very well in math, but heck, speaking two languages took me very, very far. You know, so those are pathways for some of our students who may not be, on one hand, they may not be very good in other subjects, but this could be a subject that they could master or something that maybe even they can parlay into other languages or drive interest

047in learning a different language. It doesn't have to be Spanish, but I just think that it's something that we would just be really hamstringing our kids. And I personally, I've shared with others, going to school here, I was an English learner, but I didn't really have any kind of programs to teach me English. I just learned it from MTV like every other kid. But a lot of our focus, at least in my opinion, is our English speaking kids learning a second language. I think we have a lot more of them, and I think that with a more holistic approach, we'd cast a bigger net, we'd offer some more kind of pathways to the future for our kids. Are you familiar with the seal of biliteracy? So this is a seal of biliteracy. This is not

048something that we're eligible for at our level, but if we prepare our students with a solid foundation and a dual language, they can continue with that language in high school and then sit to take an assessment and perhaps be honored with the seal of biliteracy. So we wanna push that for both avenues. Like you mentioned, someone who is already a multilingual learner coming to us, let's capitalize on that asset and continue to promote it. But then also for our monolingual students, which you said is the majority is accurate, how can we support them as well and maybe introduce a new language? Sorry, Mr. No, it's good. I like what Melissa said too, is starting a club too so those kids can start learning in the club when they're in the fourth grade, and then as

049they get into the higher grades, that's a great way to introduce them and expose them, see if they like it. But to your point, in my job yesterday, we had a crash where a car went underneath a truck and airbag went off and the Hispanic guy was pretty banged up, but he was tough enough. But he spoke no English at all. And I speak a little bit of Spanish enough to be dangerous, I always say. But I used AI too to help me bridge the gaps. But it's so prevalent in our job. And in an emergency situation, it's not great to just be able to go back to grok and go back and forth. It's better to have that direct communication. So it does. A lot of departments will look at you in favor if

050you spoke a second language. Arabic is also really big too. You can't chew off everything, but it's very prevalent in our area too. Let me share some language to see if this fits. Let's go. So to that point, adding, offering students additional opportunities to learn another language by expanding access K-8 through extracurricular clubs, course offerings, and more. Great. Real quick question. Why do we get rid of the Spanish program in Hilda Walker? Is it because we didn't have enough student interest? Or is it just something that we decided to pull away? Because we go K through 6th grade with art. And then when they get to Summit Hill, they have the chance of either going to the art program or they go through the Spanish program. They make that choice. I was just wondering, why

051are we pulling it from our fifth grade and sixth grade school when every student goes to that school as well? It was a great program. No, I don't know the reason. It was before my time. So we call that cycle rotations at Walker. And if it was in that rotation, it would have been one of the trimesters, well, quarters at the time. At the junior high, it does split off, though. It's either Spanish or encore. So that would be beyond art. It's art, music, an action lab, and calling it Explorer, but the entry-level version. So if we do consider adding something, we would want to ensure that what the Spanish teachers are currently offering is the high school's version. We're using their curriculum, the same text. We meet often and pair and talk about assessing

052students in all areas, listening, speaking, and such. So we would want to continue that path, probably, as well, if this is going to allow you to bypass high school Spanish 1. Maybe an introductory level Spanish is available, too. Just a little something to piggyback on that. Every country around the world, they introduce other languages at a much younger age, because that's how you adopt it. And so I can tell you, I went through Spanish in high school. And at that point, it's kind of almost too late. You're kind of only dipping into it. The younger, the better. And you just get more confidence. Yeah, you have less inhibitions. But it's, I mean, heck, there's trips to DC. There's no reason you can't do a trip to Puerto Rico. You can get real creative with it.

053Yeah, sorry, I will get passionate about it. An additional thing is, in the first through fourth grade schools, we have those extracurricular activities at the end of the school day, where kids can sign up and do things. Has there ever been a talk about having a Spanish during that time? Because that would be interest there, too. Especially if we open up from K through 6. If we open up five and sixth grade, Hilda Walker again to Spanish, and we decide to move that direction, it would open up the opportunity from first grade all the way through then. So we have had conversations with our two Spanish teachers when it's a tricky time, when you have to look at the identification criteria, and you have to tell some students, no, we didn't make it. So one

054idea was offering that zero-hour option. Come in early, and you can have an intro course that's not academic-based, we're not worried about your grade, we're just learning the language. And then that was just in a discussion phase. We also attempted to offer it in the summer program for the enrichment programs, but there were too few students signed up for that opportunity. So she's since moved on from that one. But yeah, there were thoughts of adding other opportunities as well beyond the school day. Gracias. Moving on to a different part, I really like the idea, and I'm just wondering what ideas or thoughts were into it in the goal number two, community and communications section about launching and refining a new central website for all district information and communications. We've got it. I was going in,

055I was just going to say same one. We have the new website done. And then what were you going to go ahead, what were you going to? No, I think our website now is very functional, but I think it can be better. I was just going to say, so we can take out the launch and put refine central website for all district information and communications with a focus on user friendliness for high importance topics or a high use for priority topics or, yeah. I think we can definitely refine and improve it. And there may be more interactive possibilities. But with the things that people want to access quickly. I've been through the website, and so I could have missed it, but do we have any like resource for parents, like you're in first grade, second

056grade, third grade, here's math, go to this for extra help, like Khan Academy. Do we have anything on the website that would point parents towards beyond their teacher or whatever to get extra help for different programs or anything like that that might be available? Because I know when Johnny was struggling with math, one of the parents, actually it was our student board member's parent, she said, look at Khan Academy and we started doing that and it did help. And again, I could be wrong, it could be on the website, I just didn't see it. But if we don't have it, that might be a good expansion to like first grade parents, second grade parents, here's this great resource here and there for learning extra things your kids can do over the summer, extra things your

057kids can do at home, after school, that would help enhance some reading and math or different subjects or whatever. So maybe more like a resource type of thing. I wouldn't say you missed it. Usually put a listing of like available resources other than the ones the district subscribes to. So like Freckles is a good example of that. And everything we use goes through ClassLink. So we talk a lot about ClassLink, ClassLink, ClassLink. So if you're looking for any information, you would want to go to ClassLink to find those apps. So what we did this summer was gear parents up for logging into ClassLink and on your home device and accessing those resources for keeping the learning going at home. So there's a page on there called summer learning. And that's maybe we could take that

058and shift it into not just summer learning, but just learning outside of the classroom. And you would have some of those options there. Perfect, yeah. So it's already there, it's through ClassLink. We can just expand it a little bit. With a focus on summer right now. Yeah, perfect, yeah. Thank you. Yeah. Who added this? But it's prioritized student health and wellness in relation to diet, movement, educational, and more. Yeah. Zero in on that one a little bit because that's pretty, that covers a lot. Maybe even separate it. I think I chipped that in and part of it was, because this is my first go at it, I kind of wanted to give it a little bit more of a, I was kind of giving direction to be a little bit more general with it so

059that we can discuss how to kind of zone in on that. Cause it's got a lot, like I love the movement part. Diet, are you talking about more so than lunch? Well, for sure, absolutely. You know, I think educating our kids on their diet and health should be an earlier task. And especially, you know, with some of the movement that's been going on as far as trying to get healthier diets and what have you and the studies that have come out on the health of our kids, the lack of movement, the digital age has not done us any favors. So we're, you know, how to skin that cat, I'm not too sure. Sure. And so I want to make sure we rely on the staff and then on the administration to kind of help me

060with that, I guess, as to what is feasible. Cause you know, it's a big ask, like you said, Joy, you're right. But I want to put a plan in place to chip away at that and make that a priority that's documented and measured and we can have some sort of progress on that. So even if it's going back to educating kids on the basics of diet and, you know, how much, you know, how calories matter and how burning calories matter and what burning calories actually look like. So I know a lot of that's done in health class, obviously. So can we maybe say produce a functional plan that prior to a functional long-term plan that prioritizes and then. That gets the ball rolling, yeah. I mean, those things. We already started that ball rolling too.

061Yeah. By looking at the food we are actually giving to these, the DASH program that we're actually, that we're using this year for the students, so. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Should I add K through eight on the end of that bullet point also? Cause we talked a little bit about starting earlier. Yeah. And we do have some fitness gram data. So there is some PE data that we can extrapolate. What happened to, sorry to ask this, this is genuinely curious. What ever happened to that, the president's test or whatever that they do? Physical test. I'm just curious. Mr. Carlson did. I could never pass it cause I'm not flexible. I could do the shit and reach. My kids asked the same question. What's that? Do we still do that, John? I don't even know. We do

062still test. But it's morphed into some of those pieces. Like the Pacer test and all those things. You do them a couple times a year. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yep. And they have to record them at certain grade levels to go out to the state. So we do them at multiple levels, but we report them out at certain levels. And each summer we have to submit our healthy fitness zone information. We still keep records of like our top athletes and stuff like that? Maybe in the schools they might recognize like, am I bad? Just anything that we could figure out to incentivize. Did you win ribbons, Adrian? I lost. Is what was, I lost a lot more than I won for sure. But anything to incentivize a refocus on fitness. It's definitely part of

063health, junior high. Every PE teacher incorporates health at the elementaries, at Walker, everywhere. But then it becomes a designated class once you get to the junior high. I'd just like to measure how good of a job we're doing at that and then try to better that. That's all. I don't know how good we are at this point. One more point I wanted to bring up. In goal number four, human and fiscal resources. One, I really like seeing develop a tenure operations, I think the idea of adding line items to the budgets per building will help us better understand and track our spending needs per property. And after about three years of tracking that data, it will give us a much clearer opportunity to understand where we need to go for each property. But that is

064a huge step in the right direction because as the previous board and I'm sure many boards before said, nobody wants to see a surprise of $100,000, $150,000 that could have easily been prevented with an operations plan, right? But below that, enhanced resources for staff development through continuous improvement in areas such as differentiation, artificial intelligence and more, it's a bit of a mouthful. I'm not really sure what we meant by differentiation, just to clarify, because if I'm not sure, I'm sure. It means meeting staff where they are. To me, it means meeting staff where they are, like if some are already experienced with that or are willing to be leaders and model, things like that. So meeting, some people might have no experience or no comfort level in certain things. So to me, that's how I

065interpret that. Yeah, okay. Meeting them where they're at as far as- I mean, staff development. Agreed. I would say development and support, actually. Development and support. Development and support. Because things are accelerating rapidly in those fields and it's gonna make a big difference in success in these fields. So I think that is a wonderful thing to put- That was in there last year. Did we, do we have anything yet? Yes. Okay. So we do have the 2021 facilities audit that was conducted by TRIA. So Walt takes copious notes in his version of that document to check up things that have been completed and add things that come up over time. But we've also established a roofing plan, a pavement plan. So like, how are we spending our money so that we have a placeholder in

066the budget so it's consistent over time? Versus, surprise, we have to seal coat every lot. We're seal coating a third of our lots this year, a third next year, a third the next year, and the dollar amount stays the same, plus like an inflationary percent. Yeah, personally, I would like to emphasize, please rely on Walt's interpretation of that TRIA report because I've worked with reports like that before. And certain recommendations that they make are fairly erroneous because if you're not spending time on the property, getting into it, you're not gonna understand what the real needs are compared to, well, from 30,000 feet, generally this is something you need to do. Walt's input will override some of those recommendations because he understands what's happening. So that's not to be the letter of the law in my

067opinion from my professional experience. So I just, again, huge support to Walt. Thank you for everything. And your opinion on those matters I think are very, very valuable. So how would you reword that then instead of develop the plan, utilize the 10-year maintenance plan to do what? Like what you were alluding to. How would you? But we also need to see it, be educated. Then, actually, I don't know. I, he put words on this. I've always used that. I know we will do part of the roof at Indian Trail. And it seems like not long after we're putting, we're fixing the roof at Indian Trail again. And I really do wish we saw like what was done what year and then. Sure. I think. You asked for this plan for longer than Paul. Right, yeah.

068And to Paul's point, it is in place. But I think the language could be improved by saying continue developing and refining the 10-year plan. Because we do have something in place, but each year we're gonna gradually get better with the improved line item assessments. And really understanding where our money's going instead of looking at one large pool of spending. We're gonna break it down into like 20 and start to see real variance points and make huge improvements. Is this facility audit report available online on the website? Yeah, I think we put the entire thing online. It is on. And to Joy's point, the Summit Hill Junior High Roof will all come out of warranty at the same time because there are no additions to the building. So what you see is when there's an addition

069put on a building like Indian Trail, we put a gym on, the lifespan of the gym roof is gonna be different than the original academic area. And we actually have, in our roofing plan, we have all of the roof footprints and the year that the warranty expires. So we have all of that and we can share that with the board. Can't we also use that Buildings and Grounds Committee too to have that utilized so then they can explain it to back to the public as well. So can we throw that in there as well with that? Yeah, so and frequent share outs with Building and Ground Committee and Board. I think that would help. Yes. Yeah, please get back to us with that information, yeah. Yeah, I think that just continuing to refine it I

070think is very helpful. And it says- And using the Buildings and Ground Committee for frequent share outs and reports, yeah. Yeah. It says explore hiring employees with varying certifications. So Dr. McDermott, this question is for you. Explore hiring employees with varying certifications, HVAC, electrical, et cetera. Are we still exploring that or are we, because I know we talked about it last year. So it comes down to funds. And when you look at a particular vendor, if you're doing HVAC equipment and you're spending $400,000 a year on HVAC repairs, how much of that is parts? How much of that is labor? And at some point, does it make sense for us to bring someone on staff that has that expertise and can just work every day in the district? Same thing with carpentry, painting, some of

071those other trade skills. So I think Walt's a big advocate of that. I'm probably the slow down in the process because I negotiate things between Julie and Walt. So here's the money and here's the want. And at what point does it make sense for us to do that? So we are continuing to investigate that. I think I've probably made the most movement on painting, although I'm not there yet. But just to explore that and when do we hit a point where it's advantageous to the district to just have our own people here? And again, adding in those line items into the budget is going to help us better understand where we can put more of a focus to what you were just mentioning, Paul, and how quickly we can reach a return of investment. And

072right now as it stands, we really don't know what our return of investment will be because we're just looking at lump sum payments in the budget book. But continuing to refine it will give us a much better movement and understanding in where we can allocate some resources to have a very quick return of investment for long term success and sustainability. It's worth noting, sorry, this is just a two second thing. It's worth noting, we all come and go. Superintendents, board members, students come and go, staff comes and goes. The buildings remain. It should be really critical in our focus to make sure and invest in the long term sustainability of our properties because they become a part of us. I very much so remember my grade schools. Very much so. And I'm still proud of

073them. Everybody there was long gone now, I'm sure. But let's give that gift to our future kids. And the nice thing is we can pull financial reports based on vendor. So this roofing company, this is how much we spent. This plumbing company. So when you have a list like you're explaining and you pair that with where the dollars are going, it makes a lot of sense. So let me read this back to you because I've been taking a lot of notes. So let's see. Continue to refine a tenure operations maintenance plan through line items per building and utilizing the buildings and ground committee. I don't wanna go backwards, but I do wanna ask a question about that facilities audit report. You said it was done in 2021. So how often do they recommend one of

074those be done? That's a good question. Walt. And before then, are we adding any additional capital assets, for instance, everything that was done at Mary Drew, just so we're keeping track of all that and that we're not waiting for the 10 years to then take all of that into account? Julie, you can jump in on that one too. While he's walking up, I think he could speak to this because I actually in-depthly looked into that report. Did you look at a lot of notes on it? So it's very, it's staged over the course of 10 years, but a lot of the additions like we did to the Mary Drew, like it wasn't in there. Well, that's what I'm saying. So are we keeping track of that? We're not waiting until the next one's done. We

075should, I mean, the stuff's gotta be depreciated. I get that. But like, again, when we're looking at the budget, are we taking those assets into account that we put those in the budget as they're coming due for maintenance or replacement? I mean, I'm just gonna say, but that's from, yeah, it's architects and engineers looking at their five-minute view of walking into a classroom, looking around, and then walking to the next one, opposed to daily operations, where it's more mechanical, electrical plumbing that you're looking at. As far as the depreciation of the assets, that's more of, in my thinking, is reconstruction. As far as maintenance, that's a different issue. And this is, that report is more looking at the maintenance in the long term. So when I look at everything, I'm looking at the maintenance and

076making sure that we can cover our staff. Okay, thank you. To piggyback on Walter's point about the maintenance not being technically accounted for in there, couple of years ago, we replaced a cooling tower that was here for three years. And that was not in the tree architecture report. No. I can guarantee you that. And that's maintenance-related. And that's why I'm asking, because I don't, it's just, I get the feeling that maybe this was an issue in the past, that it wasn't really- It's a false understanding. Following it so that we don't have that happening again. So yeah, those reports are a snapshot. And they're looking at the life safety code and the things that are changing consistently on their end. But the main thing that we have to look for and to help with the

077budget and to anticipate those long-term. So that's, like Paul was saying, we've got the roofing, we've got the pavement, looking at mechanical equipment. I have Jackie going in. She's been helping me over the summers go in and actually get model serial numbers. And we're pulling manufacturer recommendations of what that equipment. So Brian's helping the new softwares that we're getting. We're able to track those. So should it say explore hiring employees or should we reword that? I'm sorry, the same one. I think the develop of 10-year operational maintenance plan probably covers all of that. So you can take that out. You can take it out. Well, I kind of like it. It's just a goal. It's just a goal, you know. That's true. And even if we start with just one, if it is just the

078painting to see if it's worth. Yeah. And when you start with a goal, when you start with a goal on all these things, they're gonna evolve. So it's okay to keep it in there. And we may never move towards employer hiring an employee because Paul looks at the financial benefits. The insurance is too much money. It's better to, you know, financially it's better to outsource that stuff. So it's okay to hire in house. Yeah, exactly. Or it's better to hire in house because we're spending way too much money. Absolutely. But yeah, just leave it in there. I think if we keep it, it's just a matter of it being incorporated in plan or following up with it every so often just to see where the status is and where we're at with that. Well, then

079we just accomplish that too with the custodial. Right, so we already, that goal has been, we've been working on it. The letter of the law we're talking about. No, what Ronnie's saying is it's already starting to, you know, think about. To look at those things. Exactly right. To save money. To look at, yeah. Okay. Yeah. Any other goals that we want to look at or address? I'm sorry. It's goal two, the very last one, continue usage of the Parent Guardian Academy. I love that. And I was wondering if we could consider, cause I know one of the biggest, the best turnout was when we had a guest speaker come in. It was during the cell phone. I think, so with outside resources would be a good thing to put in. But really, like we kind

080of find some really good speakers. Yeah, we even talked about doing a tax one, explaining the levy with the outside resources. So maybe adding something to with. Like use our in-house, but try to get some guest speakers to come in to really speak about the issues. I mean, that one was definitely the best attended. Pack and talk about buildings for like three hours. You can. Yeah, we'll just put them up there. Sure. You can talk. I can do that? Yeah. In two languages. I have one more, if we could just take a look at, I'm not sure how to modify it, but the one that says goal two, number two, differentiate iPad and Google needs for staff and emphasize using as a tool, not sole use of instruction. So something about going back to basics,

081I think from survey and different feedback and things we've heard, we don't wanna focus so much in the technology with the professional development. This year, you wanna go back to basics and allowing teachers to have the time that they need or resources they need to work together. And is there something we could modify that goal with maybe to look more at that? So maybe like establish a foundational basic understanding with teacher input. So based on what? Differentiate instructional resources based on teacher input in need or basic. Paul has some input. Okay, I was gonna say something along the lines of differentiating staff instruction based on teacher input in need. Would they return to basics or would they return to foundational elements? Yeah. Something like that. What did you, you had some input too, Paul, you

082thought? Hold on, John. Differentiate staff instruction based on feedback in need with an emphasis on foundational skills? Does that sound? Does that sound? Does that jive with everybody? All right, so any other? I think we've had a really thorough, good discussion and I'm excited with the. I got one question. Paul, is there anything that you wish was on this list as far as a goal? Something that maybe, check our blinds. Is there anything that maybe you'd like to stretch on or you'd like to explore? Not at this time. The goals are pretty consistent from last year to this year. We've added one and that's safety in school environment. So that's kind of got its own compartment. Where we really get into it, the nuts and bolts of it are in the action plans and those

083are all of the things listed beneath the goals. And I mean, I think it's pretty thorough. Additionally, there is this other superintendent's list of things that we should be working on. I think there's 15 items on that list. About half have been completed. And that originated not in, you have to complete them this year. It was as we look out across multiple years, that's the direction we wanna go. So I use that in conjunction with this document to like move these forward. So I'll never be able to accomplish all of these things, but that goes back to our setting ambitious goals. We could set some really safe non-measurable goals and then pat ourselves on the back and be really happy about it, or we can stretch. And maybe we come up short in a few

084areas, but maybe we go a lot further in some other areas. And I think that's what we should celebrate. And then we model that for our employees. Even when we get down into, how would you set a student growth goal? You could be really safe. The data will tell you to set it at two RIC points. You know, you'll make it. So is that really a goal? No. And I would say no. So I like the ambition. And I think everyone in the group and on the team understands it's ambitious and that we're gonna take a swing at it and see how far we can go. I'm excited about prioritizing employee value by offering opportunities for voice and agency within the school environment. So we're gonna actively solicit employee feedback and ensure appropriate support is

085in place. So that'll be a good one to just kinda get a good cadence built in. Excited. So with that, can I have a new motion that the Board of Education approve the Board of Education Goals and Action Plan as modified here in this discussion? Motion. Are these? No. With his amended, all the amendments that we made tonight. Okay. So that motion includes all the amendments that we made this evening. So moved. Second. Roll call. Roll call. Amy Burke. Aye. Adrienne Chavez. Aye. Melissa Ryan. Aye. Joy Murphy. Aye. Patrick Goldfine. Aye. John Winter. Aye. Ron Petrie. Aye. Motion carries. We have a lot of work to do. Moving on to for new business, 4C1, discussion of virtual server. Brian, this is a introductory for us to process for next month's overtime, and yeah. Don't worry.

086Everybody else in the back has already texted me that I should not talk longer than 45 minutes. So I- Get the cane out. 45 minutes. Public comment, Brian. Public comment. I graciously applied and said I will work on that. So yes, this is for information, just so it could be introduced. And then yes, I would look for the board to vote on this for next month. So to kind of just publicly put it out there, currently in our network, we have one physical virtual machine server. Virtual machine is really a single piece of hardware that hosts multiple servers, optimizing resources and reducing expenses, which doesn't require us to have multiple servers doing one task at a time. For many years, the software we're using for our virtual machine is called VMware. It is the de

087facto standard that was out there for years in enterprise data centers. But in November of 2023, VMware was acquired by Broadcom, and they began to change their licensing structure. And so other schools have started to see that licensing structure change. They've seen the quality of support from VMware decrease. So that's on the software side. Additionally, our virtual machine, in the sense of the physical server itself, is about eight years old in a server life expectancy. While it can be seven to 10 years old, we're in that threshold where we should be replacing that device. So our server runs critical infrastructure. So DNS, DHCP, our building automation systems, we moved our print management fleet software there. It takes care of some management for all of our projectors and screen beams, and it runs our backup software.

088So there are critical things that run on this piece of equipment. And so while we're looking at the idea of replacement, the idea of trying to replace this is really looking at how do we make this process better with not kind of having a single point of failure. And so in this introduction, I kind of gave you four different options. And so option one and two was still trying to stay with VMware, but it was still a single point of failure, right, where we're still buying one brand new server. And we know while that server might be brand new, we know that a hardware failure could still happen. And so my concern is that it's still that kind of single point of failure. Option four, which was to move everything into the cloud, while it

089sounds great, it is a very high monthly cost, the annual cost over this five year period. That brings us to this idea of option three, which is to move to a company called Scale Computing. And what Scale Computing did was really brought us into a clustered computer. And so instead of having one physical server, we would have three clustered computers that would balance the workload. And so if one of those servers did die by accident or by something happened to that, you still had two other servers that had and had the capability of taking care of the load for the time being until that node got brought back online. It also allowed us to cross replicate. So we were able to replicate our servers here at Mary Drew to Summit Hill and our server that

090we have at Summit Hill will then get cross replicated here. And then we also implemented this year, separate from this altogether, but we all implemented an offsite backup of all of our servers to an offsite data center as well to just improve our standpoint. So if something happened here on site, we have an offsite copy of all of our servers as well. So in a very, very quick way here, I personally believe I think our best option is to look at Scale Computing and move forward with that option. Really because it improves our process. It improves our virtual server process. It gives us redundancies that we didn't have with VMware. We know, I know many other K-12 institutes that are moving from VM to K-12. Actually one of them is Mokina 159. There I've been

091on a scale cluster for the past three years. They talked, just today I met with him and they talked about how their support has been fantastic. It's US based, it's Indiana. They needed something, it was overnighted. And so you're looking at that kind of quality of support for their product. But it's one of those things where, again, this server is running our business continuity, right? What is the cost of if our server goes down and the business office stops running, the phone stops working, the ability to get to the internet, our curriculum stops working. And so this cost is $50,000 over a five year period, but what would the cost of having something go down cost us in the sense of the district in the lost idea of being able to continually run our operations.

092And so for me, I believe our best option is to move to scale computing because it replaces the hardware, but it improves the process and gives us the redundancy that we didn't have prior. Did I do okay? That was good. Awesome. I have a couple of quick questions. So this is something newer that's being used, but not brand new. They've been doing this in other districts or other entities now. In the sense of- The cluster versus a single server. Yeah, so scale computing is not like brand new. It's probably become more popular now in the past two years really because of VMware changing their licensing structure. If you had a single server go down, does it slow everything down or would that affect one school or it's- You would never know. You would never know.

093Cool. And then the last question I had was the other district that you mentioned that you've been speaking with, have they been really happy with that? Have they said we're having very little issue? And obviously I heard the part you said when they did, they were like Johnny on the spot, but they said they had very little issue with this type of setup? Correct. So included in that, and so just to kind of give you an idea, included in that $50,000 over five-year cost is the cost of installation as well. And it is a five-year, like next business day warranty on the entire cluster itself. An example he gave was he was upgrading something and something happened. He called at 1030 at night. He's like the on-call person at night picked up and helped them

094through that process. So he was very surprised at just how much they were available and how quick they were to respond and help. Nice, and I don't see any big differences between option one, two, and three. It's very negligible, so. Yeah, I mean I think it's, if we're trying to spend all money equally, are we getting more benefits with scale, I think so, than we are staying with VMware. Yeah, thank you. Can you help me understand then why cloud hosting is so much more expensive? Is it that much better? Is it that much more of a big-time solution? Who is using that? Just so I understand what the difference is. Sure, I mean with moving everything off to the cloud, so you're paying a premium to move all your data and you're paying for their

095processing, their memory, their storage. You're paying for them to rent the space in some data store, in a data warehouse. So you're paying for that physical security, that rack space, that equipment, and then they need to make money on top of that. So I'm just curious, does it better, our experience, is it that much better? Like yeah, what's? For us it wouldn't be better, no. For a company like larger companies, if they were looking for co-locations, sure. For us, no, it wouldn't make sense for us to have that. Here at Mary Drew, I mean we have two internet circuits, we have a backup generator, we have air conditioning in there, I mean we are able to do the things that we did, we enhanced our backup structure, like we're doing a lot of good things

096here internally. Yeah, I'm just wondering why the Lamborghini was on the options, you know? I just wanted to show you. I know, that's good, that's good. You just need to see the options that exist out there. 100, I agree. I was gonna ask, so kind of a theoretical question. Today, you're saying that we have just one physical virtual machine now operating it, correct? Correct. That were to go down, you're saying that we would lose all telecommunication abilities and internet options for the entire district? We have a backup, we have a secondary DNS service sitting over at Summit Hill, I mean that would pick up, and so I mean we'd have limited functionality going on, but it would be. How limited? I'm sorry. How limited? I mean you basically, you'd have some limited functionality, I mean

097we'd have basically some internet access, but you lose your building automation systems, and so what you're looking at doing is then looking at building a box from scratch to get stuff restored from backups. Yeah, so it's like, it's just a. So you know, what we're talking about. An emergency server essentially is what we have. Correct, what I have right now is I have basically a chassis that is the same type of our VM server that's in the rack right now on standby, and hopefully if something did, God forbid, happen to it, you know, you're hoping that you can swap drives in. Sure, no, totally understand. And boot it back up, so you know, if you did lose something like that, that was the problem with the VM part of it, which was that you're not

098able to recover in minutes, you're talking about hours because you're recovering from like full backups. Sure. Versus just quick snapshots. I'm just asking because I wanted to see what the like catastrophic downside would be if we decided to table this for a year. I'm not saying we are, I'm just saying let's think about this. If we were to table this for one year and continue with business as usual as we have it set up now, what would the dangers be? But we do have a backup process. Like you said, it would take a matter of hours because you'd have to take the server from one location, reboot it into the next one, and hope that everything works. But it is some lifeline, but it comes with high risk. Am I understanding that correctly? I would

099like to use an analogy and say it's like having a car over 100,000 miles. Does it still work? Absolutely. Sure. The cost of repairs after 100,000 miles start becoming more expensive. That makes more sense. I'm more concerned with the redundancy and the backup. And is this a real Achilles heel right now? Cause I mean, that could be a real problem. So yeah, I mean, right now our backup structure is we're backing up in two locations. We're backing up to Summit Hill to have an onsite backup. And then we're also backing up directly to a data center offsite. So we have an air-gapped backup. Yep, we started that July 1st. I mean, that's very helpful. So I think it could be conceivable that this could be tabled for a year since we have that. I'm not

100saying that we do, I can see. Yeah, I mean, the board is, you're able to do what you want. I would not recommend, I think you're running a... That's what I'm looking for. The real downside recommendations. Yeah, I mean, the real downside recommendation is you have six really important servers. I mean, what is the cost of losing your building automation servers for hours? I thought we had servers go out in one of the schools or something. Like phones or something. Yeah, it was like phones. We had it. I mean, we've had power outages and we had a fiber cut. The good thing is we have one month of you processing this and you're coming up with any other questions that you can prepare for Brian. Yeah. So, I mean, again, so while you're seeing this

101as a total cost of ownership of five years at $50,000, a year one cost is 29,000. So I wanna make sure that we're not spending $50,000 in year one, we're spending 29,000 in year one and then it's 7,000 for four more years. In all part of your budget. Correct. This was budgeted, like this is not another ask like this is something I'm coming to you as a board as a leader of technology telling you that we should be proactive in this and not wait because I will tell you that we're gonna spend a lot more money if this goes down because we're gonna be working and calling in consultants to make sure that this stuff comes back. Can you explain more in detail the VMR when they basically took our license and they discontinued the

102license you said because we were supposed to be covered in 2026 on the current contract. What does that look like? Because obviously we have to pay more money now. That's what I'm looking at right here. So can you explain that? Sure, I can explain the license. So yes, you're absolutely right. Our current license with VM goes through like September of 2026. That was our license where we're currently paying $485. It's a sweet, sweet deal. They've completely changed it now and they've changed it to a minimum of what they consider 72 core. So a core is like a virtual processor that they determine on these servers. In any of these servers, I'm only using 16 or I'm only purchasing 16. So I'm paying for almost 55 more core than I really need. So I went from

103485 at a three-year license to now paying at a minimum 3,600 and multiplying that by five years. So I'm at $18,000 just in VMware licensing alone. So I went from 485. Let's just say if we took it over five years and said, let's just double it and say, okay, we're at 900. I went from 900 at five years to now 18,000. And that is currently what we have current right now. If we stuck with what we had, that's what we're gonna have to pay anyways. Correct. If you sat there and said, Brian, you're gonna stay with VMware, then I would come back and tell you, we are now on a bill to pay $3,600 on a product that I'm not even gonna use all those cores for. And so what VM is doing is what

104they're really trying to get rid of the small and medium business. And they're really focusing on, as they said, the top tier of data centers and even consultants. Like the consultants that I've used that are like those boutique, not law firms, boutique network specialists, they are going by the wayside. They're being discontinued by VM and they're being phased out because VM is specifically focusing on those who want to pay the enterprise licensing price. So therefore the option three is basically you're telling us that we're getting the best bang for our buck. We're not overspending. We're getting exactly what we want to get out of it because if we stay with VM, we're obviously paying money that we don't have to use. Correct. So VM, you're overpaying in licensing and you're still in a one-to-one, like

105option two, I tried to at least do something where I could try to fell over to a server over at Summit Hill where here, at least if you look at option three, you're saving money in the hardware costs and your annual costs are maybe a little bit more. But yes, scale computing, you're getting redundancy in your master cluster because you're getting three computers instead of having one single computer. So that FAR data center that you have right now where you're putting extra data, we would get rid of that data center then? Nope, I'd still keep that because you would do that as part of like a cybersecurity stuff. So if like malware or anything got into our building here and got into any of our backups here, we still have an air gap backup that

106is completely different here. So we could always go back to those and know that those are unaffected from any ransomware, malware, or anything of that. Thank you, Brian. Thank you. It wasn't your fault, that was ours. It was time. Yes, if you do have more questions about this process and this upgrade over the next month, please don't hesitate to reach out. Thanks, Brian. Thanks. Moving on to 4C2, preliminary 25-26, district 161 budget presentation. And we are on 103 in our board budget. Hey, so thank you, Kevin, for putting the preliminary summary budget up above for anybody that wants to see the audience. And I know the board has a sheet at their table. You're welcome. So what I wanted to go over briefly was to let you know that this is a very preliminary summary

107report because at this point, we approved the budget in September. So we have a lot more information that is forthcoming that will help us define specific line items. But what I wanted to call your attention to is I like to look at some of the trends of where we've been and it kind of helps to use that for where we're gonna go and what our availability is. So up at the top, you can see the headings and it shows that it's 21-22 audit, 22-23 audit, 23-24 audit, the 25 budget, and then the preliminary budget for 20-26. So on this information, and also we are accrual basis, so we need a little bit more time to come up with our actual numbers for this fiscal year. So that's why we're working with this information and looking

108at the trends. So basically, if you look all the way to the right-hand side, that's the preliminary budget area. So how this work paper has been developed is it's broken down by fund. So what I wanted to say is if you first look at the education fund and you look over to the far right, you're seeing where our projected beginning fund balance is, our projected ending fund balance is, and right above there is your projected change in fund balance. But one of the things that I find most interesting is if you look up at the very, very top, the revenue line items, you can see how it's trending and it kind of makes sense. It's all in the same range. You know, like you're in the $30 million to approaching the $40 million when you're

109looking at the revenues up there. So education is our biggest focus, and you could see that because that's where we spend most of our money. So if you look to the next area, the next fund balance, if you scroll it up, Kevin, Kevin, oh, there he goes, okay. Operation and maintenance. So that's our next area where we're kind of spending in the four to $5 million range. But you'll look over and you'll see at the beginning and the ending fund balance with the projection for it to grow slightly. Then transportation, that's another area, and then you'll see your range there. Transportation costs continue to go up. And you can kind of see that reflected in the preliminary budget. It's going up because that's just the cost it is. We went out to bid, and we're

110seeing that cost, but we needed to have a really good, reliable transportation company for our students. So that's reflected in here, and that's why it's quite a bit more costly in the expense column than it was in the prior year. Then you go to the next fund balance, which the next fund here is the IMRF and Social Security Fund. And you can just see again that the trend in there is always like in the millions, million dollar mark. The tort, that's a little bit lower cost, but it's consistent. It includes like, you'll see even in your bills list that we pay for the insurance out of that account for workman's comp and general liability. But it's nice because it's just like kind of right in there, and the IDES payments also go in there. But

111it's good because you get to handle that fund, and you can say this trend, it kind of makes sense, and this is where we're going at. But even though we might even say from this month to next month as we go from summary preliminary to even a more tentative type budget, you'll see some changes reflected from where we are today. But then you look to the working cash fund, and what we would like to do again in this reflected in here is it's been an effective procedure that we have been doing working with the board is transferring interest income out of the working cash fund each year into like the education fund or to the other fund. So we can use that money and utilize it. So you can see in here the total operating

112fund that we're forecasting it to a positive change in balance, a change in fund balance, and then that's the difference between the beginning and the ending. So it's small, like in the $100,000 range, but it's positive. Now if you go down to the debt service fund, that's what I wanted to kind of bring your attention to. You'll see some asterisks there. At this current point, we're forecasting an excess of disbursements over revenue in that fund for next year. And the reason for that is because we are dwindling down on the amount of money we owe, and we have a beginning balance to pay for those funds based on previously levied funds. So even when we pay these bonds off, we're gonna have an excess of revenue over expenditures. So we're gonna have a surplus after

113those are paid. So I wanted to show you that even though it's negative, it's negative because there's a beginning balance in there. And we're about to, January of 2027 is the plan for the last bond payment unless the board decides something else. Julie, could you explain how, when the levy is collected that impacts when the money comes into that fund? And then also because the amount is not even, think about your mortgage every month, you pay the same amount. We've paid more in the past and we're paying less. That's gonna impact how that number looks until it's paid off. So can you just make a point of that also? It's a very significant point, Paul, I appreciate that. So basically our, generally speaking, a lot of bond schedules from a lot of school districts are

114just even, they're just flat straight across the board. But the schedule that we inherited peaks and jumps and changes value. So because of that, that is another attributing factor that when we're getting to the end, why we'll see that we already have some of the cash to pay for what we need in there now. So it's showing that in the current year, we're forecasting that that fund should have an excessive expense over revenue, but it's because we have a beginning balance to pay for that money. Kind of like you have a savings, you already saved the money, now you're gonna go and build a, put a roof on your house. So that's what that's about. And if you look to the very, very bottom, currently at this time, we're forecasting, you'll see the total of

115all funds. And when you look at total of all funds, you're looking for a, showing an excess of expense over revenues, and it's attributable to that, which is occurring in the debt service fund. So before you looked at the debt service fund, you looked at the operating funds, and you were showing we're gonna forecast a positive. So I just wanted to explain where we are with that, and that's with how, like Paul said, it's a combination of the way the money comes in, the clerk's office levies for our debt every year, and we're getting money in from two fiscal years, and because the levy is based on a calendar year, and we're based on fiscal year on June 30th, or whatever year, this year it's 2025, but next year 2026. So those are the contributing

116factors to cause that. So basically, I just wanted to let you know that this is very preliminary, and we're looking at, largely we took into consideration the 5% increases in the collective bargaining agreement, and then we also took into consideration more of a 3% increase in revenue because the CPI is less than it has been previously, so we think that even though it would be a recommendation to go with the 4.99% increase, we won't get that for the levy. So you wanna get as much money as you can out of your levy, but we're anticipated in this projection here to only receive in the 3% range because they'll cap us out at the CPI, which is the consumer price index. So I don't know if there's any questions, or... Hi, Melissa. Hi, me too. Okay,

117go on. In English, though. Which one? So under operation of maintenance or under total? Oh, thank you. There, yeah, yeah, yeah. So we're looking at, it's a positive of 140 is the bottom row, okay. Because we use most of the sale money, like a million of the 1.9 million to pay down bonds. So it wasn't like we kept that money, we used that to assist the community for a lesser cost. So that money came in and it went out almost immediately to pay down bonds of that million. So really, then there's only $900,000, and then basically of the $900,000, then that was used for special projects and special events. We also even got property at a price well below the value or what it was going for. We also, so to answer your question, most

118of that money was spent immediately in assistance to the communities so their taxes would be leveled out. Yeah, go ahead, Paul. Go ahead, Jill. Yeah, so we did a lot of improvements. We worked with technology and with buildings and grounds. We did a lot of work with the Mary Drew Center, so there was a lot of work like that that was completed as well. So when you look at the line item, we didn't have it for three years and then we have an expense of $903,000. That is like, that's a generic expense line item that's not for something specific that can be accumulation of anything and everything. Yes, and actually that column is just what the budget was last year. That's not the actual for 2025. That's only the budget. So, but I will tell

119you that yes, you're 100% accurate that we got a million nine in and then we dispersed a million almost immediately to pay down the bonds, and that was just to assist the citizens. But what created the $903,000 of- That was a difference for anticipated expenses that would occur in different areas. It's different areas in the funds. Mostly, you know, working on some capital projects we did. We worked over at Mary Drew. We worked over at, I talked a while, but we had a few other projects. We had some technology projects. So there were different costs, but it would be better that we looked into that column when we have like our preliminary actuals to go in there because that was a budget, which was a forecast that was done at the very beginning. Thank you.

120Yes, please. The preliminary budget for 26, when you're coming up with that, you're looking at this 25 fiscal years actual, right? Like you're taking the actual and then changes that you know, like you said, the 5% for the contracts, the 3% for whatever, but that budget, preliminary budget numbers coming from what's actually happened in fiscal year 25, right? Yes, yes. I was gonna say, so we actually took the 25 cash basis actual because we don't have the accrual basis yet. I mean, I can't imagine your accruals that different, right? Right. Well, we did have like, you know, we were able to put in like we had a deferred revenue and accounts receivable from the levy like that transaction that's included in there. So there are some accrual expenses in there, but yes, you're 100% correct.

121We looked at the actual based on a cash basis, took those numbers and looked at what a 5% increase would be for expenses and for the revenue side, kind of what a 3%. And then we also looked at other items like the paraprofessional raise, which was well beyond the 5% because there was an additional paraprofessional raise added later. We also looked at other, you know, consideration of other costs that we're gonna handle. We know we wanna do some security services to protect the students. We have that in consideration. We also know that we have this, the parking lot project we're finishing up and the HVAC project over at Indian Trail that we're finishing up and the JJR project, which is falling between years. So, yes. Okay, cool. So before we end up voting on this

1222026 budget, is it gonna be possible to see like a budget to actual for 2025? Like I'd like to see what you're showing me because that's the budget, but then an actual next to it to kind of see where we felt, is that gonna be possible to get that before we vote? Before we vote on the budget? Yeah. Oh, yes. Okay, cool. And then lastly, and one of the reasons I'm asking that is just because again, if I'm looking at this, when it says audited amounts, those were the final amounts. Those are not budgets. That's what actually happened in those years. So if we look down at transportation, our budget was clearly off because I mean, like, look, I just am wondering what happened there that we've got in our last year budget, a change

123in fund balance of a thousand to the positive. But if you look at the prior two years, we had a huge decrease in the fund balance. So I'm just wondering like if our current year budget is even preliminary accurate considering the actual two years, 23 and 24 that we do have. On transportation, you're talking about the expense side of it? I'm just saying we had the change in fund balance was actually a pretty big, you know, negative 700,000 in 594. So are we budgeting correctly? Yeah. Well, I think you have to look at the expense side. So, all right, look at the expense line. You could see that the trend and the expenditure for transportation. So that's like the major area of consideration. Sometimes in revenue, you don't necessarily have, I don't want to say

124you don't have as much control, but there's certain revenues that, we get transportation revenues, but sometimes they might not be as much. So you want to budget into your expenses where they're at. So that's kind of what we did there. Like you can see that the budget for the expenses are all within a trend. Yeah. The actual, the audit area. And then you can see that the projection for the expense is pretty high. I mean, it's increased over 10%, maybe on there. I see the trend with the expense, but then I'm looking at, and I'm sorry if I'm missing something, but I'm looking at the revenue. Right. Which I know you just said is kind of all over, but I mean, how we went, we had two in actual transportation revenue, 2 million, and we

125budgeted 2.7 for 25. Like, I'm just. Well. Go ahead. I mean, you only get like this certain amount of revenue that you get basically. So that was where the revenue landed. There wasn't as much interest income that year. And basically the high area, like in school business is like totally focusing on your expenses first. And then that's where the revenue landed. So, you know, it is, for instance, if the corporate personal property tax go down or your evidence-based funding isn't as high as you would like it to be, that's basically where the budget would be. So the budget on the transportation, for instance, in 2025, is somewhat more than what it was audited in 23, 24. But there are like a lot of funds. And I would say that probably education and operation and maintenance

126and IMF is more of a focus before transportation and the allocation of the final revenues. Okay. And so would that be probably the same explanation for, what was it? Sorry. That was really only one year, but for the capital projects? Well, capital projects, I mean, where like the revenue came in on it. Yes, we're again- Yeah, 47,000 to- Okay, so just to make it clear, the audit for 2024, that's not the budget. That's the actual numbers, right? So if you look, there was a transfer in of $150,000 that came in that area from interest. Yeah, so I guess it would be the same explanation. Like the focus was education in total. And then there's only certain amount of flexibility of where funds are allocated to. Okay. Okay, now that makes sense. Thank you. We didn't

127receive the grant money yet for the iPad. So how was that? We did. Oh, we did get it. Oh, great, great. I saw something and I wasn't sure. Okay, good. I just wondered how we paid for that last year Yeah, we did get it. Okay. Question, is there anything that kind of points out how much in in grants? How much we are pulling in grants? Yeah, just in grants. It's on here, it's siloed in here. But when we do the actual budget, it's specifically like in September, when we come to the budget. And in August, we'll do a tentative budget. It is specific line items. It's probably over 23 pages. And this is just really high level just to get everybody interested and showing kind of like trends and stuff. But yeah, each grant will

128be showing. And then even then, I have to say that like, we could get a grant after that, or basically, right John? He's working on some now too. You know, generally speaking, we get like our, you know, our special ed IDEA, our title one, and those really do help us a lot. But our evidence-based funding, that helps us, that's our transportation revenue. That's a thing that happens all the time. And one thing that we really want to note is that when we see the debt go away, also, correspondingly, the clerk's office will not levy for that debt because we won't need it, right? So you'll see like the revenue goes down, but that's with the corresponding debt. How much do we have in reserves right now? Well, I kind of- How many days? How many

129days could we survive if the state's not paying us? How long could we? Well, it depends on the time of year, right? Because- Well, let's say end of May, like when we have the most money, well, when we deplete everything and we're down to, we're waiting for our tax money to come in. How much did we have in May? I think it's like May 20th, May 15th? Well, you actually have it on your board packet. The exact balance in your cash fund, I could actually just bring you to that page. So if you go to- I think it's like 8 million or something like that, I think we have. That page is on. PMA is, is it part of PMA? Oh, that's another one. That's the PMA investment. Okay. But it is- Okay. If you

130want to know what the balance is that you, we have- Hello, I get that my first report. Tammy does just a great job of putting all this in here. So at the end of May, our cash balance was 13,446,190 dollars. That was what it was at the end of May, the exact cash balance. So we, we did already. We received in June, I'll tell you that number. I actually have it right here. That's actually why I didn't get up because I wanted to be able to grasp this information upon request. So on May 22nd from the lobby, we received 1,164,000. On June 12th, we received 16,580,000. And on June 26th, we received 5,403,000. So it really does flip and it requires a lot of, you know, budgeting and, but I must say too, one of

131the things that we also do is we have an Illinois funds account where you see, and there's like $2 million in there that basically just keeps growing. And sometimes it's nice to know there's a little spot where there's a cushion, you know, and you can see that just specifically laid out right on your, on your cash page, on page 25 of your board packet. I just know there's one time of the year that we could actually see after all the bills have been paid before we get a payment, approximately pretty close number to what we have in reserves. I think it's usually about 8 million, right Julie? I think that's what I keep on. So I always go, I mean, I know if we were looking at that, we're looking at the fund balance report.

132Yeah, ending fund balance seems to be pretty level, like 8,300,000, 8,600,000, 8,700,000. So kind of like where it usually stays about. Yeah, and it's, I mean, and people think of reserves in different ways. So like it's such a vague term from an accounting perspective. Like we used like to use like, what's the cash balance? What's the fund balance? And it kind of makes it a little specific. And I think I did just see that in here too. So I want to tell you what page this is on at the end of May. So now, so like the ending fund balance at the end of May was 30,187,000. But if you were to just say, I want to see what's in the working cash fund, because that's an account that we really don't touch. It's 8,694,000.

133So that's why like the word reserves is so general in my perspective. I probably am a listen, I speak the same language. Like, are we talking about cash? Are we talking about fund balance? Are we talking, you know, but so somewhere in between there is kind of where we're at. But I think those are all very good questions. And I hope that I answered them. I used to ask it often back in the day. Just like three times a year. Really? So yeah. And then what you'll see too, like there is May is our low point, you know, and it's right before we get all the money in June. And it, I mean, some districts will have a lot of issues in May, but what we like to know that, oh, we have that cushion

134and that Illinois funds account. So, you know, we were self-sufficient, which is pretty good. Thank you. God bless you. You're welcome. You're welcome. Thank you, Julie. Any further questions? So will the official one gets approved in September? Pardon me? It said we'll approve the official budget in September. Right. And then we'll just have a tentative look at the tentative budget in August. We'll have what, Melissa? Yeah. Yeah. Thank you so much. You're welcome. All right. We'll move on to five, superintendent and board. Okay. Great question came up and that was about the ECF funding. It's very misunderstood. And that is that they grant you dollars and then they reimburse you. So you have to actually spend money to be eligible for the reimbursement. And we did receive those funds. I was a little worried. In

135fact, I think I told the board, like I'm hesitant to say that we'll ever get it, but we did in fact get it. Along that same line, we are concerned about some of our title grants, some of the grants that come through the federal government. I think every school district is looking at that the same way, just being really, really cautious about anticipating those funds coming in. But we'll know more soon. And so next month we'll bring a tentative budget to the board and then the following month we'll bring a final budget. So you'll get to look at this a few more times. My report is gonna actually be short. And so I just wanna talk a little bit about enrollment. We ran our numbers last week and here are the total enrollments for the

13625-26 school year as of 7-125. We have 183 kindergartners, 195 first graders, 232nd graders, 226 third graders, 243 fourth graders and fifth graders, exactly the same number. 281 sixth graders, 279 in seventh grade and 268 in eighth graders. So if you total all of those out, we have 2,148 total students. There will definitely be changes as we get closer to the beginning of the school year, especially in kindergarten. This epiphany happens and parents look at their five-year-old and they're like, you have to go to school. And so we'll see that number pick up in the past and we do this on almost a daily basis. We look at that trend. I think that 183 is gonna be between 200 and 210. That's kind of where we'll land. We have 10 sections, so when you pull

137out our developmental kindergarten, some of our special needs students, we're gonna be at a good average right there. Well, can I interrupt for one second? I just wanted to clarify something that I was saying. When I said the fund balance, that was the starting fund balance for the 30 million, but the current fund balance in May was 12 million. Okay, sorry about that. I wanted to clarify, but and then the same thing for the working fund, working cash fund, that kind of flipped the other way where the starting balance was 8,000,006 and then the current balance was 9,000,000, but we're gonna move interest from the working cash fund to the education fund. So that will make it go down a little bit in June. Thank you. Thanks, Paul. Sorry for interrupting. You're welcome. So I'll

138just take your whole quarterly investment report in return. Okay. In accordance with policy four colon 30, we do quarterly just come back and give the board an update on our investments. The performance report discloses that our portfolios yield to maturity at 4.06% as of July 1st, 2025. And just a historical look, if you kind of look back over history, I'll start at the bottom 5.3% as of October 23rd, 2023, then 4.88% October 21st, 2024, 4.84%, January 3rd, 2025, 4.34% as of May 14th. We're hanging just above that 4% level as of July 1st, 2025. It's still favorable compared to historical times. There was a time where we got 0.1% that was basically it's a zero. So you're incurring an increase in costs, but you're getting no interest revenue in. So it's just something that we

139watch very carefully because we have a lot of money invested and we do both short-term and long-term. Over the past year, those have flipped. So it used to be better to have your money in long-term, but now just because of volatility in the market, those short-term investments are equal if not better. So we work very closely with PMA to make sure that we're investing our money. We have enough liquid in the event something happens and we invest according to a schedule so that we're investing right up until a payroll. When we pull the money out, we collect the interest revenue and then we reinvest. And so that's ongoing throughout the entire year. I'm hoping next month we can give you a look at that investment schedule. It's fascinating how we line it up. It took

140me about a year to actually understand it. So that we know that we're maximizing our interest income. That's kind of the crux of that whole explanation. But we'll bring this to you every quarter as we track that. I know also in Friday reports, sometimes I'll throw some numbers out there like, hey, this is where we're at. I always panic when it gets below four because our major increase is a 5% raise for teachers. And so those two things don't always jive. So we watch that really, really carefully. And that's it. That's the whole superintendent's report. Quick question. What was our attendance this year from our district, student-wise? 2,350, but I'll send that to you like an exact number. I'll pull that. That was my question too. I wanted to compare the kindergarten numbers of where

141we were at relatively. 195 total kindergartners last year. So when you look at those numbers on that enrollment report, we matriculated the students forward so you can kind of see what was in queue last year. Last year at this time, we were below where we're at now. So that's why I anticipate. I think so, yeah. I think we all were really worried about that kindergarten enrollment number, but we'll gather more students before the end, but I'll send that exact number to you. Number six, we no longer need a closed session so that's no longer needed. We do not have board reports on here, but does anybody have any information they would like to share? School's closed for the summer. Dr. McDermott, as far as transportation, we're gonna get the report or we're gonna communicate well

142with, just because last summer it seemed like it was messy. It was great at this point. It fell apart over the next three weeks last year. It completely fell apart, but we have a really good start on it. It's about exiting students and rolling your data over. And so what happens is every student who hasn't re-enrolled isn't on your bus route list. We cannot finalize them until we get closer to the beginning of the school year because we'll be adding students as they enroll. But we have data points set between Kevin, Mary Ellen, and myself where we check in with our new transportation company to ensure that the routing is going to be ready early. And I think we dropped August, Kevin's asleep. Yeah, the first week in August, we dropped a note in that

143we wanted the routing so that we could communicate that earlier so people could take a look at it and make sure that if a bus was moving back and forth across the district, they weren't crossing paths on their routes. And so our team, our administrative team is actually by building, gonna look at our routes and drive them to make sure that there's nothing really wacky going on. The next question is, have you talked to the bus company to make sure they have enough drivers for what we need? I have not explicitly asked that question, but I will and then I'll report that. I remember when they gave a presentation, they seemed like they can pull easily. Yeah, it wasn't even a concern from them. But so did the one before. Well, yeah, that's true too,

144yeah. So did the one before. How have they been with you, Paul, in communication? They seem like really responsive. They are, and I've worked with this company in the past in other districts. And that if anything comes up on the radar that we all are notified, you know. Right, there was one other ask, and I think it came from Ronnie, and that was just put a bug in really good drivers' ears in the event they wanted to move to the new transportation company. Maybe that was Patrick. Yeah, there's different, yeah, yeah, yeah. So we did that also. But I'll check in with American and see where they're at. I have one additional question and since we're on the busing. There was a community idea last year, which I think was really, really good. When we're

145talking about the bus company doing dry runs, right, like just to start. I know you just said maybe the admins will do it just to see if there's anything quirky or weird. Is it possible to have, you know, the bus drivers who are gonna be driving those routes do the routes and communicate it to the students who would be picked up and use it as almost a, hey, meet your bus driver day. Like students can find out when their bus driver is supposed to arrive at their thing. Before or something. Yeah, so when they're doing their kind of dry run, the students will be at the bus stops and they'll wave and say hello and the whole interaction can take approximately the same amount of time it would to load and unload the students. But

146they can get to meet their bus driver before school starts. And it, I don't know, at least makes parents feel a lot better. And I think that was a really good idea and now is the time to bring it back up because we're planning for the bus drivers. Especially the younger ones. Yeah. In the past, we did mention that to American. They didn't seem to say no to that. So we'll revisit it. And then I'll send out a more definitive answer to that once I talk to them. And I just wanna follow up with our staff survey. We got a great response from the staff surveys. Right now, the board members are looking at a summary of those surveys and major concerns and things that were brought up. They're compiling that, we are acting on

147it. We're gonna share it with the staff in August once things are settled and back to school. So just know that we've got that. Now we have a chance. You know, we're all gonna go over it and go through these summaries of it and see what the main issues are to start working on. We're already having ideas to share with Dr. Paul. And you know, they think, you know, as far as like planning stuff. Are we gonna accumulate also some issues, but also positives? Okay. Just because I know that, because I read it and it's great. But just so we definitely celebrate some of the... Yeah. I think that's really important. But I think the most important thing is let's not try and manufacture a message. I think we take the data as it came

148to us and then... Right, but you did put in like 15 of the top things. Just so we'd pull out, definitely pull out some positive. I wanna see the positive too. Sure. Yeah. Yeah. Just to double back also, I mean, one of the things that we're definitely hammering in is that the anonymity is gonna be protected. So we wanna make sure that whatever we do report is very much as ambiguous as we can keep it, I think. Yeah. We're gonna be as obviously respectful with that. So, you know. Yeah, I didn't ask for that. I just asked her, is the information you put in, if we could also celebrate the successes and things people are happy with. Yeah. Just so we could, you know, we need positive from it. Sure. Yeah. Okay, and then Dr.

149McDermott, one other question. Is there a change, I just heard this through the community that there's a change of drop-off at, and pick up at Hilda Walker this year. I just heard it was, I thought it was a rumor. I just wanted some clarification. No, we've actually talked about that here at the board table. What we're anticipating doing with the additional space in front of the building is to line the buses up very similarly to what we do at Summit Hill Junior High. So parents would drop off at the back so that there's a longer loop. So hopefully clearing out the Mary Drew Parkway. And then buses would be all lined up the way that the concrete has been poured, which you should all go look at, it's wonderful. We have about half the buses

150on one side of the main entrance and half the buses on the other. And they would all be lined up. So once we stop traffic, we can let all of the buses out at once, which would change dismissal at Walker substantially. So, and that will all be communicated at the beginning of the year as we're introducing parents to the routines. I'm waiting for Walt and Marianne to do PR updates on the construction. We actually talked about that today, it's coming. Yeah, I'm waiting for that. Any way we can comb that volleyball court. I'd like to add Hilda Walker, the sand volleyball. Can we do what? I'm sorry, I missed the first. If we can comb it so we can play on that. Oh, clean it up? Yeah. Okay, I can ask the park district. I

151think that's theirs. Yeah, yeah. Okay. I'd like to play. I do wanna give a heads up and a props to Julie cause we are moving forward in engaging with our lunch program and that company. And I'm hoping we could set some really good goals for them and some metrics and give them a couple of direct feedback and make sure we can better that program and work a lot closer with them and finding out what the potential is for the now and what the potential is for further down. We didn't tell him that, we didn't try working on that. Did we not wanna? It's a new year, Joy. We did improve it a little bit. We're gonna improve it a lot. We're gonna. Oh, good luck with that. I'll tell you one thing, our demand for

152food since we switched to the one we do our claims in, I do feel like that there's a lot of value that's gonna be added in speedings. Yes, yeah. Yep. It just goes to show what the food was before then. Mm-hmm. So. There you go. Jeez. And it's only gonna get better, Adrian. That's weird. I mean, we had some very colorful reports from the student representatives. That's right. Yes. Yeah. So. And on that note, our future meeting dates are August 13th, 2025 at the Mayor and Administrative Center at 7 p.m. Can I have a motion to adjourn? Motion. Second. Second. Second. All in favor? Aye. Aye. Any opposed? We are adjourned.