Board of Education Meeting 8-8-2023

001Okay, I was like, ready, I spent a lot of time on the driveway, calling to order the secretary, Tom Krieger, assistant superintendent, human resources. Michael Ock, assistant superintendent, curriculum instruction assessment. Aaron Warner, chief communications officer. Tiffany Rowe, assistant superintendent for student services. Brian Armour, chief operations officer. Ali Mahanti, finance. Debbie Finn, principal Highland Park High School. Katherine Anderson, principal at Dearfield High School. Ron Casbaum, chief information officer. Mira Antti, assistant superintendent of diversity, equity and inclusion. First order 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. Is there any discussion? Hearing no discussion, all those in favor? Yes, please. Aye. Opposed? Abstentions. The motion carries. First, next item of business is the board reports. That's the president's

002report. It is hard to believe that at this time next week, approximately 3,400 teenagers will cause a disturbance in the force with the shared realization that they have school the next morning. I have every confidence that students will be welcomed into our schools by every staff member, from part-time custodians, teaching professionals, building leaders and administrators, with the common goal of fulfilling the mission of this district to cultivate the passion, unlock the potential, and to inspire the unique excellence of each and every student. As a board, we do our part by insisting that every decision that we make and every action that we approve affirmatively furthers this school district's mission to inspire, engage, and cultivate the unique needs and talents of each and every student. To this end, I want to mention several important items. First,

003as the school year approaches its start, the board and the district educators association have been diligently working on the party's first collective bargaining agreement and have reached tentative agreements on salary and benefits. The parties are continuing negotiations regarding committees, teacher evaluations, and special education working conditions. We will provide a full report on the agreement when it is finalized. The next negotiation is scheduled for Monday, August 28th. Until a final agreement is ratified, the 2019-2023 agreement with the DEA will remain in effect, including salary and fringe benefits. Non-affiliated employees will also continue to be paid and to receive fringe benefits under the terms of their employment from last year. It is typical that in years of teacher contract negotiations, corresponding pay adjustments are made across employee groups, and we expect that to be the case this

004year. Secondly, a reminder for all parents and guardians that school fees, e-books, supplies, course packets, activity tickets, yearbooks, and the like are now available to purchase on the parent portal on Infinite Campus. If anyone feels that they may need financial assistance, such as free and reduced books or meals, please visit the financial aid site on the school web pages. Finally, on this evening's agenda, we have several action items concerning school safety. We are excited to welcome to District 113's staff a new director of security. All of the professional guidance recommends that a school district have a director of security as a point person to concentrate on ongoing processes and continuous assessments and improvements in student safety. We also will be voting on the recommendations contained in District 113's school safety plan. The school safety plan

005and accompanying recommendations are the result of an intensive and ongoing process of investigation, consideration, discussion, and assessment of the available factual and technical information. The district safety plan endeavors to establish multiple layers of mitigation for the risks that schools face. District 113 is committed to continuing to learn from its experience and to evaluating the impact of its safety measures and will continue to enhance and tweak its safety operations. As the Board has reiterated numerous times, we are committed to getting school safety right, not doing it fast. There is no such thing as a perfect, flawless system. Safety does not exist in isolation. It is but one component of the complex system that is a high school. Fire safety, the emotional and social condition of students, the importance of having places for students to collaborate, to

006meet and to encounter each other, the environment for learning and creativity within the building, and the cultivation of respect for others in our diverse and pluralistic student body, all will continue to be priorities in the Board's discussions. The Board continues to be committed to acting based upon the best available information and for the greatest shared good. Despite any disagreements we may have, we owe it to our students to model working together in a calm and reasonable manner. And that ends the President's report for this evening. We'll go next to administration information reports. Bruce? Thank you, Mr. Chuck. As Dan said, we're about to start school a week from tomorrow and it is such a great time of year. Anyone who works in schools loves this time of year. Students coming back, they're such an excitement.

007I know we have reports for the principals on back to school, so not wanting to get in the way of that in any way, but very excited about the start of school this year. Just point of reference, since 2019, well, I'm not going to say that. What I was going to say, I'm just not going to say how excited we are to start this school year, unlike what we were dealing with in 2020-21 or 2022. Yeah, well, I'm not saying it. So I think we should be good. But we are very, very excited about the start of school. A couple of things under my report. We're going to say this a few times. I just want to say it here. I'll say it again, as I said, we're going to say it a few times.

008We're going to have a test of our emergency communications at 9.55 a.m. on Monday, August 14th. This is really important because it's our way of being able to communicate to people in the event of an emergency. And we need to test it because if people don't get it, we need to tell them, okay, here's what you need to do to get it. And if you want to receive these communications, it could be something as traditional as canceling school for snow or e-learning day or something along those lines. But it's important that we test the system. And it's also important that people know that we are using the information you give us. So if you think you're getting emergency communications and you don't, we need to help you figure that out so that you can receive

009those. But it's coming 9.55 a.m. Monday, August 14th. It'll we'll be saying this a few times. Another thing I want to mention, since we're at the start of school, there's this new law called Faith's law that went into effect on July 1. We worked to make sure everything was in place to comply with the laws of July 1. There's on our web page, there's a link to what's called the Transparency Portal. It is a very easy way to access a lot of information about District 113 from one place. I actually use it all the time. When I'm looking for something, it's usually the first place I go because almost always I can get to what I need quickly through that. And there are a lot of resources about Faith's law, a resource guide for parents,

010students, and educators. That is the Illinois State Board of Education created. That's on the Transparency Portal. It's really, really important. People take a look. I want to let the board know that we have a newsletter going to the community. It doesn't look like this, but this is how it prints. If you're, you know, we have 8.5 by 11 printing doesn't quite look like this. And as of 10 o'clock this morning, the printer told us it would drop at the post office either tomorrow or Thursday. This is the best way to communicate to every taxpayer in District 113. Not everyone's on our email list. The only way they hear about District 113 is if we're communicating directly to them. And so this is an opportunity to talk about the great schools we have and all the

011amazing accomplishments of our students and staff. So that should be coming soon. Last thing in the event that someone is wondering, as everyone knows, Twitter has now become X. I don't like it. And you know, there's usually a media file that we would download. You know, when you see at the bottom of an email, they got those symbols that have that little lowercase F for Facebook. And it used to be the little bird retreated for Twitter. We're still using the Twitter bird because we don't have that file yet that would allow us to put that X. I don't think they've created it yet. As soon as they do, we'll have it in case you're wondering. Also, in case you're wondering, Threads doesn't have an API we can download. So we're in the same situation with

012Threads, but we have claimed our names. So if that becomes a thing, then we're ready to put things out on social media on Threads. And that is it for me. Chris, can I just ask one question on the Monday's emergency testing system? That is just for our district families, employees, et cetera. That is not a community wide. What is that? Correct. Okay. I just wanted to make sure that the station between us do things. Well, one distinction I will make is if you have our mobile app and you have notifications downloaded, anyone who has the push notifications enabled would receive a push notification. So a community member who has our app would also be able to get those things if they chose to do. Right. Just to push. We're not going to text or email

013them. This is strictly for those people. We will test that as well. Yes. Thank you. Because that's the beginning of the year. We need to. Yes. Thank you for that clarification. No, it's more. And the next stop, beginning of the school year of 2023-24. Is that our principals? So there may be some duplication. So I just saved you maybe a minute or two. Okay. I'll start with saying that we actually had a great PD today. So shout out to my Glock for bringing that. We did a fierce conversations as a district and as Administrator Academy. And it was actually a great day. So thanks for that. We started back yesterday. AC and BAM came back together. It was a great day from my perspective. Much like Drew said, this has been a very different summer.

014It's been three years of really non-traditional tough summers. And so this is just a refreshing, great start. Spent a lot of time kind of bringing our team back together. Reestablishing our group, welcoming newest members. We also are bringing back again this year something we had last year in response to 4th of July called Giant Unite Evenings. Our first one was last week. That was specifically for 10th, 11th, and 12th graders. We combined a yearbook pickup with food, paletas, which is like a frozen Mexican popsicle, DJ. So kids came, they could sit down, sign back yearbooks, get to know our new activities director who is not shy and will definitely talk to every child that walks in the building. So that was great. Our second one is Thursday night only for our freshmen. So we're looking

015forward to hosting that. Staff and students are invited to those events. Link crew training starts for us tomorrow. So some of our upperclassmen who are terrific leaders who are going to take our freshman class under their arms and carry them through a great year. We will be doing that training tomorrow. I'm looking forward to that. Our administrative, as I said, our staff came back together. One of our focuses of AC and also what will be for our staff is kind of this idea of our big giant theme and our house on Vine and what everyone's role is and to make our house on Vine a place that everyone feels safe, included and belongs. So we're looking forward to that. The rest of AC this week, we are really going to work on preparing for our

016staff and students to come back next week. Next week, Monday, we will have an all staff meeting in the afternoon. We will celebrate milestones. We will reunite with colleagues. And it's usually a really nice way to start the year. The next day, our freshmen come only. They will start and link crews and then they will do a modified schedule so they get to meet all their teachers and, of course, end with ice cream. That's how we do that every year. And then the first three days of school, we have a special schedule. We will start Thursday and Friday. Excuse me. Wednesday and Thursday, we will start with homeroom. Again, in an approach, in an attempt to build community in our schools and help kids feel a place where they feel safe and a place, an

017adult or two, who they feel like they can really trust early in the building. And then on Friday, we will be holding an assembly for our students, again, to kind of bring out the themes of Bee Giant and Our House on Vine. So that's kind of our theme for the year. There's balloon arches. There is DJs during lunch. And there's an IG background photo opportunity. Does everyone know what that is? Because I did not, but now I do. So we're excited. A lot of enthusiasm at Highland Park right now. Oh, one last thing. All information can be found on the Highland Park High School website. I want to say that because I'm getting a lot of emails. I know things are on Facebook that may not be true. So please, please, please. You have to

018go to X. They're trying. They're trying. It's not always accurate. So please, I've said to a lot of parents today, please go to our website. Everything's there. There's a tab that says back to school. Everything is there. And if not, please reach out to a counselor. We will help you with that information. Sorry. That's fantastic. Thank you. Let's see here. Just in addition to administrative team coming back, we have our administrative assistants and our counselors who have come back. Because as especially the parents know, our schedules are released today. So our counselors have been busy with that. Now that they have their schedules, students can come to the building to walk their schedules. Our freshmen will have a special opportunity to do so on Monday. We have our Warrior Welcome, which is our freshman orientation.

019So we have students and parents come at night. We have separate sessions for students and parents. I talked to the parents. George Grubb talks about cones and how you drive to drop off your students. It's a big hit. Yes, exactly. Yes, yeah, he missed that during COVID. So this is like a joyous moment for him. Yeah, exactly. He's here somewhere. His ears are burning. And we also have our students who are meeting for the first time in their freshman advisories. So they're meeting their freshman advisory teacher. They're meeting their senior advisors. So it should be a great event. And we're changing things up a little bit this year. After those sessions, we're going to have a party with our parents and our students. Where student council is going to have a DJ and some treats.

020We'll have our parent organizations there. So hopefully it's an opportunity for everyone to connect with each other before the school year starts. And it should be a nice time. Can I ask a question? Is that only freshmen or is it freshmen and new families? It is just freshmen. We have a transfer orientation actually this Friday. Okay, thank you. And there are several. We also connect our transfer students with peers. So they have their kind of own version of Warrior Welcome that they attend at the school on Friday. As Debbie indicated, we have our staff arriving on Monday and our all staff meeting is on Tuesday. Like Debbie, we also have a special schedule for Deerfield where we will have actually all of our classes meeting on Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday. And just like last year,

021our theme really is community building, relationship building. We'll have a DJ. We have treats. So it will be hopefully just a really happy experience as our students come in. Like Debbie, we also have a theme. Our theme this year is Care Connect Community. Those are all intertwined and we're really hoping that the care piece is talking about how we care for ourselves. We care for others and we care for our school. And we care for our school by picking up after ourselves at the lunch table. We also care for our school by attending school on time. So there are some pieces that we are really hoping to emphasize. I think that have been some things that we have seen since COVID where we just need to provide our students with more of the tools and

022skills to make sure that they have a great experience at the school and that they can connect with others and build community. So they're really, again, intertwined and hopefully a good way for us to start the school year. I think we both want to give a really big shout out to our custodial staff and our maintenance crew who have been working tirelessly all throughout the summer and into these, you know, last few days before everybody enters a building. They have been dealing with a lot of construction that's been happening and we'll talk about that next. But they are, you know, when we have been able to be in the building, sometimes we have not been able to be in the building because of some construction that's happening, but they're always there. And I think it's

023important that we just recognize that there are people within our buildings who are not leaving, that they are there all summer and they really make our buildings run, literally. And we're so grateful for everything that they do every single day, but especially as we start the beginning of the school year. So we can jump into a construction update for both of the schools. I will start first for Deerfield. I'll start with probably the happiest thing for me. All of it's very important, but we do have a new auditorium that's being built, so we're very excited by the progress that is occurring for that. Anybody that has been in Deerfield High School before will notice a slight difference as they walk into the building. There is a new entrance to the auditorium, so it juts out

024a little bit into the hallway. So that will be a difference that students will see as they enter the building as well as staff. But luckily, some of the construction that we had in place over the summer, it's not going to impact the Circle Drive or anything at the front of the building. So they'll be able to do all that internal work. And that is scheduled to be completed around Halloween. So hopefully we will be able to start some performances in November. But until then, we will be using Highland Park High School's auditorium for some of our fall performances. We have had also an update to our fire alarm devices. We are 100% fire protection with new sprinklers that have been installed. We have eight air handling units that have been replaced. We also have

025boiler replacements. I mean, not as thrilling as auditorium, but they are making our buildings run. Over to you, Debbie. In the winter it is. Yes, 100%. It's really hard to follow an auditorium because my stuff is really much in the boiler category. But it's important. And thank you to Brian. And I'm really glad you mentioned maintenance and security because they have been keeping us running this summer and they're terrific. Our bus parking lot has been paved. It looks lovely and has been replaced. We have three air handling units. Two of the three air handlers have been installed. The last one is being installed this week. The science roofing and the science wing has been replaced. Our chillers this winter, the main building chillers will be replaced during the winter when cooling is not needed. So

026exciting stuff over by us too. Thank you. Thank you so much. It's exciting to see all the intention and thought that's going into the start of the school year. And it's wonderful. And it's great to be reminded of how it is a team effort. Everybody in the district contributes in their own way. I was remiss to mention a very important part of what is happening this week as well because I know I will hear if I don't say anything. I'm so sorry. It was like the first on my list. And we had athletics and marching band start this week. So during the summer, we'll have lots of different camps that are going on. But I feel like we're in full force now. To have students that we're seeing all throughout the day in and out

027of the building is one of the greatest things. So kudos to our directors and our coaches and all of our student athletes and our band members. We're very excited to have our campus buzzing again. Thanks. The high school is a village. Next up is our FOIA requests. Bruce? This is the list of FOIAs that have been received and processed since the last board meeting. Any questions? And moving right along then, we go on to our discussion item for the evening. The 2023-24 school year safety plan and recommendations. Thank you. And I assume you'll be kicking that off, Bruce? Yep. Yes. So before we get into this, just one thing I want to pause for a moment. It was so great to hear all the things are happening in school. And as Kathy said, once you

028get the band and athletics going, it really starts to feel like school. But I just want to pause and just make sure we know that so close to the start of school, a presentation like this should never be felt as normal or viewed as normal. It's just, it's very unfortunate that it is part of the reality we live in, that we have to have this conversation before school starts because it's part of the world we live in. But I didn't just want to just launch into it as if this presentation is just as normal as what the principals describe, what they're describing. That's normal school. This is something that I don't ever want, I don't think we should ever view as normal. It's unfortunately just necessary. So, okay, so with that in mind, presentation actually

029falls into two parts. It's what we're currently doing and then what we're also recommending for this school year. We're going to organize both those parts around the layers of mitigation and that we have in order to keep our students and staff safe from the risk of gun violence. So that's really what we're talking about. But gun violence is not the only risk we face. Ron, if you go to the next slide, please. So we thought it was worth locating all gun violence and all the risks that we're facing. Actually, not all the risks. This isn't meant to be a comprehensive list. What this is trying to show is there are a lot of risks that we have to manage in school. Gun violence is one of them. Severe weather, train derailments, natural disasters, all these

030things that we have to live with because we live in an imperfect world, we face a lot of risk. We've got plans in place to address each of those. But by the way, I think there's one missing. I heard on the news today that the natural disaster that causes more deaths in the U.S. than any other is heat. So we probably should have heat up there. But even though heat's not up there, it is the case. You know, we also have plans in place for that. But we're not talking about any of those risks. When we talk about a safety plan, I just want to make sure everyone knows that we face a variety of risks. We've got plans in place for all of them. In some cases, you know, we actually practice an event.

031There is a, we face one of these risks, like fire, for example, we practice this. But it's not the case that we, you know, practice for all of them. But these are the risks. All right, next slide, please, Ron. The one we are going to talk about tonight is gun violence. You know, it's interesting. I just mentioned the risk of fire. Our Lady of the Angels fire happened in 1958 in Humboldt Park. In that fire, 92 students and three nuns died. And it was shocking to the conscience, not just in Illinois, but in the United States. And as a result of that fire, there were changes that were demanded in school design and in fire safety codes. I heard recently that last year, I'm not tracked this down. So I'm not sure, you know, the

032number should be verified if that's important. But the point, I think, obtained, 600 fires in schools last year. It's not like it doesn't happen. It does. 600 fires in schools last year. Not one student or teacher died in any of those fires. So there's something to be said about having a standard that schools can go by when it comes to gun safety as a risk, gun violence as a risk, sorry. But we don't. So just keeping this in mind as we're going through this, if we were going to build a new school building, if we were going to build a new addition onto a school, it'd be very clear what designs we have to implement in order to ensure fire safety. It'd be very clear what the scope, what the codes are that we have

033to meet in order for that building to pass the inspection. We have clear standards to protect students and staff from fire. Next slide, please. But when it comes to the gun violence safety risk, there are no standards. So this is going to be part of the backdrop of this. So when we think about the risk of gun violence in schools, we think about this in three ways. First is the armed intruder. We all know examples of these. I don't know that we need to get into them so much. The other is the weapon outside of school parking lot in the front of the school. And we know this because there have been enough of these things that statistically we know that is where our greatest risk is. It's interesting that there was this amendment called

034the Dickey Amendment in 1996. And it actually prevented the federal government from studying gun violence. And it was not repealed until 2018. So now the federal government is now legally allowed to study gun violence. Other people do because they happen so much. So we know that a weapon outside of school, either in the parking lot or somewhere in front of the school, statistically, that's where we're facing risk. The third risk that we face is someone bringing a concealed weapon in school. So when it comes to this, the question becomes, what are we doing in order to protect students and staff from all of these risks? Next slide, please. We've got plenty of guidance. This is coming from the United States Secret Service National Threat Assessment Center. I'm not going to read all of these. These

035slides have a lot of words on them. Obviously not going to read them. Talk about a couple of points maybe on each slide. If the board members have questions or comments, please just interrupt right then. But if you're looking to compare what we're doing to what experts advise, this is one of the things that we do. And if you look at what experts are advising that we do, this is what we're seeing. And as we go through this, you'll see that we are, we do these things. Next slide, please. All right. So this slide, what we're trying to do in this slide is we are trying to show our layers of mitigation. And we work really hard on this image. We are really trying to make this image do a lot for us because it's

036really important to try to represent in some visual form what this is. It's really difficult. So I think we just, let's not ask this image to do too much. One of the things that we are trying to emphasize with this image though is culture and climate is in the middle. That is, as we'll go through this, it is the most important thing we do. That's why it's in the middle. Not the only thing we do, if it were sufficient to protect students and staff from gun violence, that's all we would do, but we know it's not sufficient. So we have layers. Preparedness is another layer. We want to talk about what we call access control. By that, we mean the people who are in the school are supposed to be in the school, and we

037have ways of ensuring that. And do we have all the adequate ways of ensuring that? And finally, crisis response. Just as we have this in place, if there were other safety risks we were facing, whether it's tornado or fire, we have crisis response plans in place in the event that we have this type of risk in our schools. A thing I want to mention before we go too much further into this, it's a common phrase in English. There are a couple of phrases in English actually that are interesting. One is we talk about risk management. That's a common phrase, not just when it comes to this, but in other things, other areas as well. I've never really heard anyone say risk elimination. That's not a thing. You have to try to manage the risk that

038you're facing, whether it's fire, tornadoes, whatever it is, threats from gun violence, you have to try to manage them. There is no way to assure that we can eliminate risk. It's not possible. We would love to do that. There is no school that can do that. I remember responding to a parent after the mass shooting in Highland Park and was trying to explain, we do everything we can. It's just not possible for us to guarantee safety from gun violence in schools. The parent was extremely upset with me. I'm thinking anyone who's making that promise is either delusional or lying, because it's just not possible. But what we do need to do is we need to be looking at all the risks that we're facing and assess whether the mitigations we have against those risks are

039adequate. So that is a fair statement. The other statement that's interesting is I keep having to resort to this phraseology, protecting students and staff from gun violence. When we say fire safety, everybody knows what that is. If we say gun safety, that means something different. Now, gun safety refers to the people who have guns and the way that they're handling them. When we say fire safety, we don't mean the people who are handling fire make sure they're doing it safely. We don't even have really a phrase for this in English. It's really interesting. But so we're going to resort to this phrase as we can't just say one thing like we say fire safety. But I think we're saying it just like this over and over because that is actually what we're trying to do.

040We are trying to protect students and staff from gun violence. Okay, so culture and climate. What are the experts saying? Next slide, please, Ron, sorry. Obviously, not going to read this. The thing that's interesting about it is in the Readiness and Emergency Management for Schools Technical Assistance Center, and they're referring to this document called The Guide for Developing High-Quality School Emergency Operations Plans. And they are defining school climate as this rain. Well, you can see how that was defined. It's really, if you're listening to what Debbie and Kathy were saying when they were talking about the start of school all the ways that they're trying to engage kids, make them feel connected, make them have the feeling that when they're at school that adults care about them and that they have students who care about

041them. All of that, when we hear that, we should say that's just normal school. I believe that's what I said at the beginning. But actually what they're also doing by promoting that culture and climate, they're promoting school safety. And this is why we're talking about this first. This is why this is the center of what we do. It is the most important thing that we do. Next slide, please. Typically, when we talk about climate and culture, we have pictures of students at games and activities. They're being kids, having a good time. And that is absolutely part of it. We need to talk about that as we go through this. But we also have pictures of graduation. Because for us who work in high schools, there is nothing more exciting than graduation. It represents the culmination

042of all the work that students have done, all the heart and soul that our teachers have poured into their craft in order to help students have the opportunity to pursue what they want to do in life once they leave us. And that's why we have these graduation photos on here. Because as we go through this, I want to make sure that people understand that graduation is not just the greatest event of the school year. Anyone who's attended it knows. It's just wonderful. It's also all the work that takes to get us there. That's also part of the culture and climate. Because for students to be successful in school in order to get to graduation, that effort, that work, that is culture and climate. And it's contributing to school safety. So next slide, please, Ron. This

043is just a list. If there are questions about this, we can obviously dive in as deep as the board wants to. Really, a lot of discussion around the recommendations. But there may be a couple things here that are surprising. MTSS, the Multi-Tier System of Supports. This is something we put into place during the pandemic. Basically, what that does, it identifies the students who need something more than what we're just doing in every classroom. And it endeavors to give those things to those students so that they are successful in the school. Academically, that makes sense. That sounds like that's in our wheelhouse. That's what schools do. But it also contributes to safety of students and staff. Because students who are successful in school, who are able to get out of school what they want, who are

044able to use their experiences and what they're learning in order to further their lives and go on, anyone who says that success in school has nothing to do with school safety just doesn't understand school, it's as simple as that. That's why we have MTSS up there. Now, there are other things up there that are probably a little bit more expected. Support groups drop in, wellness centers. A few months ago, we had students from Deerfield High School who raised money in order to have a wellness center at Deerfield High School. There are things that we do right now for students for culture and climate. You heard not only Debbie and Kathy say it, but things that we're doing. And this is something that we've been working on for years. There are a lot of things that

045the board has supported when it comes to building culture and climate. It is, I think according to what everyone says who writes about school security, the most important thing. And in our experience, we would agree with that. It is the most important thing that we do. We have assessments to make sure that, or to try to assess out if there is something that we need to be aware of, either individual student, groups of students. So it's not just trying to make people feel good. It's also trying to understand where they are in their experience of school. And as I said, very importantly, making them successful in school. Okay, next slide, please. Talk about preparedness. Just some, here are some documents. There's a, you know, we will post this slide deck for people to see. We've

046got a list of resources. These are some of the documents that we have access to and that we use. Next slide, please. School safety, protecting students from, and staff from gun violence is something that we work really hard to get good at. We have help. We have people who are experts and who made a career out of this. And here's just some of the groups that we have worked with in the past or are currently working with. This, the first one though, this Department of Homeland Security walked through DHS's Department of Homeland Security in this context, not one of our schools. Last week, happy to report to the board that Department of Homeland Security will send someone to do a walkthrough of your school and to see what you're doing and ask questions. They've got

047a set of questions they work through and they will give you feedback on how you are doing in your current state of preparedness. Obviously, you know, there's something, there are a lot of things we're probably not going to talk about in open session because of the nature of what we're talking about. But I can say that all the things they had on their checklist, we were either already doing or we were in the process of recommending and then they'll be coming in front of the board tonight, which I think is a very strong statement of all the work that the schools have done. At this point, led by Brian, we're about to have someone else leading that work after tonight. But this is an example of our interaction with people who are experts as we're

048trying to ensure that what we're doing is making students and staff safe from gun violence. So thank, just take a moment. Thank Ann Newman, Facilities Committee Chair who attended this walkthrough. Brian was there, Ron was there and Debbie. We had time for one school and because we've got the standard care in both buildings, we're very confident that Deerfield High School also has the same standard care. Anyway, so these are the groups that we're connected to and we're working with. Next slide, please. All right, this is the National Threat Assessment Center show and this is, call your attention to, in 82% of the plots studied, someone speaking up when they found out about concerning communications led to the detection and prevention of a plot to carry out a school attack. The question over and over again

049is what are we doing and could that be improved or enhanced? So next slide, please. Again, this is a list of all of more preparedness. We have a tip line. That's something that's extremely important. Someone, people can submit anonymous tips. We have social media monitoring. We're talking about public facing pages. Obviously, we don't have the ability to see pages that are private. Where is some online behavior reporting? This is another way of getting information. This comes from the state of Illinois. You can see all of these things that we're doing. One thing, the fourth bullet, this is going to be actually new this year. It's been done. We're just in the process of rolling it out. We've worked with our elementary districts to develop a common language to describe emergency situations. Whenever there's one of

050these situations in a school, we see it. Not just one of our schools, one of our elementary schools, like other high schools. We see what they put out when they're saying, oh, here's the situation this is happening. And I got to tell you, there are a lot of times I see what they're trying to describe and I have no idea what the heck it means. Well, what does that mean? It doesn't matter if I understand it. What matters is do parents understand it? Do students understand it? Do staff understand it? So we've worked really hard to come up with a common language that we'll use in all four of our districts, 106, 109, 112, 113, to describe these emergency situations. This was a year-long process led by Brian and that's also part of our preparedness.

051We have, also want to call attention to, we have a very robust camera system that has AI technology on it. It's an enhancement to what a camera can do, also part of our preparedness. But I know there are lots of lists of things. If people have questions, if not, we'll just keep moving. Next slide, please. All right. So we have an emergency communication system. So we're having a test. Now, this was going to staff, as I mentioned, or I didn't say staff, had that on the brain, but I already had to clarify that for me. Coming this Monday, we'll have another one calling out to parents. It's using the information that people have given us and this is why we test it. People think it's easier to mistype your cell phone number, who knows what's

052happened, or maybe your carrier is blocking these messages. So we send this out and if people aren't getting the message we're sending, we need to figure out why in event that they can get them. We have an app, Threaded Assessment Training, Active Thread Drills. Here's where we're showing all the things that we're doing in terms of training, right? So there's a lot of effort in that. Now, one thing that's new, it's not a recommendation because we've already done it, we have more PA speakers. What do PA speakers have to do with safety? Well, if you're in a school and something's happening, we need to be able to communicate, not just to students who are in classrooms, but we think about it. You've been in a cafeteria, in a high school, it's loud. You've been in

053the hallways, it's loud. Gyms, all of these spaces have students and staff. We have to be able to communicate to people when we need to. We've added new PA speakers. Last thing is this continuous review and evaluation of new and developing technology. This is an ongoing thing. That's part of our preparedness. We do not say, okay, we've got this, we're good. We never say that. We've got this and at least according to the Department of Homeland Security, we're doing well. But we don't stop. We continuously review what's out there and what can support what we're doing and make us even safer. Okay, next slide, please. Oh, yes, yes. I have a question. Monday? So when do you think there will also be information about what to do? Yes, so Monday when we have all staff

054back for the first time, there'll be QR codes that staff can scan that will allow them to provide the, or tell them what to do in order to give us the proper information. It's a little more, you know, when we are trying to test with the parents, I mean, when you think about it, how do you test? That was my question. How do you let people know they're not getting a text? Right, you know, if we send people a text and let them know we're testing whether they receive a text, it doesn't, right? So this is one of the things that we announced at open house. Our open houses are very well attended. I was amazed when I came here. When our kids were little, we went to elementary open house, and oh my goodness,

055it was so crowded. Highland Park High School in Deerfield, parents come to open house because they care about schools, they care about their kids. So this is an opportunity for us to say to parents, here's this test that's coming, but there's no perfect way to let people know. But here's how we do know. When we send a message, someone doesn't get it, then we hear. And then we can track it down. Most of the time it's because they've unsubscribed and they said, we don't want to hear from you anymore. And then when there's something that goes out, they don't get it. We can tell them, okay, if you want to hear from us, you have to add yourself back. The FCC does not allow us just to, you know, create these mass distribution lists. They're

056big fines. Can we operationally at open house have those QR codes on our doors so parents can literally take that QR code on our doors if they hear this one on so they don't have to them as a parent? Remember that I didn't get the text. Remember to go on thing where if I'm leaving open house, there's a QR code. Yes, I need this. Can we do that? We also cross-communicate with other platforms like the principal newsletters, for example, are very well. The stats on those are they're opened and read. So just to try and hit multiple places so people are aware that it went out and what to do. Yeah, right. So they may have an issue with their phone getting a text, but their email is working. So yeah, but that's right. We

057try to, as many ways as possible, make sure that the information that people have given us is right and it's going to work if we need it. Okay, this slide really is a, I don't know, I kind of think of this as a public service announcement because it's really important. I think every time that I've been associated with something that felt like this is either a true risk or could become one, it was because a student came forward and said, I heard this, I saw this. What happened on April 4th, the tip we received, the anonymous tip, that helped because we were able to alert the police and the police were there, but we really couldn't take action on because, I mean, if you say we think there's someone in the school with a gun,

058well, that narrows it down. That didn't help us in trying to resolve the situation. What did resolve the situation is when students came forward and said, I saw this. And then we were able to spring into action and resolve the situation. So it is extremely important. And we say this all the time and we have to say it again that if students see something, hear something that makes them nervous, they got to let someone know, let a trusted adult know. They can submit a tip on the phone. We've got an email, online phone. We've got a mobile app. There are all kinds of ways. Sunday night, my wife and I were making dinner and on my watch, I saw that we got a tip. And not just me, but people get it. Principals get it.

059Taryn gets it. Brian, I mean, there are a lot of people when someone submits a tip, we're looking at it. Now, in this case, it was not an emergency, wasn't any kind of risk. But on Sunday night, this happened. And so we've got a lot of ways for people to let us know if they're concerned about something. And if it's at 3 a.m., we'll see it when we get up. We're obviously not monitoring this all night long. But 7 o'clock p.m. on Sunday, oh yeah, a lot of people saw that. And if it was something that needed a response, we would be able to respond. So question on this one. So this is a mechanism, if I'm understanding correctly, for students, are there mechanisms for staff, for parents, et cetera? Is that covered as well?

060Yeah, anyone can submit a tip through the tip line. It's part of what we're doing connected to this, the ability for students to say something, ensuring or helping find ways to make sure that all students are comfortable, have an avenue for that, feel comfortable speaking up, because in some cases they may not. Yeah, so there are times we get tips that are not specific enough for us to follow up in the way we would like. And so I think there's this comfort level. There are other times that we get tips that do have enough specificity that we can follow up. It was a decision that we made to say someone can submit an anonymous tip because we thought it might be more important to have the information, even if we don't know who sent it,

061than for someone to say, all right, well, I guess I can submit it as Fred Blinstone or whatever. And you know what I mean? So we want to make sure it's as easy as possible. But this is one of the things that I have a lot of confidence in because I've seen it happen so many times. Even though we can't see private social media pages, students are on them. And students have, in my experience, have been really, really good at letting us know. In part, I think because since they've been in school, this has been part of their world. And they have come up with active shooter drills and all these other drills. And they know the importance of saying something if they see or hear something. But to your point, we always have to

062make sure that we're encouraging students to go to a trusted adult. This is also an extremely important point, by the way, Greg, that you make. When, on April 4th, when the students were recording what they saw, they went to a dean. Because I remember when I first started teaching, the dean stood up and said, I'm the last person you want to see. You don't want to see me. And I thought, what an idiot. Our deans are not like that at all. Our deans make relationships with kids. Our deans are in the hallway. They know kids. They know their friend group. And it was such that the students felt comfortable going to the dean to say, this is what I've seen. When Debbie and Kathy are talking about all the activities they do to try to

063form these relationships with students, students are going to be more successful academically, for sure, if they're connected to adults. But when it really matters, having that connection with an adult is everything. And we understand that. We work really, really hard to develop those relationships. And that two things. Do we share the person if law enforcement or someone else does not need to know? Do we readily share the person who submits the tip? Or do we wait until it is requested by others? Assuming we know who the name of the person is. A student submits a tip. We know the name of the student. And they don't submit it after they speak to our school. And we do what we need to do. So of course, the answer is it depends. If there is something. We

064don't openly provide it. No. That was my question. It has to be requested. We don't. Well, or something that we need to report to law enforcement. Right. And even then, there are rules about how law enforcement engages with students. And obviously, schools work in kind of a different space than law enforcement. So it becomes a situation that has to be very, very well managed because students have rights. Parents have rights. But if law enforcement needs to be involved, then law enforcement is involved to the extent they need to be. There are times in law enforcement when they're in a building, they're running it. They're running it. They are in control. But there are other times when law enforcement has to be there because there's a situation that requires them. And then the other thing I

065thought was a really good point that you said. Unfortunately, our students have never gone to school when this wasn't a part of their lives. And there was a very interesting thing that came out after the January 6th insurrection that the people who were telling most of our older senators, congressmen, et cetera, what to do were the young people in the room. Because they grew up their whole lives with this. They were the ones that said, I mean, you silence your phone, you bear it. And I think that as sad as that is, it is, I think for us who didn't grow up, it's much more disturbing than it is for them. I think it's no different than, which I laughed looking back now, that I was supposed to go under a desk to block, to

066save me from a tornado. But I think for them, it's the same. It is just a part of, unfortunately, their lives. Yeah. And we don't have tests for it. And one of our risks we didn't say was a nuclear war. But this was before my time. But they used to tell the kids to get under the desk, which is like, get under this piece of kindling. In the event there's a fire from the thermonuclear blast. Go ahead, Dan. Why is it important for a student, let's say it's 12 o'clock at night or that 3 o'clock in the morning, why is it important for them to make sure they submit that then because no one's going to read it. Like, I might as well just wait till the morning. Why is it important that when they

067are made aware of something that they submit it right away or communicate it right away? Because I don't know what time other people get up, but it's pretty early. And the earlier we see the information, the more time we have to respond to it. Right. And so it was a loaded question. No, I understand that. But I appreciate it because if they say, well, you know, let's see, you know, they're old, so they get up early, so we can send it at 6. No, just send it. Yeah. So we have as much time as possible. And you know, this has actually happened. There have been times we've gotten information that we needed to be able to respond to. And we didn't have as much time as possible was important. For example, if we need law

068enforcement to go to someone's house before the student leaves to come to school, let's just put it out there. We need time for that. If that information comes to us in five minutes where school starts, we have a different situation. One thing I wanted to mention about this is that the improving school safety, right? This is where this comes from. We're just now making this up. There are a lot. This is part of schools being prepared. And we've got all these tools in place. I think it's worth tying this slide to the data and the research that actually earlier in the presentation, when you had the analysis recommendations from the Secret Service National Threat Assessment Center, they found that when they use averted school attacks, 82% of the time, the reason it's averted is because

069of this. That's right. This is the number one barrier to a threat happening, at least according to the Secret Service's research. It's also the same thing, that it's the number one way to stop is students because they feel as if they have a home in their building and they have people they can talk to, adults they can talk to. Next slide, please. I know this is a lot, but there's a lot behind the work we do. Threat assessment, this is an extremely important part of our work, as the Secret Service says, as critical to students, our assessments be multidisciplinary, focused on providing robust intervention students assessed as posing any level of risk to themselves or others. So this is what we are advised to do. So next slide, please. Yes, okay. Sorry. All right. Can't

070even see this. So this is the slide is talking exhibiting the attackers who are considered exhibiting concerning behaviors. And so when we're talking about threat assessment, what we are looking at as these concerning behaviors, principals can speak much more in detail about the assessment. We do these things a lot. It's not just students who might injure others, it's students who could injure themselves. There are a lot of indicators that we have that we would say this is a concerning behavior and it results in a threat assessment. But that last sentence, 80% of the cases, the attacker's behavior elicited concern from bystanders. Now, it's easy when something happens for someone to go back and say, oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, I saw that. Okay. It's very different, though, to be able to observe specific behaviors that could

071result in a threat assessment. And there are times when students give us information, teachers give us information that result in threat assessments. Next slide. Oh, actually, just one comment on this, again, trying to connect the dots. The best way to do threat assess, I mean, the best way to gather the information for threat assessment strikes me is actually everything you identified in school culture and climate, that a good culture and climate is one that's paying attention to, is one in which students are encouraged to show what they're feeling and to have people and the staff who pay attention to it and are able to act upon it if there's an issue. I mean, that's what that seems to be saying, that, you know, pay attention to what kids are doing. Yeah. Next slide, please. In

072a previous slide, we talked about the threat assessment teams be multidisciplinary. This is examples of the team members we have on our threat assessment teams. Notice that we have a director of security on there. This is a new position, but there are a wide range of people who could be involved in conducting a threat assessment. Staff members are usually in a threat assessment or involved in a threat assessment. I know these are all the possible roles. It's this. It's this whole list. Okay. It depends on, usually it's a specific student. So we're, you know, we're notifying the people that are a part of this group. And it, as it's indicated, the student's counselor, depending upon if they have an IEP, there might be a case manager and then identifying who is available at the time.

073If they are, if they do have a psychologist or a social worker they meet with, or we might be pulling somebody who is just available. So the school nurse typically isn't there, but it just depends on the situation. 504 coordinator rarely is there. But again, that's if we need additional information. So that is an all-encompassing list. So all with their individual lenses that are, you know, helping to assess how we can best support the students. The only addition I might give if there's a particular teacher or coach or sponsor that has, again, information, you might insure them as well. Okay. Question on timing. How quickly or how long does it take for a threat assessment? Like just to get a general idea, obviously every situation is different, but is this something that we're talking minutes,

074hours, days, weeks? Like what will that threat assessment look like? And I know it depends, but just the timing question. So it's a both and. So if there is a, you know, if there's information that we have, it's immediate. We're immediately with an information calling our threat assessment team together. And there will be an immediacy of having the student come in. There is typically an interview with a student, with a psychologist, social worker. We go through a process in this assessment. And then usually after that, it's, you know, communication with a family. And then there might be follow-up after that, but a part of the threat assessment process is that we continue to follow up. So we're, we're having frequent check-ins about the progress of that student and depending upon, you know, what comes out

075of that, that threat assessment process itself. So it really just depends on the situation, but it's not just a one and done. It's something that we're continuously following up on. Next slide, please. Okay. So access control. This is another layer of mitigation, you know, we want school to feel like a place where students are cared for, that this is a place where they can pursue what they want to do in life, explore different things that they might want to do and really prepare to graduate and go on and pursue those things. But we have other layers and access control is extremely important. As I said, at the outset, access control basically means that people who are in the school are supposed to be in the school. The people who are not in the school are

076unable to get into the school. So, you know, there's, there's some things here that we were doing now last year, the student check-in procedure. That was new. That was something we added after an incident that we realized, wait a minute, we need to know what door the student came in because we couldn't, we couldn't, you know, we had a hard time finding a student. We implemented this, this served us very well on April 4th because when we, once we knew who the student was, we were able to figure out very quickly what door that student came in. We're able then to use our cameras to figure out where was that student, whom did that student talk to, did that student give the student anything? And that's one of the reasons it took so long, by

077the way, because we needed to make sure that there was nothing passed off to anyone else. We were not going to let those students out of those classrooms until we knew that the student in question had not given anything to anyone. We knew that because we were able to figure out what door the student came in as a result of this check-in procedure. We have other things as well. I just, you know, this last thing we also added last year, very important. Well, we'll need to talk about that when we get the recommendations as well. A door that's popped open for longer than three minutes, Brian, is it two? 60 seconds. A door that's popped open for 60 seconds, an alert pops up on Brian's computer and alerts pop up on other people. And we're

078sending people the door to figure out what's going on. Why is this door propped open? Now you've heard of incidents in which doors have been propped open and someone has gained access to the school who was not supposed to have that access. This is an example of access control. It's part of what we do. We think it's extremely important because schools have lots of doors now. Schools have lots of doors because if there were a fire, you would not want 1,800 students and, I don't know, a couple hundred, 300 staff trying to get one door, right? So schools always have lots of doors. We've got some doors that are monitored by our great security staff, but not every door is monitored. So this is important. The doors propped open after 60 seconds. We will know.

079Can I ask a question? Something I didn't ask before and I just thought about it. How quickly, for lack of a better term, can we deactivate an ID for someone being able to get in the building? So we either have a staff that we've chosen to not have them be in our building the next day or a student or, you know, anyone, how quickly can we make sure that they no longer have access and how quickly do the people who are working those doors know that person shouldn't be here? So very quickly. I don't have a time to tell you, but you know, because as they scan in, it's a different color. You're getting an alarm message. So you wouldn't, if there was someone who was on a watch right now, you would know immediately

080because they wouldn't be able to scan in. It would be a nerve. But if that person decided to walk into another door, how quickly does the staff, et cetera, know of a student or a staff member who is no longer welcome in our building? How do we notify them and how does that? So I have your account pulled up. I can deactivate your card right now. Okay, cool. I just pulled it up. Um, but I mean, it's assuming, I think it's, I don't know if it's to you or to our Ron in the sky. How quickly do we, if our security managers are the ones who do the ideas. So if I have a student, no, but I'm saying not an ID. Okay. Because we have other doors that as we know at times sometimes

081could be utilized. So if someone props open the door and they let someone in, which we hope they would not, but it's someone they recognize and say, Oh, it's my science teacher who's no longer a science teacher in our building. How quickly do the other people in our building know if something occurred, let's say at six o'clock at night that a student or staff is no longer allowed in our building. Do we notify our full staff that that person is no longer allowed in our buildings? That's my question. And if we don't, because nobody should be allowing anybody into the building. I think that's the biggest piece is that one coming into a building that we, one of them are scanning their IDs so that they can, they can, you know, they can get through

082the building through the doors. They scan their ID. And so if a student was to be put on that list, now there is a piece of security where if there is a certain person who shouldn't be coming into the building that our security is notified of who that person is. And they know, you know, especially like a staff member, for example, that they aren't supposed to be in. So all of our security members know we haven't been in a situation necessarily where it's kind of, I guess, to that level in which we would be notifying all staff. But I could imagine that in that case, given, you know, communication with, with Brian and Dr. Law and with our, you know, even if it's law enforcement that we would certainly be communicating with those individuals who

083need to know. Yeah. So let's back up and talk about a situation. So when Anne was asking, you know, students let us know we're concerned, we have this concern. If, if that concern tells us that there is a student we want to talk to before they enter the general school population, I, you know, when Ron heard this, he sent me a text and he said 10 seconds. Okay. Thanks, Ron. So, which is really important because that, that 10 seconds, which means when, when, when a student scans in, then the light goes red and we know we need to have a, we need to have a conversation before you just go into the general school population. Thank you. There are also legal limitations on some of this too. I mean, I, I, nor do I pretend

084to. Yeah. I mean, there's, there's facial recognition software that could be purchased that, you know, could recognize some, you know, do a biometric scan and recognize somebody instantaneously, but there are rules about consents to that kind of thing. My thing was essentially what Ron had answered was, you know, how quickly if someone is no longer invited to our party. Which is, which is a capability we have as of this year, which is, as I said, already this year is sorry. I'm sorry. Yes. Last school year, which is yes. Already we're in this. Yeah. Sorry. All right. Next, next slide, please. All right. So this is, this is the last layer in, you know, not only in the presentation, but also, I guess, conceptually there are, there are times that we do need to have a

085crisis response. And so we, we put things, you know, up here, these are the things that, that we have, we have, we have, you know, great cooperation with our local law enforcement. There's, there are multiple agencies we have, we work with all the things that we do mention again, this camera system with, with AI technology without going into details. This is, this allows us to see things outside the school as well as inside the school that would alert us to something that's happening. Very, very important. And as this technology continues to improve, I'm expecting this to become more and more a part of what we do. We've got other things that are on this list. We've learned after the last incident we have, for example, we've got law enforcement coming and we have to be

086able to give them floor plan, floor plans. So there are things that are, that we've developed every time we have an incident, we debrief it, we learn from it and we make improvements as, as we need, as, as we can, as we need to. All right. Next slide. All right. So obviously once we post the slide deck, people will be able to see this. All right. Let's get to the safety recommendations and this, these are the, the, really the discussions that we're looking forward to. So next, next slide, please. All right. So the very next item, I believe on the agenda is an action item that allows the board to take action on any or all of these. These are the recommendations we're making for this school year, broken them down by the layers of

087mitigation that we've been talking about under culture and climate. There are a couple, the support of clubs for students and no club or sport. We spend three and a half million dollars on stipends for students in clubs and athletics. It is a significant amount of money in our budget and it is worth every dollar that we spend because we know that this is one of the ways that we can connect students to school and to adults and to hold them close so that they are engaged in what we're doing and feel like they're part of a school community. Going back to safety, climate and culture is part of safety. However, and we talked about this with the mayor led this conversation with the board's diversity, equity, inclusion committee, there are students who are in no

088club or sport, even though we have hundreds of these things. There are so many clubs, so many sports students can connect with, but there are students who are not in any of those. What if there were a staff member who was able to find those students and connect them to a club? What we're saying by this recommendation is we want to have extra expense, we're willing to incur extra expense in order to pay stipends to those staff members who are able to engage those students. We think it is important. We're not taking away a stipend in order to pay one, but we are saying that it's important enough that there's a staff member and actually there is a teacher who's figured this out and we're going to work it out to engage students who have

089not been involved in any club or sport. The next is Debbie and Kathy are both talking about the importance of fostering student-to-student relationships and student-to-staff relationships, exploring a curriculum that could be used in homeroom. That would do that. Of course, there are costs associated with all these. And one of the things I want to mention about starting with this one is if there's anything that we're doing that's going to impact staff, we will be working with them to figure this out. It has to be the case that the people who are going to be affected by something like a curriculum or whatever it is we're doing that affects them, that they're involved in these conversations and that we're working with them in order to figure out the best way to do this. We want to

090get this right, and the best way to do that is to be working with staff who are affected. So even though this is a recommendation, I want to make it really clear, and there will be a few of these where we're saying this is one that we actually have to talk to staff about to figure out how to implement this in order to get it right. And this first one, the clubs for students who aren't in a club or a sport was a big part of the DEI committee, like you mentioned, in looking at that sense of belonging and a cultural belonging and what we need to do so that each of our students based off the data that we have, because we do collect quite a bit of data and input from our students,

091from our staff, making sure that every student, each and every single student has that adult that they can go to. Because if it's not 100%, we need to work towards 100% so that every single one of our students feels like when they walk into our school, there is an adult that is there for them. That's right. And there's no way to predict what that might be. I remember years ago, I attended one of those breakfasts for National Merit Scholars. All these kids are smarter than I'll ever hope to be. And each student sit up and said, here's someone who's been important to me. Of all of those I've heard, most of the time kids bring AP teachers, but there was one student I will never forget stood up and said, my bass fishing coach was

092the most important person. I mean, I'm thinking, my good God. I mean, I don't get fishing at all anyway. But here's someone who is ridiculously smart, but it was bass fishing that connected the student most to school. So we never know what it's going to be. We've got to be really creative in finding out what students want to be part of and engaging them. But what this says is if that happens, we are willing to say we're going to put extra money toward those stipends in order to make sure that the teachers who have found the students who've not been engaged are able to get a stipend for that. As of this year, both schools do have fishing clubs. Excellent. I mean, because one of the founders... One of the founders brings to my house.

093Oh, okay. Well, for people who fish, it might make perfect sense. I was just so surprised that all of these really smart kids is bass fishing. All right. So camera room security operations, that's there because it's part of preparedness and it's in order. I actually want to come... I'll circle back to that when we get to access control. But security film on exterior glass. This is first floor glass. We're recommending that we put a security film on the windows. Now, this is not bulletproof glass. That's a different thing. But what a security film would do is if someone were... This is part when we talked about the three threats that we're facing. If someone is wanting to be an armed intruder, we saw this in Nashville, they shot their way in. We've seen this before.

094By putting the security film on exterior glass, depending on the weapon used, the bullets will go through depending, again, I guess on the gun. I don't really think about guns either. Someone could be injured. But the main reason we're doing this is it prevents someone from shooting their way into school. That's why we think this matters. All first floor glass. No one will... You can shoot through the glass, but you can't shoot your way in. That's why that's on there. And when the Department of Homeland Security gentleman was here last week and we were going through the detailed security plan, both of these items, the camera room, as well as the film, was absolutely endorsed by him. He thought those were necessities. And I mean, they talked about the actual product that would be purchased

095for security film. And he even approved, I shouldn't say approved. He thought that that was probably... That was the right film to purchase. It occurs to me the camera room operation sensor is probably a three, four, because it's also access control. But it also does act as the command and control sensor and the, oh, my God, something happened. That's right. And that's one of the reasons we were trying to work with this image, working with a couple of people who are really good at this stuff. It's really hard because it's not as discreet as we would like them to be in order to talk about them. OK. I just have a question about the film, which, Brian, my question is coming to you. As everyone knows, I was on a different board and they had

096pursued some of these things, but went and pursued the bulletproof glass. What happens in case of fire? You asked this exact question to the fire department? I figured you had. That's why, you know, I figured you had the answer. They assured me they will get in. If they need to gain access, they have the tools. But do we have the tools to get out? They have the tools to get in to the classroom. If that's what you're talking about, coming in through a door, they will come through that door. Are you talking about going through glass? Yeah, so we put these films on the glass and we now have one of these 600 fires. Does that mean no longer we know student can exit our building through a first floor window in case of fire?

097That was my question. So first floor windows would still still operate. There's some that open, right? But if you're talking, I assumed you were talking about the fire department trying to go through a non door. They will get in. Fire department coming in and our kids going out. That was my question. In my mind, I don't mean to sound doom and gloom. I was there 600 fires a year and I want to make sure that we're not putting things there that are making us safer to one thing and putting us in danger to another. So that was my question. So in our fire code, exiting through a window is not part of the fire code. So you would be following your exiting path. But know that windows are still operable. Thank you. That was they

098can be unlocked from the inside. Yep. Okay. That's what I wanted to make sure. Okay. Thank you. Next slide, please. All right. So also recommendation, additional card reader access for ingress and ingress. This is extremely, extremely important. What this means is we have doors that are monitored by security. If someone comes in, security will say, may I help you? Do you have an appointment? If it's a student, they scan in. If it's an adult, we run them through our Raptor system. We do. We have these things when people come into the building at one of those doors. However, if someone were to open a door for someone, because students are nice and students are sympathetic, and if they see someone standing outside a door and it's cold and clearly they want to get in, the

099normal human responses say, oh, here, let me open the door for you. Let you in. What this is saying is if you do not have access, sorry, authorization to open one of those doors, we're going to get an alert. We're going to know. And one of the things we're going to do is we're going to have a camera on that door because we're wanting to see what's going on here. If there's a student letting another student in a door, we're sending our security team there. We are responding to this. What is happening in this situation? We have had this happen before. All schools have had this. Schools have allowed, students have allowed other students into school during school day, not supposed to. This happens. But the reason I wanted to mention this as related to

100the camera system is it really is important now, as Ann mentioned, the Department of Homeland Security person said this security operations center is important because we need to have the capability, if we're getting these alerts, that a door is propped open or that someone has opened a door without authorization to do so, we can put eyes on it to see what's going on. Now, when I go to Highland Park High School, I generally park next to the daycare, hoping maybe they'll see me and say, hey, you need to come read to us because it's the best thing. But when I'm going out that door, once we have these things installed, I'm going to need to scan out of the door. Now, if I forget, someone should see the door open and it should not have,

101you know, by someone that was unauthorized, oh, it's superintendent, he forgot again, someone needs to email that dude and tell him, you got to scan when you go out. But if it's a student letting someone in, that's a very different response. But in order for us to respond and understand what's going on, that security operations center with the cameras is extremely, extremely important. All right. Access control, remote, if there are questions about these things, happy to talk about them. We, go ahead. No, you go. And the next one is we have fire doors in all of our corridors. You probably, people have probably seen them, but there is a way to automate them so they can close automatically. And there are instances in which we would want to be able to do that remotely, open

102them, close them. That's also one of the recommendations that there are these, especially, you know, like these hallways in Deerfield, they're so long to be able to very quickly close doors, not just in long hallways, but we could, this is, you know, I'm talking to Brian about this, he's talking about how easy it is to scale this out and have a lot of functionality that if we need to secure a part of the building by closing doors remotely, we're able to do that. Interior door card readers. We've got two sets, classrooms and other remaining. Right now, to get in this building, you got to have an idea to get you in. What about classroom doors? If students have IDs, they're able to get in the door, teachers able to get in the door. There are

103times when we want to be able to control who can get into a classroom. Now, there are schools that have these, and of course, we're always constantly talking to schools who have made different decisions than we've made and have different capabilities to, you know, to learn from them. But this is something that we're recommending. We need to move in this direction, both for classrooms and other doors, so that, you know, a custodian's room, for example, is just not, it would have to, it was only accessible like this. Okay, then this, the last one. So question about card readers, same 10 seconds that we talked about earlier about access, excuse me, same system, same 10 seconds, if something needs to be shut off or turned on or changed. Yeah, it's the same exact system we would

104just be building onto the current system we have. So yeah, if someone needed, if we needed to revoke rights, we could do that quickly, assuming we knew who and we were in front of a computer, we could do it in 10 seconds. And if we were in a hard lockdown, I don't think that's even the word now. Is there ability for there to be remote control over shutting those doors and locking those doors? Classroom doors. Yeah, so we could see the status if the doors were open or closed. We couldn't, we could, there's multiple options in the system. So you could have a door closed and unlocked. You could have a door locked. If the door is physically open in the open position, this is the system that is being talked about is not able

105to physically close the door. Right, so it'd be, so I know on the fourth week, there were some challenges with some of the doors being able to lock. In this case, they, you know, they're shut and then we're able to- You could change the status of all doors to locked. To locked. And also important is the security operations center to be able to manage that and see what's going on and be in communication with people who are dealing with the situation. Okay, this last one, you know, as I said at the outset, we do not have, we have fire safety standards. We do not have the standards for dealing with the very specific threat of someone bringing a concealed weapon into school. And we still think that climate and culture is our best layer of

106mitigation against that. Obviously, we know from experience and other schools know this from experience that it doesn't always succeed. There are times when we are facing this threat, this particular threat. In our situation, we have had a mass shooting in our community. We've had a student, although statistically, it's more likely to be this and that. It actually, you know, happened here. And I know, you know, we've been doing work all summer on this. Brian has gone to schools downstate that have these things. We've been, I've been talking to superintendents. We've been doing work all summer and we'll talk about that a little bit after this. But what it comes down to for me is if we were to recommend anything other than having a way to prevent someone from bringing a concealed weapon into the

107school, if something were to happen, I'm not going to be working forever. If even years from now, I'm no longer here and I'm not going to be fired, I'm not going to be blackballed because I'm no longer in public education. I'd still be living with this. If someone actually brought a gun to school and something happened, I would be living with this. And every school faces this. Every student in every school in the U.S. knows how to get a gun into school. They put it in their backpack and they walk in the door. Kindergarteners, first graders, they know how to do it. The only thing that's different here is it happened here. After we had a mass shooting in the community. So it just feels like since there's no standard for safety of students and

108staff when it comes to gun violence, it's a community. It's a local community decision. And in our community, we've been through this. And it was horrendous. And as we're about to start school, from where I sit, I know we've got best practices, we've got statistics, we have all these things. But for me, I have to recommend to the board that we implement on a small scale a weapons detection system and learn from it. We don't want to do anything to harm culture and climate. It's the last thing we want to do. There are so many things that we have to learn before we even think this is successful or even consider scaling it out. But we're at a point in the summer that now we have to make this recommendation because we could not possibly

109have started on day one with this, by the way. We'll make sure the board understands this. School starts on August 16th. There would be no way that this could be up and running on August 16th. Why? Well, a couple of reasons. One, students are going to have to become used to it. We're going to have to teach them. We're going to have to do a lot in order to help students figure out how to navigate this new way of entering school. We have to talk to staff because now it's changing the way they come into school. So there's a lot of work we have to do with staff in order to get this right. But we're at the point, I think, that we would like to recommend this to the board. Learn from it. We

110got to talk to students. We have to understand how is this impacting you know, your experience in school? What is your experience now that we are trying this? We also, when we're talking about recommend, you know, doing this on a small scale and learning from it, doing it in such a way that it has a deterrent effect. So we're not going to say, okay, once this thing is live, assuming the board, I mean, we got the board, this is for the board's consideration. Everyone would be happy to know I'm going to stop talking soon. And assuming that the board supports this and it goes live, we're not going to say it, what door it's going to be. We, it will just appear. And you know, students, if they see, oh, well, this, I see that

111it's at the door. I'm going to, now I think I'll go into a different door. In schools, that for us becomes reasonable suspicion. TLO versus New Jersey told us what we, the standard we need to meet in order to conduct a search. And it's not probable cause. That's what the police have to use. It's a much higher standard for us. It's reasonable suspicion. Can we articulate a suspicion to a particular student? And so a student might be saying, I'm not going in that door because I've got a vape pen. Okay, well, you know, if you decide not to go in the door that you're intending to go into, we, you know, we need to see what's in your backpack. So we want to do this in such a way as the term, but I am

112so, so concerned that by doing this in order to address that one specific threat of someone bringing a concealed weapon in the school, which if you look through all the things we're doing, we are not addressing that specific threat. This would address that specific threat. We cannot, we've got to be very mindful of not harming climate and culture to do it. I know more, probably a lot of questions about this, a lot of discussion. If we could just get through the next couple of slides, lots to talk about. So moving on, because this is actually, I know this is a big thing, but it's actually one of many. Next slide, please, Ron. My voice gives up. Two things in crisis, I'm sorry, crisis response. One is we need to find a way of communicate. We,

113one of the things we learned is we have substitutes in our buildings. We rely on them. They provide a very important service to students, you know, they're filling in for their regular teacher. We have to have a way of communicating with them when they're in the building. So one of the things we're looking at is some crisis communications that we could geofence. So if I'm going to stop in the building and there's something happening, I can see on my phone, I can get information on my phone what's happening. If I am in the city or if I'm traveling outside, you would not get that. We could put our plans that they're going to print out and put in each room. We could put those on them. So there are a lot of things we think

114we could do with this. The next and last thing of our recommendations is having auto-translation so that when parents are registering their students or will have to do something different to get this information, parents can indicate their preferred language. I cannot imagine what it must be like to be a parent for whom English is good, it's serviceable, but they know something is critical, but they would so much prefer having it in their home language. This is really important to us as well, to be able to communicate to parents in the language that they choose to be communicated in when something happens. This is also something that we're recommending for this year. Ron, next slide. I need to circle back to this weapons detection system. There was really no way to do this elegantly, so this

115feels a little choppy, but I apologize for that. When we're looking at this slide, it is the case that when we ask people, what do you think about this, 77% of the people we responded to, and there was enough of a response that we can say, this is representative of the population. 77% of the people said, this is how we feel. This is an important piece of information at a point in time. Now, everyone who is in the survey business, and we're getting close to 2024 president's election, I'm not sure it ever stopped, but you're going to be hearing a lot of polls. Polls are anyone who knows, at least I hear people who know about these things, they say it's a point in time, and it's just looking at that particular point in time.

116Would that number be 77% today? I don't know. Would it be 77% on the first day of school? I don't know, but I do know this. Parents send to us the most important thing they have in their children, and the reason that we have parents who are so upset is they care so much about their kids, and they are entrusting them to us, not just to give them the education that they need to do what they want to do in life, but my God, to come home at the end of the day. Next slide, please. Now, we asked this question. Some type of metal detector, or a weapons detection system is installed. How do you think it would affect that in the school? All right, so make no difference, change for the better, change for

117the worse. Worry about this. We do not want to make any changes for the worse. We have to keep an eye on this. I'm not sure that a survey is what we're going to need if the board approves them implementing this on the smallest scale that we're recommending. I'm not sure we need to do surveys, but we need to be talking to students. We need to be hearing about all students and their experiences of this to ensure that this experience of them in school is not being adversely affected by this. This is something we need to keep an eye on. Next slide, please. All right, so still thinking about this, the greatest part of the cost of installing either a metal detector system, blah, blah, blah, is the personnel required. Okay, that's true statement. We

118have expenditure recommendations coming out of the board. None of them except the particular stipends for clubs include any staffing. That's the biggest expense. So when asked in this way, if we had to... I'm sorry, I cannot see the slide. Yeah, this is a throughput question. I apologize. I'm really anxious to get to the next slide. This is a throughput question. Would you favor opposing some weapons detection system if it doesn't require them to remove their belts? Yes, of course. Well, it's kind of... Well, somewhat favors so strongly. We're not recommending a metal detector like you do at the airport. We want this to be one where you're going to take out your computer. That's just going to get used to that. Will somebody like this set it off? I don't know. How do you get

119used to that? What about your cleats? Well, all these things that you get used to. It's not... We're not saying like at the airport. We're wanting to have a greater flow through than you have to do it at the airport. All right. This is the slide I want to get to, this next one, because this is the one that's really important. My goodness, so important. Ron, next slide, please. Of the survey. It's the one that says, Effective Atmosphere of the School? I'm sorry. This is personnel. Oh, I see. Yeah, the one before it. That's the one I thought was coming next. I got confused. Apologies. Please go back. If some type of metal detector, weapon detection system installed, how do you think it would affect them? Okay, still not the one. It's not in there.

120It's not in there. There was a question that we asked. I'm not sure how this slide got left out. There was a question we asked that said, all right, if we have personnel staff, personnel costs, how are you still in favor if it requires us to reduce something like clubs and activities? Now, we didn't say that that was going to be reduced. No one said that. It said if. That word was really important. If, and all these comments about we're going to be reducing. No, we're not. We spend three and a half million dollars on clubs and activity sponsors. And not only that, we're recommending the board. We actually spend more if there are teachers who are able to engage students in clubs that have not previously been engaged. So that is not the case.

121And by the way, no one asked me how I read that slide. No one asked me my interpretation, but here's my interpretation. People want us to mitigate against this very specific risk to bring a concealed weapon in school, but they don't want to reduce the things that are important to them. They want us to figure it out without reducing activities and athletics. That is that. And that is our we've got to figure out how to do this because there is no way that we would want to reduce something that actually is promoting the very thing that is most important to us. So I want to make really clear about this. If the board supports this and there's extra staff costs, we're not going to be reducing clubs and sports in order to pay for this.

122Never said that. Question doesn't even say that. I want to make this very clear, though. We are not reducing anything that's actually making our students safe in order to pay for something that's going to mitigate against this specific threat. And I apologize. Somehow that slide didn't make it. All right. Next slide, please. Next steps. So since spring, we've been... Oh, my goodness. Here are all the things we've been doing. We've investigated. We've been testing, touring. There's a lot of work. But this small scale rollout at the beginning of the year, not day one. I know of a school district that made the decision to try this and they made the decision and three days later, they were trying it. In winter, it did not go well. We will not make those mistakes. There's no way...

123Brian is overseeing implementation. I assure you this will be well thought out. It'll be well planned. It will be smooth. But it's going to take us a while. This is why the small scale rollout at the beginning. I do not want anyone to think that we are doing this on August 16th. It's going to take some time. You didn't start looking... The spring has been focused on weapons detection systems. Prior to that, though, there has been consistent research on metal detectors as that technology has evolved. Because I know I've been in meetings while I've been on the board that this subject has come up. So there's been a lot of due diligence since spring, but spring wasn't a brand new idea. We started looking at things like this before July 4th. Correct. We do. Correct.

124The four least sounds every time we hear of an incident somewhere else. It makes us pretty valuable. And that's part of our regular closed session is the discussion of security. And about a year... Whatever it was, over a year, I can't remember. We were looking at a system and the error rate... I don't think that's the correct term, sorry. But the error rate was, I don't know, like 20%. Well, you can't have something that is giving us a false positive 20% of the time. That's a lot of students. If there are 1,800 students at Island Park High School, we have 360 of them who are going to be pulled aside. And I mean, this would... So there were some... Technology wasn't quite there yet. It's evolved and there's a new system. In fact, Rockford Schools

125has adopted that we'll want to take a look at. But yes, we've been talking about this for a long time. We're at a point where the system that we've been investigating is accurate enough and gives us the kinds of functionality we need that we're ready now to recommend this. Next slide, please. All right. Also really important. Well, in terms of recommendation, it's just at arrival. Schools are busy places. They're 24-7, really. It seems like seven days a week, for sure. But right now, what we're saying is this is at arrival only. And we want to do it, as I mentioned earlier, in a pop-up fashion. Once the board supports this, it will be only... And it will be at random doors and it will be unannounced. That unannounced part is... And the pop-up part, that's

126also part of deterrence. But it's only at arrival and we'll rotate it around and we'll go to randomizer.org. I'm sure Debbie has a statistics book in the back. We can find some random numbers the old-fashioned way. All right. Next slide. Next couple of slides. Talk about the... Just speak to the due diligence. And I think it's important that the board sees this, not just because we want to... I'm actually showing off all the work that Brian's been doing. But it's also trying to illustrate that the experience of coming into school is going to be very different. And so this is... That's like this is the staffing plan view. We haven't implemented anything. We're not quite sure. But it looks... This is a drawing, just an abstract drawing of where it might be. In the next

127two slides, we'll see what it could look like at Deerfield and at Island Park. Ron, if you could advance one. DHS, it might look like this at the main entrance. And I think one of the things that has the ability for this to be more successful is... Post-COVID, we had our students start to scan their IDs. So they are used to queuing up and doing that piece to it. This is just another new piece to it. It's a different piece, a very... But I'm saying in terms of our kids... Whereas if we would have been talking about this three years ago before they scanned IDs, et cetera, where they all just entered en masse, that's what I mean. And I didn't mean to mitigate what we're doing. But that is a big piece that has

128helped us through this is the sense that at least one of these steps our students have been doing for a couple of years. We're not throwing all of this at them once. Main entrance to DHS. Next slide, please. And this is what the Vine entrance might look like. Again, we would need to actually start implementing this to see what happens. If all the students who come through this door are late to first period, we've got a problem. Big problem. If as a result of this thing randomly popping up, if it's causing significant numbers of students to experience stress, we need to pay attention to that. If it's starting that feel of school and being in school on the first day is one of the things that is just so great. If all of a sudden

129that starts to feel different in a way that is not good, we need to be able to come back to the board and say, we've got a problem here. Because not everything that's implemented, I have no doubt about Brian's ability to implement this from an operational standpoint and get the throughput down as good as anyone can do it. But then there's this other part of students' experience that this is what we have to really have to pay attention. I know I keep coming back to this. Next slide, please, Ron. All right. So learning and training impact on climate and culture assessment and feedback, all this has to work. I just want to come back to this thing. If the board supports doing this on a small scale, it's going to take a lot of training,

130but we're going to do a lot of learning. We have to monitor the impact on culture, climate. We have to assess how we're doing, report back to the board and use the feedback in order to assess whether this is doing what we want it to do. All right. So next steps. There we now. Now we're just talking generally. The board approves recommendations as Ron expenditures. We'll get to work and starting to implement things that need to be implemented and procure things that need to be procured. But working with all stakeholders, this is so important. Finalized any implementation of anything that's impacting students and staff. We have to be listening to our students and staff. As we go through these steps to make sure we get this right, we'd like to send a communication to parents

131tomorrow. And the reason for that is this, I know this has taken a long time. I appreciate the board's patience and listening to all this, but it does represent the amazing amount of work that so many people do to try to keep our students safe, students and staff safe from gun violence. There's a lot here. It has become a big part of what we do, which is one of the reasons that we need a director of security to oversee this function, to lead this function as security becomes an ever bigger part of what we do. I've said so many times we need to learn. And if all of this is successful, then we need to recommend or for approval. Mercifully, I'll stop there. The last slide is just some links. Are there any board questions

132or discussion now, or do we want to hold that until we go to the action items? Then hold it until we go to the action items. I'm just throwing an idea. No, absolutely. Okay. Thank you, Dr. Code. You demonstrated how complex these issues are and how they touch upon every part of our schools. We'll move on to public comments now. 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 asked during public participation may be sent via email to be answered

133subsequent to the board meeting. Now, let's see. First up, we have Chad Renke. Thank you once again for allowing me to speak this evening. This is a continuation of the weapons detection discussion. From April 11, 2019, there's a quote, the district needs to work on communications with the 113 community. We need to take communication very seriously and reach out to the parents, teachers, and students to listen to what they have to say and move forward in a way that is much more open and transparent than sometimes District 113 had seemed in the past, end quote, said by someone in this room. So do I dare say that in some respects, it seems as if we are still living in the past. For the taxpayers, I must ask this district, if I want to know the

134dollar amount spent for district security survey, which asked me a factual question of which the district already knew the answer as it was on the books and its own records, which question could not be completed because no selectable response would apply, therefore not allowing me to complete the survey. Would I be told the amount of taxpayer money to send a survey to me which was discarded and not received by this district which sent the survey? And I'm understanding that a Freedom of Information Act request for the disclosure of the total cost of the security survey was never adequately fulfilled. So what was the cost? Is this the policy? Do we have any gang activity or people desiring to injure or kill others in or near our school district? For example, one summer, gunshots rang out

135in the streets of my neighborhood, allegedly in a gang shooting incident and who heard those shots? I did. And has there been any other known violence, terrorism and crime within or near this school district? So I can testify that we have a problem to deal with. Whose daughter was hiding in the library this past election day, April 4th? Mine. Who attended a high school where there was a personal belonging searched at the door every day before entering the school building? Me. And we were all on time. So I can testify that it works quite well because no one knows how to pack a backpack with a gun and walk on in because, oh, you can give that to us here. It works. After a problem was identified, a new interchange was constructed to replace the

136signal intersection of US 41 and Claybury Road for health and safety and to save life. After possibilities were sabotaged or identified, gates limiting vehicle access to the lakefront were installed ultimately for the health and safety of the larger North Shore community. After a problem was identified, a new pedestrian tunnel was constructed under the railroad at the Robinia Festival platform for health and safety and to save life. And after more than one concert, when passing by the beautiful fountain walking through this tunnel of safety, I've noticed silently there against the wall are the metal detectors. The devices so many of us step through, which we use to make concerts safe and enjoyable as possible. And I wonder all these potential hazards have been greatly reduced with infrastructure at all these locations in Highland Park. However, for

137our soft target school buildings in this district where problems have been identified and plausibility and in actuality with evidence of such problems, equal effort and diligence three minutes to be applied. Thank you very much. I appreciate it. We continue. Thank you. Thank you. Any other public comments? No. Hearing no further public comments, we will move on to our action items. The first action item up this evening is the 2023-24 school safety recommendations and expenditures. It is recommended that the Board of Education approve the 2023-24 safety recommendations and expenditures and not to exceed amounts as presented. Is there a motion? Is there a second? Is there any discussion? I would like to make a motion to divide the weapons detection system separately. Is there a second? Second. Is there any discussion? I will be honest with

138you. I think that we have been incredibly diligent and unfortunately through mostly closed session discussing a lot of these things, but I really appreciate the diligence that our administration has done to give us a truly comprehensive list of things that we can do that are tangible to help. Okay. We will first, so with that motion being seconded, we will first vote on the motion to divide the question to remove weapons detection systems first. Sorry, I've got off too quickly. No, no worries. For a separate vote, I want to note that voting yes for the motion does not obligate the board member to vote no or to vote for or against the divided motion simply to allow the consideration of the weapons detection system as a separate item. Can we have a roll call, please? Ms.

139Newman? Aye. Mr. Nieder? Aye. Ms. Shapira? Yes, please. Mr. Braza? Aye. Dr. Elliot Schrimmer? Aye. Mr. Strzok? Aye. The motion passes. Okay, so now we will vote on the original motion without the weapons detection system. Is there a motion? So moved. Is there a second? Second. Is there any discussion necessarily on the items other than the weapons detection system? What I just said before. Yes. And these items, as you so eloquently articulated, Bruce, are exactly what's in, you know, the FBI and the Secret Services reports about the culture being so key to safety of students and that the students have a safe adult they can go to and that teachers are educated, you know, on what to do to respond to credible reports of violence. So these make complete sense. Question on timeline. Obviously, these

140are all a number of different things that some will take longer than, some will take longer than others. So is it correct to assume that over the course of the school year we'll be getting periodic updates of what's been completed, when it's been completed? Is that a closed session? Is that an open session? Can you talk more about that? Yes. So regarding timelines, there are, as you said, different things run different timelines. The access control system for being able to can, you know, lock down the corridor. That's going to Facilities Committee for review. So obviously that one's going to take, well, there's a lot of design in that and there are things that need to be done. Other things can be done more quickly. I assume Brian could, has a better sense of timeline things.

141There's lead time. I would say that the most important thing, most important part of the timeline, however, are those items that we needed to wait until students and staff were back in school in order to work through, talk to them as appropriate. Now, we're probably not going to be talking to students about additional exterior and card reader access for ingress, for ingress and ingress. We're not talking to students about that one. We are talking to staff about that because it's definitely going to affect how staff, you know, or what they need to do if they're going outside the school. So the ones that require a lot more staff input, you know, that's going to be probably sort. But the important thing is, and this is always the case in 113, we work really hard to

142get it right. We're not taking the time, but at the same time, we don't, we're not rushing because we want to get it right. So, and another question you asked is coming back to the board. Absolutely, we need to be providing updates to the board. Part of this is, you know, how often does the board want to hear about this? Is it monthly? Is it quarterly? There are various ways we can meet with board president, vice president before every meeting to talk about agenda. So we're happy to provide updates to the board. And now I know we're talking just about these issues and not the other one. But yeah, I think that's a very important part of this because we're committing significant resources to this and it's taking a lot of time and there's nothing

143more important that we do than this. So yes, we absolutely have to be reporting back to the board. And then question on the support for clubs or students not in a club or sport that do not exceed amount of $40,000 a month into school. $40,000 is already been expended. I'm assuming you'll come back to the board. Here's what we've found. Here's what we've seen. Is that something that'll take place? So we have a budget right now for stipends for clubs and activities. And yes, that will be spending against that budget. We've already started. We've got sports starting and we have marching band. What this is referring to is we're asking the board to approve an amount of money that would be in addition to what's already been committed. And now the criteria for those stipends

144are different than what we normally do for activities. We have a lot of sponsors of activities. This is the hard part. I'll just make sure the board is aware of this who are sponsoring clubs and they've been waiting for the budget to open up in order for them to have a stipend. So there's, if you will, a line. What we're saying about this and I know, I mean, I'm not saying this is news because you were in the DEI committee and we're talking about it. It's really, you know, just in providing information. As we discussed with the DEI committee, there are those students we're trying to figure out how to engage in school. And so it's an amount of money on top of that. So it's functioning in that way. If we needed more, of

145course, we'll come back to the board. But that would be a great problem to have. Any other discussion? I'm going to call an audible. In calling the vote on the original motion without the weapons detection system, I'll go and read the items we are voting on and not to exceed amounts simply so that it's available for anybody who's listening or watching subsequently. We're voting on supportive clubs for students in no club or sport and an amount that are currently in no club or sport and an amount not to exceed $40,000. Curriculum for homeroom that fosters student-to-student relationships and student-to-staff relationships in an amount not to exceed $50,000. The development of a camera room, security operations center in an amount not to exceed $240,000. Security film on exterior glass in an amount not to exceed $273,000.

146Additional exterior card reader access for ingress and egress in an amount not to exceed $571,000. Access control system equipped with remote door release and lockdown capabilities. Approval of this item will move this for recommendation to the facilities committee for further review. Interior door card readers in classrooms in an amount not to exceed $1.165 million. Interior door card readers for other doors within the schools in an amount not to exceed $743,000. And a crisis communications app with features such as geofencing for enhanced communication with substitutes and easy access to plans and maps and in an amount not to exceed $15,000. We're voting on these items and we have a roll call please, Ramina. Mr. Nader. Aye. Ms. Shapira. Yes, please. Mr. Barraza. Aye. Dr. Elliott-Shermer. Aye. Ms. Newman. Aye. Mr. Strzok. Aye. The motion carries. We

147will now move to the vote on the weapons detection system. This is a vote to approve a weapons detection system in an initial amount not to exceed $80,000. Do we have any discussion on this item? One of the concerns that has been brought up is about how weapons detection systems will impact culture and climate. So can you speak to ways that you might envision preliminarily? So like, I know you don't, you might not have a full plan in mind but what do you envision could be ways that we could help monitor this? One of, there are some of the ways we've talked about. We need to hear from students directly. Each school has, has homeroom. There are, there are small groups of students who are working with social workers, counselors. There are a lot of

148settings in which we're able to begin to understand what is the impact of climate and culture and is it, is it extensive enough? I mean, if it's negative, is that negative impact extensive enough that would cause us to rethink this? There are other things that we can do. Attendance, you know, if there's a student, you know, if there's a student who's not attending school, there are people who reach out to that student to try to find out what's going on. And if they're, you know, so this might be, this would be another opportunity for us to understand if there's some impact on students. We can, we, through Panoramic, we have, we conduct surveys in which we're asking students basically, how are you feeling? We've got baseline data for this. We've got baseline data for that.

149We're able to compare it, you know, to previous administration survey, by the way, whenever we do this, we are required, parents can see all these survey questions, not trying to hide anything here. So there are, there are ways that are a little bit more quantifiable, but I, the reason I'm mentioning, I keep saying hearing directly from students, it's just really, really, I think it's really important that when we have students in, whether it's in the classroom or in a homeroom or other settings, that we find those opportunities to use those smaller settings as focus groups and begin to, you know, I know that there are people who run focus groups professionally, and one of the things they do is they're listening to all, you know, what people are saying in very different locations, you know,

150in these different groups, to see what's emerging as themes. And this is the thing, I think that's going to probably give us much more information about the lived experience students have when they're in school, as we are changing the way that they enter school to see if it's having a negative impact. The problem, of course, it's really difficult to measure this as accurately as other things. And the other problem we have in terms of measurement is we think this is going to have a deterrent effect. How do you measure the effectiveness of a deterrent effect? There's one way, of course, but then someone could say, well, you know, we don't have any more other, we don't have any further instance of someone bringing a concealed web into school because that's the very specific risk we're

151talking about. We don't have any more of those. Is that because we have a web detection system? Or is it because April 4th was an outlier event? There's no way to know that. So the measurement part is difficult. I know that I've talked to a couple of people who are really eager to figure out how to talk to our students and set that up so that it's a little bit more methodical. I have a, or as it may get, obviously, but I have a superintendent advisory committee of students and I'm constantly asking them these kinds of questions. It's not representative of the whole, but it's a group of students who will tell me exactly what they think. And so putting this together, I think, will give us a sense of what is happening with our

152students. But it's not going to be perfect. I don't know how we get to this perfectly. Sorry. Climate and culture are sort of macro concepts. You know, do you anticipate that as a part of this, there'll be mechanisms to maybe help individual students who may be having discomfort or to help them get acclimated or understand what's going on, that sort of thing? One of the things I think we are really good at, and schools have had to become really good at this, is we know that for students to be successful in school, it's not just how smart they are. It's not how much homework they complete. It really has to do with their entire social emotional well-being. And we have a lot of staff who are devoted to that. So if students have discomfort because

153of this or they have discomfort because of other things, we have staff in place who are able to work with those students at various levels of time and intensity. We have drop-in centers, wellness centers. Students know they are able to drop in without an appointment and they can talk to someone. And so I'm very, very confident in the school's ability to work with students who are experiencing that level of stress, anxiety, whatever is bothering them. The thing that I am most concerned about is it is a macro concept, but is there this impact on school culture that is at that kind of macro level? When you walk into a school, I swear this, I test this every time I walk into a school, you get a feel, you get a vibe. And different schools have

154different vibes. That sounds scientific, I know. But that's the thing that I'm worried about. Not just the individual students who are struggling, but just the vibe of the school. We're about to change that in a way that we absolutely do not want to do because we know how important it is. I 100% agree that implementing a weapon detection system will allow parents to feel that their kids are safer, that parents will feel as if they have a sense of control. I think we have to see how the staff and the students feel once that we're in. I also 100% think that it can serve as a deterrent, of course. Where I am wrestling is when we've read these reports from the FBI, from the Secret Service, from Homeland, every single one of them says, you

155implement a weapon detection system when there's increased community violence that spills into the schools. The examples are given. Santa Fe High School is an example and Richland, Wisconsin was an example of just two. After July 4th, the DOJ said no when we asked you to implement metal detectors. They said no. The police said April 4th, the student was not intending to cause harm. It was a teenager making a horrifically bad decision, which is what teenagers to a certain degree are supposed to do. We're supposed to be in an environment in which they're allowed to do that. Not to the extent the student did, but the student will also receive all the consequences of their actions. My long story, my long lead up, my question is what are the facts that are telling us that we

156have increased violence in our community that's spilling into the schools? Because we've always made our decisions based upon the experts. That's where I really struggle. You know, I don't think I have an answer directly to that. I do know that, at least I observed, there was a shooting in a high school in Oxford, Michigan. And without getting into specifics of it, because I think it could have been prevented based on what I've read. But setting that part aside, there was a shooting. And after the shooting, they implemented metal detectors. That school has no greater statistical chance of having another incident than any other school. Just because you've had one doesn't mean all of a sudden you're immune. But they implemented metal detectors after the school shooting. Why did they do that? When we're talking about

157this, and Brian is all about operations, we are talking about physical safety. We're talking about trying to protect students and staff from gun violence. And we're doing this in a very kind of abstract and rational way, which means the experts matter, which means these statistics matter when it comes to the work of keeping students and staff physically safe. However, there's also a psychological safety that really matters. And I think it matters in those communities that have gone through something, which is why Oxford, Michigan, if someone thinks why would you put in a metal detector after the fact, if you think about the need to provide psychological safety, it makes sense. And I think that is one of the things is listening to audience communication and listening to emails that we're receiving and talking to other

158people who have been in these situations, who are in this god-awful club that our community is in. That feeling of psychological safety is extremely important. And then the final thing I'd say is this is personal for me. The board looks to me to make a recommendation. I try to think through things as much as possible. I talk to people. I listen and debate and argue. But at the end of the day, it's something I need to make a recommendation that 10 years from now I can look back and think I made the right recommendation. As I said, for me, it's just this, in our school community, every person, every superintendent, every school administrator could have this up. But in our school community, given what we've been through, it just feels more real. And I could

159not recommend anything other than providing not just mitigation against this very specific risk, regardless of how unlikely it is to happen again. It did happen here. So I'm not sure what that does to probability. But also one that I think is going to provide for more psychological safety for students and staff. We could test that idea, of course, if it provides more psychological safety. But to your original point, I have nothing on point to say to that. It's I'm kind of not addressing it. So I guess I lose the debate in that setting. But that's the only way I can respond. I'll be honest. I'm struggling with us taking this vote at all this evening. We are a board of seven. We were elected to make decisions as a board of seven. And by no

160fault of one board member, 100%, that board member is not here to make. And I know that my fan on list delays things by a couple weeks. But every one of our seven board members should be voting, should be giving an aye or nay to this. And the fact that we don't have that ability tonight bothers me. This is a big one. And I understand and, you know, and I get it fully why we can't, okay, because of the timing. But I can't say that that doesn't affect me. With that, Ann, I totally I am outside of a COVID vote. This is the one that has kept me up at night because I do not I have tried. And I think we showed as a board during COVID. We made our decisions based on what

161the experts recommended to us. We made our decisions based on the guidance from the people who know far more than we do about this. And based on those visits that you have done and that Brian has done and that Bruce has done with all the people out there that know far more about this, they're not recommending this for us. They're recommending this, what we just approved. That being the case, I'm the only person here to the best of my knowledge that is taught in the school district prior to, well, that had an actual shooting. And I was an employee of Winneka School District. And I can't take that piece out. And I can't take my emotional piece of experiencing that in Winneka and then being here now. And I believe that that student made a

162really dumb decision. But that decision could have gone a different way. So I'm very much struggling with my emotional decision on this one and the way I've voted on everything else in the past. And I'm still struggling this as we are sitting here. Can I just interject something with the procedural point of order? There, you know how much I respect you and your concern about having all seven board members. And again, as you said, this is of no fault of the board members on here. There is, if you wanted to propose a motion, there is a motion in Robert's rule of order that you would say something along the lines of move the question to be postponed the next meeting. And so that becomes procedurally a way of doing this if you want to. I'm

163just in my folder. I'm well aware of the fact that I can. There is a current motion before the board that we would have to move to withdraw. Exactly. And that motion has been added and approved. And so therefore, I would not do that. That motion has been approved. Therefore, that is the motion on the table. But being the case, I cannot say that I'm happy about taking a vote when only six people can vote. I am just going to make an institutional observation that this is an issue about which there is profound disagreements from people of people coming from the most sincere and honest places. And those disagreements arise out of good faith disagreements. There is no ulterior or spurious motives involved. Fact is, there is no explicit guidance, perhaps because of the multitude

164of social and political implications of the decision we're being asked to make. It's important to remember that a vote tonight that is not unanimous is not an expression of division. It's not an expression of somehow your resolvable difference. It's simply a reflection of legitimate disagreement among people who are committed to the mission of the school district. You know, after we have this vote tonight, I have every confidence that no matter what the outcome is, as a board, we will work together and work to fulfill whatever our vote is and to fulfill to the best of our abilities the recommendations of the superintendent and to continue to carry out our obligations to this school district and its mission to be a place of inspiration for every each and every student within our bill, within our care.

165Well said. I guess, is there any further discussion? So, Jodi, I will say my Apple Watch has gone off for a high heart rate a record number of times. This is an incredibly emotional discussion. And, Bruce, to start with what you shared in the beginning, this shouldn't feel normal and this shouldn't feel okay. And this definitely doesn't feel normal or okay. The only thing that I can add from my own lived experience and my own experience as a graduate of Highland Park High School is when I hear things like random and pop up and unannounced, it makes me nervous. And I only share that not as an indictment on our system. I think each and every single staff member has the best intention for the students at Highland Park High School and at Dearfield High

166School. But for me and for, I would argue, I will only speak for myself, but random airport searches happen a little too randomly for me. Can't prove it. And science may or may not back that up, but I would not be able to live with myself without sharing that and sharing my experience, which I imagine is shared by some. My goal and hope and desire, as I believe is shared, is not to stop the gun when it's at our weapons detection system, but stop it from ever even crossing the mind of the student that is even thinking about it. So one of the things that we haven't talked about is how we harness the power of our students and the communication that they have. And the fact that on the fourth day, instantaneously, we're able

167to share information amongst each other and across that. And we aren't harnessing that power. We aren't harnessing that voice. But to be able to share information, I think, is an opportunity that we have to learn from. What that looks like, I don't know. But I think there is that student voice and that student piece that we haven't discussed. It's been minimized in public comment. It's been minimized in some discussions about how you feel. And that's fine if you're coming from a position of power where your identity didn't make you feel othered or feel less than, to no fault of any other individual. But as an individual from a class where I felt othered, where I felt less than, to have a weapons detection system at the school where we know that we have other measures

168that we can take, I cannot support at this time. Thank you. Hi, May. Okay. Do we have any further discussion? I guess what I would ask is if this is voted on, that we are very clear to our new director of security who we, with this failure, are not giving her the opportunity to come on and figure out. Yeah, figure out what our ship looks like and adjust the ship. We're dictating what she will be implementing. And Anne, I totally agree with you. This seems backwards to me. She does, however, come from a district that, for different reasons. Correct. There's a reason why. Yes. What are the facts? But what I ask is that if at any point during the implementation that we get to a point where it isn't going to work for students,

169it isn't going to work for staffs, that we're given this group the ability to say not yet. And making sure that if we're going to buy equipment because of supply chain issues, that we have the opportunity that we could return them. I want the opportunity for the right folks around the table, which I know I've said before, to be able to put this in place where, but stop at any point if it's not the right time. Because that's where I am with Jaime. It's not now. It's not now. Well, I think to Jaime's point, and almost speaking to what Anne was saying, maybe even before we get to the point of do we have a stop in place, can we appropriately train whoever is going to be implementing this on a day-to-day basis so that

170we are solving for problems like implicit bias? We don't want the system to accidentally or indiscriminately target certain students where they are coming into the building feeling like here we go again, I know I'm going to be the one that's pulled to the side to be double checked or whatever might occur. So I think before we even get to the point of saying, what can we do to stop it before, because we're seeing that it's not working where we want it to, I think we should be thinking of how can we anticipate some of the issues that will come up and train our team appropriately to mitigate some of that. Brian, just to address some of the concerns about if we, in our evaluation and the testing process, we do have the option to rent

171these detection systems. Yes, it can be purchased or rented. Okay. So I don't know if I'm actually in any position at all to be able to speak to what Jaime said or Jordi, yes sir, so important, so important. I just, it is not in my experience, so I don't know. But we have to, you know, when we talk about random, by the way, we're not talking about like, you know, random students, you know, that worries me as well. The randomization would be of the doors. So, which that's why I think that's one way to maybe address that. We got, you know, it's interesting. I actually don't know how this boat's going to go. But just as when we came off the July 4 shooting and we were so concerned about the trauma that students would

172have had, from that shooting, and we put people who have had trauma training and who are able to deal with that level. What we found was the trauma our students experience was there before July 4th was other than July 4th. And it didn't really matter if the trauma that they were experiencing wasn't related to July 4th, it's trauma nonetheless. So, this is, you know, not only the school climate, as Greg was talking about this macro level, we talk about, you know, the individual students who could feel marginalized as a result of this. You know, we've got to figure out how to make sure that doesn't happen. I suspect that when we do, if we get, you know, we've got smart people who can figure this out. But I suspect that what we're going to find

173is that in trying to address this situation, we're going to learn a whole lot about other ways in which they feel marginalized. And this could be really important for that reason. But we've got to zero in on this particular thing. And I'm not, and Jaime, I'm not, I'm not saying this in order to try to get you to change your mind or sway your vote. Please, please, please, I'm not saying it for that reason. It's just so important. We have to figure this out, not only for this, but I think in general, because students who feel marginalized felt marginalized before this thing. And if this makes them feel more marginalized, well, we've got to figure that part out. But the marginalization that I know, and it's students. It just feels like there's such a war

174going on against certain students. It's the job of a public school we're at to try to make all students feel safe, make all students feel like they belong and give all students the same attention and opportunity to pursue. What is it they want to pursue in life? This is focused on that. And I understand that. But it speaks to, I think, this much bigger issue that we're working on, but it's big. So as we discussed, I think it would be too simplistic to say, metal detector, when I come into school, I'm going to show signs of distress because of the metal detector. It is so incredibly more complicated than that. That may be the case, but I think it goes even deeper than that and harder to measure and harder to see. It's more of

175the trickle effect that could happen, which makes the success criteria that much more difficult to be able to nail down. Because if it is, we won't be able to see it in that small scale. I think that's what concerns me as well, is while it might not be the one-to-one weapon detection system, I went through it, now my day's ruined, it won't be that. But it might be that I was already having a rough day, something like death where we start to see it, I imagine. And that's where it'll be a lot more difficult to be able to ascertain both its effectiveness and what happened. It'll be the buildup sometimes. We are changing school culture. It's an important, very large decision. It is, and I'll reiterate, just incorporate by reference what I said earlier. Do

176we have any further discussion? Hearing no further discussion, Romina, can we please have a roll call on the motion to approve a weapons detection system in an amount not to exceed $80,000? Ms. Shapiro? I need a minute here. I'll be honest with you all. This decision is harder than the decisions we've made during COVID. And I'm going to vote yes. Mr. Braza? Nay. Dr. Elliott-Schimmer? Aye. Ms. Newman? We can say something when we vote, I believe. Yes, we can. No, my stance is not yet, not no. As it's probably clear, what's informing my decisions are the experts who have said that you put this type of system in when there is community violence. And April 4th was not an example of community violence, which is proven by the local experts, as well as the polling

177of the students and the staff who both all believed it was an isolated incident. We have always done what the experts have told us to do. We opened school in August based upon the FBI and DOJ. We now have a director of security, which was to bring in their expertise, which was again recommended by the Michigan task force. Um, all of the other items that we agreed on in the last vote all tie to what we know protects our students, which is that climate and that culture. And that's that adults that you have in the building that you can talk to. So I really want to let our director of security have the chance to do their job, have them be able to talk to students and the staff and the SRO and mental health

178professionals. Diversity and inclusion professionals to seek input so that the plan could get evolved and could be implemented successfully. Mr. Nader, Mr. Strzok. This is, I mean, it's a difficult vote. I have spent, I think this summer, hours and hours talking to Dr. Law and other board members about this. And I, I've, I hear, I mean, really, I hear the sense of responsibility, the commitment to students, the sincerity, the intense intensity and the passion that Dr. Law has expressed on this issue. I, I'm not in a place where I feel comfortable voting yes, but I am not going to block, I'm not going to vote to block what I think is a very, very sincere and responsible position taken by Dr. Law. So I am going to, and I know that it's something that the,

179it's a bare majority of the board approves it and the community feels that it's important and I trust Dr. Law and I trust our staff, but I'm going to abstain. So the motion carries three, two, one. We'll move on to agenda action item. I guess it's B, approved employment contractor for director of security. It is recommended that the board of education approve an employment contract for Amy Oliva as the district month 13 director of security as presented. Is there a motion? So moved. Is there a second? Second. Is there any discussion? Excited to meet her, excited to have her come on board. Wonderful resume. Yes. We, not as fast as we wanted, but we were really wanting to make sure we got the right person and we are very confident that we did that. Do

180we have any further discussion? Romina, can we please have a roll call? Mr. Barraza? Aye. Dr. Elliott-Shermer? Aye. Ms. Newman? Aye. Mr. Nieder? Aye. Ms. Shapiro? Yes, please. Mr. Strzok? Aye. The motion carries. Ah, just one observation that I think we've spent, I hope everybody appreciates how seriously we've taken this and difficult decisions, but we've taken our, we've made our vote, we've had our votes and it's time to work together and move on and move to the next action item. Action item C, college and career readiness. It is recommended that the board of education direct the administration in collaboration with teachers, staff, and the community, develop and implement a college and career readiness plan that will, one, define academic readiness for District 113 graduates, incorporating guidance from the ISB, local colleges, and other sources, two,

181ensure students graduate with the academic readiness needed for post-secondary success, three, provide appropriate career education experiences for all students, and four, comply fully with Public Act 102-0917 and related laws and guidance. Is there a motion? So moved. Is there a second? Second. Is there any discussion? I think we discussed this with Dr. Locke at a previous meeting and I believe we all expressed the desire that this is a great idea. So can we have a roll call? Dr. Elliott-Shermer? Aye. Ms. Newman? Aye. Mr. Nieder? Aye. Ms. Shapiro? Yes, please. Mr. Barraza? Aye. Mr. Strzok? Aye. Motion carries. Action item D, scholarship funds transfer between Township High School District 113 and the Rotary Club of Highland Park Highwood. It is recommended that the Board of Education approve the scholarship funds transfer agreements as presented. Is there

182a motion? So moved. Is there a second? Second. Is there any discussion? We previously discussed this with Ali. And this will further the purpose of the scholarship as originally intended. Can we have a roll call, please? Ms. Newman? Aye. Mr. Nieder? Aye. Ms. Shapiro? Yes, please. Mr. Barraza? Aye. Dr. Elliott-Shermer? Aye. Mr. Strzok? Aye. The motion carries. Agenda action item E, review of closed session minutes. It is recommended that the Board of Education approve those closed session minutes that are to remain closed or open from December 13, 2022 through May 30, 2023 as presented. Is there a motion? So moved. Is there a second? Second. Is there any discussion? I think we should probably mention that Anne and I have reviewed the minutes. They all contained information that's subject to, that pursuant to OMA remains

183confidential, is confidential, is not subject to being opened. Is there any other discussion? Can we have a roll call, please? Mr. Nieder? Abstain. Ms. Shapiro? Yes, please. Mr. Barraza? Aye. Dr. Elliott-Shermer? Aye. Ms. Newman? Aye. Mr. Strzok? Aye. The motion carries. We now move on to 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? Question. If we pull an item, does each one require a separate vote that is pulled? Only because B, C, and D, I was not here and it would be easier if I just abstained from the entire vote. You can just abstain. Procedurally, you can simply abstain. Yeah. Yeah. It is recommended that the Consent Agenda be approved as listed. Approval of

184Consent Agenda items. Board of Education Regular Action Meeting minutes, July 11th, 2023. Board of Education Regular Action Meeting closed session minutes, July 11th, 2023. Board of Education Regular Action Meeting closed session minutes through July 11th, 2023. And the personnel notice. Is there a motion? Is there a second? Is there any discussion? And hearing no discussion, can we have a roll call, please? Ms. Shapiro? Yes, please. Mr. Barraza? Abstain. Dr. Elliott-Schimmer? Aye. Ms. Newman? Abstain. Mr. Nieder? Aye. I was here. You were here. Yes. Mr. Strzok? Aye. The motion carries. We have now reached the end of our agenda. So we are ready to close. It is now 10 p.m. Is there a motion to adjourn the meeting? So moved. Is there a second? Second. All those in favor? Aye. Opposed? Abstentions? The motion carries. Everybody

185have a good evening.