001Oh, yay. That's special. Okay, calling to order township high school district 113 regular action meeting for Tuesday, October 24 2023. It is now 6pm or sorry 7pm. We'll begin with a roll call. Dr. Elliott Shimmer. Mr. Heinemann. Here. Ms. Newman. Here. Mr. Nieder. Here. Ms. Shapiro. Yes, please. Mr. Barraza is not here this evening. Mr. Strzok here. I would like everyone else at the table to please identify themselves. Tom Krieger, Chief Human Resources Office. Michael Locke, Assistant Superintendent Curriculum Instruction and Assessment. Karen Warner, Chief Communications Officer. Tiffany Rowe, Assistant Superintendent for Student Services. Brian Armour, Chief Operations Officer. Ali Mahanti, Assistant Superintendent Finance. Gabby Phan, Principal Highland Park High School. Katherine Anderson, Principal at Dearfield High School. Ron Casbom, Chief Information Officer. Mira Ante, Assistant Superintendent of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion. Bruce Law, Superintendent. Okay.
002Our first item of business is the approval of the board meeting agenda for this evening. Is there a motion to approve the agenda as listed? So moved. Is there a second? Second. All those in favor? Aye. Opposed? Abstention? The motion carries. We're now on to our board reports. The first report is the President's Report. I want to start my report by underscoring that the board shares the joy and relief communicated by Principals Anderson and Finn and Dr. Law last Friday at the news that a recent DHS graduate and her mother were released from captivity in the clutches of the Hamas terror group. Our communities have close ties to Israel, whether we have family members or friends living there, whether we have visited once or multiple times. There are so many connections. I would not be
003surprised if most of our community has at most two or three degrees of separation from the horrific events taking place. We all share the hope for a lasting and secure peace in this region that is so close to so many of us. It is important to keep in mind throughout this terrible and unsettling time that many students, staff, and families within the 113 community have been impacted by the tragic events in Israel. As a school community, our first responsibility is to come together in order to support each other. This is a time to listen closely to the concerns and uncertainties felt by our students and to respond to their needs with understanding and generosity. If a student is in crisis or needs support during the school day, please, please reach out. If you're a parent
004or guardian, please encourage your students to visit their counselor or other social and emotional support resources if they need them within Deerfield and Highland Park High Schools. This evening, the Board will approve the engagement of a search firm to assist in finding outstanding candidates to become the next superintendent of District 113 and the next principal of Highland Park High School. The single most impactful responsibility of any school board is the hiring of a superintendent. Tonight marks an important step in undertaking this journey. As we will hear from Drs. O'Mara and Yankee, they will assist us in developing a profile of the qualities we desire in a superintendent. The profile will be developed in consultation with the board and through focus groups and forums involving staff, community members, parents, and guardians, and other key stakeholders. Potential
005candidates will be identified and will be thoroughly vetted. We are committed to the exhaustive evaluation and assessment of the qualities needed to be an effective superintendent. I also would like to note that Dr. Yankee is very familiar with Highland Park High School and Deerfield High School, having served as interim superintendent for the 2018-19 school year. I have that right, don't I? As a board, we will act with due deliberation but also with swiftness to search for and hire a superintendent who will be dedicated to achieving the mission of District 113. As a board, we share a resolute commitment to soliciting and listening to the council and priorities of the district's many stakeholders, including staff, students, parents, and guardians, future parents, and guardians, and all other community members. Our schools have a proud tradition and we
006are committed to finding a leader who will build upon that tradition. We are fortunate to have the staff, the students, the resources, and the community sufficient to make it among the highest achieving high school districts in the nation for each and every one of its students. This board is committed to finding a superintendent who is passionate about District 113's unwavering commitment to providing all of its students with opportunities to realize their unique potential. It is and will continue to be the touchstone of District 113 to cultivate passion, to unlock potential, and to inspire excellence in everyone everywhere. Finally, I thought it might be helpful to provide some background concerning the rationale for next year's shared bell schedule between Highland Park High School and Deerfield High School. Highland Park High School has long had the fewest
007instructional minutes of any of the schools that we use for benchmarking purposes. The schools that are generally viewed as comparable or competing high schools. Spending less time doing what a high school does, providing instruction, is a disservice to our students. By moving to a shared schedule with DHS, HPHS will at least no longer have the fewest instructional minutes among our sister high schools. In the context of fairness and equality and compensation for staff, it makes little sense to pay the professional staff at HPHS the same amount to provide fewer minutes of instruction as our staff at DHS. This has been a long-standing structural inequity within district operations and it finally is being corrected. Thinking in the longer term for the future, a shared schedule might make it easier to find a way to retain valued
008teachers, particularly for those highly skilled and gifted teachers who educate our students in academically or creatively challenging low enrollment courses. As staff retires and we have a large wave of retirements coming up, it may be possible to ensure full-time duties rather than less desirable part-time duties for those teachers who can and are willing to teach these high value low enrollment classes at both HPHS and DHS. This approach to retaining valuable staff is unavailable under the current different schedules. In a similar vein, a shared schedule might make it easier to preserve low enrollment high value classes if they can be offered on a rotating or shared basis. It is impossible to explore and experiment in this regard without having a shared schedule. In sum, the move to a common schedule is intended to enhance instructional minutes
009at HPHS to address work and pay inconsistencies and to provide flexibility in the search for solutions to retain skilled teachers and diverse course offerings throughout enduring changes in population and career selection. So ends my report for this evening. Next item of business is the Facilities Committee report. That's Anne? We had our Facilities Committee last Wednesday, correct? Yes. And most of the items that were in that committee meeting are going to be on the agenda later, the baseball donation, the field turf, the solar panels, and then the upcoming contract. The one item that I did want to highlight is the DHS auditorium because it's not being discussed later. That is on track to be completed. As of last week, they were painting the stage and they were putting the auditorium chairs in. They're on track for
010the first event to be held in the auditorium in mid December, which is a dear parent network presentation, which I think is fantastic. So we are excited to see and see when the rubric cutting hopefully happens that we can all really enjoy the new space. And that is, unless I've missed anything from facilities, that is the facilities report. Thanks, Anne. That's great news. Next up, we have administration information reports. Dr. Law? Thank you, Ms. Strugget. Thank you for the words about our 113 graduate being released from captivity. It was, we were absolutely elated on Friday, but as we know, the situation is continuing. And as you mentioned, it's difficult on students. It's also difficult on staff. And so as a district, our first responsibility is to help our students. And we know that in order
011to take good care of our students, we need to take good care of our staff. And so just want to share with the board a couple of things that we are doing in this challenging time. The mayor has started a series of dialogues with staff and with the twin goals of taking care of staff so they can take better care of students. Principals are also compiling and sharing resources. Staff are using their classrooms and all this is an effort to support our staff so they can respond to issues and questions that may arise in the classroom. We have wonderful social work and counseling resources, but we also know that our students are engaging with teachers every day. So the principals are making these efforts to support teachers. So if these things do arise over the
012next period of time, weeks, months, however long it goes, they're ready. And there's also working with our staff. So there are a lot of things we're doing internally in this regard to support students and also, of course, to support staff. Thank you, Dr. Law. Next up this evening, we have, oh, one of our, the continuing, continuation of our award-winning Passion for Excellence series. That's, oh, it's all beat up, ready to go. So hit it, Ron. Please, I wanted to say that. I enjoy getting to know the children and, you know, we build a little, a little bond. I miss them when they go, you know, I've been here 25 years, so I've seen a lot come and a lot go. It just keeps me motivated to keep doing what I do and doing it to
013the best of my ability. My name is Regina and I work for District 113 Transportation. I started driving about 27 years ago. I actually started off as a bus monitor because my children were small and they could come to work with, but then they kept pressuring me to become a driver. I was up for the challenge and I got trained, took the classes, passed the test and got my CDL and the driver told me about District 113 and so I was like, well, I'll go give it a try and I came and filled out the application and they hired me and I've been here ever since. 78 to base for radio check. Yeah. When I first started, I was a bit intimidated because it is a big vehicle, but over time, you know, I got
014used to it and now it's like second nature. Right now I'm doing special needs. I've been doing them for the last five to seven years. The position came open and I asked to be placed in the position because I enjoy working with the special needs children. They're the sweetest. You feel more rewarded from them because they really appreciate it. They're so excited all the time to show you and tell you different things. When they go on vacation, they come back and tell me about it and get their braces out. They're just so excited. Hey, character. How's it going? I have built some lifelong friendships. So, did you still want me to cover that midday run? Yes, if you could, it would be great. 11 o'clock. The support system is great. Probably about five years after
015I started, I got a permanent midday route, but my mom became ill, so I wanted to take care of her. They did allow me to give up my midday to go take care of my mom every day until she got better. When she came back to herself, I came back to work and worked in the midday again. So I really appreciated that. I think that was very important in her healing process. She got better and she gave us another good 10 years with her. Yep. Well, I'm hearing like this grinding noise. It's coming from right in the front up there. You know, most people feel like, oh, they're just bus drivers. We're so much more than that. And we take pride in our job. A lot of things that we have to pay attention to,
016to keep the children safe. I've been here going on 25 years in August and not one accident. And I pride myself on that. You know, no one in District 113 is just. No. I mean, and this is, we love this series because not only we're seeing, you know, teachers, students know and love, but there's so many other people who care so much about our kids. And I can tell you that not every district has this kind of relationship between transportation and students. Believe me, I hear this almost every day when I get home about transportation challenges. We're very fortunate that we hire our drivers. They're part of what we do and their contribution to our students is, is significant. So we're very happy to share that one. Thank you for the first, first faces kids
017see and the last faces they see every day. That's really, they do an incredible work. Up next up, we have our FOIA items for this, for this week. These are the FOIAs we have received and processed since the last meetings. Moving right along, we are now going into our discussion items. First up is the 2023 IASB delicate assembly resolutions. And, oh yeah, that's me actually. Always fun. Because Jaime could not be here today. Let me pull them up. There's a much shorter list of resolutions this year and certainly not as controversial as some previous years. We see that they finally stopped. Actually the IASB changed its rules. Oh good. Yeah, that they don't want to have. No, they don't, they want to avoid controversial issues and political issues. And these are all more directly school
018related. First up is industrial construction. The IASB's recommendation is to not adopt and Jaime, we did not, because they're short, we didn't go to policy committee. Jaime agreed with that, that the recommendation should not, to be not, that should be not to adopt. Is there any discussion of that? Straightforward, that one. And this is, oh, just to remind, I just, I forgot to mention it for everybody. These are raised at the general delegates meeting at the IASB annual meeting in November. The Illinois Association of School Boards. The Illinois Association of School Boards meeting. And every district in the state has a vote. And so we discuss these to decide what our vote will be when we attend that delegates meeting in November. Next up is? School resource officer, SRS. Oh yeah, the school resource officer
019resolution. And the recommendation for that resolution is to adopt. And we agree with the recommendation to adopt it. It encourages support for the funding of SROs at Illinois public schools. Any discussion of that item? I'm pretty sure we've exhausted that discussion in our last two years. No. The next item up is additional regulations for bus drivers. The, or actually lightning recommend, lightning regulatory requirements for bus drivers. The IAS, in light of the shortage of bus drivers, the IASB recommendation is to adopt. Is there any discussion of this item? I may as well suggestion was to adopt. I kind of undecided on that. I mean, so since we have our own transportation, I guess the state can make changes, but we're not really beholden to them. Like we can still have a higher level of expectation.
020Exactly. And then I don't know with that, then should we be abstaining for that due to the fact that we have our own, should we be voting on something that doesn't affect us? And that would be my only thing to say, do we abstain from that because we have our own things? So why should we be voting on something that influence another district? Sorry, could it potentially increase the pool of people? Yes, exactly. That's right for us. Yeah, that's what I mean. So we need to hire a driver. It would, right. I think that's the intent to increase the pool for other districts. So when we're hiring a bus driver, it would also, it would be of benefit to us. I just wonder what they've changed. But I, but it doesn't say what's changed from
021what to what, because I read it and I couldn't see what was, that doesn't say what's old and what's new. That's the issue with it. So that would be my only to be able to compare what is being changed. I think I want to see it before we put a vote one way or another personally. Well, the two things that the behind the wheel and classroom required hours should be accepted, not just from nationally recognized trainers that are only available in commercial driving programs, but they can be accepted locally, I think. Yes. Right. And then remove the liability that is borne by new driver trainers concerning the drivers that they certify. Right. So if we decide to put together our own training program, we will be allowed to do that. Whereas right now, they have
022to go to a commercial truck training program. It also includes an increase of transportation funding from 80 to 100% for transportation reimbursements. I believe I've looked at the details. So just. Of course, this is not like, we're not passing a law here, we're making a record. We use it too in there a lot. Okay. Okay. So I think I can go along with delegated this. Okay. Next up is a resolution encouraging additional means to conduct an employment history history review. The ISP recommendation is do not adopt. Jaime disagreed thinking that his view was that the resolution would provide school districts with additional tools in order to conduct employment history reviews. Any discussion on this one? My question again, and probably Jaime would have to add to address it, but I'm interested why they are suggesting
023we not adopt it. Right. What's in there that seems so straightforward of why wouldn't you want to again, because it helps you again, potentially expand a pool and it's still very rigorous with its checks and the district rationale when they present it was all about baseball. Why wouldn't you want to continue doing that? So I'm confused. So I would agree with my initials. Well, the thing that I didn't understand about what they wrote here is that they, the ISP committee reviewing that said that they understand, you know, finding, helping districts implement this is important, but they didn't think this is the right way to do it. But that it's like, but what they were saying is let, give us access to the same system DCFS use as a, as one way, the only way you
024have to give us access to. Yeah. Yeah. Tom, I'm asking you a question, putting you on the spot. If you had the ability to look into DC to give further review to employees, would you want to be able to further review employees? Or would you rather not new employees, new hire process, like the background checks. Mike, the locks are very exciting activity. Don't break those microphones. They're really expensive. It's getting a flashing red there. Well, Jodi, when you frame the question that way, it's hard to, um, yeah, I didn't mean to throw you that underhanded softball there. I'm sorry. But I guess, I mean, my take is that, um, I don't really see that we're in any way inhibited from doing a thorough investigation now, the way things are with the system that we, the
025law, the way it is in the system we've got set up to do it. Okay. So maybe that was the committee's point. Yeah. So are we agreeing with Jaime then to disagree? Yeah. Yeah, I think so. Okay. And a lock will now be built for that microphone. The next resolution is proposed resolution is financing alternative safe school funding. The committee, the ISP recommendation is to not adopt and Jaime concurred with that. Yeah. And I read the rationale. I don't really understand what it is that they want to do. Really impacts the middle school. I think we have marching orders or a sense of consensus because we're not voting on this, uh, as to the resolutions. So is there any other discussion on this one? Um, the only thing I would say is that the question
026is, is whether we want to just reach out to our feeder districts on that last one, because it is about middle schools more so than us, correct? You know, I, it just, I would not want them to perceive us as undermining. So I would just say, let's reach out to our feeders and see where they are on it. Cause it affects them. That's reasonable. That being said, I'm pretty sure that one 12 doesn't love for sessions. That's up to them. It's important. 109 and 106 both do. Yeah. Uh, Hey, uh, we'll do that. But, and then the next item up for discussion is the tax levy. All right. I know why the students are here. Absolutely why there is no, no, no, actually, actually. So 30 slides presentation will be about two hours and Mr.
027Taylor, your teacher said he'll quiz you the presentation. So please take copious notes. It's a long presentation. We've discussed that in finance committee. So I'm going to go like lightning fast. If board members, if they have questions, please feel free to stop. Okay. All right. So property taxes and how are they utilized? This is, um, property taxes are the largest, uh, source of revenues. We need to mint levy every year, um, um, to maintain the excellence in education, meet our contractual obligations, uh, just to make it really short. As you can see the next slide, the largest source of revenue, 90 over 90% of our funding comes from property taxes and our operating funds. Uh, next slide. Uh, some of the factors, obviously the contractual obligations are limited amount, limited amount of state and federal
028revenues, future expenditure increases, capital project needs, unfunded mandates, you know, one example of special education and unforeseen expenditures. We've witnessed what's been happening the last couple of years, you know, COVID security, uh, more reasons to, to levy every year to the max. All right. So what is tax levy? Request made by, you know, the district or any municipalities, um, the amount of money to be raised from property taxes. Um, every fund has its own levy, which I can talk about a little later. So yes, if we do not levy, that means we do not get any funding at all. So it's very important to levy. Next slide. And that impacts year over year, correct? Uh, yes. Yes. Now there are laws you could recapture maybe three years up to, but yeah, it has a compounding
029impact if you under levy. Yes. Yes. Um, extension is what we receive. So levy is what we ask and extension is what we actually receive. And it's not necessarily the same amount of money. And we shall, we'll let y'all talk about it. And that is, uh, basically determined by the Lake County tax clerk after reviewing our requests. They can see the next page of the site. It's a, it's basically these things are happening in parallel. You know, the district adapts the budget, approves the budget and starts a levy process. And at the same time, there's a touch of assessor that determines the value of the properties and, you know, applies the equalization factor if needed, mainly at Cook County. And then there's a border review. And, uh, you know, after that, uh, the review, the
030tax rate is calculated for each district or municipality, and then the tax bills are mailed. So that process is two year process. Uh, so we're a year behind, um, uh, for, for our tax dollars, because that is your, for your property value that is determined a year before when the tax bills are being allowed. Next slide, please. All right. Consumer price index urban. Uh, basically this is the key factor when, what it, what it determines our revenue increase from year over year. And what that is, is, um, it's based on the basket of goods that measures the change from, you know, December to December in our case, that is that percentage that actually determines the increase in our property taxes. There are, there's other CPI as well, CPIW, but this is the most popular one.
031As you can see, it covers 93% of the population. And then next slide, when I said measures, the change of pricing, the basket of goods, as you can see that these are the eight major groups of the consumer price index. Um, you know, and we look at the change month to month, but you know, actually what the, the percentage is from December to December, that's what determines an increase in our property taxes. That's what we could levy for. Next slide. All right. So there, there are, uh, laws in place. It's called property tax extension. Um, what, what it does is it was enacted in 1991. It limits the annual increase, uh, to 5% or less. Uh, as, as, as you can see, CPI is at 6.5% for last December. We cannot levy for 6.5% because
032of PITAL. Uh, so we're capped at, uh, 5%. And you know, we do get additional money based on new development, new construction, new property. Growth and taxation is something, uh, we have to annually do if we levy for 5% or over. So there's, uh, certain steps we have to do, publish in the newspaper, have a bold, uh, uh, hearing, public hearing. Uh, even when the, uh, CPI was less than 5%, the district was still being transparent and following the process where they published it in the newspaper, letting the taxpayers know, have a public hearing, given a chance for the public to make a public comment. Next slide. All right. How's the tax rate calculated? So what we, what we look at, we look at the total extension, the amount of money that we're going to
033receive divided by the total EAV, which is the equalized assessed valuation, which is really the one third value of your market value of your house to come up with, uh, the tax rate. So for example, $4 million in taxes in a district with $200 million, the EAV has a tax rate of 2% or $2 per a hundred dollars. Very exciting stuff, right kids? I like them. All right. So there's a separate tax rate calculation for each one. So each one has its own tax rate. Next slide. All right. Assumptions for 2023 tax levy, uh, district will receive a 5% increase over 2022. As I said, CPI was 6.5, but we're capped because of heat out. EAV is projected to go up by 9%. That is an estimate that is received from our County. That does
034not impact our revenues, impacts our tax rate, which I'll explain later. Our estimated EAV is about 4.8 billion, um, for our boundaries. Our new construction is about $18 million of EAV. So that is that additional amount that we can receive apart from that 5%. And just to note here that when the County gave us this estimate initially was 11 million and we actually just asked to provide us detail of the PIN numbers from our assessors. It turns out there was a mistake made about 7 million of new EAV was tagged as existing EAV. So we were able to get additional $7 million, which results about $150,000 more in revenues. That's good news. Ali, how does that compare to previous years? Previous years our average is about 25 million. You know, last year was in the
03520, but when they gave us an estimate of 11 million, I looked at the last 10 years, we were never at 11. That's what resulted in a question and turned out. So there was an error. Sorry, have we not found that? That would have been a permanent difference, right? Correct. Permanent. Even if you would have balloon levy, we have never gotten it because that EAV, the new construction was tagged as an existing EAV. Right. Estimated total tax rate based on the numbers that are given to us is about 2.41%. That includes our debt service, a levy of about $5.9 million, which is based on outstanding bots. Next slide. Limiting rate, how's that calculated? Limiting rate is our rate without the debt service rate. And we look at our aggregate extension, which is the amount of
036money we received. And then looking at what the CPI rate is divided by the EAV minus new property. So that's how we determine the limiting rate. And the next slide is just looking at different numbers of how everything is calculated. Just a couple of things I want to highlight is our projected limiting rate, which is about 2.3%. And the projected increase from prior year was just 5.4%. So as you can see that even though we're only allowed to levy at the PTEL, which is 5%, the additional 0.4% is coming from new construction, new property development. All right. So when can schools expect to receive the levy funds as the whole cycle, as you can see, December 2022, where the CPI was known in actually January, but it was from December to December, December 21 to
037December 22, measuring the change. And then October is when we file the levy or when we start the process with the December 22 CPI, in our case, because the 6.5 were capped at 5%. Board approves the levy in 2023. District starts receiving the property tax distribution in 2024, but we recognize that revenue in fiscal year 25. And as you can see for next slide is just a trend of, you know, the projected trend of the next year, this December of 2023 CPI, which will actually fund fiscal year 26. We'll know that in January of 24. But as you can see how it's changed at least in the last couple of three years. So it's projected at 3.4. It's right now it's projected at 3.4. Correct. Yes. Yes. All right. So next slide is just to
038show that even though we're actually levy for 5% this year, and we did levy for 5% last year, if you can just look at the 30-year history, we're still in the range of about 2.5%. So it's not a lot of revenues compared to what our average increases or CPI has been for the last 30 years, 2.5%. Because then if you just look at two years, oh my God, 5%, that's a big number. But if you just look at 30 years out, the average is about 2.5%. It was below that average for much of the last year. Correct. Exactly. Exactly. Next slide is just are showing a graph of our extension history and our cap funds. Everything that cap funds is all funds, not including the bonds and interest or debt service. Next slide is our
039EAB history of these are the property values. Are there, you know, history of actual property values and then the 9% increase, which is the projected 2023. Correct. Absolutely. That one third. Right. Absolutely. So next slide is, and this is what caused me to question the history of new property construction when we initially received an estimate of 11 million, unlike the last time we had 11 million dollars, at least in the last 10 years. So that's how we discovered that error by the township assessors. So it's always a good idea to check their numbers and develop a relationship, you know, because there could be errors. All right. Next slide is looking at tax rates. What are our history of tax rates is 2022, 2.5%. That was our actual tax rate, including the debt service. And then
040next slide is our comparison of what our tax rate is compared to other high school districts in Lake County. You know, if there are questions or concerns about, hey, you know, we have higher taxes in our, in our boundaries. But if you look at our tax rate compared to other school districts, we're actually, you know, very much in line, you know, if not one of the lowest ones. 23 is just to show that how the EAV impacts the tax rate. So if the EAV goes down, the tax rate goes up. But in our case, EAV is projected to go up by 9%. What will that, that'll do is that'll bring the tax rate down. 24 slide is just a visual, it's just numbers. It's, you know, just for example, what I explained earlier, the market
041value of the house, 600,000, one third of the assessment, 200,000, and the tax rate is 2.4%. So let's say that if nothing changes, but the market value goes down, then you will see that the tax rate is actually going up. The school district still receives the same amount of money in the CPI. But with the EAV going down, the tax rate will go up, or in our case, EAV going up, the tax rate will go down. Next slide is this levy represents a 5.93% requested increase over last year. Now I did, we are projecting at 5.4%, but we leave additional buffer in case if there are more properties gets added to the tax rolls by December, or if there are more errors. So it's always good to ask for more, doesn't mean we're going to
042get all of that. So our cap levy is at 109.6 and our expected extension is about $109 million in our operating funds. All right, next slide is just the impact on the taxpayer with the $600,000 house. One thing I'm happy to report is that the Lake County decided to increase the single homestead exemption from $6,000 to $8,000. So if EAV grows in proportion, the taxpayer of $600,000 will not see a 5% increase, it'll see a 3.7% increase. So that's good news if you do have, for the taxpayers with homestead exemptions. So this is just to show that $194 increase will be based on our levy, that's how much it'll go up their taxes on a $600,000 house over the course of 12 months. All right, so these are some of the tax exemptions and how
043people qualify. Obviously the most common one is the general homestead owner-occupant exemption. Next slide. So as I shared earlier, we levy in individual funds, so I just want to highlight the 5.93% levy. The bond and interest levy is actually going down by 0.6% and that's based on the bond issues. But in individual funds, we've decided to drop the transportation levy because we have to maintain certain fund balance in each fund and we've actually increased it in education fund, but it's a temporary increase because we actually, in the pandemic year, our special ed expenditures for transportation went down. So right now we don't believe we need that much money in transportation because we have enough fund balance to cover. So we're levy more in that fund. We're not, it's still, the state still looks at it
044the total pot, but again, we maintain certain fund balance ratios in there, but we'll come back to normal in a couple of years, maybe next year. All right, next slide is the bonds and interest levy is based on the obligations and district currently has six outstanding bonds. Five of them are going to be funded from the levy. One is the out revenue bonds, but the county assessor or the Lake County asked us that we need to include all of our issues, including out revenue bonds. This is six. Otherwise we'd be at five. Next slide is just the next steps presenting the levy right now at the board meeting. And then the board takes action to estimate that levy in November and then publishing the news and truth and taxation legal notice. And the adoption and
045the public hearing takes place on December 12th. Our deadline to file the levy is no later than last Tuesday in December. And I personally go to Lake County and deliver the 110 million dollar document. So I don't try to mail it in. And I bring them donuts. It's very good to develop a relationship with Lake County. All right, so just the next slide, it's just the definitions for people to review what they mean. And this is it. Thank you. Hope you're all ready for the quiz tomorrow. All right. I was going to say to the students, if I know you typically have to write like a summary, this presentation is actually in our board docs. So I saw some of you guys taking pictures and such, but you can go into the board docs and
046you can look at the presentation if you need to put together your summary. All right. So any questions, comments? Just thank you as always, Ellie, for a very thorough presentation. You're welcome. Next up for discussion is the Deerfield High School Baseball Donation Agreement. Who has this? This is me. Brian's here. I apologize ahead of time. I'm feeling a little under the weather, so I'm going to try to get through this as quickly as I can. You sound a lot under the weather. So this is a construction project to improve the drainage in the left field of the Deerfield Baseball Stadium. And so this is a majority of donor funded project. It's 81% donor funded, 8% DHS athletic funded, and 11% DHS baseball funded. And so we review this with the Facilities Committee meeting. And I
047guess I can answer any questions if there are any about this project. They currently have that Deerfield Athletics and the Baseball Fund currently has this amount in their budget to cover this 11% and 8%. I'm making a statement, not a question. I'm stating it. Okay. Any other discussion or questions? And this has been vetted by the Facilities Committee and it's recommended for action. Next up is the field turf. This is at both DHS and Highland Park, correct? Correct, yeah. So this is me again here. So yeah, this is the cost to replace the field turf at both schools. This was reviewed at the Facilities Committee meeting. We talked about, there's one alternate in here. It's for what we feel and what field turf feels is a safer product. It's a little bit more plush, a
048little bit softer. So we would recommend that to the Board on approving that alternate. And then once, assuming we go forward with this today, we'll review this proposal with our legal team. I know there's some disclaimers at the end about damages and such, but we'll review this with our lawyers to make sure we get those all clarified. And so I can answer any questions about field turf. So Brian, that you literally jumped on what I'm concerned about. I'm concerned about things where it says prices that do not include things like them damaging our parking lots, et cetera, and they're not responsible for. That kind of bothers me. I think that someone damages our facilities. They should be repairing them. The other thing is a couple of things that they said in here that doesn't include
049a vehicle to tow their equipment onto our, like, why are we providing them a vehicle to tow their equipment? So those kinds of things, if you look essentially, those last four ones are really concerns for me that just bothered me that they are making exclusions to that. And that to me seems like that should be part of the deal. On a second note, I'm pretty sure I probably have half a turf in my house over the year, having a goalkeeper son that we've emptied half a turf onto our mudroom floor over the year. So we can bring back some of that if you'd like. It might be a little better. I don't know the little black things anymore. But anyway, but like I said, those are just my only things. Some of their exclusions seem
050to be significant in the sense of why are we taking on liability or why are they not covering some of their things? I'll review that with the legal team. The towing, I'll have to take a second look at that. I thought that was for, like, our maintenance equipment. Our, you know, we groom the field and we already have a tractor. So we would, we already, I'll take a double. Yeah, just look at those last two. It just to me seems like a lot of exclusions of things that if they're doing the work, they're doing the work, not us. Okay. Thank you. And just question. This is the, where we are proposing to purchase is a state of the art field turf, you know, the safest that we can get these days. Yes, this, the alternate
051would include a plusher product that is softer that we feel is safer. So yes, I would say that your statement is accurate. Great. Because yeah, having soccer players, we're now going to be up to five knee surgeries in a month. So yeah, never be too safe. Got it. Any other discussion? Okay. Then we'll move along. Bring something hot. Oh, you have the next one too. Don't you? Construction manager approval for summer of 2024. Yep. So this is my last one. We're, we're just, I'm just asking for approval on the pre-construction. So the estimating, the pre-planning, the bed preparation and procurement, this is to get us through, to get to a bid. And so meaning that we can get, get the, you know, the architect has got the design and the construction manager will take over,
052get that bit on the street and publicly procure the documents and go through all that. And so it's, it's just asking for the top two items at this time. And this also was vetted by the facilities committee. Correct. Yes. Yep. Any discussion? Then we will move along. Brian, get some sleep and drink some hot tea. Thank you. And disconnect. Our next item for discussion is the fourth amendment to the guaranteed energy savings contract with performance services. Oh, it's really, yeah. First, performance services, Inc. for installation. I can sell our panels in an amount not to exceed $9,940,870. And this is Ali. Yes, I can talk. And then if they're facility related questions, then I can differ. And I'm sure the kids are excited about solar. That's for sure. Okay. All right. So this was discussed
053in the, the, the financing part was discussed in the finance committee. And then the facilities part was forced in the facilities committee. One thing that was a great question asked by Mr. Nader about the maintenance costs. I actually spoke to Grayslake school district. They've actually had panels for about six years. They have panels on the roof and they have panels on the ground, ground mount. And they said they haven't spent anything on so far for panels on the roof besides the inverters that they have to replace. But that's part of the warranty. We have a quality of warranty. There's more maintenance needed if you're a ground mount because of, you know, the past or the weeds you have to, you know, take care of. Oh, you know, during snow, what they encountered is obviously snow
054and getting on there. So basically they just send one of their custodians to just to blow the snow away. But for the six years, they said they haven't spent anything on maintenance on the roof, but that doesn't mean we're not going to have anything, but that was just good for me to find out. So it was a good question for you. And that's something I wanted to add. So happy to answer more questions. I mean, I think it's an exciting opportunity, right? We get to use newer energy solutions and it's fiscally beneficial to us as well. Right. And part of this, actually they have the PSI, they have something with curriculum. I'm not sure if they're still online because they do actually work with our kids. Can we notify our environmental club that keeps emailing
055us every year? Can we please notify those students? Once it's not approved yet, but once it gets approved, yes, please do. Because we did read those emails. Just because it's parallel to the approval of this, we're on pace with all the various five governmental filings for rebates and the like. Correct. So yeah, there's a lot of, it's very important for the approval to take place sooner than later because, you know, 5% additional rebates based on the work starting in 2023 and 30%, we're talking about $3 million rebate. And, you know, there's a lot of compliance and prevailing wages. That's why we actually initiated a contract with another company to help us and, you know, file the taxes. You know, it sounds pretty weird for our local government to file taxes, but they take the liability
056on filing the taxes for us. And that's how the Congress decided to structure it. Correct. So it's this one we should approve. It's not on the agenda for today, but we should approve it at our next meeting, even if it's something like a special meeting. It would be ideal. Yeah. Okay. Yes. Yes. Great. Any discussion of this item? Okay. Moving right along then we go, we are moving to public comments. 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 is not intended to be a back and forth discussion between the public and the board. Questions
057asked during public participation may be sent via email to be answered subsequent to the meeting. The sheet I have does not have anybody asking for public comments. Any public comment? Hearing none, we will move right along to our action items. First up is approval of search firm to conduct the search for superintendent and Highland Park High School principal. It is recommended that the Board of Education approve engaging school exec connect to conduct the search for district 113 superintendent and for the Highland Park High School principal. Is there a motion? So moved. Is there a second? Second. Is there any discussion? Actually we have Dr. O'Mara and Dr. Yanke here this evening to tell us a little bit about the process and hopefully encourage folks to get involved in the process. Thank you. Thank you. Thank
058you. I'm Kevin O'Mara. Just to be clear, this is Linda Yanke and we're pleased to visit with you again this evening. We had a chat last week and we shared some of the particulars that we think match up well with the needs of the community district 113. So we'll walk through this slideshow quickly. Next slide please. So just to give you a little history, we've been around for almost 20 years, was founded in Highland Park, Illinois believe it or not. We've done over 650 successful searches. We have 67 consultants that work with the firm across the United States. Hundreds of associates across the area here were Midwest focused. Every single search we've ever done has been done on time and within budget. Our success rate is 97%. That's the percentage of superintendents and other senior
059educational leadership people we've placed that are offered a second contract by their respective board of education and we have a strong list of references and quality school districts that we've shared with the board in our discussion last week. Next slide. I would actually suggest you go to the next slide. We've got three slides that talk about the process and I think this one might be the clearest that because we have the two searches and we know it's most important to choose the superintendent first because the new superintendent will be involved in the selection of the Highland Park High School principal as well. So the superintendent search process begins now. The position will be posted in a couple of days tomorrow and we've already begun recruiting and so that process will happen right away just following
060across the superintendent. Then we will become engaged in community engagement. We'll talk to teachers, parents, students, administrators, the school board and do focus groups, community forums and we'll have an online survey. We'll gather all of that information together and present a profile to you about the superintendent in November. Meanwhile these are kind of overlapping from now to January. We're developing the candidate pool for the superintendent and we expect then to present a slate to you to the board in January of about six semi-finalists that the board would then interview. We recommend cutting down to three and then the final interview process will take place. If you look at the line below, the principal, we do recommend advertising for the high school principal right away but we won't begin doing the interview process with the principal
061until near the end. We'll still do some community engagement. Recruiting of course will be ongoing in these next several months but near the end of January that the interviews for the principal would happen and we would have a slate to you in February or early March with the final selection going on then but then the new superintendent will help direct that final process for the interviews for the superintendent. The next slide is pretty much the same thing. If you like it in text instead of a diagram, there it is. You can look through that later but it's the same thing just kind of listed in a different way. So the next slide just talks about what we do in terms of advertising locally and nationally. We do find that Illinois is a very attractive state
062in terms of education nationwide right now. We do get applicants from out of state but we really find the majority of our applicants are from the Midwest area and many from Illinois. We engage the community. We aggressively recruit. We don't just wait for people to apply. We go out and look for people, encourage people that might not have been thinking about or might not have known about this position. This is a very attractive position. We will screen the candidates and conduct initial interviews, present a slate to the board. We can help you to whatever extent you want help in terms of setting up interviews, deciding on questions, and then in the final process when you have your final three, again we can help facilitate that as much as you want us to and we help
063with the reference checking which I think is almost the most important part of the process. The next slide. Do you want to do that? Sure. Why not? We have a set of guarantees that we offer for both searches. One is that if the board doesn't like the people that we present, we'll keep the search open for no additional fee until you are happy with your selection. That is true for the superintendent search as well as the principal search. If the principal or superintendent resigns within two years or is dismissed within two years or at least for any reason within two years, 24 months, we do that search again for free. No additional charges except for expenses. And the last one is that we will not recruit as a firm, we will not recruit either the
064principal or superintendent for the first two contracts of that person's stay here in district 113. Those guarantees are ironclad and we stand by them. Next. Next. So our fees here for the superintendent search is 21,500 for the principal search, 14,500. Combined, the expenses should be around $5,000. We'll talk about advertising with the board next week when we have our planning meeting. We'll go over every specific aspect of advertising and these will be board decisions. And then at the end of the search process, the two finalists, the one for the superintendent and the one for the principal, we would strongly recommend you do a thorough criminal tort, social media, certification, licensure and university background check. And each one of those is $800, but that's our strong recommendation. That decision doesn't need to be made right now,
065but that is something that we would strongly encourage the board to consider. Next slide. We have some frequently asked questions and these were actually questions that the board asked us when we presented to them last week and thought that it might be beneficial to address these for people who haven't heard this presentation before. The first question is about timeline. How does this timeline compare? It's a very good timeline to begin in the fall and choose the superintendent by the middle of the year to start advertising for the principal in the fall and choose by February or early March is a very competitive timeline. We talked about the fact that it used to be that all searches started in January or February with concluding in the late spring and districts had moved earlier in order to
066be more competitive. But I actually think this timing is good starting in September or August even can be so early that that superintendents and principals aren't looking yet. This is a time of year that they look for postings and expect to see some interesting openings. The candidate pool, do you want to talk about that? Sure. The candidate pool, we feel there's a shortage of teachers across the United States and there's a corresponding shortage of good leadership across the United States, educational leadership. However, our firm does some great recruiting. We just finished the search for Harvey School District. They're interviewing candidates tonight and tomorrow. We had 59 people apply for that superintendency. We have good numbers for the other searches we're doing right now. I rely on our team to get the word out and make
067sure that the profile that we develop matches the candidates that we recruit. We feel that the candidate pool for both superintendent and principal will be a strong pool. Will it be hundreds of people? Probably not. But all you really need is that one person for each one of those roles and we're dedicated to make sure that takes place. Not only dedicated but we guarantee it in writing. Each constituency in the district can contribute to this by participating in our community engagement. That's one of the most important processes is getting people to come to focus groups, answering the survey, helping us reach out to students, to teachers, to parents, as well as the entire staff and the board and administration to participate. That really gives us a depth of understanding of what you're looking for in
068the next superintendent. How are the profiles used? The profiles are developed by putting all that information together. When we do the focus groups or community forums, we take extensive notes and code them and put them together. You'll receive a report on the focus groups and on the survey results. They often almost always match very closely and they're very different from district to district. So it will be interesting to see how that comes out. Once you have identified the characteristics and skills that are important for the next superintendent and principal, how can we judge whether the candidate actually has those skills and attributes? We talked about the fact that the first thing is we in the first interviews use the profile. We don't start those interviews until the profile is done so that we can fashion
069questions that match the characteristics that you're looking for. We recommend that the board in their initial round of interviews does the same thing. You discuss the questions and think what is a good answer to this question? What is it that we're looking for and how can we tell that? But the other thing, of course, is reference checks. I said to the board last week the best predictor of future performance is past performance. And so really deeply checking into references and making sure that the characteristics that we are looking for really are present in their day-to-day work, not just in an interview. And that is basically it. Do you have anything else you want to add? No, that was a good summary there, Linda. Thank you very much. Next slide. Just our kind of contact information
070and email address and cell phone, please. Happy to take any questions. Anyone from the audience or anyone? Well, I don't know if that's legal. Anyone from the board would like to ask me? Ask us. Go right ahead. No, we already did. One, this is exciting given the experience and intel you have with us. My question is about when you're doing this work with different stakeholder groups and thinking about Spanish speaking families or do you have someone who will come in? We will do a survey. Well, we have many languages most commonly used as Spanish, so we will publish a survey in Spanish. And if there are other languages that you are concerned about, we can do that as well. We also, I think it would be very important here to have a couple of focus
071groups at least that we have a translator that can conduct it in Spanish. And really work with you on finding ways to help people feel comfortable in coming into that meeting and coming to the time and the place, planning that very carefully with you to make sure that people feel comfortable coming in. We want to make sure that all stakeholders' voices are heard, so we will design creative ways to make sure that takes place. And we shared some of the information with the board last week, but we want those voices to be heard. We'll make it work. And we on the board very much want to hear from the entire community. That's really in some ways one of our biggest priorities. Understood. So do you, and I know the salary is determined by the board,
072but do you advertise kind of a compensation rate? The reason I ask that is because if you have a really good superintendent who's really happy with this rate, unless they see the compensation rates, which might not motivate them to apply. Yeah, we don't give a number, but we usually use a phrase like regionally competitive. And then people understand what that means in this area and look, you know, of course so much information is available online. Right, everything's public facing. And we haven't had this planning meeting discussion with the board yet, but when we present the semi-finalists late, you'll have complete compensation information from all those candidates. So you'll know kind of where they're at now so that we don't waste their time and they're not wasting the board's time. How to get all voices in
073here, I think in our community has to be specific for Hamilton Park. It's really important to go into our community rather than ask them to come here. So that's something else. We did speak about using the Highwood Library or things like that. We can definitely help you with that. You know, the community, we do not. We want to make sure that you guide us in that process. We'll have that discussion with the board next week. They gave the example last week, I believe, of meetings, meeting some families on the back porch of someone's house in Urbana. That was fun. That was fun. But on the other hand, they did feed me. That was nice. I heard donuts several times. I'm wondering what's going on here anyway. Well, I appreciate the time you took last week
074as well as the other firm's time. And I am excited to move forward. I think obviously, Linda, with your experience with our district, extremely helpful. I think also the fact that your firm is actively engaged in a couple of superintendent searches in the area that are very similar to us is also very appealing. So we're excited to have you be a part of the team. Thank you. And we're looking forward to putting you to work. We want to be very aggressive in our search. And we think this is, I mean, we truly do believe this can be the best district in the state. Oh, yes. It has what it needs to do it. I think there's no question about that. And we're committed to help that process along. I hope you have a good evening,
075folks. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you so much. Of course. Now we will have a roll call. Aye. Ms. Newman? Aye. Ms. Berneter? Aye. Ms. Shapiro? Yes, please. Mr. Baraza? Present. Dr. Elliot Trimmer? Aye. Mr. Strzok? Aye. The motion carries. Great. My guess, please. So we get started next week with our planning. Next agenda item is the approval of a legal firm for property tax appeals. It is recommended that the Board of Education approve the law firm of Hodges, the Leasing, Ice, and Temporality, to be the legal representation on behalf of District High School District 113 property tax appeals. Is there a motion? So moved. Is there a second? Second. Is there any discussion? We discussed this at length last at our last board meeting. Is there no discussion? We'll have a roll call then.
076Ms. Newman? Aye. Mr. Nieder? Aye. Ms. Shapiro? Yes, please. Mr. Baraza? Dr. Elliot Trimmer? Aye. Mr. Heineman? Aye. Mr. Strzok? Aye. The motion carries. We now move on to our 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? Hearing no request, it is recommended that the consent agenda be approved as listed. Is there a motion? So moved. Is there a second? Second. And Anne will be providing a report on the bills. I received three different bills and the bills matched what we expected to find. So once again, fantastic. All copacetic. And thank you, Ali, for helping us on that review. Thank you. Is there any further discussion on the consent agenda?
077Hearing no further discussion, we will take a roll call. Mr. Nieder? Aye. Ms. Shapiro? Yes, please. Mr. Baraza? Dr. Elliot Trimmer? Aye. Mr. Heineman? Aye. Ms. Newman? Aye. Mr. Strzok? Aye. The motion carries. We are now moving on to our closing items. It is 813. Is there a motion to adjourn the meeting? So moved. Is there a second? Second. All those in favor? Yes, aye. Any opposed? Any abstentions? The motion carries. Everybody please have a great evening. Thank you.