001I am reconvening into open session Township High School District 113 committee of the whole meeting on Tuesday, May 13th, 2025 at 701 the recording secretary will now call roll Mr. Raza here Mr. Frank here Dr. Elliott Schrimer here Mr. Neater here Mr. Newman here I would like everyone else who is present to identify themselves. Tom Krieger, Chief Human Resources Officer. Brian Armour, Chief Operations Officer. Ali Mahanty, Assistant Superintendent of Finance. Hallie Fleischer, Principal at Highland Park High School. Karen Warner, Chief Communications Officer. Katherine Anderson, Principal at Deerfield High School. Mira Ante, Executive Director of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion. Shayla Holland, Superintendent. May I have a motion to approve the agenda as presented? Is there a second? Is there any discussion? Hearing no further discussion we'll proceed to a vote. All those in favor say aye.
002All those opposed say nay. The motion carries. We have a very exciting evening this evening. We will first be doing several recognitions. This evening marks another moment of reflection and gratitude as we move further and further to concluding the First I want to make sure that any student artists that are in the building are able to be in the boardroom at this moment. We have an overflow room so if we can just give everyone a moment of pause. Thank you. So if there is an artist in the overflow room I do want to make sure that you're able to make it into the official boardroom. We want to thank our student artists who give us the privilege of sharing their work on our board walls for the duration of the school year. We do also
003before we list the names of our student artists Dr. Holland did you have any comments? Yes so I'm gonna miss your art. It has beautified our boardroom. It's made my office very inspiring as well. I have a love for artists by the way so thank you for the joy that you've brought to this building. So I want to thank all of you personally for contributing your work to our district. Your art has brought inspiration, curiosity. I've been asked some questions to ask about some of the pieces and has actually brought your voices into this building in a very meaningful way. Your artwork has been a constant reminder of our arc call to serve you and to create opportunities for you to express yourselves and also to create so thank you so much. I'm going to
004be listing the students names first Highland Park and then Deerfield High School. If you are a student artist here we have your art on the back table so please take it with you as you leave. If by some chance you we have listed you and your art is not on the back table please just let your principal know and they'll make sure that we get that squared away. Highland Park High School Kira Feinberg, Getza Gayton, Scarlett Kischer, Alexa De La Cruz-Ramirez, Ariel Buckmaster, Odalis Servin-Duron, Charlie Kellogg, Patrick Williams, Cecilia Gabrielle, Kaya Fowler from Deerfield High School, Sayake Tozaki, I'm sorry Sayake Tozaki, Nolan Fetner, Violet Kroll, Jonathan Hyde, Natalie West, Emma Spielberg, Sophia Belagamba, Taktovic Asatrian, Gail Harvey, and Rhett Freese. Thank you all again for your beautiful artwork that has made this boardroom a
005much more enjoyable place to spend our Tuesday nights. Thank you. We now will be honoring our outgoing board liaisons and I know you both are in the room. We appreciate Mr. Walker and Miss Peck who served as the board student liaisons. Your thoughts and perspective enriched our discussions and helped us stay student focused. You'll see them wearing special purple cords at graduation as a symbol of the leadership role that they served on for the board and for this district. Is there any comments you'd like to add? Of course. So this is both a sad and a joyous day for us. I was fortunate to meet Lila and Miles during my transition period as they served in this role for the past two years. High school students are real busy and these two are pillars at
006their schools and they're greatly involved. It has truly been a joy getting to know each of you in this role and also your participation on the students superintendent's advisory council. Your insights and perspectives have greatly supported my leadership. Lila, I want to encourage you to keep using your powerful voice and the wisdom found in your words, poetry, and performance to inspire the world. Thank you for representing a generation of thoughtful, empathetic, and reflective young adults to have a greater sense and call to enhance outcomes in the lives of all humanity. Miles, I want to encourage you to keep using your powerful voice, your presence, and your grounded perspectives in your advocacy and support of others. You have consistently served as a sounding board and as a critical friend for me this year, ensuring that I
007stay connected to differing perspectives regarding the student experience. You bring light and joy to all spaces. We will be rooting for both of you as you embark on your next phase of your journey. Lila at Vanderbilt University and Miles at DePaul University. Thank you so much. Lila, if you both come around to the front so we can take photos. Thank you so much for everything you've done. Miles, thank you. College-bound opportunities is our next opportunity for recognition. Again, I want to make sure if there's any CBO students that are in the overflow room I would love for them to be able to make it into the boardroom. So we'll just give them one moment. I'm going to be, before I introduce Lyssa Halperin, who is the director of college persistence from CBO, who will be
008able to share information about the organization as well as introduce our scholars. Dr. Holland, was there anything you'd like to say? Yes, our district has a powerful and inspiring partnership with college-bound opportunities. CBO works with scholars during their junior year through their graduation from college to support student access, belonging, and achievement, key aligning pillars with the work of our district. CBO equips students with the skills, resources, and mentoring to achieve their goals. The students honored tonight have not only demonstrated commitment, but they are positioned to not only change their lives but to serve as an inspiration for their families and all who follow. So thank you to CBA and welcome to our meeting tonight. CBO. Lyssa, if you wanted to come forward that would be great. If you know what, would you mind coming actually
009up to the podium with a microphone only because we also look forward this opportunity? For those of you who are not familiar, we are a not-for-profit organization, community- based and community-supported, and we are very grateful to District 113 for its support of CBO since its inception. Since 2006, college-bound opportunities has been mentoring, empowering, and inspiring low-wealth, first-generation college-bound scholars to overcome barriers, graduate college, and achieve success in life. CBO is very proud of the fact that 98% of our scholars graduate from a four-year college or university. We accomplish this through support, support, support. Our program includes college access while in high school, college persistence during college, financial support for college-related expenses, and career preparation workshops to ensure our scholars are prepared for life after college. And what also sets us apart is our long-term commitment
010to scholars through both staff support and one-to-one mentoring from the time they're accepted into the program until they graduate from college. We currently support 71 students who attend Deerfield, Highland Park, Buffalo Grove, Lake Forest, Vernon Hills High Schools, and Crystal Ray St. Martin in Waukegan, and about 135 kids who are in colleges around the country by now. By the end of this spring graduation season, we will have over 300 college graduates, which we're really excited for, all employed in a career and or in graduate school. We'd like to congratulate all of this year's 32 high school seniors and wish them good luck in college next year. Tonight, from Deerfield High School, we have Giretzi Matsariegos. Please stand when you're asked to please. She'll be headed to Wellesley College in the fall. We have Alejandro. We
011have Alejandro not here, but will be headed to Augustana College. We have Chelsea Cruz. She is headed to Augustana College. We have Jalen Vargas. We have Jocelyn Melchor, who's not here, but will be attending University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. We have Jocelyn Ortiz, who's not here, but will be attending Augustana College. We have Johan Garcia Hernandez, who's not here, but will be attending Illinois State University. We have Nicole Cruz. She will be attending University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. We have Robbie Mendoza. He will be attending Deloitte College, and we have Sarah Gonzalez Heredia. She will be headed to Illinois State University. Thank you again to District 113 for all the support. If we could have the students come forward, we'd love to do a follow-up. Thank you. Our last recognition for this evening is our retiring staff.
012I do want to ask if there is any retiring staff out in the lobby or in the overflow room, I do want to make sure that they are able to make it into the boardroom for good. Fantastic. Thank you. We want to recognize and thank our 15 district staff retirees, 13 of whom have served the students of our district for 20-plus years. They have met the needs of our community as classroom teachers, administrative assistants, bus driver, custodian, teacher's aide, office manager, data analysis manager, skilled maintenance, athletic director, and DEA leadership. Thank you for the role you each played in helping our students grow and launch. And to that end, the board has a resolution in honor of our retiring employees. Whereas a key priority for Township High School District 113 is the recruitment and retention
013of qualified, conscientious, and motivated employees to serve all students. And whereas one element of pursuing this priority is recognition of employees for their service to the students in District 113. And whereas such recognitions of service to students also encourage people to consider education as potential employment and a career. And whereas one opportunity to recognize employees for their contribution to students is when employees retire. And whereas hearing the recognition of contributions employees have made to students benefit the entire community. Therefore be it resolved that we the members of the Board of Education of Township High School District 113 Lake County Illinois recognize and thank our retiring employees for their commitment and dedication to Township High School District 113 and express our profound appreciation on behalf of the students, families, staff, and community of the district. Before
014I honor each individual retiring staff member, Dr. Holland, did you have any comments? Yes, congratulations on your retirement. That's first. That's amazing. Your dedication and service to District 113 has been truly remarkable with an average of 26 years spent shaping the lives of students and other staff members and families. Your contributions have left a mark on our schools and community. Your commitment ranging from 5 to 32.6 years has touched countless lives and created a legacy of learning and growth. We extend our heartfelt gratitude for your years of service and I wish you all the best in this exciting new chapter of your lives. Also thank you for supporting me and my first year here. All of you have been very welcoming, honest, transparent, candid, supportive, and all of the right ways. So thank you so
015much. I now have the honor of reading each of the names of our retirees. If you are present, please stand as I read your name. I'd love for you to stay standing if you can and then at the after I'm done reading all the names we will have everyone come up. We do have a token of our appreciation and as you can imagine a photo as well. Jeff Berger White 32.6 years of service. Carrie Benito 32 years of service. Marty Escar 32 years. Jeff Doc Hoyer 31 years. Robin Kibinski 31 years. Paul Harris 30.3 years. Betty Libralis 30 years. Joe Baggetti 29 years. Joe Lin 28 years. Andy Zakuski Mar 25.5 years. Ruth Morkin 24 years. Tony Sintu 22 years. Lisa Johnson 20 years. Bonnie Kath 13 years. Nancy Hall 5 years. Thank you all
016for your service. Thank you. As I said this is a very fun meeting. We get to celebrate some fantastic members of our community. We recognized those that are leaving us now we have an opportunity to welcome new folks that are going to be joining our family. It is recommended that the Board of Education appoint the following student liaisons to the Board of Education for the 25-26 school year. Ethan Polinsky from Deerfield High School and Sophie I'm sorry Monsivais. Sophie is sorry. I will get better by this time next year I will have it okay. May I have a motion to approve this recommendation? Is there a second? Second. Is there any discussion? Hearing no further discussion a roll call vote please. Mr. Brunk? Aye. Dr. Elliot Schumer? Aye. Mr. Heineman? Aye. Ms. Lupo? Aye. Mr.
017Nieder? Aye. Mr. Braza? Aye. Ms. Newman? Aye. The motion carries welcome. I don't think I can see your cracks. Fantastic. And Miles and Lila you guys can take your knee plates with you if you like. At the holder. Oh but you but no one else in the building heard me say that okay. It is recommended that the Board of Education approve a multi-year employment contract for Jose Medina, Executive Director of Facilities Management as presented. May I have a motion to approve this recommendation? So moved. Is there a second? Second. Dr. Holland would you like to share any information regarding this recommendation? Yes. I actually want to start by sharing something about the entire process and then the recommendation. So over the past seven to eight months we've engaged in an unprecedented hiring season at the
018district office. Each process is extensive, often bringing together profiles and expectations, many rounds at least three rounds of interviews with a wide range of stakeholders usually including staff administrators, parents, caregivers, and students. Each process also includes extensive reference checks to confirm and solidify the expertise and experience we should expect to experience. Each hiring process spans several months. All of the feedback and information thoroughly vetted and reviewed and this process is hard and I'm sure is hard for our applicants making moments like this even more of a reason to celebrate. Mr. Medina brings over a decade of experience in facilities management operations and budget oversight to District 113. He currently serves as a Director of Facilities at Beach Park School District where he manages their annual budget overseeing the maintenance, repair, and operations of all school
019facilities. In previous roles at Beach Park he supervised the maintenance and operations of all facilities implementing a preventative maintenance program, effective and efficient protocols, and extending the lifespan of all equipment and facilities. Prior to his current role in Beach Park he served as Assistant Director of Operations at Vernon Hills High School District 128 where he managed daily operations, facility operations, and construction projects. Mr. Medina holds several certifications including the Illinois Association of School Business Officials, Certified Plant Supervisor, AFE, Certified Professional Maintenance Manager. He also serves as the Northeastern Illinois Facility Professionals Regional Co-Chair, holds Building Operations Certification, HazMet Certification, and CPO Certification. Anything I miss? Mr. Medina will succeed Chief Operations Officer Brian Ahmer in this essential critical role and I'm so excited to welcome you to District 113. Great. Um, stay clear. Any other
020discussion? Maybe. Hearing no further discussion, a roll call vote please. Dr. Elliott-Shermer? Aye. Mr. Heineman? Aye. Ms. Lupa? Aye. Mr. Nieder? Aye. Mr. Barraza? Aye. Mr. Brunk? Aye. Ms. Newman? Aye. The motion carries. Welcome. Mr. Medina, did you have any remarks for this evening? Great. If you don't mind coming to the podium only again because we are able to stream and want to make sure people and you might as well get used to this now. If you want to press the button on the microphone so the light turns green. Well, I just want to say thank you very much for letting me be part of this district, letting me be part of this team. It was definitely a lengthy process and I'm very, very honored to be here. I look forward to working with everyone,
021with Dr. Holland, with the rest of the Board of Education, the administrators, the rest of the team, but most importantly, you know, facility staff. But the one reason we're here is for the students. I'm looking forward to that. Thank you so much. Thank you. Thank you. We'll do a picture too. Maybe I should guess it a little earlier. It is recommended that the Board of Education approve a multi-year employment contract for Dr. Karen Ritter, Assistant Superintendent of Curriculum, Instruction, and Assessment as presented, may have a motion to approve this recommendation. So moved. Is there a second? Dr. Holland, would you like to share any information regarding this recommendation? Yes, please. Dr. Karen Ritter is poised to join District 113 with a distinguished career marked by a deep commitment to instructional innovation, equity-driven practices, and student
022achievement. She currently serves in the same role at Community High School District 117 and serving Antioch and Lakes High Schools. There she oversees comprehensive curriculum development, instructional best practices, district-wide assessment frameworks, strategic professional development, and instructional coaching and new staff support. Dr. Ritter has also been instrumental in expanding multilingual services, implementing a tiered MTSS model, increasing college and career pathways with dual credit opportunities, and leading the district's grading coalition, charged with the implementation of a new grading scale accompanied by purposeful and consistent communication of grades. Prior to District 117, Dr. Ritter served as the principal of Niles West High School and Niles Township High School District 219, where she focused on areas that were impacted by the pandemic, including chronic absenteeism, culture and climate, freshman success, and restorative practices. She also served as the assistant
023principal for teaching and learning at East Leiden High School and Leiden High School District 212, where she led efforts to close the opportunity and achievement gap in advanced placement courses, especially for underrepresented students. Prior to Leiden, Dr. Ritter served as an assistant principal at Mather High School and as a French teacher at Taft High School, both in CPS. During her teaching career at Taft High School, Dr. Ritter was the recipient of a Fulbright Teacher Exchange Scholarship and taught English and French-speaking students, two French-speaking students, in Senegal. Dr. Ritter earned her Bachelor of Arts degree in the teaching of French from the University of Illinois. While at UIUC, she studied abroad for the academic year in Paris, France, as at the University of Paris, Sarbonne, hopefully I'm saying that right. She earned her Master of Education
024degree in General Administration from the University of Illinois and her Doctorate of Education in Administration and Supervision with Superintendent endorsement from Loyola University Chicago. Most recently, she completed her CSBO endorsement through Northern Illinois University. So I am excited to recommend Dr. Ritter. She's unable to be with us here tonight. She also serves on the Board of Trustees for College Board and had a previous commitment, but she would love to be here and knows that we will be talking about her in positive ways tonight. Is there any other discussion? Hearing no further discussion, a roll call vote please. Mr. Heineman? Aye. Ms. Lupa? Aye. Mr. Nieder? Aye. Mr. Braza? Aye. Mr. Brok? Aye. Dr. Elliott-Shrimmer? Aye. Ms. Newman? Aye. The motion carries and welcome Dr. Ritter. Let's go. It is recommended that the Board of Education
025approve a multi-year employment contract for Dr. Tanya Karner, Assistant Superintendent of Student Services, as presented. May have a motion to approve this recommendation. So moved. Is there a second? Second. Dr. Holland, is there any points you would like to share regarding this recommendation? Yes. Dr. Tanya Karner brings a deep understanding of holistic student support to District 113 and over 20 years of experience in student services and special education with a strong focus on equitable data-driven support systems. She currently serves as an Assistant Superintendent of Student Services and Director of Special Education for Community High School District 117, where she leads district-wide initiatives to support all students, including critical areas such as MTSS, SEL, behavioral supports, and compliance. Dr. Karner oversees IEP and 504 planning, professional development, and inclusive practices and manages key areas such as
026homebound tutoring, homeless services, Medicaid billing, and federal and state grant writing and implementation. Previously, Dr. Karner served as Director of Special Education at Elementary District 159 in Madsen, where she led district-wide special education initiatives, curriculum evaluations, and aligned special education programs to regulatory standards. Her leadership background includes roles as a special education administrator, instructional lead, assistant principal, and principal. Dr. Karner holds a BS in elementary education and an MS in special education from Chicago State University, an MA in educational leadership from Lewis University, a Director of Special Education endorsement from the University of St. Francis, and a doctorate in EDD from Loyola University, Chicago. I'm very excited to recommend Dr. Tanya Karner. Is there any other discussion? Hearing no further discussion, a roll call vote please. Ms. Lupa? Aye. Mr. Neager? Aye. Mr. Braza? Aye.
027Mr. Bronk? Aye. Dr. Elliott-Shermer? Aye. Mr. Heineman? Aye. Ms. Newman? Aye. The motion carries. Welcome. I'd just like to say that thank you for this opportunity. I am super excited to get to work and I am just, I'm ready. I'm ready to start and thank you all so much. Thank you. Moving on to board reports. The first is my president's report. Two housekeeping items. Can I just say something else? Okay. I have some closing remarks. So I just want to say for me this has been an incredible first year leading District 113 with so many people working so hard. We've made tremendous progress in cultivating inclusive school communities, focusing on access, belonging, and achievement for all of our students. We are also aligning our efforts to ensure our staff have the support they need to
028deliver instruction and foster student learning and growth in a supportive environment. In addition, we have brought together stakeholders across our community to develop a strategic plan that will drive and prioritize our work for the next five years. District 113 is so fortunate to have talented administrators, new administrators joining us at this pivotal time when they can help collaborate and lead in the implementation of our future focus plan. The appointments that were made tonight reflect the deliberate effort to enhance the leadership capacity of District 113 at a time of dynamic growth and renewed vision. Each of our leaders who were introduced tonight brings not only technical expertise and knowledge but a proven track record of collaboration, innovation, and service to students and staff. We welcome them with great enthusiasm and look forward to the impact of
029their leadership in the years to come. So once again, welcome. Yeah, thank you. Thank you. Okay, I have two quick housekeeping items. The first is the committee assignments for next fiscal year. For finance and facilities, Greg Nader will be the chair. Rick and Alex will sit on the board as board members on the committee. Policy will be led by the vice president, Jaime. I will serve as board president and then Alex will be the other board member. Our education committee, Dr. Jody will serve as chair and Jaime and Greg will serve as board members on the education committee. Rick, we appreciate the time he spends. He has agreed again to be our TIFF liaison as well as our ED-RED representative and Jenny Lupo will continue as our True North representative and Jenny and I will
030be the board liaisons for the DEA contract negotiations as we move forward. The other housekeeping item is making sure all of you are aware, IASB's call for resolutions are now open and are due by June 25th. So our board can submit any new resolutions or amendments to the current IASB position statements for the IASB resolution committee to consider in the late summer. In fall, our board will review and agree on our position on all IASB resolutions up for a vote at the joint annual conference in November. Those resolutions that are approved by a delegate assembly in November become IASB position statements to provide the association, provide the association with direction on positions and or actions on a particular issue. Please provide Jaime or myself with any of your proposed new or amended resolutions by June
0314th that way then we can have any discussion and agree as a board at our June 10th meeting. I did want to also take a moment and celebrate as last week was Teacher Appreciation Week, May 5th through 9th as well as National School Nurse Day on May 7th. May 5th through 9th was a formal opportunity to celebrate our licensed staff members. Every day our 350 plus teachers, learning support staff, and dedicated professionals guide and support our students. To our educators, thank you for all you do in the classroom and beyond. The board encourages our entire community to show appreciation not just in May but year-round. Every interaction is an opportunity to thank them for their passion, professionalism, and commitment to student success. And as I mentioned, May 7th was National School Nurse Day it was
032obviously a part of last week's celebration. Our new nurses do far more than treat injuries and illness. They manage chronic conditions, support mental health, and create safe inclusive environments for every student so every student can thrive. To our nurses, thank you for being a constant source of care and expertise in our buildings. On behalf of the Board of Education, thank you to our teachers and school nurses. Your dedication does not go unnoticed and we are grateful to all of you for all that you do to support our students every day. Thank you and that concludes my report. True North report. Thank you. The True North Leadership Council met on May 7th. Our meeting opened with some impressive recognitions. The Optimist Club was there to honor three True North students for their prize-winning essays based on
033the prompt, how has optimism paved my road to success? 24 students took part in that contest and I wanted to point out that all three winners have the same teacher so there's some excellent teaching going on in that room I suspect. We also recognize True North retirees who have a combined 96 years of service. True North Family University presented to the Leadership Council on their upcoming June 2nd launch. Offerings will be available to all families and member districts are encouraged to collaborate with True North Family University by hosting events, facilitating presentations, and promoting participation and learning. I heard one of the things they were going to be presenting is getting through the airport with your children. So useful useful things. The fiscal year 2025 true up rates have been calculated and because of relatively small
034tuition increases there will be some refunds to member districts. Updated tuition rates will be applied to final bills in late May early June. The fiscal year 26 draft final budget has been placed on display from May 8th at the District Services Center. True North has signed a professional learning space agreement with Wenetka Covenant Church. This cost has been accounted for in the 2026 fiscal year budget. True North will be continuing existing partnerships in early childhood support and services with several inclusive community preschools. And an update on the withdrawal process. Main Township Trustees of Schools approved Glenbrook School District 34's withdrawal from the cooperative affected July 1st, 2026. Glenbrook High School District 225 has revised its intent to also withdraw on July 1st, 2026. There are upcoming meetings to discuss this change. On June 11th, 2025
035a plan outlining future needs at True North will be presented to the Leadership Council. The next Leadership Council meeting will be at 7 p.m. on June 11th. Thank you very much. Next we'll be moving on to administration information reports. Dr. Holland. So this past week we celebrated staff appreciation week across our district. Each school hosted daily events supported by the administration and also our PTOs. As mentioned through the recognition of our retirees and as demonstrated by the daily work of our staff, we have outstanding staff members in District 113. It is my hope that each staff member felt appreciated and found joy in the events of the week. It was wonderful to experience them and thank you for all that you do in service of our students and families. On Wednesday evening with Principal Holly
036Fleischer and Principal Kathy Anderson, I attended the Educator of the Year ceremony hosted by the Regional Office of Education and our Superintendent Dr. Michael Karner who happens to be here tonight. It was an evening filled with inspiration and a who's who in Lake County. During the ceremony we were able to celebrate the outstanding work of two of our mental health professionals Miss Amy Hineson and Dr. Gata Watson who were both recognized during the ceremony. It was not only outstanding that mental health providers were recognized but it was an honor to join in the celebration of two of our outstanding licensed staff members in District 113, both who serve our students, staff, and families in the most meaningful ways. I'm looking forward to celebrating more of our staff at this annual event in the future and
037we're committed to filling up three tables next year. 2025 marks the 25th anniversary of Grand Times. Grand Times began in 1999 when Susan Benjamin then District 113 Assistant Superintendent realized that senior citizens in the community could be an important resource for both students and faculty. She worked with two Deerfield residents, Jerry Witkowski and Louise Kenney, to assess the needs of the district and then to establish Grand Times. They are the founders of Grand Times but Miss Lynn Samuels was also able to join a year after retiring as a teacher in District 109. I would like to thank Grand Times for contributing to the cultures of our schools and our school communities. Our classrooms are special because you're often there with our students and staff. While our classrooms continue to change and evolve, it's great to
038have members of Grand Times remind us of the importance that intergenerational relationships have when supporting the education of our students. I would like for Miss Lynn Samuels to stand and I would like for us to show her our appreciation for your work with them. Thank you Dr. Holland and thanks to the Board of Education for recognizing the contributions that Grand Times has made over the past 25 years. We can hardly believe that it's been 25 years. Over that time, Grand Timers have been welcomed into hundreds of classrooms to share our time and our life experiences with the students at Highland Park High School and at Deerfield High School. I know I speak for all Grand Timers when I say we are so grateful to the faculty and to the students for welcoming us into their
039classrooms over the years. Thank you all and thank you for this recognition. Thank you very much. In closing, I want to encourage all of our students to finish the year strong. How you finish is just as important as how you started the year. Honor all of the hard work, time, and commitment that you've given this entire year through a strong finish. Please make smart choices through the last day of school. Seek help and assistance if you need it and surround yourselves with friends and family who will help you make positive choices. As our seniors prepare for their end of the year events, be smart, be safe, and be present. Enjoy these last few weeks of school. As we cheer you on, between our claps are also extended hands. Reach out if you need support getting
040across this finish line. Please remember that we're here for you and congratulations. Thank you. FOIAs, I believe? Yes. There were two FOIA requests that received a response from us since our last meeting. And I believe now we're moving on to informational reports. Yes. The first is cell phone review and recommendation. Okay, so throughout this school year the district engaged in an extensive review of our cell phone policies and procedures. These efforts were led by Mira Ante, our executive director of diversity equity and inclusion. The landscape regarding these conversations continues to shift around us on a monthly almost daily basis now. At a time when we have more research regarding the impact of phones on student well-being, development, and engagement, I welcome these efforts in our district. Mira Ante will provide an overview of her work
041findings and our recommendations for our path forward. Thank you and good evening. I am excited to review the work that we've done and to think about why cell phones right now is a topic of discussion. What research is telling us from the national stage to our own research in our own backyard talking with our families and students and staff. Thinking about not only the feedback but the insight. What did we learn? What were people really saying? What did they mean by what they were saying? And as Dr. Holland said a recommendation and then thinking about what are some of the frequently asked questions that are coming up for us as we hear this information tonight. So what I want you to notice is what's on top. You've heard this quite a few times. This being
042access, belonging, and achievement. The pillars of our work. What really ground us in our district and what makes us think about how can we help students find growth through engagement. And so some of the key things that are really I think circling the conversation are the elements of distraction that can come up in classrooms. The learning loss as a result of that distraction. Understanding that at times academic integrity is at stake. Thinking about mental health concerns as we look at the implications of the use of and not even just the use the overuse of cell phones. Unfortunately we're all too familiar with cyber bullying and privacy issues that are a part of our landscape as well as the strained relationships between students but also really in that classroom space and it should say staff and
043student relationships. This isn't unique to just the classroom. And so with this in mind I want to take you into some of the work we were doing. The Dr. Holland you know used my name as the way to get into this but really there's been I would say partnership from universities and researchers that don't know us to our neighbors and local schools and people that we've talked to and had the chance to really get insight from students and other staff. But then all of the people in our district who've worked on what I'm presenting to you tonight. This is very much a collaborative effort and I'm bringing to you multiple voices within this presentation. When we think about the national research I'm going to read to you a few things I thought you know you've
044read this report you know what's in here let me bring something a little bit new possibly that's come out over the last kind of few I would say about over the last week or so. And so one of the things that I think is really important and these are out of pretty I would argue leading reputable sources such as the National Center for Education Statistics. I picked up one piece here that said public school leaders at 73 percent report that phones diminish students attention spans. Now this is from a leadership perspective we know that as we drill down and look at the learning sciences we look at other elements of research we see not only is this an impact but it is also looking at just what is the capability of our minds as we
045think about just the human dynamic related to the cell phone. You know what I'm saying? Oh guys we're going to be friends. Okay one of the things that I'm also highlighting here is that this is a statistic that leads from goes all the way from our leadership into our hands of our staff our teachers. Students will talk about some of these statistics as well and I'll show you some of that in a moment but what I want to also really focus on with all of us is that we are thinking about the mental health concerns that have been highlighted very much in recent even book talks DPN anxious generation. We are looking at something that has been deeply studied and even earmarked as something that took off in 2013 and when we really think about
046what's going on and what we can do as together now this is students this is the adults in the spaces on our families one of the things that height puts out is that this needs to be something that all of us can do because together this is what will be successful this being what are we going to do about cell phones this can't be just an adult you know thing where we're trying to bring it down on kids and this also is not something that is independent of our schools our families are really very important in this work and so when we look at what's happening on that mental health level one of the pieces that's critical is that there's some disagreement but if I look at Jonathan height's work from ancient I don't want
047to call it ancient anxious generation he argues there are four things that we need to think about and so I'm going to put those out there and then we'll let it kind of sit for a moment and I'll bring the research in from our district he recommends one no smartphones before high school flip phones you know obviously contacts important he goes on to say that there should be no social media until 16 when you think about what's out there the free reign of until 16 years of age now he's not arguing that's the the time when it should all happen but we could all agree that that would be the base age I'm not asking that we agree on that I'm just putting this out there as some research that has been done and recommendation
048from leading scholars he also puts out phone free schools and thinking about and there are age differences but that is one of the four recommendations and then he says what we have to do is we have to increase the independence of our children in the real world that risk taking is so critical that being outside literally and being amongst your crew and taking risks is where you learn at the highest level and so that's it those are some really broad pieces that we were wrestling with because all of the people that I'm interviewing all that survey data all the conversations people have read some of these things people have experienced much different things and we have a varied set of opinions so I thought the work that's really important is to not bring in a
049collection of opinions but to really understand what did people mean when they were saying what it was that they were saying and so the analysis becomes really important the remedy is really important what are we going to do next year so let me talk to you a little bit about whoops which clicker am i clicking thank you not my opinion but what people were saying in our district so we have around a little over 1800 respondents on a survey that went out the number of people who responded were broad across stakeholder groups we're looking at students parents guardians and staff and when you look at the numbers 10 percent the number of staff that almost represents all of our lsms and so what i want you to think about is do we have a divergent
050and diverse set of voices in this group of data and i would argue yes when we looked at across grade level across schools and the various demographics the survey also began to look at three major areas impact of cell phones access what are people saying about the access to their cell phones and then an open-ended space of additional comments i gave you a couple examples of the items on the um survey and i want to also really underscore this was 10 questions my advice the advice that was given to me is keep this short we know um raise your hand if you love to take a survey our kids one of the best ways to get your voices is through this and yet it's one of the worst formats as you get inundated and and
051so we needed to keep it short but let me also say that this isn't free of conversation so i presented to you the data whoops this is not very easy to click between two you'd think it would be but sure i would like to think i can do that but clearly i can't okay um and thank you so the the summary of the data i don't think is surprising when you were reading through this i'm guessing it seemed pretty much on point i would even argue that if someone looked at the survey itself and the items they could probably find some flawed aspects of the way that questions were worded possibly i'm thinking about how did i really get at certain points of um of these items and so we could have that conversation but
052what i think's most important is to understand kind of the highlights that are going on here and when you can leave it there for now thank you when i um try to dig down and get those takeaways we can see that even students could identify that there's a possibility that cell phones can negatively impact the classroom they are definitely not in the same camp as adults are because why i think because they're digital citizens who understand the benefits of the phone at a level that i know i don't i love my phone i would argue my relationship with my phones got a crush on it but i also know that i am i don't even understand the power of the phone all the things that can do the ways that you guys and other people
053are able to network and do amazing things but what i also can find illuminating within this data is that there isn't a disagreement that there's a possibility of that negative impact and so the question then is what do we yeah i just and i because i i so i mean i have read his book front to back and and i so support all of this data i do just want to be a little bit cautious of time only because we do have multiple reports tonight so um if and again as we've said the board has had the opportunity to drill down on this and it's such a wealth of of information um if there is a way that you could summarize this maybe one step above just so that we can continue to move on
054because i we i know we're all eager to see the plan that this data has driven to absolutely i thank you for that so sure we will skip ahead um what i will argue is that the insight here so beyond the numbers that's really important for us to to take a minute to to take in one is that there's deep concern amongst staff and parents and guardians about the fact that this isn't new this idea of putting cell phones away during class time and so how are we going to enforce something that we've been practicing across different classrooms there's also the other piece that i was kind of getting at with our students which is we have to find a balance because when they're using their phones in a classroom sometimes and maybe not because
055they've been given that permission they're telling us something about what they need and so we need to acknowledge that the use of the phone isn't always an act of defiance or some sort of misbehavior that is shy of telling us something more that we need to know in addition we have to be careful for the ways in which any procedure that we put into place could fall differently on different groups of students from medical needs to educational needs into like i said those ways in which behavior are it's communication and lastly there's a real strong call for whatever it is we're going to do let's make it unified and across a district which means in every classroom this is the same expectation so you don't go to first period with one rule and then second
056period with another which puts students and teachers and staff at odds as well as staff and staff at odds and so we needed to get that consistent and unified so the other thing then that you're wondering is so what are we going to do like to your point and so i really floated in the arguable i was calling them the community circles these talking circles what about these three different kind of plans we've got a no cell bell to bell which is from one bell first period to the end of that first period then you have the walkway going through the hallways you can be on your phone back into a classroom essentially it's all classroom or designated spaces no cell that's the bell to bell not from eight to three then there was the
057phone zone what if there were places around the schools that were designated just for phone use i think that one got laughed out before i could almost get it out of my mouth but it was a thought and i've read about a few areas that had done that and then sell away all day that's the eight to or from eight to three personal favorite okay but i'm not supposed to bring my opinion in keep going so the recommendation is that we do no cell bell to bell so i got a little bit of harassment for coming up with slogans and things and this is somewhat borrowed from another district but what i think is really great is to think about phones up i mean heads up which lead to grades up and then what's up
058that means like the idea that you have more interaction with your peers you are really saying all the things that we say could be at possible risk for this engagement over engagement with the phone and so this is our recommendation that we move into a space that the schools have been practicing for years this is not again new there are teachers over six years we've had pouches in classrooms we've had a lot of this practice happening but what will make it different is this it is required so all teachers will have the backing of the district all staff members will have the backing of the district to adhere to this policy this would not be an independent choice but everybody and all students will be required to place their phones in pouches so remember that
059that little graphic that's supposed to be a cell phone pouch in their classrooms during instructional time there are the hallways and the lunch room and a few other areas that are allowed students will be allowed to use their phones that are already the open spaces that we have set up in our schools so what's really important here is that this will cause a moment of wait so what's different there'll be questions are we talking about an total ban of phones no but can students keep their phones in their backpacks the answer would be no they're going during instructional time they're going into these pouches we have a i think a lot of staff who've been able to help vet these kinds of questions we've had experiences with parents and guardians as we've worked through this
060plan and are fielding those and kind of creating the an faq in order to meet some of those needs heads on head on and then the real thing is is once we live what it is that we're doing we will grow and learn more as other school districts around us have done and we will add to this process and procedure i don't want to stick like you said on the pieces that you've read so i can start to answer questions and we can head into you know where your curiosities are who has questions so will the district be providing each classroom with the designated pouch and then will it be that teachers must use the pouches or will some people have the like alternative methods like a lock box or something like what mechanism will
061be used to store the phones so they have already been equipped with these uh pouches so we'll ask for anyone who would need more but all of the classrooms so we'll be using those phone storage pouches for the classrooms yes i guess one of the questions i have is you've as we know the parking lots have been in several of the classrooms for several years um how are we going to enforce enforcement of this yeah that that's the magic question and i feel like we've been working together um different groups uh and most recently i've been working uh with deans um with dea with various elements or various staff members um asking those questions and so we've developed um a process in which there are really three kind of stages that so and without going
062into extreme detail what i think is really important it's a uniform process in which all staff are supported in carrying out um really uh i would argue a restorative progressive process so you ask your student um you know um are you did you forget you know you assume positive intent you remind them what it is that needs to happen you record that in um i see so that there can be okay so this was our first time it's all good let's move forward though you know what to do and with each step that hopefully that reinforcement is happening um and we don't get to the third one which would then be a little bit more of a severe consequence that would hopefully then begin to shut down the forgetfulness that might happen and or any
063kind of um defiance if you will which would be um securing a phone in a yonder or not a yonder but a any pouch that is considered a a secured phone pouch here's my question though i think that um would you argue the effort also is needed around our community around our staff around our students to have this convert like to understand we all play a role right and so i think the reinforcement will come also within um as families um also become aware in helping us to carry out the the policy too not texting as much i think we have and families who are guardians who are often thinking about things they forgot or want to tell their students things and so it's going to be all hands on deck um and i think
064that's how it works my other side of the concern actually is the staff and forth like i think um i think there i could see where there's opportunities where um one classroom would potentially say you know it's fine you guys can hold your phones on you and even though our policy is is it's not really well um and where other classrooms would would handle it with the pouches and so i think that sends a very mixed message to our students and that's one of my concerns and we've talked about that as well um and so what is really important will be the united front amongst staff that essentially almost a pledge to one another to carry um through with what's being set up and there's also evaluations and there's supervision and there's but it's about
065encouragement you know i want you to be the best staff you can be i want our kids to get what they need i'm noticing you know you didn't do that that needs to have that's part of this um your classroom management that's part of the what we're looking for and so that has come up will people will supervision happen um and and i think that it's of course yes we've talked about that um and amongst um peers what happens when we are um noticing something how do we say hey you know when you don't do that it undermines me as well um and it will come from our principals and our superintendent and all the messaging of what it is that when we open the year what we hope for for all of us um
066but i really feel staff and i don't mean to i'm not trying to undermine anything that you're saying i what came from them is a real strong desire to be supported from policy procedure district building and they i felt like they wanted it too i even felt like a lot of kids don't the kids express they want to be engaged they want to do the things and they don't necessarily want to be on their phones and so i feel like if we create the conditions that will help this um we've got a lot of will a lot of people want to move this move in this way so i want to create a space to see if you have anything that you want to contribute to this conversation uh yeah i actually feel a little
067different i feel like i mean i don't know if it was last year this year but a lot of the teachers were starting to talk about the pouches i got like super mixed uh signals from all my teachers like my first period teacher every single day it's phones in the pouch and most kids are fine with every kid is fine with it um and then my next period is completely different and the teacher doesn't say anything um and i'm not sure like a kid if being on their phones is what kids are really wanting to i i think you're right kids want to be engaged kids want to do the work so i'm not sure if if this is like you know if it if the teachers are by doing this it's going to do
068anything and so that's so interesting because the when teachers did ask for it it happened and it was when teachers didn't say anything that there was no need to listen because it wasn't being asked of you and so right that's to me feels like a very strong indicator of expectations need to be clear across the board yes regardless of the type of classroom that right right liatha do you have anything to share i was gonna say i agree with that and i also think a lot of differences with phone usage comes with what the class is and what's happening in class like there are some classes where there's less engagement maybe where students are more just like want to go on their phone and want to check it um but i definitely think keeping everything
069consistent and the same throughout the school day will help um with that and i do think that productivity is definitely um reduced with phones being present so yeah thank you yeah thank you and that's our reminder we're here for you um to to really make that a meaningful experience which i know we know our teachers want to do our staff wants to do are we going to do anything to follow up uh in six months or a year to see what the impact of this has been do we have any kind of metrics or kind of quantitative measures to say like this is the impact this has had whether it's culture surveys whether it's academic outcomes because i feel like you know i look at this and i my attendance you know i talked about
070this is i worried that this isn't going to go far enough you know that that the options see you know there are high schools that do that there are you know middle you know middle schools that do that um where it's no phone the whole day um how will we know if this has accomplished what we wanted to versus we need to do more i love your question um and i won't be irritating and be like so what do you think um because that's the i don't know so the answer is yes we have to that would be um bad practice if we didn't follow up but the real piece that i'm hearing is the what are we measuring exactly and and what does success or healthier student conditions and i'm i have ideas but
071that's a we need to collect not necessarily all of you although of course we'll be part of that because we have committees that will help us with that but we need to do um some collaboration and some work to think about that because um right if we're talking about mental health we have measurements there if we're talking about grades and academic and growth we have measurements there already as well and we're talking about engagement from clubs to activities to courses the way kids vote with their feet and their voices um we can find out a lot but i think we need to nail that down i think it's going to be challenging to we'll have to figure out a way to attribute attribute change changes to cell phones because i feel like there are many
072factors and so if i go back to slide three where you list distraction and learning loss academic integrity risks we do track some things so i think we can um see if there if there's any decline in any of these areas but i think one of the things you mentioned so i see is infinite campus that's their student information system and so part of what was shared earlier was not just reporting but documenting inside of infinite campus when students are using their phone so that's a part of it tracking the conversations that are occurring with students um and then really thinking about ways to build relationships so part of this is relational part of it is around curriculum and instruction our students being engaged in class in meaningful ways where we're removing the need or
073the desire to do something else yes it's hard but we have to to figure all of that out i think one of the things we're going to have to figure out is how to attribute changes in any of these areas to cell phones so we'll have to figure out a comprehensive way to to be curious if to to what extent it's having an impact on student engagement to what extent is it helping to decrease issues or bullying or anything else that happens in our buildings as a result of being on the phone i mean some of that could just be qualitative right yes got our teachers yes they're going to see it and feel it know it and so we can get some of that you know for them yes absolutely and maybe to alex's
074point too what would be the cadence then of you potentially coming back to the board with how this is going yeah i feel like you know at minimum there are two reports that would come into the boardroom next year um and that would be at semester and you know each the end of each semester yeah at minimum um but we would there there are other elements um that i think are going to be really important for us to look at as we move through the year and what i don't want to do is fall into the trap of over surveying or you know so i want to think about this in a more creative way um but yes i i would say that you should ask for and expect i also think we need to
075give a change process time so that's the other piece um we can keep coming back and we're not actually paying attention to what we need to be paying attention to and that's the implementation um all change requires some adapt adaptive period and i feel like even with the best of intentions we can develop procedures and see that they're having an adverse impact or having an impact that we did not intend them to have so this is basically going to be a journey of trying some things out possibly coming back to the to the board if we report back stating what changed along the way and why it changed like all of the moves that we're going to have to make because we sometimes don't know what we don't know until we implement these type of
076changes yes and i i would i'm going to challenge you that how i'm a little pessimistic here proved to me how you're going to improve mental health when they still have their phones in the hallways and in the lunch rooms and i'm guessing home room i'm guessing freshman advisory like i'm guessing there's going to be um situations where and that list then becomes longer and longer so sorry this is one of my questions i've actually two questions one which doesn't necessarily need an answer right now but sort of like this putting it out into the to the universe right is there is there room is there space for facilitating conversations for responsible use of these devices and not just the devices themselves but what they're using them for there has to be yes advisory is
077that somewhere a part of this part of our curriculum yes and then my other question is more we've seen some some information here on i don't know if these are proposals on how each of these a b and c might be i don't know if those are set in stone at this point these are suggestions i'm not this is exactly how we're doing it at this point no decided no uh a has so option a no cell bell to bell that's what's been decided right even some of the elements within that rollout that's been decided that's how we're going to do i'm not sure exactly which i don't know i'm not sure how it's going to communicate i'm not sure that i want to you know i'm not sure okay well i see what you're
078saying yes right okay um we've seen a um a preview present a view of this date this presentation that maybe has been um cultivated differently over it's not sure what's been communicated and so we may have some information right um discussing here um and so i'm just curious whether what we see as you know a proposed implementation whether that's been decided whether there's further discussion so what we hear you saying is the current the the proposed implementation is no cell bell to bell yes okay and that you will evaluate that um and see how that is progressing yes and that has been um that has been shared with our leadership within our schools within staff who've come to meetings to talk through this our deans um and is coming out once we we wanted to
079come here um and then we will start working with parent groups community dialogue share out into our school or our schools and in their spaces so there's not um a lot that is on that will be um that you have to be discreet about her i i feel like you're really wanting to ask something specific but um and i want you to so but i i don't also you know shayla yeah i don't know what it is that's okay okay okay any other questions okay thank you okay thank you uh next up is communications update so karen warner our chief communications officer supports our district in very important ways karen will provide an overview of her work in key areas of focus there's a lot of important work coming from her mighty department and i
080do want to thank the board for your support in ensuring that the department has the resources to get us back on track with many of the important priorities that she will speak about tonight okay there we go so here you can see a list of um basically all the the functions that the communications department leads are overseas and here you can see um all of our stakeholders represented there some have more formalized relationships than others but we as a communications department and as a district communicate with all of these groups okay so for this year um we've worked on several initiatives one most recently was when the new website we launched a new website may 1st moving from blackboard to final site on the right hand side you can see um kind of a screenshot
081of one of the enhanced features of this new website it has enhanced ada tools um what that offers right there it's called audio eye it gives people the ability to if they have visual impairments um they can enhance what displays on their screen it doesn't fix content per se but it can increase the contrast ratio it can make fonts bigger things like that um also related to the new website is an enhanced uh translation tool but i'll get to that in a later slide um a new thing coming uh to our world very soon in april of 2026 is a new accessibility standard called uh wacag rolls off the tongue 2.1 um it is based on the size of your community's population so for us it's um coming in april 2026 we have also moved
082to parent square for emergency communications we are moving from constant contact to parent square for email and newsletter items we've adopted a device called pocket talk it kind of looks like an iphone it's basically will help to facilitate one-to-one communications in person when someone might have a particular skill in a language that's needed or um just to facilitate someone shows up at the front door and they speak russian and no one speaks russian how do we help them that kind of a situation um and then of course we've been working on the strategic planning process um all year it feels like all year um it's just some overview of numbers that's that population number that's impacting the deadline for um accessibility and on the bottom right you'll see another number i want to draw your
083attention to that is the percentage of households without children in school so as you can see we have a very large percentage of our community um who do not have children in school karen as you go through can you actually say the numbers so sure so our population is nearly 60 thousand and our um percentage of households without children in school ranges from about 68 to 70 percent it's hard to track that exactly but it's within that range with that percentage is it including children who are younger than school age and families that have no children right exactly so in the basically the k to um 12 range here you can see some more detail behind the stakeholder numbers basically um we have a direct email and emergency contact information for parents students uh guardians
084staff but as you can see at the bottom there our best case electronic reach is about it's just under 20 percent so that kind of reflects that percentage of the community that don't have children in school we do not have direct access to them the only way really to get to them is potentially social media if they're active there or a good old snail mail we have lots of multilingual stakeholders you can see we have about 37 languages spoken at home that's self-reported through what's called the home language survey so they are reporting that as they come into the district spanish is the most commonly spoken language outside of english and then you can see the other languages there um in the right hand you can see a screenshot of the new translate function on
085our new website and so basically we use the home language survey data to inform what languages we chose to um to connect with a service called weglot which is much more accurate and robust than a google translate and so we've chosen those top five languages there we can evaluate it on the back end to see how often they're being used so if we see that potentially one language is really not being used we can sub out for another one or we can determine that we might need to add something so we communicate with our multilingual stakeholders in a variety of ways we have a community liaison and hp who serves our spanish-speaking families we are moving to that or have moved to that parent square platform for emergency comms and are in the process for
086newsletters that software gives people the ability to choose their own language preference and they decide that on an individual basis not as a household and they can change it as often as they'd like and we don't have to be involved in it so it's a just a self-preference to our tool it makes it much easier for them uh like i said the website has that weglot uh functionality and enhanced ada tools um our chat pod that we just added in february also has a multilingual options the tip line that we added at the start of the school year also has multilingual options and as i showed you the pocket talk device we've deployed that now in the school buildings here's just a screenshot of all basically our electronic communications infrastructure just some visuals there same
087items as i was discussing earlier to dive into the chat bot analytics a little bit um from that two month period on the left i know the numbers and type is pretty small so basically the overwhelming majority of questions have come in in english and then on the right is self user reported um success data so are they finding the information that they are looking for and the success percentage is 99% and again we can monitor this on the back end and tweak answers or direct people um more explicitly to certain information if they aren't finding it it's also helped with the new website too that gives you um it's just a graph showing some uh in-depth analytics so basically i think the number is i can't even see it myself now i think it
088was like 300 no it's 510 questions actually so in this two-month time frame we've received 510 questions so assuming the success rate that's user rated is correct um that's 510 emails or phone calls that didn't come in so you know that helps our staff and people find what they want to find this is just a snapshot of the top 10 pages through google analytics it kind of mirrors what we're seeing with the chat bot as well four says not set but it's the district um site so basically people are looking at what you'd expect most frequently school home pages district home page calendars employment athletics for our newsletters and messages um constant contact the platform we're currently using uh for this keeps uh sector stats basically and the education sector has about a 40 open
089rate overall we far exceed that as a district and both of our schools the open rates range from about 68 to 75 for the district and 75 to 80 percent for schools um it varies basically on what the email topic is about but as you would expect superintendent messages principal newsletters those things have very high open rates this is some information on our tip line so we have done um i think a pretty good job of encouraging people to report tips like i said we implemented a new tip line this year obviously that number for this year is not complete because we're still in the current school year but i think one of the reasons for falling off a little bit is because of the two-way encryption that the new tip line offers it gives
090people it gives our staff a chance to follow up with the original submitter so i think in the past people kept submitting tips thinking that there was no way to communicate back with them unless they gave their name so if they even if they submit a tip anonymously we can reach out to them if they select that option and they can still remain anonymous and we can get more information and so they can know that it's being resolved or it's being looked into and so it provides a level of um you know conclusion or closing up something so they know that they can kind of move on and it's been handled and again multiple languages offered there social media just a snapshot of our followers and accounts that we have the district and schools are
091on the meta platforms instagram and facebook we're also on x formerly known as twitter the district is on linkedin our school accounts um predate our district level accounts so they have more followers and more engagement and they're also you know just generally have things that more people want to see like students and activities and athletics so it's kind of expected but that's where we are socially and then to get into some current and future challenges um as you saw like connecting with taxpayers who do not have children in school is kind of a perennial challenge locally we have we've seen some uh i think like the record north shore is a new media outlet but in general the media landscape over the past five years in particular has gotten pretty dire so it's become more
092and more difficult to get out just sort of general good news that used to be kind of the mainstay of things like highland park news or um neighbor you know those neighborhood newspapers of yore um so we are always looking at ways to improve on that our accessibility standards are changing the way we're going to operate our website just because it's far more stringent um and so by virtue of that we have to change the way we operate um there's been a lot of mergers and acquisitions on the edtech uh landscape and so sometimes that forces uh changes for us that uh on timelines that we don't particularly like but we have to cope with um misinformation is always a kind of another perennial and then sharing misinformation on on social media and having it
093get another life or a extended life can cause some problems and then of course obviously we encourage people to contact us directly if they have questions or report a concern because we'd much rather give you the factual information out of the gate and then looking ahead as everyone knows we're working on the strategic plan that is the draft goal for there which reflects school and community and family partnership so when the strategic plan comes to the board on may 27th uh the board will approve a final recommended version and we will get to work on strategies to support goal four in its final version and then tactics to support those strategies and then of course developing kpis to measure success uh for that and then reporting back on progress any questions fantastic no questions just
094uh thank you um from the strategic planning process side being able to sit beside you and other members of the team and just the amount of work that goes into communication and that positive communication not only that but also the reactive communication when there is an emergency or when there is an issue i think the communication side of the house is one that is so incredibly important both for the good and the the not so good so thank you for everything that goes into that work thank you i was just gonna say not as well thank you uh moving on technology update okay so if you've ever wondered who the man behind the voice is as we introduce ourselves at the start of our meetings is our chief information officer ron casbaum ron in his
095department ron in his department are the magic behind many facets of our district overseeing all central aspects of high functioning secure and innovative technology systems and infrastructure this moment might be comparable to revealing the wizard and the wizard of odds but in the future you should expect to hear more from ron and all members of cabinet welcome ron well thank you i was joking with the cabinet last week that i think my last presentation of the board was in 2010 so it's been a few years so that will be changed maybe i shouldn't have said anything um so just to kind of recap what the technology department does um we ensure reliable and secure technology and infrastructure maintain critical systems networks and devices support seamless operations across the district we manage and support core operational
096systems oversee vital platforms such as infinite campus our student information system financial system and other essential administrative tools we protect district assets and data privacy implementing cyber security best practices to safeguard sensitive information and ensure compliance with legal and ethical standards and then we drive strategic planning innovation technology aligning technology initiatives with district goals anticipate future needs and promote sustainable investments in educational technology so in my last 20 years here at the district we have seen technology grow from a nice tool to a major utility powering the instructional and operational functions of the district what powers that is our technology infrastructure so to kind of throw some numbers at you we have six physical locations between the high schools administration buildings elm place walters field we have over 99 uptime it's actually like i think
097this year is trying to get 99.7 uptime we have 20 gigabits of internet connectivity so to put that in illustration when i started here 20 years ago we had two megabytes megabits i should say so that is a 10 000 increase in the last 20 years of internet capacity we have the latest fully ratified 60 wi-fi coverage throughout the entire district all students have a two-in-one chromebook that they're issued in their freshman year nearly 10 000 devices connect daily actually pulled that stat like a week ago and it's actually closer to like 11 000 even our buses have wi-fi coverage so when they're out and about we support over 500 security cameras and over 400 access control locks and then we're also the back infrastructure and we support everything phones point of sales terminals digital
098signage pocket talks weapon detection systems pretty much anything falls under us so comes up to my next fair topic cyber security cyber security is the district's technology's highest priority as you've seen in the new schools across the countries are having cyber incidents that not only do financial loss but also loss of instructional time cisa the cyber security and infrastructure security agency which is a u.s federal agency responsible for safeguarding the nation's critical infrastructure and cyber security wrote in their k-12 recommendations cyber security risk management must be elevated as a top priority for administrators superintendents and every leader at every k-12 institution so per illinois public illinois law public schools are required to implement and maintain reasonable security procedures and practices to help determine that um what reasonable security practices are because it's pretty broad the
099learning technology center which is part of is be released their 48 security best practices these are aligned with cis and nist cis is the center for internet security which is a public organization that creates guidelines and um tacticals mapping for um organizations and nist is part of the federal government which also releases their best practices for cyber security so what we do is we take the reasonable security practices we take that cis k-12 cyber security recommendations and then we merge that also with zero trust zero trust is a cyber security framework based on the principle that no user device or system should be trusted by default this is so important that the federal government has mandated that every federal agency must adhere to zero trust frameworks so with all that merged together we did get
100an audit of our reasonable security practices in the fall of 2024 this was a lot of the school districts in illinois participate in this audit we did get a grade of an a where the average illinois district grade was a d plus now with that said we did come out of the things out of that audit with areas that we still need to improve upon our big focus at the end of this year and beginning at next is we are deploying industry standard that's from the cis to every client device instead of using our own standard we're using now a national standard we're also updating our security settings on client computers that end users can no longer install software if you're in the industry that means removing local admin rights and then we're extending our
101micro segmentation work to all network segments we already had in our client segments but now we're extending to other ones micro segmentation basically means if you have two devices on the network they can't talk to each other to follow best practice and zero trust now that goes into instructional technology ai is looking like it might be one of the biggest technology leaps we have seen since the internet its role in education brings a lot of exciting possibilities that we need to learn how this affects in instructional spaces to help that we have launched our ai co-pilot integrating ai with education our ai co-pilot has 80 teachers who have signed up for it they'll be piloting four premier ai tools but those same ai tools are available to all teachers not just the ones in the
102co-pilot but the co-pilot ones will get extra instructions from that and then out of that ai co-pilot we're also hoping to use that information to enhance our current ai guidelines on usage now here are some really cool examples this is what i think is awesome because i love ai so a math teacher created an ai calculus tutor that students can access whenever they need it just to help them wherever they are many teachers using ai tools provide students with first pass feedback on their writing which i would have loved in school if anyone's ever read read my writing students need to evaluate the feedback they're given and make decisions about to improve their their writing and my favorite is an algebra teacher actually made an ai chat room to answer problems for students and the
103students actually found it harder than the teacher would be on them to get feedback so it was really nice but they're also using this to actually help them on the administrative side so ai science teachers took you know slides from classes and used ai tools to create summaries took seconds instead of you know hours also in the teacher uploaded project documents and used ai tools to create an assessment rubric and then lots of translation and adjusting of levels of text for students so current and future challenges obviously cyber security is continually evolving necessitating increased investment what i always say is the reasonable technology standards from isby was is 48 now a year ago it was 43 they've added five new ones which allows which makes us have to adjust to those buy new software adjust
104practices to account for that plus every day i get a cyber briefing from an organization we're a member of nationally with new things that we have to deal with every day so it's fun and then we're having funding concerns erate which is really the universal service fund is currently has been declared unconstitutional and is currently at supreme court level being determined erate helps cover 40 percent of all of our internet costs it also helps pay for large portions of our infrastructure and then obviously tariffs tariffs are constantly adjusting i'm getting calls from vendors almost on a weekly basis saying if we don't order by this date it'll go up 10 20 30 40 percent you know tariffs from taiwan where our laptops come are currently a 37 percent chromebooks come from china which was about
105124 although that just seems to have dropped down to 30 yesterday but who knows so those are our concerns so that's it i think i got it done in six minutes any questions so my question i don't necessarily think this is for you ron and maybe for you as well you know when it goes to ai which you know obviously we're at the dawn of this we don't exactly know what all of the implications are going to be but as we start to implement us how do we ensure that it's used to augment the instruction we're given not as a as a substitute for the instruction that we're giving and as we free up time you know how do we ensure that we then take the time that we found to again continue to augment
106the work that we're doing the curriculum the teaching the you know whatever else is going on and we don't just sort of you know find time and twiddle our thumbs now so ai to me will never replace humans and the humanity and the relational aspects of teaching and learning i'll say that first other part of it is i think our biggest focus is on making sure that students understand how to use use ai responsibly and for different purposes there are times when as ron shared an example that we want students to learn how to to write prompts that supports their that supports their learning but are to write something and to get additional feedback and there are times when i feel like the best way to know where a student is with their learning is
107for them to do it right in front of you i believe that about reading writing and many things former literacy coach i think because this because ai has tools as well as there were other systems prior to the launch and of ai that would also the students would tap into i think we have to teach students how to use it responsibly and for different purposes i also think we have to be explicit regarding the ways that we want students to use it in our classes at different times explicit instruction around any resource including ai is going to be essential because if we don't tell students we shouldn't expect them to know how they should use it or why they should use it in a specific way i remember we talked about this previously just in
108terms of consequences for students who may choose to use it they might not think they're cheating they might not think they may have a different perspective on their use of ai that may differ from their teacher so i think or their instructor i think we have still some work to do with making sure that our staff comes up to speed with ai effective ways that they can use it because not all of our staff understand ai our students are far beyond any of our staff and i feel like that might just be an ongoing trend i feel like it's going to be ongoing learning for our staff and also explicit instruction and direction provided for our students because the tools are created new new platforms new systems are created every day and so we're challenged
109with keeping up on all of the new items that are that our students have access to i don't know if anyone else wants to contribute along those lines i'd love to hear do we have tools available for teachers to check for ai usage is that something that we've we've as a district have have providers that kind of teachers should figure out themselves so there's a great book called ai snake oil to princeton press and in it they illustrate how those ai plagiarism tools don't work it's the whole chapter in there not to mention open ai came out and said there really is no ai tool that can check you know there's no tool that can check if ai is being used um you know and now what they're people are doing is they take from
110one ai they throw into another ai to rewrite the previous ai's to come up with a whole new um system so at this point no it's i mean even if there is well this become a cat mouse game of one will change to the other so i think sorry go ahead i'll just say it largely what our teachers really rely on is having plenty of writing samples that our students are doing in the classroom so that they do have an idea of what our students writing is so that if they see something that is way off of what they're typically um sharing that it's a conversation between the student and the teacher this is what you've previously done tell me more about what you submitted so that i can have a better understanding of where
111you're at so i think those are great opportunities for the teacher to engage with the student if they were using ai helping to reframe you can use ai as a tool but you're not using it maybe in the correct way and then providing more guide about how they can use it as to get ideas to use it as a questioning resource and i think that's what's great about the ai pilot is that it's helping our teachers to engage in those conversations about how can they teach students to use these tools so that i mean as educators we're learning how to use ai better ourselves so we have to be a step ahead of it so that we can teach our students where when you dream where do you envision i think this kind of goes
112to greg's point so we're talking about the student lens when staff are able to free up their time from some of the rudimentary work that's involved in in instruction in a classroom because ai can just do it faster for them um what where do you see then that that classroom staff being able to to do with that time and and be able to expand that educational experience so i think this sort of is funny to me staff have very limited time to address all the needs of student not that you're saying no right but i'm just saying like um we should always look for efficiencies we should care about the effectiveness of what we're doing and i with the evolving needs of students not just instructionally socially emotionally behaviorally like we're constantly having conversations around
113how to support um staff members in addressing all of the needs of students within our instructional spaces when we think about some of our efforts to um have students educated with their peers like i don't i i would i can't even imagine a time when anyone has that much time that we have to figure out what to i'm just answering honestly has that much time to figure out what to do with it just because of all of the needs that continue to evolve and that exist already in the classroom i think um part of the conversation is how do you um how do you use some of the resources um at our fingertips to to spark um to inspire to to address more of the needs in the classroom rather than removing or using it
114to just like eliminate i feel like there will always be some other way some other student with a different need students groups of students with different needs that will consistently exist so i'm having i can't even imagine what that would look like just thinking about how much time is going into time energy great intention cares going into what's happening with our students on a regular basis so it may even be really creating that space to really encourage staff that might be more reticent to use ai where it can help help right so that they can really do those things that they they have really gotten to the industry to do exactly so some of the ways similar to us teaching students how to use it to support their needs maybe to unpack their answer to
115a math problem problem to explain the steps because that's where the meaning happens when we talk about instructional design and we work with staff members specifically to understand how to write prompts that may help them think differently around instructional design to meet the needs of diverse learners in the classroom they can also use it as a tool to enhance their instructional practices as well in trying new things so i feel like it's evolving in some ways it's exciting it's also scary because we don't know what it's what it's going to evolve into but i think that our students brains are changing every second we talked about cell phones technology the needs of our students the needs that our students are presenting are multifaceted and require us to wear many hats in one class period oftentimes
116so speaking of students i'd love to not put you on the spot but maybe put you on the spot to hear what you're thinking but one of the things before doing that is like looking at that science teacher example to take her slides and create a study guide which can be done in a matter of minutes would have taken maybe not hours but hour but like those mini pockets that then to your point let you move on to other tasks of like what you came into the industry to do so instead of creating a study guide or instead of giving that first pass it frees up time to enrich to refine to do something else which is so incredibly exciting i'd love to hear your thoughts um yeah i definitely think with at least for
117me the way i use it in the most part is like if i'm writing an essay or something i'll use it to help me edit my essay and um give me feedback and i definitely know people who've been called out for like having their essays be checked for ai and things like that so definitely being cautious of that but it's definitely a really good tool that has helped me also in like physics for example i'll have it like explained to me um how to step by step how to do a problem and so i've definitely been able to use it in a really beneficial way but i also know people who just use it to get through their classes so there's definitely some middle ground there but yeah i'd say mostly the same i use
118a lot to study like i have it explained stuff to me um like when i don't have a teacher available to me um i feel like it's like a great thought enhancer but not a thought replacer i feel like it's used a lot like that in class um and so yeah like finding a good middle ground of how to teach kids how to use it and then having them effectively apply it is super important ron is it your department then that will be sort of spearheading bringing ai into the schools or is there any one person who's sort of going to be in charge of that as as it changes because even 30 years ago when email started and web pages started i never would have imagined this is where we'd end up so it's
119just so foreign a idea to me i don't know i'm not even asking the question correctly is there someone who's going to be bringing all this information to to the classroom to the teachers to how to use it so it's happening right now um ai is here and it's here to stay it's here forever and so oh um there's there are aspects of this work that ron in his department support um we have instructional technologists within our buildings um we have instructional coaches we have assistant principals we have a lot of people who are becoming well-versed in ai and how to effectively use it to improve outcomes to support instructional design um to create chat bots based on a course and to create different they're working right now a huge part of the pilot is
120for teachers to understand the different ways that they can use to support student learning it's not replacing them but teachers aren't around all the time um and they can also see so say i teach a lesson and i've designed a chat bot um where students can go in and ask questions maybe to complete an assignment on the teacher end you can see what students are looking up what type of questions they're asking which to me would inform what i may need to reteach you can track trends and what students are looking up what they don't understand especially if they're going to this the system this platform to complete assignments and they're showing they're demonstrating different aspects of their understanding so those are the type of things that our teachers are learning how to utilize it
121for then to go back and to maybe there's a group that are demonstrating that they don't understand something so revisiting with that maybe it's whole class instruction maybe it's the instructional materials like it could be a range of things um so my concern is this such a huge universe like there's no boundary so how do you distill it into something useful in a classroom at 9 30 tomorrow something like that so so the other thing part of the pilot is there are every day something new is launching we're trying to figure out and everything has a cost we're trying to figure out what platforms what systems we're going to support as a district um there are some districts who allow people to try anything that's super expensive we're trying to identify platforms and systems that
122we can stand behind because it's actually connected and aligned to the ways that we want students and staff to use it and then create resources and have professional development and design around those knowing that that may evolve over time but yes we have to wrap some type of parameter around what we're doing we talk about this forever but so even within those platforms we decide the ones we're going to use right that are approved people are going to be innovating within it all the time right the algebra teacher who created this thing that could teach algebra right how do we then figure out which are the ones we're going to then grab on to and implement and so that all algebra teachers have access and how do we you know how do we do that
123you know as people are innovating within it i mean that's really the purpose of that cohort is to pick those tools like that cohort literally their design and their goal is to say which tools are we going to use no we can't use all of them as i said because there's too many and too expensive but what are the two key and i just talked to one of our instructional technologists yesterday and they said you know already they're seeing lead candidates coming out due to ease of use and you know how it works in the schools so so i'm currently in a pilot program like this and i think once you actually start to use the tools for instruction or assessment then as a teacher you start to see exactly how user-friendly they are to
124your point and there will be ones that rise to the top where you're like you say yes this would work well with my students versus this other one i think would cause more shoes for this reason or that reason there's certain ones that you have to be 18 in order to use and so it wouldn't even be allowed even though some students might think they can use it so there some will rule themselves out i guess my question is is once you've said this is fantastic this is working great for me how do you then get that to your colleagues so that they can use it also so it sounds like that's what their team is working on with the pilot program i guess from what you've said is that they will report back give
125you feedback and then as a district you decide which ones you want to invest in because there's also a cost to the different levels of access that you as the student or teacher can can have in these programs we also have to bring in the department chair lens so that's the person over the entire department too so feedback is constantly coming our instructional department leaders have to be a part of the conversation to also think about is this something for example that can support the entire math department or is this something that is most effective within a specific course and so the departmental lens so i mentioned some of the leaders but there are layers of leaders who really guide instruction who are directly connected to the individuals in their departments who are engaging in
126these pilots as well so they're not absent the conversation and the opera there are the main people who can support the implementation across the department assistant principals and principals can support it across the school and so there are layers for that i also think right now it's like these are ai tools you are also going to start seeing ai built into current existing tools that we're using and i think that's really where you're going to see a lot of stuff move forward because it's now it's you know gmail has stuff built in and all the google stuff and you know if you're using word and all those work it will be less of a separate tool just be built in any other questions fantastic well we look forward to seeing you again ron i'll see
127you in 15 years yeah ai ron chat bot and our last informational report tonight is second semester security update and feedback lane that's great but i also think there's some four-legged presenters here right yes i have something to say to frame it okay um and dr holland did you want to start the conversation sure so during the second semester we implemented additional layers to our security landscape we implemented canine units at both high schools randomized weapons detection systems and also launched a security advisory committee while you will hear more detailed feedback regarding our canine units tonight in this presentation we are continuing to assess the impact of the changes to our weapons detection system and plan to bring more detailed feedback at the end of first semester in the fall 25 26 after that system
128has been in place for a more extended period of time we're also trying out some additional ways to use that and want to have more of a comprehensive discussion so during this presentation you will hear from brian obmer our chief operations officer mirror ante our executive director of diversity equity inclusion and our director of security laine linder don't get up so uh thank you dr holland so um obviously like dr holland said mira and lane are both here we have our canines which will be introduced to in a minute so i hope they're not too distracting but it is important visual here that we can all see what we're talking about so thank you for thank you all for being here so lane's going to kind of start this off talk about some of the
129the nuts and bolts of what we're doing and then mira's gonna help us with get through some surveys so from here i will turn it to lane to talk about weapons detection system so one of the first upgrades um we did was in march we initiated a more balanced approach we redeployed our weapons detection system using a randomized selection process for students entering the building and the goal of doing this was obviously to increase building security but also increase the level of deterrence with those devices increase the efficiency we encountered the same problems a lot of districts encounter when they implement these programs as they're logistically challenging to implement and maintain and then we wanted to increase equity and basically we do not want to target so specific students or specific groups of students and
130then lastly we increase the sensitivity we refine the search parameters of these devices to increase the protection level of what these devices are looking for when people go through them our weapons screening for extracurricular activities and events is currently being evaluated for possible deployment by the start of the next school year it will be more of a stadium style process where people will be able to walk through in a larger throughput but obviously putting aside larger objects like stadium seats and stuff like umbrellas and stuff like that and then we will be coordinating that deployment with the athletic and activity departments so the next update is for our canine program it became fully operational after winter break deployed in both schools and we have with us tonight we have sue from highland park right here
131maybe you want to give sue a little and then we have a year up from deer field high school is here with our handlers and this is melody weathered and this is isaiah britain our handlers i'm sorry and what's the dhs dog's name yara yara oh she says i heard my name yeah they are truly a welcome addition to our schools and into our security programming when we implemented this process we you know cutting edge not a lot of districts in the country are doing this so along with that we had to develop and implement our own procedural guide because it didn't exist so it was we developed and implemented a comprehensive guide with the help of all of our building leadership it complements the layered approach to security that we have at district 113
132we've conducted staff training at the school safety teams at both schools and the program is being considered at multiple districts in our area as well we know of two at least two other schools that have started that have signed on this with this process signed up for this process sounds as if there's great value in the the book you've put together that might have some finance i get a lot of requests for it opportunity and i think um next uh mera is going to talk about um a survey we did about the k-19 thank you um and it shouldn't be lost on us that we're you know we're also a digital conversation sometimes the value in um just these amazing teams so thank you yeah okay thank you holly um what i'll do is quickly
133just review our data but also we wanted to make sure that we were putting in front of us the values of safety through thinking about the environment itself and the conditions that the k-9 team are helping us to achieve through student well-being well and again we're not talking about causal but thinking about the correlation between perceived safety and comfort in the building as well as obviously underscoring that layer of safety that lane spoke about um thank you one of the things that's important here is just to understand that we're talking about um a survey that was given uh throughout the district in both staff and students and um we had the majority of respondents being our students um particularly our freshmen and across both schools we saw even distribution and we're roughly around 500 um
134a little bit more than that we're able to respond um part of the survey items uh if we were to really disaggregate the the items themselves centered around awareness and interaction um with the team also comfort and perceived safety um that the team was bringing to our school as well as the overall impact on our environment uh and then future support and open-ended questions um when we looked at the overall responses here you can see that there's an overwhelming feeling of um people being aware that the um k-9 team was in place and we also thought about um just how often the respondents were encountering the k-9 team making sure that when we are looking at our numbers were we looking at people who had very little interaction or people with a lot and so
135you can see here that uh the majority range from sometimes uh too many times throughout their days the comfort level was um high but it should be noted that there are enough um who are also responding that they had some discomfort we've talked about it even on our team there's feelings of anxiety around having a dog in a building as well as just not necessarily understanding the role of the um of the team and so one of the questions then is what could increase comfortability if we are looking to support the continued team which you'll see at the end people were supportive of that we don't want to disregard the numbers just because they're on the lower end um the idea around um comfort and perceived safety both of those um categories also coming in
136very high but again i'll note that there are a group of people who said they're just not sure if they're comfortable and so i'd like to understand that as well um there are very much though a majority of our um staff and students who are finding that the idea of the impact is positive on the environment um and when you sit around and you watch um you overall you either see um kids who are just really walking by and not really paying attention to um very much longing to pet um interact um there's a lot of hellos and how you're doing um that are happening and what we wanted to really get at is so given these different interactions and where you're feeling a sense of safety or comfort and then on the other end
137of discomfort would you support the continued use and again you can see this majority of yes however the not sure keeps coming up and so that's where when i think about in the end um what are some of the suggestions we need to think about one um how do we make sure that people understand what's happening and as you pointed out there's been great communication an education campaign and we can always increase that with every new um crew of kids that are coming in and there were questions that came up and i'll be really kind of um explicit here where kids were noting in the open-ended you know the dog keeps smelling my butt and when i talked with the handler we'd notice that the bat that's where the backpack hangs for most kids and
138so there's a moment when there and this wasn't the majority of student feedback but you know those are things just for us to know and notice and and then be able to interpret i mean it yeah well that's true and that's a space where there's a lot of materials and so thank you dr holland um we may need to have a little bit more education there but one of the also the pieces is just understanding that there is this great desire to interact and we're not going to rush that timeline and they're definitely here for a really important purpose we've been brainstorming about ways in which when they are off duty we could possibly have interactions in an advisory or maybe a home room um we know that they've done some of their own creative
139ways of interacting with our even our preschoolers and so there's some things that could happen as we move forward um with making sure we don't interfere with their work but increasing that contact when i disaggregated data you'll notice that i kept it aggregated in this moment the any negatives i was looking at any negative data that would say no or i felt extremely uncomfortable there were no patterns that emerged regarding demographics or grade level um but i do think it's important to note that the there were some people who worried about profiling um whether it was gender or race as well as just wondering what is this you know what are they sniffing for um and so those two things just said to me that we can always do more in our communication and education
140back to you lane so the last piece we've been working on is the school safety advisory committee we had 18 participants who signed up and so we're able to accept all of them into the committee they range from district 113 students parents caregivers staff members faculty members are part of the committee we've had two meetings so far march 19th and may 7th some of the topics that we've covered our school safety objectives operational framework stakeholder profiles perspectives resource allocation threat assessment and committee feedback and then upcoming initiatives we're looking at is um information on alignment of our safety and security protocols with district 106 109 and 112 so then i i just wanted to say thank you to mira lane isaiah melody sue and jira for being here and we're glad to answer any questions
141about our second semester security initiatives um so one question when you talked about the other neighboring surrounding districts being interested in possible implementation has there been a large number of inquiries of you know visits or understanding how that's how that's working and has that gotten i guess has that been happening how's that been going yes so um when i started here one of the first things i did was meet uh with the other security directors from that district and also from true north and we meet and talk on a regular basis we share incidents that are going on or things to be aware of for situational awareness and then we also talk about protocols that are in place and maybe differences and that's been part of the rationale for us looking at adopting a protocol
142that's more in alignment with the other districts it's very important that students from a very young age come up and they're very familiar with the common terminology and the common actions and the directives that are associated in school emergencies and so if we can make that happen from kindergarten all the way up through 12th grade i think that's a mandate that we need to do that for our students and our families as well i'm sorry i had a question i could not remember for a moment um i was i know mira had data on the staff uh responses are in the survey i'm curious about any uh anecdotal information from staff in regards to the canines being in the buildings um i can provide something great i happen to be in uh the building uh
143for sue's birthday i've never seen a bigger celebration for a member of a school community than i saw for sue i mean they had um a table uh full of treats and homemade treats and there were signs all over the place happy birthday uh to sue um and then i know that um the office staff at um deerfield has come become quite fond of um the dog because uh melody's office is in that area of the building so they get frequent um interactions so i think the staff is quite enamored with our floppyard friends but i think there are also opportunities there as well to maybe for more engagement and we're having conversations about what that looks like my incoming freshmen this is one of the things that uh they're most excited about is meeting
144the dog so one of the to to that point um one of the um possibilities that we're looking at is working with the freshman advisory uh to maybe have the dogs um you know go into those spaces and and so the kids feel comfortable day one uh and then hopefully then they become part of that climate and culture of safety in the building and that the students become uh more accustomed to them and more comfortable being around them and and again i also think getting that common language between all of the theaters and us is so critical you know more you know as karen has referenced um you know social media can tend to take on a life of its own um and especially when there's a crisis in one of the buildings and and
145there's a new term thrown out to how the building is in some level of lockdown and it just adds a layer of um anxiety to the community that you know having that common language is going to be so helpful so completely free so not a question but a call out um so i think dr holland our conversations that we've had around security this is a sliver of the security component i mean there's so many other layers to it just a call out that this is specific to these two components but there's a lot more that we haven't talked about that's still going on i just wanted to double down on that yes we have a very great security website that has all the information about the efforts that are constantly underway and in play these
146are just three areas that we um focused on to enhance our security efforts this just the second semester thank you thank you all very much thank you thank you thank you i see that sue's finally sitting down now that she's done he's done okay moving on to student liaison reports there's like mr walker miss peck who's going first awesome last ones yes okay dhsa's drama three and four classes had successful runs of their productions this past week each class put on their own show in the studio theater alternating nights with period two performing the guy who didn't like musicals and period five performing rumors and then on may 2nd we had jam for justice in the courtyard and many students performed and seniors celebrated the end of the school year and then last night was
147also honors night and many students were recognized for their achievements across many different academic athletic and fine arts categories to just name a few but yeah thank you walker uh a friday may 2nd highland park was its jazz night lots of good music it was a lot of fun both students from highland park and northwood were there so that's very cool there our math team placed fifth overall out of 65 schools so congratulations to them and um last friday coach harris recognized student athletes who will be continuing their sport at the collegiate level so congrats to them as well okay um i we did have two uh community members signed up for public comment but they did leave so um we are going to move on the public comment to our first discussion item sorry
148give me one moment uh so the first discussion item is the 2526 school district pressures bond so i'm going to kick this off but ali mahanti feel free to chime in for the 2025-26 fiscal year a surety bond has been secured by ali mahanti who serves as our assistant superintendent for finance in the amount of 18 million nine hundred seventy five thousand dollars through the district's um collective liability insurance cooperative also known as click excuse me this is in accordance um with section a2 of the illinois school code which requires each school district treasurer to be appropriately bonded with the bond amount equal to ten percent of the total value of all assets held in the treasurer's custody do you have anything that you want to add about that yeah i just want to add
149the why the bond is needed so it's basically a legal and financial safeguard that protects the school districts and taxpayers so as a treasurer i'm interested with the custody and management of the public funds which includes collecting dispersant accounting for student make a significant amount of money so the bond ensures that if there were ever a situation involving misappropriation fraud or failure to perform my duties in accordance with the law the school district would be financially protected though it's uh not only a right thing to do but it's also a legal obligation for the districts to secure that bond any thoughts questions from the board before this comes back at a future meeting okay next item is 25-26 special issue surety bond decrease rider okay i'll speak to that in 2022 our district issued bonds
150to fund improvements to school buildings and sites some of those funds remain unspent illinois law requires districts to properly manage and report these unspent bond proceeds while the district threat the district's treasurers existing bond covers all district funds including these unspent bond funds a separate bond is not legally required just for these specific unspent bond funds however keeping the appropriate bond coverage shows the district is following state rules and managing public money responsibly as a fiscal year 2025 the amount of unspent money from those 2022 bonds six million dollars illinois law requires the bond amount to equal 10 percent of the remaining unspent bond amount therefore the bond amount needs to be adjusted six hundred thousand dollars to match those state requirements so this adjustment is what's called a penalty rider just to explain that
151molly do you have anything to add i said these funds will eventually be spent on various capital projects so yes it's just the timing for this any questions or thoughts fantastic moving on to the third discussion item resolution authorizing drivers education fee which is a resolution that needs to be reviewed on annual basis is my understanding that is correct so illinois state law says the school districts can charge a fee for drivers ed courses the basic fee can't be more than fifty dollars however the law also allows districts to charge more if up to 250 dollars if they allow if we follow certain steps which includes holding a public hearing and passing a resolution to set the fee we plan to maintain our current fee at 240 dollars and plan to hold a hearing at
152our may 27th meeting and we will request your approval of the resolution during that meeting okay um does that and we can we will do the logistics from a timing perspective does that hearing need to occur on the 27th of may in order for all of the right pieces to fall in line or could that hearing uh occur at our june meeting um i believe it has to be done by the end of fiscal year but i'll double check okay i just it's for next week correct yeah because i know the 27th we've got a lot i'll look into that and i know it's a very quick hearing but okay i'm curious if you have a question um sorry i'm sorry alex do we know roughly what percentage of our students use the drivers ed
153through high schools as opposed to going to a private drivers ed that's a good question i have that data in front of me right now but that's something we can get back looking to kind of curious whether the fee at all impacts you know impacts that but not not not supermarkets i'm sorry what was your alex i was just curious whether the the fee that we charge like the impact of the dollar amount that we set on a family's decision for the child to do through the school versus through a private source which i imagine probably is more expensive usually how we assess fees is based on the comparables among several school districts and i do know that our drivers ed fee is actually one of the lowest so we do survey and compare other
154school districts so that's how we assess fees okay thank you patty did you want to ask it is a lower percentage um we typically have around three sections per semester so that can range up to 18 students per section and that really is dependent upon the vehicles that we have available in the staff because you do need a number of staff for it because they're doing both in the the lessons in the classroom as well as going out into the cars as well so there are some restrictions in that regard but it is definitely a very cost effective way to go about doing things but because of where birthdays fall sometimes people will choose to go with an outside entity especially because our students are so busy so that is some of the reason but
155we are actually seeing an increase in the number of students who are interested in engaging in our in our school traffic safety program so it might be something that we'll have to look at in the future in terms of vehicles and staffing and whatnot right because the outside entity fees could range from like 800 to 1200 and the last time the fee was increased i think was been like eight years ago so that free hasn't been touched so something we evaluate thank you i will now proceed to action items it is recommended the board of education authorize the assistant superintendent for finance to approve timely payments to the companies and vendors as presented may have a motion to approve this recommendation so moved is there a second is there any discussion everyone understands why we
156do this every year hearing no further discussion a roll call vote please mr neater mr braza hi mr bronc hi dr ali shimmer aye mr hanneman aye aye miss newman aye motion carries it is recommended the board of education approve the resolution designating depositories for school district funds as presented may have a motion to approve this recommendation so moved is there a second second any discussion hearing no further discussion a roll call vote please mr bronc hi mr bronc hi dr aliott shimmer aye mr hanneman hi mr neater hi miss newman aye motion carries is recommended the board of education approve the engagement letters for franzyk and engler khalway bastin and straga straga along with the engagement letter resolution authorizing engagement from kira bosek as presented may have a motion to approve this recommendation is
157there a second is there any discussion hearing no further discussion a roll call vote please mr bronc hi dr ali shimmer hi mr hanneman hi mr neater hi mr braza hi miss newman aye the motion carries is recommended the board of education approve the donation agreement with the deerfield high school booster club as presented may have a motion to approve this recommendation is there a second second is there any discussion hearing no further discussion a roll call vote please dr ali shimmer aye mr hanneman hi mr neater hi mr braza hi mr bronc hi miss newman hi the motion carries is recommended the board of education approve a salary and benefits agreement with the bus driver group as presented may have a motion to approve this recommendation so moved is there a second second is
158there any discussion hearing no further discussion a roll call vote please mr hanneman hi mr neater hi mr braza hi mr bronc hi dr ali shimmer hi miss newman hi the motion carries the next item is the consent agenda items including the consent agenda were provided to all board members in advance and made publicly available as part of the meeting agenda a board member may pull any item for separate consideration does any board member wish to pull an item off the consent agenda for separate consideration may have a motion to approve the consent agenda as presented so moved is there a second second is there any discussion yes i have some discussion on the fees for the facilities i just want to note that there's other issues that other things that are considered in this
159for example we require certain levels of insurance and things like this so what we see in the policy manual and in the procedure that's associated with the policy as well as this memo doesn't include some of those other factors plus it's my experience from something that happened before i was on the board so like six years ago that there sometimes is a fine line between a school use and a non-school use the example that occurred was we had highland park strings wanted to use the facility they had an issue with the the fact that we required more insurance than they were going to cover again it took a quite a few discussions to get this fixed because even before ali was on board so we need to make sure that within our operation we have
160a a mechanism for handling requests for exceptions and for applying judgment to some of these factors i don't think the board should be involved in that at all but that we we need to understand that our exceptions are going to be requested and we need to have a process in place to handle those exception requests i can add to that yeah hp strings is one they're a park district affiliate and they do they fall under our iga and there's there's agreements in place to cover entities like that you know there's a lot of agreements that cover a lot of different entities that serve our community so this is this consent agenda item is purely just to increase the rates for cpi this isn't revising any of our rental agreement policies but yes there are a
161lot of different users and the majority of our use our renters are you know we use our facility so much that this is not a major factor of our business because between our us and our park districts and such they use we use our facilities so right now these kinds of things go through you um me but mainly the buildings yes me and the buildings would to answer your question okay and with our new hire sure yes we'll transition accordingly okay and it sounds as if um in the point that rick is bringing up that most of these organizations don't necessarily need an exemption or an exception excuse me because they're a part of an iga and we just have to make sure that we're using the right intergovernment relationship when we're bringing yes yes
162we would always have to like pick out which one to talk about because some are in policy some are in totally some are clubs some you know it's a it's a very intricate thing and we've figured it all out so it's not a not a worry great okay any other discussion hearing no further discussion a roll call vote please mr neater hi mr braza hi mr broke hi dr eliot trimmer hi mr heidemann hi suman hi the motion carries there being no further business may i have a motion to adjourn the meeting so moved is there a second all those in favor say aye aye all those opposed say nay the motion carries this concludes the business of township high school district 113 board of education for this evening at 9 32 thank you for
163your time and participation