001That's all I can do. Thank you, Seth. That was my thing. Good to be here, Alan. Thanks, Kipri. We actually, literally, as they pull them off, pass can and cash. That's what we have to do. We have to pass can and cash. We have to get those, that's what we used to do. Okay? I'm sorry, I don't want to interrupt you. We'll make it a hundred. We might as well start. Yeah, calling to order Township High School District 113 regular action meeting. It is now 705, Tuesday, November 28, 2023. Let's see our first, our first agenda item is that we have a public hearing concerning the approval of an e-learning plan. Can we have a roll call please? Mr. Pura? Here. Mr. Garazza? Here. Dr. Elliott-Shermer? Here. Mr. Feynman? Here. Ms. Newman? Here. Mr. Nieder?
002Here. Mr. Strzok? Here. Would everyone else at the table please identify themselves? Can we now ask the Executive Secretary? Tom Krieger, Chief Human Resources Officer. Michael Locke, Assistant Superintendent Curriculum Instruction Assessment. Karen Warner, Chief Communications Officer. Tiffany Rowe, Assistant Superintendent. Brian Armour, Chief Operations Officer. Ali Majisan, SOOP Finance. Debbie Phan, Principal Highland Park High School. Ron Casbaum, Chief Information Officer. Mira Antti, Assistant SOOP of the EI. Ursula, Superintendent. Hey, we are now going on to public comments and this is public comment for the public hearing concerning the e-learning plan and comments limited to that topic. Per policy 2-230 at each open school board meeting, the Board of Education has a public comment period for a maximum of 30 minutes. We are ready to listen and appreciate your comments. We recognize that it takes time and
003work to prepare a three-minute statement. Public participation is not intended to be a back and forth discussion between the public and the board. Questions asked during public participation may be sent via email to be answered subsequent to the meeting. Are there any public comments regarding the public hearing for the e-learning plan? Hearing no public comments. And this is something we have to do by statute, having hearing about this. And that's the hearing. We are now going to adjourn the public hearing on the e-learning plan. It is 7-06. Is there a motion to adjourn the public hearing? So moved. Is there a second? Second. All those in favor? Aye. Opposed? Abstentions? The motion carries. We are now going to convene our open meeting. It is now 7-06 p.m. Can we have a roll call, please, Romina?
004Mr. Braza? Here. Dr. Elliott-Schirmer? Here. Mr. Heidemann? Here. Ms. Newman? Here. Mr. Nieder? Here. Ms. Shapira? Here. Mr. Strzok? Here. Our first item of business is the approval of the board meeting agenda. Is there a motion to approve the agenda as listed? So moved. Is there a second? Second. All those in favor? Aye. Opposed? Abstentions? The motion carries. Next item on our agenda are the board reports. My report will be released tonight because we have a very heavy agenda. I hope everyone had an enjoyable Thanksgiving holiday with friends and family. We now are embarked on the final three weeks of the first semester of this academic year. Seems like we just started. Hoping that all of you have, everybody in the district has a smooth and successful wrap-up to this semester. And enjoys their upcoming
005winter break. On behalf of the entire board, I just want to thank everyone who completed the survey or participated in one of the focus groups to help identify the qualities desired in our next superintendent. We look forward to seeing the outcome of this important work at our meeting this evening. And we also look forward to additional opportunities to hear community input throughout the search process. And that ends my report for this evening. The next item up, I believe, is the report from the DEI committee. Jodi? Hello, everyone. So this evening earlier, we met and we discussed Operation Red Apple with Mira Aunty and we reviewed exactly what it is. And so for those of you who aren't aware, it is an operational system that the district has developed that we're going to use for hiring
006practices to ensure that our practices aren't biased. So we'll focus on how we're redesigning our hiring, recruiting and retention practices and procedures. For example, we'll review where we post positions, job fairs we attend, and we'll look at questions like what do people see when they visit our website? Mira went through various parts of the Operation Red Table infographics. I'll pass this around for the board members to see. She really focused on two specific areas though, the scorecard process and the anti-bias training so that we could learn more about how the different processes will be more closely aligned and we could really focus on unconscious hiring bias. So really understanding what that looks like in our practices and making sure we don't have it. She described 10 tools that are going to be used in the
007interviewing process and these tools range from the moment when the job is posted through when the individual is hired. And she also elaborated on what the portrait of a District 113 educator is and how that aligns with collaboration, climate, culture and curriculum, which are kind of like the four pillars that the district will focus on for this school year. Is there anything that I missed from the committee members? All right, and that ends my report. Next up we have administration informational reports. Dr. Law, the floor is yours. Thank you, Mr. Strzok. Two things. One is I want to talk to the board about a particular aspect of our procurement process. The board knows when we have purchases, the board approves all those purchases, either when we bring detail in the tentative budget or if it's
008not in the budget, we bring it according to board policy for board approval. But a question continues to arise when there is a construction project that the board has approved and there's a component of that project that, you know, comes along. We've got the bid results and do we go to facilities committee discussion? Do we discuss it with the board? You know, what pass do we take for getting board approval? So I'd like to suggest that we all follow this process. When I say all, I mean administration, so we know what to do and board members, so they know what to expect. That there are three prongs to this test, if you will, when deciding what to do about a particular component. And I can't be, you know, Brian, there are some examples that could
009go through. Precast concrete, air handlers, there are rigging, there are various things that come along as part of a project the board's approved and then the bids come and we need to have the board approve those. So we'd like to apply a three prong test to know what to do. The first is if there's an expenditure that is part of a project that the board has approved. That's been vetted by the facilities committee has gone to the board for discussion. We know we're doing a project and so we are moving ahead when we have that. And the second thing is that there is a component in that project has been approved by the board that could have a long lead time. There was a time when we had issues with that because of supply chain
010issues and we would order things well in advance trying to make sure that they were here in time. So it's not to delay the project. So that would be the second thing that we'd be looking at. Is this something that we need to be concerned about in terms of lead time. And then the third thing is did the bid for that particular component come back more or less as expected and we can talk about what those parameters are. But if it comes under bid, I mean, under what was expected, then we feel like we don't need to go to the facilities committee. Brian has these conversations, facilities chair, and then we're trying to figure out, hey, does this go to the board for discussion and then come to action. If it's a project, the board's
011approved and there's a component in that project that could have a long lead time and the bids have come back and it's as expected. We feel like we should just be able to go to the board for action for that item. The board doesn't have to approve it. There could be other questions that would allow us to delay it. I think this way, it keeps construction moving and it keeps Brian on track for what he's trying to do. And it's clear what we're supposed to do. And it's also then I think clear what the board should expect when we're dealing with this. Right now, for example, there's a real world example that's bringing this up. We have air handlers that are coming in under budget, as I understand it. And so do we go to
012facilities committee? It's $750,000 when I say under budget is not a small number, but it's part of a larger project. So do we go to facilities committee? Do we have a discussion with the board? I think that we could just go in with those three prongs of the test or met. We should just be able to come to the board with action. There should be no surprises because we know we need an air handler or we know we need rigging, we need precast concrete or whatever it is. It's really nothing. And these are all things that were line items when we approved the project initially. Yeah. So it's like we already have in essence said, yeah, you need to buy an air handler. And these are the things. These are not the actual implementation of
013the things because I think that's correct. A clear delineation as well. This would be just this specific example would be just physical air handler, not the installation, but we're essentially buying a spot in line. We bought a spot in line for precast. Sometimes it was roofing for a while. Sometimes these things come up because we want to get in line as quick as we can. And we've, you know, there have been times we said, okay, we know normally we have a discussion, but we're coming to board for action because we're on a time crunch. We need, you know, so that's not a good process. So I think if we have this understanding, the board is comfortable with that, we can, you know, we can start moving ahead. Again, we're not skipping any steps here. There's
014a project that's been approved by the board, components of which we need for that project that may have a long lead time. And we need, and we bid them, we just need to get the bid results in front of the board for approval. And as long as the bid results are consistent with what we're in, what was in the initial projection, it's... And the scope hasn't changed. And the scope hasn't changed, yeah. It's like, oh, we've approved it. It's just the formality of now signing off on this award. I don't really have a big concern. And certainly where there have been issues, the board has been more than willing on construction items to vote against something that's up for approval when there's a surprise. I think that's what we should do. I think we need
015to be... Okay, thank you. I think we also need to be very clear in the description of the item. So I think we should say this is part of this project that was approved by the board. And we would also say this particular item was expected to cost X. This is what the bid came back. So the board knows we were expecting... Brian, what were we expecting for those there, Handlers? The small trunnits and things, but they're just slightly under budget by a few thousand. But if we add... I can split it a bunch of different ways, but they're under budget by, let's say, 10,000. Okay, so we budgeted 760. It came in at 750. But I think the board should know what that line item was to see the variance. I also think that
016occurs to me for the sake of transparency. There should almost be what I would call a legislative record almost. That record of this item was approved and this should be in the public section of the agenda so that it's available. There aren't surprises to people. And no one has to go hunt to find the information. It'll be right there. Because we're going to have variances. It's not going to all come in $10,000 under. There are going to be variances. It'll be really great then. Yeah, it'll be great. Everything $10,000 under. Brian, make a note. I wrote it down. Okay, good. Makes sense. Okay, thank you. So the second thing is I want to say again, we've got an event on November 30th with Julie Lithcott-Hames. This was an attempt to bring together a speaker, not
017just for District 113 families, but for the community. Parenting has never been easy. I cannot imagine now how difficult it must be. And so these concerns are not just high school concerns. They're K-12. So on November 30th, Districts 109, 112, and 113 are sponsoring Julie Lithcott-Hames. It will be at the Performing Arts Center at Deerfield High School. I think this may be the first time we've seen those say that publicly. I just want to be clear about something. It is the soft launch of the Performing Arts Center on Thursday. The official launch of the Performing Arts Center, as Deerfield wants to call it, is the Holiday Music Extravagance on December 13th. And of course, we're all invited to this concert and the official opening of the almost called Auditorium Performing Arts Center. Thank you, Dr.
018Locke. Next up, we have course proposals for the 2024-25 school year. I assume that's you, Dr. Locke. Yes. Hello. So we bring to you this year's set of course proposals. You have a document in front of you. I'm happy to outline some of the details. Top line message. Yeah, I made a mistake. I apologize. I looked at the wrong item. I'd like jumping around. Yeah, no, I just I it's had a brain cramp. I looked at B and I saw the wrong B. We have our we're continuing our award winning passion for excellence series. Yes. Yeah, sorry. I appreciate that. Sorry, I messed up. I was you're ready. Yeah, you're ready. Yeah, this brain cramp. Pam Holt, DHS director of bands. Very happy to present this tonight. This is going to be a fascinating day.
019I think there's so much about music that isn't about music. My name is Pam Holt and I'm the director of bands here at Deerfield High School. I've always been interested in music. I've always been involved in music. I started on flute when I was in fifth grade. When I was in high school, I felt like I hit a wall. When you play flute, there are a million flute players. So I chose to switch instruments to play the bassoon because nobody else in my high school played it. So I knew I could be great because nobody else in my high school played it. I didn't think I was going to be a band director for a long time. I was super passionate about music, but I was going to be a chemist until my senior year
020of high school. And I had a chemistry internship and it just it didn't take long for me to realize that it just like really wasn't my thing. And I was super passionate about music and I didn't realize how passionate I would become as soon as I kind of locked into that. Like, wait, I have something to bring to this. Like, I can take what my high school band director gave me and then bring this other element and create just a different type of high school band experience. One, two, three. Before I came here, I'd been teaching band for about 15 years, but I was really excited to move to Chicago. My husband and I were both band directors and we needed a big city where there would be a lot of high schools and we
021could both get really good jobs. My husband and I met at Indiana University. We both were music education students. We went in at the same time. At the same time, we also had the benefit of crazily being placed in the same ensembles every single semester that we were there. He was a percussionist. I played bassoon. Coming to Deerfield, this school gives me new challenges. I like how music is all of the things that might be wrapped up in the rest of the building. Music education is just that. It's education. We're not a professional jazz band touring around. We are ensembles that are working to build musical skills in this environment that we build together, me and the students and the student leaders. You can take risks in here, but you also feel safe taking risks
022out there. Hopefully, all of those things can translate into the world and into their lives. You can cram study some things, but you can't cram study music. It's just the time that you put into it. I have a wonderful family. I have three kids. My daughter is in fifth grade, and I have twin boys who are both in second grade. My husband was a high school band director. He passed away in December. He had a year-long fight with really yucky cancer. I tend to be a sharing person anyway with high school students. I think that it's important that you acknowledge that they walk into this room with a lot of emotions. Everybody's in iceberg, every single person. They've got stuff that they're dealing with, and I feel like I've always been a teacher who also
023shares that with their students, and we have shared a lot. We had to layer this really heavy piece of my life and of my family and of my husband on top of a group that I felt like I was just finally getting to know. There's been a lot of things that's just like you never know how to handle things, but yeah, I have a family that I'm very proud of. And again, because my husband and I were both high school band directors, a lot of what I do is impacted by us. My hope for my students as they leave this year, and I don't get to see them in this band room every day, is that they take risks, believe in themselves, they go after what they want, and they believe that they can do
024it. I always had this sense of if there was something I was trying to do, if I worked at it, that I could do it. And that doesn't mean that I always did, but I had this kind of like core belief that if you put in the work, you can do it. And I hope that they remember music in a fond way and being a musician is something that is something they carry with them in some way throughout the rest of their lives. Thank you. Now that was very moving, and that's the way she spoke. She is exactly what a teacher should be. She had incredibly large shoes to fill when she came. Dr. Brame, who had been in our district, I think 30 or something close to it. She was it. And she came
025in, and for anyone who saw that first football game, and let's just say it was unpleasant weather at best. And this little woman who I don't even think is like, I mean she's little, is sitting there jumping on the wet bleachers in her gloves and her hat and motivating these kids, and it was just such a beauty to see and she continues to do so. And I love what she said about who she is and why she's gone to this journey, but the ability to know or the hope that her students will continue music afterwards. I think every teacher out there, whatever their discipline is, hopes that their students still find joy in their subject area once they're done in their classroom. Absolutely. We'll move on to the always insulating FOIA requests. Oh, this is
026a short one I see. No, no, no FOIA is a good process. What are you doing for free time. Now we move on to our discussion items. First up is the superintendent search doctors Yankee and O'Mara. And actually we can put it up on the screen too. You know what, we were asked if. Thank you. We were asked if that was necessary. I don't think it's necessary. Okay, we're not going to go word for word. We're going to do some highlighting here. Perfect. That's okay. Sounds good. I thought you were going to be healed by now. I'll borrow yours when you're done. Because mine's January. Here's some extras, Bruce, if anyone wants to speak. We've got PDF versions. Before we begin, let me just say thank you to Jody and Karen and others who facilitated.
027I think we had 20 focus groups and open forums, and we walked in and were welcomed by everyone. We had great conversations. Linda will review some of the results of those conversations in the first section. We had 150 people show up to those meetings, those 20 meetings. We had a lot of great conversations, as I said. There's lots of data here. We're not going to read the data. We're not going to read the report we're dated to. You've got copies of it. It's important, though, to, at your leisure, review this information as you start to think about what you are looking for in your superintendent. That's the design of this profile, together with the survey results and the focus group and open forum responses. This will help you, I think, meet some goals for the
028superintendent, whatever that might be. I hope in a retreat setting to help know what the community and other stakeholders are looking for in the superintendent. So we feel this is a useful endeavor beyond just the screening and vetting and recruiting of superintendent candidates. Although that's the reason why we have this profile now. That's the lens by which we will use this information. So we had, as I said, 158 stakeholders and 20 focus groups and open forums. We also had the survey out there that was participated in by 567 people. Use numbers from now on. I can't beat those numbers. 567 people took the survey and six survey responses and tenors as well. And we ask that you allow us to kind of review some highlights from the profile. And I'm going to turn over to
029Linda so she can talk to you about the focus group open forum. We had a delightful time with the focus groups at both schools. And again, a very, very good attendance with parents, students, staff, et cetera. And we did see I had over 50 pages of notes, my handwritten notes, Kevin's type notes. And putting them together, the themes began to emerge. And you'll see if you haven't had time to look at this yet, with the focus groups and the survey, there is a consistency. There's an alignment in what people identify as the strengths and the challenges and the qualities that we're looking for and the priorities for the district. Looking first at the major strengths of the district. It's interesting that really across groups mentioning teachers, great students, great, great teaching, the sense of community
030here and the uniqueness of each high school, but a sense of community in the district are seen as great strengths. People find this an attractive place to come to and live. Families come back here after they grew up here. Every parent group I was in had at least several people who had gone to high school here. The parents had and it was delightful to visit with the different employee groups. They all take pride in their work and feel that they contribute to the district. And the day that I did most of my work, I was here three different days, but one day I did 10 groups and I had bagels with the bus drivers, pizza with the students, dinner with the administrators. And I know there was candy everywhere. But it was it was just
031delightful. People really appreciated being heard from and listened to and mentioned again these same themes of the things that they're proud of in the district. People are happy here. I mean, I just I met with people at Deerfield that I was over here, meet with the support staff, people here in the office and back and forth and parents and people are just very happy here. I just think that's a great marker for this district. But that's a segue into the challenges that people identified in the district as well. And and really, I listed first because it really was something that was consistent across the group's concerns about safety. And certainly the trauma that this community has gone through is still on people's minds. I was surprised at the number of students who mentioned concerns about
032safety and and parents. It mostly came from parents and students, but it's very much on people's mind. Internal and external communication was also a theme that was mentioned in every group, you know, getting information out and telling positive stories about the students and staff at both schools. Other other challenges include addressing the needs of increasingly diverse student populations and school community support for students, social and emotional needs. Relationships between the district administration and building administration was mentioned a number of times. We have a new teachers union and implementing the first contract is a challenge and reducing the achievement gap. Those are some of some of the highlights that you'll see appear here and and in the survey as well. Participants were then asked to identify skills, personal qualities, experiences for the next superintendent to possess.
033And again, communication appeared. Excuse me. Communication across platforms, reaching all constituencies, crisis management skills that people really mentioned a leader of leaders, someone who is collaborative works with groups across the district. Visible, approachable, recognizable, accessible. Those are things that are that were frequently mentioned and also committed to diversity, equity, inclusion. Another favorite group of mine was meeting with some Spanish speaking parents. I had a translator there and all those several people also spoke English and they were so deeply appreciative of this district and what you do for their children and for them. There is a strong parent education program that they feel very good about. They also were flattered that someone would come and ask them these questions, but also express their deep appreciation at being listened to. It was interesting morale came up at
034some times, morale of the staff. And I was interested actually in the bus driver group, the transportation group. Someone said morale is a succession of little things. And I thought that was a really good statement that and when they were talking about what they're looking for in the next superintendent, record of accomplishment, a history of success and committed to district 113 for the long term. People are interested in having someone stay for a long time. The priorities follow the themes that you've heard in these other questions. Building strong relationships, understanding the community's history and its vision for the future. Working collaboratively and transparently with the board, with the administration, with the buildings. Building strong, productive teams, both at district office and with the buildings. A communications plan. A facilities plan came up a number of
035times too. People mentioned aging buildings and a need as we go into the future to think about the needs of the facilities and on both campuses. Commitment to hiring a diverse, talented group of leaders, teachers and support personnel committed to the well-being of all students. The vision was mentioned a lot. Being able to articulate the vision that reflects what the community is looking for and helping all students develop to their fullest potential. You want to talk about the survey a little bit? You've got the whole survey as a PDF. Obviously we would encourage you to put this profile report and the survey results on your website under the superintendent search section which you have in place. Use some highlights from the survey responses. The percentages will wind up being more than 100% because some people
036check parents and community members and so forth. So it's not going to have exactly 200. About half the respondents were parents of a current student. About a quarter of the respondents were current students of the district and so forth. You can read the percentages there. The second question asked a forced choice response that represented the greatest strengths of the school district. And these are mirrored in some of the themes and focus groups that we just talked about. A student achievement dedicated and highly competent staff and teachers, a quality fine arts program. Again, just flat out teacher quality was a high achiever. And in the athletic activity programs available to students at both campuses. The third question asked five items that represent the challenges for the school district. A closing achievement gaps between student groups and
037subgroups. Effective board governance was a challenge elicited by about a third of the respondents. School safety was about the same percentage as the previous response. And the two next ones are tied. I don't know how that happened. Strong administration and principals and supporting SEI learning across both campuses for students. The next question asked for the top five goals for the school district. Not the superintendent to accomplish in the next three years. Assuring student well-being. Focus on 21st century curriculum and instruction that revolves around the 21st century skills. Engaging students through best instructional practices. Maintaining programs for all student achievement levels and needs from both campuses across the board. And improving staff morale. The last question asked five attributes that you think are most important for a person to be successful as a superintendent in 113.
038More than half the respondents said builds a great team and brings out the best in others. Someone who inspires and gives resources to those so they can be effective in their roles. Has excellent communication skills across all media. And a deep understanding of curriculum instruction and learning. They know what teaching and learning is all about. Is primarily and exclusively student-centered. Every decision is made with the question being asked is how is this going to affect our students. And the collaborative consensus building, a builder able to work with all stakeholders. I'm going to ask Linda to review the student profile which is on the last page of your handout. The new superintendent profile is as Kevin said on the last page. And again you should see the same themes that we talked about from the focus
039groups and the survey. And these are not listed necessarily in order of importance. I should say that. But communication. Vision. Think strategically. Build strong relationships. Prioritizes student safety. Leads with transparency. Humility. Commits to leadership that values diversity, equity, and inclusion. Narrows the achievement gap. Prioritizes building trust. Demonstrates skills in financial management and fiscal responsibility. I didn't mention that before but that did show up in the surveys and focus group as well. That's important to people. Again addressing that long-range facilities plan. Communicates. There are a couple of items I felt like communication was so important and mentioned so frequently that it's mentioned a couple of times in a couple of different ways. But communicates decisions with clarity, reason, and empathy after considering input from all stakeholders was kind of a different way to talk about communication.
040And develops a communication plan that ensures timely dissemination and builds trust that important information has been shared with the entire school community. Leads the board collaboratively and transparently. Hire strategically. And build strong, productive, loyal teams. That came through, again, very clearly in the focus groups and survey. The superintendent should maintain a strong presence in the district schools and community. Possesses a genuine, warm personality and a sense of humor. Knowledge of best practices and curriculum and teaching to ensure that students are experiencing engaging instruction. And show skill at building trust and mutual respect. So we will use this profile as we screen candidates. We are getting applications. And we will when we develop questions for the candidates when we do the screening, it will be based on thinking about these themes, these attributes that are in
041the superintendent profile. We had a thoroughly enjoyable experience here. And again, no district I've ever worked in is perfect. It has everything right. But there are a lot of strengths here. And again, I think this is a very attractive position for someone looking for a superintendent job. So we appreciated everyone's time. People came out in the evening, early morning, middle of the day. Especially we were talking before the meeting tonight that we especially enjoyed meeting with the students. I appreciate both principals set up great student meetings. Those were a lot of fun. Yeah. And very insightful and interesting. Do you have any questions for us? We recommend that you put this in a visible place on your website. I know that you do have a superintendent search. We're going to add this to our posting
042and we're going to share this with all the people who have applied thus far and who will apply in the future first thing tomorrow morning. Great. Now, this is very, very instructive. I mean, it's encouraging, not surprising, but encouraging. And I'm glad to see how people are thinking. It's valuable. Yeah, this absolutely belongs on our website. We will put that up. I know you started your discussion. You mentioned, you know, further discussion of this at a board workshop or retreat. What's your, I mean, in terms of timing, what do you think that's appropriate? And when we present the slate, that will be a night that we will talk about your next steps and how you prepare for interviewing the candidates. And that will be when we'll talk about how your questions reflect this community engagement
043report and the profile. And we'll have questions, suggested questions, but boards often develop their own. And then talking about the next steps in the process after you interview the first group of candidates and then narrow it down to the finalists. And again, we will talk with you about that process as well. And and how you seek the candidates and the qualities that you're looking for and how you set up those interviews can be very instructive in in differentiating candidates. This this afternoon before the board meeting, there was a committee meeting of our diversity and equity and inclusion committee. And they were discussing the efforts within the district. It's what the Apple program at Operation Red Apple to attempt to seek diverse pools of candidates and to evaluate candidates in a sort of more bias free
044neutral way. It would be something that would be great. And I think if you could, if it was, would be possible for you all to talk to our committee and love that. Yeah, that's great. Because that's important idea of a guiding print that using the Operation Red Apple is potentially a guiding principle or kind of umbrella principle as we move forward through the superintendent search. Yeah, absolutely. Maybe we can contact. Would we contact you about that? Yeah, okay. Yeah, actually, yeah, Jodi or Jaime. Yeah, that's Jodi. You can contact that Jodi through the other Jodi. Okay. Yes. I know that you gave the report. I know that you gave the reports. Will Jodi Shapiro be tasked with making sure that these things get up on the website or? Which means I'll say to Karen. Yeah,
045Karen. But I just think, I think it's important for us. I assume. Okay. That's what I figured. No, I hear you. So what then is our next steps or the timing of what happens next? Jaime, we are, we have been receiving applications and it appeared there was a group of applications that came in over the Thanksgiving weekend. I think when people had time. We had lots of calls. We met with a lot of people in IIII who were kind of interested but are more interested now. And I see now that two of the people I spoke to have already completed their application. Our numbers are climbing as far as applicants. But not only the numbers are climbing, but the quality of the candidates that are going to match this profile best. No one's going to
046get all the boxes. I think, I think you'll be happy with the vetting process. We will interview and screen and check references in early January and deliver the slate of five to seven. I believe January 7th if my memory serves. Or eight, whatever that date is. But during that meeting, before we present the slate, we will do an interviewing workshop that answers a lot of the questions that were asked earlier. We'll go step by step. So the process is very clear from education. Part of the process. Sorry, it's part of the process at this point. Also actively recruiting folks through your network. People you might know of that. Is that? Oh, yeah. We've been recruiting. I've made a lot of phone calls, but a lot of my colleagues around the Midwest and abroad, throughout the
047country have been doing the same thing. So we have a good slate, but we're going to make it even better. Great. Any other questions? I'll keep up the good work. And I am shaking. Thank you for coming tonight. And yeah, I will keep on bugging you. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And I'm it sounds like we'll be scheduling some time in early January. Yes. Thank you very much for your time. Thank you so much. Thank you for your service. Thank you. Thank you. You're much too quiet. You guys should make a noise. Thanks, guys. Thank you. And now it is time for Dr. Locke's presentation on course proposals for the 2024-25 school year. Sure. Ready? I'm ready. This is it. This document describes the new courses we seek to add in the district. I'll summarize them quickly
048and then happy to answer any questions. We're proposing to add a fifth year of Chinese. Curiously, we have five 11th grade students at Deerfield and want to keep their Chinese education going for their senior year. We would anticipate this course running in a stacked configuration and have already talked to teachers about that. Second, we want to start offering advanced placement pre-calculus. This is the new course that the College Board has offered and they've done their usual hundreds of university professors have reviewed the content and will design a test so that it matches college expectations. Numerous local universities, including U of I Champaign, are accepting college placement credit for this course. So we want to start offering it. It will result in some sequence changes in our mathematics departments, but our departments have been very excited
049by this opportunity to provide college access to even more students in high school. It's about time that the hardest math class have an AP. There's some language in here about the difference about stacked courses and what honors means there. We would like to add an earned honors option to a small set of courses this year. This would sort of let all kids enroll and then give kids the option while in the course to decide to take on more challenge, do more work, learn deeper, learn more, and then get honors credit on it. There's still a lot of work to do here. We need your permission to do this to then develop all the rubrics and scales that go with this. So we'll come back to you with the data on this once it's done for
050the first time, but our teams at both schools are pretty excited by this option. And then lastly, there's a very small set of some sort of technical changes for a few courses at the bottom there. Adding an honors option to the English program at Deerfield to mirror what happens at HP and changing the name of concert choir, adding some tweaks there. Questions? Is there still a freshman honors English at HP? Yes. Is there a reason why then we would only offer it to sophomore honors at DHS if we're trying to align with HPHS? Why would we not do both? This was the only option we wanted to bring to you at this time. Okay. Can I ask a related question? Yeah. So we've identified that there was a hole in the curriculum at Deerfield in
051this honors sophomore English. What is the process that we're undertaking on a consistent basis or otherwise to identify what those holes are, and then what steps do we take to plug them? There's a long answer and a short answer to that. I'll go short and then can expand if you want. So we lay out a process for course proposals every year. We've kept a similar process that involves teams of teachers proposing ideas, and then we have a set of committees that this goes through in the process. One of the things we have asked people to do, particularly for standalone courses or for a particular teacher who has an idea, is to nestle that within a long-term plan for the department. In this case, given our de-leveling work, given the sort of additional facility with the
052data that we had, this is how that course, the sophomore English option, came about. We're working to do even deeper plans, ideally a five-year plan for each department about what are the new courses to add, what are the courses that we would sunset, and what are the reasons why. Remember, in August, we talked about how to do that for career readiness, so we'll do a process for the applied arts. We just had a meeting about that today, so that work is beginning to snowball as well. Happy to give you more details on what that looks like. I may reach out to you. That's fine. Maybe along those same lines, how would you determine there's a hole that has to be plugged versus the fact that potentially the two schools may have slightly different coursework offerings
053to address the similar curriculum? Does that make sense? I think those of us that are DHS parents will say an absolute hole to be plugged is there is no honors English for the lower grades at DHS. That's, I think, many of us have stood up on soapboxes. 14 years. But I can also see that, for example, there's some Highland Park courses here that are going to have earned honors option that are not, not all of them, but are not courses over at DHS right now. And so I'm assuming there's valid reason why. Or is the goal that every single course is at both schools, period? I don't know if that makes sense. I think so. So the schools are different. Yeah. And they have they have different courses. We are working to when it makes
054when it makes sense to align things and foster the across the highway collaboration. There's been a fair amount of that work on our ninth grade courses, which, as you know, were the first to get mapped to standards. We're teaching them now in our D surveying process. There's a there's a tension around how much time and energy do you put in to do that? And it's easier to do some things when there's more momentum and others. The upper level English courses are structured very differently at the across the highway. So there's more an English four model at one school and more options at another school. So changing that takes a lot of time and energy. Not a hundred percent sure that that's a change worth making just to just to make. So we have to have
055these we have to balance these. Isn't a lot of that also staff driven that traditionally these classes have I mean, they have champions within the department. Like I know comedy and tragedy has been one teacher's class and he loves it. And it's his class. There's a lot of that. And just the thought process of the different departments leads to different outcome, different course selection sometimes. Yeah, I mean, we, you know, yeah, there's a balancing act. Like, you know, we've talked about this before. It doesn't to me. It doesn't make sense that things are identical across the highway just to be identical. I agree with that. That said, we can certainly learn from learn from each other more. And I think we're doing that and use that kind of learning plus, you know, the review of
056all the data we spent last month looking at to sort of say, OK, what really do have our priorities need to be moving forward and how does this work? I mean, it does seem certainly allowing a teacher to champions and that they have a passion. They want to teach students. I think we should clearly foster that. Right. Right. At the same time, it does seem that there are some easy ones like the one we're talking about here. You know, honors English. You know, when does the administration say we have to have this and sort of go make it happen? Right. Versus coming up from from the teachers. These were almost all driven by administrators first and forth of the well of the new courses. They were driven by administrators and then adopted by the staff
057on the earned honors options that was driven by administrators. There were some courses that individual or teams of teachers proposed this year. We worked on them, decided they weren't ready. They may come back next year. I will say I love the concept of staffing classes and letting students who want to go deeper, et cetera. I think that is such a valuable thing for students. Not that there's a million people watching right now, but the honors class being stacked with a non honors class is not meaning that you're getting more questions on a test. It means that you're going deeper. And I think that that's a really important thing for people to understand. The test is a quote harder. It's deeper. It's asking for more from a student. It's not just asking more questions. And sometimes
058it is more questions because you're going deeper. But I think that it's so important for people to understand the nuances for a teacher who's teaching those classes to be able to really engage those students that want to take it at the honors level and go in there with them. I think I think I'd say yes. I'd also say yes. But the nature of what the of what deepness looks like is different in the humanities than math and science. And so there may be, you know, more of a hyper acceleration. Or for instance, that, you know, I'm using an example from my own history because it's just what comes to mind. Like, you can teach physics without using trigonometric identities, but an honors level one probably should add those in. Exactly. And that's that is more
059and that's different. And it's different than, you know, we're reading a reading this novel and going deeper into it or revising our papers multiple times with more feedback. Different disciplines have different ways to do this. But once again, it's about that extra step. You're not taking the same class and getting honors credit because you got a ninety five. Correct. You're taking the same class, but you're having you're having different goals and a different. Yeah, there's some kind of more. And we we work with the chairs. And I think it's great that we're finding a way to do those within the classrooms with our declining enrollment. There's kids we have to find a way to make this work. Well, it's it's an opportunity to keep the five level foreign language classes because when there are three
060kids who want to take an honors and seven kids who want to take it. You know, it's it's that's the only way to do it. And I'm excited to hear more about the earned honors and how that's going to play out, because the thought of encourage that rewarding kids who decide that they want to work a little bit more and harder and be self motivated and giving them an incentive for that is a great idea. We'll see how it's implemented, but it's exciting to to make that available, I think. Well, I have a question about how decisions made with more world languages. So, for example, we're talking Chinese. One of the things I discovered recently is a friend who grew up in Taiwan and another grew up mainland China. And the languages are substantially different
061because in red China during the Cultural Revolution, they simplified it. So there are different languages to a certain degree. And even within mainland China, there's a lot of different variations. So it's just a process question, not trying to make a decision on what we do. But I assume that it would be the chair of the World Language Department with the staff that teaches Chinese. It would decide how it's presented and how it's taught. And I assume it's a similar question with Spanish. When my sister took Spanish 60 years ago, it was all about Spain. And, you know, most of Spanish speaking folks where we are, are from Spain. So I assume there's different variations in the language, who makes the decision, how these things are presented and what's the process. That's a great question. And
062I'll admit, I don't know a lot of Chinese. I've never been to either Taiwan or mainland China. I do know that we're using sort of as foundational texts for this course, the state standards that describe what students should know and be able to do it at each of these levels, as well as the requirements around the seal of biliteracy and the commendation towards biliteracy and the AAPAL tests which students take to demonstrate proficiency in language. So we're using the very established standards and levels for that. I do know that there is a cultural component in all of our world language courses. I do not know the degree to which this proposed course will focus more on Chinese as in Taiwan or Chinese from mainland China, but I can explore that. I feel pretty confident that
063because we have, you know, because of how our community is because of our work to sort of focus on respecting the cultures that come to us and understanding the broad world that we have that sense that we should be inclusive and open about that, but I can check on that. So what is the stacked courses, the earned honors, how does that impact the de-leveling work and the work through the equity committee around access to coursework for our student body? How does that impact? Our belief, and we have to try this out, is that this will make more academics, more rigor, more deep learning, more available to more students. It doesn't put kids in tracks. It says you're all in the same room and people who can choose to do more can dig in and do
064that and they'll be coaching and support from the teacher to do that. We think this is a way to be inclusive and keep our standards really high. And that happens during the course, not ahead of the course. So it's not like you signed up for one, like when does that? So in the stacked courses, it's whenever you sign up and the earned honors will begin on day one. We haven't quite figured out what the timeframe is. It will be pretty difficult the day before a final to say, oh, I want to go in for earned honors and do this. But exactly what that date is probably going to depend on the course and the teacher. So these are things we have to sort of figure out. But the goal is to make this as to
065keep our standards high, but make this as appealing and doable for as many students as possible. But those on ramps will be multiple. They will be defined. They will be clear. We'll bring them back to you. And there'll be lots of ways for kids to demonstrate that they have gone deeper. Do the teachers who will be teaching these staff courses either feel that they understand exactly how to do that? Or will they receive the training so that they can do that adequately? Because it's far more than just differentiation. They're teaching two classes at the same time, essentially. At least that's what it reads. So I just want to make sure that they have the support that they need to give the students what each one of them will need in that classroom. They are not
066ready now, which is why we're coming to you now to say we want to do this so we can work with our teachers next month, next semester and over the summer to get this right. I've seen draft rubrics and templates of this. So there's some work already happening, but it will take work to articulate this and then learn how to do it. And the first year we do it, I'm sure there'll be some bumps. Is this an accurate statement? An earned honors course is not a stacked course. Amstuz is a good example. It's American Studies. And there you will figure out on ramps by which students would be able to earn an honors credit for that class because they've gone deeper into content. Or a stacked course is can be because of enrollment, because we
067have choir and honors choir. And in order for both all those students to have the course, there isn't enough students to run both separately. So they're combined or a stacked is Spanish four and five being in the same room and being differentiated, as Jody was saying, for those those students, because I want to make sure it's clear because earned honors is not stacking. Correct. The we think the earned honors configuration will facilitate and make easier the transition from one to the other. Right. Right. Don't have to go through a course change process. It doesn't get in the way of staffing. We can staff getting all those. Yeah, it saves a lot of bureaucratic hassles to do this and gives more opportunity to more students. Right. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it has to play out. But
068the thought that a student decides that they like Shakespeare and they want to read extra plays, what's wrong with that? Yeah, that's a good thing. Or go deeper into their analysis. Yeah. Yeah. It may not be just reading another. Oh, yeah. I mean, writing more papers. Yeah. Revising a paper multiple times to get even better. No, exactly. Yep. Exciting. It is. Any other questions, comments. Thank you, Dr. Locke. Thank you. Keep on. This is a good direction. Next up, we have our security updates. Brian, do you have the slide deck yet? Yes. Right. So I'm going to go through a quick security update, and I'm going to move through this. So please ask questions on the slides if you have any. Otherwise, I'm just going to kind of keep going. So, all right. So these
069are the four topics that we're going to talk about. In this update, I'm not going to read them, but I'll go through them here in a second. So one new thing I want to talk about here is we typically get, not typically, we get all of our information from our government partners that we try to use to make decisions. So Secret Service, Homeland Security, State Intelligence Center, it's going to go by STICS. We get this information. We try to make the best decisions with the information that we have from our experts. Additional information that we received recently was we took a trip to Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, which is commonly known as Parkland. And so at this trip, during this trip, we learned a lot of things. Parkland, there was a tragedy there in
0702018 on Valentine's Day. And so I'm not going to talk specifically about everything that we learned, but a lot of the things that we had talked about in that tour and in that trip and talking to the assistant state's attorney are things that we are doing. And so it's confirming a lot of the direction that we're doing as far as security. Before we, I don't know if you're taking a breath like you're going to go on, I want to pause for a second. This just illustrates the ongoing effort that we make to learn more and more about security and get better and better at what we're doing every single day. So the fact that Brian, Amy and George was sitting out there, took the time, went to Parkland in order to learn on site directly
071from people who were there to go into the building and see exactly what happened. This is the level of commitment we have to ongoing improvement of what we're doing in security. So I'm saying this, Brian probably wouldn't, but I appreciate him and Amy and George doing this. It could not have been easy in any event. But the reason they went was not out of curiosity. The reason they went was to learn and help us get better at what we do. So thank you, Brian and George, if you can hear me and Amy couldn't be with us tonight. I just, Bruce, we have to like really make that point that building is is set in time. That building has not changed since that February 14th date. Correct. And the fact that we had three employees that
072chose to put their job above their personal feelings and emotions to to make sure that they were learning for our district is unbelievable. And it speaks volumes of those individuals and their commitment to what we're talking about tonight. It speaks volumes by what you're saying to the community of Marjory Stoneman. They are allowing our people in there to try to make a difference. Thank you all. Yeah, it's hard to talk about, so I'm going to keep moving on. All right. So changing subjects and not going into too much detail about Parkland. I want to go back to what we approved on August 8th. This is a list of items that we approved at that meeting. All of these items are in progress and we'll go we'll highlight some of those in detail moving forward. There's
073a there's a delay when I hit this. There we go. So film on the exterior glass. This is something that we're currently working on. We've done some destructive testing. We've tested it ourselves. We want to make sure we're getting the right product. And so this is something that is currently being installed and is expected to be completed soon. This prevents this is security film that prevents someone from quickly shattering the glass from gaining quick entry into the building. And it slows people down when they're trying bad actors when they're trying to get it. But if there's any questions, I'm going to keep going. So one of the things that we're trying to be very specific here because there are a constellation of risks that we face. And so we're we're talking about a mitigation for
074those those risks. And one of the things, of course, you hear people say, because I even like social conversations, I can't escape this. Well, so once again, the school, they can get in a school and you just shoot their way in. We're trying to mitigate that because the glass, it's not bulletproof, is that right? You know, Brian said not bulletproof, but they won't be able to shoot in, shoot their way in. So this this is a really this is an important, important thing that we're trying to do. And I should also mention one other thing, because again, Brian wouldn't say this. So this is August 8th. And here we are at the end of November. We're providing an update on this. It's the when Brian is doing something and this is, you know, in District
075113, I think this is where all the operations go. But for sure, when Brian is installing something, he's going to test it, he's going to test it and he's going to test it. He sent me a video of someone trying to this was installed in a window and someone trying to take a sledgehammer to break it, to see if the window would break. I mean, because and you know, this takes a while because, you know, we're actually breaking a glass. We had to have a glass to replace it and you have to do all these things. All this all this takes time because if we're going to install something, it's not just going to be window treatment. It's going to be something that we know is going to work. And so anyone who just buys
076whatever just installs it and hopes for the best, it's not how we work. So if someone is saying this should have been done three months ago, yeah, sure, it should have been. But to do it right, it takes time. And by the way, I have told Brian that if he needs someone to take a sledgehammer and hit a window, I've got some meetings. If you want to schedule that after those meetings, I'd be happy to help help help a brother out. It's awful that we can refer to things this way. This is an essence of mitigation of Nashville. Right. Exactly. That's exactly right. I would say Nashville and Sandy Hook. And who did you take guidance from as to the the glass that is going to have this film on it? There's different states doing
077doing different things. We've so we were looking nationally on what other states are doing. We've we've consulted with our concert, our security consultants on what type of glass to use, what type of film to use. We've talked to our architects. We've talked to all of our experts on where to put this. And then we talked to a sledgehammer. And then we did our our own internal research and not just research, looking at papers, research. OK, so the next one when it flips here, this is additional card readers on exterior doors. And I know I've talked about this a couple of times, but I need to talk in detail because sometimes people think, hey, you're locking me in the building. That is not the case. So what this is on all of our exterior doors, there'll
078be a card reader to get into the building and a card reader to get out. And so on only unauthorized people can leave the building. If you're unauthorized, meaning you don't swipe out, the door will go into local alarm and alarm, meaning at the physical door and then alarm back at our monitoring center. And so we'll know we can look and I can say, hey, someone was carrying a teacher was carrying a two by four through the door and they couldn't hit the button. OK, we'll shut it off. Or a student pushed a door open and let another student in or an unauthorized person push the door open on another unauthorized person. And then we can react to that, you know, chaining the door shut, things like that. That's certainly not possible. And so this
079is a really great way to we have more situational awareness, intelligence on what's happening in our building to make sure that doors aren't aren't open when they're not supposed to be. And only on only people that should be opening those doors are. So I think would be important just because people are watching and listening. Can you just also denote when it's being done? So this last one training will start second semester. Right. So we'll get all the doors operational. We're in the process of they're being installed right now. Once we get all the doors operational, we'll go through a training process with the teachers to say part of it is you'll train yourself, meaning you go through a door and the alarm will go off and you'll figure out why. But we're not just going
080to do that. We'll start with a training process to make sure everybody understands how the doors work. There's certain, you know, you hit the card reader, it'll go off in a certain time frame and you can only hold the door open for a certain number of seconds. And so we'll go through all that with the with the staff. So the next one is very similar, but but different. We're talking about classroom doors. And so right now we are in the we're past the testing phase and we're kind of and we're starting to implement this, knowing that we have to get this right. So this is classroom doors that have card readers on them. So what we can do with this is we can centrally lock down the building. So we know so the teacher can,
081you know, get into the classroom with their card reader, hold the door open and we can lock it centrally and the teacher can lock it locally. What this does also is if we need to in an emergency deactivate a card reader, we can deactivate a card reader in an emergency so that card reader is no longer active. And so this item that's we're talking about. We're talking about getting these doors up and live. This will be a phased rollout with the full deployment expected in the summer of twenty four. Some lead lead time items and making sure we also get the programming right, get it tested right. There's a lot of IT components with this specific item. How many classroom doors are there? Oh, I don't have that memorized. We're we're it's a big project.
082It's a it's a big projects and we're making sure we grab the right doors. I don't have that. I don't have that number in front of me, but it's mirrors probably pretty close. And this prevents access. It doesn't prevent exit if we will to date we have not. This is very important to date. We have never violated fire code. So you always have free egress out of the classroom and out of the building. We can't I I can get on a soapbox to say that security code needs to start rising up with fire code and they need to talk. But we've we've never violated any fire code. So I think that's an important point is as you're looking at these measures, there's the fire code component that plays into the balancing of the safety and
083fire safety and sort of, you know, the reasons why we don't chain down doors, the reasons why there is the exit and the entrance. There is that piece that you're navigating and balancing, which I think we haven't said tonight, but I think it's important reminder of the fire code. Right. And that is so important because there's been, you know, you go back in history, there has been so many tragedies with people locking doors and fires. And I can cite specific examples, but I think I'm getting off topic a little much, but we'll never we'll never violate our ROE and our fire code. I think I think to mention here when it says being tested now, the District 113 Education Association has been great in working with us to test because obviously this is going to
084affect teachers. And so we've been trying to pilot this to learn how to make it work with a small group of teachers so that when we do scale it out, you know, we will have learned the way things fail is you just, you know, implement them. But this again takes time, but this is this is how to do this, do this right. So this will this is on the way and it should be in effect for next year. My next one here is building threat assessment. And so Amy was taking the lead on this one. Unfortunately, she couldn't be here tonight. But this is, you know, we're really we talk about threat assessments for students all the time. This is really I don't want to say an enhancement to that, but it's a it's a
085kind of a duplicate of that. When we have an undisclosed threat, social media threat to saying, how do we address that threat? What's the process by that? And so we've created a process. The process is complete and we're in the we're in the implementation stage of that. So we know so everybody knows exactly what to do when we're in one of those threats. And this is probably one of the this is one of these mitigation items that is so underappreciated that this in essence is mitigating the fog of war in our attempt to that there are lines of communication that everybody knows who they report to. That hopefully will allow a more timely response and appropriate actions to protect and protect everybody. I mean, this one is just one that's so important that I think
086all the studies it's it's like, yeah, you have to have this. Yeah, that's what I was going to ask. This one was one of the top from the different studies that we had talked about being a big having a big impact, if I'm not mistaken. Right. Like this was a incredibly important down to your point component of the entire response. And this includes actors outside of the school, right? This includes local law enforcement and the process. The process. Yes. Yeah, yeah, the local law enforcement would be involved in. And absolutely. And I mean, there's nothing if there was ever a threat, they would always be included and will be included in the process. So, yes, just jumping back to this, I think another important aspect of this goes back to some of the other things
087that we have discussed before. It's a threat assessment, the pieces that we put in place before it becomes a threat assessment, whether it be the money that we put into starting some of those clubs, making sure our students are invested in that. Making sure our students are invested in our communities, making sure our students feel safe and have a place and a voice. I will say I loved when I saw the superintendent thing when students said they feel like they have a voice and are being heard. But once again, only about 150 students of almost 3000. What are our other 2850? And I think that's a really I'm glad that we have been able to build a threat assessment. And I think that's a really important aspect of the threat assessment is that we have
088to make sure we build the student up so that they're not a threat assessment. All right. There we go. So enhance security cameras. So I'm going to talk about this, but I'm going to leave it a little bit vague. We have a system that has we'll call it AI or machine learning that sits on top of our camera system that can detect and alert us very quickly. Or on our grounds has a brandish weapon. And so we'll get alerted via email, text message and phone call right away. So I'm not going to talk about specifics, but we do have that capability to know with an AI component, for lack of a better term, what's going on in our buildings. Today we have it. We have this today. This is fully implemented. And it's been tested
089and it works. And this implementation, this was a massive undertaking. And this is basically, Ron, and it's a massive undertaking to get this up and running. And this is something that we have not talked much about in open session previously, and we're not going to go into a lot of detail. But that there is a AI assisted cameras, much like what Lake Forest is doing right now, rolling out this camera system. We've had this in place for a while. We have. I can't comment on specific schools, but we've had this in place. Of course, the risk that we're trying to mitigate is undetected shooter. But what we're doing is we're just trying to buy time. Because in all these school shootings, the more time you have to respond, the better. And so knowing there are
090schools where there have been school shootings and students recorded saying, well, I heard something. I thought that it might have been bags of chips being stepped on or maybe a science experiment or something. And there's just those moments of what's happening. And the more quickly that a school is able to know this is what's happening. And we set the motion, the process of law enforcement and building administration being able to do what they do. The better the better it's going to be. This is all these things are horrible to talk about, but this is the world. But none of these things are in isolation either. You know, we talk it enhanced security camera. Hopefully, you know, detection generated within three to report of detection within three to five seconds. Once we complete our main security
091office camera, it'll be alert will go there. It'll be possible to hit the button and lock all the doors. Correct. And it's all part of a comprehensive system. It's not something in isolation. It's all layers to mitigate as much risk as we can. And you talk about time. And what I've heard consistently is that it's clear that we understand time is seconds. It's not even minutes that the response that that this these plans. I'm sorry. The risk these plans mitigate is all in seconds, not even in minutes. Correct. One one thing that we learned from going to Parkland and this is publicly available, but their their preferred language was to say murder. So all the murders happened in the first 90 seconds during that event. So we're looking at seconds. In other words, it's important.
092We've said it a few times, but it's worth, I think, underlining. We're talking about risk mitigation. We're not talking about risk elimination. We would all love to say we've got a way to eliminate risk. It's not possible. What we do is we try to mitigate it. And all these layers are trying to work together to mitigate risk. We can never fully eliminate this risk. I'm going to move on. So this is we're into weapons detection now. This is an example of one door. This is one door at Highland Park that we've this is one set up. We continually try to make this door or all doors as efficient as we can. This is how this is the process, how we started the year, what Highland Park High School, the H entrance looks like for weapons
093detection systems. So this isn't new. This has been this specific image has been shown at a board meeting before. So one one thing that we learned in doing this is the minimum requirements is we have one security staff member for the initial screening. And then we have one security staff member at the secondary screening and then someone to assist. And so this is, again, the minimum requirements. Now, this is a per door requirement. This is a per weapons detection system. So some doors have two systems, some doors have one. So I want to make that clear. But this is what we've been operating with per unit, not per door per unit. So for H entrance, for example, and this is leaving aside the ID scanners that having two weapons detection systems that aid H entrance,
094we're talking about one, two, three, four. And it looks like there is an additional security sort of person sort of floating or five staff members for this one entrance. And each entrance with two detectors would be four or five people staffing it if it was a two lane entrance. Yes. Yeah. OK. So that's for a school with three entrances, three main entrances. We're talking about 15, if they're all two lane, 15 staff members. Each school would have one two lane door. If there's three entrances, each school would have one two lane door and two one lane doors. OK. So four, five, six, around 10 staff members. Just on the weapons. Yeah. Yeah. Just on the weapons detection, not counting scanners, not counting walking around the perimeter or anything like that. Not including parking, not including
095anything. So the next slide, Bruce, I'll turn it over to you. Yeah. So we've been talking about staffing. This is the issue we've learned a lot since we've implemented this at Highland Park at the beginning of the year. And one of the things that we know is that if you're talking about screening for weapons, we should be having security people do that screening. When students scan their IDs, when they come in, you know, that's that's actually a pretty nice job. You can say good morning. How are you doing? Have a good day. That's the weapons screening that we think should be done by security. So we have tried to provide adequate staffing to be able to scale out the weapons detection system to multiple doors. Excuse me. So that is the issue for us. It
096is having adequate staffing. Dan was counting the staffing. So what we tried offering stipends, we tried to see if we could do split shifts, we could do all kinds of things with current employees. Here's what we're now doing, what we're doing. We're trying to employ school traffic safety guards to be able to bring our security staff inside the building. Now, we've been doing a lot of research on this. Tom has been calling, reaching out to other districts to see how they staff. When you have school districts have crossing guards, because it's a similar thing, when the school districts have crossing guards, how do you staff crossing guards? Interestingly, most school districts that have streets that have traffic guards where it's a public street, it's the municipality that provides the crossing guard, which makes sense because
097a public street should be the responsibility. The municipality provide traffic safety and cross pedestrian safety at Highland Park High School, however, on Vine, which is a public street. We provide traffic safety, which means we have security on the street in Vine for Highland Park instead of being in front of the school. Now, wear your way. That's our property. Get it. But what we're doing or trying to do is trying to hire security guards, sorry, traffic guards. So our current security staff can come in the building and that's where they're needed. Now, the slide says that when we can get this done, we've had the posting up, we have one applicant. When we get this done, then we have the ability to scale this out. We're not trying for three doors at each school. We're just
098trying to get this to two doors because we think that having all students come in one door would be ill-advised. So this is where we are with this webinar detection system. It is a staffing issue that we're trying to solve right now. We have two security guard positions at Highland Park that are unfilled. It's not as easy as just because we have vacant positions that doesn't generate from the earth applicants. We sought to have people who apply for these jobs. So this strategy allows us, once we get those two positions filled at Highland Park, strategy will allow us to have current security staff come in and do this. Once we have enough traffic guards to be able to have our security staff in and expand this, then we would say to students there are two
099entrances to be used for arrival in an effort to have these at the doors for arrival. I just want to make sure the board understands this. Two points. One is as we hire traffic guards, we bring security staff inside the building. There's value in that. There's much more value for students and staff to have security guards in the building than to be outside. That work is important work. I'm not trying to minimize it at all, but I'd rather have security staff inside. So as we hire people, we'll start bringing security staff in. And when it gets to the point that we've had, when we've hired enough traffic guards, I'm trying to be optimistic here. I said when, not if, then we'll have to have a fairly long period of time of communicating this, a week
100or two at least, parents to say we're changing the way arrival is going to work. These will be the doors so that it is still going to be chaotic probably the first couple of days. But we'll try to get the message out. I don't know when that will be. I can't put a time frame on that because we can't even get to that point until we have adequate staffing for these things. The cost of the units, that's not the issue. Having units available, not the issue. The issue is having adequate staffing to do it right. Now, we could just put them up and people run to walk through them. If they go off, we don't pay attention. But if we think if we're going to implement these, they need to be, it needs to be
101done right. And to do it right requires staffing that we've learned by experience that we need to have. Whenever I talk to superintendents about this, they ask me, whenever I have a meeting and the topic of security comes up, as it always does. The one thing I say to them is before you implement a weapons detection system, you have to know how you're going to staff it. Until you solve that problem, you're not going to be able to implement a weapons detection system in the way that you would like. So this is where we are. We're trying to figure out how to provide adequate staff. I have some comments on weapons detection system, if that's okay. And it's totally separate from the idea of how many security guards we have, because I don't have any
102expertise in that area. We, on August 8th, approved weapons detection system not to exceed $80,000 and we're talking about four units. If we, what we're discussing here in general is the possibility of significantly expanding that and having many more doors. The rationale that was utilized when we made the decision in August was that this was going to be the answer. It was going to provide a deterrence for particular types of instances. We now know a lot more than we did then. We know that that didn't really work, that one door where people can text each other was not really going to cut it. So I think we need to review not just these kinds of issues, but we should have it review and take a vote at some point on how do we proceed. And
103one of the options that I think that we should consider, given the fact that we are implementing all of this very large number of different kinds of mitigation techniques, one option is to not have weapon detection systems. I don't know what the answer is, but I think that we need to review it and we need to actually have a board vote on the subject. I appreciate your saying that because our working assumption is that we are scaling out what we began in August and first learning what we need to scale it out and now we know what we need. We need staff to be able to scale it and assuming is the only word I can use that if we have adequate staff that that is what we would do. But I take your question.
104You know, I think one of the things we need to do is keep circling back to the board. I'm worried a little bit that we were able to advertise for traffic guards in September when the weather was lovely. Today was not the day. Today was not. I don't know that we probably got many applicants today. So, but this, and you know, but at the same time I don't want this to also be hanging out there. I don't want this to sound like this is, you know, we're sandbagging this thing so that, you know, we come back to the board in April and say, well, you know, the posting has been up for six months. And here's what's what's happened. I don't think I don't think we can stay in this kind of almost circling, holding
105pattern, holding pattern. That's for for that long. I think that's too long. So we need to we need to, you know, we know how to make it work. If we have the staffing to make it work, we will we will do it. I don't I'm not confident that we could just say we're going to hire security and have them do this because we've got open positions right now Highland Park High School. So there are this I think is our best shot at solving this, but we just need to keep coming back to the board with updates. Because as I said this holding pattern cannot just this can't go on for months and months and months. I mean, I can see I see Rick's point that, you know, if we sort of do this, it's the
106creeping Lee incrementally. Well, if we find staffing, well, then maybe we'll get the machine, you know, all this kind of thing that it would make sense to authorize and advance the expenditures. If that's what we were going to do or not do. I can see it's much like what we did August 8. I can see the logic of that it certainly gives a clear direction. And it is, you know, clarifying again the big picture that we're facing. You know, certainly that's that's something to think about. Because yeah, I mean, we're finding that staffing is a real challenge. And I don't want to forget about any of this presentation, we've been talking about the stuff, the equipment, the physical things. And we really have during our earlier discussion, much of our discussion was on the cultural
107impact and and how students would perceive how these how these systems would be perceived by students and received by students. And we haven't talked about that very much recently. And I think it's really important that we revisit that as well. That are there is has there been any chilling effect on some groups of students attending our students feeling actually is there a sense that students feel safer or that that's just a complete neutral. Those are all things that we still need to consider as we need to talk about again as well, I think. Because it was part of what we said we were going to do and just because students aren't screaming, saying something doesn't mean they're not feeling it as we know. Right. And one of the things that Rick said is that he
108feels like it might not be working. And so earlier discussions we had had really focused on what would success even look like in this, as we look at weapons detection systems and perhaps that's a conversation that we need to have is going back and thinking about what are the goals for this and we talk about how we were really trying to solve for really one specific type of threat, because there are several, and this wouldn't cover all of them. So, are we in our best iteration of this plan, would it actually sell for that and then what does that do to school culture and are we asking the right questions of the people in the building both the adults and the students to really get to the sense of, is this working or isn't it,
109and then do we, how do we move forward. And within the context of a, a broad security program, what is the incremental value of the weapons detection system, as opposed to everything else that we're doing, is there some additional plus some risk that is going to be mitigated by this that isn't captured by the rest of the web that has been security web that has been developed. And that has to be part of the discussion as well. Sure. But I think we're for now at least we're continuing to stay that we should have that discussion but we also for now continue to stay the course and keep these positions posted. Absolutely. And, you know, we, at some point, we're going to have, if we have, we have to reach that decision as to what to
110do going forward. But yeah, we continue to look for staff to do, who can actually be there to build this out. Just to reiterate, we know that having traffic guards outside our security staff can be inside, regardless of whether we have weapons detection is good. So that's, that's, that's worth doing. So we're not doing it for one purpose or another, if they are always better in our building. Correct. And both schools correct where I think one of the discussion points around impact on culture and climate, I think is a big question. We had initially talked about, you know, getting focus groups together and other ways to amplify student voice. Here staff voice, I think it would be interesting to hear about the learnings of here's what's come up here's what here's what hasn't come up,
111I think, in an open session we've had a few instances where students we've we've heard from students say, it's actually like, not that big of a deal. So I'd be interested to hear more of that data, and not from confirmation bias of, I want to hear more about what I already know but like what are we hearing and what are we not hearing we're hearing it from who are we not. Because the other thing to keep in mind is while we are securing the building. We are educating our students and building a sense of community and how do we build that sense of community, and have students come to school and feel safe I mean we saw from the school exec connect survey and time and time again. This desire to feel safe, emotionally, emotionally
112and physically safe, so I think the weight of the decision is a pretty, a pretty big one. Like what we think might be the final implementation of this in order to be able to answer those questions. Right. When do we put ourselves in a position to be able to answer those questions appropriately. I think I think that's right. What success looks like it's hard to say we're hitting that over falling short Kathy's at a conference that can be or so I'm not speaking for but you know we've had a similar roll out at Dearfield that we have at Highland Park and the students there again, not speaking for Kathy but minor saying that the students there are saying things that are similar to what students Highland Park you're going to have it at one, you
113should have it at all of them, it doesn't it doesn't make sense to them that it's, you know, it's at this door and so students say, you know they text each other we know this say it's not here it's there and so students go the other door, or other doors. So, but that's, that's their perception of the effectiveness of what we're doing it's not, that's not a comment on what they think the impact on the culture is but so all those things need to need to just need to continue as we get closer and we'll just have to back to the board and then and I think maybe what I'm hearing, if I'm wrong, what I'm hearing is, if you know maybe we'll hit. I don't know what the weather is going to be is
114going to be in the 70s next week who knows. Yeah, so we get we get this run of good weather we get all these applicants, before we send the message out to parents say okay here's what we're doing. So it sounds like we should come back to the board and have that discussion before we scale, like that is that is that what I'm hearing them. Am I that discussion but I also think maybe we do have a vote to authorize purchase if we're able to find the staffing authorize the purchase. Something like that of the equipment of the equipment. Oh yeah, yeah. And we probably need to do that anyway procedurally. Yes, that that yes that that for sure. So that that will be then. Because yeah that that would be, I don't know how
115much they these costs if we trip that threshold but no matter. We'll, we'll bring it to the board for approval. So that would then the board approving that would then be the kickoff of the communication campaigns to parents to say, this is what we're doing but I just want to say it again. We don't have the staff yet to do this. Until we have the staff to do it. It's, we're just planning for the future. We currently do not have staff. And then what would be the converse of that that it at what point do we circle back, because we haven't found the six enough of the six security guards in order to do two doors. Are we regrouping on this subject in March in, you know, that's what I'm saying that's a holding pattern
116I don't think we can. I don't think we can wait that long. I just I just think that's that's so we should we should work through this sooner, sooner than that when I mean if you're asking when I don't know but you know it's one of those. March seems too long so does that mean February, well, maybe you does that mean January well I mean, you know, it gets, it gets hard to know what what the time is but I think that we can't staff it we can't do it. Yeah, well, we can't run this we can't run a class without a teacher, we can't run. Yeah, right. And so like at the December meeting for example part of my report I don't think we need an entire agenda item for it, you could say,
117here's where we are in hiring traffic cards, that's what we're going to suggest. And so just to kind of regroup what I've heard is this is this independent standalone statement, we need six, we want to hire six secure traffic safety guards, so we can bring security in house period. Yes, whether it be for weapons, period, period, but you know we know we need we have to do that in order to staff weapons right then statement is, you know, once we have up to the six, then we can do weapon detection. Yes, but the converse is not true, you don't we don't have to have like. So, they're just it's a separate statement. And the plan with with our staffing is to do two doors. And the reality is, we, we can't go down to one,
118because we have buses, we have student parkers and people that students that park, and we have parent drop off. And one entrance also creates another independent risk of having everybody separate everybody. Right, absolutely. But it's just not even say that like let's just be so clear that those three, we can't funnel those three functions of bus drop off with how our schools are currently built bus drop off, plus parent drop off, plus student parking, all funneling through a single door. Even if we miraculously never had a line outside the door, like that just doesn't think that that fourth element is important because as we talk through this and make a decision. Everyone has to understand the complexity of this we solve for one problem you cause another. And so I think that we need to
119leave that in there. And we're talking about this one very specific risk. This is, this is not it's not it's not a question that the security of students and staff rests on this, it's, it is mitigating this very specific risk of a student student of someone bringing a concealed weapon in the school. Right, that's it. Yeah, and as Dan put it's really about. If we have focus groups we need to discuss we have this large envelope this large list of things that we're doing we have this environment that we build for security does, you know what is the exact thing we're trying to mitigate with this particular technology. That's one of the things that you would need to bring to us. But then that's kind of the discussion has to be leading the focus groups
120as well, is that, you know, we've got all this other stuff. This is what that particular tool is for. Right, it's right there on slide 11. The risk mitigates a person bringing a concealed weapon in the school. Right. That is, this, this would not have stopped Parkland, what happened in Parkland. Understood. You know, or, or the other number of Tennessee I mean it just goes on and on. So, no mass shooting, this does not solve. But it might have stopped what happened on April 4. Yeah. Yes, it would stop working. If they, if the student came through the main doors. I know, but I'm just saying that's not a factual statement. And then we also have to mention the thing that none of us have actually said that if we're not looking to put this
121at three doors because for three months the district has been trying to find people to staff the use detection systems and has been been unsuccessful. You know we don't talk about it all the time, but the district has been looking for staff to do this. It's asked current staff if they'd like stipends it's asked current staff if we could change schedules around all of these things have been done. And there haven't been the volunteers to do it. And it's been difficult to hire, find people from outside who actually want to apply for this. I mean there are people say it's easy to do but it hasn't been easy to do. And we're talking about two entrances, because we've had it, we haven't been able to staff for two entrances much less to think about staffing
122for three entrances. But for a lot of people going to two entrances is not going to be something that is popular or well received. This will be inconvenient. This is going to be inconvenient for everybody for the kids who are used to park using maybe athletics at Highland Park. Now they have to choose between Vine or H and there's a big parking lot in front of athletics this logistically this is still going to be a headache and it's going to be inconvenient. But we have tried to find staff. And it has not. We have not succeeded yet. That's the problem it's not it's we're not even talking about the cost we're talking about just finding people to do this. And remind me for the single pop up at each of the buildings how are we,
123how are we staffing it now like what does that look like, because we're talking one. Now when we go to two like what does it look like currently since the beginning of the year, or since it started at the building. I grabbed the mic because I probably can answer that. Weekly, we get a notification from Amy usually on Sunday that says this is where WDS is located throughout the week. Principal team immediately puts their names down so we are at one of those doors all the time, I put it out to the administrative leaders in our building, asking them to sign up for at least one week. It's been really hard. They've been great. It's been particularly tough because we have collaboration and they're all they should be. And we're pulling them out of their
124departments, they're not. And Brian knows like they're team players but it's hard and we've been doing it since day one. And it does pull us away from things we should be doing now versus right. Do I hate it. I enjoy it very much honestly, except in cold days but it really is, you know, it's nice to see kids and faces and we felt the same way about scanning. But that was much easier to manage. We don't hire department shares and pay department shares to run securities. I agree. They should be leading their departments. That is their highest and best use. No we don't, I don't disagree with you like occasionally it's one thing but that is how we're managing right now. And it's unsustainable. It's not sustainable. I mean we're doing it because we have
125no choice right now but it's hard. So unsustainable and to go from one to two with the current configuration is like it right now is is unsustainable and under the current configuration going from one to two I mean I would say that even having it one is putting a tremendous amount of stress on people in the in the buildings. And, you know, we're not in for security stuff. It's not as though we've got backups. If someone is out because people get sick, things come up, you know, then things happen. It's, it's, it's a, it's a challenge. So this that's why I keep coming back to this. The issue for weapons detection system is staffing people. So are we clear on orders? Yeah, I think I think that the consensus is that we encourage the administration
126to continue its firing efforts and to make this work. And if we are reaching that point, we then make the decision on moving whether or not on how to move forward. But we need to get to the point of actually having the staffing of security personnel at the level it needs to be at. No matter what. Yeah. So what do we do between so what happens with the weapon detection system plan between now and then? Unless we receive direction otherwise, we would stay what we're the course of what we're doing right now. I have a question just to clarify the focus groups that you brought up in both the timeline and perhaps not tonight. But the questions that you feel would provide the window into what I'm not quite sure, you know, because I think
127that the level of questioning we're asking right now is very minimal. But it's also incredibly broad, like a question like safety. Do you feel safe? Are we really asking that? Are we asking, do you think that the school will have fewer gun? You know, so I just would want to hear a little bit more about that, given that that would be something I would be running. Yeah, that's a tough that's a tough question right in the focus group, because you can ask a question of do you feel safe? Like, do you like, I think it varies on the level of I don't know. I don't know what the question would be, but I don't think the question is you feel safe, right? But it also isn't it. I don't know. I don't have an answer
128of what that level of question would be, because the question by definition could be leading one way or the or the other. If I asked you, you hate the weapons detection system, right? Very different question than, you know, I don't know. You could be the person that keeps setting it off and is totally annoyed by it because, you know, because you have something in your backpack. It would be helpful to hear what you've heard from students. And depending on the direction it goes, it might be broad enough to act based on what you've heard already. But it has to be a large number. It has to be that you've met with and you've talked to heard from enough students that it's like, oh, here's the here's the sense. I don't think we need to jump
129into doing focus groups, but just to get a sense of where the discussions and the feedback from students has been. I also think I know that there are some social studies classes that because of their where they are in their curriculum, some of these topics are coming up. And so the students are sharing some of their thoughts on the system in those environments as well. So it might be interesting if we have an opportunity to tap into some of the staff that's, you know, working with some of those students. And again, it's not scientific. It's not here is a list of five questions, right, that we're going to ask everyone is, I think, a little bit more free formed, you know, thoughts by the students of what's working, what's not working. Even what they're calling,
130they're calling it TSA. And so for me, that says a lot, but maybe it's not saying a lot from them. You know, I carry that very heavy when I hear that. But maybe for the kids, it's a students. It's just I think that's a risk of a non scientific. Like free form information gathering in that we're going to lean on that to make a decision. You're you feel some way about them calling it TSA. And so I think we would probably need to be really thoughtful about the wording of the question and figure out a way to reach as many students as we can so that we're not hearing it from the subset of students in a class. And like that, you know, they could be biased in their own way, depending on the elected.
131Like there's so many different ways that that group came together. And and so I think that if we're going to seek information from students and we have to find maybe a more formal way of doing. Yeah, I we're going to do with the information because we already have arguably close to fifteen hundred bits of information from fifteen hundred different kids. Reporting on a sense of safety connected to the weapons detection system. And that's I don't know if it's really what we're it might not be exactly what we're looking for, but it is relevant that there has been a fairly large body of percentage of the student body that has provided shared some of their feeling about this, at least. And at a certain point, you know, it's up to the board to do with the
132to vote, you know, to approve going forward or not going forward. And we have to rely. We're never going to have perfect information, much as we all know that none of these mitigation tools are complete and perfect in and of themselves going to have to rely on what we have at some point. But it's important to at least to have the sense of that. You know, we're not hearing kids saying this is making me stay away from school, which was a fear. That doesn't mean it doesn't exist. But and that's that's the dilemma we're in. The problem, of course, is when you start talking about weapons detection systems, a standalone entity, then they think of that as the question. And really, the question is, how does it all fit into the context of the entire
133thing? And I wish I could tell you exactly how to ask that question, but I don't know how. These folks are closer to the kids than I am. You have to give context to have a discussion about this. You can't just talk about this because it is just a relatively small, small piece of what we're doing for security in our schools. But it's the most visible. It's the most visible. I would argue that it isn't a small piece. I would say argue it's probably the largest piece because of the visibility day in, day out. Students will see it. They will walk through it. They won't see the film. They won't interact with the film on a daily basis. So while, yes, it is a singular component, it is an incredibly large component and the component
134that is taking up so much of the time and the resources out of a desire to make sure that we get it right for the safety and well-being of our students. And frankly, and this has taken me a long time to get here, part of the benefit is this sort of deterrence effect that is the visible, physical, oh, I'll have to pass through this kind of thing that might, that turns some people, that will likely turn some people away. And that's where we started on August 8th. And that's, yeah, and that's where we started. It's not going to stop somebody from shooting a window, but we have security measures in place to address that. You know, it's not going to stop somebody from trying to sneak something in somehow. But that's why we have some
135of the security measures we have like the locks and the camera systems to address that. It's not foolproof, but if it stops one person from sneaking something into the building to do harm, if it deters one person from trying, it has some value. And the question is, is that value, I mean, I don't want to say there's an economic part to this, but is that value worth the expenditure? I tend to think that it would be now because I don't want that to happen here. It's happened enough. And I get that as part of the consideration as well now that this has been the last year and a half almost have been awful. Have been shocking for a lot of people in this, for all of us in this community, and they've been shocking. It's
136been hard. We need to move past that. And if the way to grow is to put something in place that makes people feel more comfortable, I can see the logic of it. And this has become a larger discussion now just about this topic, which I don't think was our intent, but it is all interconnected, right? And it's becoming a little bit like the story of putting your finger in the dyke and other hole opens up, right? So we're closing everything else, the doors and the windows and all sort of thing, right? If we leave this, you know, this now is a vulnerable point, right? So maybe somebody won't choose to come in through the propped open door, right? But now this is the way in if we don't have some current in that location, right?
137And now we plug that hole and this hole opens up to some degree. You know, I don't know. Again, we've spent over 35 minutes talking about weapon detection system, and we spent 15 minutes on the five previous slides that are just as important. And we'll actually, I don't know. Well, that are already all in process and have been approved. Yeah. I think that's the part that is most troubling for lack of a better term is what's troubling is that we're focusing on this and not on the other pieces, you know, going back to the superintendent search. Well, security and safety is one of the elements there. There is an entire list of other priorities and goal areas that we need to look at as well. And I'm going to go back to what I said
138when we first started talking about this is what are all the things we need to do for our students, for the children, for the people in this community, so that this is so low on our radar at that point. And I'm going to keep hammering at it, because the reality is, we see statistics of part of me what a school shooter looks like. And every single one of those things are horrific things and many of them are things that we can be doing something about without a weapons detection. And actually, probably the most dangerous risk factor is what we talked about in the school report. Exactly the isolation that there are increasing rates of absenteeism because those are the kids who become isolated, potentially, and who have an unhappy relationship with the school. I remember
139the problem that we're solving for. This came about because of April 4th. Yeah, there wasn't a school shooting. It was a weapon brought into the building, which is a very different problem that we're solving for. I just want to bring that back to the forefront. And that problem exists within the context of a couple summers ago and the context of what happened in August with the students outside of the building. That's where we are in our concrete situation. That's not hypothetical. It's unfortunate we spend, as a school district, we spend so much time talking about this because it's a statement really about where we are as a society and the worries that we all have. But I do appreciate how seriously the board takes this. I know how seriously we take it, who work here
140every day, but obviously the board takes this seriously. And I also appreciate that you understand and are willing to get into all the levels of complexity. It's tempting to try to boil all of this down to just one solution or just do one thing as if there's just one thing that we do this and everything will be solved. And that's simply untrue. So I appreciate the board having the mind to be able to deal with the complexity of this. I think I'll try to assume the spirit of my predecessor to boil this all down. To summarize. I think the sense of the board is that the district administration should continue its efforts to hire personnel so that a weapons detection system can be staffed. An adequate system can be staffed to continue that effort. Once
141we get to that effort, we need to have the vote on whether or not to move forward with it. But we need to have the staff in place first because that staff is going to provide valuable security services, whether or not they're in the hallways or they're at an entrance. Is that fair? Yes. Okay, we'll move right along then to public comment. Are we done with the presentation? We were, weren't we? That was the last. Yeah, there's the secret slide. We're moving on to public comments. Yes. Per policy 2-230 at each open school board meeting, the Board of Education has a public comment period for a maximum of 30 minutes. We are ready to listen and appreciate your comments. We recognize that it takes time and work to prepare a three minute statement. Public participation
142is not intended to be a back and forth discussion between the public and the board. Questions asked during public participation may be sent via email to be answered subsequent to the meeting. I don't have anybody on the sign up sheet. Does anybody want to provide a comment? Going once, going twice. Okay, we'll move on to the end. We'll move on to our action items. Action item A, approval of district 113 e-learning plan for 2023. Should that be 2025 or six? Six. Okay, it's a three year plan. 2023 through 2026. It is recommended to the board that the 2023-2026 district 113 e-learning plan be approved as presented. Is there a motion? So moved. Is there a second? Second. Any discussion? Ramina, can you take a roll call, please? Dr. Elliott Schremer? Aye. Mr. Newman? Aye. Ms.
143Newman? Aye. Mr. Nader? Aye. Mr. Perra? Yes, please. Mr. Strzok? Aye. The motion carries. Action item B, approve amendment to employment contract of special education coordinator at Deerfield High School. It is recommended that the board of education approve an amendment to the 2023-2024 employment contract of Deerfield High School special education coordinator, Christine Durienzo, as presented. Is there a motion? So moved. Is there a second? Second. Is there any discussion? Hearing no discussion, can we have a roll call, please, Ramina? Aye. Mr. Newman? Aye. Mr. Nader? Aye. Ms. Shapiro? Aye. Mr. Braza? Aye. Dr. Elliott Schremer? Aye. Mr. Schremer? Aye. The motion carries. Please say aye. No one knows it. We're all punchy. Action item C, approve amendment to employment contract of special education coordinator at Highland Park High School. It is recommended that the board
144of education approve an amendment to the 2023-2024 employment contract of Highland Park High School special education coordinator, Elizabeth Nelson, as presented. Is there a motion? So moved. Is there a second? Second. Is there any discussion? Can we have a roll call, please, Ramina? Ms. Newman? Aye. Mr. Nader? Aye. Ms. Shapiro? Yes, please. Mr. Braza? Aye. Dr. Elliott Schremer? Aye. Mr. Heineman? Aye. Mr. Strzok? Aye. The motion carries. We are now. Yes. Can I make a brief comment? Circling back to agenda item 9A on the e-learning plan. Yeah. I think it's important that the board recognize this is the result of a DEA administration collaboration. One of the new committees that's part of the new collective bargaining agreement. I'm sure all the members of the committee would agree this was really smooth. Yay. It took us
145three meetings to do this. Every meeting ended 10 minutes early. We sent it around for feedback for all staff. We got a bunch of feedback. We were able to resolve all the comments. There was nothing. It was easy. It was harmonious. It was smooth and we got a good product. That's great. Thank you for sharing that. Thank you. Great to hear. That's encouraging. Now we move on. Consent agenda. Next is the consent 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? It is recommended that the consent agenda be approved as listed on the screen. Is there a motion? Is there a second? And Greg has the pleasure of providing a report on the bills this month. All
146right. Given the late hour, I'll spare you my 18 page. I had the opportunity to look at several invoices. The first was for BSP vision. This is our germ provider for provision both for current and former staff members. I looked at an invoice for Hobart service. This was for replacement for a walk-in cooler in the cafeteria DHS. I also looked at an invoice for reimbursement to a third party for out of pocket expenses related to special education. I spent some time with Ali going through the internal control processes that impact each of these. And after that review and in that kind of text, everything was properly approved and dispersed. Thanks. Great. Can we have a roll call now, Romina? Mr. Nieder? Mr. Perot? Yes, please. Mr. Barraza? Yes, please. Dr. Elliott-Shermer? Aye. Mr. Feynman? Aye.
147Mr. Newman? Aye. The motion carries. We are now on to our closing items. It is now 916. Is there a motion to adjourn the meeting? Yes, please. Is there a second? Second. All those in favor? Aye. Opposed? Abstentions. The motion carries. The meeting is adjourned. Have a good evening.