SHSD161 Board Meeting 9/18/2024

001Good evening, everyone. I'd like to welcome you all to this meeting of the summit hill school board If you would all rise and join me in the pledge Thank you, mrs. Campbell, can we have a roll call please mr. Winter here mr. Bradbury here Here Here and we are going to start this evening's proceedings with the seating of our student Board of Education members Good evening again everyone We have an exciting and very forward-thinking item on the agenda this evening And that is the appointment of two summit hill junior high school students to the Board of Education For this effort. I'd like to thank mrs. McClish every year there is a conference down in the city in Chicago Where members of school boards from across the entire state come and attend? it's a great conference

002to go to a lot of different ideas are presented at that time and Mrs. McClish happened to attend a session last year on this very subject and thought it would be a great idea for our district and We as a board agreed and Today it's the culmination of that we are going to seat our student board members We are one of the very few elementary districts to put this kind of value on hearing the voice of our students And we are extraordinarily proud of the process and the applicants who step forward as new 8th graders Who raised their hands and offered to volunteer for this very important position? All of the applicants were Outstanding and it was a very very difficult decision for the board Having said that and after reading through the applications and

003conducting in-person interviews with each student candidate We are proud to announce that Kimora Franklin and Audrey Brown have been selected These two young ladies are really really amazing and we look forward to working with them this year and for our school learning Community to get to know them better At this time would Kimora and Audrey, please come forward and would you all give them a round of applause? Okay At this time as we discussed in our orientation meeting last week and in accordance with board policy to colon 40 and policy to colon 80 and the Illinois Association of School Boards Recommendations that they're bring student representatives the school board table document We the fully elected Board of Education will recite the oath of office along with our student Board of Education member appointees To initiate

004this can I please have a motion that we appoint both Kimora Franklin and Audrey Brown to the Summit Hill School District? 161 Board of Education so moved second we have a motion in a second Any discussion can we have a roll call mrs. Campbell mr. Winter here Mr. Martin I and the motion carries At this time I'd like to ask the board members if you would you all have the oath With you if we could all come down in front and join our student board members Never really I And that decision is to be made only by the authority of the authority I shall abide by majority decisions of the board while retaining the right to seek changes in such decisions through the medical and structural channels As part of the Board of Education I

005shall accept the responsibility for my role in the medical and quality education of every student in this school district I shall foster with the board extensive participation of the community, formulate goals, define outcomes, and set the course for the Summit Hill School District 161 I shall assist in establishing a structure and an environment designed to ensure all students have the opportunity to obtain their maximum potential through a sound organizational framework I shall strive to ensure the continuous assessment of student achievement and all conditions affecting the education of our children in compliance with state law I shall serve as an education team advocate on behalf of students in our community schools to advance the vision for Summit Hill School District 161 I shall strive to work together with the district superintendent to lead the school district

006toward building a district in which the board has created fostering excellence for every student in the area of academic excellence, knowledge, citizenship, and personal development Welcome to the school board Welcome Alright ladies as you see in front of you there should be a microphone when the little green light is on that means that the mic is open and ready So at this time we would like to turn the mic over to you offering the opportunity for you to introduce yourselves Kamora why don't you go ahead and get us started please Hello I am Kamora Franklin I'm a cheerleader at Summit Hill I applied for the board of education role because I noticed that the board is a governing body that makes different decisions over the school and makes it a safer place for students and

007faculty I plan on becoming a political advocate when I'm older so I can be a voice for the voiceless and be the change that I want to see So I just want to thank you for this exceptional opportunity so that I can be able to do this And I would just like to thank my teachers, my parents, and the students here at the school district Thank you Thank you Kamora go ahead Audrey Hello I'm Audrey Brown I'm a student at Summit Hill Junior High district 161 and I'm really happy to be here And along with that I applied because I felt that if I were here I would have my input and I would be able to make this community a little better by having student input into it and not just adult input Thank

008you Audrey And with that we officially welcome our student board of education members to the board of education and again we look forward to their input, influence, and contributions throughout the year One thing I want to remind everyone of at 730 we will have to stop our regular meeting and have our budget hearing which will not take long and we will then continue on with the rest of the meeting after that So that will be at 730 because it is published and that in the newspaper we have to stop at 730 so we may have to interrupt what is going on But at this time we would like to recognize our September summit award winners at Indian Trail third grade teacher Lauren Jurassic and parent Tim Wheatley Dr. McDermott would you like to go? Sure,

009we're excited to kick off the 24-25 school year with two summit award winners. In fact we get so backed up with nominees we've gone from one to two and at some point we may need to be at three and we have nominees all the way to Christmas already So good things for the school district First up tonight is Indian Trail third grade teacher Ms. J who has been a teacher in our district since 2009. She was nominated by board member Stephanie McClish who wrote upon entering Ms. J's classroom one immediately feels excited, curious, and a sense of belonging She is the kind of educator we all wish we had and the one every child deserves. She goes above and beyond every single day to engage with her students in learning and walk by her room

010on any given day and students will be laughing and having fun without even realizing at all they're taking it in Everything she does is intentional with no stone unturned and no detail overlooked While some shy away from reinventing the wheel Ms. J doesn't know how to approach her classroom without innovation and creativity. The unique experiences she offers her students from following the Iditarod mushers in Alaska to researching explorers throughout history empower her students to grow in their knowledge, skills, and in real world connections While often deemed the fun teacher Ms. J is so much more than that. She has high expectations for her students yet she gets to truly know each individual one so that she can deeply consider what every single student needs to be successful in her classroom She instills a love of

011reading, fosters cooperation, and reminds students that they each have talents and they have gifts to share with the class and with each other While Ms. J offers a multitude of special experiences for her students the unmistakable favorites are her Think About It projects which she provides a general theme then students pick something a bit more specific to research. From there students then create a creative project over the course of the month that they then present to their peers Students can do anything, like really seriously they can do anything, newspaper articles, podcasts, posters, PowerPoints, stories, videos, anything goes. This kind of openness and freedom can be intimidating for a teacher to facilitate but she embraces it. She is trusting and encourages her students to create passion projects they enjoy and can be proud of Any student

012lucky enough to have Ms. J for the year that undoubtedly goes by too quickly walks away with not only the knowledge and skills but the understanding that in her class they were seen, they were loved, and cared for beyond measure District 161 is extremely fortunate to have Lauren as a part of our teaching staff and she is beyond deserving of the Summit Award. Thank you for all that you do. Would you please come forward to accept your certificate Alright, we also have this father From this extraordinary family. His name is Tim Wheatley. He was nominated by the individualized instruction teacher Lauren Baker in her nomination. She wrote I have been an individualized instruction teacher in this district since the program started in 2014 throughout my years of teaching are very special learners. I've never had

013a parent as involved as Mr. Wheatley His daughter Iris started first grade in my class during the COVID-19 pandemic. All of our interactions in the beginning of her first grade were via zoom. Mr. Wheatley worked right next to Iris as we attempted several times to get her to interact with us through the screen. At this time, I wish Iris was minimally verbal and would offer to scream because of the frustration. She felt not being able to communicate her wants and needs. The team decided to introduce Iris to an augmentative and alternative communication device. It was with Mr. Wheatley's patience and help that Iris began to communicate with the help of her AAC. Iris is now in fifth grade at Walker and speaks in clear sentences. Mr. Wheatley understands his daughter's needs better than anyone does

014and has been an integral part of helping Iris become an efficient communicator. Throughout her years working with Iris and her family, Mr. Wheatley has helped the team better understand Iris and helped her to get to know where she is today. Thank you, Mr. Wheatley for never giving up on Iris and for supporting the team for being her biggest advocate and for striving to continue to help Iris have the most independent and happy life that she can possibly have. D.J., our kindergarten principal, Francie Bloss, who was Iris's principal at Arbery Hills, adds, Mr. Wheatley, this guy, Mr. Wheatley has been a great example of the parent relationship that we achieve within our school district. He has modeled what it means to have home and school work together. We are so thankful for the partnership that we

015have between home and school to help his daughter reach her fullest potential. And at this time, Mr. Wheatley, would you please come forward? Why don't you go ahead with the freedom of information and then we'll let everybody go. All right. If you take a look at your board book, you'll see that the next item is the Freedom of Information Act. We had six foyers that we fulfilled this month. We have several more that are on the docket for next month. The requests this month were made by Mr. Gibson, the Lake County Gazette, and Mrs. Massari, and they were completed in the appropriate time frames. Very good. We have about eight minutes right now. Our next thing on the agenda should be public comments, but I don't want to split public comments up. So at this

016time, yeah, we have enough people speaking, so we want to make sure that we give them time. If anyone that has attended our meeting will take a short break, if anyone would like to leave at this time, especially students, since you got school tomorrow on that. Why don't you go ahead and do so? When we come back at about 725, we'll go ahead and we'll start the budget hearing. Please take your seats. We're going to go ahead and transition back into our agenda. All right. Thank you very much. At this time, I would like to declare the opening of the budget hearing for the fiscal year 2024-2025 Summit Hill School District 161 budget. This serves as an opportunity for the people in attendance to make comments regarding the Summit Hill School District 161 fiscal year

0172024-2025 budget. The tentative budget has been on display at the district office. As of right now, no one has come to the district office to examine the tentative budget. At this time, is there anyone in the crowd that would like to speak to the tentative budget? Okay. Seeing no one, I move that we close the budget hearing on the fiscal year 2024-2025 budget for District 161. So moved. Second. Second. We have a motion and a second. Can we have a roll call, please? Yeah, well, let's just go ahead and do as long as we get this. Let's just go ahead and since she's, it'll be approved, then you'll be talking about a real budget. Go ahead with the roll call. Do we need to hear anything from her? You want to have that in the

018discussion? It doesn't matter to me. We just had that thing. That's why I thought I'd bring it that way. Go ahead. Good evening. I'd like to welcome everyone to the 2024-2025 budget hearing with our board president, Jim Martin, board vice president, Joy Murphy, secretary, Katie Campbell, board member, Amy Burke, Matthews Bradbury, Stephanie McClish, John Winter, superintendent, Dr. Paul McDermott, and a special warm welcome to our new board members, Audrey Brown and Kimora Franklin. So basically, when we talk about our budget, we look at our budget calendar, our budget principles, the process, the forecast and plan, and the overview and any questions. Well, in regards to the calendar, it started back in August 21st of 2024, then we moved to having it. Also, we publicized it in the newspaper, and now we're at the budget hearing.

019Next. So it looks at budget principles. We talk about focus. We talk about the district. We talk about what we are looking at to assure and our target. Our target resources are to maximize the academic achievement and to prioritize direct instructional services to the students, obtain external grants and support the educational growth. When we're looking at our forecast plan, we basically look here and we say, we're going to continue to pursue our grants to offset costs. We also are looking to utilize the interest to pay expenses. So you'll see where we do a transfer from the working cash front of interest, and that gives us basically money that we earned from interest. We get to use that money to pay expenses. So it's kind of like capitalizing on the higher interest rates that exist that

020basically occurred with the increase in the CPI. So when we look at the forecast and plan, there were a few major things that were taken into consideration that were different than a lot of budgets. And basically they're saying that our bonds, when we look at our bonds, we were scheduled to pay bonds in 24 to 25 for 7.8 million. And then the previous year we paid 7.2 million. So you can basically see that it has increased. And we're projected to pay them off by 2027. So that's a good thing. And it's something that we're aware of. We're aware of the tax impact. It has been authorized by this board, of which will be of assistance to the taxes of the citizens, is paying down the bonds with some of the proceeds that occurred from the

021sale of Arbery. So I think that that's a really a beneficial thing that the board has done in order to assist the taxpayers. And it's basically listening to the taxpayers, OK, we want some benefits in our taxes. And by paying down the bonds from the proceeds from the sale of Arbery, that's very helpful to the citizens. So I think that that's something that can be considered to be grateful for. In budget process, we look at the next plan. We talk about projections, revenues, expenditures, enrollment and staff. We know that enrollment has declined, which has been the major cause for our school closings. So when we look at that, we also know that CPI has previously increased, which has caused a high cost and salaries. But we know that our most precious, besides our students, our

022other most precious commodity is our teachers. And so we want to pay them correctly so they enjoy their work and they're rewarded for it. So within that, you can see that if you switch to the next page, the collective bargaining agreement is a highly high participant to the increase in revenues and expenses because they the major component increased by five percent in the collective bargaining agreement. Which was basically dictated by the CPI at that time. And you want to keep good teachers. So that's a place to put your money in. And that's where we have put that money. OK, so I wanted to look to the next page and say historical comparative. You could see the trends, you know, where the money revenues and the expenses, they trend, they're trending up, which is how it

023is expected to occur. And that's because over time there is inflation and there is cost of living increases. So if you look to the next page, you can see, you know, the major component and change in CPI that occurred that was highly attributable to the point where we in fact had adjustments to our collective bargaining agreement and rightfully so. So when teachers go to the store and buy stuff, they have the appropriate amount of funds to do so and live accordingly. So that was a response to that. Now you can see that there are some interest declines that are anticipated. And I did see something coming across today as well. So as we look to the historical comparative, you can basically see that the trends make a lot of sense when we're looking at the

024revenue and expenses. You want to go to the next page? One more over, Kevin, please. So what I wanted to show on here is it may seem like at first glance that the revenues and the expenses have increased more than what is normal if you just first, you know, draw your eyes across the line. But what I wanted to bring to your attention was that in reality, it's closer to a forecast of like in the five to six percent, the five percent increase in expenses and it's showing like a five point nine percent increase in revenues projected because you always want to project a little bit more. You want to make sure that you can try to achieve all the grants that are out there as well. But the reason for my explanation on this

025slide is I wanted to say that when you're looking at the budget revenue of fifty seven million, you have to consider the fact that if that includes one point nine million dollars in proceeds that were received from the sale of our very school. And with that one point nine, if you take that out, the revenue is then at fifty six million, which would be then trending at a five point nine percent increase over the prior year. The other contributing factor was one hundred and fifty five thousand dollars that was earned from the transfer of property from Frankfurt Square. So that's fifty thousand dollars a year plus one hundred and fifty thousand at least for their payments on the playground. So there's been a lot of work I think that this board has accomplished and the

026superintendent in order to fiscally be responsible and to to our taxpayers and basically and also still provide for the teachers, the staff and the students. So I'm grateful for that. And if you could see the expenditures to you see fifty six million. But I want you to see that we're looking at that includes about eight hundred and eighty eight thousand dollars because if you look at one point nine million on the proceeds that came in from the sale of our very school last. The total one point one that we're going to spend this year to pay down on on the bonds paying down on those bonds is going to have a good impact on the taxpayers. So the stuff and all the work that you've done has really been important. And I feel like the

027board and the superintendent has have really worked hard to make this happen and to be fiscally responsible. We're not going to have to go back out to referendum to get more money from the taxpayers to take out more bonds. We're living within our means. And I think that that that's the way to to work. Basically, in other words, we're paying down debt that was inherited. We're not only doing that, we're taking money proceeds and using that money to pay down debt. And in addition to that. So when we look at the next slide, it says financial issues facing the districts. The costs basically, you know, this has been an outstanding item for years for school districts when they talk about the teacher pension shift. So it's such an unknown. So you just got to keep

028hanging out there in case that ever does occur. But in other costs, I know that Stephanie brought this up before like phasing out the ester grounds. Yeah, that that is an issue because that was a lot of money. So new grants will continue to be pursued and we will always look at that. Now, with the consumer price index escalating, that led to inflationary costs, which we had to respond to. And subsequently, we had to increase salaries. We want to be able to keep good people to make our districts strong and benefit our student learning. And that's just what we've done. But we've done it financially and fiscally responsible by reducing costs and bringing in funds through sales when when it was on an older building, too. So over 60 years old in that area. So

029these concerns are mitigated by reductions in building costs with the closing. So we know that we have new costs. We have new inflationary items that are hitting, but they will be mitigated by less costs of buildings. Another mitigating factor is, yes, we said this. I said that already proceeds. But overall, I feel like our budget is very sound and we're ready to start a great school year as it already is great. And we have great students and teachers and board and superintendent. So thank you for everything. And I want you to know that that your work is helpful in creating a fiscally sound budget. Thank you. I think a quarter would be of time would be essential to show, you know, the difference. But that's a great point. So our estimates when we ran those

030numbers was between two hundred and fifty and three hundred thousand dollars per school per year. So we're looking at operationally a half million dollars less in operations maintenance to maintain the buildings. So but we can pull that quarterly. So every three months, we'll pull that and let you know. I have two things. One thing I wanted to state, too, is that the board that's seated here right now does not intend on going out for referendum when these bonds do are finally retired. So we count that to be a tax savings for the community during the time of high inflation. We were getting a lot on our investments. What's happened in, like, say, the last year to that number? Oh, it increased substantially. I'm like we had we had interest rates that were above five percent.

031So five and a quarter. So PMA sends information to Julie and I about market trends. What we saw is that you would think intuitively that a longer term investment would yield a higher interest rate. But that is the opposite of what was happening because of the volatility in the market. Our short term investments were actually yielding a better rate of return. And so we received something within the last week or so. Interest rates are in the mid fours. And so you see that there is a motion on or there's an action item on the agenda tonight to move interest from working cash over into the Ed fund. We don't need to grow the working cash. What we want to use, what we want to do is use that money for our students. And so the

032interest transfers conservatively three hundred and fifty thousand as that interest rate continues to decline, we'll have less and less money to transfer over. So it's something that we're keeping a very, very close eye on. And the feds cut the interest rate today. So we're going to see how that impacts our investments. I mean, we're investing a lot of money at a time. We always make sure that we have an amount of money that is liquid so that we can make payroll and we invest the rest so we can pull this interest out of it. And then reapply it to our students. So we're investing and reinvesting money multiple times a month just to make sure that we always have the funds available that we need and maximizing on interest income. So from that process and

033working with PMA, three hundred and fifty thousand dollars slides over into the Ed fund. We can use that for students, student learning. But it's even more important now to know that that's not going to be the same. It's going to decrease. And with it decreasing, you know, it has to be made up elsewhere in the budget. So that's why I wanted to bring it up, because it's not something that you see. You know, it's the good use of taxpayers' funds until we use them to try and make sure that we get the most bang for their buck. And that bang is going to be smaller in the future. Right. So we were at five and a half percent. I think the last investments we put out were at approximately four and a half percent. It

034just kind of depends on where we're investing the money. That's a percent loss. And so we're not losing money. We're just not gaining as much interest income to put into our other funds. Same with corporate replacement property taxes. That's also decreasing next year. We've received notification for school districts. So that's going down, too. So we have to be prepared for these changes. And we are. Yeah. Hence, I mean, we were going to experience more expenses than income coming in by closing the schools like we did. We gave ourselves that kind of cushion to make sure that we don't have to go back to the taxpayers and ask for more money. It's so interesting. So if you watch CPI with CPI trending at three point four percent, the raises in our collective bargaining agreement are sitting

035at five percent. And so when we calculate that, that's north of a million dollars a year additional that gets put into our teacher salaries, which is great because you're dividing that amongst a lot of people. And so along with less students enrolled gradually and softly without impacting class size dramatically, we will reduce staff. Also, the Ed Fund is the major expenditure in a school district. It's salary and benefits. And so as we see fewer students come in, we need fewer fewer teachers to service them. So what we did last year is we protected everyone's jobs. That was a big move by the board. We probably carried more people into what we call the merge than we needed to. But every person who worked here last year who wanted to return did. And our retention rates

036were above ninety five percent. And so when I give that number, that's every single person who left the district, whether they were a teacher or administrator or if they were a lunch monitor or whether they were retiring. So every employee was included so that we can really look at real numbers. So people are staying because of the benefit that the board has put forward into salary and benefits. People want to stay here. And it's important to stay to that. When we while we will be reducing staff, we're going to do that through attrition to retire natural retirement and that type of thing. Correct. Correct. That was another really important piece to have in our collective bargaining agreement was having teachers be able to identify early that they were retiring. They could receive a slightly higher

037amount in their raises for those four years. And by doing so, we now have a better idea of who is in the pipeline for retirement. So it gives us a lot of room to really plan. I mean, we're planning for next year. So now that we have our students in kindergarten registered, we already know that we're going to have just about 100 students go to D.J.R. And just about 90 students go to Indian Trail. And so out of our 190 students who are in kindergarten right now, we know where they're going next year. And that gives us some time to plan to post jobs to see who's interested in moving a grade level or not, who's retiring, who's not. And so it just we're our minds financially are already in next year. I mean, that's

038how far in advance we have to work in order to make a fifty seven million dollar corporation run. Well, what was the just out of curiosity, what was the Fed rate cut? Because I was sleeping at half percent. OK. And then it's a big one. What is our investment company? Are they recommending us to switch to long term now or are still the short term? They haven't made any recommendations as of yet. I think some people were surprised that it was a half a percent. I mean, that is a big cut, especially this close to an election. Typically, I mean, they say that they're not politically invested, but it has political ramifications to it when you're making cuts like that to your economy in election season. And so I think there's going to be an

039effect to it right now. Our money is already invested. And so as money becomes liquid and rolls in, then we can determine how much we should invest in what percent. And so pretty routinely in the Friday update, I'll push those percentages out just in the back of the mind for board members to keep in mind. That means we're going to receive a little bit less in interest just on those investments. Any other questions, anyone? We've already had a motion and a second. So at this time, if we are included, can we have a roll call, please, Mrs. Campbell? Mr. Winter? Aye. Mr. Spreadbury? Aye. Mrs. McClish? Aye. Mrs. Burke? Aye. Mrs. Campbell? Aye. Mrs. Murphy? Aye. Mr. Martin? Aye. Mr. Wood? Aye. Uh-huh. So we're going to move into public comments. I want to make

040it clear since we had some confusion at the last meeting about this. Public comments is a time to address the board and the board only, not the audience. You need to identify yourself. And with the number of speakers we have, we have, we can allow five minutes per person in their public comments. public comments. So at this time would Lisa Brace please come forward. My name is Lisa Brace and I'm a parent to two Summit Hill students and a taxpayer in the district. My first topic is FOIA requests. The administration has about 30 community members in a special status called frequent FOIA requester. What this does is allows them to delay the FOIAs for up to 21 days rather than the standard 10 days. This delays the community from getting timely responses to the FOIA

041documents they're entitled to as taxpayers of the district. Most blocked members have sent less than three FOIAs in the past year. This is a heavy handed approach used to keep the community from getting public documents in a timely manner and should be reconsidered. My next topic is building security. In response to an uptick in threats against the nearby districts and an upcoming active shooter drill planned, district parents are voicing concerns. What is the district doing to proactively prepare for a real world situation? Security resource officers have been discussed multiple times in this district, but no action has been taken. We have over 200 students exposed on the playground during each recess period. What plan is in place for outdoor exposure? What safety tools are given to our classroom teachers to reinforce their rooms? We want

042to reassurance that proactive actions are being taken to ensure students to staff safety. My third topic is transportation. We should be concerned about Safeway's solvency during their massive loss of business. We don't want to be left with our butts in the wind should they shutter their business overnight. Safeway drivers are reporting wage theft practices where they're paid 40% of their driver wage when attending non-driving tasks like mandatory business meetings or holiday vacation pay. They've also reported outside drivers are temporarily moved from other district routes and out of state locations to service D161. This is a temporary fix and not a permanent solution done to make, and it's done to make us think that their internal issues have been resolved. Additionally, they report no driver drug and alcohol testing is being conducted after the initial hire

043date. Is this a company Summit Hill is going to trust for the continued safe transport of our students? My final topic is accountability. When did our administration know about serious problems with our transportation provider and why wasn't proactive action taken? It seems we have a lot of people who stand in line to cash a check generated off taxpayer dollars, but no one wants to be accountable to ensure our students are transported safely to school. Paul McDermott cashes a huge check. Lucky Sahota with Safeway is cashing a huge check. The vendors providing logistics and route tracking are cashing a check. Everyone has a handle, but no one wants to be accountable to oversee transportation so that our students can arrive at school safely and on time to learn. This is unacceptable. Do better. Thank you. Next

044will be Patrick Oliphant, please. Good evening. I would like to provide a follow-up on the advisory referendum that was still being disputed by Kevin McLeish as of the August meeting. On August 23rd, the Will County Electoral Board ruled that Stephanie's husband's objection, an attempt to keep the advisory referendum question off the ballot by challenging signatures, was officially overruled. The panel ordered the county clerk to include the referendum on every ballot printed for the November election within our district and give the public a chance to vote on the following question. Do you approve of the process by which the Board of Education for the Summit Hill School District 161 closed Arbery Hills and Frankfurt Square Schools without a corresponding reduction in the property tax levy rate, yes or no? Effective tomorrow, our Will County District 3

045elected representative, Dan Butler, is issuing a press release from his office announcing the defeat of Kevin McLeish's attempt to silence the voters. This press release reaches 19 different news agencies. I'm sorry, what's that? He is not a board member, he is a citizen. It's a public record. No, he's not a board member. No, it's a public record concerning the school district. You can, we don't use other people's names like that, citizen's names. Okay. This press release reaches 19 different news agencies. For those who remember Dan Butler, he fought for you at home and he fought for the entire community from this very podium in February, demanding that fellow elected officials do their duty and listen to the people, listen to a crowd that not only filled this room but filled an entire overflow room. They

046just wanted to be heard. This board leadership did not do that. The electoral board ruling brings this board's leadership out of the shadows it thought it could exist in and right into the center of the expressway of public opinion that is the November election. Board leadership cannot discredit the signatures this time as they tried to do from this very podium in February. The self-proclaimed success of the board's attempts at public outreach is now not up for debate anymore. We will find out if you were as successful as you thought. For those of you at home wondering why this is important as this advisory referendum cannot reopen any of the schools, I say this. Our community has been kicked around by unjust school closings in both district 210 and now 161, leaving our neighbors feeling helpless

047against their local governments. Now, over a thousand members of our community by having the courage to sign a petition restored a voice back to our community and gave everyone in the district an opportunity to have their voice heard about the most important policy issue in recent memory for this board. Over a thousand citizens told this board that they will not be silenced. They induced the board member's husband to spend his own family's money out of pocket to pay for at least four half days of legal fees, which is not cheap, in an attempt to silence the public, but the public won. Also important, contrary to what the board would have us believe, a majority of people did not know that the school closings were official. I know this because I actually met and spoke with

048them. Now, in November, every voter will know what this board has done, and not only will they vote with their opinion, but they will become informed about the direction that this board of education is going into. Every voter will be able to make an informed decision just five months later on April 1st, when this board's future is decided in the April election. Board President Martin and Stephanie McLeish have already announced their intent to run for re-election. It is worth noting that Katie Campbell has not done so yet, and Joy Murphy cannot run for re-election as she is up for a possible re-election in 2026. My fellow community members, you have given the community a chance in the ability to hold our elected officials accountable. You have given the community a chance to restore the trust

049that has been broken by this board. This board's leadership tried to use traditionally low turnout in the April elections as a weapon against our community to pass their personal agenda and personal interests, not the interests of the public. Now you have a voice again. Now you have a chance, whether you agree with the school closings or not, to formally be heard on the record. You can now make a difference here in 161, and I gotta tell you, that's not nothing. Thank you very much, and have a great night. Our next speaker is Carrie Bunda, please. Before I begin, I just want to remind you specifically, Jim and Katie, of the code of conduct that we are talking, you are listening, not to interrupt us as you did to Patrick last time and as you did

050to me, Katie, before. So you guys need to have respect. It was out of your mouths at a board meeting that you guys are to sit there and listen, not to respond back to us. I feel like sitting here tonight, I had a lot to say, and then listening to you, Julie, I was listening to CNN, tell me stuff that wasn't true, telling me how responsible you guys are being with our money and what a great job you've been doing budgeting it, all this blah, blah, blah, because it's on a PowerPoint, we're supposed to believe it. I don't. The frustration of the community has not gone away or decreased regardless of how many people are at the board meetings. We continue to send emails to the district, submit FOIAs, and most importantly, build networks in

051the community and share information. You've shut us out and rejected our requests and press on with your own agendas. We have a largely overpaid superintendent with a background as an art major who taught ceramics over at Lincoln Way, who's done nothing positive for District 161. A few board meetings ago, Mr. McDermott, you spent time after public comments discrediting many of us, telling us, the community, not to listen or believe what we have to say. You accused us of spreading false information. Do you really think that this is gonna win favor with the people here saying this? Joy Murphy, you were one of the few, that's the only one that I think that was brave enough at the time to vote no to hiring him at such a high pay salary. Mr. McDermott continues to receive

052pay increases and renewed contracts. In an email from Mr. McDermott to the Board of Education dated February 15th, 2024, he said, and I'm quoting, a request came in regarding me putting together a list of major accomplishments over the past year. I'm busily putting this together. As such, please let me know if anything else is needed for the superintendent evaluation. Well, I'd love to see that evaluation and see what it consists of. Under your leadership, you've shut schools down during COVID, forced masks, divided us with your equity audit, closed two schools, and although the bus issue may have not have started being your fault, you didn't get your hands dirty and make sure it got taken care of in a timely manner. You sat back and delegated it to other people. You really spoke to me

053at the board meeting saying how offended you were because you care about the special needs community. And I wanna say, if you care about the special needs community, then where's the security here at Mary Drew? I come pick up my son standing at a brick wall with no windows and no security cameras. I know that we just had a security, I don't know, a grant or whatever, and it was put towards the junior high and towards Rogus, but not towards the youngest kids and to the kids that have special needs. If I was a teacher opening that door and I didn't know who was behind it, I would be extremely concerned. Where's our resource officer that Mr. Winter has fought for, that he asked you for, that Jim and Paul you said you would look

054into or consider 210 has one, 157 has one. Why don't we have one? We have therapy dogs, but we don't have a resource officer. Julie's telling us how much money we have, but we can't have better security here. We pay tons in taxes, we saved all this money closing the schools. Why aren't we using funds to secure Mary Drew Better? Why aren't we using it for a resource officer? Lastly, I wanna say how discriminated against I felt that I was overlooked for the community outreach committee. I know it's because you don't like me. I've lived in this community for 20 years. I put three kids through. I have three kids in three different schools here, and you pick people that just moved here, people that have lived here for a year or two. I mean,

055talk about DEI, you know? One minute. Oh, thank you. Michelle Musial. Taxpayer as well. I have sent multiple emails to the school board. I would like to comment that I have received some replies, though interestingly only from the female members sitting at the board. I'm not sure why that is that other board members don't feel it their responsibility to reply to topics of safety and accountability, which is what I would like to discuss today. First and foremost, when we bring our children to school, we expect a safe, healthy learning environment. The lack of bus transportation, I will default that for others to take care of because my children have had to become car riders. The AC in the school, that entire situation is ridiculous. You can refer to my previous emails. I don't think I

056need to elaborate further other than to say I'm dismayed that our schools have not been kept up to appropriate standards for a school district where each of our students are technically allotted $25,000 per student based on our taxes. Our other neighboring districts, those students are $20,000. So I would just like to say you don't get credit for not having another referendum. You don't get positive credit for that. This school district has had more referendums than any other neighboring areas. So shame on you for not using the money to maintain the four open schools to the standards that your offices are maintained at. In addition, regarding safety, the school violence and the threats that have been happening locally as well as nationally need to be addressed. All other neighboring areas have had their communications from the

057superintendent as well as from the Board of Education throughout the course of this week due to the threats at Grissom Middle School as well as the threats in Joliet. Every other neighboring school district has sent out multiple emails, Mokina, New Lenox, Tinley Park, confirming and communicating with the parents of this area. This is what our schools are doing this week. We understand your students may be afraid. We understand as parents who may be afraid. But here's what our schools are doing. We're going to have extra police officers at every school. Our district has done nothing. There has been no communication with us as scared parents of what is being done in this district to ensure that our children are going to have a safe, healthy learning environment. That cannot happen. Ignoring us is not an

058option, and that needs to change from this moment on. In this day and age, we have communications on Seesaw and Remind Apps and all of these other avenues. We should be hearing from you what you are doing. In addition to that, we need to be proactive, not reactive. In addition to resource officers, what else is being done? I sent to you all an email with links. I did the work. I looked up grants. I looked up the different panic buttons. I looked up the different safety measures that you can employ within the classrooms, how to put on the actual doors that the teachers can slide in within five seconds if the school's in a lockdown. Again, I got one, excuse me, two replies to that email. Do you not care about the safety of the

059students? Because that would really negatively affect your $57 million corporation, and how dare you reply to someone else asking a question about the budget? How dare you refer to our schools as a $57 million corporation? Shame on you, Mr. McDermott. That was so disheartening as a parent. Those are my children, not your funds, not your corporation. How dare you? And lastly, the accountability, the accountability from a budgeting standpoint. Ms. Stearns, you should know the exact dollar amounts, not I'll look into it later. If this is the budget meeting, you should have those numbers written down. That is your job. Mr. Snipes, I have spoken to you several times over the course of the last several years. We do not have a competitive curriculum in our district relative to our neighboring districts. We don't. 15 years

060old is what our science books were, until we just got them this year. Why are we not updating our curriculum every three to five years? And who is holding him, her, and him accountable? That is your job. Your job as board members are to hold these other individuals accountable and say, I want your action plans. Mr. Snipes, Mr. McDermott, Ms. Stearns, I want your action plans to say, by this date and this time, this is what I expect to see. How are you going to resolve these situations? I will say what I said at the end of one of my other emails. Our children are falling between the cracks. But in this district, those cracks are turning into sinkholes. Our teachers and principals are amazing. They're amazing. But so are our students. Protect them and

061do your job and represent what we as taxpayers are asking of you. Not because you didn't do another referendum. Because this is what you were elected to do. Please do so. Thank you. Thank you. Christy Guido. Good evening. First, I am a member of this community and I do have children in the school. So Frankfurt is very near to me. I wanted to say that my heart and my passion truly lie in the school bus world. I started in the school bus industry in 97 and wouldn't ever honestly wish to do something different. With that being said, after I left my previous employer, because I'm sure some of you might notice me, I joined a team of senior school bus managers, which included Bruce Barr, and we are opening a new school bus company. We

062are in the process of opening Yellow Bus Group of America, which I have sent Paul an introduction letter previously. I also have a copy with me for anyone that would like one. We have a terminal in University Park and we have roughly 50 buses lined up should a school district need assistant. I personally have had numerous districts contact me to see if there is a possibility of taking a load off their current provider, whether that be home to school runs or after school needs. We would like you to know, should you need relief, we are here to help you and we would be ready in October to help with anything. Thank you. Ms. McClush, would you care to comment at all? Yeah, I just wanted to clarify a point on the referendum since it was

063brought up that although it was not reversed, there were over 100 signatures and there probably would have been more if it continued forth that were delegitimized in the process. So there were not over a thousand signatures that were legitimate, although Mr. Oliphant did have enough for the referendum to pass. There were quite a significant amount of signatures that were people that were not registered voters, people that did not live in the area. There was one person on there who was actually deceased. So there were a number of signatures on there that were not legitimate. And although I cannot speak for my husband because I am not him, I think that anybody who wants to follow through a process like that would undergo any kind of scrutiny that anybody else up here would go through. And

064so that's my only comment on that. I just wanted to make sure that I clarified that point. And if anybody wants to know why my husband did that, feel free to contact him and ask him. Thank you. All right, at this time, we're gonna move forward with the next thing on our agenda, which is the consent agenda motion. I move that we approve the items on the consent agenda for this meeting as presented, including what? 19. Yeah. The new students to let you know there's the consent agenda and then there's all the supporting information afterwards. So there'll always be like 60 pages after the consent agenda. So you'll have a chance to look through it in the future and that'll help you track through. Okay. That's how I looked. Hey, that's how I looked my

065first day too. Don't worry about it. I said, that's how I looked my first day too. Don't worry about it. You'll figure it out like ride a bike. And actually a consent agenda is where we group a lot of items together instead of voting on them individually. So you will see in the future when you get your board book, what each one of those are. So the board members have access to that information prior to this. Okay. It's a learning curve. You guys will get it. Okay. Getting back to the motion. I move we approve the items on the consent agenda for this meeting as presented including 5A1A regular session meeting minutes of August 21st, 2024. 5A1B closed session meeting minutes of August 21st, 2024. 5A1C special meeting minutes of September 4th, 2024. 5A1D closed

066session special meeting minutes of September 4th, 2024. 5A2 approval of preliminary July cash report. 5A3 approval of bills list of September 18th, 2024. 5A4 approval of resignation to staff. None at this time. 5A5 approval of family medical leave for employee 2983. 5A6 approval of employment of staff. There is none at this time. 5A7 approval of the memorandum of understanding about planned time compensation. 5A8 approval to seek bids for custodial supplies. 5A9 authorization to seek bids for the elevator maintenance contracts at Hilda Walker and Summit Hill Junior High School. And 5A10 approval of the extension of snow removal services for fiscal year 2025. Any questions or comments at this time? Do we have a motion then? Second. We have a motion and a second. And we have a roll call. Mr. Winter. Aye. Mr. Spredberg. Aye.

067Mrs. McClish. Aye. Mrs. Burke. Aye. Mrs. Campbell. Aye. Mrs. Murphy. Aye. Aye. And the motion carries. We move on to old business since we had our public hearing. Now is the time for the resolution to approve the fiscal year 2024, 2025 budget. At the August 21st, 2024 meeting, the board approved the tentative budget for the public display and established that budget hearing and approval to take place today, September 18th, 2024. And at this point, I will read the recommended motion. Whereas the Board of Education of Summit Hill School District 161, County of Will, State of Illinois, caused to be prepared in tentative form of budget. And the secretary of this board has made the same conveniently available to public inspection. And whereas public hearing was held as to such budget on the 18th day of

068September, 2024, notice of said hearing was given as required by law and all other legal requirements have been complied with. Therefore, be it resolved by the Board of Education of said district as follows, section one, that the fiscal year of this school district be and the same hereby is fixed and declared to be beginning July 1st, 2024, and ending June 30th, 2025. Section two, that the following budget contain an estimate of the amounts available in each fund separately and of the expenditures from each be and the same is hereby adopted as the budget of this school district for this said fiscal year. That's a mouthful. So moved. We have a motion and a second. Any questions or comments? Can we have a roll call, please, Mrs. Campbell? Mr. Winter. Aye. Mr. Spradbury. Aye. Mrs. McClish.

069Aye. Mrs. Burke. Aye. Mrs. Campbell, aye. Mrs. Murphy. Aye. Aye. And the motion carries. Next on our agenda is new business resolution approving the transfer of funds from the operation and maintenance fund to the bond and interest fund established for the purchase of paying debt service on outstanding bonds for the district. Anything you care to explain about that, Dr. McDermott? It hasn't already been done. Okey doke. At this point, any questions or comments? Chance? Okay. Then I move that the board of education approve the resolution approving the transfer of operations and maintenance fund to the bond and interest fund established for the purpose of paying debt service on outstanding bonds of the district. Can we have a roll call? Oh, sorry. Second. Now that we have those two, now can we have a roll call?

070Mr. Winter. Aye. Mr. Spradbury. Aye. Mrs. McClish. Aye. Mrs. Burke. Aye. Mrs. Campbell. The motion carries. Next is a resolution approving the transfer of interest from the working cash fund to the education fund. It is recommended to approve the resolution authorizing the transfer of $350,000 in interest from the working cash fund into the educational fund. And Dr. McDermott, again, outlined why that process has taken place. So at this time, I move that the board of education approve the resolution authorizing the transfer of interest earned from the working cash fund into the education fund. So moved. Aye. We have a motion to second. Any questions or comments? We have a roll call, please. Mr. Winter. Aye. Mr. Spradbury. Aye. Mrs. McClish. Aye. Mrs. Burke. Aye. Mrs. Campbell. Aye. Mrs. Murphy. Aye. Mr. Martin. Aye. And the

071motion carries. And now we move on to the superintendent and staff report and I turn it over to Dr. McDermott. Okay, thank you. So for the enrollment report, we already covered much of this information. We're on page 79. If you're following along, either online or in the board book. So as of 9-11, when we put the board book together, we had 190 kindergarten students enrolled for the 24-25 school year. Last year at this time, we had 214 kindergarten students. The other information on that board page has been covered already. And so I'll move on to the technology update. Can I ask, how many are we graduating this year? 297. Okay, thank you. Any other questions on that first point? Okay, the technology update. On Monday evening during the union implementation meeting, the union co-presidents and

072vice president asked if Brian Skowinski and or Kevin Perkins could attend the meeting to offer updates on a host of technology related items and problems that have occurred since the opening of school. Brian attended and spent a considerable amount of time offering information about a checklist of items that have been completed. The status of items that are not yet completed and more. It was a good conversation that yielded more accurate information about the status of staff concerns than what was initially reported. Again, the majority of the issues had been addressed prior to the meeting. And again, there are still a handful of items that need the focus and attention of the technology department. At the very end of the meeting, the union leadership team offered a grievance letter documenting shortcomings and also offering remedies for

073these matters. They filed this directly with the superintendent, myself, skipping the informal and building level administrative steps, which is allowable under the collective bargaining agreement. Our CBA states in step two, the superintendent shall meet and confer within five workdays to arrive at a satisfactory adjustment. And then within five workdays from that point, the superintendent shall state his or her decision in writing to the union presidents. To validate and appreciate our union, the representation of our staff and the legitimacy of their technology concerns, I will, of course, abide by the contract and help ensure that any and all issues are remedied. The Board of Education, by contract, is specifically listed in step three of this process, which I do not think this matter will come to, so once the written decision has been reached and hopefully

074agreed to, a copy will be forwarded to the board as an FYI. I appreciate our staff, their use of their elected leaders within the union and the manner in which this was brought forward. I am unhappy about the conditions that led to these technology issues and have actively addressed them with the appropriate personnel. In the end, we are here to serve our students, our teachers, so that they can, in turn, have the most academic progress possible. And the way that we care for our employees and their concerns is important and will not be dismissed. So I'll pause there in the event there are any specific questions about the information that was provided in the board book regarding technology. Dr. McDermott, I guess I just have a general question. What, was there like a main cause,

075would you say, for these technology issues, or is it a lot of like separate, distinct issues that came up, or is there like a common theme? Yes, there are both. Okay. Part of it is moving to new technology, so not only using iPads, but also moving away from Microsoft into Google, so that caused issues. The main issue was with ClassLink, so that's an automatic rostering, and I've got my tech people in the back, so if I get a little off, I'm sure they'll come up and assist, but ClassLink helps automatically roster students from PowerSchool into all of the different apps that we're using. So the automatic rostering was not working correctly. The apps were working, teachers could use them, and teachers are super creative. They find a lot of workarounds, they work together collaboratively, but

076they put in a lot of extra work that was unnecessary in order to access the tools that they need. And so some of this is going to be covered in the work that I do with our union in representation of our staff. At this point, everything is working. There are things that are unavoidable. For example, we had an internet outage today that is not a product of something that our technology team can address. It knocked out part of our Uniflow, which is our printing and scanning, and so for several hours during the day, we did not have access to that. By the end of the day, it was restored, and again, we send tickets in and have the companies address these types of matters. There are also smaller issues that are across the district. For

077example, a staff member gets married, they now have a change of last name, they're rostered differently with their classes. Although they may be using that name until we have the documents in the district office where we can legally change that, then sometimes there's a delay in getting those addressed with the way that their emails read, the way that their rostering looks, and so there are smaller issues that have more isolated groups or individuals within the district. So we do have a talented team. They are working, so we have coaches in a building, we have technicians in the buildings, and then we have both a director and an assistant director of technology who are handling a myriad of different issues, and so we heard from our public today what is the most important thing, and that's

078school safety. If students and teachers don't feel safe, teaching stops, and so when we get a ticket that comes in that has something to do with school safety, that's always prioritized over something that might be of comfort, and that's not referring to air conditioning, it is referring to if a teacher moves their desk and they want their phone that is operating in their classroom moved, we'll fix a front door that's not closing correctly first, and then that will be done secondarily. And so the three gentlemen that work in that department, because I'll add Walt into that group, are our troubleshooters, and so they're out fixing and repairing things in the district. We have five buildings, it's a lot of ground for them to cover, but at this point right now, everything is working. So the

079union did come with a list of just struggles at the beginning of the year, and that's something that we need to have some procedures and protocols in place to address now that we have moved and made the move to Google and to iPads, I don't anticipate having those issues in the future, but we still need to formalize this into a procedure. So we'll do so. So this ClassLink PowerSchool disconnect, does PowerSchool run ClassLink? Or is it a separate? I'm gonna look in the back, we gather the information from PowerSchool to put into ClassLink. Does that sound correct? Is it a PowerSchool issue? Brian, why don't you come forward? We'll have him answer the specific questions. The short version. Sure, so ClassLink is specifically rostered out of Google. So the Google, in Google we have all

080of our users, those are then synced over to ClassLink. So is PowerSchool not interacting with that, or is it a PowerSchool issue? I feel like we've had some of the similar issues. Sure, so we do use PowerSchool for rostering some of our software, but that is not through ClassLink. So ClassLink is specifically rostered out of Google directly. PowerSchool is used to sync our Google Classroom. So anything that is being populated into Google Classroom is directly coming out of PowerSchool. So that's why our teachers are automatically being rostered with their courses and sections, because that is specifically coming from PowerSchool. Specifically what happened with ClassLink is that the district roster is probably about, we counted it up last year, about 30 different applications. And so we have a lot of things that take time to roster.

081And so we kind of backed ourself into a little bit of a corner, because we kept ClassLink running through, is it Summer Bridge or this? Yeah, so Summer Bridge ended probably within the first full week of, which really gave us about seven business days to completely redo ClassLink. I mean, really we started from scratch and had a buildup. And so while we had all of our Google stuff imported in the ClassLink, then it became the individually rostering of all these different products that existed within ClassLink. And then we began to see issues there that weren't working right, that I don't necessarily would have foreseen, that a product didn't work right in the ClassLink app, it works okay in Safari, or it needed the app instead. And so we were kind of fighting those various fires

082in real time, certainly not the way I would have heard this year to start, but I do accept that that is on my shoulders for the way it started. And so I didn't disagree with anything that the union had to say in our conversation. I think I've told you guys before, I don't make change for change sake. And so the board entrusted me to make this change and lead the district forward. And so I understand right now it's extremely frustrating. So I know I'm working along with my team to make sure that we are working to get these larger issues fixed. And it is true, we do have smaller issues that are out there, like specific people aren't seeing something specific to their user account. And so now that is where we're working towards next

083are these small individual specific issues versus a larger issue that affects many teams. How will kids that need to print, because with these iPads, so how is that going? What kind of, and has that been communicated? It has been communicated. And the conversation did talk about where is this in the sense of priority. And so I kind of said like, this is not just a, put a printer out and kind of do, just put a printer out and allow them to print to it. So there are other products out there. And so once we kind of get all this rostering and classroom management stuff, taking care of printing would be something that we would look at as the next big ticket to take. So they would be able to print from the road? Because we

084also want our teachers to be able to print to it. And so it's, we did look at Uniflow trying to have Uniflow print from the iPads, but it does not play nicely with the iPads. So. Okay, I have a couple of questions. So my first question is, if a teacher has a technology issue, they submit that through a school dude, correct? Are, beyond just you, are coaches and technicians able to get into school dude and see what those requests are and resolve them themselves? That is correct. Our building technicians receive tickets first. Okay. And if they can be resolved, they are resolved first by the building technicians. And if not, then they are escalated to Kevin or myself. Okay. And then Dr. McDermott, when you say that you have to issue a decision for the

085grievance in five days, does that decision basically mean you're agreeing to everything that the grievance states or what do you mean by you have to make a decision? Can you just clarify that? Sure, so the first thing that we would do is we would meet about their concerns. I've read through them. It's reasonable. And so we would agree to those terms and then I would commit that to writing. Okay. So there's nothing in their particular document that is egregious. There are procedural issues that they would like to see to help protect members from having delays at the beginning of the year as a result of technology. Okay. And then my final question was, in terms of an e-learning situation, I'm a bit concerned that we may not be prepared for that. And I just want

086you to alleviate that concern because I'm guessing we would be on Google Meets, but I'm not sure that parents really know what's going on with that. I'm not sure that all of our staff know what's going on with that. It seems like our upper levels are a little bit more comfortable or aware, but our lower levels are more so using Seesaw. So just, I guess the question is how prepared are we if we needed to go into an emergency e-learning day? And if we're not prepared, when are we going to get prepared and how? Sure, great question. So we have our two communication platforms and our lower grades, right? Communication is going out through Seesaw. Today in our institute day, both buildings went through in-depth training, not only in Seesaw, but in Google Classroom. And

087so if we did have to go into an e-learning event, our staff would know that in the younger lower grades, they are communicating that link through Seesaw. And in the upper grades, they do have the ability to use Google Classroom, or if someone was still using Schoology, they would know they would take that link and communicate it to their students through that manner. Communication went out to all of our staff last night about a variety of things, but there's an initial step of how to set up a Google Meet multi-page kind of walkthrough that was provided to all staff. And so that was brought up to us earlier in the week. And so that messaging went out last night. So we walked our staff through how they would have to set it up, how they

088would be able to communicate that in whether it was Seesaw or Google Classroom. And I think hopefully that helps alleviate that possible panic, because we do know that we do have another Institute Day or SIP Day coming up, but that wouldn't be until October 31st. So we do have the coaches. If we did need to do some further training, our coaches can meet with the PLCs or grade levels and work in a smaller group if we did feel the need that additional training beyond what was documented to maybe help them start it. So we do have opportunities to do more training beyond October 31st. Thank you. Ms. McClish, can I add to that? Yes, please. I echo Brian's sentiment about October 31st. In my mind, at least I always think of emergency days, snow days,

089winter. It's okay to wait, but given the emergency situation, conversation with Dr. McDermott, some of the principles, it's like, let's get the information out now in the event. So I have a quick reference guide for families on these schedules and some reminders and all that information about Google Meet and what Seesaw would do and where Google Classroom comes in would be there. So I will send that out this week just to give parents a heads up on those platforms. But like Brian said, the teachers, we earmarked October 31st for hands-on training. We might need to do something sooner than that and then more in depth at that time. Thank you. I wanted to go back to one more thing. I appreciate that. That's very helpful. With the school due tickets, you said that the coaches

090and the technicians, they do have the ability to go in and see it and do it at the building level. Would you say that the most issues are able to be resolved by the coaches and technicians? Or is this part of this that like, in the beginning, a lot of this had to go further up and that's why it's been kind of frustrating? Sure. To clarify, coaches do not have access to school due tickets. It's our building level technicians. Sure, sure. Yep, so no worries. I would say our team was learning alongside in this change as well. So I would say being a part of a district who was Google and iPad previously, I would say I shouldered a fair majority of the different challenges that were going. And then we lost the building technician

091at Rogus and this is no, I'm not trying to make an excuse, but then I'm also trying to support Rogus and all their classroom and building changes. And so truthfully, it was an overwhelming August. It wasn't if, I know at a time like this, it doesn't matter how many hours you put in, but I just need you to know this, it was not a five day a week, 40 hour August. I knew what had to be kind of shouldered and I tried to do as much as I could do to be prepared. And I still fell short. So I don't understand that we don't have a building tech at Rogus. Correct, he resigned on August 9th and we're doing interviews tomorrow to hire for that position. Okay, so who is clearing those at this time?

092You and Kevin? Well, I mean, yes, but we have heavily relied on our two instructional coaches. I mean, I do need to give them the- Well, they just don't get the notices. They do need to get the deserving credit for Don Gasco and Kyle Fisher. I mean, those two have immensely stepped up to provide the daily service and then I kind of come in and help in hours of where I can. Can I- Oh, go ahead. I just have a question. Power School, does it sync with Google Classroom? Or will it? Power School does sync with Google Classroom, correct. So will it sync to the grade book? So, okay. Initially, so yes. Can you say that loud and clear for the teachers that are listening? I know that's a big concern of theirs. Thank you.

093So when we linked Google Classroom, we initially did not turn on grade book syncing. I'm damned if I do. I was damned if I don't. So I did it as a cautious start. I have been told otherwise. So we will look to try to see if we can enable it and start piloting it. It was one of those things where from feedback from other school districts that were doing this, they talked about it being very cloudy in the pushback to the Power School grade book. So I was very leery about if it wasn't clean, I'm still gonna catch grief from staff about how it's not working right. So I figured let's take it slow and at least get working in Google Classroom before we decided to add another layer on top of it. And in

094conversations, I was told that they were ready for it. And so we will look to implement that shortly. I don't have a specific date, but it'll be, I would look to have some people try it before we kind of tell everybody like, you know, dive all right in. And also I know this has been a rough month for technology. You guys had a lot going on, but I want you to know in the last day, 24 hours, the communication that you've shared with the staff, I had like four phone calls today of relief. Just the communication was awesome. I guess there were like three emails that had gone out and they felt, you know, even about the printing, they couldn't complain because they knew before they ran into difficulty. Thank you. Thank you very much.

095The staff has received three emails from me this month. It was a trilogy, but. Thank you. I'm curious if Kimora or Audrey, do you have any feedback on how technology has been so far this school year versus last school year, previous school years? Has anything on your end seemed different? Be nice. So on my end, whenever I have to like sign in, it like won't work sometimes. And I remember yesterday, I had to go down to the tech hub because whenever it said, oh, you can sign in, you just press the sign in button and it would just do the same thing over and over again. So I think that was maybe the wifi connection. Was that in ClassLink you were having the issue? It was Google Forms. Like my teacher, she sent something for

096a practice assignment and then it said, oh, sign in and then press the sign in button and it never did. So we had to like reset the computer, do this and do that, so. Sort of along the lines that she was saying, just mainly internet issues where like maybe some point it wouldn't connect and now teachers would have to like reschedule what they were doing because a lot of the things they were doing were online. And there's also been a problem with like submissions and submitting things, just as Kamora said, if you were to try to submit something and you were like, I swear I submitted it, a teacher would be like, I don't see it here and it would cause then problems there in having you thinking that you submitted it and they're not

097getting it on their end. Was that in Google Classroom? That was not in Google Classroom. It was through the notes, through the new Schoology, like where it's in our home screen now and not through ClassLink because you have to log in through Schoology because now there's two Schoologies and then you submit through the second Schoology and it's all weird, but sometimes like it won't go through and it will say like error or this. So submissions and internet is mainly the issue here and there. Have you heard anything else from peers or other students about technology issues? What are you doing to me, Mr. Spreadberry? It's getting hot up here. I mean, geez. Not at this time. Yeah. It's not compatible from Microsoft to Google. It's important. Something about tools. I did hear grave concern from

098the science department that something with science fair and there's no tool to do the... Citations. Citations, yep. Right. And it's been brought forward by the staff. And the staff did bring it up in implementation and maybe you could talk more about it, Brian, about science fair and the issue because that is a big deal. This week I was just informed about looking how we could transfer some of the students' stuff from OneDrive because that was something we didn't do. We didn't transfer anything for students over from OneDrive to Google Drive. So that was a comment that was brought up and the answer wasn't no, but I didn't have a chance to really dive into it any further than acknowledging that that was something that they were looking for. Do you, by any chance, maybe need

099to like... Possibly, I mentioned this to Dr. McDermott today, to like hire somebody to come in to give you a hand, just like a seasonal person, to like help get everything on track? I mean, again, we're in the start of a new... You know, multiple new things. And so there was a lot that was kind of shouldered this summer. So I don't necessarily think we need additional staff to do this. You know, I think by hiring our person at Rogus, that helps alleviate one other responsibility that I don't have to necessarily be there. But sometimes the work coming in is clearly faster than can be resolved. I have a question about the submissions because the other day, my science teacher, she was trying to collaborate with another teacher and it didn't work. So we all

100had to like almost redo our work. So is that a big problem with the submissions on Google Classrooms? Some of the stuff you guys are telling me is really the first time I'm hearing it. So what I like to do, and here I am in the public forum, I like to be able to stop by on Friday and find you guys and specifically kind of sit down with both of you and you can kind of show me what's going on. It is, you know, very humbling when you put out 2,300 devices and it's, you know, handled by 2,300 people in a different way. For Google Classrooms, most of my classes barely use it so far. Like it's not used much and any time it is, it has problems in one way or another. So I

101think some teachers are avoiding using it because they don't know how to use it as well. And what do they use next week? Schoology instead. They're using Schoology, yeah, because there's confusion on learning how to use Google Classrooms. Along with, I've seen students, my peers, being lost, having to ask the teacher and the teacher also not knowing what to do. How are the coaches assisting and supporting staff during all this? To be honest, I think they've been fantastic. They were the ones that led not only the Seesaw but Google Classroom instructions with their staff. So John and I met with them as a team last week and then they really kind of paired off and we really focused on specific goals that we wanted them to achieve in not only Seesaw but with Google Classroom.

102And John and I were out at both buildings today and so we've gotten feedback from principals and I also got feedback from staff at both buildings, at least that I attended, that the training that they attended today was very well received and that they learned a lot. I think that went a lot for me. So I think Jason at Hilda Walker has made great strides with building relationships with that staff and the staff, I believe, is trusting him and he's working on a rotation to meet with different PLCs in grade levels and so I think Walker is in a great position. Chris Mena over at Summit Hill Junior High is working really well with Jason Swanson and so those two have paired up very nicely, worked together really nicely for our Google Classroom training today

103and I think Chris did an excellent job executing today's Google Classroom and I also witnessed when we rolled out iPads at Summit Hill Junior High because Chris and I were paired up together and so I watched Chris for seven periods lead students in getting their iPads set up and one of the things that I laughed about was I kind of gave him a template and by the time we got to fifth period, he already kind of took his template or took my template and then added to it in his own way and so there was the initiative right there and he led it fantastically. Can't say enough about either one at with Kyle, Dawn and Jonah as well. Again, those are our veterans because they were technology teachers previously that have moved into this role,

104I think, pretty seamlessly and so they already have established relationships within their own buildings and are leading their staff in that direction where we need to go and so I was very pleased with how today went with our very first step day with direct instruction that focused specifically on CSO and Google Classroom. I think going back to, you know, I've said this before that it is a big undertaking for teachers to pick up and learn a new application or what have you so I would be patient with your teachers because I'm one of those old goats that took me forever to transition, it took a global pandemic for me to pick up and learn how to use Google Classroom and talk about learning under fire, learning under pressure but now I'm like a master at

105it. Well, he's a master, I'm probably not a master but you know, you learn tricks over time and you learn helpful little things but without using it at all, you'll never learn that and I think in hindsight, I'm glad that I had to learn it because it's really enhanced my classroom experience for my kids, I fought it for a long time and I think some teachers are there like fighting it and that's okay, that's normal, you know, hopefully they'll find something. I think one of the most useful things for me in learning it was we have an amazing, amazing IMC person who would just get online and meet with us for like, what do you need to know how to do, sign up and she would just do a Google Meet with us and it

106would be like five minutes and you're like, oh, that wasn't so bad, you know, maybe just push topics out like people can kind of log in and off during their plan time if they have time or maybe, you know, record those sessions or whatever so that people can go back to them and you're probably already doing stuff like that but that was the most important thing like, hey, PE department, I'm gonna meet with you on Thursday at three, come in with any questions you have. Some of us would show up to the Google Meet and some of us wouldn't but it was just super helpful to have it departmentalized and say, here's how you can use this as a PE or a health teacher for whatever reason, okay. I mean, I think our structure that

107we set up in place is a sound structure. If we didn't have the technology coaches, I think we would be struggling more but, you know, we have offered not only our building level technicians who take care of that hardware portion of it or, you know, wireless issues and then we have that technology coach who is able to bridge that gap of technology and the educational platform. We still have the coordinators of instructional support and so these are people that aren't transferring between buildings, right? No, the coordinators do but, I mean, you have two full-time people in there dealing with problems that can be handed, you know, right when it is occurring or people that are able to build a trust relationship and not being spread then. And so I know we are one month in

108but I think, you know, we will stay the course. You know, we're not gonna deviate, we're gonna keep on pushing in, we're gonna keep on solving our problems and, you know, knocking tickets down as quickly as we can but offering the acknowledgement that it wasn't the way we wanted it to start out but also knowing that there is still work to be done and that we will continue to do the work until everything that we need to get is gonna get taken care of in the way that they need it taken care of. If you don't mind me asking, you said School Dude is for the teachers that submit tech issues, right? Do you think that the tech team would be up to students submitting their own problems to them so that maybe you guys

109could do like a little five-minute session on how to fix those problems with like the most being Wi-Fi problems and how to fix it? Look, you're already earning your seat right there already. Sure, let's talk more on, I'll talk to Mrs. Goble and Mrs. Lau and we'll figure out a time when I can meet you both. Yeah, I think it would be great for you guys to be able to be that conduit to funnel it so it gets condensed to like the most common stuff and then maybe they can show like a little fix, like a little video fix or something like that for that, just so he doesn't get overwhelmed too. So you guys could be that conduit. I'm just letting you know, I'm not on TikTok. Maybe they can handle that part for

110you. Yeah, I will defer that, don't worry. Brian, one more question. For the iPad, when they bring it home, is there any kind of safety, like a case? Like they had one last year for the tablet, but this year, they kind of just bring it home. Yep, the case and keyboard are one unit together. And they have that, students do, the case and keyboard? It's just like this in front of you. It's similar to what you have. It's a stronger case than this for the students. They're like latches closed. Yeah, they're nice. Okay, just so they're protected. Don't worry, they're protected. That doesn't mean they haven't been damaged already, but they're protected. Anyone else have any questions for Brian? Thank you, Brian. Can I ask just one more? Are we making progress back in the

111day when they were rolled out to the staff, all the apps they want are being pushed through, all that stuff is getting done? Be careful, I'd say everything that they want. Well, like Reflex. That's out. That's out. Yes, Reflex is, yes. We had an issue yesterday where we did an upload in Clashlink and it lost its association. That's devastating to the students. I understand. They love their Reflex. We were just out. It was only for a couple hours, so it's fixed now. And a technology question, more so just for calendar. Today they had a half a day. I went to the calendar to see what time I had to pick up one of the kids. And it just said half a day, but it didn't say what time. Is there any way we could just

112kind of, yeah. Because I ran into that issue with the Christmas program. It's easy enough. And I had like four of them to go to. So, okay, thank you. That's an easy fix. So Amy, I'll tell you, so everybody has the app that they need to do their jobs. So what we're finding out now is that some teachers have purchased possibly their own stuff and we're using it on the side or they were buying supplemental stuff without kind of our knowledge. So this is where we're finding things. And so John and I are the SOPA police. This is where we have to really figure out, again, is this an application that is only a one-off? Is this application really good? And it should be used gray level-wise or building-wise. And so not that I'm saying

113that people asking about what apps that they specifically want on their iPad aren't justified, but we're starting to see the people that had purchased things on the side now asking for that to be only installed on their classroom set of iPads. So there is a, in my next email that goes out to the staff, there will be a form that they talk about on how to apply for, or not apply, how to request an app. And so I'll just tell you on that request, it's, you know, I want X, Y, and Z app. Why do you want that app? How does it meet your curricular, your goals? And how does it meet our Common Core? So there is a little bit more than, hey, I want espn.com on all my kids' iPads. You have to

114do some research and justification of how it meets a curricular goal and how it would enhance what you're trying to do. But they did this last year. So if they had it on there last year, they just expect it this year, and it was okay last year, now it's not okay this year? That's frustrating for a teacher. That's really frustrating. Unfortunately, Joy, those people were behind. I think you need to get some of the apps back going because that was part of their curriculum, and they were evaluated on it, and I'm sure the principals were aware of it. That's an assumption. Any other questions or comments for Brian? Thank you, Brian. Well, let's dive into transportation. Okay, here we go. So opinions vary greatly on how transportation could have or should have been addressed with

115both Safeway and their former employees pushing out information onto social media and with members of our learning community. Again, these issues were not isolated to 161 but included many, many other districts, none of whom saw this kind of situation unfolding. I was asked recently about when and how communications came in from Safeway from a board member and wanted to follow up with copies of relevant emails. So these are in your board, they're at your board seats. You should have copies of these. And I emailed them out earlier today. So the email chain is addendum one. So again, you have a summary sheet and then what's behind that are some of the finer details in the event you want to kind of look into those for yourself. You'll see the chain of conversations that there was

116no mention prior to the school year that there would be any disruption to our service after a successful year in 23-24. And with an in-person meeting with Sam Singh and Joe Donnelly, our reps from Safeway on July 31st, 2024, there was nothing with their change in management that pointed to anything different in service. As a district who deals with hundreds of vendors, we rely on the approved contracts and agreements to drive the services that are provided. You'll also see the information, planning, and routing that was completed by the district this summer as evidence that the appropriate plan and planning was in place on our end. The contract was not followed. We've held Safeway accountable and they have taken full responsibility to support and change and we are supporting them to try to help rectify the

117transportation problems. All of this placed our students, their families, and our staff and the district in an unsafe and inappropriate position to start the school year. And much of this was addressed at our last meeting, a special meeting on September 4th, which is available online. There's a Vimeo link you have to click on in order to see it. I checked to make sure it was there. It is there. To be prepared for today, Julie and I spoke with several other transportation companies and the event Safeway failed to make the appropriate adjustments. Those are all listed in the notes in addendum number two. These are attached for your review, for your information, so you can kind of scan through what we found out from these other companies. So I sent you an email with these documents.

118So looking forward now, there's much for Safeway to prove. Better service was demanded and they responded transportation has been better and running much closer to on time. And after a thorough assessment of the options, if we needed to replace Safeway, we have not found anyone who can step in and pick up all of our 24 plus routes. It would take several companies to cover all the needed routes, minimally three, which we believe would be confusing and detrimental to the district. We believe as stated in our last meeting that supporting Safeway through this situation is the best path forward for our district. I know there are other districts who have dropped their service, but for our district, we feel that we have fared much better than many of the others. Our list of items that Safeway

119needed to address, which was a list that we created kind of cumulatively at our last board meeting, was verification that there are 24 unique drivers for our first and second runs each day that is complete. Securing an additional bus for DJR to split our longest route for our youngest children has been approved by Safeway. We're in progress of routing. Utilizing the five additional buses assigned in the PM to split the remaining five longest PM routes at DJR is approved. We are currently routing. Affirmed date to roll out, here comes the bus, which is our app. It was determined to be September 25th, 2024, and that was determined at our in-person meeting here in the district office yesterday with Safeway, with Lucky and his team. So communications would come prior to this and we have received

120a request from the district alerting parents that the here comes the bus app is accessible with instructions for utilizing the app and with a request that they contact our transportation department with any issues so that these can be corrected for the following week. So all of this has been approved. We're working on the communications on our end. We just wanna make sure that it is ready and reliable before we send those to our parents. A status update for turn-by-turn directions to assist drivers in their routing. 25th, which is a week from today. That has occurred through immense pressure from our district to Safeway in our meeting yesterday. More efficient bus video retrieval times. We've had several bus videos that they could not retrieve. The past three or four requests have come in on time. We

121have a contact who responds. And so those help our building administrators address issues that are occurring on the buses. All billing is on hold until this is resolved. That was agreed to yesterday in our meeting. And better availability, timing, and communication surrounding our after-school charters. Those are all of our extracurriculars. So after the first run, after the second run, we have many of the same drivers who will be driving our, we call them charter runs, but this is in progress also. Safeway may need to add drivers if they can't finish their second run and get to the pickup on time so that our students are arriving to their competitions and their events in a timely fashion. So I do feel that there's been progress and that transportation is improving. I judge that mainly by the

122number of times that our phones ring in the office and the number of emails that we receive from parents. Aside from the inevitable construction or traffic or a flat tire, we have promising signs that Safeway can handle our district and run the routes according to the parameters that we've set. Lucky Sahota and his team are here today. They've been waiting patiently in order to come to the microphone to give a few statements, answer any other additional questions that the board might have about transportation and kind of give us that shot in the arm that they think that they can do it. So Lucky, come on forward. You can't lose who Lucky is to the board members. Yes, sorry, Lucky Sahota, he is the owner of Safeway Transportation and I'll let him introduce his other two

123team members. Thank you, respected board members. We appreciate the opportunity to meet us, meet with you once again. We would like to directly thank you, Superintendent McDormand and his staff and everyone else within the School District 161 learning community for their assistance in addressing the transportation issues at the start of the school year. We are happy to report that since the last meeting, service has been improved. We have completed preparation to start the pilot program of turn-by-turn voice directions. It is soon to be September 25th to be launched in six school buses and same week, within a few days, all 24 school buses. With the remaining buses will be launched that follows our regional manager, Mike, who's with us here today has been on site at this location for full two weeks and has aided

124in the hiring a new assistant general manager with two dispatchers. This has lead to us elevator driver shortage with the new drivers that has helped in fulfilling the district guidance for routing across schools in the district. We are here to provide, take your questions. Thank you. I have my CFO, Steve Wolf with us as well. So since we've had the new buses, the new routes or the number that we were supposed to have in the beginning for Act 24, are any of these doubled up? So in other words, are two buses, has there been issues with two buses running the same routes accidentally or? I'll answer that and then I'll let Lucky jump in. So our primary concern is that we had Summit Hill Junior High drivers who were then assigned to a Walker route.

125Okay, so those two things are incompatible. So there's no way that you could ever finish a Summit Hill Junior High route and then arrive to Walker on time to run that route. And that's the first run. So those drivers then also run an elementary run, which pushed those back even further. And so at the very beginning of this, our contract called for 24 unique buses and unique drivers and we did not have that at the beginning of the year. And so part of the relief of pressure is having enough drivers to run those routes. And so I'll let you answer how many drivers you have running our routes. If you are beg borrowing and stealing drivers from other locations and bringing them here, you had public comment about the quality of your drivers and drug

126testing and things like that and so. That was my question as well was, are we pulling them temporarily from places or are these permanent fixes? Is it temporary to make it look good for, you know, for the deadline and they had a, yeah. Yep. It is always when new school location started or new school you started, wherever's needed, it's not only us. Can you please speak in the microphone a little bit? Every other bus company has this answer. All right. We bring bus drivers from other locations to here. Temporary means we are hiring locally. As soon as the new drivers start up, our other locations going back to their original locations, not just temporary to feel good just for today. In general, because of, in order to get school bus license, it takes more than

127a month just to start to complete. And when school started, between school year end to school startup, mostly what happen is drivers goes after different pay scale and different bonuses, different other perks. We lost some school bus drivers and we are hiring. That's what it was means. We are temporarily bringing school bus drivers here. So my concern would be, are we borrowing from another district and those people are gonna disappear or vice versa? And I think that's what kind of Amy was alluding to. It's exactly you. Do we have our 24 routes and we're adding routes to cut the time? Yeah. Do we have what we need to get our kids from point A to point B in a reasonable amount of time? Yep. Okay, my name is Michael Comstock. I'm the regional manager for

128Safeway. The drivers assigned to the 24 routes here are all local drivers. You have no out of town drivers on any of your routes. It's one of the first changes I've made. I haven't been here that long, only a couple of weeks. And hopefully you're seeing baby steps and progress going along the way here. Over the last 24 hours, I've worked very hard in having a working tablet, right? I have one working tablet right now that I actually use today for turn by turn directions for the driver family. And I used it on ROGUS a couple of times. It's working really well. The audio's on it good. The technology's there. It's working just fine. What I'm finding out though, as I'm working with it, let's say we're working off of Google Maps and everything's not

129perfect, right? Not for a 40 foot bus. So there's times a driver, hey, I can't take a right there, but I know if I take that next right, that'll give me the same amount of time and safer. So the software will automatically, after he does it like three or four times, it will follow his route, right? Because it'll void the hazard. So I was really excited today. I've been working since four in the morning, so I'm a little tired, so excuse me. So I was really excited to get going on this. And I'm really excited going forward to, I'm excited for my driver's family. I'm excited for the community because it is really gonna make a difference. And I don't just say that about the seasoned driver, right? That guy, he knows what he's doing.

130But it's nice that he has the tool. But it's the newer drivers, right? It's the guys that get a little lost, right? But with that tablet, it's going to make a huge difference. And we're going to also be using that for our, we call them sub-drivers, right? So when someone calls in sick, it's just not a brand new guy doing a route. It is a brand new guy doing a route, but he's got a tablet, right? It's gonna help them tremendously. So I am really excited about the tablet rolling out in the community and the Bus Stop app. So I'm hoping you see improvement here because it's why I'm here. I'm here to make a difference in the community. I've been in the school bus industry for over 15 years. Previously with this, I was

131a first student. So I have a very good understanding about what's going on in your community in the school bus community. So like I say, I'm really excited to make a contribution. That's all I really have to say. And also one question. If the kindergarten, say the smaller kids especially, if they have one driver in the morning, does the same driver drive them in the afternoon? You know, I've been looking at, I look at it all, right? There's nothing, I look at everything. I see some of that going on, but not as much as my personal preferences, right? Especially when it comes, I'm real particular about everything, but when it comes to special needs, right? And when it comes to our SPED students, what you're mentioning is very critical to me because that relationship that

132gets developed between the student, between the parent, very important to the parent and the driver. So there's a percentage that is, but there's a percentage that's not. And once I get a few other things straightened out, I'll be looking at some of that stuff, right? Because I think it clearly makes a difference to the relationships, right? And it easier for the driver. Yes, I would agree with that. Not everybody thinks about what's easier for a driver. So thank you for that, but you're absolutely correct when you say that. And thank you to all your drivers. The drivers have been great. It's more just the logistics. Yes, and like I say, I know you guys have gone through a rough patch here from everything I've heard prior to my arrival. But like I say, I really

133think there's some good progress going on and it's just gonna continue to get better as we improve. And the technology is a big part of it, to be totally honest with you. Paul talked quite a bit about that yesterday and you got me a little bit more motivated after that conversation, obviously. So I've been working about 19 hours straight to making sure that comes true for your district. Anything else for me in particular? Can I be really picky on your wording? Just ask you to clarify one more thing. When you say no out of town drivers, so you're not saying drivers from out of town, that includes meaning not from other surrounding districts, right? I just wanna clarify. No, what I'm saying is- You said out of town. What I'm saying is, you have no

134out of town drivers on your routes. I do have out of town drivers in, I'm not gonna lie, but there's none on your routes. No, but you're not taking drivers from other districts and borrowing them temporarily. I'm borrowing extra drivers that are in other communities, right? So if I got a location up in Waukegan and he's got five extra drivers for me and I'm short at another district, not yours, yeah, I plug them in. And there's been times, and I'll be totally honest with you, I'm not gonna lie, there's been times those drivers have stayed the whole year at a location. Very common practice in the school bus industry. I don't know if you guys, very common practice, right? I can remember bringing 40 people from Seattle and moving them to Madison for a whole

135school year. And that's what we did. And we absorbed that cost, right? Because we're committed to fulfill our contract. But on your district, there's no out of town drivers running your routes right now. I had a question about Here Comes the Bus. I know that it's coming back on September 25th. Yes. So do you mind telling us a little bit more about the program? Does it track the bus to show you, oh, is your bus closer to your stop? Or does it tell you the ETA of when you're gonna come to your event? Yes. All those things you just mentioned, it will tell you. What you won't be able to see is what's going on in another area, right? You only see your bus and there's privacy reasons for that, very important. But you will

136see a time, I'm still working on it a little bit, you should be getting an alert that two miles away, five miles away. I'm not sure where the alerts are set right now. But yes, it will do what you're asking. So will there be an email out to parents to say, oh, here's your QR code for bus number eight? Yes, that will be on Paul when he puts that information out. Absolutely, yes. Thank you. And the Apple work sub drivers, like it should work the same? Yes, for other districts in the community, it should work the same, if that's what you're asking. Yeah, if you have a different driver that day, the parent can still see everything that they're supposed to. Because that was an issue that we had last year, that if a sub

137driver came and did a route, like if say like route six, whatever, a sub driver came and did it, then here comes the bus did not work that day. So anytime we had sub drivers, the app did not work. So as parents- As long, and I say this- Or if they were in a different bus. Or if the sub driver had to take a different bus. It's- Correct. Here's what I'm gonna say. Bad data in, bad data out, right? If my dispatcher doesn't take that driver and assign them on that same bus on that route, or change the bus number in that software to match the bus that the driver's running on that route, we will have bad data. And I'll be totally honest with that. If we do things properly behind the scenes, everything

138will work pretty smoothly, right? That's how technology works. But like I say, people are gonna make mistakes. We know there's gonna be time. Oh, I forgot to put that driver. Well, now the whole world knows. Problem is now when you make mistakes, everybody's gonna know it, right? Hey, why is my bus still showing the yard, but I see it out in front of my house, right? So that will happen. I promise you there'll be a day that that will happen. Well, prefer it won't be the first day or the first week, but there will be a time that will happen. There's room for error because there is humans involved in it, right? But otherwise, it's gonna be a great tool, I think, for the community. It's going to take the phone call volume down at

139the district level and our level, which is what we really like, right? Especially when it's working right and everybody can see it, the phone calls go down, right? So we're really excited about that. When you do get a phone call at Safeway, do you- I keep hearing a voice behind me when I turn around. So I'm sorry, go on. No, when you get a phone call at Safeway, do you let the district know you got that phone call or do you just keep, like, is there communication? From what I'm seeing, if we get a phone call from a parent that, like I said, I've only been here a little bit. So when that phone calls in, come in, hey, where's my child or what's going on, we tell them, but we don't turn around and

140inform Paul unless it's something very important and something, you know, that he's gotta be notified. Otherwise, the incoming calls that we get, we don't turn around and send them to a transportation department. Just so we can keep track of the amount of calls. On our end, we might be thinking the parents are happy, but they may be calling Safeway. Here's what I will say, whatever volume was, it's really dropped dramatically over last week and a half, I'm gonna say. So we don't, like, do a tally or do a count on the calls we have because we service several districts. So it's a lot. I'm sure there's something down the road that somebody will come up with to inform you guys of that, but right now, we don't have that kind of tool in place, right?

141Just right now, we just don't have that tool. What have you guys done to really fix the overlapping? Because one of my peers last week, they came to school at least an hour and 30 minutes late. So what have you guys done to really fix that? Did they take Uber? No, they took the bus. Okay, I'm just checking. It was us. What, can you tell me what school it was? Summit Hill, I don't know what bus she's on. Junior High? Yeah, Summit Hill Junior High. But she came late to- Said an hour and a half. Yeah, at least an hour and a half, took 40 to an hour and a half, and they said, oh, now you can take attendance because the bus was really late. What are you guys trying to do to fix

142that? I can't remember Summit Hill last week running that late. I'm not doubting what you're telling me. Surely it happened. Mike, why don't you pull the data and give it to me and I'll share it with the whole board. Do you know what? I meant to pull a week's worth of data here. Prior to getting- That's okay. We'll take it now, and then that will help answer Kimora's question. I will send you the GPS arrival times for the school for the previous week, for the AM and the PM side, because that's really the true tool and what I personally use too. But that one really bothers me because that would stick out like a red, you know, that'd be like, what do we do? So I'm gonna look at that and I'll get the reports

143to Paul. It's because she came late two times. Like it wasn't just a one and done situation. It was at least the first week of school and then last week where she came at least a period late and we had first and second. So she came maybe at the last five minutes of second period. I will look at Summer Hills. I can tell you at this point, I can't, I wasn't involved the first week of school. I know it was rough for everybody, but like I say, we're making improvements and I will spend some time looking at Summer Hill because I hear you loud and clear is what I'm gonna tell you. So thank you for that. Would that data include when the students are picked up when the bus routes start? Cause I was

144contacted by a parent that they missed their bus stop two days in a row because the bus was over 15 minutes early. So they missed their bus stop because the bus was so early. Bus started too early. Yeah. So would the data include that if we get this report? Yes, it will. Perfect. It will include that. So yeah. Matt, that's not an isolated event. Okay, yeah. So whatever is in power school, the bus has to come at that time. Yes. If it's early or late, you have a parent standing there on the front side or the backside or both. Right. Wondering if they missed it or if it's coming and that's the reliability that we talked about. So in the event the buses are consistently on time, you build trust and people start to trust

145that time and you get a little bit of margin. So when something happens, people are like, okay, but for the past two weeks, it's been every day at this time. And that's more accepting than if it's different every day. And also for here comes a bus, will it tell you, oh, by the way, your bus is gonna be five minutes early or blank minutes late? It will tell you the time. I'm still working on a lot of it. I think there's some messaging that's available on it, but don't promise me on that one yet. I don't know if that's usable. But yes, it will tell you when we're late, unfortunately, if we're late. See, I love that question because if a bus driver's on a route and they're running early, they should wait. And then

146get back on the exact times to hit the stops. And again, that's that reliability. The gentleman mentioned at the end here, I got my glasses on, I've been up too long, I can't read any of those things. I've actually had to pull some drivers back over the previous couple of weeks, say, hey, you're starting too early. What are you doing here? So there has been some corrections made in those instances, just to let you know. If the driver's expressing to you, or do they ever talk to you and tell you like this route is just not? Oh, they talk to us all the time. Two days a week right now, we have, with Lucky's permission, we have brought in the actual router from our routing company in-house. So he's been spending three, four hours in-house.

147So I don't have him come until the drivers are done with the routes, right? So they could go directly to him. It's not somebody telling somebody else and sending the router an email. He's in the lunchroom, and I promise you, the first full week it started, drivers were lining up, which is a good thing, right? That means there's a tweak here, there's a tweak there, and it may not be anything major to, hey, you know, your pickup time's gonna be 10 minutes earlier, but it's something to keep the driver on time, if that makes sense. So having that router in the building over the last couple of weeks has really made a big difference for us, I'm gonna say. It's been tremendous. One thing I'd like to remind everybody of, it's already 9.25. We wanna

148make sure we don't keep the students too late today. We still have a few things that we gotta cover. Are there any other pressing questions that really need to be answered at this time? Thank you, gentlemen. Thank you very much. Thank you. We'll be talking. Thank you. Thank you for coming. Okay, I have just a couple of other items that are in the superintendent's report. They're more informational than anything else. We wanna release this information into the public. So last week came the advent of many new programs and initiatives across the district. We obviously have student board members sitting here. We also had our first community outreach committee meeting. We also had our first parent guardian academy. So thank you to John Snipes, Nicole Smythe, and Stephanie Gehry for presenting on the topic and organizing

149it. Along with the parents and guardians physically present, the session was also videotaped and will be available on the district website for future viewing along with the handouts that we had at the meeting. In the event a parent is looking for that information. The next meeting will take place on October 8th and will center around Power School and seesaw for parents. Please feel free to join us at 6 p.m. at the district office. You can also tune in online once the video is posted. And to add a little fun to it, we do have trimesterly punch cards. So if you attend two of the three sessions or if you view them online and you turn them in to Mary Ann Ryan here at the district office, you will be eligible for some great Summit Hill

150School District 161 prizes. Again, thank you to everyone who brought this to fruition. When will it be online? I don't have the date in front of me. I'll pass that along to the team and then I'll let the board know in the update. I just wanted to say I was able to attend and I thought that Nicole Smythe and Stephanie Gary and John Snipes did a wonderful job. Even if you think that these sessions aren't for you, I really highly encourage you to attend. There were some great tangible takeaways that I even implemented in my own home. So just highly recommend attending or watching them online because our staff did a great job putting together a presentation and doing a presentation that really was good for parents of any age. So they definitely took into

151consideration that they had parents who were of younger kids and then parents who were of older kids and they made sure to kind of hit all of those areas. So I just really wanted to say that I appreciated it and encourage people to attend. Okay, I was also asked to add building level culture committees onto the list just for a brief update. So at our most recent AC meeting within my report, we discussed these building specific building administrator led meetings. With each building having their own distinct character and culture, we want to offer staff, parents and the administrators in each building the time to talk about how to make the very best learning and working environments possible. Our current plan is to meet in October, January and April using the transition groups that met as

152we were reconfiguring the district at the elementary level and in collaboration with our MTSS and problem solving teams inside the buildings that already exist. This group will have the opportunity to look at all available data. So that could include five essentials data, building level data, information relative to the equity audit that was provided to the district in the past. And the building administrators will all have a similar agenda outline to help guide the meetings and ensure a degree of consistency but the conversations will be unique to each building. That's how we can include more people. The goal behind having these conversations is again to ensure we have the very best learning and working environments for every person, student and adult who enters our schools. All right, and that concludes the superintendent's report. I have a

153quick district 843 report. We adopted the budget for the fiscal year at the August 27th meeting. Pioneer Grove this year has 71 students, which is really up. That's a sign that it's a good program that's healthy people are moving into the districts in order to access it. Pioneer Grove has 71 students, SELF has 29 and the bus is transporting 587 students. But that's again a couple of weeks out. You may hear that there was a bit of a staffing shortage there. We had a few people who signed contracts, showed up for the first three days, left their computers behind and resigned by email because they took other jobs. So there's not a whole lot we can do about that if people are going to be unethical in that way. Unfortunately, that seems to be something

154that is happening more and more throughout the nation at this point. It's a real problem when you interview people, you sign them up, they sign a contract, you have them set to be in front of kids and then they just don't show up. So there were some adjustments made. There have been interviews held. Those kids are not just sitting in a room with no one. So there have been adjustments made to that, but it really is a problem in staffing throughout the year. So that's my 843 report. Next is board member building reports. Oh, anyone want to start? I can start. Oh, sorry, did you want to start Amy? Okay. So I had Indian Trail. So I'll still be representing Indian Trail. So I had some information from Mrs. Wright and Mr. Estona. So just

155wanted to say thank you to them for providing this information. So they said, students are doing great, becoming acclimated to the daily routines at school. Even the first grade students are becoming comfortable learning where the classrooms and school offices are located. PBIS is up and running. Students are being recognized for their outstanding effort and being respectful, responsible, and safe. Congratulations to our numerous Bravo winners. Keep up the great work. And then they also wanted to share that ITSCO will host a family night at Indian Trail tomorrow, September 19th from 4.30 PM to 6.30 PM with games, activities, and food trucks. And so they encourage everybody to come out to that event. Thanks. Amy, you want to go next? Go ahead. Is your mic on? Oh, thank you. Thank you. That's what happens when it's 9.30.

156Okay. We kicked off the school year at our first PBIS assembly to announce this year's Spartan theme, mindset matters most. Mindset matters most. Students learned our building expectations, met staff, and we're the perfect audience. We are excited to continue on this positive streak. And this can already be noted with our NWEA scores and our spring IAR and ISA scores. We're also thrilled to have our eighth grade students, Kamora and Audrey, join the board of education as student board members. These two will help connect not only the Summit Hill junior high students, but also students district wide. They will also work with students on the principals panel, as well as throughout the year to bring insight and value to our school community. Amy, keep reading because mine is cut off. Oh, okay. I'll read next time.

157Our athletic season is off to a great start. We had one student hit a hole in one on our very own square links course. Another golfer qualified for state and got a great sendoff and placed 55th out of 80th. And our softball team advanced in the regional championship game. Runners, cheerleaders, volleyball players are all busy with their seasons as well. Many of our clubs have started for a complete list. Visit our school's website and click students for more information. Our Summit junior high staff is tremendous. Our students are the highlight every day. And then we're excited to share big news every month. Whoever'd like to jump in next, by all means do so. I feel terrible. I left my report on the kitchen table. That's a new school, can't be that much new. You should

158have said the dog ate it, okay? That would have been a good one. Joy, Tammy's looking for that online right now. So we'll see if we can get you a copy. I'll go ahead with DJR. For kindergarten, supply drop off in the back to school bash were a great hit. Families enjoyed seeing each other and socializing as they learned about the soaring together theme. We took time to decorate mini eagles and hang them on the wall to show that we are all soaring together. We enjoyed our kindergarten meet and greet. Students and families had an opportunity to meet their child's teachers, learn about their classroom and even tour a school bus. They also held their first PBIS kickoff assembly for the new school year. We came together as a building to talk about the school

159expectations, review our theme of soaring together, learn our school song and have some fun with the established color teams. And to be clear, that was for kindergarten. And then for first through fourth, Mr. Bradley sent, we are well on our way to a great school year and we can't believe it's almost midterm for trimester one. Our students have been working hard, spreading kindness and participating in fun PBIS activities. We're looking forward to an awesome year. The DJR choir started rehearsals this year and we will have over 60 members in the choir. We can't wait to hear the first performance later in October. Additionally, the DJR staff will be sponsoring 25 different activity clubs for the students to enjoy throughout the school year. And a big thank you to Eagle Scout Lily Bonovitch for designing, creating

160and donating an outdoor learning classroom for our students and our teachers to enjoy in the interior courtyard green space. Many classrooms have already made use of this space. Joy, why don't you go ahead since you're borrowing somebody else's computer. Thank you, Leslie. First and foremost, at Mary Drew Preschool, we're thrilled to welcome the students to our new building, filling the hallways with all the little learners and seeing them enjoy the new playground, the library, the classes. It's been amazing. The preschool team has implemented a new experience, Fun Friday. It's an opportunity for all the students and all abilities to participate in one large group activity in our library. It's been great. Coco, our comfort dog, has started at Mary Drew. We love having him with us and our little learners and we love to come

161visit him and to see him throughout the school day. And that, last but not least, John. Hilda Walker. Thank you, Ms. Carroll, for putting together a very nice report here. You made my life very easy. The theme for the school year is the sky is the limit. We have challenged our students to set a goal, academic, athletic, personal, anything they'd like. Our first round of clubs and sports have begun as well. The Hilda Walker and Summit Hill Junior High cross-country team started in August and our girls basketball team begins practice. And then the Hilda Walker Beginning Band and Beginning Strings program are completed. Their enrollment night's this week, which was tonight, for the last week of our students. We attended that. My son, Johnny, is taking up the mantle of his mother and his grandmother,

162so he'll be third generation sax. And we went there today and met Mr. Fitzgerald, who I hear nothing but amazing things about. So we're excited. My dog's been howling from the first few toots. So that's been comical. And then this last part here, which I love, is the SCO for Hilda Walker is planning a family night at Hilda Walker on Monday, October 7th. Weather permitting, we will be outside with food trucks, a DJ, inflatables, and more. We hope our families attend. What I love about it is that I always say that because we're unincorporated, we don't have a village like Frankfurt does or New Lennox, where they hold a lot of festivities. And these are the kind of things that our community comes together and we get to meet more parents and families and come

163together as a community. So I appreciate that. We attended the last, the end of the school year at Frankfurt Square last year and they did food trucks and it was so much fun. So I encourage everyone to come out and thank you again, Mrs. Carroll, for helping me put this together. Thank you. We have a closed session scheduled. We talked about technology and transportation. Do we still want to go into closed session in order to further discuss that? I thought that a lot of things were answered. I mean, it wouldn't hurt to go into it, but I think a lot of things were answered as far as the transportation goes. And I also think the technology stuff, Brian spent a lot of time on. So I'd be okay with not going in there, but if

164we needed to for a few minutes, if somebody wants something more sad to go. Yeah, I don't think we need a closed session. Anyone else have anything else? Joy, are you okay with that? Okay, then we'll go into closed session. You want me to do this community outreach? Yes, go ahead. Okay, real quickly, community outreach committee update. We had our meeting this past week. We had 11 of the 12 members there. One member did not come because he did not receive the email. And so we've corrected that. I corresponded with him today and he's on board. Amy and Stephanie, they co-lead that group and did a great job of facilitating the conversation, making people feel welcome, drawing comments out of people for the first time, having them together as a group. Next tasks for the

165November meeting include creating a mission statement for the committee, determining how to introduce this committee to their respective schools and finishing up the meeting minutes for review and approval. And so I'll pass it to you if you'd like to give some comments. And I'll kind of start from Stephanie. The vibe was very good. The vibe, I mean, everyone got to share some ideas and already they're just thinking big and making it what they want. So the vibe was very good and I appreciate that. And I just wanna reiterate that this is a way for people who might not feel comfortable otherwise to express their voice to participate. And I hope we see it grow and they make it what they want. Yeah, I would agree with everything that Amy said. I thought that it went

166really well. People were able to meet some new faces from some different schools, found out that their kids go to multiple schools and were able to chat and just seemed very eager to get involved and participate and bring some ideas forth. It just was very positive, but also very focused on some ways that we can improve and make our district better. So it was just a really great night and we're looking forward to continuing. So thank you. Thank you. And Paul, do you wanna advice? We don't have anything after the closed, right? So public is aware that they're not waiting. Right. And that was one of the things I was gonna mention. We're not gonna have any action after our closed session. So could we potentially release our student board members? They can't go into

167closed. Yeah, well, no, I know they can't, but I don't want them to stick around or think they have to stick around. I wanna make sure that they know that they can go home and go to bed, because it's late, it's past my bedtime. So at this time, I mean, our future meeting is gonna be October 16th, 2024 here at the Mary Drew Administrative Center at 7 p.m. And at this time I move that we go into closed session as printed and publicly posted on the agenda. So moved. Can we have a roll call, please? Mr. Winter. Aye. Mr. Spreadbury. Aye. Mrs. McClish. Aye. Mrs. Burke. Aye. Mrs. Campbell, aye. Mrs. Murphy. Aye. Mr. Martin. Aye. And the motion carries and we are going into closed. Thank you all very much for attending tonight. We

168stay in here or what?